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About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul



Wednesday, October 03, 2007

8 Reasons Windows Users Don't Switch

Steven Leigh at AppleMatters makes up a nice, logical list that should be at the forefront of the mind of anyone concerned about whether Apple will continue gaining market share at Microsoft's expense. My feeling, frankly, is that the Mac has to plateau at some point, unless some of these issues are addressed:
Experienced Mac users may not have the perspective that it takes to see what makes Windows users stay with Microsoft, and let’s face it, some Mac users (not you or me, of course) are just downright zealots.

4. Price
The perception by Windows users is that Macs are more expensive than Windows PCs. This may have been true in the past, but the new Macs are very comparably priced to similarly equipped PCs. Unfortunately, the perception remains.
Well. Actually, the truth remains: Macs are more expensive than PCs, they still are. Yes, Macs are often comparably priced to similar PCs. The problem is that PCs come in many, many more price points, and unlike with Apple, PC users are used to choosing exactly what they want and getting it. This is a key differentiator that Mac fans often overlook. If you want to spend $1500-2000 on a PC, the iMac is competitive. But if you want to spend $500, there's a decent PC out there for you. The same is not true on the Mac side. It just isn't.
5. Lies
Let’s face it: Apple tends to bend the truth once in a while, especially about Microsoft and Windows.
Yep. This one and number 6, Windows Bashing, are essentially the same thing.
I remember watching the 20 or 30 minute Vista-bashing session at the WWDC conference and wondering why Steve Jobs is so insecure that he has to berate the opposition. Can you imagine shopping for a car and having the salesman only talk about what’s wrong with the competition’s cars?
Brilliantly put.
8. Mac Users
Okay, I’m not talking about you or me here, but there are some Mac users out there who have just a little too much love for Apple. When they are shouting (or typing in all caps) about how much better Macs are, they’re not convincing anyone to switch, they are scaring them away.
This is, quite possibly, the biggest problem facing the Mac community. You may not realize how serious this is. But consider this:

Mac fanatics are like Detroit car lobbyists. They've spent decades doing nothing but propping up the Mothership, all for what they think is a good cause, but all they've really done is harmed the thing they love so much. People understand quality, and that's why so many are swayed by Apple's products. People also understand bullying, and that's why so many ignore Apple's products.

The good news? We're already at the point with the iPod family that the vast majority of users are not Apple sycophants but rather normal consumers. And they're not concerned with the same issues that plague the fanatics. On the Mac, it's finally getting there too: As Apple gains market share each quarter, the percentage of crazies goes down just a bit. Pretty soon, they're the minority. They're still a loud minority. But they're a minority.

Don't let the crazy people ruin the Mac, or the iPod, or the iPhone, and shout down the people who are honest enough to point out problems where they exist. That's just silly, and while Apple's fanatics might have been desirable or even necessary during the rebuilding years, now they're just dead weight. Good riddance, I say.

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[ Posted at 10:03 PM | Permalink ]

 

Monday, September 24, 2007

The iPhone is not a UMPC, sorry

The Apple Blog engages in a bit of wishful thinking:

Microsoft had their chance at defining a market. They pushed for the creation of the Ultramobile PCs (“UMPCs”). The Windows-based mini-tablets have not found their market. However, the Apple iPhone (and now the iPod touch) is actually the UMPC done right.
Um. Not quite. The iPhone isn't big enough to be a UMPC, and doesn't include USB ports so you can use a mouse and keyboard. It doesn't work with Mac OS X software and indeed can't be extended in any way. Heck, the iPhone doesn't even support Cut and Paste. Think about that for a second.

What the iPhone really is, is a new computing platform. It sits at the Windows Mobile level, not the UMPC level. It's a smart phone for consumers, or an entertainment device. But it is most definitely not a UMPC, sorry.

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[ Posted at 11:39 AM | Permalink ]

 

Saturday, September 22, 2007

The Tao of Steve

Elizabeth Spiers looks into the psychology behind the Apple fanatic's fixation with the company and its leader:
I blame Steve Jobs [for] seduced me into buying his sleek machines, even if their delicate organs seem to fail with alarming regularity, like the beautiful consumptive heroines in Victorian novels.

Steve--we'll call him Steve because he seems like a first-name-basis kind of guy--is the human incarnation of the average Apple product: He's good-looking, he overpromises, and he's notoriously temperamental. He evokes the feel-good indie populism synonymous with the company's brand and manages to retain a solid reputation as a creative person while managing a $118 billion business.

The image is, of course, a facade. The dollar-a-year salaryman has been rewarded with at least one corporate jet.

We forgive Steve in a way that we won't [Bill] Gates. We do this because outward appearances are important to us, and the products are a reflection of how we think of ourselves. Apple products are stylish and innovative. (We're stylish and innovative!) We love Steve for the same reason. He's creative and he seems appealingly antiestablishment. (We're creative and antiestablishment!)
I think this hits it on the head. What's interesting, of course, is that the bad parts of Mr. Jobs' personality--his prickly defensiveness whenever one suggests that an Apple product is lacking in some way, for example--seem to ooze down to the fanatics as well, as if by osmosis. You can see it in their vitriolic emails and their rabid and sometimes illogical defenses of the company in online forums. As the saying goes, they are a minority, but they are a very loud minority.

Anyway. Though I like Apple's products quite a bit in general, one of my regular criticisms is that Steve--er, ah Apple--always choose style over functionality. You can go too far in the other direction, of course (HP anyone?) but I think there needs to be a middle ground. One example: Many MacBook/MacBook Pro users would really appreciate and frequently use a multi-format card reader built right into their machines. But Jobs will have none of that: Such a port would be an ugly gaping hole in the side of these sculpted masterpieces, and there's already two USB ports, so if you need such a thing, you can just figure it out yourself. But I would point to the Lenovo ThinkPad line--specifically the T61 I'm currently using--as the current apex of this compromise between style and substance. The T61 has a wonderful built-in media card (or not, your choice) and yet manages to be quite stylish. In fact, most people would agree that the ThinkPads are the most elegant notebooks around. Because they are.

Maybe I'm just a tad too practical to completely embrace the Apple Way--or the "Tao of Steve," as Spiers accurately calls this intriguing lifestyle choice. I would absolutely choose functionality over style any time--my Motorola Q beats the iPhone hands down on this point--but do appreciate elegant form factors. Is there a middle ground in the PC or electronics industries? Lenovo? Sony? I'm honestly not sure. But I suppose if there were, few people would be fanatical about it. Curious.

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[ Posted at 10:10 AM | Permalink ]

 

Friday, September 21, 2007

Stephen Fry blogs smartphones

UK actor and comedian Stephen Fry is blogging now, and his first (lengthy) post is about the iPhone and other smartphones. It's hilarious and insightful, and it makes me wonder why he didn't start doing this sooner. It's almost as if Douglas Adams is back among us. Bless you Mr. Fry:
All the big guns want an iPhone killer. Even I, mad for all things Apple as I am, want an iPhone killer. I want smart digital devices to be as good as mankind’s ingenuity can make them. I want us eternally to strive to improve and surprise. Bring on the iPhone killers. Bring them on.

I have, over the past twenty years been passionately addicted to all manner of digital devices, Mac-friendly or not; I have gorged myself on electronic gismos, computer accessories, toys, gadgets and what-have-yous of all descriptions, but most especially what are now known as SmartPhones. PDAs, Wireless PIMs, call them what you will. My motto is:

I have never seen a SmartPhone I haven’t bought.
Brilliant.

Note that because the site was running dog slow, I wasn't able to post this yesterday as I had wanted. Mr. Fry must be running on EDGE. :)

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[ Posted at 2:38 PM | Permalink ]

 

Monday, September 17, 2007

More iPhone/iTunes ringtone silliness

So Apple has finally posted a page on the iTunes Store that explains the all-too-complicated and restricted process by which iPhone customers can make (and pay twice for) ringtones. Here's what it looks like:

 

 

 

 

But what's that I spy at the bottom right of the page? Yep, it's some ringtones Apple has synced with their iPhone: "Imperial March" (John Williams, from "The Empire Strikes Back," an excellent song for a ringtone), and "Like a Rolling Stone," presumably the Bob Dylan version, since Apple CEO Steve Jobs is such a huge Dylan fan:

 

 

Let's go find them in the iTunes Store and make some ringtones!

 

First... Imperial March, er ah... hmmm....

 

 

Curious. It's not available as a ringtone. Now why would Apple use that in their example? Surely, we'll have better luck with the Dylan song. I mean, Jobs loves Dylan.

 

Huh.

 

 

This time, you can actually buy a song with that name, assuming you want the versions by The Rascals, The Young Rascals, or Dino, Desi, and Billy. And who the heck wouldn't?

 

Long story short, this whole ringtones thing remains a joke one week later. Obviously.

