As you read my blog, you’ll see I’m a fan of the iPhone, and Apple. I like their products, I like the way they do things. But, there are quite a few things I would like to see changed . The only way to see real change in any business, is to have competition.

I just saw a sneak peek of Viigo for the new Blackberry Storm. I’m not too impressed with the storm itself, but I am happy and motivated to see other devices with touch screen interfaces coming out. Viigo seems to be the RSS reader I want for iPhone, currently I use NetNewsWire, but Viigo seems to be able to do things that the current version for iPhone doesn’t. Here’s hoping someone from NNW is reading my lame blog, and gets some cues, on ways to enhance my experience with the phone. I’m loving the landscape mode, and the use of gestures to navigate from one article to the other.

So, it’s been a few months since iPhone 3G came out, and a little over a year that the original jesus revealed itself.
After using the phone from the day of launch, here are my thoughts on where Apple can focus on, to make my life easier.

1. Wireless Syncing: Seriously, AppleTV has it, why not the iPhone? I’d like to be able to keep the phone next to my
   bed as an alarm, charging via the supplied wall charger, and still have the phone update my music, my new TV shows, and
   podcasts automatically. I don’t want to go back to the office to connect to my laptop. What’s the point of the wall charger otherwise?
2. Dashboard Sync: Here’s another thing which would help me and others considerably. I already have my dashboard configured with my weather applets, my clocks, and my stocks. Why do I have to renter them into the phone? Granted, it’s a one time thing usually, but if I make a change to the cities I want to check the weather for, I have to do it in two places, same for the hot new stock my friend just told me about.
3. Legitimate Tethering: I love my phone, I am happy with AT&T’s 3G service, I want to use it with me whenever I need to, why do I need to have two separate plans? This is the most customer unfriendly thing Apple has ever done in my opinion. Apart from greed, I have not come across any other reason for not allowing this. AT&T and Apple have shown complete and utter disregard, and contempt for their users here. I bought the iPhone because I thought it would be a converging device, so I wouldn’t have to have a cell phone and an mp3 player when I travel. Now, I have a cell phone/mp3 player + 3G data card, with software that sucks for it. AT&T offers users of their 3G unlimited plan, basic access to their wifi hotspots, but they have no way of getting this access via a mac. Plus, the option GT ultra card software, is horrible, it crashes randomly. It makes no sense that these two companies can’t work with each other and make sure the products they peddle work with each other out of the box.

That’s my list, how would you change things? Not that Apple is listening over here, but it’s always nice to dream eh? I purposely left out the copy/paste thing, as it’s a given, it would be nice to have, I personally have never needed it on ANY phone, maybe I’m not a power user after all?

So, I was reading an article about how Macs cost twice as much as PCs, and how they’re such a rip off, and only gullible consumers buy Macs. I thought, oh no, not again, not the vim vs emacs, linux vs windows troll bait.
Anyway, Macs cost a lot of money, PC’s cost less money. We get it. Pound for pound, spec for spec blah blah blah.
Well did you know that if you drive a Porsche at 60 miles per hour, and a Nissan Sentra at 60 miles per hour, they both travel the same distance at the same rate? They both stop for red lights, and they both get to the same destination at the same time? So why buy a Porsche?

Personal preference, some people like mid engine cars, some people like rear wheel, some people like the ability to get to 60 MPH in 4 seconds (please don’t start on exact times, or model numbers). People work hard for their money, and they usually make a conscious decision to buy a mac, they feel it gives them a better experience, and they’re willing to pay more for it.
I’m sure you can make your Ubuntu, Windows, OS X box to do the same things the other OS has, or you can find 40 reasons why y or more open than z.
Yes I’m sure you can tune your Sentra to go from 0-60 in 4 seconds, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should do it.

Let them be. They aren’t spending your money, let them spend it how they want to. Don’t you have a more pressing problem like:
If Worf was to fight Chewbacca, who would win?

To the KTLA reporter who was amazed by the people standing in line for the iphone. Yes, we know it’s just a phone. It’s just a phone, for God’s sake. Yet, you seem to miss the sad truth about your career. It’s a line, for a phone, and you are so horrible at reporting anything else, that your bosses sent you to report on a line. A line for God’s sake . Now, I could go on insulting you for your pathetic job, but you have kids to feed, so I understand you had to do what your bosses told you. So, let’s try to see this from another perspective.

Have you ever been excited about a sporting event? A football game, soccer, basketball, etc? Have you gone early for a movie premiere? I hope you said yes to at least one of the above, because otherwise you lead a very boring life. Now try and rationalize the logic of people who want to be home for kick off, tip off, or have to see the movie at midnight, the day of the premiere. Think about all the people who stand outside the line for the Oscars, who want to catch a glimpse of their favorite actor or actress.

Watching the opening kick off, with all your buddies at home is not going to change the outcome of the match. Getting to see a celebrity in the heat, is not going to change your life for the better. Yet, people do it. It’s called excitement, about something they care about. Something they’re passionate about.

Don’t mock someone’s passion, chances are you’re passionate about something they can’t relate to either.

