Let's take a look at some of the most overrated inventions of our time:
- The Spork, along with its closely related cousin, the SpoonStraw.
- Pretty much anything you find at The Sharper Image and/or Sky Mall Magazine.
- The Apple iPhone 3G.
Don't let the shiny glass screen and chrome trim fool you. Much like lipstick on a pig, the outward appearance may be pretty, but it is only masking an otherwise useless device. Here is what I did not like about the iPhone 3G:
Separate mailboxes. Unlike the Blackberry which allows me to have one inbox for all my mail and SMS text messages, the iPhone forces you to use separate mailboxes for each email address.
Push email. The iPhone will only check for new Gmail messages every 15 minutes. I receive Gmail messages instantly on my Blackberry device.
Instant messaging. You can access Google Talk on the iPhone but only via the browser and if you aren't looking at the browser, you won't see that someone is sending you a message. AOL has developed an AIM application for instant messaging but it doesn't alert you when you get a message, either.
Apple states that their phone is "ready for business." It's not. Despite hours and hours in the Apple store and talking to tech support at AT&T and Apple, we were never able to get the phone to sync with my Microsoft Exchange Server.
The network. No one can compete with Verizon's network.
I must admit that the browser and attachment viewing capabilities of the iPhone are superior to those of the Blackberry. I hope that will change when RIM launches the Blackberry Thunder, the new touch-screen Blackberry that is coming to Verizon in a few months. And the iPhone is good at other things, too: it's good at pretty much everything that I don't need a phone to do.
I should also mention that I had no problem using the touch-screen keyboard. I had thought that I would not like the keyboard but it turned out to be fine. Nevertheless, I wound up porting my phone number back to Verizon after just a few days and I have gone back to using my Blackberry Pearl. I look forward to switching to either the Blackberry Bold or Blackberry Thunder when they come to Verizon's network later this year.
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