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Last October I finally cracked and got an iphone 3Gs.

Part of the reason for this was my ageing palm pilot wouldn’t sync with Window 7. I also needed a new phone. I decided against an Android based phone as I just wasn’t convinced that it would be as user friendly, it also seemed to have a less healthy developer ecosystem than the iPhone.

The iPhone ticked the following boxes:

• Personal organiser - calender, notes, TODO, contacts, syncing up to the web
• Tethering -plug into the laptop for net access on the go
• iPod -I didn’t have one, was thinking of getting one
• Internet device - for net and email access anywhere
• Phone -
• App Store - if it doesn’t have it out of the box I can probably write or buy something to do it

Having owned it for ~6 months I’m still enthused by it. I think this has done more than any other single tech purchase to make me more optimistic about new technology. It it quite simply one of the best hardware software combinations I’ve ever come across.

I think the best illustration of the ease of use is three anecdotes. I gave the phone to someone who had never used one with no instructions while driving so they could provide directions. They could used it immediately. While out at dinner one night I saw one 70 year old showing another 70 year old photos on her iphone. I wouldn’t have called 70 year old ladies a great market for high technology. Lastly, in the 6 months I’ve had it I’ve only opening a manual one and that was to find out how to undo (as it turns out shake).

Out of the box it is a great, add the app store and you have something really special. I found the note taking app pretty anemic, particularly as it couldn’t sync to the web, so I picked up Simple Note. The lack of a todo list was rectified by Toodledo. I even found the Good Food Guide was available as an app. And then there were all the games…

I think the app store is one of the best examples of what can happen when you create a great platform (the iPhone) and make development relatively friendly. I also thing the walled garden aspect of the app store is a net positive for consumers as it helps filter out a lot of noise.

It has been a while between posts, apologies I’ve been busy, especially with work. I also ran into a bug in wordpress as I tried to log in to create a post. Essentially if you logged in with admin rights but were not an admin, and you needed to upgrade the install, it endlessly redirected.

So a quick tech summary of the last year, which I will expand on in further posts:

• iPhone - I got one, it is great, highly recommended
• Snow Leopard - I finally moved my laptop to snow leopard, seems a bit better
• Windows 7 - I ran the RC for 8 months or so, looks good, just installed the RTM version on my desktop
• Virtualisation - I’ve got very excited about virtualisation in the last 6 months, particularly vmware
• Code - I’ve found a language worse than perl: Powerbuilder
• Library project in Python - I found Library thing and decided I didn’t have enough time to write my own