Disclaimer: I stood in line for one hour on opening day, and decided to leave due to a conference call I had to attend, and I’ll be in line at 1:30AM for the premiere of The Dark Knight, so I can watch the 3:15AM show. I expect 450 other people in line with me, to watch “just another movie”.

Dismal. It seems the only thing I got right were:

1. Mobile Me
2. 3G
3. GPS

From the perspective of what’s next, I guess more information will roll out, I’m a little worried that Mr. Jobs didn’t find one small piece critical.. and that is Tethering..
Will the iPhone 3G allow tethering? Or do I need to have two unlimited data plans from AT&T? Sure, dropping the price by $200 is nice, but even if I was to take the cost savings, that’s only 1.5 months of 3G service with the laptop and phone.. I really hope they have a tethering option, and I hope they announce this ASAP, I’ve been using AT&T’s 3G network again for the past 2 weeks, and I’d really like to know if I need to cancel my service and just the iphone’s or if i’ll get hit with a $200 termination fee, if I decide to upgrade to the iPhone 3G.

So, the internet is abuzz, rampant, on fire.. with speculation as to what could or couldn’t happen at the Steve Note next week. So, not to be outdone, and definitely to help throw in some dry wood into the fire.. here’s my take on things.

• MobileMe.com: Apple owns this domain. Why do I know this? Because I tried to register it myself 3 years ago, I started a company and we were doing ‘mobile stuff’ with it. When I did a whois on the domain, it was owned by Apple.com. Now that they’ve moved the hosting over to mark monitor etc, I doubt they gave up the ownership of it. This was also my first indicator that an iphone was coming, and that I was entering the right market
• .Mac Changes: Granted, these changes are way over due, but instead of an overhaul, I’ll jut be happy if things worked as advertised 8 years ago, get the basic syncing to work, then we’ll worry about other fancy features ok Steve?.
• iPhone 2.0: We all know the software update is due anyday now, my bet would be June 29th. Hardware upgrade would be nice as well, along with the standard request for 3G. Some other things I’d like to see:
  • Copy and Paste
  • Ability to ‘beam’ my contact information to another user, or recieve such information from another mobile phone. Seriously, paper business cards.. in 2008? Go green Apple, save the paper, oh and not everyone has a business card, I’d like to be able to give people my personal info, or business info with just a tap. My name is hard enough to pronounce, imagine teaching people how to spell it for my email address.
    PS: I think the first Palm Pilot did this advanced trick…
  • Better support for car stereos etc. My Alpine still complains about the iphone everytime I plug it in, it works, but it’s annoying. I can’t do a firmware update on my car stereo as I can, the iphone.. so .. mobile me car matey! arrrrrr!

Thanks for playing.

On Valentines day, I posted my thoughts on the way Apple pushes it’s old inventory out the door. A few weeks later, The Consumerist gets a tip along the same lines. Now, being a fan of the site, I’m flattered that I caught onto something before they did. I love their work, so thanks for telling more people about this little shenanigan. I obviously don’t have the eyeballs they do, the story made it to the public, I’m glad. Next time, tipsters, please give due credit, I don’t expect the staff at the consumerist to know where every story is coming from.

So, I’m in the market for a 30 inch monitor. The choices so far are between the Apple Cinema and the Dell 3007. I went to Apple’s website to see what the Cinema would cost me, $1,799 says the apple store. So, I checked Apple’s goodwill/refurbished store, and there the price is $1,499, $300 cheaper, woohoo. What caught my eye though, was the next item, they say the original price of the display is $3,299. Really? I double checked the brand spanking new one on the store, looking for “going out business, 50% off, everything must go” signs. Needless to say, I couldn’t find any. I think it’s interesting that Apple shows the price as $3,299 which was the price when these things were first announced, 5 years ago, instead of the price if bought brand new today.

I’m wondering, is this standard practice amongst retailers? Do you really want to list the first original price of an item to help get rid of your old inventory? If was to buy the same thing brand new, the price wold be only $300 more. But, looking directly at the site only, it seems the refurbished item saves me more than 50%. Is this fair?

I think this is a 7.5 feature, but I noticed, that now if you try to add a song to a playlist twice, iTunes will warn you and let you know that you already have the song in the playlist. This is a great feature for me, as I create large playlists for my road trips, and I’ve noticed every now and then that I have the same song twice or sometimes even thrice in there. So, Yay NoDupes!!!

The final release of Leopard is out, actually so is the first beta of the 10.5.1, so I thought this would be a good time to elaborate more on my issues with Spaces, and things I’d like to see differently.

1. Transitions: I hate the transitions, I don’t want things to slide in or out, I just want to switch the space. This has nothing to do with CPU, but more an annoyance. Maybe I’m getting too old.
2. Remembering: I’ve noticed every now and then, that Spaces screws up where my iTerm window is, or was, if I switch between spaces a lot, this becomes very annoying.
3. Adium: The latest version of Adium has some bug fixes, but they aren’t complete.. the message window, vs the contacts list these seem to get lost all the time
4. An easy way to to move a window to a space, clicking on the title bar, and then doing ctrl # works, but it would help to have a right click option.
5. A proper pager like enlightenment. Or hell, even NeXTStep or Afterstep..