Until now.

I made the plunge the other day and upgraded my phone to iOS.  I wasn’t expecting huge improvements as a 3G user.  My phone is slower and isn’t as cool as the 3Gs or the 4G – I get that.  But I figured folders would be worth it, as well as a few other things (naming your own playlists, etc.)

The upgrade took forever, and I began playing around.  Yeah, nothing too exciting – made some folders, noticed the new accounts view in Mail.  Whatever.  I go to switch my desktop (not lock screen) wallpaper.

Nope, can’t do that.  Not on the iPhone 3G at least.  This struck me as odd – I’m not really feeling that having desktop wallpaper would really challenge the performance capabilities of the device, but c’est la vie.  I also noticed that when paired up with my bluetooth car radio that I can now control the volume on the iPhone itself.  You couldn’t do this before.  I didn’t think much of it – it felt like change for change sake to me.

Then things started to go sideways.

I’m listening to my iPod while I’m reading some Mail, and a terrible song comes on.  I double tap the home button to get the iPod controls – the window pops up.  But low and behold – the controls aren’t there.  Nor is the the song information.  My forehead wrinkles a bit, and I move on.

Later, I’m at work and listening to music again.  A coworker comes up and taps my shoulder – so I double tap the home button on the now locked iPhone to get the iPod controls on the lock screen.  They appear – and everything seems fine, save the fact that the Play/Pause button is the Play arrow.  Note, my music is playing.  I touch the play button, and the music indeed pauses – but the iconography doesn’t change.  It’s still the play button.  I touch the play button again, and play resumes.  My eye twitches a bit, and I turn to my coworker with an iPhone 3GS.  He had moved to iOS recently, as well.

Have you had this issue?

Now, the first problem doesn’t exist on the 3GS because they’re privileged enough to get the fancy new iPod controls while not in the iPod app itself.  But the lock screen issue didn’t exist for him.  In fact, his experience seems fantastic.

On the way home, there’s a daily podcast I listen to, and I usually stream it via iTunes because I don’t sync with my PC at work.  So I start it up as I typically do.  At a traffic light, a text message from my wife comes in – and I go in to quickly reply (yeah, I know, shouldn’t do that in the car).  I click reply.

The audio stops.

At first I think it was just some unique glitch.  So I go through the sequence again to see if it’s a reproducible item.  What do you know – it is.  Apparently in iOS, or at least on the iPhone 3G – you can’t stream audio and do anything else at the same time.

It could be a regression, but I’m betting my coworker doesn’t have these problems.

Dear Apple – I like your products.  I have an iMac at home, have had iPhones since the first generation phone, I even own an Apple TV.  It’s a bit disconcerting though that you’ve shown such disregard for current users of your products though in your furor to maximize upgrade revenue.  iPhone 2G users I know have always been patient with the fact that for various reasons, you won’t offer them all of the software upgrades that you offered us in the past.  I can appreciate being in their boat now being two revisions behind in hardware.  But it’s unacceptable that the overall quality of your software would be secondary for users of older devices.  I’ll have to think long and hard before I can convince myself that I can trust you enough to invest additional dollars into your impressive line of mobile products.