iPhone 4 - the review

Yes, I got one. On launch day. Fortunately, I have sufficient connections that I was able to avoid a lengthy wait, but it was still a launch day spectacular.

First of all, let me address the biggest question: Yes, there is a potential antenna issue. Here's, as far as I can determine thorough my non-scientific test methodology, the exact circumstances that will reproduce the issue for you:

- You need to be in an area with less than full-power service.
- You should be left-handed.
- Big hands are also a factor.
- The iPhone needs to be held by the bottom edges.
- You should be somewhat sweaty.
- Squeeze the iPhone with a very firm grip.
- Do not use a case or bumper on the phone.

If you do all these things, you will assuredly see a noticeable signal loss. Repeatable, too. However, break any one and your odds go way down of reproducing the issue, and if you use a case, bumper, or even a little bit of Scotch tape at the bottom gap, your odds drop to 0% of causing it. So it is real, there is a potential loss of signal, and it's incredibly easy to mitigate. I always use a case for my phone so it's a non-issue for me.

Now that that's settled, on about the phone. There are a handful of bullet points I'll make. First of all is the speed. Everything's faster on the iPhone 4 - from photo display and scrolling, to webpage rendering, to application launching and switching. Having had iOS 4 running for several weeks on my old iPhone 3Gs before this, I can say that the extra processing horsepower of the A4 plus the extra 256MB of RAM in the iPhone 4 make a significant performance difference. At the same time cellular performance is improved, particularly on network uploads (sending emails is now pretty much instant with the faster uplink) and I also have been able to hold calls through several spots that were formerly dead on the prior iPhones. Big improvement.

The next major feature is the build quality of the device. The iPhone 3 series felt solid in the hand and pretty comfortable to hold. The iPhone 4 feels like a brick - but lighter than the older one at the same time. I mean it's solid. It feels like I could drive nails with it. Remarkable.

As for the screen, it's as good as advertised. Possibly the single biggest improvement in the iPhone overall, and one of the biggest advances so far in any mobile phone I've used. To look at the "Retina Display" and compare it to the iPhone from last year is silly. To compare it to an older phone like a Treo isn't even fair. Type looks like paper. Photos look like film. It's that good.

The last major addition to the new phone is the camera. I haven't used the much-balyhooed FaceTime yet, but I've taken pictures with the new rear camera. The quality is comparable to a last-generation point&shoot camera - which sounds poor until you remember that digital cameras have been pretty darned good for a number of years now. 5MP, with a fast shutter speed and good dynamic range. I was able to take some photos at a grownups party last weekend during the evening in low light that I might not have gotten with my far smarter Canon G9. Video quality is good - roughly on par with low-end HD cameras like the Flip.

In short, the iPhone 4 on paper isn't a major change for the series, but in practice it improves in a lot of places (performance, build, and screen) and it's almost barely recognizable to people who still have an original iPhone. In 3.5 years since the original announcement they've come a real long ways. Unless you're a really big sweaty-palmed lefty with a hatred of cases the new iPhone 4 is full of Win.

One WWDC addition

Oh yeah - Safari 5. Book it. All the goodies in the Webkit nightlies, wrapped up in a pretty bow.

More seriously, there won't be a MacOS release this year, so it's good timing for a standalone Safari release (after all, browsers are the computing experience to a lot of users). Plus Chrome is right now pretty much the canonical WebKit-based browser and has a lot of mind share. WebKit is Apple's baby, and there's no way that'll be allowed to stand. Apple is happy to see WebKit adopted by so many vendors (less chance of IE being required by websites that way and it also helps kill ActiveX), but there's a pride of origin there and Apple also wants to be the "reference implementation" of WebKit.

Hence Safari 5.

For more details, the usual rumor sites have a listing of what's expected to be included in the Safari 5 feature set.

My WWDC prediction post

As you Apple fanbois know, WWDC is this coming week, and it's the only major public conference/event left that El Jobso performs a Stevenote at. No more Apple Expo, no more MacWorld, and all the other appearances he makes are special press events - like the iPad announcement and the OS 4.0 announcement. Real Stevenotes are rare. Apple is focusing tightly on the iPhone OS at this year's WWDC - no major MacOS stuff on tap, and no IT track, either. But, as usual, speculation runs wild. Here's my call on what we're going to see announced for new products and/or goodies:

- iPhone HD/iPhone 4: 100% certain. We know what it looks like, we know most of the technical details, and we know it has a front-facing camera. We can assume it has a variant of the iPad's CPU, and likely has a little more battery life. What we don't know is how much RAM it has and how much storage. I predict either 256MB or (more likely) 512MB, and it will have 32 and 64GB variants. Maybe a 16GB version (or they keep the 3GS and move it downmarket like they did last year with the 3G). It'll be in white and black, and is an incremental improvement with a new form factor after 2 years of the previous version.

- iPhone OS 4.0: Yep, it'll be shipping. I suspect GM is available at WWDC with the handful of surprise features that they were withholding from the betas and just playing with internally. Ship date will be approximately 2 days before the iPhone is available to minimize the hit on activation servers.

