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.

This is indeed the droid a lot of people have been looking for. This looks like an interesting project, and has all the ingredients to be the first massively public failure of something released by Google. Not from a technological perspective, but from an implementation perspective. We’ll see how it goes, I’ll give my review of the SDK and my thoughts on everything next week. Let’s not forget the Sharp Zaurus, and Qtopia, maybe/hopefully the third time is a charm.. though technically.. it could be the second time.

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!!!

A while back, I had talked about the issues I had with my
EVDO express card purchase and my macbook pro, a lot of you asked me to sum up my experiences with the card, and to comment on whether the speeds are worthy of being a primary connection or not, so here’s my answer.

Definitely, maybe.

I know, such definitive answers make me sound like a politician don’t they? Well.. politicians would probably skirt the question completely..
Here are my experiences with the Sprint USB card since late June 2007.

EVDO/3G data cards and plans are the most liberating technology ever sold. Seriously.

I am no longer confined to the house. I am no longer confined to starbucks and other places with stable wifi (Panera) (usually).
I can work, or play anywhere (more on that later). This technology allows one to connect to the internet from anywhere, with connections much faster than some DSL connections I’ve seen. The advertised speeds of “average download speeds of 600 kbps - 1.4 Mbps and average upload speeds of 350 - 500 kbps.” are not false. If you happen to be in an EVDO Rev A area, you will be close to advertised speeds. I’ve downloaded software at about 300K/sec before, and I’ve uploaded photos to flickr at about 80-100K/sec.

Nothing earth shattering, but I was in a hotel in McAllen, TX where the wifi of the hotel was $9.99/day and only worked in the lobby.

If you know me personally, you know I work remotely. I “tele-commute”, if you know me well, you know I’m rarely at my house. It’s not because
I’m on location or “on site”, but because I have this sprint card, and I can work from anywhere. Example:

I was one of the crazies that stood/sat in line for the iPhone, I got in line at 7:30AM, but I took my laptop and power cord with me, while waiting for the phone to be ‘released’, I actually got about 6 hours of billable time in. Work was happy, as they didn’t lose me for a day, I was happy as I could bill, while I was in line.

.

Without the card, I would’ve had to call in sick, and I wouldn’t have been able to make money that day. So, enough of the “anecdotal ad” for the EVDO cards.

So, how does the card fare up to travel and regions? Well.. since I bought the card, here is a table of places I’ve been, and what a standard wifi connection would’ve cost me.

Since I use a MacBook Pro, my development environment goes with me. I have PHP 5, Python, Apache and MySQL all installed
and with test data on my laptop. I wrote my PHP Gallery script and uploaded it to my server in McAllen, TX. Yes, I’m a nerd.
This also helps from a non nerdy perspective, I’ve been able to look up things to do, movie times, and alternate routes via google maps, though with the iphone, I don’t need the laptop to do any of those tasks, except maps when I need to get birds eye view of the city I’m in.

I’ll be in NJ first week of November, Vegas in December, El Paso in January, I no longer have to worry about connectivity anymore, I can choose to be as connected as I want to be.

For those who think this is just encroaching more and more into my life, or their lives, the technology isn’t bad, it’s your lifestyle. I have no problem defining when and where I do not want to be contacted, and the people I work with respect the boundaries I set. The card doesn’t make you a slave to your job, it doesn’t force you to check and respond to emails, it’s you.

Also, the reason why I said definitely maybe earlier, is that this connection as fast as it is for work, is not ideal for gaming, and is no where near as fast as the fiber running to my home, downloading songs and shows off iTunes is not the fastest thing on these cards, I can download songs from iTunes in about 3 seconds, on the card, it takes me about 2 minutes.. not terribly slow, but 1:57 .. I could’ve heard an entire song in that time.. :).

A thing to note about Wifi hotspots, sometimes they do not allow you to establish PPTP VPN tunnels (Panera), so working from these places is impossible if you need to connect to the corporate VPN.

So, today Amazon announced their MP3 Store, in beta. A lot of people are happy, a lot of fanboys are trying to find fault with a “beta” release, and all the apple haters are rejoicing, “Yay cheaper, higher quality songs, no more iTunes monopoly”. One thing to keep in mind, for all those who are so happy with this new store from Amazon.. “One Click Shopping”. No matter how cool you think this, remember when you buy at Amazon, you feed a different beast. So, go and buy there, just don’t bitch when they make it illegal for anyone else to be able to sell songs online, because Jeff Bezos would like nothing more.