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[ Posted at 11:47 AM | Permalink ]

 

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

iPhoney

Harvard Business Online offers what is, perhaps, the most interesting reaction I've seen yet to the iPhone price drop:
The immediate effect on supply-and-demand is not the only issue at stake when it comes to this (or any other) price-cutting decision: it also impacts the perception of authenticity ... we treat Apple as an exemplar of what we call "original authenticity." Almost everything Apple designs -- from its gorgeous computers and sleek iPods to its retail experiences -- seeks to stimulate in customers a sense of discovery and self-exploration. But what this decision seems to do -- and what the reaction from early iPhone adopters bears out -- is lessen the originality of the concept. It's clearly a swing for the masses, leaving behind those who saw themselves in the uniqueness of the design. It says the iPhone is a commodity like any other phone, not original enough even in its own designer's eyes to maintain a premium price. We thought the real Apple was better than that.

Jobs is being a bit disingenuous when he says, "This is life in the technology lane." No, such an immediate price decrease is highly unusual, smacking of desperation. Perhaps the iPhone isn't really the original breakthrough that Apple says it is -- but an iPhony! In this lies a lesson for all businesses: don't sacrifice long-term authenticity of your brand or your business for short-term revenue gain, as sustaining revenue over time hangs in the balance.
Thanks Ian.

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[ Posted at 3:24 PM | Permalink ]

 

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Jobs Offers Apple Lisa Early Adopters Store Credit

LOL. BBSpot, the "Onion" of the tech world:
Early adopters of the iPhone weren't the only ones receiving in-store credit from Steve Jobs. In an overlooked announcement, Jobs said that early adopters of the Apple Lisa would be receiving a $7000 in-store credit.

Apple released the Lisa in January of 1983 for $9,995, and the similar Macintosh was released a year later for $2,495.

"I've felt bad about people who bought the Lisa for a long time. Anybody who bought one of the first Apple Lisas really got screwed," said Jobs. "Now that we've got some cash, I think it's about time we made it right."

Analysts think that Jobs could be setting a bad precedent which could cost Apple millions. "What about Newton owners? Apple III owners? This could quickly get out of hand," said industry watcher Devon Scanlon from Goldman Sachs.
Good stuff.

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[ Posted at 2:26 PM | Permalink ]

 

Argh.... Ringtones still don't work (properly)

So after posting all those shots I actually completed syncing the iPhone ... and get this message:


WTF. It plays fine in iTunes.

Update: You have to play the ringtone version in iTunes before it will sync. (Not the song.) Sorry, but this isn't obvious at all. This system is just broken as-is. There is no way normal people can use this easily.

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[ Posted at 10:22 AM | Permalink ]

 

Making a ringtone with iTunes 7.4.x

Full-sized images at source:

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[ Posted at 10:14 AM | Permalink ]

 

iTunes ringtones go live ... sort of

So I discovered this morning that the new Ringtones feature is live in iTunes 7.4.x, sort of: My only attempt thus far at making a ringtone has ended in the following error:

Could not create ringtone. An unknown error occurred (-42160).
There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.
OK

No big deal. But the ringtone creation process has revealed a glaring issue with this process. Not only do you have to find a ringtone-able song in the iTunes Store, but you don't actually get full ringtone making capabilities for your $1.98. What you get is the right to edit the song once, online, and make a short clip. You can't go back and make a different ringtone from the same song if you don't like the first one, without paying for it yet again. So that additional 99 cent fee just covers a single online editing experience, and one 15-second ringtone.

Obviously, I'm not a big ringtone buyer. But this seems kind of silly to me.

I'll have pictures in a bit.

Update: I bought a new song and got it to work. Again, pictures soon.

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[ Posted at 9:48 AM | Permalink ]

 

Monday, September 10, 2007

Apple Sells One Millionth iPhone

Apple PR:
Apple today announced it sold its one millionth iPhone yesterday, just 74 days after its introduction on June 29. iPhone combines three devices into one—a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod, and the best mobile Internet device ever—all based on Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface and pioneering software that allows users to control iPhone with just a tap, flick or pinch of their fingers.

“One million iPhones in 74 days—it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We can’t wait to get this revolutionary product into the hands of even more customers this holiday season.”
This is great news for anyone who believes, as I do, that the touch UI introduced on the iPhone has legs. Hopefully the new low price on the iPhone will drive a new round of innovation in this space. I'm thinking specifically of Apple opening up the platform to third party developers.

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[ Posted at 1:41 PM | Permalink ]

 

Jumping the iShark

The New York Times touches on the topic du jour:
Let me get this straight: Steve Jobs insists that songs on iTunes cost 99 cents and television episodes cost $1.99 because consumers crave simple pricing.

Except, of course, when it comes to Apple’s own products.

There were wrinkles created by all the dynamic pricing. Customers who paid $599 when the iPhone came out two months ago saw their status drop from early adopter to, well, sucker, after Mr. Jobs cut the price of the device by a third. After Mr. Jobs was crucified for playing it too cute on the so-called “Jesus phone,” he issued a non-apology apology and a $100 store credit to help those early buyers salvage some dignity.

A pricing error? Absolutely. And when you think about it, the media companies Mr. Jobs is fighting with want the opportunity to make the same mistake.

Apple saying it would not carry television shows from the coming NBC season because the network wanted double the $1.99 price and NBC saying that was not true.

“Apple is not telling the truth. We never asked to double the wholesale price of our shows," said Cory Shields, a spokesman for NBC Universal. “Our negotiations were centered on our request for flexibility in wholesale pricing, including the ability to package shows together in ways that could make our content even more attractive for consumers.”
This is interesting on a number of levels.

First, the hypocrisy thing is pretty obvious.

Second, that NBC has made its shows available on Amazon Unbox for less than they sold on iTunes is telling.

Finally, the "sucker" comment closely resembles the "stooge" line I used the other day. I guess we're on the same page when it comes to the gotta-have-it gadget crowd and the Monday morning quarterbacking scenario where people have actually argued that they've gotten $200 of value out of the past two months of iPhone use. Egads.

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[ Posted at 1:33 PM | Permalink ]

 

Sunday, September 09, 2007

How Steve Jobs Lost Control of iPod Launch

Newsweek:

Last Wednesday Jobs donned his costume of black mock turtleneck and jeans-like Olivier dabbing on the greasepaint-and unveiled to a San Francisco crowd of media and employees a bunch of cool stuff. But this time Jobs lost control of his story.

In June, as you can't help but know, the iPhone became Apple's most-hyped product ever, so much so that the company's fate became intertwined with the groundbreaking device.

Before he left the stage, Jobs dropped a bomb: Apple cut the price of the iPhone from $599 to $399. Slashing the price by $100 might have been high-tech business as usual. But slashing the price tag by a third, only two months after hogging high tech's red carpet, was startling. And it became the story of the day. Since reports had been rife that sales of iPhones weren't soaring, some critics opined that this drastic cut was born of desperation. And wouldn't those who bought one at the higher price now feel like suckers?

Jobs ... was making a timely gamble. A lot of people are going to be giving phones as holiday presents, and Apple's research, he says, shows that they want to choose an iPhone but believe it costs too much. Bringing the price down means making the sale. "We have one chance to go out and go for the holiday season," he said to me. "If we don't take that chance, we wait a whole other year. We're willing to make less money to get more iPhones out there." What about people who just bought one for $599? "I feel for them," he said. "But, you know, we're not harming anybody."

(I find it ironic that the same Apple fans who in June were lofting their newly acquired iPhones in the air like they'd won the Stanley Cup are now complaining that they paid too much.)

Then you don't understand the mentality of these people, Mr. Levy. They're proud and defensive about their insular little private club. Now that they've been revealed as stooges, these guys have lost their cachet and thus their sense of self and ego. Not only are millions and millions of people suddenly getting into their club, they're doing so at a vastly reduced price. Imagine buying a Lexus for $40,000 and then watching the company put it on sale for $25,000 two months later. And no, you didn't get $15,000 worth of use out of in two months, delusional self-justification notwithstanding.


Anyway, Levy is right about one thing: The iPhone price cut certainly did overshadow the new iPods. But that's brilliant, because Apple will sell tens of millions of these new iPods this year regardless. Now they can sell millions of iPhone too. Brilliant.

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[ Posted at 10:29 AM | Permalink ]

 

Friday, September 07, 2007

The Puppet Master ... And the Puppets

I, Cringely:
Apple announced a variety of new and kinda-new iPods dominated by the iPod Touch (iPhone minus the phone) and an iPod Nano with video (great for watching miniseries). At the very end of the presentation, Jobs announced the iPhone price cut. Why did he wait until the very end? Because he knew the news would be disruptive and might have obscured his presentation of the new products. He KNEW there was going to be controversy. So much for the “Steve is simply out of touch with the world” theory.

So why did he do it? Why did he cut the price? I have no inside information here, but it seems pretty obvious to me: Apple introduced the iPhone at $599 to milk the early adopters and somewhat limit demand then dropped the price to $399 (the REAL price) to stimulate demand now that the product is a critical success and relatively bug-free. At least 500,000 iPhones went out at the old price, which means Apple made $100 million in extra profit.

Had nobody complained, Apple would have left it at that. But Jobs expected complaints and had an answer waiting — the $100 Apple store credit. This was no knee-jerk reaction, either. It was already there just waiting if needed. Apple keeps an undeserved $50 million and customers get $50 million back. Or do they? Some customers will never use their store credit. Those who do use it will nearly all buy something that costs more than $100. And, most importantly, those who bought their iPhones at an AT&T store will have to make what might be their first of many visits to an Apple Store. That is alone worth the $50 per customer this escapade will eventually cost Apple, taking into account unused credits and Apple Store wholesale costs.

