Geek4ever

So the iPhone is now very cheap, only $400 US. After you hack it open and don’t have to use AT&T it is the best geek device on the planet right now.

So why aren’t I buying one? Simply because it doesn’t currently do what I need. I have a Palm T3 PDA that I rely on to get my day to day job done, what I would like is to integrate this with a phone and the Palm Treo with its keyboard just doesn’t work for me.

The iPhone while great is limited by its lack of support for Third party applications. Yes hackers are now releasing 3rd party apps, though without proper backing this will always be a niche market that won’t get full 3rd party support.

Here is a list of the bare minimum of what I need from a portable device of this type. If the App has a * then the iPhone has a solution for it.

• Awesome calendar, up there with Datebk6 - easy to schedule, custom alarms, templates, floating events, send to-dos to the calendar right from the device itself.
• Notebook area - multiple categories.
• ToDo list with multiple categories
• *Address book
• Searchable Address book, todo list and notebook
• *Calculator - Standard
• *World time
• *Stopwatch
• *Countdown Timer
• *E-book reader - something better than just a HTML reader that remembers where you were.
• *Picture viewer
• Secure Safe program - encrypted password storage.
• *Voice memo record, quick easy 1 touch record and easy playback. Ability to add text name to each memo.
• Format Convertor - convert lenghts, units, currencies etc from one to the other. eg ft to cm.

The iPhone is a great first step, I will be keeping a close eye on future developments.

I was hoping to be able to switch to an iPhone, though it is more than half way to what I need, right now it will be a step backwards for me. This doesn’t stop me from thinking about just buying one anyway. :-)

Here is hoping the hackers can really push this thing to the next level. If there is word of a decent Palm emulator, you can just lock me in to buy an iPhone. :-)