iPhone 4s

Reports are very positive on Siri. Despite the obvious security concerns, if you have an internet connection it sounds like it really can work some magic. I wouldn't know first hand though. I'm not on the "s" line. My theory is people are either on the "s" line (3gs, 4s etc) or they're on the other line. The early termination fees encourage you to stay within your line. For a fee (for me currently $175) you can jump the line but otherwise you end up waiting for the next thing. While Siri, a better camera and getting rid of the hideous AT&T service are very temping, $300 for the phone + $175 for the early termination fee keeps me on the non-"S" line.

Is your cell phone the mark of the beast?

Watching my 12 year old daughter exchange over 10,000 text messages a month:

I started thinking about the role of the cell phone in our culture. Its how we communicate. Whether its the old phone call approach (look at her minutes used though), or TXT messages, facebook, twitter etc its always with us. Whether or not we have GPS features enabled on the phone the phone can be triangulated by the cell phone towers which is a feature companies like Apple and others have used for better maps/GPS/navigation support. So you can be tracked unless you turn it off. 

In the last year or so an increasing number of companies have begun working on the ability to make payments with your cell phone. You can already do this in a very limited manner at some places like Starbucks. There are speculations that Apple's upcoming iPhone 5 will have this ability (my bet is that it wont make the cut since its more like an iPhone 4gs than a true iPhone 5). Either way the day is coming. And from a commercial point of view it makes a ton of sense. Kids get cell phones LONG before they get credit cards. Turn that cell phone into a payment device and you've just created a whole new class of payers.

But, I have to ask, is the cell phone the mark of the beast? 

From the Christian Bible, Revelation 13:16-17:

The second beast forces all people—important and unimportant, rich and poor, free and slaves—to be marked on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that no one may buy or sell unless he has the mark, which is the beast's name or the number of its name.

Most people are right handed. They have this cell phone thing in their hand or attached to their head (bluetooth headsets etc). You may someday not be able to buy or sell without it and you can be identified at all times by it. 

Am I crazy? Either way where things are going is a bit frightening.

Finally bought another iPhone App

Up until recently the only iPhone App I had purchased was OmniFocus (not a good deal at $20). When iPhone OS came out for my iPhone 3G OmniFocus became useless it was so slow, but after upgrading to the iPhone 4 its a decent app again. It nicely ties into the desktop app (which you also have to pay for). And if you're foolish enough, you can pay yet again $40 for the separate iPad app. I wont be doing that - i'll run the iPhone app on the iPad in 2x mode and save the $40. How many times is the Omni group going to get money out of me for the same thing?

Anyway, i've been doing fitness road biking trying to go every other day. I have a Trek crossover bike:

Not great for pure road work like i've been doing but the roads near me are hard to call roads. I've got a bracket for my iPhone 4 so I can listen to music (over the speaker -- i'm in a dead quiet area and there's no traffic) and watch the GPS. That leads me to EveryTrail. I've been using the free version all summer and I love the way it tracks my pace, the altitude and keeps me from getting lost. Here's a recent ride:


Past Church 8-28-10 at EveryTrail



Since i've been using it every other day I decided to pay the $3.99 for the pro version even though there are NO extra features that I care about in the pro version. I paid to support them. Its a shame they don't have extras in there like something to calculate my performance versus the last time I did the same trip or calculate the maximum inclines and duration of inclines etc. Its a generic application for tracking trails and it does that well.

I've been slowly leveling up on my biking fitness and gear. First a flat kit, then the gloves to avoid sore palms, then the padded bike shorts (I found out why so many people wear them the hard way...). Next summer perhaps i'll break down and get a road bike and see if I can get my distances up. I'm doing 10-12 miles each time in my hilly area. I'll never be a Lance Armstrong but at least i'm not a total couch potato.

Another app i've been loving recently is Waze, a free "social" GPS. Since I spend a lot of time in the car i've been leveling up there.

