The single thing that annoys me the most about my iPhone isn't how often Safari crashes or the slowness of EDGE. No, the thing that really drives me batty is the earbuds. I'm really hating the earbuds.
I'm not a big fan of Bluetooth headsets. It's has nothing to do with the technology, it has everything to do with me. I'm bad about remembering to keep my headset charged. I'm bad about remembering where my headset is located. I'm bad about keeping my headset paired with my phone. All of these together mean that headsets are virtually unusable, and unused, by me. I've tried it before, many times, and it just never works out.
I'm not willing to walk around all day with a headset attached to my ear. I get enough Borg jokes because I work for Microsoft, I can't imagine adding to that with a piece of glowing electronics sticking out of my ear constantly. I don't make calls on my phone often enough to justify keeping the thing in my ear all the time. While I do end up making a number of calls on my phone, it's sporadic. It's pretty common for my phone to only be used for calling every other day or so, but then that call is an hour or two. So no constantly-in-ear headset for me.
Instead, I rely on the iPhone's earbuds. I generally know where my earbuds are (why I've never been able to extend this kind of knowledge to a headset is beyond me). I find the earbuds pretty uncomfortable for extended use (90 minutes is pretty much the max that I can take it).
The thing that really gets me about the earbuds is that they're constantly tangled. I've tried all sorts of cute little tricks to somehow make them be not tangled. Nothing has worked. Every time I pull out my earbuds to connect them to my iPhone, I've got to spend a couple of minutes untangling them. I'm pretty convinced that there's some kind of technology there that makes them knot onto themselves. I hope that Apple is licensing that technology to the military, it seems like something that they'd find useful.
Please, Apple, please find a way to make the earbuds work better. I'll accept their current level of discomfort, but I'd really love it if you guys could make them not tangle all the time. I really don't care what you do, I just want to not have to spend four minutes untangling my earbuds every single freakin' time I want to use them.
Be nice if Apple (or somebody) could outwit the laws of physics. Not going to happen, at least not soon (check back next year), thanks to something called "Tangle Theory".
Here's a pretty good article on the subject: http://www.maa.org/mathtourist/mathtourist_10_01_07.html
Try googling (or live searching, although those results don't seem as good.) for "headphone tangle". I quickly came up with the following two Lifehacker articles:
http://lifehacker.com/software/ipod/how-to-wrap-a-headphone-cord-225310.php
http://lifehacker.com/software/life-hacks/keep-headphone-wires-from-getting-tangled-152499.php
@Bladderpod - There are some easy methods to outwit the laws of physics. The Zune does this by putting magnets in the earbuds, so at least you've only got one long string instead of a Y-shaped piece of string to tangle. I've seen retractable earbuds as well, so maybe it's time for me to see if there are iPhone ones out there.
@Rick - The devil horns method only works if there's nothing for the cable to catch on and untangle, which isn't the case when it's in the bag of cables and dongles that lives in my laptop bag. :)
I have a friend that keeps them in a toothpick case. You could also keep them in an empty dental floss case too. Or you could get one of those dorky looking cases that has a thing to wrap the headphones around.
Nadyne -- why don't you get yourself a decent pair of earbuds (no, not the cheap ones that Apple includes in the box). I love my Ultimate Ears. I am always amazed at how folks spend a ton of money on their iPhone/iPod only to listen on a cheap pair of included earphones (which costs Apple something like $5 or less). Also, a nice pair or earbuds will include a heavier gauge cord which is less likely to tangle up.
Randy - There aren't a lot of earbuds out there that have the built-in mic. The majority of my earbud usage is for calling, not for listening to music. I have to admit that I haven't looked within the past couple of months (I bought a house in February, so not a lot of bandwidth for anything else lately :), but I was so underwhelmed with the mic-included options out there that I've been sticking with the included earbuds.
It amazes me that I spent a tonne of money on my iPhone and they couldn't be bothered with including a pair of earphones that's worthwhile in any way.
Whinging about the iPhone earbuds got me thinking about some other iPhone improvements I'd love to see
Here is what you should look into. BTW, we hooked Scoble up with the folks from Ultimate Ears and they comped him a sweet pair of custom molded UE10s for the nice writeup he did.
http://www.ultimateears.com/_ultimateears/products/superfi/superfi4vi_description.php