Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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Reveling in the plethora of Palm Pre reviews

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If you’ve checked just about any of the major technology and news sites today, you’ve probably come across a review of the Palm Pre. I got a chance to see it at CES in January (and did a first impressions piece on it here) and I’ve been anxious to see it released. That day is almost here and I’m actually toying with the idea of buying one to see what it’s like and returning it within the allowed window and calling the re-stocking fee I’d need to pay a rental fee.

When I first saw the Pre in January, I was very pleasantly surprised and even Tweeted that the Pre could draw me away from my iPhone. Alas, in CDMA form, this isn’t an option as I have no desire whatsoever to switch to Sprint and give up international roaming capability. However, the reviews so far have shown that WebOS is really slick, if a little sluggish at times, and its Synergy synchronization, notifications, and multi-tasking abilities are quite nice. Most surprising to me is that it can sync media with iTunes, minus any DRM-protected files, of course. Frankly, I don’t think Apple will let this continue, though they probably won’t be obvious about breaking this functionality and disguise it as the result of some other change to iTunes functionality.
I’ve been following the expected Pre availability news online, including the leaked Best Buy inventory shots over at EverythingPre.com, and I’m really disappointed that Palm isn’t better positioned to have a grand launch for the Pre. Somewhere along the line, there must have been problems with suppliers, manufacturing, or even delays in development at Palm to result in this kind of low inventory. It doesn’t feel like Palm pulled out all the stops to ensure that the device that could put them back on the map among smartphone makers landed solidly in front of as many consumers as possible.
So, should I try to get one or not? If I did, it would only be to do a comparison review with my iPhone 3G. Adding another cell phone account at $70 per month is completely out of the question for financial reasons – not to mention the fact that I don’t need another cell phone no matter how much I might like to have one – so it would need to go back within the return period. However, with such low stock expected and my lack of desire to camp out for several hours to be sure to get one, I don’t think it would happen even if I were motivated to try.
At any rate, if you’d rather not read the multiple reviews out there, there’s a good summary of the major ones here. I will continue to mull over the thought of trying to get one. If you see far too many Tweets from me on Saturday morning blathering on about a trip to Best Buy, standing in line for hours, etc., you’ll know I decided to try to get one after all. I’ll try to contain my excitement to a reasonable level, but I make no guarantees whatsoever to remain calm should I actually get one of the shiny devils in my hand.

WWDC approaches and I am getting antsy

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WWDC is coming up soon and I’ve been keeping an eye on the iPhone rumors and cobbling together my own wish list of what the next iPhone model will have. I have seen some people question whether or not Apple will actually introduce a new iPhone model this summer. Some have even speculated that with Steve Jobs out on leave, no new iPhone models will be released until he returns. Personally, I think that’s pure and utter poppycock. Steve Jobs is an important asset at Apple, but I don’t think Apple will delay a product lunch for him – other leaders there still have a stock price to worry about and a CEO on leave doesn’t void their responsibility to stockholders. Besides, Apple has done a very good job, so far, preparing the market for the day that Steve Jobs is gone – the company has clearly survived a Macworld Expo without him, he’s been on leave now for several months and nothing has exploded at Apple HQ, and I’m sure WWDC will bring us new products and some good stuff about Snow Leopard.

Anyway, I ramble. When it comes to the next iPhone model, I think some things are no-brainers – Apple will need to add some things for the iPhone to remain competitive – while others are more dream items that would be cool to see. First, here’s what I think will definitely be included (rumor sources are linked to each):

