I've had more time to use the new iPhone 2.0 firmware from the perspective of a productivity nerd and here are some results.

Productivity Killer: Tip calculators The iPhone is overrun by these useless tools. Based on the contents of the App Store, you'd think calculating a tip was the primary challenge of our time. Stunningly, there are 18 tip calculators in the App Store today — and only one of them is free! Developers, and I use this term loosely, please please stop the madness.

Killer Productivity: Local stuff. The possibilities presented by the convergence of good mapping, social networking, and GPS practically demand that apps like Yelp, Urbanspoon, and Where get developed and installed. Even if I don't necessarily need them, they are too cool to pass up. I'm not entirely sure I need help finding pizza or a Starbucks yet, but the free Showtimes app has saved me time finding movie listings.

Productivity Killer: Note takers and todo lists. All of this stuff existed in the 1.0 firmware... the Calculator and Notes. Cluttering your iPhone with an extra icon is not productive. And paying to do so is counterproductive in oh so many ways.

Productivity Killer: RSS (in its current state). I expected to see a good (and free) RSS feed reader in App Store on day one. The current offerings are so negatively reviewed, I'm afraid to even install them. The New York Times and Associated Press apps are nice, but almost as slow as visiting to their sites (or Google reader) in Safari. A Digg app would pretty much take care of my mobile news needs. Then again, a decent offline RSS reader in which I have NYT, AP, Digg and other feeds would be even better.

Killer Productivity: Games. The dudes and dudettes in lab coats say games are good for more than hand eye coordination. I'm not much of a gamer, but I don't argue with science. I can confirm that the games have helped me relax among the screaming kids at the doctor's office. Of course, when a first-person shooter comes along, this category will really be "killer."

Productivity Killer: Voice Recorders. I found about 10 of these in the App Store. I know people have been screaming for this functionality, but is it really productive? Fact is, even though recording a voice note is faster than writing one, it takes longer to listen to a voice message than it does to read a note. And if you don't act on it when you hear it, you're going to be listening to it again and again.

There are times, though, when you don't have time to fiddle with the keyboard. Personally, I like and use Jott. It's a service that transcribes a voice message and passes the text on to you or others via email, IM, etc. The iPhone app doesn't add much to the great web service other than a button on your screen. So, the productive thing to do is sign up, keep the 800 number as a favorite, and skip the app for now.

Productivity Killer: iPhone backups. I guess customers who whine about long backups are better than customers who freak out about data loss. Since everything that matters on my iPhone (addresses, music, mail) is stored elsewhere, I'm not particularly concerned if I have to reset the whole thing and start over. I turned off the time consuming and overly-frequent iPhone backups.

Killer Productivity: Streaming audio. I spend a lot less time making playlists, downloading/syncing podcasts, and finding music thanks to Pandora and the excellent Internet Radio Tuner by Nullriver, Inc. Also, with the Macbook in my office streaming internet radio to my living room speakers via Airport Express, Apple's "Remote" is indispensable.

Productivity Killer: Hands-free dialing (in its current state). AT&T does offer voice dialing as a separate service, but system-wide voice control would be a welcome addition to the iPhone.

Killer Productivity: Mobile Me. It got off to a rocky start, but I'm not going to pile one. Apple's Mobile Me service is working well for me. In fact, I'm using my "me" account as my primary account on my desktop and as the only account on my iPhone. Filing mail on either and not seeing it on the other is a big time saver. (That's just your IMAP functionality, I know. But it's still a helper.)

(One thing I like to do on my Mac is press COMMAND-I in Safari and save the resulting draft email into a "read later" folder on my Mobile Me account. It's a handy way to quickly save web pages for later.)

Productivity Killer: Apple's Notes and ToDo's. I'm a broken record on this point, but the inability to sync notes and todos between Apple's Mail.app and the iPhone is ridiculous. While I would prefer to keep things simple and use Mail.app to manage my tasks and projects, it's pretty clear that Apple doesn't consider this a priority. (iCal syncing still only captures events.)

Considering my endorsement of the "Leopard-only GTD" recipe, this is a hard pill to swallow.

Productivity Killer: Things (in its current state). The promising Things app from Cultured Code continues to tempt with a clean innovative interface, but their less than complete desktop app and rather pointless non-syncing iPhone offering suggests they are still well behind Omnifocus. Don't get me wrong, I'm pulling for Cultured Code. I think they are brilliant. But right now, Things teases more than it delivers.

Killer Productivity: Omnifocus. I have to say that the people at Omnigroup really get GTD. On day one, they had a complete syncing application in the iPhone app store. My iPhone finally lives up to the promise of being a "ubiquitous capture device."

In fact, Omnigroup's GTD suite is so good that I'm moving towards full conversion. The price is steep ($79.95 for the desktop app and $19.99 for the iPhone app. $100 bucks is some pricey productivity, but a handheld device and a desktop app that talk to each other is the holy grail of GTD.

Killer Productivity: The App Store. It's nice knowing that something new could show up in the App Store tomorrow. Provided you can refrain from checking every 15 minutes, it's a good thing.