Category: iPhone

A Decade of Tech

Around Christmas-time back in December and during our celebrating the beginning of 2010, I started thinking about the computery, gadgety, techy goodies that I so enjoy, that we didn’t have (or barely had) back at the beginning of year 2000. Since we have so much technology now that we take for granted, I wanted to make a note for posterity. The day will come when we can’t imagine our lives without these benefits, even as our memory fades of how we lived before they came along. Already I know I and my wife wonder how we got along without cell phones, not having the ability to “reach out and touch” anyone anywhere at any time. This has also been our family “decade” for having kids, and so I know for them the personal computer has been a constant all of their young lives. Will some of what I list below be in their oldest and fondest memories of electrical gadgetry?

Here’s my list of the best from the past 10 years:

Digital Video Recorder (DVR): I honestly can’t remember the last time I scheduled myself to watch a show live on TV. To me that would be a horrible waste of time to watch a one or two hour show, and be beholden to the time frame that some producer schmuck decided was best for his ratings for a show to air. To be stuck to watching little 7 or 8 minutes segments of a show around which I have to get something to eat, or get the kids ready for bed, or take a leak. That falls under my definition of retardity! TiVo really kicked off the DVR revolution, but being the cheapskate hacker I am, about five years ago I built my own dvr box out of an old PC with a nice TV adapter card (the only part I bought) running Linux. Such liberation! So many options! So many commercials to be skipped!! I could schedule a show to record while sitting at my desk at work. I could even schedule a whole season of shows to record automatically. The rise of the DVR marked the beginning of the end of broadcast television as we know it.

BitTorrent: While the DVR changed how and when I watched television, my method of acquiring shows has changed just as much. Along with the rise of the DVR is also the mainstream use of bittorrent. Yes, it can be used to download movies, music, and software illegally. I cast no stones. But for TV shows, it gets a bit murky for me. I could set up the DVR to record shows and watch them, skipping the commercials. I also could use BT to download shows to the DVR that have the commercials cropped out. The downloaded shows transfer to my laptop quite easily so that I’m even not attached to the TV itself. Let’s say that I choose what is most expedient.

High Speed Internet: And of course, what good would bitorrent be without fast internet access? Sure, we had high speed 10 years ago, but today it’s about 10 times faster and the price is not much more than it used to be back then. We also have better options, with cable and DSL offered to most homes close to town and satellite for the unfortunate county folks. The US still lags behind some of the Asian countries (Japan is getting 100Mb/s to the home?!?) but at least some of the phone companies like Verizon are stepping up and getting more fiber to the curb. It’s great to see the cable companies and the telcos fighting each other to give consumers more options. And it’s only been in these past few years that the “triple-plays” (internet, phone, television) have been worthy and affordable options.

Smartphones: This would have to be my personal, all-time favorite category from the past decade. In my view, the growth and acceptance of regular cell phones in the past 10 years, and now smartphones in these recent years, is what has really changed people at an integral level. By smartphones I refer to the class of phones that have PIM options, internet access and sometimes wifi, can download new software, and have full QWERTY keyboards (hard or soft). Cell phones are now so integrated into our lives, we think of them like electricity or water service in our homes. We feel naked and vulnerable if we leave home without them. They might cause cancer? We are more than willing to take the risk (besides, the smarties keep proving and disproving that fact… just like the detriments/benefits of coffee!). Most kids down to age five have them now; they’re ubiquitous. The jump from “dumb” phone to smartphone was complete in 2007 when Apple released the first iPhone. Simply said, this phone absolutely dominates the smartphone market at least here in the US and is spreading around the world. I have always been after “One Gadget To Rule Them All” and I think the iPhone fits that almost perfectly (given the level of technology we have today). Sure, there are many people who are content with a normal cell phone that lets them talk to people, and perhaps do a little texting. But the iPhone and Android and Windows Mobile phones give you access to so much more information… all only a few keystrokes away. Any time you need it.

