macolyte.net

We’re a little over two weeks into iPhone ownsership and hot on the heels of my obligatory iPhone vs. Newton post, I now present my obligatory Things I Wish the iPhone Did [or at least did better] post. Let’s dive right in, shall we?

In no particular order:

• No copy/paste. If I want to, say, text message a link to someone, I have to manually type it in. This is a huge pain in the ass. I did discover, however, that you can email a link to someone rather easily.
• Can’t save pictures from emails. If someone sends me an email with a picture in it, all i can do is view it. It would be nice if there were some mechanism to save the picture to the Photos app.
• No custom ringtones. But there is a hack. Haven’t had the guts to try it yet, tho.
• No support for multiple calendars. It just lumps everything together. And you can only sync back to one calendar on your Mac. This is something I hope to see fixed with Leopard and its integrated calendar server.
• Need more BlueTooth services. Like file transfer or tethering. That’s the one feature I really liked about my RAZR. Probably not ever going to happen, but a guy can dream.
• iPhoto. Why must iPhoto open every single time I plug the thing in? I know, it’s so I can sync my photos, but can’t they just add something in iTunes to do it automagically? Update: Fixed
• No password manager. It gets really annoying having to type in my username and password whenever I go to a site that requires it.
• Opening links in a new window. Sometimes I like to follow a link, but at the same time keep the page I’m on available without having to hit the back button 12 times. Update: Fixed
• I need a real PDF reader!!! Seriously. I have two options for reading PDFs on the iPhone: by clicking on a link in the browser or attaching them to an email. Neither of these options is really working for me. If I use the browser, whenever Safari decides it doesn’t want to remember the page I’m viewing, I have to hope I remember what page of the PDF I’m on so I can scroll on back to it. The mail attachment option is worse. If I’m in the middle of reading a PDF that I’ve emailed myself and decide I want to check for any new mail, I have to remember what page I’m on in the PDF, go back to my inbox, check my mail, re-open the email with the PDF, and again hope I remember what page I was on because I’m going to have to scroll all the way back to it. Plus, I can’t view it in landscape mode this way. I’m not asking for Acrobat Pro here, or even Preview. Just a standalone app that will remember what page I’m on if I decide to go do something else on the phone.
• No SDK. ‘Nuff said

Those are my big gripes thus far. There are a couple of small things too, but I’m not really all that concerned about them.