*This is not an iPhone hardware enhancement but would be an AT&T network enhancement that would allow the iPhone to utilize existing bandwidth on their network for faster data speeds.
Of course, it will also be able to take advantage of all of the goodness that 3.0 will bring, including copy & paste, MMS, additional Bluetooth profiles and tethering, and a bunch of other features.
My personal wishlist of features that are unlikely to be added, but a girl can dream:
  • Automatic sound/vibrate mode profile switching based on location
  • iTunes synchronization via Wi-Fi
  • On-device podcast subscription management (within the iPod app)
What I’m most anxious for relative to the 3.0 firmware are the new apps that will come using the newly-available APIs. Come on, turn-by-turn GPS! I’ve found that I’ve stopped buying apps lately in a subconscious attempt to save my spending money for a GPS application that will probably cost around $100 or more – while this is pricey, I do expect it to be in line with GPS applications available for other mobile device platforms. And, I’m hoping that the developers will be smart enough to allow in-app purchases of updated maps rather than some sort of subscription service, which I think would be hard to bill for anyway given how the App Store operates.
I’ve also been thinking about the Palm Pre release scheduled for June 6. With the new iPhone model expected to be announced at WWDC on June 8, Palm is hard-pressed to find a good date. If they went later in the month, the new iPhone would probably still have the spotlight and Palm would be criticized for being “too late.” If they tried for the June 8 date as well, I think the iPhone would still garner most of the attention. Apparently, Palm was unable to release it any earlier, so June 6 is probably as good a date as any before the release of the next iPhone. They’ll at least get in a couple of good days of press coverage and they can boast of “beating” the new iPhone model out of the door, which may not be wise, but I’m sure some Palm exec will say that in some interview somewhere.
I’ve half-toyed with the idea of buying a Palm Pre just to review it and then returning it within Sprint’s return window. Aside from being tied to AT&T, I’m definitely not going for a CDMA device anytime soon. I will get more interested when an unlocked GSM version is available, though this will most likely come from an overseas source. I’ve got my eye on Expansys.com already.
Some exciting times are coming up soon! Woo hoo!

Found: the one man in Boston who doesn’t own a cell phone

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Actually, that’s not entirely true. He does own a cell phone, but he says it remains in his car’s glove box and is never charged. This earth-shattering confession came from a guy I met at a volleyball game earlier this week. I was using my iPhone to capture a teammate’s contact information and he asked me about my iPhone to see if he should get one himself. He said he didn’t have one – later amended to the uncharged-in-glove-box story – and was curious about whether or not the iPhone would help him with his business. I was thoroughly confounded. A business owner without a cell phone? In 2009? What?

In between games, I interrogated quizzed him about how he stayed in touch with clients, scheduled appointments, and ran his business in general. It turned out that he simply made use of voicemail on his landlines or had a receptionist who fielded his calls. Someone else sorted through his emails and passed on the ones requiring responses from him. He rarely travelled out of the area and was always at a location where a landline was in easy reach. In the end, I had to admit that it sounded like he didn’t really need a cell phone at all, though I hastily added that an iPhone, or to be fair, another smartphone, could still help him. He could forward landline calls from the alternate office to his cell phone, check his email directly, and use MobileMe or some similar service to keep his calendars in sync over-the-air. 
As you may recall, my sister-in-law’s horrifyingly simple dumb phone stunned me as it was, but no cell phone at all? I was off my game and speechless. He later chuckled and said he wished he’d been able to take a picture of my face when he told me that he had no cell phone – apparently, that kind of shock and puzzlement is rarely seen in the absence of an act of God and is worthy of capture. Regardless, I think I managed to explain the iPhone’s capabilities well enough to convince him to get one this summer. He said he’s going to wait for news on the new model after I gave him a quick run-down of the rumors on its specs. 
While I am not one to count my chickens before they hatch, I think I’ve convinced him to get one. I will confirm the acquisition later this summer. 10-18. Geeky girl out.

I found a robot to keep an eye on my house

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When I was a kid, I watched the Jetsons and, while their robot, Rosie, annoyed the crap out of me with her whiny voice, I always wanted a robot of my own to take care of chores around the house. Who wouldn’t? The closest I’ve gotten is an iRobot Roomba, a lovely gift from my wonderful husband, who wasn’t quite sure why I had one on my Christmas list to begin with and who was very surprised by how excited I was when I unwrapped the present. At any rate, I’ve got my eye on a new robot. Unfortunately, it’s not advanced enough to do my dishes or anything like that, but it will be guaranteed to let me know what’s going on in my house and probably scare my dog to death. If you haven’t already guessed, I’ve got my eye on the Rovio Wi-Fi-enabled Robot Webcam.

I’ve actually been eying it for some time, but passed it off as too expensive and felt it would be a pain to set up on my Mac since the software it comes with is only for Windows. However, I Googled around for set-up instructions for the Mac and came across a related gem – there’s now an iPhone app to control your Rovio remotely. How sweet is that? As sweet as my neighbor’s delicious, home-made, honey-dipped Finikia cookies, I tell you! How can I pass this up?
So, the Rovio is now on my shiny-objects-I-must-have list, along with many other things. I just got my bonus and there are some tough decisions coming up. Should I get high-performance tires for my car for this autocross season? What about new curtains and area rugs for the house? Or a new snowboarding helmet with Bluetooth? Or should I save it all like a good girl? (Sigh.) Despite my angst, I’m sure you can already guess what I’ll end up buying…

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!
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