Global Positioning Systems / GPS: Thanks you, tech gods, for giving me a device that means I never again have to ask for directions! =D Surely I jest, but this is a class of devices that is so practical and fun, I can’t imagine not having it. I got a portable Garmin GPS device four or five years ago and I still remember the fascination of taking it on a trip and being able to watch it record a track of every point along the way. It told us how far we’d gone and how far we had to go… and how long it would take to get there. It told me how soon and when to turn (or turn around!). It gave me POI along the way. It could mark exactly the tent site where we camped or the hotel where we stayed. We also quickly got into geocaching which is awesome for family togetherness, and one of our favorite things to do when we travel. It is also pretty cool, after getting back from a trip, to plug in the recorded tracks to Google maps and show exactly where we were. Again, the GPS is such a practical device, it’s hard to imagine not having it. Many vehicles have it built-in now, and the day will come when it is a standard option. Please come quickly…

MP3 players: Lastly, the humble digital music player. The first one I ever had was won at a tech demo from one of our company VARs. 256MB of digital goodness, baby! Of course, at an average of 4MB per MP3 file, it didn’t hold more than a few albums… but still! Music that was infinitely reproducable, would never degrade, which I had copies of on all my computers, and could now carry in my pocket. I could listen to my music at home, at work, on a plane, in the van. Of course the memory sizes and types of MP3 players have skyrocketed in the intervening years (again, Apple raised the bar early on and still dominates to this day), but it’s just so cool to know that all the tunes I want are really only an earbud away. Any time, anywhere.
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All in all, a great decade for tech that makes life more interesting and, well, more fun. Here’s to 2020 and what we’ll take for granted in those future days!

WinMo No Mo

After a long run with Windows Mobile, I am done and done. It took a fair amount of deliberation, but I decided to go the Apple fanboy route and get an iPhone 3GS… and I can hardly begin to put in words how absolutely glad I am that I switched! For the past several months I have been able to play with the iPhone a little here and there, as several people I know have the phones and were more than happy to demonstrate all the things the phone does so quickly and so beautifully. And that’s what finally won me over… just how easy and intuitive it is to work with this thing! It really IS like a breath of fresh air in using a smart phone, not having to worry about using a stylus or fingernail (my long-time method of screen operations) for selecting an arrow or a micro “OK” or “X” button on the screen or even hitting the hardware Back button. No having to navigate through a Start menu or Programs list, all apps are just a swipe or two away. And one button to get back to the main springboard screen. Easy! While I can’t say it is a perfect phone, this is as close to one that I’ve ever had.

This ease-of-use comes down to probably the biggest transition for me, switching from a 320×240 resistive screen to a phone with a 480×320 capacitive screen. This is what takes you from a stylus to a finger touch. It’s so liberating and intuitive to use finger gestures to work my way around the iPhone’s springboard interface and also inside the applications. This is really what separates the “old-school” phones with the next generation ones. The future does NOT include a stylus! As a quick fer instance, to make a phone call is as easy as a swipe and a few finger taps. My old phone required about twice that many operations, especially if I was calling someone not in my main contacts page or speed dial list. And absolutely forget trying to do all that one-handed! The larger screen also has more real estate for web pages, emails, ebooks, etc., and the denser pixel count also looks better overall.

One if my hesitations with going iPhone was the lack of a physical keyboard, like I’ve had on my last two WinMo phones. But I have found, to my amazement and pleasure, that the on-screen keyboard is easier to use and I’m faster and more accurate using it even with the one finger, hunt-n-peck method than I was with my old phone’s keyboard! Even in portrait mode, it is quite usable… and being able to rotate the phone and have the screen automatically rotate to the larger keyboard is SO SO welcome in my world. There was just something about having to slide out my old phone’s keyboard and wait that second or two for the screen to rotate that just got to be so annoying. My old phone was also continuously popping up the onscreen keyboard in portrait mode when it thought I needed to do some text input. Again, annoying, because then I’d have click on that infuriatingly small keyboard button at the bottom of the screen to make it go away. Good riddance!!

