Honest... Just been super busy with a research project for a client along with all the usual stuff. The only reason I can post right now is because I have some downtime while I'm sitting in my office salvaging a failed server of a client's.
One month into iPhone, it's still the best phone I've ever used. There are some flaws, but not major. I've had applications crash a couple of times (without affecting the rest of the phone), and the phone itself crashed once. Since my Treo used to crash several times daily I consider this a big improvement. AT&T's service is a little better than I remember (or possibly my first Treo - the 650 - just had exceptionally crappy RF performance). A couple of the dead spots I used to encounter are gone now. Battery life has emphatically not been a concern for me so far. Sound quality is very good, and Bluetooth performance is damn near perfect.
I'm eager to see what the first update (I figure it's due any day now) will bring.
In our personal life, David has adjusted well to summer camp and now claims to enjoy it. The first week? Not so much. He's also starting to come to terms with the idea that he is Not Going Back To His Old School. Period.
Everything else is a work in progress.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Farewell
RIP Mr. Butch. He died this morning in a scooter crash - the man was a fixture of my Boston days, and rare was the morning that I didn't see him and at least wave "hi" as I'd walk to work in Kenmore Square back in '87 (before it was gentrified by BU and Butch fled to Allston). He was one of the last from an era when the homeless guy in the neighborhood was a part of the community - not just someone you called the cops on. Adios, Mr. Butch. Boston is a poorer place without you.
Monday, July 09, 2007
iPhone - 1 week later
A week into iPhone, I've used it extensively and also deployed about ten of them at various client sites to boot. Here's some of my experiences, likes, and peeves:
- I rode the Acela down to Philadelphia on the fourth in order to rejoin my wife and kid during their vacation in progress. Other than a dead area coming out of Boston initially and underground in 30th Street Station in Philly, coverage was excellent along the whole Northeast Corridor (I was able to use my EVDO card, too). And battery life is terrific as well - I was listening to music pretty much the whole way and making a batch of calls too, and never dropped the power below 75%. I didn't recharge until I made it to Cape May.
- Power is a little flaky. It doesn't charge quickly unless you're using the AC adapter. When it's plugged in to a Mac it charges, but slowly - and if you're using a car power adapter for an iPod (I already had one stashed in my car from before) it pretty much just keeps the power from draining down if you're on the phone.
- I forward my calls to the iPhone from my office phone - and I've noticed that I will usually get a little popup that tells me a forwarded call is coming in. It's annoying, because it gives me an extra tap to dismiss that before I can actually pick up the call. But it doesn't happen every time.
- The keyboard click is sort of loud. Most of the other sounds are subtle.
- I still am annoyed about the lack of Notes support on the Mac side.
- I want support for password-protected PDF files to make up for it. Right now they'll load as blank pages.
- The more I think about it, the more I wish iPhone had access to location info (even E911 info from triangulated towers) in Google Maps.
- EDGE really isn't bad. And AT&T still has the same dead spots they had when they were Cingular. Not horrible, mind you, but a few annoying ones. Verizon has their share as well.
The iPhone still rocks, though.
- I rode the Acela down to Philadelphia on the fourth in order to rejoin my wife and kid during their vacation in progress. Other than a dead area coming out of Boston initially and underground in 30th Street Station in Philly, coverage was excellent along the whole Northeast Corridor (I was able to use my EVDO card, too). And battery life is terrific as well - I was listening to music pretty much the whole way and making a batch of calls too, and never dropped the power below 75%. I didn't recharge until I made it to Cape May.
- Power is a little flaky. It doesn't charge quickly unless you're using the AC adapter. When it's plugged in to a Mac it charges, but slowly - and if you're using a car power adapter for an iPod (I already had one stashed in my car from before) it pretty much just keeps the power from draining down if you're on the phone.
- I forward my calls to the iPhone from my office phone - and I've noticed that I will usually get a little popup that tells me a forwarded call is coming in. It's annoying, because it gives me an extra tap to dismiss that before I can actually pick up the call. But it doesn't happen every time.
- The keyboard click is sort of loud. Most of the other sounds are subtle.
- I still am annoyed about the lack of Notes support on the Mac side.
- I want support for password-protected PDF files to make up for it. Right now they'll load as blank pages.
- The more I think about it, the more I wish iPhone had access to location info (even E911 info from triangulated towers) in Google Maps.
- EDGE really isn't bad. And AT&T still has the same dead spots they had when they were Cingular. Not horrible, mind you, but a few annoying ones. Verizon has their share as well.
