Initial Thoughts on the iPhone Friendliness

The next morning; The initial rush of a new iPhone is gone (not that much though). So it's time to look at the thing with a more open mind. After my earlier post I had some time to think about the features I stumbled upon. Especially the tethering and syncing problems I ran into.

At first the tethering; no idea why Apple stripped that one from the 3.1.2 update (when you're not having the correct carrier). Most countries allow (by law) the users to remove the SIMLOCK from the iPhone. This opens the iPhone for other carriers. But it seems that when you switch carriers you end up with a 'crippled' phone, since the tethering gets 'disabled'. Not having the visual voicemail with other carriers is only a nice-to-have gone away. But tethering is something more basic. Something you (I) cannot live without.
Every other phone I've owned in the last 5 years was able to 'tether' through either an USB cable or through Bluetooth. It's like stepping back in time with the iPhone.

I know there are ways around it (e.g. downgrading to iPhoneOS v3.0). But that's not the point. It's the principle.

The second thing is the syncing part I ran into last night. It seems that the iPhone has trouble (or at least iTunes does) syncing data between multiple computers. Sure, the fact the syncing between multiple computers for an iPod is (perhaps) unwanted from a business point of view (copyrighted material MIGHT end-up some where the RIAA or MPAA doesn't want it). But we're talking about syncing contact, and calendar information. These items have no value at all to Apple, RIAA or the MPAA, but are EXTREMELY important to me.

The only real reason I can think of is that Apple wants people to get MobileME (paid subscription). Except, I don't want backup / redundancy on my data (I take care of that myself). All I want is to sync information.

As a more final thought on these frustrations; If I can't figure out these two mayor problems within a month or so, the iPhone will end up on the free market, and I'll be getting a Nokia E71 (which also syncs over Bluetooth).

Before you think I completely hate the iPhone, you're wrong. I really love the rest of the phone/ipod/etc-part. It's just that the contacts and calendar are two things that are really important to me. So for now it's a phone with cool gadgets. Definitely NOT a smartphone.