And finally, Audible came out with their own free app. You may ask why use the Audible app when you can play their audiobooks with iTunes? Its all about the stats to me. I'm a numbers junkie. Total listening time on the audible app since it was released on 7/16: 32 hours. Total audio books in library: 59. I tend to hunt for a good author or series and then wipe it out and move on. If you're looking for a Sci Fi series and have a lot of time I enjoyed the Lost Fleet Series.

Oh and there are some "for pay" apps I have but I got them for free by watching the FreeAppAlert to see if they come up. Always worth a quick look.

If you have any iPhone apps you can't live without let me know, i'm always looking for good ones. Waze was a sleeper I didn't hear about anywhere else. I wonder how many others are out there like that?

White iPhone 4G appears in Apple Case Selector - oh the irony

Call me jaded but I think its ironic that Apple's magic fix to the antenna problem is the iPhone 4 Case Program app which shows pictures of the ever-elusive white iPhone 4 in the Apple black bumper case as your make your case selection. Are they trying to irritate people further? Perhaps the contrast from black to black wasn't good for the pictures, but since anyone who gets the black bumper will be putting it on a black iPhone they may as well show reality, contrast or not.

Frankly I think the band-aids that some enterprising people are selling are a better idea than the cases and are only $5. I hate wrapping the beautiful iPhone with plastic and rubber. If Apple had thought of this perhaps they could have saved themselves a few million dollars.

iPhone 4 -- first impressions

I'm still amazed by the speed next to my iPhone 3G and now understand why some people have tolerated applications that took forever to load like Omnifocus. On the iPhone 4 (and perhaps the older iPhone 3GS) it loads quickly -- blindingly fast next to the 3G. It could still be better optimized etc but its definitely tolerable as an application now whereas before it was so slow I rarely used it.

There's a ton of news on the net about the iPhone 4 antenna concerns but the jury is mostly still out on that. For my own limited testing, within my home office I no longer get reliable coverage with the iPhone 4 where I did reliably with the 3G. Thats a concern. Full disclosure, i'm a righty.

Other than that, with the faster phone i'm enjoying the new folders and overall phone a lot more. One thing i've noticed missing in Apple's advertising is that with about 77% of people buying the new iPhone 4 being upgraders, i'm sure a large percentage of them are like me, iPhone 3G users. They've been touting the new iPhone 4/iOS features over what the 3GS had but they're missing the fact that many of us never experienced those. There's all sorts of new stuff in there not covered by recent press thats new and wonderful to me like voice dialing, compass, etc. Some of the apps also use this like AroundMe where if you use it in landscape mode uses the compass to do a virtual reality like thing showing how far away places are which is really cool:

Its unlike Apple to miss a marketing opportunity and with this antenna business they could use some extra help.

Meanwhile I got my phone back and i'm in love again. I just hope they don't break it once more when iOS5 comes out...

iOS4

Since my iPhone 3G has been terrible anyway I figured there was no harm in updating to the latest OS, iOS4 when it came out on Monday. After the (long) upgrade, it completely hung and was non-responsive. I did a hard reset to reboot it (power off wasn't working) and it came back up and has been running since. Its not more or less responsive than the prior OS version so I didn't lose ground with the upgrade. The iPhone 3G with OS 3 or iOS4 remains a terrible device due to the sluggishness of it.

Meanwhile, I found a little (very little) value in iOS4. The only thing that has been useful to me has been the folders and I could have lived without them. Other things I could make use of in the (limited) iPhone 3G implementation of iOS4, like the unified mailbox, I don't want or need. I don't use a unified mailbox at my desk and like to keep my context in work or in personal stuff and not mix those two contexts. 

Other things I got on the 3G but find useless:

* 5x digital zoom - the camera on the iPhone 3G is terrible, so adding zoom to that is silly.

* iBooks/PDF/Games - since the phone is so slow these are useless.

And even if they had delivered multi-tasking in the 3G, I assume it would have been terrible on the 3G due to the overall sluggishness of the phone. 

