Dumbphone or Smartphone?

After a recent family Christmas party, my wife asked me and a surprising question: "Do you think we should get iPhones?" What surprised me is that she is rarely the sort of person to care much about technology but it was apparent that seeing other family members with all the latest iPads, iPhones and Droids got her wondering if getting one of these devises would make her life easier. "What does an iPhone do?" she inquired.

Basically an iPhone or any Smartphone's big feature is that you have web access from the palm of your hand. This can be quite handy at times for sure but as we discussed some of the features we both came to the conclusion that there isn't any big reason for us to go out and upgrade our current dumbphones. Here's a breakdown of some features that we talked about and why they would be nice but not needed:

• 24/7 web access.
  Pros: never without the internet
  Cons: have high-speed internet at the office and home and would typically prefer a laptop and keyboard over using the internet on a phone.
• Easily look up addresses and phone numbers while traveling
  Pros: Makes this task easy
  Cons: Current phones can quickly look things up by texting a name or category along with a zip code or city/state to GOOGLE. And it's free.
• Built in camera
  Pros: never without a camera (still or video)
  Cons: Camera quality and response time is still not as good as the small Canon camera and Sony camcorder that we currently use. So we wouldn't really be replacing these.
• Built in GPS
  Pros: Never lost and maps are always current.
  Cons: Already have a standalone GPS that suites our needs without a subscription fee.
• Built in Music Player
  Pros: would be nice to always have my iPod with me. And my wife would enjoy this feature as she doesn't have a music player currently.
  Cons: Already own my iPod and have it set up with all my music.
• Facebook access
  Pros: what's not to like there. My wife would especially love this.
  Cons: Already get notifications and can post to facebook via tex message for free.

Plus it's nice not worrying about the kids breaking our current phones or someone stealing them. If we went out and got iPhones we probably would need to be a little more careful with them. Also people always talk about the battery life not being great. Add all that up and we still can't justify giving our cell phone company more money for these added features. I'm sure we'll eventually make the jump but we are definitely slow adapters and for now just can't see that one feature we can't live without. Am I missing something?

iPod trouble

I’ve had my iPod for close to a couple years now and have rarely had any problems with it. Got a little worried the other day however, when I went to play a song on my way to work and found that all my playlists and songs were gone. It was as if everything had been erased. The first thing I thought of was that I had just updated my iPod software before leaving for work so that must have had something to do with it. When I plugged it back into my computer I was relieved to see that it still showed all of my playlists and songs on my iPod in iTunes so everything was still physically there, it just wasn’t recognizing it without the computer. After doing a little reading on the web, most suggestions seemed to recommend updating my iTunes as well as my iPod. This seemed like a simplistic fix but I figured I’d try to update my iTunes and what do you know. That took care of the problem. Still not sure why having a slightly outdated iTunes messed up my iPod to that extent (you would think they would keep things backward compatible at least a version or two) but all’s well that ends well. I’m just glad I don’t have to recreate all my playlists again.