Apps… need I say more? There are now over 100,000 available for the iPhone. I know I won’t even use a fraction of that, but having such a choice is awesome. As they say, there really IS an app for that. On the WinMo side, let’s see… oh, they just launched the Windows Mobile “app store” which is clunky and most developers don’t like. Ah, and you have to have a WinMo 6.5 phone to use it (oh I forgot they “back-ported” it to 6.1 too now, win!). Wow, now that’s a compelling reason to upgrade. But let’s talk about the CAB file method of installing software. It’s not bad, but there were many times I would click on a link in PocketIE to download and install a CAB file, and the stupid browser would start loading the file like it was a web page! Lots of binary code! Ok, so it’s finally downloaded, so you open it, Do you want to install this? It hasn’t been signed! Where do you want to install it? Oh, your phone RAM is getting low, better install to the SD card, but wait, the developer says it’s more stable if it’s installed in the phone’s RAM… blah blah blah.

Install an iPhone app: tap tap done. Backed up in iTunes.

But, how can I like a phone that’s so locked down? Simple, I did a jailbreak on it. The first jailbreak for the 3GS was released not long ago (I got my phone like only a week before… good timing!) and it opens the world for setting up your iPhone for how YOU want it to look. My personal favorite is the ability to show email, sms, and calendar info on the lock screen, so at a glance you can see what’s going on and what you need to check. Of course there are gobs of themes out there to let you deck out and “decorate” your phone, but I like to keep it simple. What’s really great is that this is in addition to using the Apple app store, it just adds on other software sources. The downside is that it voids your warranty… but I’m willing to risk it.

And battery life… I was worried that even going with the iPhone I’d only get about a day’s worth of juice on an overnight charge (this preconception came after talking with my iPhone compadres). That’s what my old phone was doing, even with push email turned off and no wifi or gps running. Well, to its credit, that phone was approaching two years of continuous use on the original battery, but even in its prime it still HAD to have a nightly charge. The iPhone, on the other hand, is doing excellent with battery life! I can easily go two full days of average use and still be rockin’ at 25-30% charge. I know it’s fresh and new and these batteries fall off over time, but I’m really happy with it right now.

One other tipping point was the fact that Microsoft is only just now starting to come out with phones running WinMo 6.5, and are planning v7 late next year. There was nothing in 6.5 to make me want to upgrade (from 6.1) just to have it, and v7 is sounding like it’s where the first iPhone was back in 2007. (As a quick aside, most WinMo phones are NOT fully upgradable… my old phone only went from v5.0 originally to 6.0 to 6.1, no chance of 6.5 working on it. The iPhone? Even the most recent release can install on a Gen 1!) (Another aside… there are 6.5 ROMs that DO work on my old phone, but they are FAR from official.) I had a previous post here on the blog about the first capacitive screen WinMo phone, the HD2, coming out early next year. It does look intriguing and the size and resolution of that screen looks absolutely gorgeous, but it only shines because HTC put their own interface over the default WinMo apps. (Also looks like only T-Mobile will carry it, bummer.) There are the same, old, boring, crappy applications, especially for mail. My other strong leaning was the HTC TouchPro2 which is out now, but you know, after watching several videos of people using it and seeing how the good stuff was still tied to the HTC TouchFlo3D interface (which I’ve never been fond of), it just wasn’t enough.

So, guess I just have to say, sorry, Windows Mobile. We had a lot of fun and Microsoft could have taken you to such heights. It’s too bad they didn’t make you a priority years ago, especially when Apple first dropped the iPhone bomb. They have the money, developers, talent, (shrinking) market share, EVERYthing they need, but no vision. Now, even when there are inklings that they’ve finally seen the light, it is too little and much too late. Of course, I’ll keep watch on the WinMo world to see how it develops, but since the iPhone feels like a new and liberated world for me, I can’t see ever going back. I’m quite content and happy with that.

Remember this mantra, Microsoft: It – Just – Works.

[2009.12.01 addition: Just came across this post [http://www.mobilitysite.com/2009/12/droid-iphone-or-hd2-which-would-i-choose/] from Chris Leckness on MobilitySite.com, he compares the iPhone 3Gs, HTC HD2, and Droid… and basically sums up a lot of what I’m thinking. iPhone is still the best.]

More phone than player

I see a lot of people with iPhones, but rarely see them listening to music on them. Guess that’s more of a side benefit since it’s more about the apps now.