Since the iPod piece of the phone is a major asset to me (and a piece that actually does work well even on my 3G except for the odd outages during bluetooth streaming) and the fact that all other phones have poor support for multimedia i'm left thinking about upgrading to iPhone 4 now (once the lines/noise settles) or holding off until the fall hoping Verizon gets lucky. We'll see how patient I am :)

iPhone 4, any competition out there?

There's lots of buzz about how the various phones and carriers match up to Apple's new iPhone 4. The real issue is perhaps something other than the number of pixels, screen size, battery life, weight, or even carrier and coverage, I think they're missing something fundamental which is where I get stuck on the decision. Usability. Products are about ease of use, especially a multi-function live-with-it sort of device like a smart phone. On the phone itself Apple has shown a lot of polish in the software (we well as some silly mistakes, late deliveries etc) that is still lacking, even on the latest droid based phones like the HTC Incredible.

But, when it comes to a smart phone, it also comes down to getting your content on and off the phone and surprisingly the reviews are all skipping this topic . Email, calendar and contacts are a place to look to start (and even there I worry for non-iPhones). But what about music, movies, pictures, audiobooks, e-books? How well does the phone connect with your desktop and take care of all this for you? As far as I can tell without iTunes this is all a huge mess regardless of what phone you have. And Apple has effectively blocked non-iPhones from connecting to iTunes. 

Specifically for the hot HTC phones their documentation says this:

"HTC Sync is not compatible with Macintosh computers. While you will be unable to use HTC Sync to synchronize your PIM information, you can transfer files such as music, movies, photos, etc. to your DROID ERIS by HTC by mounting the device as a disk drive."

So I have to manually manage my multi-media? What about remembering playback positions in audiobooks? Rating changes on my music? Automatic syncing of unwatched movies/shows? We're supposed to give that all up?

Can anyone really stand up and say that life without iTunes is easy and things just work, and then describe how? Then try doing that for an OSX-based desktop environment. I'm sure there are techno-geek ways to solve the challenges, but for someone who wants it to just work, is there a way? So far my research says no.

iPhone 4

So the new iPhone 4 was announced. It's an impressive phone. Unfortunately the big news was the video chat. Since nobody else in my family is crazy enough to go to AT&T (including my wife), and many of my friends are too poor to pay for the expensive smart phone plans, few I would talk to could take advantage of this. Now, if the phone was distributed on more carriers, then there'd be a better chance of using this new functionality, but, sadly, Apple didn't announce anything with Verizon.

One option i've been thinking about is picking up someone's 3GS (after they upgrade to the 4 since I wouldn't want to pay $99 to end up with a 2 year contract renewal). Apple has a good 3GS vs 4 comparison here. That choice gets me a reportedly more-stable phone than the 3G, multi-tasking on the new iOS4, a much better camera (but without flash), video recording (but not HD). Essentially its a very good upgrade from my current 3G phone. With people upgrading perhaps I can get a 3GS for free/cheap without renewing my contract. That buys more time until something more appealing comes along.

Of course, there's always the need to have the latest and greatest NOW. Perhaps some time with the 3GS on AT&T will make me hate AT&T less and i'll be ready to lock in for longer.

iPhone 3.1 woes update

Since my last entry on the misery i've had with iPhone 3.0 i've made some progress. After much fiddling I found that turning off things like wifi, bluetooth, MobileMe, etc did not solve my problems.

The one symptom I could see is that with all accounts deleted and MobileMe sync turned off I still saw calendars listed in the iPhone calendar app:

Nothing I did (reboot, power off, reset) would get rid of them.

I resorted to the ultimate and completely nuked the phone and set it up like a brand new phone. This is a horrifically painful process since you have to re-lay out where your apps are, re-enter passwords/settings for each app etc. Perhaps a restore would have worked but I had read reports that it didnt and didn't want to do the 2 hour wipe part more than once.

The process worked. I've been good for 4 days and i'm declaring victory.

There are still some reports that even with Calendar sync off in iTunes people are seeing calendars "on my iphone" that they cant get rid of. I think the bug exists but there are some manifestations of it that are catastrophic like mine and others that are just annoying.

