Attached is the view from my desk. If you squint you can see the ballpark and the Linc

UPDATE: this is gonna be a very useful app. You can even post photos from the synced photo library (not just the camera roll):

But I did buy one the day after it came out. And having carried it in my pocket every day since, looking at it every morning when I wake up and before I go to bed, using it for everything from weather to directions to email to playing Nintendo, I’ve gotta say: it’s a truly amazing device. Game changing you might say. Sure, I get a bit jealous of those more functional Blackberry keyboards, but these days when I have to suffer through using someone else’s phone I briefly wonder how I ever lived without my slim little iPhone.

What’s most impressive is when you hand your iPhone to someone who’s never used it before. Just watch them play with it and you see the future of software.

I’m not the first to say it by any means, but the announcement yesterday of Software Development Kit for the iPhone and iPod Touch is going to be huge. It’s not a phone or an mp3 player anymore, it’s a platform. It’s a way of building portable, useable, and revolutionary tools that are going to continue to change the way we interact with the world. Seriously, if you don’t have one now, you will have a touch-based and internet connected device in your hand in the next 10 years.

Now let’s just hope someone besides Apple and Steve Jobs can get their act together and build a true competitor.

And on a completely unrelated note, Star Wars according to a 3 year old.

It was such a gorgeous day that I rode over to Franklin Square park instead of heading back to work to eat at my desk. They’ve done some really great work on the park in the past few years and despite it being in the shadow of the Ben Franklin Bridge and wedged between highways and streets, it’s turned into quite a nice little spot. I snapped a shot of my new bike in front of the fountain on the iPhone.

FYI – Instead of emailing this photo directly to Flickr, I synced to iPhoto and then uploaded. For some reason iPhone emails a lower resolution version of your shots and I wanted to see what the 2 MP camera can do in all its glory. Not bad in the sunlight.

• Please get Note synching working soon Apple. I have memos from my Treo that I do not want to retype. They’re useless without syncing.
• The keyboard isn’t an issue if you just trust the auto-correct software and let it do it’s job. But why can you only use the keyboard in landscape mode in the browser?? That’s stupid. Most typing is done in SMS/Mail. Similarly why can’t I go into landscape view mode in Mail? It renders HTML mail as a web page. Why not treat it as one?
• Multiple mailboxes in Mail = stupid. It’s way too many taps to move between inboxes too.
• Bluetooth on/off is in a weird place in Settings > General. Not that bluetooth is useful on this phone since I can’t sync or connect to my MacBook Pro over it. My 2 year old Treo 650 could do that.
• The wow factor simply is incredible. Everywhere I go everyone wants to see it. I had a five year old boy scream at the top of his lungs when I pulled it out on Sunday night. And it hadn’t even been activated yet!
• Visual Voicemail and the whole voicemail setup in general is great. Hopefully all phones will have this soon. It appears that your outgoing message is recorded on the phone and then uploaded to the server making it extraordinarily easy to change your message.
• The orientation sensor seems to lag a bit sometimes. Hopefully this can be fixed through software.
• EDGE isn’t great but isn’t terrible either. Big step up from the Sprint 1xRTT network I was on before. WiFi has worked well for me so far. It would be nice to have a feature to tell it to turn off the WiFi radio if it hasn’t picked up a network in a certain period of time. I also want to be able to “sleep” my email at night. I don’t need email notifications while I sleep but I can’t put it on silent either since I’m using the alarm.
• As for the alarm, I understand why for business reasons they don’t want people using any old iPod song as a ringtone. But at least let me wake up to my music! The alarm interface is superb though.

More thoughts to come…

So add me to the list of people who had initial problems with activation but are now able to use their phone. Hooray!

As a bit of background, I headed down to the Center City AT&T store after work on Friday and waited in line with no success. I’m estimating they only had 75 phones or so in stock. But on Saturday I had to go to NYC so I stopped by the Soho Apple Store around 3 pm and picked one up no problem. Go to the Apple Store if you’re still looking.