The iPhone still rocks, though.
Friday, June 29, 2007
iPhone - day 1
So I went ahead and did it. And it's pretty spiffy, too. The line was a fun experience, and I picked up my allotment of two iPhones (one for me, one for a client). Setup was simple - I snapped a few unboxing photos with my iSight as I worked for the heck of it...
After that thrill was gone, I set up the new account (although they don't offer "business" account plans, I was able to work around that by using my business credit card for the account and reporting my office address), and then got cracking. Even though I live in Essex County (area code 978) I was still given a 508 phone number. Interesting. My old Cingular phone had a 978 number, and I was given choices of numbers during the manual process. That was the only strike, though - overall setup was far easier than traditional cell phone setup ever has been. iTunes rocks.
Initial sync took about 15 minutes, bringing over my iSync data, one playlist of about 200 songs (550MB) and my last 12 months' worth of iPhoto data (about a gigabyte when re-rezzed down). Re-rezzing took most of that time, and really strained the processor utilization - on my Santa Rosa MacBook Pro, it had the fans roaring for the first time since I bought this portable. Once sync was complete, I was able to pick it up and immediately be useful. E-mail setting synced automatically. In this initial release, IMAP push doesn't seem to work with non-Yahoo services, so I set timed sync for 15 minutes (the minimum). I haven't done too much yet other than experiment with the interface (slicker than I thought) and make some calls.
Voice quality is excellent - better than my previous GSM Treo 650 by far. The iPhone is almost impossibly slim (under a half-inch), but is about the same overall height and width as a Treo, but lighter as well. It feels very solid, unlike pretty much every cell phone I have ever used in my life. Because I'm paranoid, I bought some screen protectors and placed them on it almost immediately, but in the limited touching I did beforehand it didn't seem especially smudge-prone.
Bluetooth, unlike with my Treo, is a joy. My Jawbone paired immediately, and the connection has been rock-solid. In the few hours I've had it connected, my Treo would have already reset the Bluetooth connection several times. Score one for iPhone! I did have one glitch with iPhone, though - my first attempt to record my voicemail greeting hung the voicemail app - and trying to figure out how to unfreeze it I inadvertently rebooted the phone. Oops (turned out I pressed the wrong button combo - a different combo will reset an individual app, and I tested that later on purpose). The bright side, though, is that the iPhone rebooted in about 10 seconds to a fully operational state. The Treo 700p takes a minute or more.
Overall for now, this is a very spiffy little device. Quibbles - I'd like to see an LED that can be used to notify me of new e-mails without having to wake the phone up. Push support for non-Yahoo IMAP would be nice, too - my Kerio server supports it, so I want to use it. The mail client itself, though, is pretty good. The lack of copy/paste isn't a major problem so far, but I could maybe see that being an issue down the road. Also, my Jabra wired headset doesn't fit the recessed iPhone jack, and needs either an adapter to work or replacement. That's annoying. I don't really have too much else I can whine about yet, though I'm sure I'll find it - the nice thing is that given that it's Apple, there will probably be frequent software updates pushed via iTunes and most of these glitches will be addressed.
I'll probably write more about it in a week or so. For now, its nice to be off my accused Treo and on on something that actually works!
After that thrill was gone, I set up the new account (although they don't offer "business" account plans, I was able to work around that by using my business credit card for the account and reporting my office address), and then got cracking. Even though I live in Essex County (area code 978) I was still given a 508 phone number. Interesting. My old Cingular phone had a 978 number, and I was given choices of numbers during the manual process. That was the only strike, though - overall setup was far easier than traditional cell phone setup ever has been. iTunes rocks.Initial sync took about 15 minutes, bringing over my iSync data, one playlist of about 200 songs (550MB) and my last 12 months' worth of iPhoto data (about a gigabyte when re-rezzed down). Re-rezzing took most of that time, and really strained the processor utilization - on my Santa Rosa MacBook Pro, it had the fans roaring for the first time since I bought this portable. Once sync was complete, I was able to pick it up and immediately be useful. E-mail setting synced automatically. In this initial release, IMAP push doesn't seem to work with non-Yahoo services, so I set timed sync for 15 minutes (the minimum). I haven't done too much yet other than experiment with the interface (slicker than I thought) and make some calls.
Voice quality is excellent - better than my previous GSM Treo 650 by far. The iPhone is almost impossibly slim (under a half-inch), but is about the same overall height and width as a Treo, but lighter as well. It feels very solid, unlike pretty much every cell phone I have ever used in my life. Because I'm paranoid, I bought some screen protectors and placed them on it almost immediately, but in the limited touching I did beforehand it didn't seem especially smudge-prone.