So Apple still comes out $75 million ahead, which is important to Steve Jobs.

Steve has a love-hate relationship with, well, everyone. Customers buy Apple products and they appreciate Steve’s design and market sense, but they also have opinions and NEEDS — two characteristics Jobs (and for that matter almost any CEO) would like to do without.

So Steve slapped his customers around a bit and what happened? Apple got free publicity worth tens of millions and the iPhone, which was already the top-selling smartphone in the world, will now sell two million units by the end of the year, up from an estimated one million. And Steve, having deliberately alienated his best customers, now gets a chance to woo them back. He has finally placed millions of people in the role of every key Apple employee — being alternately seduced and tormented. In this case the torment is over and the seduction will come next month when Apple ships OS X 10.5 (Leopard) — the company’s last chance to position its products for Christmas. Look for 1-2 very un-Leopard surprises at that event — surprises intended to get us all dreamy-eyed over Steve Jobs again.
This is, perhaps, the most intelligent thing I've ever read about Steve Jobs. And he's dead-on about the connection between Apple fans and Apple employees: Jobs treats them both like utter crap--his trademark--and they just love him more for it. That he has been able to extend this relationship, remotely, to customers is astonishing. Steve Jobs is a god. An angry, spiteful god, but a god nonetheless. I know why you worship him. But I fear for you all the same.

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[ Posted at 12:42 PM | Permalink ]

 

Thursday, September 06, 2007

An open letter to all iPhone customers

Looks like the outrage over the iPhone price reduction was worse than some believed. Check out this open letter from Steve Jobs:
I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.

First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it.

Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane.

Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple's website next week. Stay tuned.
Hmm. Given that virtually everyone who bought an iPhone in the first two months was a huge Apple fan, this will probably satisfy most people. But this isn't a rebate at all, and I think that would have been a nicer gesture. Still, this is better than nothing, obviously.

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[ Posted at 4:27 PM | Permalink ]

 

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

The $200 Question

So Apple took the unprecedented step of lowering the price of the iPhone by $200 to $400. Folks, that's a 33 percent price drop, and when you combine that with the fact that the iPhone has only been out for two months, I mean... My God. It's kind of insane.

My opinion on this is that the iPhone isn't selling as well as Apple would like. You just don't drop prices that aggressively so quickly. Ever. Especially when you own mindshare like white owns rice. Especially when you're the company that can do no wrong. Today's iPod announcements would have been incredible without the iPhone price drop.

But that's just an opinion. The question, of course, is this: Does this price cut screw the early adopters? You know, the people who actually waited in line, like lemmings, to get an overpriced gadget that will eventually sell millions of copies. The people who would pay anything for any product Apple cares to sell. The fanatics.

Or, is Apple just doing The Right Thing (tm) and moving quickly to overcome what has clearly been the iPhone's biggest complaint? (Well, after EDGE. And that virtual keyboard. And the weird recessed headphone jack. And the insane international roaming bills. And... well, you get the idea.)

I gave the iPhone a 3/5 rating in my recent review, and while I stand by that, I know that a lot of the Apple fans feel differently about this trendsetting product. Does this price cut change anything? Did you just get screwed?

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[ Posted at 7:34 PM | Permalink ]

 

Apple Fall 2007 Products: A Timeline

So it's September 5, 2007 and Apple just announced a bunch of brand new iPods and other related products. But as anyone who waited for an iPod mini back in early 2004 will tell you, an Apple announcement does not a product availability make. (Or, ahem, whatever.) So when can we actually expect to see these new products (in the US)? Here's a timeline.

iPod shuffle
Status: A hold-over from last year, but with new colors
Pricing: $79 ($1 GB)
Availability: Immediate
Apple Store delivery estimate: Within 24 hours, but green version is "not available"

iPod nano
Status: Completely redesigned hardware and software
Pricing: $149 (4 GB), $199 (8 GB)
Availability: This weekend
Apple Store shipping estimate: 1-3 business days

iPod classic
Status: Hardware is held-over from 2005, but with new software UI
Pricing: $249 (80 GB), $349 (160 GB)
Availability: This weekend
Apple Store shipping estimate: 1-3 business days

iPod touch
Status: Completely new model, based on iPhone
Pricing: $299 (8 GB), $399 (16 GB)
Availability: Late this month
Apple Store shipping estimate: By September 28

iPhone
Status: 4 GB model dropped, now just a single model, otherwise unchanged
Pricing: $399 (8 GB)
Availability: Immediate
Apple Store shipping estimate: Within 24 hours

It will be interesting to see how the iPod touch availability, especially, matches Apple's promise. And let's not forget the weird new Starbucks service for the iPod touch and iPhone: According to Apple, that service will debut in New York and Seattle on October 2, 2007, and then be added to 350 Starbucks stores in the San Francisco Bay area on November 7, 2007, then 500 stores in Los Angeles in early February 2008, 300 stores in Chicago in March 2008, and additional markets throughout the US later in 2008. The service will be available throughout the US sometime in 2009.

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[ Posted at 4:06 PM | Permalink ]

 

First impressions: 'The Beat Goes On' Announcements

While I'll be reviewing Apple's new lineup of iPods on the SuperSite for Windows, I thought it would be interesting to toss out some thoughts about the devices based on the recently completed special event at which they were introduced. As always, the iPod line remains the standard by which all other portable media players are judged, and the Fall 2007 lineup is the strongest yet. Here's what it looks like, along with other revelations from "The Beat Goes On":

No Beatles
Despite persistent rumors and constant Beatles references during the Jobs keynote, "The Beatles" catalog was not made available on iTunes. (Yet.) Sigh.

Grade: F

iPod facts and figures
The domination of iTunes and the iPod is astonishing. According to Apple, the company has distributed over 600 million copies of iTunes and has sold over 3 billion songs, 95 million TV shows, and has provided over 125,000 podcasts to listeners. Astonishing.

Apple has sold over 110 million iPods to date, also astonishing.

Grade: A+

iPod shuffle
Apple added new colors and not much else to the $79 iPod shuffle, which was thoroughly revamped for last year. New colors include red (as in Product[RED]), purple, light blue, and light green, in addition to last year's silver color. Otherwise, the shuffle hasn't changed, up to and including the same 1 GB of storage space. This is mostly OK: The shuffle was fine as-is, but you'd think Apple might have bumped the storage to at least 2 GB.

Grade: B

iPod nano
The best-selling nano is getting quite a bit fatter/wider thanks to a new QVGA 320 x 240 screen (equal to that of last year's iPod with video) that supports video as well as Cover Flow; it also comes with 3 iPod games. While I question the width increase of the new device (coming as it does with a non-updated music-only iPod shuffle), the new nano looks neat. It is all metal (though I doubt anyone was actually asking for that), thinner than before, and appears more rounded on the edges than the too-sharp-edged iPod with video from last year. It sports 24 hours of battery life for audio and 5 hours for video, both excellent. Pricing is reasonable at $149 for a 4 GB version and $199 for 8 GB. The new nano is available in five colors: black, red, gray, blue, and green. They look great overall.

Grade: A

iPod classic
Replacing the old iPod with video (which some people think of simply as "iPod") is the new iPod classic. This player doesn't appear to be particularly exceptional other than the new storage options: It's the same basic size and shape as the previous iPod, but appears to have rounded edges, like the nano. (Assuming that's the case. It may be a photographic trick.) Anyway, the iPod classic is now all-metal (whatever), thinner than before, and comes in 80 GB and 160 GB variants. The 80 GB version gets 30 hours of battery life for audio and 6 hours for video; it costs $250. The 160 GB version gets 40 hours of battery life for audio and 7 hours for video; it costs $350. Both are reasonably priced, though the tiny screen is increasingly uninteresting in the wake of the Zune, iPod touch (see below), and iPhone. As before, the iPod classic comes only in black and white.

Grade: B

iPod touch
Arguably the most impressive introduction of the event and the one countless digital media fans have been clamoring for, the iPod touch is basically the iPhone without any phone features. It features all the iPhone goodness you'd expect, including the multi-touch UI, the Cover Flow views, the icon-based home screen, and landscape video playback.

The iPod touch does more than that, however. It includes integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, like the iPhone, which you can use with its integrated Safari browser, YouTube application (a la iPhone), and... drumroll, please... the new mobile version of iTunes, dubbed iTunes Wi-Fi. Yep, Apple jumped on the obvious train and added that feature so many people were looking for: Buying music over the air. Sadly, you cannot sync over the air via Wi-Fi, which would have really completed the picture. There was also a Starbucks announcement that is barely worth mentioning, given that it will taken until 2009 to completely rollout, assuming it ever happens.

The price is reasonable, but not exceptional, given the capacity: An 8 GB version is $300, while a 16 GB version will set you back $400. Battery life is great, 22 hours for audio and 5 for video, but then you won't be putting much video on this thing with such small amounts of built-in memory.

The only reason this doesn't get an A+ is the storage: Even 16 GB is paltry for a video collection. I honestly believe customers would be OK with a thicker device if they could get an 80 GB or even 160 GB hard drive in there (with the resulting larger battery). Maybe someday that will happen, but this is a wonderful start.

