Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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Gadget Status: My current favorites

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As a geek, I find myself trying out new gadgets and accessories often. The ones I like stay in my gear bag and the ones I don’t usually find themselves in a drawer for an extended period of time and eventually get to a new home via eBay or Craigslist. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve been using lately…

iPhone cases
I have an iSkin Solo FX case that I tried out for a few weeks a while ago. I like the smooth texture of the outside of the case since this made it easy to slip it into my pocket. But the case isn’t all that flexible and I found that it stretched out a tiny bit after repeated insertions and removals of my iPhone. This probably wouldn’t be an issue for many, particularly those who don’t want or need to take the case off and put it on again frequently, but it is for me.
I have been using a Paul Frank iPhone case a lot lately (I reviewed one of these cases for the first-gen iPhone) and absolutely love it. It’s more flexible than the iSkin case and I don’t see it stretching despite how often I take my iPhone out of it. It has Julius, the trademark monkey, on the back and he has fangs (the name of the case is “Count Julius”). How could I resist a monkey with fangs?
I bought a Mophie Juice Pack Air (official site here, Amazon page here) for CES, thinking I would be roaming around so much that I wouldn’t be able to charge my iPhone as often as needed. I was right about that and found the Juice Pack to be invaluable at CES. However, I haven’t used it much at all since I got back from CES since I’m never too far from a power outlet most of the time (a benefit of working from home). I do plan on using it again, mostly when I’m going to spend the day out in the city working and when traveling, but it’s just not going to be a daily-use item for me, and I am almost tempted to sell it because of this.
I got the matte red color. While red isn’t usually a color I go for, the black and white ones were glossy plastic and this was the only one with a soft-touch finish and I liked it the best. So, red it was. It’s not a bright flashy red; it’s more like a burgundy with a metallic sheen to it and it’s not bad at all in my eyes.
Most of the time I go without a case, though, since it’s easier to fit my iPhone into my shallow girl-jeans pockets that way and there’s less to do to dock it in my car.
Bluetooth
I have a pair of Motorola S9 Bluetooth stereo headphones (thanks, Chris!) and I use these puppies every single day. I don’t always have a pocket to put my iPhone in as I putz around the house or work out that would make it possible to use wired headphones and the S9s make it easy to wash the dishes, clean the house, and exercise without any cords getting in the way. The audio quality with my iPhone 3GS isn’t the greatest, but they’re still very useable and I don’t even notice it when listening to podcasts. Battery life is decent and my only gripes are that they don’t grip my head tightly enough for my tastes and I have to put my ponytail in exactly the right place to make them totally comfortable.
Since I have a Bluetooth system in my car, I rarely use a stand-alone headset for calls. When I do, I have the first Aliph Jawbone headset. It’s a few years old now but it works like a charm still. I have been
Headphones
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It’s ALIVE! My iPhone car set-up has been perfected

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Well, this may not be perfect according to everyone’s standards, but it’s damn near close for my needs.

The hardware:

I’ve had this OEM iPod kit in my car since I bought it and it’s worked flawlessly with an old iPod nano that permanently resided in my glovebox. However, now that GPS apps are now widely available for the iPhone, I wanted to hook up my iPhone to my car so I could hear the navigation guidance audio over my car’s speakers and charge my iPhone at the same time with the same cable. Yet there were a couple of obstacles to overcome first…

  1. The iPod cable in my glovebox was not quite long enough to reach the place on my dashboard where my ProClip holder resides, so I needed an extension cable for this. 3GJuice makes a 24-inch one that sells for $24.95 on Amazon. It’s black and would have been a bit less obvious against my black dashboard, so I went for it. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Next, I tried a similar extension cable from USBFever. No dice with that one either. I half-heartedly ordered a CableJive cable, expecting to see the same result. But it worked! God bless CableJive!
  2. The iPod-your-BMW kit charges via Firewire only, so if I wanted my iPhone to get a charge – particularly important when using power-intensive apps like GPS ones – I needed a charging converter to work with my iPhone 3GS. Scosche sells one, and I got it from Amazon
    for $24.99.

