Archive for the 'Communication' Category
Guess what I got a week ago today?!
That’s right, kids, an Apple iPhone! I got an advance on an already existing technology loan at my place of employment (0% for 18 months?! You can’t beat that!) and purchased it last Tuesday evening after work. I wanted to have a good week of experience with the device before I made my announcement and shared my initial thoughts on the phone.
Well, I’ll go ahead and give you my final thoughts on the phone first. This is one impressive piece of hardware paired with an extremely intuitive and beautiful piece of software. The iPhone has met or exceeded every one of my expectations, and for the price, I am grateful! Thanks, Apple, for an impressive Web enabled phone!
The Good:
I’ll start off with the good of the phone, like any respectable reviewer would. Again, let me say that this device is beautiful and it all starts with the design of the hardware. In keeping with the beautiful design of the iPod, the Apple iPhone has a sleek, slim design that has super sexy curves. The phone is not too big to hold up to your dome and using it as a phone or as a “PDA“.
The touchscreen works flawlessly. The screens scroll so smoothly that it makes you want to cry. The soft-keyboard is extremely easy to type on once you realize you can’t use the side of your thumbs like you can on a physical QWERTY keyboard like most smartphones have. You have to use the tips of your thumbs to type, but with the visual response you get when pressing a key, it becomes a natural movement.
The version of OS X that runs on the phone has the same sexy look that you would expect from a Macintosh machine. The icons, backgrounds, menus, etc. all look very “Apple’ish” and are extremely easy to use and understand. The applications that are installed by default on the iPhone are impressive as well. The iPhone version of Google Maps is very nice. It allows you to interface your contacts locations with the map as well as get driving directions to and from locations. The other applications are impressive as well with their Dashboard Widgets look and feel.
And, the big kicker for me is the Safari Web browser that ships on the phone. A majority of the applications on the iPhone are powered by the Safari rendering engine using AJAX. They flow so smoothly and work the way you would expect a Web application to, except you use your finger to maneuver around instead of a mouse. The way you increase and decrease the browser window with two fingers is extremely cool. And, of course, all third-party applications for the iPhone use Safari and an Internet connection so you will spend a majority of your time in Safari when using the iPhone.
So, to wrap up “The Good” in one phrase, “It Flows”. From the main menu screen to the contacts, phone, settings, and basically every screen, the experience just flows seamlessly from one experience to another. Over all, this is the best cell phone I have every used and I am very happy that I finally made the purchase.
The Disappointing:
I wouldn’t say there is anything “bad” about the iPhone, but there are some disappointing aspects. First of all, there is no support or development kit for native third-party applications. This means that all third-party software has to be accessed via the Safari Web browser and the Internet. This in itself is not such a bad thing since the Web browser and Internet capabilities of the phone are better than other cell phones and smartphones on the market today. However, it would be nice to be able to compile and install some native applications on the iPhone, whatever they may be.
There isn’t support for Adobe Flash on the device, as a standalone application, or within Safari. This kind of limits your multimedia experience on the iPhone to movies from your iTunes library or the limited YouTube library available through a preinstalled application on the phone.
You can’t sync the phone with your machine/laptop via Bluetooth. All syncing of music, movies, photos, contacts, and calendar is done through the iTunes software installed on your PC or Mac. This is kind of frustrating because I don’t want to plug my phone up to my machine every time I want to sync. Also, this limits your ability to sync your phone via proximity detection like I used to do with my Nokia E61 (Yeah, she was a good phone…).
Another thing I would have liked to see on the iPhone is a terminal application for SSH’ing into remote *NIX servers or an RDP client for accessing into remote Windows machines or servers. I am sure there are a number of other applications I would like to see on the iPhone, but these two would really get the “I’m an administrator” parts off to a good start.
Conclusion:
I have done a lot of research on the iPhone. Everything in the “disappointing” category I knew about prior to buying the device. I could go on and on about the device, it’s capabilities and it’s limitations, but I feel this is a good stopping point for my public “I have an iPhone” announcement and review. I will be posting some more on this device in the days and weeks ahead, and hope to develop a Web application geared towards the iPhone in the coming months. I’ll keep you posted on my progress with the phone and any newsworthy items I find on the Internet related to the iPhone. Final words: I love my iPhone!
