Tag: iPhone - Page 8 - UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

There’s an easily misinterpreted map for that

I’ve been meaning to write about Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” commercials since I first saw them, but now that AT&T is suing, this seems like a good time to remedy my oversight.

The issue AT&T has with the maps in this commercial is, in my opinion, a legitimate one: Verizon’s entire network is 3G, so the gaps on the red map really are gaps. But AT&T maintains a large 2G (EDGE) network, in addition to its rather spotty 3G network. So the white parts of the AT&T map don’t necessarily represent dead zones for AT&T customers.

But there’s another issue with this map, and it’s the same problem I have with election result maps: the U.S. population is not evenly distributed across the physical landscape. It certainly looks bad that AT&T offers no 3G service anywhere in the four-state region of Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota. But the collective population of those states is under 3 million — representing about 1% of the total U.S. population — distributed over 393,000 square miles — representing 10.4% of total U.S. land area. That’s less people than in the St. Cloud/Twin Cities/Rochester blob of blue across east-central Minnesota in the map, and it’s far less than the over 4 million people in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn — an area under 100 square miles.

So, as I’ve said before while studying election maps, the colored areas don’t really tell the true story. Maybe AT&T has a lot of gaps in its map, but there aren’t very many people in those gaps, either.

Now, this is not to go too far in defense of AT&T in this situation. I haven’t had any significant problems with AT&T’s 3G coverage in Minneapolis (although I have noticed my iPhone occasionally dropping down to the EDGE network — a situation that reminds me of Mitch Hedberg’s joke about escalators), but as the Engadget article notes, there are apparently major problems with their network in the most densely-populated areas of the country — San Francisco and New York.

Perhaps the most interesting thing for me in this article, though, is the following claim from AT&T:

Verizon’s misleading advertising tactics appear to be a response to AT&T’s strong leadership in smartphones. We have twice the number of smartphone customers… and we’ve beaten them two quarters in a row on net post-paid subscribers. We also had lower churn — a sign that customers are quite happy with the service they receive.

It’s no secret that much of AT&T’s recent success, especially where smartphones are concerned, is due solely to the iPhone. And it’s also no secret that it’s the iPhone hardware/software combo, not AT&T’s service, that iPhone owners are overwhelmingly satisfied with. Consider AT&T’s exclusive rights to the iPhone, and that pretty much negates any value in AT&T’s claim to customer satisfaction.

On the Nook and “lending”

To say I’ve been baffled by the appeal of Amazon’s Kindle would be an understatement. It’s not that I don’t like the idea of e-books (or, more specifically, the as-yet unrealized promise of e-paper as a general technology); it’s just that I don’t think the Kindle nails it. Even in its redesigned form, it’s too big and awkward. But most importantly, I’m generally disposed to dislike single-function devices. For $60 less than the cost of a Kindle you can buy an iPod touch, which can read Kindle e-books and do 85,000 other things too, in a much more convenient form factor. Good luck sticking a Kindle in your pocket.

Which brings us to the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s answer to the Kindle. While both products have questionable names — although “Nook e-book,” said fast, would make a third grader (or Derek Powazek) titter on Twitter, I still think “Kindle” evoking book burning is worse — I think Nook is catchier and less of a head-scratcher.

So, what of the Nook? Another e-book reader. Seems like a Nintendo DS-inspired mashup of a Kindle and an iPhone, actually… right down to (inexplicably) using AT&T’s 3G network for wireless access when Wi-Fi is unavailable. It looks to me like B&N took the weaknesses of the Kindle to heart in delivering what looks to be a superior device, but it’s still just an e-book reader, which once again leaves me wondering why anyone would spend $259 on a one-trick pony. It also leaves me wondering even more about the long-rumored Apple tablet device. The one complaint I could theoretically see Kindle (and now Nook) lovers leveling against reading e-books on an iPhone or iPod touch is that the screen is too small. But if Apple were to deliver a device with a form factor on par with Kindle or Nook, but with the full technical capabilities of iPod touch, I think it would be a no-brainer: goodbye, Kindle; goodbye, Nook.

The one thing about the Nook specs that does intrigue me, at least a little bit, is the idea of lending. As stated in the New York Times:

One of the differentiating factors of the Nook is that customers can “lend” books to friends. But customers may lend out any given title only one time for a total of 14 days and they cannot read it on their own Nook while it is lent.

