It’s been a while since I posted anything other than links but I’ve been in the Outer Banks for 2 of the last 3 weeks, trying to post more on marketingshift.com and ppclab.com (subscribe to the feed!) lately, and have been pretty busy working on some client projects. Everything is going pretty well as you can see here and the next 6 - 8 months should be pretty exciting here at Labitat.

Speaking of Labitat, El Capitan, Jason and I just got back from visiting a client and before I dropped him off at the airport we went to the Apple store and he got me an iPhone. I’ve resisted posting about it because I wanted to get a week of use with it in hopes to give a more level-headed opinion, but alas, I’m still excited about it.

Honestly, so far its lived up to the hype. It’s amazingly easy to use, packed full of features and while it does have its cons, they are few and far between. The iPhone keyboard has been one of the biggest things in question and was one of my initial concerns but after a week of use I love it. Even with my big fat hands, I rarely key in a wrong letter and I’ve found the auto-correct feature more useful than harmful. The phone portion is surprisingly clear, I was sure the iPhone would do all these cool things but sacrifice a quality phone but thankfully I was wrong. I could go on and on about the positives but thats been beat to death.

A few things I think could be improved on the iPhone:
1. The ear piece could be a little louder, but maybe thats just me trying to use a phone in the Jeep.

2. Battery life with Wi-Fi enabled and some phone use is about a day and a half and could use some improvement but without wifi on and moderate phone use, the battery is still full after a day which is pretty good. This would be my biggest complaint if I had to choose 1.

3. Lack of MMS sucks. You technically can’t send picture messages with the iPhone because it doesnt support MMS but you can still send them by using the free email on the iPhone it just requires you sending the picture to phone#here@whatevercarrier.com, so for example 919741##$#@attwireless.com would be my phones “email address”. (I’ll post more about this later). The Iphone handles incoming MMS messages in an interesting way as well. If someone sends me a picture message, ATT will intercept it and then send me a TXT message telling me to go to viewmymessage.com and enter in the supplied ID and password to see the picture. Not real convenient but its better than nothing.

4. Since I am a Windows user (for now) there is no real good way to manage the other aspects of the Iphone (music and video are handled through itunes) but there is no contact or photo manager for us windows users and it makes transferring my contacts pretty tedious.

5. No choice on ringtones, not really a big deal but for now the only ring tones I can use are the ones supplied. I’m sure they will be selling them later through itunes. I’d also like to be able to choice my sound for incoming messages and what not, but again no biggy.

6. The EDGE network is pretty damn slow.

7. The reception in some buildings is spotty, but it maybe that I just never noticed it signal strength with my other phone. Although in my house, ATT is stronger than Verizon.

Thats about all the complaints I have so far, most of these things can be fixed with a software update. Overall, the iPhone is pretty close to being the one and only device a person could need.

Thats it for me. Where have the rest of you been hiding? Paul, Brent, Scoogs, Casie, Will, Scooter….AWOL!