Really like it but too unstable for casual user (thought it trashed my iPhone for awhile)

iFlashDrive really does a lot of what I want and I really want a utility like this. I installed this and dragged a PDF and an Excel worksheet to the app in iTunes and they transferred. When I opened it up it asked me if I wanted to set a PIN and I declined because it said I could do it later by hitting the "i".

THe two docs were in the library. I opened the PDF file, pretty good viewer. I could zoom it and scroll around, good for my needs. The Excel viewer was not as impressive... about the weakest viewer you could imagine because it had no concept of scrolling rows or columns... just a big picture that you drag through. But again, it was good enough for much of my needs. So I decided to set a PIN and hit the "i". I have big fingers and I hit the ad and the verizon browser launced to view the ad in the app store. I mention this only because the browser worked.

I tried again and set the PIN. Left the app, came back in and was challenged for the PIN. Excellent! I went to email the PDF to myself. There was no way to enter my email address in it but it disappeared. That was strange (I later checked my home email and it was there.... not sure if this is because I have my email accounts set to blind cc me or what). Then I deleted one of the documents (mostly because one review said it was impossible). It deleted. Very good!

This was good enough for me to buy it. I clicked the link to it in the help and web browser came up hanging. I hit the home key in the phone to manually surf to the iPhone Apps store app and it came up hanging. Soon everything became unresponsive on the phone. It would only shut down when it timed out. When I turned it on it kind of crawled but if I hit anything with http (web browsing) it just hung and was really hurting. I turned Airport mode on and off to see if I could break a hanging connection or something.... no luck.

I plugged it into my machine and iTunes refused to synch with it and said "unknown error connecting to phone". I could not shut down iTunes and I could not even kill it from the Windows XP Task Manager. My PCs file system became unreliable (the Windows explorer tree control was unresponsive and TrueCrypt could not unmount an encrypted drive). I rebooted my PC, same thing. At this point I thought my iPhone was toast. I googled how to reset it and held the power off and the home button together until the Apple logo came up and it eventually came back. I deleted the app and then synced.

So.... I want this. Im probably going to buy it, but Ive been a software developer across virtually every modern platform and technology for 25 years and Im confident that I can work around the bugs. But I really dont think this is quite ready for primetime for a non techncial user who just wants to share a few files.

Where am I now? Well...if this required jailbreaking and was not sold through the Apple Store it would never get another shot on my iPhone. But, it is sold through the store and has had some cursory Apple testing so I have put the free app back down on the iPhone. I am going to put a few documents on it. I am not going to delete or email them until am at a convenient place where I can reset the phone. I am willing to spend a few days learning its quirks. I have a feeling that it is the delete that is poisonous because it changes this imaginary file system and however it hooked to explorer for drag and drop perpetuated the problem. My guess is that deleting through iTunes is the only safe approach.

American Primitive about iFlashDrive Free - USB&Bluetooth&Email File Sharing