Regardless, for Apple to not have fixed it quickly is inexcusable. Their self-inflicted punishment appears to be giving people new iPhone 3G's unnecessarily.

iPhone 3.1 Woes

Since i've upgraded to the 3.1 OS on the iPhone my iPhone has been frustrating. Its slow to respond, takes forever on key presses, battery is draining quickly, etc. Looking around the net shows that others are experiencing the same thing. The general solution appears to be don't turn on wifi and bluetooth at the same time although others are suggesting more drastic measures. I'll give the wifi/bluetooth settings a shot and see how it does over the next day or so and report back. 

Seems like a basic test case. Perhaps they used the team from Snow Leopard? Or are they just giving us grief for not upgrading the the 3GS? Of course if they had offered early upgrades...

Unlimited iPhone Ringtones for free on OSX

This has been covered in pieces elsewhere on the net, but I just got it going myself and figured i'd share.

It always bugged me that iTunes wouldn't let me make ANY song a ringtone and they wanted to charge me extra for the few ones that I could. Turns out there's a way to make any MP3 (and perhaps other formats, but all my music is MP3) file a ringtone. 

Here's the process:

1) Pick a song, make a duplicate of it and give it an easy to recognize name like "a song - for ringtone"

2) Get info on the copy of the song and pick the start/end time on the song in the options tab. Make sure the duration is no more than 40 seconds. Fiddle with that until you're happy. Use iTunes repeat play to help you fiddle

3) Run garageband and open a new project, I chose a voice project (perhaps others would work too)

4) Delete one of the two voices (you get a male and female by default) (delete track or command-delete) (this seems to be optional)

5) Click on the bottom right icon in the garageband window (media). Find your song and drag it to the remaining track (you can adjust length etc again here if you want)

6) From the garageband menu choose share->send ringtone to iTunes

7) Sync your ringtones and assign them to whoever. My wife got "Firecracker" by Josh Turner. She thinks he wrote the song for her. Go figure.

There appear to be other ways of doing this too but no way to natively do it within iTunes. This avoids any command prompt hackery and uses Apple products I already had.

I think Apple is split on this front. I think the Carriers (AT&T) dont want them giving away ringtones, but at the same time they haven't completely blocked it. 

There are better interfaces for doing this (iToner from Ambrosia) but they're not free. The process above isn't hard and its free and legal so why part with the $15?

iPhone 3GS Update

It seems that AT&T is reading my blog :)

Anyway, they changed their stance and are now offering special upgrade pricing to early iPhone adopters.

I just checked my status and I got this back:

"A full discount on a standard handset or iPhone upgrade is not available at this time, but you may qualify on 12/12/2009.  We can offer you an iPhone upgrade at a higher price with a 2-yr commitment and an $18 upgrade fee. Please visit a participating iPhone sales location for pricing on this offer."

Since this program is targeting the early adopters:

"All of that said, we've been listening to our customers. And since many of our iPhone 3G customers are early adopters and literally weeks shy of being upgrade eligible due to iPhone 3G S launching 11 months after iPhone 3G, we're extending the window of upgrade eligibility for a limited time."

And I got the iPhone 3G the day it came out I don't understand why I'm blocked until 12/12/09.

Either their systems reports on upgrade ability don't match their press releases or they're flat out lying on the whole early adopter program. AT&T appears to just make things up and see how people react then tune/correct as they go. Not a lot of thought/planning going into what they're doing.

Anyway, even if I was eligible for the early upgrade there's little in the HW that i'd care about:

• Compass - More targeting people walking around in cities. Fortunately I dont do much of that.
• More memory - I fit just fine in the current footprint (16GB)
• Bluetooth audio - i'm not very interested in this and i'd have to buy new a new headset too
• Voice commands - i'm not much of a talker
• Better performance - This is the only one thats really appealing. Some apps are dogs and some of the delays on the phone are annoying. But thank goodness its not a Newton!