Well, yes, I would say that this does quite literally fit the description of “lending.” And it’s a reasonable way around the inevitable complaints from publishers about copyright and illegal redistribution of their intellectual property. But… come on. This is an absurd hobbling of technology masquerading as a throwback to the model of a physical book. While these arbitrary limitations on lending may be a helpful analogy for non-technophiles, and I certainly can’t argue with a mechanism that forces your friend to return a lent book in a reasonable amount of time (I’m sure we all have friends who’ve been “borrowing” books from us for years at a time), this is at its core the same sort of unwillingness on the part of copyright holders to adapt to an evolving technological world. Rather than finding new ways to be properly compensated for their works while simultaneously embracing and propelling forward new technologies, they’re dragging their feet, and holding the rest of the world back with them.Ultimately it matters not for me. I won’t be buying a Nook, so I won’t need to worry about “lending” my e-books. Despite my enthusiastic embrace of the latest-and-greatest technology, I still prefer plain old paper and ink and glue when it’s time to read a book. That’s a medium pretty well perfected, and despite these recent advances, the technology still doesn’t compare to the tactility, and utility, of a real book. Plus, they never need to be recharged.

Pocket Sysadmin

I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again.

Actually, that’s not true: I will be back on Sunday. But the point is, I’m going on a trip… and more importantly, I’m not taking my laptop. Gasp! Can it be true? I’ll answer that for you: yes, it’s true.

OK, enough with this absurdly bad writing. On to the matter at hand: traveling sans laptop. Since I began freelancing in mid-2008, it’s been a given that I would always have my laptop with me. Not because I am a workaholic (not true) or because I’m an Internet junkie (true), but primarily because I needed to have a way to monitor and troubleshoot web server performance in case any of my clients had technical problems while I was gone.

But for this trip, I’ve decided I want to make it a real vacation. I want to remove the temptation to work when I really shouldn’t. I need a break. But I still need to be accessible if an emergency arises, and I need to be able to do something about it. Accessibility has been a non-issue ever since I got a cell phone: just call me. Or, since I got an iPhone: email, text, or call me (preferably in that order). But heretofore, the best I could do with a phone/iPhone was become aware of a problem. I still needed a full-fledged computer to actually do anything productive.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been preparing my iPhone to become an all-in-one tool for managing my business on the road. That meant setting up all of the diagnostic and troubleshooting tools I could, to ensure that I can adequately monitor the performance of the web servers I’m responsible for, and fix any problems that come up. Here are the tools I’m using to make that possible:

iStat

iStat is a very polished little utility for monitoring system performance. Its main feature is that it provides detailed stats on your iPhone itself: battery capacity, memory usage, storage available, IP address, uptime, running processes, and MAC address. But what’s really cool about it is that there are remote monitoring tools that allow you to monitor your Mac from your iPhone, or, more importantly for me, you can monitor a Linux, BSD or Solaris server. It requires a fair bit of command-line mucky-muck to set up (including compiling from source), but in a matter of minutes I had multiple Linux servers set up, sending their performance data to my iPhone wherever I go. With iStat, I can be proactive in monitoring server performance.

TouchTerm SSH

So, great. iStat lets me see how my servers are doing. But what if there’s a problem? That’s where TouchTerm SSH comes in. When I work with servers from my computer, the main application I use is Terminal. The SSH protocol allows me to connect securely to my servers with a command-line interface, where I can do anything I need to do: check running processes, modify configurations, restart services, etc. TouchTerm SSH is a fully-functional SSH terminal on the iPhone. With it, anything that I can do via SSH from my computer, I can now do with the iPhone. I just installed it today, so I haven’t completely put it through its paces, but I am sure that before long this will be one of the most indispensable apps I have installed on my iPhone. Even more than Ramp Champ.

Slicehost Pro

This one’s a bit more specialized, obviously, but since Slicehost’s iPhone app was one of the main selling points for me to go with them in the first place, it’s worth acknowledging.

Slicehost is a VPS hosting company based in St. Louis. They offer great service at unbeatable prices. Running a VPS is not for the feint of heart, but if you’re not afraid of taking full responsibility for your own server, Slicehost is the way to go. Their simple web-based admin interface makes it a snap to set up your own server with one of any number of Linux distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, CentOS, Fedora, Arch or Red Hat), and once it’s running, to monitor its performance and reboot if necessary.

The iPhone app’s functionality is pretty limited, but it has the one critical function I need: if the slice becomes unresponsive, you can reboot it. Sure, you can do that from their mobile website too, but it’s always fun to have another app on your home screen.

