Tag Archive for 'iPhone'

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More iPhone features iWant

Published on March 20, 2008 in Geekery. 0 Comments Tags: , .

You heard them here first. Well, maybe not, since I haven’t been an iPhone watcher since forever, but still, I think they’re new ideas.

  • Next/Back songs in iPod by simply quickly shaking the iPhone forward or back (relative to the current screen orientation). This would be a great demo: just tip the iPhone to the right, and get the next song.
  • Better use of the motion sense-y stuff overall. C’mon, why don’t all the native apps support all 4 directions. Upsidedown should be easy too. And hey, the You Tube app really needs to support both right- and left- handed orientation – especially since sound quality varies with the integral bottom speaker, depending on where you’re sitting.
  • Please, please, please, put the Emergency Call button somewhere not immediately next to the PIN entry pad. I know it makes it look pretty and lets your screensaver picture show better, but it leads to endless screwups when you’re doing it without looking.
  • A zoom lens for the camera. Oh, wait, that’s not very realistic.
  • An engineering version of the calculator. I know, adding in the integral and Fourier code actually takes a little bit of space, but what gadget geek wouldn’t want to use RPN to input calculations on such a shiny consumer device?
  • Actually useful stock lookup links. The stock app is fine; just when I click for details on a ticker symbol I want an actually useful iPhone formatted screen about the company instead of the ad-laden and not very useful screen I get from Yahoo now. When I’m looking up stocks, I want to go to a detail page with just links to the core financials and latest finance-related news. Links to everything else can be somewhere else.

Who’s downloaded 1.1.4? How do you like it?
Who’s planning on writing an iPhone app? What is it?

Jon has more iPhone ideas, even if his blog title is somewhat… painful.

iPhone features iWant to see

Published on February 19, 2008 in Geekery. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Well, it’s an eternally in-progress list, so I’ll post it as a separate page and ask for discussion (or ideas) over here as a separate item.

I have kowtowed to the evil Apple conspiracy and bought a “compatible” headset/headphone for my iPhone, which I do like, non-standard thin plastic barrel notwithstanding. Otherwise I’m happily on 1.1.3, still in jail to reduce the worry factor. Still waiting eagerly for the SDK to come out, and for just a few key apps to get built. The default items are all good, but several could really use updates to be great, and there are a host of fairly simple things I’d love to see be native (instead of having to find someone’s website to do the work for you).

iHate iApple’s designers

Published on January 7, 2008 in Muse. 2 Comments Tags: , .

OK, hate is a strong word, given that I’ve never run a mac as my daily driver. But still, whoever on the iPhone design team decided to use a non-standard audio jack is just plain stupid.

Whether you call it a bad engineering choice – if they actually thought they needed the structural strength for the case, thereby meaning a smaller jack size – or a thoroughly evil business choice – if they simply decided to force lock-in for headsets – it was a bad choice no matter what.

I mean, sure, Apple’s got this pretty design and wow factor as huge selling points. And yes, their user interfaces are very different than the rest of the world – they are so good they’re like magic 80%+ of the time, which most people like. And the other 20% is well understood, and either you don’t mind (most humans) or you can’t stand it (geeks who need control). But that’s the software side.

Headphone jacks? 3.5mm TRS connectors have been pretty darn standard for decades now, especially for audio purposes. If they wanted small, they could have gone for the normal 2.5mm TRS that cell phones have made standard for years now. But no, Apple had to go out and do something that was almost a standard, but wasn’t. If I were in any worse of a mood, I’d compare their design choice here to Microsoft’s, but it’s been a pretty good day, so I won’t go quite that far.

But now I think of it, I do know a handful of people who’ve worked at Apple. Maybe someday I’ll get to meet the “genius” who made the final decision on this one, and get to call them stupid. Normally I’d call them dumb, because as a very small person reminds me, stupid is not a nice word. But I expect better design than this from Apple, so in this case, I’m sticking with stupid.

So – tips for over-the-ear iPhone compatible headsets, especially ones that double as phone headsets (i.e. mic too)? Preferably ones not sold by Apple, please.

iLove my iPhone

Published on January 7, 2008 in Muse. 0 Comments Tags: .