Until next time…
While I was at home working last week, I needed to make a phone call to a business that I have listed in my ever so handy Address Book on my laptop. While I was looking at the business’ contact information, I right (ok, Command-clicked) clicked on the phone number and saw an option to dial the number with Skype. Guess what?! That’s what I did!
I know I will get slammed for this, but I like Skype. I have used it a number of times while out and about to make calls that would otherwise cost me cell minutes. Outbound calls for me are free due to my annual subscription. I use my Bluetooth® headset with my laptop to make Skype calls so it is really no different than talking over a cellular network… Except that your calls are encrypted and bouncing along a peer-to-peer network via a proprietary protocol.
Anyway, I was impressed that I could right click contacts in my Address Book and make the call from right there. No dialing numbers, no opening Skype and then dialing the number, just a simple right-click (or Command-click if you will). If you use Skype on your Mac and also take advantage of Apple’s Address Book contact management application, give a contact a right-click (I know, I know, Command-click) and let the dialing begin!
Until next time…
All 4 of us average admins (ok, maybe there were more, but in reality, there was probably less…) used to frequent the #averageadmins channel on irc.freenode.net (freenode.net). This was back in my FreeBSD days and I was using the command line version of BitchX and loved it. I could switch between different windows, have different chat sessions in different IRC rooms opened, etc., etc. Life was great back then.
Now, since I have been using Mac OS X on my Apple MacBook, I have become a bit spoiled in what I expect from applications that I use on a regular basis. The Aqua User Interface is so so beautiful and I am now getting to where I expect everything I run to be just as beautiful, even if it is a third-party and/or open-source application. That’s bad, I know…
So, I want to get back into chatting and monitoring IRC chat rooms these days as there is a plethora of information and support available in these chat rooms. BUT, I want to do it from my MacBook with the same beauty I get from my other applications. Well, that time is now for my IRC needs. I discovered an IRC client today called Colloquy that really brings IRC to life on the Mac. It provides a number of useful features that I am not used to in BitchX. The interface is just as you would expect from an OS X application and the different plugins available and scripting options at your disposal makes this a truly full featured IRC client.
If you’re using OS X and want to try a little something different for your IRC needs, I highly suggest giving Colloquy a try. It is very impressive and has a lot of options for meeting your IRC needs on a Macintosh.
Update: Join me and/or anyone else in the #averageadmins channel on the irc.freenode.net IRC server if you ever just want to hang out with some “average” guys. I’ll be on most often after 6:00PM Central Time.
Until next time…
I stumbled upon this article the other day when I was reading through some of the blogs I monitor in Bloglines. The article is from O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.com site and is about a patent filed by Apple in August of 1982 and granted in December of 1985 for a flip phone in the shape of an apple with a bite taken out of it. In other words, the phone is in the shape of the Apple logo.
If you review the patent through some nifty patent interface provided by Google, you’ll see 13 drawings (Fig. 1 - Fig. 13) of what the proposed phone would have looked like. This is pretty cool to know that Apple had an idea for a phone over 20 years ago. I am also very glad that this phone didn’t make it to market and that the iPhone will be their first cellular phone offering. If they had released this flip-phone back in the late 80’s or early 90s, they may not be around today to give us phone addicts the iPhone.
Until next time…
I am totally sold on hands-free communication when using a cell phone. I can not stand to hold a phone up to my dome and talk on it. It makes me feel all yucky inside. So, ever since I got my first Bluetooth® enabled phone, the Motorola RAZR V3, I have been sporting a Bluetooth® headset along with it. Before I go on about my latest adventure, let me give you a little history of where I’ve been.
Lately, I have been using a Plantronics Voyager 510 and a Motorola H700. Both of these headsets have their pros and cons, in my opinion. I have written a little bit of what I like and dislike about both of these units below.
Flickr Updates
