There is one thing that I still have not gotten used to: the location of the ‘Decline’ and ‘Answer’ buttons when there’s an incoming call and the phone’s screen is not locked. This throws me off every single time.

Shawn’s write-up is great, although I think he’s overcomplicating things. On almost every phone I know and have owned over the past couple of years - even my crappy handset phone at home - the decline button was and still is on the right side while the accept button stays at the left. In Mac OS X the default actions like Save or OK are always on the right side, but I think it’s plain wrong to transfer this design decision to a complete new device with a different user interface like the iPhone.

In my opinion Apple should stick to the common model and place every decline button in the interface on the right side of the phone.

[via Shawn Blanc]

I’m probably four or five times less likely to post a comment when there’s no “Subscribe to Comments” functionality.

Full ACK. But in the last couple of weeks I try to comment on my blog instead of using the comment functionality of others. Blog entries are somehow easier discoverable than a normal comment.

[via NSLog()]

Tethering is a niche need with a much smaller constituency than Microsoft Exchange support. And if we’re looking for “gee wiz” features to be added to the iPhone, they’ll probably be things that the a large percentage of iPhone users will at least try.

Dave makes some points about the iPhone’s target market. I think that technology savvy people never were the primary market Apple wanted and still wants to reach. The mass market with the average John and Jessica is one of the most profitable markets for companies.

What’s up with tethering? I don’t really think it’s so important. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack - pointless. The iPhone is a great device with huge capabilities, at least enough for over 90% of its users. It’s far better to use a separate USB stick. The iPhone doesn’t have the best battery and I still want to use the device as a phone. All day long.

[via Inside iPhone]

Over the years I have been building a Python tool that turns specially-formatted OmniOutliner 3 files into proper help books, which can then be dropped into an app. This is pretty useful for “single-sourcing” our help and manuals.

Writing in Apple Help Book format is really painful, but often necessary. I really love the idea of writing everything in OmniOutliner and converting the data into the Apple Help Book format. William has created a very useful tool for us developers out there. Thank you very much. Now you really don’t have an excuse why your app has no built-in help.

Google modified the Google Blog Search interface so everyone can track what’s hot in the blogosphere. It’s a very nice addition that comes from their own Google News Search. Just give us a feed and we will be on top of the hottest current subjects.

Instapaper is a fabulous application for the iPhone or iPod touch—truly first rate. As one who reads a lot online and off, I’ve quickly come to appreciate Instapaper as one of my favorite apps. It’s so easy to use, in fact, it’s tough to resist saving articles for later as just for excuse to whip out the phone and read something. Drives my wife and kids crazy.

Ben Boychuck wrote a very nice and positive review about Instapaper for the iPhone. I love this app and it is my favorite offline reader on the device. Marco is very kind and responsive, too.

After a slow start, the U.S. has caught up with Western Europe in the adoption of 3G. According to data-research firm comScore, 28.4 percent of American mobile subscribers now have 3G devices versus 28.3 percent in the largest countries in Europe.

Very bad interpretation. It isn’t important how many people buy a device with 3G capabilities, but, in fact, it is important how widespread the network coverage is. As far as I know Europe’s 3G coverage has the highest density worldwide.

[via Macworld]

Agile Web Solution’s 1Password did the job, but I was a bit frustrated by the way it opens up links within the application. I prefer to use mobile Safari. I actually think I liked the first iteration of 1Password (the web-based solution) more than I do the full-scale iPhone app, simply because I often surf to a site in Safari, then realize I need a password. In such a case, it’s inconvenient to have to exit Safari, start up 1Password, then load the page again within 1Password.

That’s exactly what I think all the time. Since 1Password officially only supports the synchronization with their own iPhone application I don’t use it at all. I try to make new tasks in OmniFocus for iPhone which I process later on one of my Macs. The way you have to work with 1Password on the iPhone is a real bummer.

[via View from the Dock]

In the iTunes 8 new features listing, a couple of tweaks may have been overlooked. Podcast subscribers have long yearned for more granular control over downloading and retention in iTunes

After the various bug fixes and speed improvements the updated podcast interface on the iPhone and in iTunes is the second most important change at all. Before this update you only had the possibility to change the behavior for keeping or deleting episodes for a podcast, but it was an all or nothing switch. Now you have fine grained control over every podcast you subscribed to.

The interface on the iPhone and iPod touch has also seen a lot improvements. You can see how many minutes are left for every episode you’ve already listened to. There is also a neat little bubble on the left which shows you how many percent of the episode you haven’t listened to and does this in a very convenient way. In addition to these changes there are also some more details in the list view. The information doesn’t overwhelm the user because it’s very clear designed and the supplemental data like the episode length or the release data has a smaller grey font.

I really love these improvements.

[via TUAW]

Normally, the little corrections made by the iPhone are more frustrating than anything else

I somehow disagree with this statement. Through my extensive iPhone usage during the last couple of months I discovered that the corrections function learns more and more depending on how often you use and correct the words it thinks you have misspelled. It somehow correlates to the early days of spam filters which had also a higher amount of false positives compared to the modern improved implementations. The first days of typing are the pure horror, but it gets better and better. However, I discovered that the function works better for native English than other languages like Polish or German.

[via TUAW]