- Minor CPU announcements: I'd say about 75% likely. If there are any, it'll probably just be for the Mac Pro and/or Xserve at WWDC. Mac mini updates will be soon thereafter.

- Additional hardware announcements: 25% chance at best. I know folks keep talking about 27" Cinema Displays but that's really a minor thing and not Stevenote-worthy. I think a likelier thing would be a 30" Cinema Display that's been modernized to add an iSight, mini DisplayPort, and a MagSafe connector. But that won't be at WWDC either.

- iPhone OS 4.1: 90% chance. This is a given - they've already preannounced it as coming in the fall for both iPad and iPhone. Now they'll tell us what other bells and whistles are there besides Unity. My prediction: basic printing support and AFP server access. Outside chance of SMB server access.

- Improvements to MobileMe/cloud services in MacOS and iPhone OS: Yep, that's coming. I'm expecting that MobileMe basic (device sync and a few goodies) will be free, and serious storage will be an added cost like the whole service is now. I also think iWork.com gets rolled into it somehow.

- MacOS 10.6.4: Probably this week for release, but not an announcement. It will support a couple of the new things announced Monday.

- MacOS 10.7: 50% chance at best. I think they won't heavily discuss it but may mention it by name and show off something whizzy. But I think next years' WWDC will be all about 10.7 with iPhone bringing up the rear.

Why I don't hate AT&T like so many do

I sent this to Gruber at DF this morning, but I thought it was worthy of converting to a blog post as well. Hence the tone. But otherwise the points here are very useful, and also put into perspective just how much wireless voice and data costs nowadays (thank goodness it's cheaper!)

I own an IT company with 5 employees. Right now, just to take my own requirements, here's what I have today (not counting texting, which should be almost free everywhere but isn't):

- iPhone unlimited voice plan = $70 (they cut that price from $100 a few months back, remember?)
- iPhone data plan = $30
- Verizon data plan with a USB stick and a spare router in my bag = $60 (which I rarely use but I keep as an insurance policy in case I need to work on the road)
- iPad 200MB plan - $15

So right now I'm spending $175 on voice and data, just for what I carry in my bag. I just barely bumped into the limit on the iPad, and I only used 245MB of data on my iPhone in the heaviest month out of the last six. I only use a few hundred MB on Verizon at most per month. Under the new plans, here's what I'll do now:

- iPhone unlimited voice plan = $70
- iPhone 2GB data plan = $25
- Tethering for iPhone = $20
- iPad 250MB plan = $15

So that'll reduce my bill to $130, saving me $45 per month for starters. Plus I can ditch about a pound's worth of gear from my backpack (the Zoom mobile router, charger, and the USB stick), and I get an extra 50MB buffer for my iPad. Even if I need to go to the 2GB plan for my iPad, it's still a net savings of $35. This is so much a no-brainer that it's silly.

Now add to that my wife's iPhone which she mostly uses for email, Facebook updates, and checking weather. Putting her on the $15 data plan is an easy call - she doesn't even come close to consuming that much data outside the house. That saves me another $15 in our personal life.

And changing the plans for my iPhone-using employees? Again, a no-brainer. They haven't bought iPads yet, but I'll still save plenty of money on their accounts as well. All in all, this should save me a couple of thousand dollars per year. Would I like it if AT&T had made the "DataPro" plan 3GB instead of 2GB? Yep, it would be a little closer to what you supposedly get from Verizon and their 5GB cap, but on the other hand it's cheaper. I'm unlikely to blow past 2GB but I'm certain to not go past 3GB. Do I think tethering should be free or at most $10 additional, given how relatively rarely I'll use it? Yep.

But am I happy to have a big monolithic consumer-unfriendly phone company change their rule and plans in such a way that I'll save a lot of money every month? Hell yes I am. Not to mention that a few months ago that unlimited voice plan cost me $100 per month, not the $70 it costs me now. Altogether between just my plans and my wife's, as of next week I'll be saving $120 per month over what I was paying for the same services last fall.

And why again am I supposed to hate AT&T?

More musings on the cloud

So I've had an iPad for a week now. In fact, I'm typing this blog post on it. I'm pretty happy with it so far. What I see now as the obvious market opportunity is basically this: since there is no direct support for server filesystems (SMB or AFP), it creates an opening for a basic editing app that connects to a cloud service, caches files locally on the iPad (within the limited filesystems space the app has), syncs with it, and can handle Office/Gdocs/OpenXML formats. And the real opportunity comes if there's a desktop component for Windows/Mac as well.

Apple's iWork could do it but it's Mac-only and doesn't take advantage of the MobileMe service well enough. Microsoft could do it with an iPad-native tool added to the forthcoming versions of Office for Windows and Mac. The wildcards are Google and the third-party storage companies. Box.net, Dropbox, or another storage provider could provide an iPad app to help them sell storage. They already have apps for the client OS side.

The real point is that whoever is first with a robust solution to the problem likely wins the war. I bet folks are hurrying to get to market...

As April grinds to a halt

I am in the process of setting up my new iPad. It was actually set up hours ago - in fact, I did it quickly while I was at a client's office this afternoon. That fast and that easy. Really.

