Blackberry, on the other hand, has archaic development tools – even their testing environment provides for 20 different simulators to match their product offerings. It is no wonder that the application base for BB is miniscule by model – developers can’t easily deploy to the 20 model formats without extensive coding and testing hoops to jump through. Deployment communities are even more constrained, as they either have to go with a single blackberry model across the corporate user base, or live with a very limited application set that works across models, if it even exists.

It seems every handset manufacturer tries to outdo the other on features, when what they need to concentrate on is the solution – phone, email, web, PDA, a back end infrastructure that allows easy user management of what things are on the device, and a rich selection of applications – and not just the phone feature checklist.

As far as UI goes, the BB environment seems to be stuck between MS-DOS and Windows – text and GUI. It feels glued together with duct tape. Even though the feature set and operation is quite well integrated, it just feels clunky. Every function and application feels like a different experience, with no enforcement of human interface conformance guidelines – something that Apple has done exceedingly well since the first Mac.

Stop making sense.

My goal was to have one device, but with the iPhone being unable to do such basic tasks as searching within the calendar app to find upcoming events, it’s a piece of crap as a business tool.

What’s frustrating, is that it could be so much more – and they tout it as being business friendly. In reality because of the limitations Apple imposes on it, it’s a dissapointing toy.

You know how the iPhone automatically provides a tag line to append to all sent emails? The default is “Sent from my iPhone”. I’ve changed it to “Sent from my visually beautiful but functionally crippled, overpriced, overhyped, underperforming iPhone”.

Yep, that about sums it up for me.

coop

I’m also not a business user (although I do work for a PDA software company ).

I think there are more groups than ‘your mom’, ‘that guy whose blackberry is glued to his palms’, ‘a tween who texts more than they talk out loud’.

I’m kind of an advanced minimalist user. I could – and know how to – do a lot of advanced things on a mobile device, but generally my life just doesn’t require them.

For that… the iPhone wins.

It does show how inportant a good UI is, even when the feature set is limited.

My guess is that there are a lot of newbies using the iphone – people who have never used a hand held device (other than a basic phone) before.

These people don’t know what they’re missing, and what the iPhone -should- be able to do, based on it’s technical abilities.

That’s the sad part.

Best browser, good iPod, average phone – lousy PDA and real business tool.

coop

Now she is using the calendar, she loves the visual voice mail and getting her email and texting is easy. She has started to learn to use the camera and games and actually played solitaire for most of a flight back from Hawaii. The bottom line is that you just can’t beat a good UI.