Joining the iPhone Cult

For the past three years my job has required me to be available 24/7/365.  Fortunately it's more precautionary than necessary as we're very cautious about things that could disrupt our service.  In any case, the company had provide me a Motorola RAZR with a full data plan so I could text and monitor email.

This setup worked pretty well as I had few meeting that weren't regularly scheduled.  Thus I could accept the invites on our Exchange Server, but then put them on my Google Calendar with alerts to my phone.  Similarly, I rarely had a need to write anything other than a short email reply.  But with my recent move to Engineering Manager - Portal I quickly ran into problems keeping up with email and meetings during the day.  As such, it was time for a new more full featured phone.  And until very recently it would have meant a Samsung Blackjack 2.  I could have had one of these long ago, but I liked the small size of the RAZR and I was getting by with it.  But at my boss's insistence, I needed to upgrade.

I explained why I still had the RAZR and liked it, but realized it was time for me to reluctantly move to a Blackjack.  At this point he told me I could now get an iPhone instead if I wanted.  Thus I embarked upon a mission to talk to a few of the people I knew who had been beta testing their use for the company.  And it didn't take long to learn that it was definitely the way to go unless you do a lot of texting.  The Blackjack's hardware keyboard makes it pretty good for texting.  But my texting needs aren't great as they are largely incoming reminders.  Thus, I opted to join the iPhone Cult as I generally call it.  And?

I have to say, after two days I really can't say enough good things about my new iPhone!  And although I have loaded some music on it, at this point I haven't had a chance to try it as an iPod.  But that's alright, that's not the primary reason I have it.  But I can say this thing is far more than a phone, it's a palm sized computer.  The mail and calendar issues I had have been wiped out.  This means no more double calendar maintenance and likely far less Google Calendar use.  Actually this is unfortunate, because I certainly like it better than Exchange.  Although it's not nearly as bad as Outlook which I still only use on a limited basis because I hate it!  (For desktop email I use Thunderbird.)

Anyhow, the iPhone has proven it's a very powerful tool that is going to help me a great deal.  I still need to work on refining and/or changing My Organizational System (GTD) as I need to rethink some of the things I'm currently doing.  Largely that's because the iPhone should allow me to do more work that I could with the RAZR.  Thus some of the tools I've been connecting to might not be the best.  Offhand, one thing that I'm contemplating is moving from Sandy to Remember The Milk as they offer an iPhone app in their Pro version.  The other negative now to using Sandy is that Jott went premium for access to Sandy.  I don't use it enough to justify the cost so I've quit using it.

So I'm now contemplating how to maximize my new tool to make both my personal and professional lives more manageable.  So I guess I'm in the cult now, although I don't see myself hanging on Steve's every word at the next Apple dog and pony show.  ;)
October 11, 2008 @ 11:33 pm | Category:
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