Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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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.

Wrong numbers, redacted

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It used to be that I’d get phone calls from people who had mistakenly dialed the wrong number. We’d do that awkward verbal dance – I would ask them again who they were trying to reach and they’d play along, only to apologize once the error was clear and then abruptly hang up. I’d occasionally get someone rude, demanding to know my name instead as if I had had the audacity to have this number instead of it belonging to one of their friends.

I rarely get wrong number phone calls anymore. What I do get are text messages from people I don’t know. Fortunately, these are usually far more entertaining than wrong number calls. Here’s an example of a wrong number text message exchange I recently had:
As you can see, I first attempted to ignore the message, thinking that the wrong number would be recognized and I would be spared further messages without any action required on my part. However, this was not to be and I felt I had to respond to be clear that I was not the intended recipient of these texts. 
I admit that I was puzzled by the question asked by my dear anonymous texter to explain what “You have the wrong number” means. How is that not clear? Did he (or she) think I meant that his own number was wrong in some way, that I was expecting a text from him from a different number? I was sorely tempted to ask him why my reply wasn’t understood, but I thought that would be tempting fate. What if he took that question as an insult to his intelligence – and he would be partially correct – and then attempted to call me to speak to me about said insult? Ye gods! Absolutely unacceptable. So, I replied more thoroughly and never received a response. I guess there’s no text messaging equivalent to the “abrupt apology and hang up” move. That’s okay, though – the entertainment value I got out of this outweighed the minor lack of courtesy endured and I can only imagine what kind of wrong number messages I’ll get when my iPhone can receive MMS messages with the 3.0 firmware release this summer. I’m sure more hilarity will ensue then.

My near-naked iPhone and a quick look at the first Google Voice app

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The wonderful folks over at Proporta have sent me a few items to review and first up is their Maya case for my iPhone 3G (it will fit the iPod Touch and other products as well). My iPhone in its Incase Slider won’t fit into this case, which made me realize that my iPhone would need to be naked in order to use the Maya case enough to review it. I couldn’t bear that thought one little bit so I ordered a DecalGirl skin to give it at least some protection. This is not the first time I’ve used a DecalGirl skin, and while this brand wasn’t my first choice since there are others that cover more of the iPhone, they had the design I liked the best (courtesy of DecalGirl’s site):

While I’m at it, I’ll do a review of this skin as well shortly.
If you’ve ever checked out the About page on my site, you’ve probably seen my Google Voice contact button (it used to be a GrandCentral button). If you have a Google Voice number and an iPhone, you might be interested to know that there is currently an app available to let you use your Google Voice account to make calls, and there’s another one with more features due out soon. The one currently in the App Store is called GV Dialer – I mistakenly purchased this thinking it was the first Google Voice app I’d heard of, GV Mobile. GV Dialer works, but it does not offer the ability to use the text messaging feature now available in Google Voice, which GV Mobile does. Fortunately, GV Dialer was only $2.99, so I didn’t waste too much money on it – I’ll most likely ditch it for GV Mobile once it’s available in the App Store.
A few quick thoughts on GV Dialer:
  • I had a small glitch setting it up – it wouldn’t let me scroll down to the email address field after entering my Google Voice number. I can make calls still, so the missing email address didn’t affect its operation.
  • I never needed to enter my password to start making calls with the application. UPDATE: At first I thought this was a major security issue in that someone else could easily use only your Google Voice number to make calls on your account, but it turns out that your iPhone’s phone number must be registered with your Google Voice account, which makes it more secure.
  • You can use this application instead of the original Phone application all the time – you can set it to ask you before making a call to use your Google Voice account or make the call through your cellular provider just as you would in the Phone app. 
Here are a few screenshots:
The Ask on Call setting in action
Settings


Shortcuts


Dialing a number



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!

Dumb phones are beyond my ken

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While visiting family in San Diego the weekend before last, my sister-in-law handed me her new cell phone, asking me to show her how to do a few things since, somehow, my day job dictates that I know everything about every cell phone model currently on the market. Of course, it doesn’t, but I give it the old college try when someone hands me their cell phone anyway. Hers happened to be an exceptionally basic flip phone from Verizon. And it stumped me.

My internal geek monster has driven me to find the most feature-filled and cool smartphones in the past several years. As a result, I’m used to my phones being able to slice, dice, and chop, all at the same time if necessary. Her phone doesn’t. There was no Bluetooth and no camera. The screen was tiny and I couldn’t find a video/music player or internet browser on it anywhere. It had a dedicated 911 button and 3 large buttons that spelled I-C-E right below that itty-bitty screen. It was hideous and thoroughly functional all at once and I died a little inside when I touched it.

I can grasp that not everyone needs a multifunctional phone that can do everything. My husband is a prime example – he is more or less satisfied with the 6-year old Razr that I got him for Christmas so long ago (he asked for it – surely you wouldn’t think that I picked it out for him?). He uses it as a phone first, then as a text message reader to get through the barrage of texts I send him on a daily basis, and he needs nothing more from it. I see it, but I don’t understand it. I’m supposed to be a smart girl (at least according to my grades and standardized test scores from the days of yore) but I cannot wrap my mind around why someone wouldn’t want to be able to check their email, take a picture of something funny you see and send it to someone else right away, make up your shopping list, watch a YouTube video, or read an ebook on your phone. Why would you deny yourself this kind of functionality willingly? Does. Not. Compute.

Once I digested and made peace with the severe limitations of my sister-in-law’s cell phone, I reset her ICE contacts (which she had accidentally set to the wrong person), changed her husband’s ringtone so she would know right away when he was calling, and set up several speed dial contacts for her. She is an intelligent woman and could definitely have figured this out on her own, but simply lacked the time to mess around with it between work and managing 3 young children. Not to mention the fact that I gave one of her children a bloody nose while I was there, adding to her general level of busyness. Um, to be clear, the bloody nose was was an accident involving a baseball, an overzealous Aunt Marianne enjoying the ability to put a little heat on a throw a bit too much, and a setting sun obscuring said child’s vision. Aunt Marianne is deeply sorry and promises never to do that again. Ever. And that goes for manhandling her sister-in-law’s depressingly barren cell phone as well. That’s all I have to say about that.

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