The painful memories of looking forward to and being disappointed by the first Newton still affect my thinking on whether or not to get in line and buy an iPhone next week. I am an optimist and a technology enthusiast.
I know the feeling. I’ll never forget sitting in my car and staring at the Newton MessagePad screen that was almost unreadable in daylight. Some how I got used to it and perservered with my Newton for several years before switching over to the much more practical Palm Pilot.
Now I carry a Blackberry, required because of corporate mail. It’s a decent phone and a really good mobile email system. It has a tiny screen and can’t display attachments like my last Palm could, so I always need to travel with a laptop to read attached documents. It works as an EVDO modem with my corporate laptop (not my Powerbook). The calendar function works fine, syncing with the corporate Exchange calendar well enough. I’ve never been able to use it for note taking or mobile text database the way I did with the Palm. I blame this on it’s Outlook style Notes and Tasks which just don’t work for me. I use the Web browser for Weather Underground and Google Reader almost exclusively as they provide a pretty good mobile experience.
It’s on Verizon, so in Europe it needs to be synced from the laptop. I’d like to believe that I could switch to the iPhone, get global GSM, usable browsing, calendaring and note taking but I just don’t think the corporate integration will be their. I’d have to carry both the largish iPhone and the large Blackberry. I imagine that I could use the web access to corporate email, but I doubt I’ll get usable email and calendar integration. We use Blackberry. Otherwise you’re on your own. Like the iPod and Apple TV at their introductions, they will useful gadgets, but probably will take some time before they gain enough traction to force general integration.
If ever. I’m on the sidelines for this one. For now.