So, I bought an iPhone. I had been resisting for a long time: too expensive, I don't really need it, I don't want to switch to AT&T, etc etc. But then I realized that I needed to replace both my phone and my iPod, and the iPhone isn't expensive compared to replacing both. (The phone probably could have limped along for a while longer, but the iPod was completely shot. The battery only lasted for a minute or two, so it had to be plugged in at all times. And it had developed this annoying habit of shutting itself off if the case got bumped or jarred. Like, say, if I hit a pothole on the road.)
Then I found out that the iPhone works as a GPS. I had been thinking about buying a GPS for art car trips, because I have a terrible sense of direction and always get lost in strange cities. Suddenly the iPhone seemed like a positive bargain!
I've had it for a few days and okay, yes, I love it. The GPS was really easy to use: while we were in MD last weekend, we went to the grocery store so we could make a dessert for our hosts' dinner party on Saturday night. (Guinness Stout Gingerbread, really good recipe.) While we were out I decided I wanted to find a Wendy's to get an iced tea. I googled wendy's on the iPhone and a message popped up, "Would you like to find a Wendy's near you?" Why yes, I would! It showed me a map of nearby locations, I picked the nearest one, and it gave me step by step directions. It also showed us a map with a glowy dot that moved, so we could follow our progress along the route. I think it would be hard to use if I were alone in the car, but with two of us it worked great.
My one frustration so far is finding a good recipe app. I want an app that will get recipes from epicurious.com. My pre-iPhone method was to search for a recipe at work when my boss wasn't looking, print it out, carry the paper to the grocery store and then to the kitchen, where it gets all stained and wrinkled, and then save it in a big stack of paper recipes which are impossible to search, so I end up printing the same recipes over and over.
I found an app which works well once it has the recipe (it shows you the instructions and a shopping list, both in handy checklist format). Unfortunately getting the recipe into the app is a pain. It doesn't search the epicurious database: you have to go to epicurious.com, a site which is not easy to use on the tiny screen, find the recipe, and click a button to send the recipe to the app. So, my search for a really good recipe app continues.
Did you hear the NPR piece about people using their iPhones for cooking? I'm completely blanking on when I heard it (weekend?) or what show (maybe Splendid Table), but here's the NYT article they were discussing.
No I totally missed that! From my own very limited experience (made 2 recipes using the iPhone instead of paper recipe) it was easy and convenient, with one annoyance: the phone shuts itself off after just a minute so I had to keep tapping it every time I needed to read the instructions. Which meant washing my hands constantly so as not to get food on the phone. Then again, frequent hand-washing while cooking is not a bad thing.
On the bright side, it takes up less counter space than a cookbook, a printed piece of paper, or a laptop -- like I would ever bring my laptop into the kitchen. I will risk food spills on an iPhone, not on my computer! If I didn't have the recipe on paper I used to leave the laptop in the next room and have to run back and forth to read the instructions. That was inconvenient.