About 4 days after I switched to a MacBook I got an iPhone. While I love this phone, some of its features still need a little work.

Picture and video messaging. People send me pictures all the time. When a picture comes to me on the iPhone, I get a text message with a website address, a user id, and a password (new user id and password every time).

The site is VERY slow and the user id and password rarely work. At minimum, I should get a link that opens the Safari browser on the phone and fills in the user id and password (still clunky, but better).

Flexible Synchronization. Everything you put on an iPhone must originate from one computer.

I use my laptop for all contacts, calendar, and email. However, I share a central music and video library with my immediate family (we all synch to one desktop).

I had to authorize my laptop on iTunes and move thousands of songs over to my laptop to get music on my iPhone!

From now on, every time we get something new, I’ll have to physically put the music/video on both machines.

Voice recognition. I can no longer just say “Call Liz” and get connected. All I can do with my bluetooth is answer an incoming call, hang up, or redial the last number I called.

Camera. It doesn’t zoom and can’t take videos.

Expanded email functions. I prefer not to download email to my mobile device if it’s already downloaded to my laptop. I also delete multiple emails at once. My Blackberry Pearl could do both with the exact same POP mail accounts. My iPhone can do neither.

Access to the internet (the “real” internet), easier to read email and text messages, and streamlining down to one device (I gave my iPod Touch to my son) more than make up for the limitations on the list above.

Except for one…

The limited multimedia messaging functionality is very frustrating. My Blackberry Pearl was on the same network and I was able to see multimedia messages immediately.

Why can’t my iPhone do this?

Isn’t the iPhone supposed to be all about multimedia?

I’m confused!

(All comments, advice and/or instruction welcome!!!)