The Shape of Days

Okay, so I’m nearing the end of my first 24 hours with my iPhone, and I’ve got a couple new things to say.

First, I’m hooked. Honestly, I had my doubts at first. Between the nightmarish death-march that was getting this damn thing activated and the little quirks I thought would take a long time to adjust to, I had my doubts. But the quirks have faded away way faster than I thought they could.

I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to make the e-mail work for me. That’s going to take a little bit of thinking.

Suddenly I have an opinion about YouTube. Have you watched this video yet? It looks spectacularly spectacular on the iPhone over wireless. I hear rumors that they’re pumping out more highly compressed videos over EDGE, but I haven’t tried that myself.

Speaking of which, can I even begin to tell you how mind-blowingly obvious it is to have a phone that automatically switches over to wireless whenever it’s available?

For the first time in my life, I’m seeing SMS as a viable way of communicating. Tapping out messages on my old phone with the number pad and the postage-stamp-sized screen was just too painful to be believed. I never did it. I’ve probably sent more text messages in eight hours on my iPhone than I did in the previous year on my other phone. And only part of that was the novelty factor.

Speaking of tapping out messages, I’ve had an insight about the keyboard. Are you getting frustrated because it’s difficult to type on your iPhone with both thumbs, Blackberry-style? Quit it. Trying to type with thumbs on my iPhone is a torturous ordeal. But with just the index finger of my right hand, I fly through SMS and e-mail messages. Not having to exert any pressure on the screen, coupled with the iPhone’s forgiving keyboard and auto-correction, means I’m typing short messages faster with one finger than I ever imagined possible.

I still stand by what I said earlier: I ain’t gonna be writin’ no novels on this thing. But for SMS, terse e-mails and twits or tweets or whatever the hell we’re calling them these days, it’s really very nice.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go put something into my body other than coffee. I haven’t eaten since last night, and it’s catching up with me.

Gee, maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to write or work today. Hypoglycemia isn’t good for braining!

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