This post was published more than a few years ago (on 2007-06-30) and may contain inaccurate technical information, outmoded thoughts, or cringe takes. Proceed at your own risk.
So far, the iPhone is 95% joy, and 5% infuriating. Some of the high (and low) points:
- It’s incredibly scratch-resistant.
- Bluetooth hands-free headsets work incredibly well. Well, at least my JawBone does.
- No to-dos. Ta-da Lists have a nice iPhone-specific interface now, but I still want some sort of OmniFocus-like GTD
task list for this thing.
UPDATE: Omni is working on a personalized iPhone access solution for OmniFocus, but it’s still a ways from being truly useful. I’ve also been led to believe by someone at the Apple Store that more functionality in this area will be coming around the same time as Leopard. - The built-in alarms and countdown timer actually work like they should, waking the iPhone if it’s off or popping up a notification on top of whatever app you’re using when the time comes. I never had luck with that on my Treo, so that’s a great thing.
- MobileMail now shows a couple of emails that say “This message has not been downloaded from the server”— even though I may have actually read them once already— and I have no idea how to make them download. The little “reload” curved arrow in the lower left doesn’t seem to do anything here.
UPDATE: This seems to have to do with how Gmail (and possibly other email servers) deal with multiple reader clients. See the comments for details. - When transferring your account details from your Mac, Gmail-hosted domain accounts don’t come over properly, since the iPhone assumes it’s a regular Gmail accound, and appends a non-removable “@gmail.com” to all my user name settings. I had to manually set up my email settings on the phone to work around this.
- There is odd behavior when editing a text field in landscape mode. In that mode, there’s such a tiny space between the virtual keyboard and the top of the screen, the little magnifier loupe that pops up to help you position your cursor actually falls off the top of the screen, making it useless.
UPDATE: The Apple Genius’ solution is just to scroll the text field so it’s a little lower on the screen. A small thing, but it still bugs me. - The headphone jack is sunken into the top of the iPhone and has a bezel around is that restricts the size of the 1/8″ plug you can fit in it. So far, every 1/8″ plug I’ve tried other than the Apple-supplied headphones won’t fit in it. I may have to buy another set of Apple phones to cannibalize to make an adapter cable.
UPDATE: Apple Stores already have an adapter cable in stock for $9.99. - Seems to have frozen a couple of times when I tried to edit the name of a recurring event in my Calendar, and hitting “Save” actually seemed to save a new copy of the event, so I had a duplicate. But at least that got me out of the freeze.
- I really, really like the list view in the Calendar. I wish iCal had that.
I’m still reading the manual (which doesn’t come printed, but as a PDF you can download from Apple’s iPhone Support page), so maybe I’ll come up with answers for some of these yet.
Re: “This message has not been downloaded from the server” seen in emails already viewed… I have the same problem, and evidently, you’re the first (and only) website that google finds with that phrase. I have the same problem, but I suspect that it may have to do with the “Use Recent Mode” setting for Gmail. When it’s off, I tend to get that error message, but when it’s on, it seems to work alright. Let me know via email if this fixes the problem for you and I’ll put in a post on the Apple support forums.
I had the same problem on my iPhone re: ‘This message has not been downloaded from the server’ I went into Settings, Mail, Gmail Account, Advanced, and changed ‘Use Recent Mode’ from OFF to ON. Now I can read the messages fine, but it caused a different problem. Now it re-downloaded duplicate messages to my inbox and when I delete them from the iPhone, they just come right back. So pick your poison.
That is it exactly. I saw it more on messages with attachments, and it must be re-downloading it from the server each time, but once Mail on my Mac had downloaded it, it was no longer available from the server. Of course, that means now I get a 2nd copy of everything in my email, whether I already dealt with it on my Mac or not… so it’s a trade-off.
For those who want to try, the directions state:
To invoke this “recent” mode, just change your login name in your POP settings to “recent:yourlogin@gmail.com”. This works for Gmail as well as Gmail-hosted domain accounts.
I’ve been having the same problem, but I’m using a Google Apps for my domain account and there is no ‘Use Recent Mode’ in the advanced settings.
To bypass this i changed my username to ‘recent:username@mydomain.com’. This allows Outlook and the iPhone to play well together, however I’m still getting a LOT of “This message has not been downloaded from the server’ messages. If anyone knows of a fix please pass it on.
Yeah this is pretty weak, I get the same thing happening.. Without recent mode, all emails with attachments show that error message, or without, I get every goddamned email i already read many duplicated… hope this gets fixed with a firmware upgrade
If gmail would implement IMAP, we wouldn’t have any of these problems.
Hi everyone, I’ve found somewhat of a reasonable solution to all this madness.
I went to my Gmail pop settings and “Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on”
Then to set up the gmail account on your iPhone, don’t use apple’s GMail option, choose OTHER. Then enter these values:
Enter ‘pop.gmail.com’ in the ‘Incoming Mail Server:’ field
Enter your Gmail username (including ‘@gmail.com’) in the ‘User Name:’ field.
Enter your Gmail password in the ‘Password:’ field
enter ‘smtp.gmail.com’ in the ‘Outgoing Mail Server:’ field
(likewise username/password)
that’s it! you will now receive new incoming emails! no more receiving your whole inbox.
Hey, Gmail has implemented IMAP! Huzzah!