Bluetooth, unlike with my Treo, is a joy. My Jawbone paired immediately, and the connection has been rock-solid. In the few hours I've had it connected, my Treo would have already reset the Bluetooth connection several times. Score one for iPhone! I did have one glitch with iPhone, though - my first attempt to record my voicemail greeting hung the voicemail app - and trying to figure out how to unfreeze it I inadvertently rebooted the phone. Oops (turned out I pressed the wrong button combo - a different combo will reset an individual app, and I tested that later on purpose). The bright side, though, is that the iPhone rebooted in about 10 seconds to a fully operational state. The Treo 700p takes a minute or more.
Overall for now, this is a very spiffy little device. Quibbles - I'd like to see an LED that can be used to notify me of new e-mails without having to wake the phone up. Push support for non-Yahoo IMAP would be nice, too - my Kerio server supports it, so I want to use it. The mail client itself, though, is pretty good. The lack of copy/paste isn't a major problem so far, but I could maybe see that being an issue down the road. Also, my Jabra wired headset doesn't fit the recessed iPhone jack, and needs either an adapter to work or replacement. That's annoying. I don't really have too much else I can whine about yet, though I'm sure I'll find it - the nice thing is that given that it's Apple, there will probably be frequent software updates pushed via iTunes and most of these glitches will be addressed.
I'll probably write more about it in a week or so. For now, its nice to be off my accused Treo and on on something that actually works!
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
A couple more serious iPhone things
Here's the bottom line that I've learned from my year or so as a Verizon Wireless voice customer:
Yes, Verizon has the most complete network, with the fewest dead spots. They even recently seem to have closed the hole in coverage they had for years at the intersection of routes 1 and 97 in Topsfield. But it matters little, because Cingular and other GSM carriers have one key advantage:
SIM cards.
When you use a SIM card, your entire existence as a customer is contained there. Your account info, phone number, and such are dependent on the SIM, rather than on the phone. So you can go out and buy any off-the-shelf unlocked GSM phone and it'll Just Work with your SIM inserted. This is key. Verizon, for instance, has offered the same passel of "smartphones" for months now. The only two Treos they offer are the 700p and 700wx - where other carriers have completely moved on from those models. The 700 dates back over a year - meanwhile, the 680, 750, and now the 755 (for Sprint/CDMA) are out and have been for a while now.
Verizon, on the other hand, really doesn't seem to care too much about the smartphone market. They do have good Blackberry options, and are good in the consumer space, but if I want a new phone I have to go through them to get it and then I'm stuck with it.
If I did buy an iPhone (and I likely will - if not Friday then in the near future), and I decided the device sucked, I could always remove the SIM, sell the phone, and then buy an unlocked phone that I liked better. There's options in GSM, even if some aspects of the technology are inferior (I think voice quality is, in fact, better on CDMA networks).
Bottom line: Verizon is fine for people who want voice. Its great for people who want data, too (they're aggressively moving to EVDO Rev.A and they have the best overall coverage). But if you want a Wonder Phone that does it all, then it's not so much. Which may be iPhone's market opportunity in a nutshell.
Yes, Verizon has the most complete network, with the fewest dead spots. They even recently seem to have closed the hole in coverage they had for years at the intersection of routes 1 and 97 in Topsfield. But it matters little, because Cingular and other GSM carriers have one key advantage:
SIM cards.
When you use a SIM card, your entire existence as a customer is contained there. Your account info, phone number, and such are dependent on the SIM, rather than on the phone. So you can go out and buy any off-the-shelf unlocked GSM phone and it'll Just Work with your SIM inserted. This is key. Verizon, for instance, has offered the same passel of "smartphones" for months now. The only two Treos they offer are the 700p and 700wx - where other carriers have completely moved on from those models. The 700 dates back over a year - meanwhile, the 680, 750, and now the 755 (for Sprint/CDMA) are out and have been for a while now.
Verizon, on the other hand, really doesn't seem to care too much about the smartphone market. They do have good Blackberry options, and are good in the consumer space, but if I want a new phone I have to go through them to get it and then I'm stuck with it.
If I did buy an iPhone (and I likely will - if not Friday then in the near future), and I decided the device sucked, I could always remove the SIM, sell the phone, and then buy an unlocked phone that I liked better. There's options in GSM, even if some aspects of the technology are inferior (I think voice quality is, in fact, better on CDMA networks).
