Category Archives: geek - Page 3

Screw you, Early Adopter! ~ Love, Apple

Posted by on September 5, 2007 No comments

Today, Apple got rid of the 4GB iPhone, and dropped the price of the 8GB model by $200. This comes just over two months since the product launched in the first place. That has to be a record for fastest price-drop.

Basically, now I can go to an Apple store, and purchase an 8GB iPhone for $100 less than I paid for my 4GB.

Gah!

They also announced some other stuff, including an updated iPod Shuffle in new colors (including a Product (RED) offering), a new iPod nano (affectionately dubbed by some, the “fatty”) which supports video and the WiFi iTunes store you can access from the iPhone soon and from the new iPod touch which is basically an iPhone without the phone. The disk space on all the models got moved around too. Looks like the 8GB nano comes in all the colors now, not just black, and looks like the price came down a bit.

On top of that, they announced a partnership with Starbucks which will allow Starbucks customers to instantly buy songs that are playing in Starbucks locations. Kind of neat, but I wonder what T-Mobile thinks about that. T-Mobile provides the WiFi access inside Starbucks locations, but does not carry the iPhone, which is exclusive to AT&T. So, in a round-about way, T-Mobile has a partnership with a company that does not benefit T-Mobile in the least.

10 Reasonable iPhone Wishes

Posted by on August 16, 2007 2 comments

So after just over a month with my iPhone, I have a list of things which I would like to see pushed as a software/firmware update to the phone. As far as I know, none of these would require hardware changes.

  1. Highlight, Copy & Paste. I’m not entirely sure why this was left out in the first place.
  2. Landscape Mode in SMS and Email Applications. Again, not sure why this was left out.
  3. Video Support. Let me take short videos with sound. Add a button to automatically upload to YouTube and/or my .Mac Web Gallery.
  4. MMS. No reason why a camera phone shouldn’t be able to send and receive picture and video messages.
  5. Group Messaging. Sending one message to one person at a time is annoying. Change it.
  6. Bluetooth Auto-Syncing. I would like to be able to sync via bluetooth. With this, I’d like the option to select which things I would like to sync in this manner. Calendar, Address Book, Bookmarks and Mail should be a no-brainer. Syncing the iPod over bluetooth would be pretty maddening, so I’d pass on that. Also, I would like this to work automatically, with both the computer and the iPhone detecting changes on the other. I don’t want to have to push buttons for the basic stuff.
  7. Smarter Google Maps. If I navigate away from from the Google Maps application, don’t send me back to the start of my directions. Remember where I was, and start back there when I tap the Maps icon again.
  8. Smarter Weather & Stocks. In the weather and stock applications, let me select a frequency at which the data will be automatically updated. This will avoid me loading up either application while I’m out of service area and having the data displayed be a day old, or not displayed at all.
  9. Add GPS support via Bluetooth. This will let me carry a small GPS receiver in my pocket and interface with that via the Google Maps application.
  10. Make the Notes sync with something. I am assuming this is coming with Leopard and the new Mail.app, but it is annoying now. If for some reason I have to restore my iPhone, my notes are gone. Not cool.

Netflix: Instant Viewing (But Not For Macs)

Posted by on August 7, 2007 No comments

Boooooooo @ Netflix

Project Idea

Posted by on July 24, 2007 3 comments

I think I’m going to start working on a Mashup of all the micro-blogging, social dealies. I want to be able to send one text message which updates my Twitter status (with location via twittervision), checks in at dodgeball, updates my Facebook status and whatever else I need it to do. Hrm.

/me runs off to poke around in APIs.

Monday News

Posted by on June 11, 2007 No comments

The US is arming Sunni groups who have said they will battle their former Al Qaeda allies. What could possibly go wrong?

WWDC starts today. Pretty interested to see what Jobs is going to talk about for ninety minutes. iPhone features we haven’t heard yet? New desktop-class machine? Mac Mini going away? New non-iPhone iPod? Lots of Leopard stuff? Ars Technica has their keynote bingo scorecard up, so we can play along at home.

Bush gets a hero’s welcome in Albania. Maybe they’d like to keep him?