I was lucky enough to be able to take vacation this last week. Any of you in retail know that when you ask your boss when a good time to vacation is, the answer is usually never! Typically when I am working overnight, my iPhone serves as a way to separate myself from my email and a way to pump out some really good music, but being at home I was thinking that this function would change. I started using Fizz Weather to check the weather daily. Those of you who live in Texas know that we have two seasons, unlike the rest of the world, hot and really hot. Well, lately it seems mother nature wants to play a few tricks and our weather is turning to be more like Katy Perry's song Hot n Cold. Anyway...since I had plenty of time on my hands, I finally figured out how to properly jailbreak my iPhone 3G without bricking it. I love having the ability to take video with the free Cycorder application. It came very handy on our vacation to Houston (another post). I was amazed and happy to see a remarkable decrease in work emails after the first day or two. Some of the guys kept in contact through IM or text messages if they had questions. I have always told my employees that they are free to reach me any time if they have a legitimate problem or question. And they do: one of my stock controllers called me at 2:45am to ask me a manpower problem. I simply took the call answered his questions and went back to sleep. Unlike the other two managers in my department, my team knows that I am always reachable and always return calls as soon as I can. Yes this drives the wife crazy, but she's learned to be understanding. Okay, so the iPhone is good for checking weather, email, and texting...One of the things that I sorely missed from my jailbroken 2G iPhone was the themes. Winterboard is so much more advanced and offers more themes than the original Summerboard app. Currently Lea is my favorite theme...you can't even tell it's an iPhone, especially when it's in its new InCase PowerSlider. (Another review, coming soon.) My iPhone is constantly by my side, it even came to the rescue when i was stuck in a game and needed to look up a walkthrough. I rarely use my iPhone to call people, but my fingers constantly dance across it retrieving info, adding info, or searching for something new.
Now for the bad part...I do not feel excited for Palm Pre. If this device had come out at the same time as the iPhone and other all touchscreen smartphones, then I might be willing to own it, but as it stands I made the switch over and I think that Palm is a little too late with this one. I feel the Pre will have its market of die-hard Palm fanatics, but not as many as they could have if they don't support backwards compatibility. My wife, mom, and I are iPhone users now. We understand that the iPhone OS is very young compared to the refined likes of PalmOS and WinMo, but I feel that as Apple slowly releases it grip, developers will blow the doors off this OS.