I do have a Belkin iPhone car charger but my cigarette lighter/charging port for the front seats is inside the ashtray, and it’s not the prettiest thing to leave this open all the time when I want to charge my iPhone, and it’s a bit of a pain to keep digging the charger out of the center console as well. Hence my desire to make sure I could charge my iPhone using the cord for the connector kit that is in my glovebox.

I’ve had the ProClip mount almost as long as I’ve had this car as well, albeit with different holders for the different phones I’ve had. The current holder is an iPhone 3G/3GS-specific one that accommodates a naked/skinned iPhone (I have a Gelaskins skin on it at the moment – my review of this skin is here). It also tilts and swivels so I can switch my iPhone to landscape orientation and adjust the viewing angle, with an additional arm that will prevent it from falling out when swiveled on its side or even upside down – you can find it on ProClip’s site here. I can’t say enough good things about ProClip mounts – they require no modification to your dashboard since they just pop into existing seams and they look far more professional than the air vent and windshield mounts I’ve seen. They are a bit pricey, but definitely worth it in my opinion.

Honestly, I do not like the look of wires hanging about my dashboard, but I was hesitant to drill through my dashboard to make this a little cleaner. However, since it’s just one black cord that peeks out of the back of the glovebox and drapes only 12 inches or so over my also-black dashboard before hitting the side of the passenger footwell, I’m not *too* bothered by this (this picture actually makes it look more obvious than it does in person).

To avoid the cable from dangling into the passenger footwell and the plug end from flopping around on my dashboard when my iPhone is not connected, I used some wire clips (kindly procured by my husband) and velcro. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with velcro, but it works very well for this, including keeping the dock connector end stuck to my dashboard in a place that makes it easy to grab when I need it and quick to store yet out of the way when I’m done.

In the end, if not aesthetically flawless, my set-up is is spot-on for what I need:

  • Incoming calls are already routed via Bluetooth through my car’s speaker. I can accept and end calls using a button my steering wheel. I can initiate calls using my car’s voice command system, or I can browse my contacts list on the stereo’s display using buttons on my steering wheel. Music playing through the stereo or iPod app fades out and in with incoming and outgoing calls.
  • Music playback from the iPod app works flawlessly, though it is limited a bit by the iPod-your-BMW kit. I have to set up special playlists labeled BMW1-Playlist1, BMW2-Playlist2, etc. for the kit to see the playlists and play music from them. It’s not the greatest and requires advanced planning, but it works and I’m used to it. I am considering changing this kit out for an after-market one that offers more functionality, but that’s not in my budget at the moment. If I really want to listen to something I just downloaded that’s not in a specially-made playlist that the system will see, all I need to do is start playing it before I plug it in and it will automatically pick up playing where it left off – I think this is a bit of a glitch with the iPod kit, but it’s a handy one.
  • Audio from GPS apps plays over my car’s speakers. Depending on the app, music will fade out before the navigation guidance and fade back in afterward, or guidance will simply play over the music. With the TomTom app (my review for work), this means music stops and starts abruptly when voice guidance is given. With the Navigon (my review) and Sygic (my review) apps, music fades out and back in nicely before and after voice guidance.

The only downside (aside from the limitations of the iPod-your-BMW kit) is that I must plug in my iPhone each and every time I get in the car if I want to listen to music from it. If I’m lazy and don’t do this, I can still listen to FM radio or a CD, of course, and my calls will still be routed via Bluetooth and all of those functions remain intact. However, I’ve found myself plugging my iPhone in as soon as I get in the car all the time, even for short rides to the gym or post office. I really dislike FM radio (too much chatter and advertising) and I haven’t made a new CD in ages with more recently-obtained music that I usually want to listen to.

Overall, I’m very pleased with my set-up. If you have any questions about any of the products I’ve mentioned in this post, please don’t hesitate to email me or post a comment.

Why so much iPad hate?