Grade: A-

iPhone
Apple is dropping the 4 GB iPhone and, most astonishingly, dropping the price of the 8 GB version by $200 to a much more reasonable $400. I've often referred to the price point on the iPhone as being exorbitant, but this brings it down to reality. Bravo to Apple for being this aggressive this quickly.

The iPhone also picks up some iPod Touch features, like iTunes Wi-Fi (sweet) and the silly Starbucks application, as expected.

Finally, Apple is adding one of many curiously missing features to the iPhone: Ringtone support. Now, customers can buy song ringtones for $1.98: 99 cents for the ringtone itself and 99 cents for the song. It's not the full iTunes catalog, however, but rather a 500,000 song subset. The new version of iTunes, being released "tonight," will also add a ringtone editor so you can recast nonprotected songs from your existing music collection into ringtones yourself. Neat.

Grade: A

iTunes 7.4/8?
There's a new version of iTunes coming tonight, apparently. We don't know much about it beyond the new ringtones stuff and reverse sync with iTunes Wi-Fi, so there's no point in writing it up quite yet. Stay tuned.

Grade: n/a

Presentation
As is often the case, Steve Jobs loves playing to the home crowd and the Apple friendly people in the audience--about half were Apple employees according to at least one blogger who was there--ate it all up. I don't like the lies--Apple isn't the first to add a Web browser to a portable media player, example--and I don't like the boasting, but there's no denying that Jobs is the master of this domain. Say what you will, but this time, at least, he was right on target. This stuff is excellent.

Grade: A

Overall, this was a solid even exciting event. I'm looking forward to reviewing the new iPods, and iTunes 8.0, if that's what it is. I'm also curious how Microsoft intends to answer this threat with new Zunes, and if that's even possible.

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[ Posted at 2:56 PM | Permalink ]

 

Monday, August 27, 2007

Is Google About To Stab Apple in the Back With Google Phone?

ParisLemon:
Reports out of India suggest that Google will be releasing their rumored "Google Phone" worldwide in two weeks. The report is questionable for a number of reasons, the first of would probably have to be that it is only coming out of India, and the second of which is the unlikelihood that Google would stab their tech buddy Apple in the back by releasing a phone so soon after iPhone.
I love this assertion. How, exactly, are Google and Apple "tech buddies"? The only "partnership" we've seen to date is a single uninteresting Google Maps application on the iPhone that doesn't even all of the features of the Web version. (Gmail support in iPhone Mail doesn't count; it's just POP3.) If you really look at it, there's more and better Yahoo! stuff on the iPhone than Google stuff. And yet, we've been treated to all kinds of Apple/Google rumors, none of which were ever true. (Two examples: Google would buy Apple, and Apple would switch .Mac mail to Google Apps/Gmail.) It's amazing to me how pervasive this baloney is. Just because someone says something doesn't make it true, no matter how often its repeated around the blogosphere.

Anyway...
It does seem to be fairly well assumed that Google is going to release a cellphone at some point in the future - and that it might even be free thanks to advertisements that would run on it. Also fairly likely is a phone from Microsoft, which may or may not be a ZunePhone.
So, lots of good speculation there. (He even doubles up on the speculation in the first sentence, which might just be a record.) Let's forget about the Microsoft stuff, since they've been doing Windows Mobile since it was first called Windows CE back in 1996. I'm all for a gPhone or whatever they'd call it, as I'm a huge consumer of Google services. I have zero interest in advertising-based clients, however, and would gladly pay a monthly fee so as to not deal with that. But again, I have to wonder. Where do these rumors come from? And where does the rumor end and the truth begin? The rest of this post drives right off the deep end (apparently Nokia, Motorola and others are just going to lie down and die) so it gets pretty silly. But I'm intrigued by the possibility of a gPhone. Really intrigued.

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[ Posted at 10:41 AM | Permalink ]

 

The unholy Apple/AT&T alliance has been undone, but iPhone is still a waste of money

Tom Yager at InfoWorld:
If your biggest gripe with Apple's flagship media player is that it refuses to make voice or data calls on anything but AT&T's wireless network, you're officially free. But the price of freedom, in this case, is either a very steady hand and soldering iron, or a willingness to send money to Australia in exchange for a "Turbo SIM," delivery date unknown. Of the two methods, I prefer the third: Buy a real phone. Following an exhaustive comparison of alternatives, I have overwhelming backing for my early conclusion that iPhone is vastly outmatched by several devices in its price class.
There have been a lot of stories over the past few days about various successes unlocking the iPhone so that it works on non-AT&T cell phone networks. I picked this one because I'm amused that the "Enterprise Mac" (enjoy the oxymoron) guy at InfoWorld doesn't like the iPhone. I mean, both the Mac and iPhone are equally unsuited for the enterprise. Why not an "Enterprise iPhone" column? If you're going to be the crazy guy, you might has well just go for it.

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[ Posted at 10:35 AM | Permalink ]

 

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Apple iPhone Update 1.0.2

It appears that Apple today released the second iPhone software update, 1.0.2. It's unclear what this changes per se--the release notes say only that "this version of the software includes bug fixes and supersedes all previous versions." I'm installing it now and looking for more information...

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[ Posted at 12:08 PM | Permalink ]

 

Monday, August 20, 2007

Great artists steal ... well, thieves do, anyway

You know, this kind of thing really freaks me out. It's bad enough that the iPhone calculator (which I discuss ever so briefly in Part 4 of my iPhone review) is a horrible, silly, affair, with a UI that looks nothing like any other Apple iPhone or OS X application in existence. It turns out that it was stolen from elsewhere too. Absolutely brilliant:


BTW: Only a sycophant would call this an "homage." The iPhone calculator should look like an iPhone application at the very least and ideally offer a number of skins. Obviously.

Thanks Jerry.

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[ Posted at 4:50 AM | Permalink ]

 

Sunday, August 19, 2007

And This Is Your $4190.76 iPhone Bill

The Consumerist:
When Pierre visited Ibiza, Spain and Europe for two weeks, his iPhone went with him, and he returned with memories of a hedonistic summer vacation, and a $4190.76 bill from AT&T.

Like others, Pierre had found out the hard way just how extremely expensive international data transfer rates are...

Pleading with AT&T customer service got him retroactively on an international plan for $24.99 for 20mb, and $5 per mb thereafter. He used 205 mb total, so his new bill is $900. Still expensive, but a bit more swallowable than 4 g's.
There have been a lot of horror stories about the cost of using an iPhone in Europe. Since I'll be using one here in France for one month--we're almost three weeks into that time as I write this--it's an obvious concern.

I was at least smart enough to enable AT&T's AT&T World Traveler plan before I left (see An American iPhone in Paris). The article quoted above doesn't specifically mention this, but it looks like Pierre forgot to do that. But as mentioned in the article, the iPhone should display a warning screen if you're using it in a high-cost area, like international. They should also offer the same low-cost international roaming options that you can get on a Blackberry ($70 a month for unlimited international roaming.) But they don't.

Anyway. I've been monitoring my usage since then and trying to keep the data usage via EDGE to a minimum. What I've seen so far is this:

- My voice usage has not been posted online all month. AT&T reports that "there are delays in reporting and processing call records ... Further delays may apply to roaming usage, which is based on call records received from other carriers. A delay of a minimum of two to ten days for roaming usage is usual and up to 60 days or longer is possible." Cute. But since I know that phone calls here are $1 a minute, the same sad price I'd pay for calls via our European phone, I'm OK with that. We've made a few calls a week and most were important. This is no different than what would have happened if we didn't bring an iPhone.

- My data usage seems pretty low. AT&T breaks data into four categories, Text/IM messaging, multimedia messaging, video share calling, and "Internet/MEdia Net" (which I think of as Internet). (And the iPhone can't use the multimedia messaging and video share calling services.) My total data usage since late July, most of which occurred here in France, has been just 1.26 MB, all Internet usage. However, I'm not on Pierre's plan. I'm on AT World Traveler, which charges 2 cents per KB. And if my math is correct, 2 cents times 1259 KB is $25.18, a pretty exorbitant fee for that amount of data traffic, but nothing close to $4000.

I've also sent 6 text messages, for which I pay 50 cents each, or $3. So... When you add it all up, my iPhone usage (hopefully) this month is $5.99 for AT&T World Traveller, $25.18 for data usage, and $3 for text messages, for a total of $34.17, not including voice charges. (Which could be as high as $100, I guess, but what the heck, we've been here a month. We've also used Skype for checking voice mails and for a few work calls.)

The problem with this math is that it assumes that AT&T's data, which I access online, is complete. It does appear to be for the data, and that's the important part.

Fingers crossed.

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[ Posted at 5:50 AM | Permalink ]

 

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

iPhone Owners: "We Like It, But..."

I'm amused that PC World has borrowed my "But..." language with regards to the iPhone:
A little more than a month after the Apple iPhone went on sale, nearly 90 percent of iPhone owners who answered a PC World survey said that they love their almost-new toy. But they also had a few complaints--most notably regarding the iPhone's voice and data networks--and lots of suggestions.