No, I’m not a pod person. I’m an iPhone person. Finally a device that combines beauty, size (i.e. small), functionality, and an actual ability to do useful stuff. Even the boxes are beautiful, although disappointingly not as intricate as the old iPod boxes used to be.
Obviously seeing and using a bunch of friend’s phones at ApacheCon helped me decide that iPhone might actually be worth it, but it was really a number of factors including some of the unfortunate events of early winter. In any case, I overcame my reluctance to spend money on my geek desires and bought one.
It’s sweet. Yes, I hear the complainers out there, but part of what you have to remember is that form and function are linked in my brain, and I happen to like the vast majority of designs that Apple produces. The case is nearly beautiful – if they had gone just a touch farther with the back, I’d love just a plain shell to play with and leave on my desk. That, plus the fact that the touch interface really is pretty nice, and turns out to be intuitive (for me, at least), means that I’m inclined to like it off the bat.
Then comes the obvious: it’s an actual computer, and – equally importantly – it’s networked. Magically. At home or at wifi hotspots it’s just as fast as browsing with my laptop, but a lot faster to turn on. And on the road, sure, the EDGE network isn’t the fastest thing in the world, but it works. Want to read your favorite blog on the train – anywhere? Sure. See a billboard for a neat product on your long car trip (while you’re a passenger, I hope)? Go online and buy it right there and then, no need to slow down.
Now it is Safari, so there are the 1% of websites that are a bit funky. And the screen is small, if beautifully crisp, so complex forms take a while of zooming and panning. But you really can do it. Heck, the only thing that didn’t make sense to me was the hit-space-for-wordcompletion on the keyboard. I kept expecting it to give me a hover listbox of alternates, but it’s word completion engine only gives the single most obvious word at a time.
And I find the other finger gestures work just right. I still wish I could spin pictures by twisting two fingers, but scrolling through long lists is fun as the items spin by with a nice acceleration rate if you flick it. I suppose if I think about it they might have overloaded the on/home button to also be off (by holding for 2 seconds), and eliminated the off button. But otherwise, it’s a very nice package of minimalism in moving hardware.
You really can watch short videos well, although I admit I haven’t tried full movies, although I might on my next plane trip. And the built-in speakers could actually function for music instead of headphones if you’re in an office or home environment.
(Pause while I smile at my beautiful folly)
Oh, and for me, the iPhone is a special treat. Not because it’s shiny, or has actual memory, or all that. But because it has SMS. My previous phone – an i500, which does a great job of being a really small color Palm plus a phone (and will be for sale soon) – didn’t really do SMS. All that power of the Palm OS and Sprint network, and no default SMS. Silly Sprint. Not that I need a ton of txtmsgs, but they are darn useful at times. I’m so much better at asynchronous messages…

I just tried to hit the STOP* key on my phone..

Published on April 13, 2007 in Geekery. 1 Comment Tags: , .

.. to cancel the pop-up dialog on my monitor, of course.

This made perfect sense to my brain, just having gotten off one conference call – using my headset, of course – and just having checked my phonemail.  (Tip: I check email far far more often than I ever check phonemail. Please join the current century.) An important factor to note is that my second monitor is a flat screen, hung on a nifty articulated arm immediately over where my phone and headset lie on the desk.
While listening to a somewhat long message, I started looking up some information on the intranet to try to answer the person’s question.  As they kept going on leaving me contact information (which I don’t need, since I can always look it up at work), I hit STOP* and DEL6 to cut the message and delete it.  At the same moment, an unrelated item pops up on my second monitor, so my fingers did the obvious and hit STOP* again to get rid of the popup.  I stopped their automatic motion towards the DEL6 key, however, proving that the brain was still engaged.

Whoever invents the DWIW interface – Do What I Want – will hopefully become very very rich.

This is doubly ironic today since some other folks I know are having their corporate phones replaced with IP phones and are getting unified messaging, so in thier case, phonemail and email really will become merged.

Cingular? Or AT&T?

Published on February 26, 2007 in Muse. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Could someone just wake me up when they make up their minds?  I mean, the incest between the various children of Ma Bell is well known, but at least it usually takes them a few years to merge and split and reproduce and be reincarnated as the original again.  But this time, it seems like our wireless bill switched for only a few months, and now it’s suddenly going back to the other name.  I forget which one; I mean I’m going to switch to Sprint (for the employee discount I get, not for any other real reason mind you) but I’m still curious.

Just wonderin’.  The power of marketing.  Molding the mind in the modern world.  One blog post at a time.