However, it's taken me a little while to get "HD" versions of my apps (most were free, and I spent about $15 on upgrades), and to find a cloud-based Office suite for the iPad (I went with the $7.99 "Office2 HD", which has Google Docs and iDisk support). Then I had to set up the local sync parameters, which resulted in a 1024x768 version of my 13k+ photo library being generated and then synced up. It took about an hour and a half to re-res everything, even with an i7 under my Mac's hood. It's uploading to the iPad now.

The only thing I'm kind of waiting for is a iPad-centric version of Tweetie, my Twitter app of choice. I figure that'll come pretty soon now that Twitter owns the app. The iPad is, in the end, one of those game-changing devices that will ultimately redefine what a computer will do for most people. And in the end, it's just too important to my career and life for me to not jump on the wave near the beginning.

HP buys Palm. Woulda Coulda Shoulda.

HP has come to the rescue of struggling Palm - but I think it's doomed anyways. Sure, WebOS is a fine accomplishment. In the year+ since the original WebOS device (the Pre) was announced the OS has matured nicely. And if the Pre had come out in early 2008 instead of mid 2009 Palm would probably be riding high again. Problem is, Apple and RIM had already gobbled up all the mindshare for smartphones (enough to convince Microsoft to reboot their platform entirely) and there was nothing left. Plus, when Palm introduced the Pre it was a US-only CDMA device and was only on the smallest CDMA carrier.

Since then, they've broadened the line of WebOS devices but it's too little, too late. In buying Palm, HP gets WebOS - a nice hedge against Android and Apple that lets HP come back into the mobile space and with an OS they control. And WebOS in theory should scale nicely for tablets and other cloud-based devices.

The catch is that HP has never shown any ability to market mobile devices. They have also never really had an aptitude for mass marketing outside of their printers. HP is pretty much a consumables and services company right now. They have more market share than Dell right now, but that's mainly a function of Dell's ineptitude more than HP's prowess. Someone has to be the market leader.

Fortunately, HP is big enough and profitable enough to keep a Zombie Palm running for a long time to come, enhancing WebOS enough to keep it competitive but never a major player in the market. I don't see them ever leveraging Palm into a major market share play. That ship sailed a long time ago and I think Android was the last entrant into the market.

My last Palm was a Treo 700p - which I ditched in favor of an iPhone the day the iPhone came out 3 years ago and I haven't looked back since.

iPad month one

I've set up a few. I'll have one myself soon. Now that it's out, I see a lot more practical value than I originally did. Typing on it is actually pretty good. But here's the missing links to it right now:

- No direct printing. There are a few workarounds and 3rd-party print methods, but no Apple-sanctioned way to get print output to even a small group of supported devices. I don't think OS 4.0 will change that, either.

- The filesystem isn't shared between apps yet, and there's no true wireless server access or file sync. So the killer app would be a local (maybe as an app written in HTML5) app that has its own cache in local filespace that syncs to Google Docs and has a desktop component that does the same sync. That puts all your real storage in the cloud, with the iPad mainly caching so that it can be used offline. Internet isn't quite ubiquitous yet.

Resolve these and the iPad will be the biggest thing ever.

Just finished an ugly read

I read "The Year of the Cock", by Alan Wieder. To save you time, here's the synopsis:

- Moderately successful reality TV producer gets a case of ego, leaves long-suffering wife.

- Moves into apartment, starts screwing a diverse array of women.

- Decides his dick is too small after seeing Fred Durst naked. Goes off on obsessive dysmorphic streak and freaks out.

- Flies to NYC to win back wife. Succeeds for a while. Gets a little less neurotic and gives props to his shrink.

- After reconciliation, has a kid who he loves. Wife divorces him in the end anyways.

- Tells us how stupid he was.

Amen to that. I think I'll stay married. Then again, I was anyways.

When I was 14

The day I turned 14, I don't remember. I'm pretty sure it involved a sparsely attended birthday party (I wasn't the most popular youth), and my hormones bubbling over.

The day I turned 24, I went out for drinks and food (but mostly drinks) with my girlfriend and a few of my friends who lived around Boston. Went to work at my crappy dead-end pseudo-sales job that I had back then (I was making about $20k working the floor at Egghead for a dedicated porn enthusiast), and went home to our rented apartment.

The day I turned 34, I went to work at a much better job (it was a Tuesday), and then I went out for a quiet dinner with my wife - the same person who was my girlfriend at the birthday ten years prior (we got engaged later that year). We had owned our house for seven years. I think I played golf that afternoon before dinner.

The day I turned 44, I got to go to back to bed for a couple of hours after being awakened by a tantrum when my son couldn't get a toy to work at 7AM. Followed by a lovely session of trimming nose hair because that's something you get in your forties. After breakfast, we watched a rented movie, and we are going to a school meeting before dinner at a Mexican restaurant where I will be made to wear a goofy sombrero at some point during the evening.

After which I shall work on a proposal, write instructions for one of my employees' use tomorrow, and do laundry.

Life goes on. 54 should be interesting, you think?