I was one of those Apple fanboys that got his iPhone the first week they were out, so I've used mine for a while now. Recently, I met with Mike Rogoway who writes both for Mac Newsworld and the Oregonian and he asked me how I liked it. It's an easy answer: I like it.

But as a Marketer, the one thing that drives me nuts about the iPhone is the home screen. It's gorgeous. It works great. And, for the most part, I like how Apple decided to utilize the home screen icons to let me know there's something new. Whenever I have a new SMS, phone message or email, a little red dot with a number is overlaid on top of the icon.!http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/7008/iphonecritiquemh4.png!

But for the life of me, I can't understand how Jobs, the ultimate Marketer and Product Manager, let the iPhone out the door with the Calendar icon working the way it does. Along with the little red numerical dots, the Calendar icon is the only other icon that's actually updated with real information. It shows today's date, without the need to launch the Calendar.

Why would Apple introduce this concept, of near-time information displayed at a glance, without holding this one part back and then rolling the same intelligence across the entire interface and calling it "a new feature?" Now, every time I look at my iPhone's screen I end up staring at the weather, the stock market, the time, and the map while thinking, "why are you other icons so dumb, while your calendar friend so smart?"