The iPhone Book , Second Edition

The iPhone and the AppleTV products were introduced to the public at the same time. I was a bit disappointed because I selfishly wanted the attention to be switched. I wanted a jaw dropping feature rich Apple based media entertainment center and a basic phone with some Apple related features. I’m not much of a phone guy.

My Motorola phone was on its last leg about the time the 3G iPhone came out. Actually, it had no legs or arms and reminded me of the scene in Monty Pythons movie The Holy Grail. I kept trying to use it, although the battery would die within 5 minutes of a call. I waited a month after the 3G phone became available. First because I wanted to see what the feedback from new users would turn out to be and because I’m not the kind of guy to stand in line for practically anything.

I went into the Apple store with a 70% chance of purchasing one and forcing down the minimum $70 a month AT&T connection charges. As it turned out, the darn nice and helpful Apple Store employees were way too charming for my reservations to stand. Opening the graceful packaging of my 3G iPhone, I was a bit stunned there wasn’t any real documentation on how to use the product. Online, there is a little bit more but it is scattered pieces of information here and there.

So about the same time I began considering joining the army of iPhone owners, I stumbled upon Terry Whites technical blog. I quickly added it to my google reader and enjoyed both his writing style and choice of content to cover. It was there that I discovered he had produced a 3G iPhone book with coauthor Scott Kelly. I immediately placed an order for it on Amazon.com and have been tip toeing through its content every since. During a recent morning stay at my automobile dealership for an oil change, I finished it and found it a delightful book. Delightful isn’t something you normally associate with a review of a technical resource and that is simply too bad.

The book covers quite a bit of content in a very friendly and open manner. Each topic is covered on a single page and includes a very helpful picture to cover that topic. It is akin to the Visual QuickStart guides of old but much more elegant. Some topics includes a bonus tip at the bottom of the page and some of them are real gems! Now many of the tips are evident with the user friendly interface of the iPhone but I simply missed them. One of these is on page 27, which shows how easy it is to add a dialed number to your contacts module or the bonus tip on page 26 that shows how easy it is to hit redial. Here is a quick listing of my favorites ...

Page 30 - Seeing a persons photo when they call
Page 33 - Assigning a ring tone to a caller
Page 77 - Filing an email into a folder
(and why I cannot with my POP account)
Page 117 - iPhone as an alarm clock
Pages 123 to 129 - all map related
Page 131 - Adding weather for other cities
Page 188 - Syncing your iPhone on another computer
Page 201 - Adding music to your photo slideshow
(although it is bit lame)
Page 206 - Making a photo your wallpaper
Page 201 to 261 - The entire chapter on Killer Tips and Tricks

So the book is about $20.00 and well worth it for the new iPhone user. I can see this be a volume on my shelf for many years for a couple reasons. First will be to quickly look something up or thumb through it from time to time. Second, as an example of how a technical book should be written in regards of tone and content!
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