You Can't Get Rid of Me That Easily

Hello again, boys and girls. First, some meta stuff. I'm aware I haven't posted in a month, and I'm sorry about that. Things have been crazy in all parts of my life. Work has been really picking up lately, and I moved into a new apartment mid August. I'm finally getting some stuff settled, and will hopefully get myself back on track. There hasn't been near as much news reading because of all of this, but I have been able to read a number or articles in the last couple days, so I'll give some brief thoughts on those.

First, the one that has been making all sorts of news lately is the Apple event from the fifth. The big news includes completely redesigned Nanos, bigger HDDs in the "Classic," and the release of the Touch. As anyone that knows me knows, I'm not really a fan of Apple, for a few reasons. That said, I can always appreciate cool stuff when I see it.
The Nanos, in my mind, are finally worth the money they cost. Up 'til now, I'm not so sure they were. A quick side note, why the heck do people act like Coverflow is so great? Does it do something magical that I just haven't noticed? Isn't it just a navigation method, that when you think about it is really not the most efficient one there is? Sorry, just curious.
The newly dubbed "Classics" are pretty much the same as they were before except for the space and UI, so not much to say about that.
The Touch is where all the cool stuff is. A lot of people had been begging for an iPhone sans the phone, and this is pretty much the answer. Personally, I think this thing looks spiffy, but still has too many shortcomings for my taste. First, the most obvious, is the lack of storage. Jobs has this stupid obsession with things being thin, but when it comes to a device that is supposed to become your primary portable media device, you need to stick more than 16 gigs in there. Especially when you charge that much for it. Aside from AT&T, everything else that's bad about the iPhone is bad about this one too, so I won't rehash it. It is pretty, though.
Speaking of the iPhone, it has now reached a price that resembles something reasonable. Steve's closer of dropping the 4 gig model altogether, and bringing the 8 gig to $400 instead of $600 has generated the most coverage. The reason that so many people are talking about this, in case you've been out of it this week, is that those close to a million people that bought an iPhone in the first two months of its release are feeling pissed. Jobs' answer to this is that technology moves fast and that early adopters pay more. I can tell you from my HDTV purchase that I've felt the early adopter cost first hand. However, it's an entirely different thing when you've been able to experience the device for close to a year before seeing huge price drops happen. In this case, it was a first of its kind. Just two months after release, the price came down 33%. That's just absurd. To me, this says that the people who bought early really got gouged. Now, there are all sorts of arguments that come in response to this and defend Apple. One of them is that the people obviously thought that it was worth $600, or else they wouldn't have paid that. That is absolutely correct. However, does it look like Apple thinks it was worth $600 when they drop is so drastically so soon after launch? Has anything ever dropped that much that quickly before? That's not rhetorical, I really am wondering. While Steve is right that tech prices come down quickly, I think that this is a bit of a stretch. I think that the reason they dropped this much is because Apple doesn't value the device at $600 so it blatant, "We overcharged you," to all of the people that bought one. If there was something you really wanted, and would gladly pay $1k for, would you still do it if you knew that the guy selling it would be charging less than $700 two months later? Most people, no probably not. That's why I think so many people are pissed.

Lets see, what else has been going on...Oh, Facebook announced that they will start having profiles indexed and searchable by search engines. This means that when you type someone's name in Google, that their Facebook profile might come up. This is something that I think is a neat idea, but I'm agreeing with everyone saying that it should be an opt-in, rather than opt-out service. Facebook was built around the principles of privacy, and keeping everyone out except those you let in. Now, though, the default is that everyone can see you, and you have to tell it otherwise if you don't want that. Well, poo on them. I joined Facebook back in 2004, and have loved it ever since. That said, I'm not happy in the direction that they are heading. I feel like each new feature they release is bringing them one step closer to MySpace. I say that only half-jokingly. While I know that they will never (probably) fall into the pit of despair that contains the likes of the ugly as sin site that is MySpace, I do think that they are on the path to pissing a lot of people off. Even moreso than they did with that newsfeed fiasco (I actually defended them on that one, the info was all already available). This time, though, it's not just opening you up to your friends, it's opening you up to the world. Get with it, Facebook, make this an opt-in feature and don't risk having the users complain. It'll be really easy to do. Really.

This iPhone Review Is Better Than You

I love Maddox. He provides, hands down, the best summary of the iPhone yet published.