What I would like is an upgrade that would stop the phone from dropping calls 3x on a 45 minute ride on the Mass Turnpike. Unfortunately that upgrade is one that requires a new carrier. AT&T remains the weakest part of the iPhone which we all expected from the day Apple announced the first one. Its just a shame considering how much business they've received thanks to the iPhone.

Find my iPhone

A cool feature that came out with iPhone OS 3.0 today. Not sure it will help you find it while its in your house but it will at least track down what store/gas station you left your phone at.

For the house problem it has the ability to vibrate/ring (despite ring settings) for up to 2 mintes:

"Write a message that will appear on your iPhone's screen. You can also play a sound on your iPhone, even if it is in silent mode."

If you choose the sound option when its at somewhere like a gas station they'll get annoyed. Assuming you have security on your phone (a pin, which you should have or your whole life is exposed) then it will beep and vibrate continuously for 2 minutes and they can't stop it without the pin. They could power it off (I confirmed they could do this) if they know how to do that on an iPhone. I fear what they'd do otherwise...

iPhone 3Gs

Ok, I have to post on it. I'm more excited about the new iPhone 3.0
software. But in this generation of the iPhone AT&T and Apple have
made what I think is a mistake. For the first two versions I got the
phones the day the phone came out. The very first because it was new
and exciting etc. The second one before it had some significant
improvements (3G) AND they let me get it for the same price as a new
customer -- i.e. they allowed me to upgrade before my 2 years were up.
Without that I wouldnt have an iPhone 3G. This time around they've
taken an ugly approach of requiring you to pay full price ($500-$700)
AND re-up for 2 years. Thats worse than most on an early renewal. I
could live with re-upping for 2 years IF they gave me a discounted
price. But I can't live with both.

So i'll wait out my contract. Hopefully verizon will get to offer one
around the time my contract expires and i'll be rid of AT&T and get to
a new phone at the same time.

BTW, the side effect of them allowing me to upgrade at the cheaper
price would have been for me to give my 3G to my wife, caused her to
switch from Verizon and then they'd have another AT&T subscriber. AT&T
didn't think this one through especially with oncoming competition on
several fronts.

EveryTrail

Just got back from a bike ride with the kid. Got to use my new iPhone attachment for the bike and EveryTrail iPhone app. Thats a nice combination and lets you keep track of rides.

Ride with Lydia

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

iPhone 3.0

I wont re-state all the iPhone 3.0 features they announced today as others have done that well. But there are a few that to me were key that may not be highlighted by others:

MMS - I left everyone behind on Verizon when I broke my contract and joined AT&T just to get the iPhone. I imagine there are tons of others in that camp. They all send me MMS pictures which are too painful to try to access so I miss all those family pics. 

Voice Memos - An obvious oversight. I wonder though about them putting so many 3rd party guys (iTalk for example) out of business. Why?

Search - Across apps is nice but not needed to me, but within an app like Mail and Calendar its required.

And finally one that not too many are pointing out, I can finally send stuff from my address book on the iPhone to someone else. That was a major one for me.

Note that I didn't point out other things like Copy & Paste, Tethering and some others. They'll be nice but not as basic/fundamental.

Its great to have a phone thats so flexible that they can roll out serious updates like this and do it for free. While the iPhone is still not the best phone on the planet with dropped calls etc, it sure is my favorite electronic device.

Voicemail

I'm amazed that in this digital age there are still very few options for managing voice mail for the services I use. My home internet is through Charter Communications which does not provide for emailing voicemail messages or even sending you alerts that you have new messages via txt or email.

On the iPhone there is no software way to export a voice mail despite the much touted visual voicemail feature. You can't export from the phone, or from desktop software, or even through AT&T's web site. This is an oversight that many web sites are complaining about.

Anyway, the quick and dirty solution is as follows:

1) Find a simple 3.5MM male/mail audio cable plugged into the iPhone (easier with a 3G) and into the Line In on your mac. 

2) Make sure "Line In" is selected in the Input tab of your Sound preferences. 

3) Run Garageband, create a new basic track, picking something like "Male Basic" for type

4) Press record at the bottom of the screen and then hit play on the iPhone visual voicemail to record. 

