Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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The madness must stop. I think.

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The iPhone 3GS release frenzy is winding down a bit and I’ve had a little time to reflect. I have purchased each new iPhone model on release day and have even procured spare iPhones to use as back-ups along the way. Why do I need more than one iPhone? I don’t know. What I do know is that this is crazy. I can’t really keep this up if Apple is going to release a new iPhone every year, can I?

Of course, this train of thought prompted me to think of what could possible be changed hardware-wise in the next iPhone generation. An even better camera? Definitely. A slimmer or smaller design? Possibly. A high-res screen, perhaps with OLED technology? Faster internals to keep up with more demanding firmware and apps? Perhaps. But will these things be enough for me to upgrade yet again? Can’t I just be happy for more than 12 months with my shiny new iPhone 3GS?
To be clear, I haven’t been the kind of girl to keep a cell phone for very long, ever. I think that my first-generation and 3G iPhones have been the cell phones I’ve kept the longest, putting me at a maximum of 1 year of cell phone monogamy, so to speak. But, even while I had my iPhones, I was tempted by other phones. The Blackberry Storm called to me with its large screen and empty promises of stability and usability. The T-Mobile G1 flirted outrageously, flaunting its Android operating system while vaguely pretending to be slim and svelte. The Pre was probably the most tempting, slyly reminding me of fond memories of past Palm devices, but the 3GS easily drew my attention once it was released.
Regardless, I am happy with my new 32GB iPhone 3GS (the 16GB I started out with is being returned). I still look fondly at my factory-unlocked 3G, but its slowness compared to my 3GS is noticeable enough to make me think it’s going on eBay sooner rather than later. And I suspect that, despite my best intentions, Apple will again woo me with a new device next year.
In related news, Apple has posted a couple of helpful bits of information on their support site. They’ve published this chart showing Bluetooth profiles under 3.0 for all iPhone models here:
Note the incomplete implementation of the AVRCP profile that does not permit skip forward/backward and fast-forward/backward capability even if your accessory has controls for these functions.
And, they’ve also published a chart of 3.0 capabilities by iPhone model, which can also be called a “See what you’re missing by not buying the latest iPhone model” chart as well:
Sneaky boogerheads.
My iPhone 3GS vs. 3G vs. first-generation iPhone comparison review is coming along. I want to include some video samples and I’ve been waiting for some nicer weather to get some good video of my dog running around like a nut in the yard. According to the forecast, Saturday will probably be the day for that as it looks like we’ll get a brief reprieve from this endless cloudiness and rain.

Check out the new iPhone 3G S Guided Tour

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I’ve got a good bit of bandwidth available for the month, so I thought I’d host this iPhone 3G S guided tour video since Apple’s site is getting a bit slammed at the moment. Nelson is your friendly and too-perky host for this video but it gives a nice overview of the new features.
This will stay up until my hosting company sends a large man named Vito to my house to break my kneecaps.
Oh, and I’m definitely going to buy an iPhone 3G S (as if that was ever in doubt). And I totally called the VoiceOver feature in the new iPhone, for the record. 😉 

I am a weak, weak geek who has been wooed by iPhone 3.0 beta 3

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I did it. I upgraded my iPhone 3G to the 3.0 beta 3 (thanks, Rick!). Yes, I said I wasn’t going to do it before. I know, I know. But how could I resist? Everything I was reading indicated that this beta was working really well, showing none of the lag or glitches present in the first beta. And, IT CAN DO MMS. Well, technically, anyway –  I haven’t been able to send or receive any yet thanks to the exertion of absolutely no effort whatsoever on my part to get it to work.

How is it, you ask? It’s been pretty good, with only 2 noticeable glitches and one mistake made by yours truly. The first glitch is a disappearing call button in the phone’s dial pad – see the screenshot below. Re-starting the iPhone fixes that, but it somehow reverts back after a little while. I’m not the only who’s seen this – Patrick over at JAIB has as well. I’ve gotten around it by using the keypad in the GV Dialer app and then choosing to make a Direct Call from there. If I didn’t have the GV Dialer app, I think I’d be far more put off by this glitch without a way to initiate a call to someone not in my contacts list.
What’s missing from this picture?
The second glitch is some battery meter inaccuracy during charging. I noticed this when I went to charge my iPhone on Saturday after forgetting to charge it overnight on Friday. When I set it in the dock, the battery meter immediately went to full even though it was at less than 50% when I put it in, and this full reading persisted when I removed it from the dock right away. I didn’t bother re-starting it, which might have fixed this issue, and just kept charging it since I knew it needed it anyway.
The aforementioned mistake was in relation to Notes. I was inordinately excited about the ability to sync Notes between my iPhone and the notes in the Mail application on my Mac, but when I had problems syncing my iPhone, I chose an “overwrite items on this iPhone with data on my Mac” option at some point that over-wrote all my notes on my iPhone. I’m a little bummed about this since I kept ongoing shopping lists and other minutiae there. They’re saved in the back-up file made before I upgraded to 3.0, so I might try to find a way to extract them and even re-create them if I have to. Despite this, I am very happy to be able to create and edit notes on my Mac and my iPhone and have them all stay in sync with each other. Why Apple didn’t do this from the beginning I’ll never understand.
I’m also happy to report that Google Maps works flawlessly, which was a concern of mine after reading reports of it not working well in the first beta.
I know there are supposedly over 100 new features (!) in 3.0 – there’s a good list of them here – but they don’t stand out to me extraordinarily in daily use unless I think about it. I like having landscape mode available when reading and writing emails, notes, and text messages. I’ve used copy and paste, though I find I activate it often when I don’t mean to when double-tapping to zoom. NetShare still seems to work (yay!) though very slowly. I don’t use the search function much but I like that it’s now an option. I am very pleased that I can now choose to open a link in a new page in Safari. 
There is one thing for which I am exceptionally grateful in 3.0 – the ability to turn off those damned repeat notifications for new text messages. I really only need one notification to let me know I’ve received a text message.  The additional ones made me think I’d received another message, causing me to check and then be immediately disappointed that I’m not nearly popular enough to have received more than one at a time.  Whose brilliant idea was that in the first place? I curse the engineer who thought this would be a good feature. A pox on you and yours!