Bottom line: Verizon is fine for people who want voice. Its great for people who want data, too (they're aggressively moving to EVDO Rev.A and they have the best overall coverage). But if you want a Wonder Phone that does it all, then it's not so much. Which may be iPhone's market opportunity in a nutshell.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
iPhone in 3 days...
Why I won't buy an iPhone:
It's expensive.
No removable battery.
Touch screen keyboard?
AT&T has a decent network, but it's not as good as Verizon's.
No 3G support.
Why I will buy an iPhone:
As much as Verizon's network is better, their multiple call interfaces and voicemail suck.
So does their Caller ID.
So does my Treo.
The iPhone is way smaller than the Treo. I'm sick of the dorky belt clip.
Battery life is better on GSM devices. I now know that. And I've never swapped a battery on my Treo during the day (I trickle-charge it in the car or on a sync cable when I need to).
Regardless of whether or not I buy one, I am going to the launch on Friday. It should be fun.
It's expensive.
No removable battery.
Touch screen keyboard?
AT&T has a decent network, but it's not as good as Verizon's.
No 3G support.
Why I will buy an iPhone:
As much as Verizon's network is better, their multiple call interfaces and voicemail suck.
So does their Caller ID.
So does my Treo.
The iPhone is way smaller than the Treo. I'm sick of the dorky belt clip.
Battery life is better on GSM devices. I now know that. And I've never swapped a battery on my Treo during the day (I trickle-charge it in the car or on a sync cable when I need to).
Regardless of whether or not I buy one, I am going to the launch on Friday. It should be fun.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Holy crap
This afternoon, just before dinner, I saw the news that Chris Benoit, is wife, and their 7-year old son were found dead in their Atlanta-area home. That just plain sucks. Chris was a gifted performer, and by virtually all accounts I've heard he was a pretty good guy for virtually all of his 40 years of life. Assuming Occam's Razor holds true and the obvious answer is what happened, how does a good life go so far off the rails so fast? How does it all fall apart like that, and how can a child just barely older than my own son get caught up by it, too?
Food for thought. No, I don't believe in heaven or hell or any of that crud, but if there were an afterlife, Chris would be having 5-star matches with Eddie Guerrero that would bring down the house every time. And if there was a such thing as divine intervention, that family would still be alive - rendering the point moot.
Those of you with families - give your spouse and your kids an extra hug tomorrow when you wake up. Just because.
Food for thought. No, I don't believe in heaven or hell or any of that crud, but if there were an afterlife, Chris would be having 5-star matches with Eddie Guerrero that would bring down the house every time. And if there was a such thing as divine intervention, that family would still be alive - rendering the point moot.
Those of you with families - give your spouse and your kids an extra hug tomorrow when you wake up. Just because.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
A few thoughts
Just a few things in the world at large I thought I'd comment on quickly this morning before I hit the road...
- In the local news here: Joe Kennedy's ex-wife is gloating, because she was able to get the annulment he had requested overturned by the Vatican on appeal. So this is a win for you how, Sheila? It just means that "legally" you can't move on with your life and get married again, either. So you're bitter that he divorced you. It was over 15 years ago - get over it, for Pete's sake! On another note, this annulment crap is yet another reason why I'm firmly convinced that religion in general is ludicrous.
- The Mass. Pike is thinking about implementing high-speed toll readers (good), and congestion pricing (bad). I like the readers, because it'll ease rush-hour traffic. That's a plus. However, despite my general preference of market-based solutions when possible, the idea of congestion pricing for roadways is one where I depart from most of my libertarian-leaning brethren. You see, driving isn't entirely market-based activity. Most people drive at a certain time of the day because they have to - not because they want to. Work and commuting aren't really discretionary, and the employment market has relatively little excess capacity for workers who want to change to save money commuting. Not to mention that virtually all employers don't really care what the toll prices are when they set work hours. They shouldn't - they don't pay that cost. So the burden of congestion pricing falls entirely on the workers, and they really can't do anything about it. Ergo, I'm against it.
The flip side of this is that on average traffic has vastly improved over the last decade or so - the Big Dig has made a huge impact here. There are still traffic hotspots outside of town (Route 3 southbound, Routes 93 and 1 northbound), but overall Boston itself is far easier than it was back in my commuting days - I drove through Boston as a commuter from 1992 to 1998, and I remember 45-minute delays on the Tobin Bridge and at the tunnel almost every rush hour. Those days are long gone.