About 13 percent of our respondents said that they'd run into at least one significant problem with their device in the past month.
As I wrote back on June 30, the iPhone is fantastic, but... "because every time you want to point out something positive, you have to amend a 'but...' onto the end of it." The fanatics blasted me for this sort of heretical talk, but the truth is the truth. And in this case, the truth is that the iPhone is fantastic. But it needs a lot of work.

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[ Posted at 11:14 AM | Permalink ]

 

Friday, August 03, 2007

iPhone 1.01 update

Some shots of the iPhone 1.01 update in Vista:

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[ Posted at 5:37 AM | Permalink ]

 

Thursday, August 02, 2007

An American iPhone in Paris

With a looming trip to France coming, I basically had two options with regards to the recently-released iPhone: I could bring it along and actually use the thing, sucking up whatever monstrous fees AT&T charges for international roaming, or bring it along and barely use it at all. Not bringing the iPhone wasn't an option: I'm in the middle of a lengthy review of the device and I intend to finish that by the end of the month. So I opted to bring it and really use the heck out of it. (And good thing, too: This week, Apple shipped the first iPhone software update.)

Before doing so, however, you have to call AT&T and set up international roaming. This involves dialing a toll-free number, wading through AT&T's annoying but typical automated phone system and, if you called on a weekend like I did, waiting to do it all again on Monday. When I did get on the line with a human being, I was impressed with her professionalism and thoroughness, if that means anything to you. She described the three possible options, once the phone was configured for international roaming (note that if you don't make this call before you leave, you can't make it work until after that trip):

1. Do nothing. Calls made internationally will cost $1.29 a minute, and you'll be charged 2 cents per KB for data usage. Text messages are 50 cents per message sent. Received text messages are free.

2. Join the AT&T World Traveler for $5.99 a month. The nice thing about this charge is that you can enable it and disable it whenever you want, so I enabled it for August and will turn it off when I get back. Calls made internationally cost 99 cents a minute, but you'll still be charged 2 cents per KB for data usage. Text message prices are the same as above as well.

3. AT&T also offers a plan for $29 a month that essentially gives you unlimited international voice calls and a decent amount of data usage per month (I forget the details). The problem is that you can't opt out of it for under a year, so if you sign up, you have to pay for 12 months worth, or a total of about $360.

Side note: What I wasn't impressed by, at least not in a positive way, was how AT&T verified that it was me calling. They asked me four (very) personal questions, many of which I found quite shocking. For example, the first question was, "Which one of the following three companies were you previously employed by?" She then read off a list of banks, one of which I worked at over 15 years ago. The second question regarded addresses I'd live at (from the Phoenix area, about 15 years ago). Then another one about previous jobs (from about 12 years ago). The last one was, "Which of the following mortgage companies have you done business with?" Yikes. Privacy advocates should have a field day with this one.

As far as the roaming options went, I ended up going with the second one for what I assume are obvious reasons. I've been trying to stay off of EDGE while in France (via Bouygues Telecom in the Paris area) because of the expense, and I've disabled a few things that might trigger network access repeatedly, like email. But I'm guessing we're going to have a healthy bill when we return. All in the interests of testing, of course.

I will say this: For a few years now, we've had a cell phone that we use specifically for Europe, and it's got an unlocked SIM card. That phone has worked much more poorly than has the iPhone this first week, and since the phone costs are basically identical, we've pretty much just switched to using the iPhone for calls here. Actually, it's nice having two phones, since there are days when my wife and kids will stay in the city when I return to the home we're staying at to work.

As a frequent international traveler, I'm looking forward to what I assume is an inevitable future where we can simply bring our phones back and forth between continents and not pay extravagant fees for the privilege. The iPhone certainly gets the ease of use thing right, though I suspect a lot of people will be burned by the need to call first to enable international roaming. Next, I'd like to see Apple/AT&T tackle the international roaming charges. This should be less expensive, though of course that's not unique to the iPhone.

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[ Posted at 11:29 AM | Permalink ]

 

iPhone Software Version 1.0.1

Apple throws out the first iPhone update a few weeks later than expected but offers up very little in the way of information:
Bug fixes

This version of the software includes bug fixes and supersedes all previous versions.

For feature descriptions and complete instructions, see the users guide for your iPhone.

For more information about iPhone.

To troubleshoot your iPhone, or to view additional support information.
I've got the iPhone up and running in France--in fact, when I have a second, I have interesting info to post about that--so I've installed the update and will see what happiness it brings. Hopefully, it at least adds some stability fixes.

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[ Posted at 4:10 AM | Permalink ]

 

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

AT&T iPhone activations disappoint

Reuters:
AT&T reported initial data on activations for Apple's iPhone that were disappointing to some investors. [Just some? --Paul] AT&T said Tuesday that it activated 146,000 iPhones in the first few days of its availability.
Bloomberg:
The iPhone activations were a "disappointment," Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster said in a research note. He estimated that Apple sold 200,000 iPhones in the two days to end the quarter. Analyst David Bailey of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had estimated that AT&T and Apple sold 700,000 iPhones in their first three-day weekend.

AT&T's rate of customer turnover, also known as "churn," fell to 1.6 percent from 1.7 percent a year earlier. AT&T attributed that to "attractive handset selection" and called iPhone sales "robust." More than 40 percent of iPhone activations were for new subscribers.
AT&T, obviously, is the weak link in the iPhone plan. I wonder whether they call customers "chum" or if the word "churn" just reminded me of that word? :)

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[ Posted at 12:53 PM | Permalink ]

 

Friday, July 20, 2007

How to add custom ringtones/system sounds to the iPhone

Hack the iPhone:
Custom ringtones are one of the biggest requests by people that want to modify their iPhone to make it unique. This page will teach you how to add your own files to the iPhone to use as a ringtone.

I know this looks like a difficult procedure. Read it through first before performing anything. Once you have all the files downloaded, and have put them all in the same folder, this is a 4 minute process. Seriously. Download the files that I link to on this site. There are many versions of Jailbreak and iPhoneInterface. The build numbers were not consistent. You could have problems if you got your files elsewhere but use these instructions.

There is obviously some risk involved here, but everyone we know of has been able to restore their iPhone by using iTunes. I've heard no report of anyone damaging their iPhone by doing this. However, if your iPhone becomes unresponsive to restoration via iTunes, then you may have to seek repair or replacement through Apple Inc., or AT&T. Pay careful attention to the instructions here. We are NOT responsible for your results. You are assuming all risks.
Note that this link is for Windows users. Intel Mac users should look here.

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[ Posted at 1:45 PM | Permalink ]

 

iPhone Contract Is Long and Legally Murky

Like most cell phone contracts, then. Wired:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs proudly proclaimed the iPhone one of the most intuitive devices ever made. Not so for the iPhone's terms-of-service contract, which at 17,000 words is one of the longest and most complex ever to accompany a wireless gadget, legal experts say.

No one reads such things, least of all early adopters eager to own the summer's most-lusted-after product. So Wired News has done the hard work for you. We read it not just once but several times, with the help of a few good lawyers.

"I think there's no chance whatsoever that a layperson would understand it and I doubt they could get through it. I think most lawyers wouldn't understand it either," says Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who in a past career crafted licensing service agreements for a living.

The iPhone contract is unusual in bundling many separate agreements into a single contract. It comes in six parts, including agreements regarding AT&T's phone service, the iPhone software, the iTunes software, the use of Google Maps and of YouTube in addition to a user's consent that an e-mail from Apple "will satisfy any legal communication requirements."

The iPhone agreement also says Apple may monitor users' iPhones "to verify compliance with terms of this license." It notes that Apple may collect technical information regarding users' iPhones, computers, software and peripherals, as long as such information is not used in a form that personally identifies individual users.
Woo.

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[ Posted at 1:36 PM | Permalink ]

 

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

iPhone: Prepay the right way

A nice bit of trickery to get around AT&T 2-year service agreement, courtesy of TUAW:
If you want to set up your iPhone as a prepaid account, do not--no that's not emphatic enough--do NOT, DO NOT attempt to set up the account in advance with AT&T.

Just don't. Trust me. Here's how you should do it:

Buy the iPhone. Connect it to iTunes. Sign up using 999-99-9999 as your social security number. After failing the credit check, select a GoPhone plan. After signing up for a GoPhone plan and being assigned a number and passcode, connect to the AT&T GoPhone funding page as prompted, enter your credit card or debit card information and you're good to go. DO NOT attempt to fund your iPhone over the phone with AT&T. DO NOT set up your iPhone prepaid account in advance with AT&T.
Related: Apple iPhone Activation Without a 2-year Agreement

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[ Posted at 5:29 PM | Permalink ]

 

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

iPhone synching woes, Part 3

OK, the final round: This time, I tried syncing the iPhone with Outlook 2003 running on Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2). As per the last installment, I did a clean install of XP with SP2, installed the 100+ post-SP2 critical and suggested fixes, installed Office (this time Office 2003), and configured Outlook with two local calendars, adding a single appointment to each for testing. (Outlook 2003 does not support subscribing to Internet-based calendars like Google Calendar, so I had to skip that for this test. See below for a workaround.) Then I installed the current version of iTunes, plugged in the iPhone, restored it, and set up syncing.