Why my friends and family are afraid of the iPhone 3.0 firmware

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Well, they’re not exactly afraid of it now, but they will be. You want to know why? MMS. Yeah, that’s it. MMS. 

For the past year and a half, roughly, they’ve lived in relative peace, receiving only text messages from me to communicate my location, ask if anything is needed from the grocery store while I’m there, and other mundane things. I’m not sure why, but I’ve evolved (or de-volved, depending on your opinion on the state of human interaction relative to modern technology) into the type of girl who’d rather exchange texts than talk on the phone with someone when I’m not at home. I mean, I’ll do it if I get a call while I’m out and bored or I’m going to be in one spot for a little while to make a conversation feasible without interruptions or unduly disturbing others around me. But I’d much rather have my conversations in private, what with my potty mouth and all. It’s safer that way, particularly for the children around me whose parents clap their hands swiftly and firmly over their ears when they hear what I’m saying. (Actually, I’m not that bad in public – I do watch my mouth, I swear.)
Anyway, I’ve really missed not being able to send MMS messages, and I intend to make up for the recent past when this hasn’t been possible with my iPhones as soon as 3.0 is out. For starters, my husband will receive MMS pictures of every damn funny thing I see when he’s not with me. Unfortunately for him, I am easily amused. Very easily amused. 
Next, my friends will get numerous pictures of my dog doing silly things, which occurs often, though this is probably more a function of the fact that I’m very easily amused. If my mother remembers how to open the messaging application on the Samsung A747 I helped her pick out a couple of years ago, she’ll get videos of me assuring her that I am indeed alive and in one piece after I miss one of her phone calls and fail to call her back within 1.34642 seconds of receiving the voicemail she leaves. My dad will receive short instructional videos on how to navigate through the Macintosh operating system on the iBook I gave him for Christmas years ago in response to his infamously long voicemails asking me what the red, yellow, and green buttons do in the top left corner of every window he opens, or who this Sherlock character is and what else can he do besides show movie times.
Do I have your cell phone number? If I do, you should mentally prepare yourself now. If I don’t, well, count your lucky stars.

VoiceOver on the next iPhone? Yes, please!

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For work, I reviewed the latest iPod Shuffle released by Apple and got to try out the VoiceOver technology it features. When I first heard about it, I thought it was gimmicky and that it would be slow and irritating to use. But after using the Shuffle, I found out my initial thoughts were incorrect – it works quickly and is a pretty neat feature that doesn’t require you to look at the iPod to see what song is playing and navigate around. 

While on the train home the other night, I actually reached for the control button on my V-Moda headphones with the intention of activating VoiceOver to get the name of the song I was listening to since it was one I hadn’t heard in a while. At this point, I realized I was listening to music on my iPhone, not the Shuffle, and I was briefly disappointed to realize that I needed to get my iPhone out of my pocket and hit the home button to see the lock screen version of the now playing screen. Definitely not a hard thing to do, but I admit that I am creature who adores small conveniences.
Of course, this near-reflex and resulting disappointment made me wonder if this is a feature that Apple will add to the next iPhone. Or maybe a better question would be, why wouldn’t they? I’d bet good money that the next iPhone model will get a hardware change to allow it to receive volume control commands from a headphone remote control, just as you find on the latest pair of in-ear headphones released by Apple. VoiceOver is a feature activated via iTunes with the Shuffle and it must not take up much memory or it wouldn’t go over well on a 4GB Shuffle. Why not add the long press on the control button to activate VoiceOver, a command which does nothing now on the current iPhone? As far as I can see, there’s absolutely nothing to lose with doing this.
Wait a minute. I lied. A long press on the control button could be a good trigger for voice command functions with wired or Bluetooth headsets on the iPhone. Speaking as a geeky girl who doesn’t really need voice command functionality in her cell phone since her car can already do this for her with her iPhone, I still vote for VoiceOver instead. Unless voice command will allow me to do something super cool with my iPhone that has heretofore been impossible, like being able to dictate the contents of an SMS to be automatically sent to my husband to let him know this will be the weekend we buy him a new cell phone, I’m not interested. Plus, voice command wouldn’t be as useful a feature as VoiceOver on the iPod Touch in comparison. Bring on the VoiceOver!
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