The Most Comprehensive iPhone Review Ever

After nearly a week of silence, I am back, and with the most comprehensive review of the iPhone available. Ars has got nothing on me. I offer to you my extensive review after my long five minutes spent with the device. That’s right, five minutes was all it took to come up with this.
First, I’ll start by saying that part of me really has wanted the iPhone to be horrible, and for everyone that bought one to regret it. This is based solely on my disliking of the personality of Apple and its fan base. The other part of me, though, really wanted the iPhone to do well. This is based on the fact that it sounds awesome. The concept behind it is pretty neat, and it looked like it had some great potential.
Now then, for be brief impressions. First and foremost is that I am apparently wrong about everything. Anything that felt natural or intuitive to me is just wrong according to Apple. The way I held the phone? Wrong. The way I tried to type? Wrong. The way I tried to scroll through lists? Wrong.
The very first thing I tried out before anything else was the rotation of the screen. I wanted to see just how smooth the transition actually was, since I’d heard good things. However, holding the phone how I hold any other phone doesn’t work. I would rotate the thing, and it didn’t register that I had turned it. At first I thought I was just doing something wrong. Like maybe I was using some hidden version of Safari that doesn’t support landscape mode. I decided to try it out on other applications. All of them came up the same. It just wouldn’t work. At this point I started vocalizing my frustration, and the guy next to me told me to tilt the phone. So I tilted it up, and sure enough, that did it. Now, I fully understand the logistical reasoning behind this, but what gets me is that once I turned it to the "proper" angle, it was no longer natural feeling. Like I said, though, maybe I'm just naturally wrong.
The next thing on my list to check out was the keyboard. Obviously, this has been where a lot of the curiosity has been focused. The question everyone is asking is, "Will it work?" The answer, for me, is no. Let me preface this with telling you that I don't own a smartphone. I don't have a QWERTY keypad on any mobile device. That said, when I go into a store to try one out, I can type pretty darn fast right from the get go. I hold it how it feels natural, and type with both of my thumbs. My attempts to do this on the iPhone met with disaster. Nothing I attempted to type like this was correct. I would not lift one thumb up fast enough before I hit the next key. I would aim for one key but some other one got it. I repeatedly had the space, backspace, and return get pressed simply by holding the phone. Now I know what you're thinking, "But Jeremy, Steve & Co. said to start off typing with just one finger, and getting used to the keyboard." To that I say, "Why?" Why should I have to "learn" how to use a QWERTY keyboard when I can use any other one out there with no problems whatsoever. Not only that, but I do a lot of texting on my phone, and not having to look at it is very nice. Even if I got used to where the keys were, and could theoretically type without looking, I'd still need to check it because I have no way of knowing if what I'm typing is actually getting typed. If I can type quickly, with no learning curve, on a physical keypad, what's the incentive to learn to use this one?
The other big thing I played with was Safari. This is an incredibly awesome mobile web browser...when it's working. There have been various reports floating around in reviews about how Safari can be a little crash happy. For me, this was an extreme. I think it crashed somewhere around two dozen or so times while I was using it. There were only about three times that I clicked a link and the new page loaded. Every other time, if I clicked a link, the browser crashed. Given that reopening the browser takes you back to where you were, it's not enough to incite homicidal rage. However, it was enough to cause me to yell at the stupid thing loud enough that a lot of people looked my way. It was very aggravating, and if I were trying to surf the web with it, I would get pissed a lot. The problem is that the browsing experience is so great when it works, that if they can stabilize the thing they'll be rocking.
I tried to do most of my browsing using the EDGE network in order to see just how it felt. Since my browser crashed so many times, I didn't really get a good feel for it, though. I did, however, manage to get a speed test page to eventually work. What I got was something like 113k down. I was fairly impressed by this, given what I was expecting. It could be, though, that Dallas is one of the places that gets better reception than others. When I tried the speed test on WiFi I got something like 600k, for comparison. I could actually live with the 100k or so, if that was consistent. I do use Sprint right now, though, and my phone does have the ability to take advantage of the nice speeds. I can stream video and have it come in crisp and lag free. I got about 300k on my phone, for those curious. Note that I also only ran these tests once, so it's pretty unscientific.
The other peeve I had with the phone was navigating lists. Now this could be something that is easily changed with a setting, but I dind't get a chance to look, so if that's the case then forgive me. So when I loaded up something that had a long list of items (music, call history, photos), instinct kicks in and I try to scroll down the list. Nope, wrong again. You have to drag, not scroll, the lists. Is this something that causes a lot of frustration? Of course not. My point, though, is that it's just one more little thing that goes against my intuition. I guess that's why Apple says to think different.
All in all, it was a very pretty device. I think that they made some brilliant moves with it: optical glass screen that basically will no scratch. And some big blunders with it: horrible email, for example. A lot of the things that people dislike can, and likely will, be changed via a software update. That's great and all, but why weren't a lot of these things included to begin with? A software update should fix bugs, and things that they never thought of. It should not fix things that are standard on a free with rebate phone. It shouldn't correct a mail application that feels like it was an afterthought. There are so many things that I have to think Apple made a conscious decision to exclude that just baffle me. I can understand that this is not your ordinary phone, and that it's suppose to change things, but for cryin' out loud, don't include a camera but no MMS support. I mean, seriously here people.
It's important to see that I looked at this solely from a "Will I like it" perspective, and not a "Will most people like it" angle. That said, I still don't think I could recommend anyone buy this right now. Maybe later when they've fixed some things and the price comes down it'll be worth it. Right now, though, it definitely is not. The biggest problem of all is that it is AT&T only right now. I would definitely wait until they are taken out of the picture.
In seriousness, if you are interested in getting a really good picture of the phone, check out the Ars review I linked to at the top. They cover just about everything and then some.