I got not love, sorry. As with previous attempts, iTunes refused to see that there were multiple calendars configured and grayed out the "Selected calendars" option, leaving just "All calendars," which isn't really "all calendars" at all, but is instead "the default local calendar only." After sync, I could see the appointment I made in this calendar, but not the one in the other local calendar. Game over.

I've now tried to make this work on two separate Windows versions and two separate Outlook versions. (And on the Mac, too, meaning I've tried virtually every supported combination of operating systems and calendars.) It's clear that, on Windows at least (Apple's biggest market), iPhone sync is horribly broken. Regardless of the supported Windows or Office version you use, the iPhone will only sync with the single default local calendar in Outlook, and not with any other calendars, be they local or Internet-based. This is a problem for a number of reasons, but the most damning is that calendar sync with multiple calendars (local, Internet, whatever) actually works fine with a normal iPod. Why it can't work with the iPhone--where, frankly, PIM sync is clearly more important--is unclear. And not to beat this to death, but seriously, Apple, could you support something other than Outlook? How about Windows Calendar? Google Calendar? Something.

With that horror show out of the way, I turned my attention to actually syncing Google Calendar with the iPhone. To make this work, you need to use a third-party tool that syncs Google Calendar with Outlook; I use SyncMyCal for this purpose and it works wonderfully, even the free version (which requires manual syncing). After installing SyncMyCal, I configured it to sync into the default local calendar in Outlook 2007, plugged in the iPhone, restored it, and synced it up ... again.

This time, success. And it only took five iPhone restores over two OSes, two versions of Office, and three different PCs (and a Mac, just for testing). Oh, and a third party sync application that, unlike iTunes, actually works. It's amazing how satisfying "it just works" can be when it actually does work.

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[ Posted at 9:35 PM | Permalink ]

 

iPhone synching woes, Part 2

After uploading my original iPhone synching woes post the other day, I received a bunch of feedback from readers wondering whether the problems weren't caused by Apple's lackluster support of Windows Vista. I was wondering the same thing, but I was also wondering whether Office (Outlook) 2007 might be the culprit as well. (Or, put another way, whether Apple's lackluster support of Outlook 2007 might be the issue.)

So I began testing a few things.

First up: A fresh install of Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) on an older Lenovo ThinkPad T43. I had vowed to never use XP again, so this was painful, all the more so since Microsoft hasn't shipped a new XP service pack since SP2 three years ago: I had to download over 100 updates from Microsoft Update and reboot three times before it was done. Then I installed Office 2007 Professional, configured Outlook with a subscribed Google Calendar, and then installed iTunes. Then, I plugged in the iPhone, let iTunes download the iPhone software update, and restore the device. Then it was time to sync.

The sync options are virtually identical to those presented in Vista, with one logical exception: On XP, you can sync email with Outlook Express if you want. I chose Yahoo! for contacts, Outlook for calendar, and IE for bookmarks, and hoped for the best.

Bzzzt. Just as with Vista, the iPhone dashboard in iTunes can't see any Outlook calendars: The "Selected calendars" option, again, is grayed out. I'm vaguely glad that Vista isn't the problem.

So, it's back to the drawing board. Next up, I will test this with Window XP SP2 and Outlook 2003 instead of Outlook 2007. Hey, you never know. In the meantime, this is somewhat depressing: As I noted previously, sync is basic smart phone functionality. This just needs to work.

Update: Before wiping out this install, I decided to add a test calendar item to the default Outlook calendar ("Calendar") to see whether it appeared on the iPhone after syncing. It did, which suggests that local calendars work, but subscribed (Internet) calendars do not. That said, iTunes still won't show that you even have multiple calendars, and of course, subscribed Internet calendars work fine if you sync from iCal on the Mac. And what about secondary local calendars? I created a new calendar in Outlook, "iPhone calendar," and created an appointment in there too. Rebooted. Re-synced. Nothing. So maybe it's not only just local calendars that work, but only the primary local calendar. Did I mention this was aggravating? :)

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[ Posted at 3:38 PM | Permalink ]

 

Putting Google On Your Phone

A fantastic post from Google Blogoscoped:
Reto Meier of the Radioactive Yak blog recently turned his cell phone into a “Google Phone,” and he’ll explain how you can do the same through the different mobile-optimized sites and Java clients Google offers.

Google Mobile Homepage
Mobile Blogger
Google Maps (and local search) Java client
Google Calendar mobile
Picasa Web Albums mobile
Gmail mobile
Google Reader mobile (RSS Feed Reader)
Google News mobile
Google mobile Search
Virtually all of this stuff works great on my Q. A few of them work well on the iPhone too, and of course the iPhone has a slick Google Maps application built-in. I certainly have spent a lot of time ensuring that most of these are in my phones. BTW: Google Reader on the iPhone may be the Safari killer app. RSS just looks great on the iPhone.

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[ Posted at 10:05 AM | Permalink ]

 

Monday, July 09, 2007

And so it begins...

I've tried to remain very calm and measured in my reaction to the iPhone. It's not perfect, and it doesn't get some very basic things right, even as it raises the bar for mobile devices. Needless to say, I'm viewed as negative (and even a Microsoft toadie) for being brash enough to actually criticize the thing. But I think the iPhone is important. It's just not the be-all, end-all that some hype-sucking journalists would have you believe.

Well, the inevitable backtracking is starting to finally creep into the iPhone conversation. You may recall that I noted a few weeks ago that the truth of the iPhone would become obvious after weeks of real, normal people actually using the device. Today, The Boston Globe's Hiawatha Bray, who previously penned an iPhone mini-review called "Believe the hype," has come back down to earth. No offense, but this is exactly the kind of baloney I was warning about when the first round of "OHMYGOD OOHMYGOD HMYGOD" reviews came out:
Despite the iPhone's indisputable cool, it would have to be well-nigh perfect to get $600 out of my wallet. And it's a long way from perfect.

Its worst problem, by far, is the iPhone's feud with Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook. A good deal of my life story for the past decade is tucked away inside Outlook, a combination e-mail program, address book, and appointment calendar that's arguably the best bit of software Microsoft makes.

It took about a dozen tries before the iPhone copied the Outlook data stored on my PC at the Globe; it's never worked on my home machine. I'm not alone in this; a quick Internet search found at least a dozen complaints from iPhone owners with similar problems. Either the iPhone won't sync with Outlook at all, or it does so intermittently or incompletely.

This is no minor glitch for the millions who rely on Outlook for keeping track of phone numbers and addresses.

My 10-year-old hand-held computer works just fine with Outlook. What's Apple's excuse? They need to take care of this, and fast.
It's amazing what actually using a product can do to color your opinion. People, Apple can hype their own products. We shouldn't be doing it for them, especially if we haven't actually used the thing. The iPhone is good technology. But it can only get better at this point and it's still unclear to me that this device is a decent solution for most people. Someone who writes for a mainstream publication like The Boston Globe should understand that, and understand their audience. And for crying out loud, learn to separate hype from reality.

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[ Posted at 1:52 PM | Permalink ]

 

Sunday, July 08, 2007

iPhone synching woes

I desperately want to give the iPhone a proper review, I do. The problem is, the buggy little device won't work consistently enough for me to remain all that positive about it. Case in point: Sync. It's been a complete disaster.

PC #1: Media Center PC

I initially attached the iPhone to my Vista Ultimate-based Media Center PC, my main desktop machine, and the place where my master music and photo libraries are stored (and, in the case of music, managed via iTunes). The Media Center PC has been quite reliable and stable, and it's been blasting recorded TV shows and other content over the network to an Xbox 360 Media Center Extender in the living for about eight months without a major hiccup. This should work fine, right?

On Windows, the iPhone supports contacts syncing from Yahoo! Contacts, Outlook, and Windows Contacts, but it only offers Calendar syncing from Outlook. Since my contacts are available in Outlook format, and it's easy enough to subscribe to Google Calendar (which I use for my scheduling needs), I chose Outlook for both. I ultimately turned off email syncing (since I use Web-based Gmail) and toggled between Safari and IE bookmark syncing, just to see how it works. (The lack of any Mozilla facilities on the iPhone is, of course, disturbing.)

Here's what happened:

Contacts. Contacts syncing worked just fine and I could access all my needed phone numbers via the iPhone's Phone application.

Calendar. Calendar synching never worked. In iTunes, you can supposedly choose between "All calendars" or a list of calendars from which you can select the calendars you want to sync. Despite the fact that Outlook has multiple calendars, one of which is local (the cunningly named "Calendar") and one of which is the subscribed Google Calendar, the "Selected calendars" choice is grayed out an unavailable. But here's the thing: I know it works, because my various Outlook calendars are choosable on the iPod's sync page in iTunes. So they work there but not on the iPhone. Irritating? You bet.



Email. Never attempted and never will.

Bookmarks. This worked fine from both IE and Safari, but created folders in the iPhone's Safari browser, requiring me to navigate down to find the bookmarks. Yugh. Not useless, but close. Sync is not two-way, however: If you create bookmarks on the phone, they don't appear in the synced desktop browser.

iPhone-based Photos. If you take photos with your iPhone and connect it to the PC, the Windows application for acquiring photos is supposed to start up, allowing you to download the photos to the PC. This never worked on the Media Center PC.

