As I had mentioned in a previous post, I recently installed the iPhone 2.0 software on my iPod touch. For the most part the process has been pretty memorable. For example, I’m writing this post on my iPod so that should give you an idea of just how massively cool this transformation of something that was just a really wicked media player in September of 2007 to what is now a pocket sized computer. The transformation was stark. When I first got the touch, I played around with all of the features. This pretty much decided which types of applications I was going to use on a day-to-day basis. iPod was a clear winner, video was also a function that seemed to pull me back again and again. I bought an album and a few songs here and there with the mobile iTunes store, but beyond that there wasn’t really much utility. YouTube was interesting, but I never was one to waste a lot of time browsing the latest video phenomenon.
So I basicially used it as an iPod that I woud ocasionally use for some of it’s rich media functions. Welcome to January 2008. I pay the $20 for the upgrade. It kind of feels like a gyp but I go for it anyway. Mobile mail wins hands down as the most useful app of the bunch. I have heard a bunch of complaints about how this mail app doesn’t do this and it doesn’t do that, but it works for me with just one IMAP account snyced to it. Many of the people who complained the loudest were those who had more than one email account. Now, like everyone in the Web 2.0 world, I have got several email accounts; four to be precise. One for business, one personal, one for signing up for junk, and one for fun. I made the decision a long time ago that since about 70% of my email comes through one account then that was the one that I was going to be using on my iPod touch.
For me $20 dollars was worth it just to use the mobile email app that just seemed so ridiculosly cool on the iPhone. As it is I’m pretty much an enormous email junkie and instead of using the web client of my email, I get to use the interface that was one of the cornerstones of the original iPhone. If I decided that I wanted to take more email around with me then at the very least a unified inbox would be necessary. All in all it was worth it for me.
Move to now and I’m just blown away with what can be done on a pocket sized device. Incredible. The very fact that I’m composing with an iterface that can change at a whim to suit the predillections of the designer, also boggles my mind. The WordPress mobile app is pretty good. Like I’m sure that I have said before, I’m a writer not a web designer, so first impressions are about how I can feed info into the device and if this rather lengthy post illustrates it’s pretty damned easy. The interface is clean, simple and easy to use. I’m guessing the programmers weren’t anticipating people like me typing my thumbs off and yearning for paragraphing and ofthe typographical features, because for composing anything longer than a few sentences can be trying unless you’re really invested in the process. Clearly a win for the WordPress team and I’ll be using it until MarsEdit mobile rolls out.