Apple Hates Your Company

I knew from the get-go that the iPhone was not going to be a big hit with business customers. Apparently, Apple is taking extra steps to make sure that it won't be. Don MacAskill of SmugMug says that when he tried to get he and his staff iPhones to use, that he was told that wasn't possible. According to everyone he talked to, in order to get one, it has to be tied to a personal account, not a corporate one. Now this means that if you have your own account that you use for business and just get reimbursed for, you'd still be able to nab one. If the account is completely a corporate one, though, then you're going to be out of luck. All of this might be a good thing, though, given that Gartner has encouraged IT people to not allow the iPhone onto their networks.

iPhone Encourages Evil

I love Lore Sjöberg.

Another feature provided by the iPhone is the ability to play videos from
anywhere in the world. Think of your child gazing into this device, viewing
events taking place elsewhere on the planet and even looking back through time.
The device itself has a "friendly" rounded look to it. Is this Apple's way of
introducing children to the concept of a crystal ball? Will the next iPhone be a
perfect transparent sphere? Very likely.

Dry As a Bone

Partly due to Zelda, and partly due to my mood, I haven't been able to come up with much of anything to post lately. I'm reading the news, but nothing is just jumping out at me. I mean, Apple has made a fool out of themselves twice recently. I suppose that's something. Apple really grinds my gears. They are so full of themselves it's amazing that they are taken seriously. They are also treated so differently from other companies by the public, I'm always left wondering. Speaking of this, Apple announced that the iPhone is going to get up to 8 hours of talk time. I'm skeptical, at best. However, if this turns out to be true, then props to them. Maybe others will figure out how they did it and we can all start having incredible battery life on our electronic devices. Another thing about the iPhone: Jobs has said that it is the best iPod yet. I don't see how a portable media device with as little as 4 gigs of storage can be the best yet. Part of me really wants to see the iPhone fail horribly, just to knock Apple down a few pegs. The problem is that that won't happen. The over-hype about the phone will mean that it will be a success at launch, regardless. After that, even if it does start to fail, Apple will be forgiven and the masses will forget about it. Personally, I've got a few things I dislike about the iPhone, but only two that would keep me from buying one. The biggest is the price tag. People many places are saying that there hasn't been any firm evidence on what price will actually be, but I beg to differ. The slide at MacWorld 2007 seems to show that the $499 and $599 price will be with a required two year contract. Which brings me to my second item. There is no way I'm becoming an AT&T customer. I've heard horrible things about their wireless business for many years, and their latest bit about spying on people means that I won't be counting myself as any type of AT&T customer. I realize that the price is all but guaranteed to drop after a while, but I'm not talking about buying one later. Plus, I seem to remember seeing something about the AT&T exclusivity being five years. I could be wrong on that one, though.
Really, though, the iPhone does have some compelling features, but nothing that makes me think it deserves the price. They give their little comparison chart, but leave key features that many find important off of it. I also wonder how happy users of their onscreen keyboard will be. I think that the iPhone is a step in the right direction towards what people want, but I think it's a far way from the best thing ever. I know that none of this is new, but that's never stopped me before. I guess that only time will tell. Well, maybe. There just might be enough fanboys out there to keep it alive even if it does suck.

Another Confirmation of the Reality Distortion Field

There were a couple of announcements that came out of WWDC yesterday. One is that the Safari web browser is now available for Windows, and the other is that the iPhone has an "innovative" way of allowing third-party development. You would probably think that these two announcements should be more unrelated than they are, and you'd probably be right. This innovative solution is nothing more than running a web ap via Safari on the iPhone. This means that developers can make AJAX apps for the phone. I think this pretty much fails to even come close to a comparison of being able to properly develop applications. Jobs calls this solution "new" and "sweet." I call it "stupid" and "lacking." This is yet another example of why so many people bash on Apple. They keep such a closed system that it limits what anyone can do with their devices. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but don't claim to allow outside delevopment via a web browser. Just come right out and say that you are not going to allow third-party apps and leave it at that. Telling people that this is a "sweet solution" is just insulting our intelligence. Worse, though, is that people are buying it! Alex Hung claims that making a proper SDK is "hard," and that Nokia and Sony Ericcson are exaomples of this. I'm sorry, but last time I checked neither of those companies are in the business of software. Apple may say that they are a hardware company, but they are heavily involved in the software side of things. The reason they didn't release an SDK is not because it is hard, it is because they don't want to open up their device to the potential of being unstable. By allowing outside development, they allow the possibility of someone making an application that could cause problems on the phone. This would create the perception that there is something wrong with the phone, which Apple wants to avoid. Hey, I don't blame them. Like I said, I just think they should be honest about it. A better take on this, in my opinion, comes from Ed Burnette at ZDNet.com. I think he sums it up nicely with this.

“You can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps!” Thanks Steve, we’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.

Yeah, allowing Web 2.0 apps on a web browser: Genius! Oh yeah, and don't forget that any Flash app is out of the question. Maybe that "fully functional" web browser on a phone isn't so full after all.