PC#2: Macbook

In order to see what a real sync experience was like, I tried the Mac next. When I first connected the device to the Mac, iPhoto popped up, allowing me to download those photos I couldn't get to on the PC, which was nice. Then I restored the iPhone and started over. Here's what happened:

Contacts. You can choose between Mac OS X's Address Book application and Yahoo! Contacts, but on the Mac, you get one additional feature: You can sync your Yahoo! Contacts list with Address Book as part of the synchronization pass, which I chose, thus populating Address Book on the Mac with a relatively up-to-date copy of my contacts list. The iPhone-based Contacts list worked properly as well.

Calendar. I subscribed to Google Calendar with Apple's iCal application and was able to choose just that calendar to sync with via iTunes. Finally, I could see my schedule on the iPhone. It's pretty attractive looking.

Email. Never attempted and never will.

Bookmarks. Here, the Mac is actually more limited than the PC: You can only sync with Safari, with the same hierarchical folder issues noted above. Not to belabor the point, but I'd really, really like to see Mozilla support here.

iPhone-based Photos. Photo importing always worked fine. When I had taken photos on the phone and the connected it to the Mac, iPhoto would pop-up to download them.

PC#3: Lenovo ThinkPad T61

Syncing with a Mac is cute, and I'm glad I could test it, but the reality is, I live in a Windows world, as will most iPhone users. So I turned to my latest notebook, a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 running Windows Vista Ultimate. The sync results, alas, were similar to the Media Center PC. (Maybe it's an Outlook 2007 issue?) Further problematic: The iPhone's Wi-Fi will no longer connected to my home network for some reason. I type in the passcode and it says it cannot connect. My notebooks all work fine, and the iPhone worked fine previously. Maybe another restore will fix that, but for now, here are the sync results:

Contacts. Works similarly to the Media Center PC.

Calendar. As with the Media Center PC, I can't choose between my various Outlook-based calendars as the choice is grayed out. However, when the default choice (all calendars) is selected, the iPhone did sync with an old and out of date copy of my calendar that is in the default Outlook Calendar (again, named "Calednar"). So it sort of worked, but won't see other calendars, including a second local calendar I created for testing.

Email. Never attempted and never will.

Bookmarks. Works similarly to the Media Center PC.

iPhone-based Photos. This time, photo importing did work, which was welcome, and Vista's built-in photo acquisition utility does appear when I connect the iPhone with fresh photos to download.

Overall, the sync experience has been exasperating. The only time it worked correctly was on the Mac, go figure, and I can't see myself using that as my central management point for contacts and calendar. (And while I didn't really discuss this aspect of it here, I had to copy over my iTunes library to the Mac to get music, podcasts, and videos on the device. I'm not going to keep that up-to-date on the Mac over time either.)

What's needed here, obviously, is better compatibility with existing solutions (Outlook, primarily) and compatibility with a much wider range of email, calendar, and browser applications. Mozilla support should be obvious, but what about supporting popular Web-based services like Google Calendar too? I realize the iPhone is a 1.0 product, but fixing these issues and increasing compatibility should be Job One for whoever at Apple is working on this part of the iPhone and iTunes. It's a huge problem.

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[ Posted at 11:45 AM | Permalink ]

 

Saturday, July 07, 2007

iPhone Web Dev

iPhone Web Dev is clearly a site to watch if you care about the iPhone:
The iPhone will be the premier platform for portable Web 2.0 applications. This website is a community of web developers helping other web developers to create the best possible web applications for the iPhone.

Our first service is a public email discussion list hosted at Google Groups.

Additionally there is a section with examples of iPhone specific layouts and tricks.

We're also working on a blog in which to post the most interesting developments from the email discussion list, for those who can't keep up with the traffic.
I discovered this on Scobelizer.

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[ Posted at 2:06 PM | Permalink ]

 

iPhone Parody No Flash

Courtesy of You Tube:

Ironically (OK, not really), the iPhone's camera doesn't support flash either. :)

Irony number 2: You can't view this post on the iPhone. (That was a joke, people: YouTube uses H.264 now.)

Thanks Charles.

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[ Posted at 2:02 PM | Permalink ]

 

Friday, July 06, 2007

iPhone rhetorical question of the day

If the iPhone supports both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (not to mention EDGE), why can't it sync wirelessly?

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[ Posted at 9:47 AM | Permalink ]

 

Thursday, July 05, 2007

iPhone observation: Podcast support

Apple can and should be credited with jumpstarting the podcast craze by adding decent podcast support to iTunes and the iPod, and this support carries across, for the most part, on the iPhone. Sadly, because the iTunes application only supports five main buttons--Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos, and More by default, you have to hop into the "More ghetto" to access your podcasts. Things work as expected with one huge exception: Video podcasts only play back audio when accessed through the Podcasts list. (Flip the screen, and you'll see album art in Cover Flow view, as you would for a music file.) If you actually want to see the video, you need to access them through the Videos list. Seems like a curious omission. (To be fair, this is what happens on the iPod too: There, you have to access video podcasts through the Video Podcasts sub-menu under Video.)

Tip: Thankfully, you can configure the first four buttons in the iTunes application, so I've replaced Songs with Podcasts, as I will use that more frequently.

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[ Posted at 1:00 PM | Permalink ]

 

Web Development for iPhone

Apple finally posts its guidelines for developing iPhone "applications":
Developers can create Web 2.0 applications that look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and provide seamless integration with iPhone applications and services including making a phone call, sending an email, and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using web standards can extend iPhone's capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.
Not surprisingly, a little blurb right on the front page essentially corroborates my theory that Apple released Safari for Windows specifically to facilitate iPhone development. ("The first step in developing a web application for iPhone is to ensure it is fully compatible with Safari. Safari 3 Public Beta, now available for Mac and Windows, provides you with the ideal environment for Safari on iPhone compatibility testing.")

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[ Posted at 10:39 AM | Permalink ]

 

Semi-obvious iPhone/iPod futures

I was among the crowd of people clamoring for a phone-less iPhone-like iPod back when Steve Jobs first announced the device at the January 2007 Macworld, and I still think that would be a great idea, especially if it could be fitted with a real hard drive. But while wrestling with some weird sync issues over the weekend, another thought occurred to me, and while I'm sure this is equally obvious, I'll spell it out anyway: Apple should sell an iPod-less iPhone as well.

You might call such a thing the iPhone nano (with apologies to David Letterman and his even more obvious recent spoof of such a device). And here's why I think this would be a killer idea: After I couldn't get the iPhone to sync with my Outlook calendar properly, I decided to nuke from space ("restore" the device in iPhone parlance) and see what the sync experience is like on the Mac. No surprise, it's better. But since I didn't have any music on my Mac at first, my initial sync was just calendar (Google Calendar via iCal) and contacts (Yahoo Mail contacts via Apple's Address Book application). This information takes up almost no space at all on the device. But what you're left with is a stunningly usable phone and personal information manager.

Indeed, once you get rid of most of the storage space--I'm thinking 1 GB would do it for whatever random photos you might take--you can also dispense with a lot of the battery, since that's pretty much only needed for media playback anyway. You could therefore make a phone-only iPhone--the iPhone nano--that was about one-half to two-thirds the size of the existing device, while retaining the same basic proportions. A smaller phone would be highly desirable to a lot of people, methinks.

Meanwhile, a future video iPod that's based on the iPhone could arguably be a bit bigger than the current iPhone, while still losing the phone features (and associated monthly charges). This could become the new high-end iPod, designed primarily for TV, movie, and other video content.

Just a thought.

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[ Posted at 10:30 AM | Permalink ]

 

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Happy 4th

Here's a cool photo taken with the iPhone...

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[ Posted at 7:21 PM | Permalink ]

 

iPhone Out-of-Warranty Battery Replacement Program

Apple:
Apple will repair your iPhone for a service fee of $79, plus $6.95 shipping. Be sure to follow [Apple's] instructions for optimizing battery life and troubleshooting battery charging issues before submitting your iPhone for battery replacement.

The repair process normally takes three business days.
You didn't think this was going to be free, did you? Fair enough, this is, after all, for out of warranty replacements. But three days sans phone is a bit much.

Incidentally, the iPhone warranty is one year (PDF download). I'm curious that it's not warranted for the length of your AT&T service agreement.

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[ Posted at 12:18 PM | Permalink ]

 

DVD Jon joins iPhone hacking brigade

Guardian:
The iPhone launched over the weekend, and it's already got a gang of hardcore hackers playing with it and trying to decouple it from the AT&T network. The latest? Jon Lech Johansen - better known as DVD Jon.

Johansen explains that he's found a way to activate an iPhone without paying AT&T a penny. Meanwhile, the people at The Unofficial Apple Weblog have also had a crack, and have a different way to make it contract free.

Of course, there's one crucial element missing from all these hacks - they mean you can't actually use the iPhone as a phone.
Interesting. Obviously, there's a huge market of people who just want the iPod part of the iPhone.

BTW: Why does the iPod application crash so much when I'm using Safari? Songs just suddenly stop playing all the time, causing me to go back into iPod to start it up again. It's not a fluke: This happens regularly, and regardless of what I'm doing.

