Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray is backtracking on his earlier column that Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone is perfect. While his employer fronted him the $600 to consider an iPhone purchase, Bray cites four reasons he'll return it:

• It doesn't sync with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s Outlook. Bray likes Outlook and has "his life" on it and he was delighted to see that the iPhone is designed to let users copy their addresses, phone numbers, and appointments into it. That means users can find their Outlook phone numbers on the iPhone, then just tap a number to dial a call. Unfortunately, it took Bray about a dozen tries before the iPhone copied the Outlook data stored on his work PC; it's never worked on his home machine. Bray found at least a dozen online complaints from iPhone owners with similar problems. Either the iPhone won't sync with Outlook at all, or it does so intermittently or incompletely.
• The GPS navigation doesn't work. Bray admits this is a trick question but he finds it hard to believe that the $600 iPhone lacks GPS, a feature built into the Verizon Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VZ) Wireless phone he got for free when he renewed his contract in 2006. Bray finds the iPhone's Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) Maps implementation quite useless when he's lost. And he doesn't understand why GPS is now common in the cheapest phones, but absent from the iPhone.