- I'm kind of enjoying the last-minute hype boosts that Apple's orchestrating for iPhone. Monday they announced that the specs had been upgraded - the screen would be glass instead of plastic (a decision they must have made months ago, but held off on announcing until this week), and battery life was now 8 hours' talk time instead of 5. Then yesterday they announced that the "mystery" 12th application was YouTube on the phone. The hype has built to unprecedented levels, and there's still a week and a half to go - not to mention that they haven't even announced the service pricing for the darned thing yet! Cellphone industry, meet Apple. Enjoy the ride.
- This was our romantic "date night" last night: a nice dinner, followed by a trip to Home Depot where we bought a new grill (the old one had rusted out a couple of years ago) and some ant-killing supplies. I'm not sure if that means our priorities are different nowadays, or if we're just kinda sad!
(we were going to go to the movies, but we got too late a start last night to do that as well as dinner - hence the substitution)
- In the local news here: Joe Kennedy's ex-wife is gloating, because she was able to get the annulment he had requested overturned by the Vatican on appeal. So this is a win for you how, Sheila? It just means that "legally" you can't move on with your life and get married again, either. So you're bitter that he divorced you. It was over 15 years ago - get over it, for Pete's sake! On another note, this annulment crap is yet another reason why I'm firmly convinced that religion in general is ludicrous.
- The Mass. Pike is thinking about implementing high-speed toll readers (good), and congestion pricing (bad). I like the readers, because it'll ease rush-hour traffic. That's a plus. However, despite my general preference of market-based solutions when possible, the idea of congestion pricing for roadways is one where I depart from most of my libertarian-leaning brethren. You see, driving isn't entirely market-based activity. Most people drive at a certain time of the day because they have to - not because they want to. Work and commuting aren't really discretionary, and the employment market has relatively little excess capacity for workers who want to change to save money commuting. Not to mention that virtually all employers don't really care what the toll prices are when they set work hours. They shouldn't - they don't pay that cost. So the burden of congestion pricing falls entirely on the workers, and they really can't do anything about it. Ergo, I'm against it.
The flip side of this is that on average traffic has vastly improved over the last decade or so - the Big Dig has made a huge impact here. There are still traffic hotspots outside of town (Route 3 southbound, Routes 93 and 1 northbound), but overall Boston itself is far easier than it was back in my commuting days - I drove through Boston as a commuter from 1992 to 1998, and I remember 45-minute delays on the Tobin Bridge and at the tunnel almost every rush hour. Those days are long gone.
- I'm kind of enjoying the last-minute hype boosts that Apple's orchestrating for iPhone. Monday they announced that the specs had been upgraded - the screen would be glass instead of plastic (a decision they must have made months ago, but held off on announcing until this week), and battery life was now 8 hours' talk time instead of 5. Then yesterday they announced that the "mystery" 12th application was YouTube on the phone. The hype has built to unprecedented levels, and there's still a week and a half to go - not to mention that they haven't even announced the service pricing for the darned thing yet! Cellphone industry, meet Apple. Enjoy the ride.
- This was our romantic "date night" last night: a nice dinner, followed by a trip to Home Depot where we bought a new grill (the old one had rusted out a couple of years ago) and some ant-killing supplies. I'm not sure if that means our priorities are different nowadays, or if we're just kinda sad!
(we were going to go to the movies, but we got too late a start last night to do that as well as dinner - hence the substitution)
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Back in town
iPhone launch T-13 days and counting...
Vacation ended pretty well, and the last week was hectic in catching back up with life (plus, the week before Fathers' Day is one of Jane's Hell Weeks at work). I'm still jealous that David caught a fish and I didn't!
Over the next week as iPhone details trickle out, I will try and write a little more analysis. It may not be the greatest phone in history, but it is a significant event that has already changed the phone business. And I've been pretty deeply into it.
Vacation ended pretty well, and the last week was hectic in catching back up with life (plus, the week before Fathers' Day is one of Jane's Hell Weeks at work). I'm still jealous that David caught a fish and I didn't!
Over the next week as iPhone details trickle out, I will try and write a little more analysis. It may not be the greatest phone in history, but it is a significant event that has already changed the phone business. And I've been pretty deeply into it.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Productive trip
We're leaving in a couple of hours. I was able to make it through three of the four books I brought this week (God is not Great, Rapid Response, and I'll Sleep when I'm Dead). I'm going to start The Assault on Reason this morning and read more of it on the ferry, plus I bought three more books out here.
Everyone needs souvenirs.
Everyone needs souvenirs.
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