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Even as an Apple fangirl, I will be the first to admit that the iPad isn’t for everyone and that the iPad lacks features that would make it more appealing and useful for many. But why all the hate? It’s one thing to legitimately define why you don’t like the iPad (and I think Gizmodo has a great article here comparing the iPad to other tablets and its shortfalls are clearly evident) but it’s another to completely bash it simply because it isn’t for you. Why bother? Do those who bash it simply because they don’t like or want it hope to change the minds of those who do? Or is there some other chest-beating and roaring message behind this behavior that I’m just missing?

I really like Apple products for the most part (if you couldn’t already tell). I don’t own everything they’ve ever made and I don’t make it a point to buy everything they put out. Yes, I have 2 Macs, 2 iPhones, an old iPod laying dormant in a drawer (which reminds me that I need to sell it) and some peripherals. I don’t have an AppleTV, a Mac Pro, Aperture, and a whole bunch of other things that Apple makes. Not everything that Apple makes is perfect but the products I do have work for me. That’s the key thing right there – I have all of these things because I like them and they function (most of the time) in the way that suits my needs the best.
If you’ve been reading my blog regularly, you see that I don’t bash Windows products. I have used them (I used to own Windows-based computers up until 2003 after leaving my very first Mac from college behind for my dad to use) and have always had to use them at work. I admit that I may get snarky about them sometimes (I recently complained about having to install Vista on one of my Macs simply to use one application that I couldn’t get to work under CrossOver and has no Mac equivalent) but that’s usually out of bitterness when something does does not work as it should. I’ve owned phones made by RIM, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Palm. Consumers have tons of choices out there. I make my choices based on what I need and the features of what’s available. If I don’t like something, I don’t go around crying that a product sucks, will never sell, or that it’s stupid just because I don’t like it. And I certainly don’t insult people who will buy a product that I don’t want or need, which is what I’ve been seeing a lot of in the Mac-related forums I visit, unfortunately.
I know that Apple is one of the most prominent companies in the consumer technology space now – the iPhone, the success and growth of its retail store chain, and the overall performance of the company in relation to its checkered past prior to Steve Jobs’ most recent return, all make it an easy target for pundits and consumers alike. Apple is a company that likes control – they want their products to work a certain way and provide a specific user experience and they do limit and close down their products to ensure this. If you don’t like it, buy something else. Bitching about it certainly won’t change how Apple does things – it’s certainly been working for them with a stock price hovering around $200 per share and $24 billion in the bank.
I definitely don’t advocate not speaking up when you think something is wrong or when you feel a company has not delivered what has been promised in a product or service. But the iPad isn’t even available yet and you don’t have to buy it if you don’t want it. It does look like a large iPod touch and it doesn’t have a camera or any USB ports. It doesn’t multi-task and it appears that it won’t show Flash so far. Does these facts really make you angry? Do you really feel the need to ridicule those who want to buy it? If you answered yes to either of these questions, the only useful and polite suggestion I have for you is to seek a some therapy from a professional. If a single product that’s not being forced on you in any way, shape, or form causes you to act like a schoolyard bully, well, I think that says a quite a bit about the type of person you are, and I have no desire to make your acquaintance, to say the least.
Oh, and the sanitary napkin iPad jokes were lame about 5 minutes after the tablet’s name was announced. I can’t believe that the word that has this definition according to Merriam Webster titillates so many people:

Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1570

1 a : a thin flat mat or cushion: as (1) : a piece of soft stuffed material used as or under a saddle (2) : padding used to shape an article of clothing (3) : a guard worn to shield body parts against impact (4) : a piece of usually folded absorbent material (as gauze) used as a surgical dressing or protective covering (5) : a component of certain brake systems (as disc brakes) consisting of a plate covered with a frictional material b : a piece of material saturated with ink for inking the surface of a rubber stamp 2 a : the foot of an animal b : the cushioned thickening of the underside of the toes of an animal 3 : a floating leaf of a water plant 4 : a collection of sheets of paper glued together at one end 5 a (1) : a section of an airstrip used for warm-ups or turnarounds (2) : an area used for helicopter takeoffs and landings b : launchpad c : a horizontal concrete surface (as for parking a mobile home) 6 a : bed b : living quarters

Really? I thought I left the obnoxious boys who giggled anytime they heard the word “bra” or anything else related to “girl stuff” in my 7th grade class far behind.

