Tag Archive for: iphone

Thoughts on iPhone OS 3.0

Unless you were living under a rock the past couple days, you probably know that OS 3.0 for the iPhone and iPod touch came out yesterday. There are many new features including copy/cut/paste, MMS (unless you are on AT&T), tethering (again, unless you are on AT&T), voice recording, push notifications, CalDAV support, among others.

After I installed the update and my phone rebooted I was excited to start testing out the new features. There was only one problem. After the update my iPhone was running slow. Very slow. Safari would freeze, applications would crash, and it took forever to find my AT&T signal. After about 15 minutes and multiple restarts, it started behaving again, and in some cases sped things up.

Copy and paste was something that I thought I would never use or if I did use it, it would be on rare occasions. I probably used copy and paste more than anything else yesterday. It is great with the Tweetdeck iPhone app. I wanted to copy a url and paste it in for a tweet and it worked perfectly. The part where it came in handy the most was setting up my Google Calendars.

With OS 3.0, you can finally add Google Calendars using CalDAV. I can’t use Google’s Exchange sync because I have my work’s Exchange account on my phone and you’re only allowed to add one Exchange account. I added my first Google calendar filling out the normal credentials, but it only syncs the main calendar on your Google account. If you have multiple calendars, what do you do? This is where the group calendar comes into play thanks to great instructions here. You add the calendars the same way, but when you are finished you go into advanced options and replace your email address with the randomly generated email address that Google creates. If you have ever seen this email address, it is quite long. Luckily, I could copy the address on my desktop and email it to myself, then open up the mail app and copy it from the email and paste it into the calendar settings. Cross app copy and paste ftw! Also with copy and paste you can also finally email multiple pictures instead of sending a separate email for each image. Awesome.

OS 3.0 is a solid release that brought a lot of long-awaited features. It will be even better once AT&T get their act together. The only thing that I really want to use right now but can’t is MMS. AT&T really dropped the ball on this one. They are trying to hide the fact that their network is not all that great. How can they not be ready for iPhone picture or video messaging when every other phone on their network has the capability to do so already? The only answer is their network can’t handle it. That has to be the same reason tethering isn’t available yet. I’m glad that Apple make the snarky remarks during the WWCD singling out AT&T. This must be a PR nightmare for them. There are a lot of angry customers.

iTunes Problem Leads to New Solution

Friday night I plugged my iPhone into my computer and let it sync. Next thing I know, all the apps on my iPhone were deleted and some of the songs and videos that were on the iPhone were removed as well. It’s no secret I really do not like iTunes, especially with how slow and buggy iTunes 8 is, so when I started iTunes the other day and it told me the library was corrupted and it backed up the corrupted file and loaded up a new, I thought nothing of it. Typical iTunes being stupid and not working how it’s supposed to. I never thought that the broken library file would effect my syncing, but it did. I’m guessing because the file was broken, the new one it created didn’t have all the music and applications that it should have. Therefore, when my iPhone synced, it deleted the things on the iPhone that did not exist in the library.

I added the applications, music, and podcasts back into iTunes. The problem was knowing what songs were deleted from the iPhone. I add only checked files, but that doesn’t always work (because iTunes sucks). So sometimes I have to add them to a playlist in order for them to sync, even though they are checked to sync. Trying to figure out which ones were in a playlist or already on the iPhone would take forever. That’s when I decided to do a little searching. That’s when I found this post. Basically, what I did was create a smart playlist that included items that I check. As soon as I check an item, it is added to the playlist. If I uncheck, it is deleted. I set up my iPhone to sync that playlist, now every song that I check is synced with my iPhone. It’s the easiest way I’ve found to manually manage the music to sync. So, iTunes breaking and not doing things right made me find a solution that I never knew about that will save me a lot of time. Of course, if iTunes “just worked” I wouldn’t have had to search for a solution in the first place.

Sony ICF-C1iP Dock with Clock for iPod or iPhone

A few weeks ago I bought the Sony ICF-C1iP Dock with Clock for iPod or iPhone. I was at Target and started listening to all their iPod/iPhone docks. The Sony was one of the systems with the best sound (besides the extremely expensive Bose system). I usually don’t buy an electronic like this without reading reviews but I was able to play with it and listen to the sound quality, so I had a new alarm clock/iPhone dock/mini-stereo. This was a big disappointment.

The first couple weeks of having the system I only found one problem: the brightness of the clock. The clock had three brightness settings and on its lowest it was way too bright. It would literally wake me up in the middle of the night, that’s how bright it was. No big deal though, after a while I could get used to that. And for the most part, I did. Then last night something happened.

I was just about to fall asleep and I hear this incredibly loud buzzing. It was distortion/feedback fromsony the speakers. The iPhone was causing interference with the speakers. I read a couple other people having this problem but the product was clearly marked as working with the iPhone, so what gives? Well, even though it clearly states it works with the iPhone, unless you want to turn your iPhone to just a normal iPod while it’s docked, you’re going to experience problems. Apparently the only way to not have any interference is for it to go into Airplane mode, in which it turns off the phone (nowhere in the instructions does it even say to do this, by the way It tells you it will ask, but doesn’t tell you which option to choose). Since I sleep with it on the dock I would miss calls if I do this. This is unacceptable, especially for a product marketed towards iPhone users. So, I took the system back, very disappointed, and very disappointed in Sony for trying to cash in on the iPhone when it was clearly made for the iPod and works somewhat with the iPhone.

My iPhone

I’ve only had my iPhone for a day and I am in love with it. I love being able to get on wifi networks on my phone, having a full html browser, the applications. To be honest, while the phone is great, I don’t know if I’d ever buy it if it didn’t allow 3rd party applications. That’s what makes the iPhone truly great. I love being able to be in contact with people anywhere, whether it be email, IM, twitter, or whatever.

This is my home screen on the iPhone

This is my home screen on the iPhone

The email on the phone is fantastic and looks just like it does in Outlook. Now, if our work webserver goes down, I can be notified right away if I’m not at the computer. Twinkle is great for a Twitter client. I tried Twitterific, but whenever it would launch it would crash right away. Probably my favorite has-some-use app has to be Shazam. You let it “listen” to part of a song and it will tell you what song it is. That should come in handy whenever I’m in the car and don’t know the song.

Another cool app, and this one cost, is the MLB At Bat. When I bought it I thought I was just getting

The second screen of my iPhone

The second screen of my iPhone

the box scores and the Who’s On stuff, but no. They did more than that. They update the games with video highlights as they are going on, so you can watch the highlights of the game. And the video quality is amazing. Other great apps that I’ve tried are Facebook, Last.fm, The New York Times, and Google. The Google one is a little pointless because you can get to all their stuff via the Safari web browser. It is kind of nice though because it is a quicker way to get to those things. All in all I’m extremely happy with the phone thus far. And I’ve not even used it to watch movies or listen to music yet. It was a great purchase and I can’t wait to see what other cool apps come out for it.

Stand in Line for Me

So, the day that the iPhone 3g comes out, July 11th, I will be having my wisdom teeth removed.  All four of them.  What I need to do is find someone to go stand in line and buy one for me at one of the AT&T stores or the Apple store.  That way when I leave the surgeon, in complete agony, I will have something to do while I rest up and float high on Vicodin.  So, to my lovely sisters and/or brother-in-law, if you would like to volunteer for this tremendous oppourtunity to help out a person in need, I would appreciate it a great deal.  I might even make it worth your while (no, I will not buy you an iPhone).