5) When the voicemail play is complete (watch the iPhone screen). press record again in Garageband to stop recording

6) In the menu choose share, export song to disk, choose MP3 and "Good Quality" and give it a name

You can do something equivalent on the PC. I used Garageband because it was there, there are free programs out there for all platforms that can do the garage band steps for you. 

Sounds complex, but this whole process took me 2 mins including finding the cable in the basement and running Garageband for the first time ever (i'm not musically inclined (which is why I like country :) ))

iPhone App addendum

One other thing I should have mentioned with the iPhone apps: Several others could be on the list (and hopefully will be some day) if Apple supported background notifications. Its supposedly on its way. Once that happens perhaps some chat/Instant Messaging app(s) may make the list etc. Until then they have little value to me when they have to run in the foreground.

iPhone & iPhone 3G

Being the gadget/Apple fanatic I had to get the newer iPhone 3G the
day it came out. What did I do with my old iPhone? Unlike many that
sold them on eBay etc, I gave mine to my daughter. Its not enabled as
a cell phone so its basically and iPod touch. She loves it and does
all sorts of things on it - email, pictures, games, videos, music. And
I can honestly say that after watching her (she's 10) abuse it for the
last 6+ months that the original iPhone is a TOUGH device. Like my
Lexus RX300 that I gave to my wife when I got a new car (Acura MDX), I
feel sorry for it. It was kept in such good shape and now its abused,
but both are tough and can take it. Then again, my girls are tough too.

iPhone Apps

Seems that its the thing to do at the end of the year to rate top iPhone apps you use. To date i've purchased ONE (1) App. And that one was a whopping $20. Which one? 

OmniFocus. A friend turned me on to a series of Apps by the Omni group. The apps are generally overpriced but work well on the mac. I was looking for a better to-do list manager and he swore by the product so I broke down and bought OmniFocus for the mac. It's been helpful in consolidating all my "to do" lists and get things more organized. The natural extension was to buy the iPhone version too (they sync with each other). The insult was that the iPhone App was $20. Its not worth the money. It has a horribly slow launch time (which evidently is better than it used to be) and takes forever to sync with MobileMe. The interface and capabilities are decent but if you want to quickly add a to-do item you'll forget it before the thing launches. I do use the app but mostly for To-do cleanup when on the road/waiting somewhere.

Ok, out of 7 screens of Apps (see full pile below), what is worth mentioning?

Rob's Top 10 iPhone Apps (free unless otherwise noted):

1) NetNewsWire - RSS reader, syncs with my other locations. Wonderful way to keep up on news etc. Great way to kill time waiting in lines, airport etc.

2) Shazam - For finding out what song is playing and remembering it so I can buy it later

3) WeightTrack - because I need to lose we

ight. I wish there was a better free one (its odd when its tied to the OKC stuff) but this one works and is fast & easy

4) GalCon Lite - only game i've liked enough to play more than once on the iPhone

5) 1Password - Password tracker syncs with the mac. In case I need my login info on the road (dont really use it for the iphone browser)

6) Flixster - for finding movie times quickly (Showtim

es has promise but has consistently been unstable for me)

7) Google - I had little use for the early versions which just launched a web browser page, but the voice activated search in it now is the bomb.

8) Dialer - A free working voice activated dialer for the iPhone that works

9) PhoneFlix - Look my Netflix queue

10) OmniFocus - Task manager that syncs wit the Mac. $20.

Apps i'm looking at that have promise:

1) Urbanspoon - a cool way to find restaurants (but not how I pick where to go)

2) Mobile News - AP news reader. Seems more conci

se than RSS etc. 

Apple apps that have little value to me:

1) YouTube - im not a big YouTube fan. I mostly use MobileMe to share videos with family

2) Contacts - its also accessible in the "Phone" app and before they made another app I got used to getting them there

3) iTunes - I dont buy music on the road (or update RSS feeds)

The rest of the Apple apps I use all the time.