Stuff that sucks: Griffin and HP edition

I hate stuff that sucks. And these days, it seems like more stuff sucks than ever. The era of things being built to last has long since passed. Even the era of planned obsolescence is obsolete. We are living in an era when most things aren’t built to be any good in the first place. Printer companies, in particular, seem to have adopted the Gillette model of disposal razors: give the printer away for free (well, almost), and reap huge profits on ink cartridges. Now, you’d think that in order to keep their customers in need of ink cartridges, they would at least ensure that their printers work. But they’ve learned that’s not even necessary. It’s cheaper to just swap the duds with “refurbished” replacements than to ensure that no duds leave the factory in the first place.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My gripe today did not start with my HP Photosmart C4580 all-in-one inkjet printer/copier/scanner. I have a perpetual low-level gripe with it, to the point that I’ve become numb to the absurdity of having to restart the supposedly always-on, Wi-Fi enabled printer to get it to actually recognize commands from computers on my network. No, today’s gripe began with the Griffin Reveal case I purchased along with my new iPhone 3G S three weeks ago.

At first the case seemed fantastic, but within a few days I noticed little bits of dust/grains of crud/whatever were getting down inside. I removed it, cleaned away the crud, and replaced it. But the crud came back, and as the days went on it got worse.

Now, just three weeks after I bought the phone, the Griffin Reveal has left permanent, deep pits in the back of my iPhone. Observe, in this pathetically blurry picture that — for reasons I’ll explain in a bit, though you may already be able to guess given the rant that started this post — I took with my old iPhone (which now belongs to SLP).

The pits.

Now, if you could see any detail at all in this picture, you’d see that there are dozens of little pits in the back of the phone, like I stabbed it repeatedly with a drafting compass. (Which I assure you I did not. I haven’t owned a drafting compass since geometry class in tenth grade.)

Here’s the culprit, which I am contemplating returning to the Apple Store for a refund:

The culprit and its stupid box.

And, yes… the blurry photos. I was going to scan the back of the new iPhone with my HP all-in-one, but the flippin’ thing won’t scan for some reason. I just scanned some stuff with it last week, but now the HP Scan Pro software crashes each time I try to use it. The scanner will kick in, scan a few inches, and then bail out with a pointless error message.

Translation: We suck.

Bear in mind that this error message appeared after my clicking of the “New Scan” button in the software caused the scanner to sputter to life and begin (but not finish) scanning.

I tried restarting the scanner. I tried restarting the scanner and my computer (twice). I tried deleting preferences and I tried opening HP Scan Pro directly instead of letting HP Device Manager fire it off and I tried using a USB cable instead of Wi-Fi and I tried standing on my head and chanting dark incantations by the light of the full moon. Nothing worked.

So much suck in such a small package.

Update, the next morning: Having “slept on it,” I recognize how much Apple is to blame here. Aesthetics do often trump practicality in Apple’s industrial design. The shiny black plastic on the back of the iPhone sure looks nice, at least when it’s new, but it’s way too soft and scratch-prone. My old iPhone had a brushed aluminum back, which I loved. And to be honest, the plastic back was a big deterrent for me with the first iPhone 3G. I shouldn’t need a case for my phone. A device that goes in people’s pockets and purses ought to be made from materials that are suitable for that environment.

That said, the pits caused by the Griffin Reveal case are far worse than the superficial scratches it would have received without it. I suppose the case does still provide extra protection if the phone gets dropped, so now I’m debating putting the case back on, despite the damage it’s caused so far.

Another update, later in the day: Well, there will be no returns… I checked my Apple Store receipt and it needed to be returned within two weeks. It has a one-year warranty (WTF?) though, but it seems more trouble than it’s worth. Unless I can get a new iPhone 3G S on the spot, I’d rather just live with the damage. Which is just what they’re hoping I’ll do. Sounds like HP.

My favorite new feature in iTunes 9

Yesterday Apple released iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1, and this new version of iTunes addresses one of my ~~biggest~~ few frustrations with the iPhone: organizing your apps.

I cringe at saying “apps,” fearing I sound like Michael Scott talking about something they sell at Dave & Busters. But, given that it’s known as the App Store, I guess that’s what to call them.

Anyway… this is not about what they’re called, it’s about how they’re organized. And up to now, the only way to organize them was to go to your iPhone’s home screen, hold your finger on an icon until they all start to wiggle, and then drag them around. Not bad, when you only have one screen’s worth of apps, or even two or three. But I have seven — and that doesn’t even count the apps I downloaded but deleted from my iPhone.

Trying to keep seven screens’ worth of icons (16 per screen) organized by this finger-dragging method is tedious to say the least. And now that even the default configuration includes two screens, Apple realized they had to do something about it.

But now, we have this:

Brilliant. I love it. The only flaw now is that this layout is too big to fit into the iTunes interface on my MacBook without having to scroll the entire thing, since the iPhone screen is represented at actual-pixel size. (I had to take two screenshots and stitch them together in Photoshop to create the image you see above, which is scaled down slightly from the actual size.

Then again, it’s always something, isn’t it?