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[ Posted at 12:15 PM | Permalink ]

 

iPhone observation: Mail application, Take Two

So my previous post about the Mail application was a bit limited, by definition: I'm trying to wrap the iPhone around what I need, not cover every single feature. However, I did get a number of interesting email replies, so I thought I'd follow up on what I've learned, both from readers and from the local Apple Store, where I spent the morning with the concierge.

The iPhone supports a few email services, if not natively, then at least specially. These are, in order of sophistication, from best to worst:

Yahoo! Mail. Unique to the iPhone, Yahoo! Mail is a special form of "push" email that is described as being IMAP-like, which is excellent if you use this service. Yahoo! will literally push server-based changes--like new folders, new email, and so on--to the device automatically every fifteen minutes.

.Mac. Users of Apple's .Mac email can take advantage of IMAP technology, which is a first-rate experience, but not as sophisticated as push email: Basically, the iPhone has to manually sync with the server on a set schedule (every fifteen minutes by default).

AOL. AOL uses IMAP on the iPhone. I finally did get this working, and from what I can tell, the big advantage is that the iPhone only requires your name, user name, and password, and then configures the server settings automatically.

Any IMAP email service. If you are using a third party email service that supports IMAP, and have access to the server information you need to configure it, iPhone is good to go. This includes, by the way, the supposed "Exchange support" that's advertised in the Mail Settings on the device: Exchange only works if its configured for IMAP.

Gmail. Though Google's email service is listed as one of the top-tier choices in the Add Account section of Mail Settings, it's just POP access. The only advantage is that you don't have to look up the server settings; the iPhone will do that automatically when you enter your name, email address, and password. As I noted in the last post, this is really unsophisticated and doesn't meet my needs.

Any POP email service. If you are using a third party email service that supports POP, and have access to the server information you need to configure it, iPhone is good to go. Note that POP email is unsophisticated but better than nothing.

Web mail. You can also access any Web-based email service, like Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, or whatever, through Safari, which ranges from OK to completely unacceptable depending on the service and various browser compatibility issues. I've found Gmail access to be decent (but not "good") via Gmail Mobile in Safari, and I'll certainly use that before I ever configure it for POP.

Basically, if you use Yahoo!, you're all set: Yahoo! Mail on the iPhone is a first class experience. I'd describe .Mac mail, AOL Mail, and any other IMAP-based email as a second class experience. Everything else is a joke, or at best better than nothing. In my particular case, I'm stuck using Gmail Mobile via the Web, which is what I was doing on the Windows Mobile-based Motorola Q, though Google does offer a (lousy) Java-based Gmail client on some smart phones too. So it's basically the same experience, with some pros and cons. On the iPhone, the screen is bigger and nicer looking, which is good. But you can't download attachments, which is terrible.

Anyway. Mail, like much of the functionality on the iPhone, remains a mixed bag, unless you happen to be a Yahoo! Mail user.

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[ Posted at 12:07 PM | Permalink ]

 

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

iPhone observation: Mail application decent, but doesn't deliver what I want

While the iPhone's email application, Mail, benefits greatly from the large screen of the device, the actual email support it delivers is sub-part, even by smart phone standards. (Look to Windows Mobile's Pocket Outlook Email for an obvious comparison.) Most of the email support is POP-based, though those lucky enough to have IMAP support can at least take advantage of that system's work-on-the-server approach. (.Mac mail support in the iPhone is a bit better, though that won't help most users.) Obviously, the best mobile email is text-based, and here the iPhone does a great job of displaying messages with its gorgeous screen and crisp fonts. Now if we could only do things like download and edit Word documents and not just view them. And why can't I save JPEG attachments to the device and use them for wallpaper? Too obvious?

One Mail problem points to an obvious design flaw in the iPhone: If you click on a hyperlink in Mail, the link opens in Safari. But if you want to get back to email, there's no Back button messing up the device design. So you have to click the Home button and then manually tap the on-screen Mail icon to go back to your mail, and the message you were reading. Another problem with Mail relates to one of the iPhone's many inconsistencies: If you're viewing a list of messages in your Inbox and rotate the screen to landscape mode, the display doesn't swivel with you. (This is true in some but not all other lists in the device: When you swivel while viewing songs in iPod, the view switches to Cover Flow; when you swivel while viewing videos in iPod, the view doesn't switch. Inconsistent.) The view doesn't swivel when you're viewing email messages or attached Word documents either. Both would benefit from this possibility, but because the iPhone does this in other places, it's bewildering when it doesn't work. Apple makes a big deal out of the screen rotation stuff: It should work consistently everywhere.

Ultimately, I was hoping that the iPhone would have a killer native Gmail application, but really all it has is a POP-based Gmail client. That's useless to me because I organize my email up on the server using Gmail's amazing labels-based technology, which treats email like a database table which you can access using different filtered views. This stuff doesn't get pulled down to any client, POP or otherwise, so Google and/or Apple would need to actually do some work to make the iPhone a first-class Gmail citizen. I desperately want a smart phone that can do this. The iPhone isn't it.

Update: I've written a follow-up to this post which could be of interest: iPhone observation: Mail application, Take Two

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[ Posted at 5:09 PM | Permalink ]

 

Monday, July 02, 2007

Verizon Upgrades EV-DO

The iPhone may make my Motorola Q look silly by comparison, but the tables are turned when it comes to using the "high speed" Internet services both devices can access: EV-DO is just way faster than EDGE. Well, it looks EV-DO just got even faster:
Verizon Wireless kicked some network sand in the face of AT&T on Friday by announcing its entire EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) network has been upgraded with higher speeds and lower latency.

Although the Apple iPhone going on sale at Apple and AT&T stores Friday has won praise for its design, features and Wi-Fi capability, in its current form the phone uses EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), a form of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) that falls far short of the nation's fastest cellular systems.EDGE averages 70K bits per second to 135K bps downstream.

Verizon announced Friday that its whole EV-DO network has been upgraded to EV-DO Revision A, which the carrier said offers 600K bps to 1.4M bps downstream and between 500K bps and 800K bps upstream. Its earlier EV-DO network delivered 400K bps to 700K bps downstream and just 60K bps to 80K bps upstream, Verizon said. Revision A is also designed for less latency, a type of delay that can hurt time-sensitive applications such as multimedia.

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[ Posted at 1:53 PM | Permalink ]

 

Apple apparently sold a lot of iPhones

No surprise there. I guess the only question is how many were actually sold.

Apple May Have Sold 700,000 IPhones, Beating Estimate
Shoppers may have bought as many as 700,000 units over the weekend, Goldman Sachs Inc. analyst David Bailey said, twice his projection of 350,000. Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster pegged sales at about 500,000, more than twice his original 200,000 estimate.
Apple sold 525,000 iPhones since launch
Apple Inc. sold about 525,000 iPhones at Apple and AT&T Inc. stores in the first weekend since its June 29 launch, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday, citing an analyst.
Apple's Opening Weekend: 200,000 iPhones Sold
According to a Global Equities analyst, Apple sold 200,000 iPhones on launch, which if we average the price between the 4GB and the 8GB models, comes to a tidy $110 million, double the $47.2 million box office of Pixar's Ratatouille over the same weekend. Granted, the iPhone costs a little more than a movie ticket, but if the figures are accurate (Apple has yet to release official numbers) it's a box-office smash for Apple.
That last one is an interesting comparison. I recall when Microsoft launched Halo 2 for the Xbox, they also compared its record-setting sales to Hollywood blockbusters:
This month's launch of Halo 2 was the biggest video game event of all time: In its first day of availability, Microsoft made over $135 million on Halo 2, far more than the opening weekend draw of any Hollywood blockbuster in movie history.

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[ Posted at 1:35 PM | Permalink ]

 

iPhone observation: Battery life

One area in which the iPhone excels is battery life. Granted, I've only done one test, but this is where Apple's other mobile devices--notebook computers and iPods--have never lived up to expectations. In my first battery life test, the iPhone ran for an impressive 5 hours and 29 minutes before shutting down. This is impressive because the first hour of so of that, I was browsing the Web over EDGE (painful, and with many lost connections, while the Motorola Q on EV-DO hummed along and worked faster and much more reliably), while the final four hours were spent playing through the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun" fully twice. By comparison, you can almost watch an iPod battery run down in real time while playing back video, especially the first (2005) version of the 5G iPod with video. The iPhone, somehow, handles this with aplomb. Again, quite impressive.

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[ Posted at 9:27 AM | Permalink ]

 

Countdown to iPhone 1.01

What's the over/under on the first iPhone patch? Or the next upgrade to iTunes?

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[ Posted at 8:59 AM | Permalink ]

 

Sunday, July 01, 2007

iTunes 7.3

So Apple released iTunes 7.3 on Friday to correspond with the release of the iPhone. But it turns out that this release actually addresses one of the most maddening flaws in the Apple TV: Previously, you couldn't stream photos to the device if it was full with your other media. Here's the Apple description:
Wirelessly share digital photos from any computer in your home with Apple TV
Simple, no? But this is huge, and a big deal for anyone who's been frustrated by this problem.