/rant over. Now it’s time to search through my stash of gadgets that I no longer use to see what I can sell to help fund my iPad purchase. First on that list is that old iPod nano…

Yes, I’m going to buy the iPad and it may even replace my MacBook Air…

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Of course, I was glued to my computer yesterday watching multiple sites providing live coverage of Apple’s event. From the overwhelming number of rumors in the past few months, everyone pretty much knew what was going to be announced, though the actual design of the tablet and detailed specs hadn’t been pinned down. I actually screamed like a sweaty teenaged girl at a Jonas Brothers concert when Steve Jobs first held up the iPad on stage. Fortunately no one but the dog saw this bit of highly undignified behavior. And the dog was not amused.

Could this be my new Preciousssss?
As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, I am going to buy an iPad. No, I don’t need really need one given that I already have 2 Macs. For me, it will probably be an ebook reader first (I had been toying with the idea of getting a Nook recently and I used to own a first-gen Kindle). It *could* replace my MacBook Air (my secondary Mac I use when traveling or to spend the day working at a cafe or the library) if a few things happen:
1. Easy access to my iDisk and MobileMe OTA synchronization

Now, I can’t see Apple *not* making the MobileMe synchronization happen. Plus, the iPad should already be able to use Apple’s existing iDisk app anyway, so the iDisk access should be a non-issue. However, what will be key for me will be the ability to open and edit documents stored on my iDisk (I’ve previously ranted about how this isn’t possible on the iPhone, which still drives me crazy). This is how I already use my iDisk – I store work documents exclusively on my iDisk so that I can access them from my desktop or my MacBook Air without needing to worry about document version control. (Before you start to worry, my iDisk is backed up regularly in case Something Bad happens on Apple’s end.)

2. Excellent document editing capabilities

I know Apple demo’ed iWork for the iPad yesterday, but I’d really need to get my hands on it to see how well it worked for me. However, iWork may not even be an option for me since I use some relatively complicated Excel spreadsheets for work and I’m not even sure that Numbers could handle them without losing some of my formulas and macros. I’m hoping that Dataviz (the developers of the Documents to Go app for the iPhone and other platforms) will optimize their app for the iPad, AND that Apple allows 3rd-party apps to access iDisks (or some file storage on the iPad itself).

3. Decent text entry functionality

I saw the on-screen virtual keyboard and it looked like it was pretty quick, though those announcing the iPad and demonstrating it at the hands-on event afterward had the benefit of getting used to it for a good while, I bet. I definitely do not expect to be able to type 90+ words per minute on the iPad as I can on a full-sized mechanical keyboard, but I’d like to be at least as fast on it as I am on my iPhone, on which I’m about half as fast as I am on a regular keyboard.

I’m sure I won’t be patient enough once the iPad is released to confirm these things before I go ahead and buy one. I am, after all, an Apple fangirl.
I’m eyeing the 64GB version with 3G. I had expressed hope yesterday on Twitter that I could use my existing SIM card from my AT&T 3G modem in it to avoid paying for yet another internet connection, though the iPad will only take “micro* SIM” cards (I have never seen one of those in person) and my 3G modem’s SIM card is a standard sized one. Now, if AT&T will give me a micro SIM version of it and I can get a regular-sized SIM adapter for it, that might work, though I don’t think AT&T will be nearly that cooperative in my devious plan to avoid giving them more money.
I’ll head to my local Apple store to see an iPad in person as soon as they’re available. I already know it will be VERY hard for me to not buy one of the Wi-Fi only versions but I will try to stay strong.
Will you get an iPad?
*I have a sneaking suspicion that Apple did this merely to make it hard for people to use their existing SIM cards from an iPhone or other device.
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