iPhone 3.0 observations

I installed the latest iPhone OS (3.0) on my iPhone 3G the other day. Yeah, yeah, why do I even bother with such an old phone, why not upgrade.. I'm cheap, that's why :) Sure, I'd like to have all of the cool new features that the "3G S" includes, but I can't see paying $500-$600 for them, so for the time being, I'll live without the ability to record videos and a compass.

But I digress, this is about the OS, not the phone. Like I said, I upgraded to 3.0 the other day. The upgrade went well for the most part. There was an issue with iTunes and the phone talking after the installation/reboots, but those were related to iTunes on Vista I think.

Way back when the first announcements were made, I thought I would see these features:

• Cut/Copy/Paste
• MMS
• Stereo Bluetooth (aka A2DP)
• Ability to send multiple pictures in a single email

But, of course, AT&T said no to MMS (sure, they didn't say "no", they said "it'll take us time." - might as well have said "no").

I "found" cut/copy/paste accidentally. It wasn't quite as nice as I would have liked - but in truth, I'm not sure what I'd like - ideally, I could make some sort of swiping gesture to select text and then the next tap would make the little popup guy appear. Maybe it works like that and I'm doing something wrong, but mostly it works.

Stereo Bluetooth I've not seen though. Perhaps because I don't own a pair of stereo bluetooth headphones - that's a combination of "what's the point?" and "I'm cheap" and "oh, is it supported now?" - but I saw nothing in the Bluetooth configuration that looked any different than it did before. Maybe I'll pick something up at Frys just to test this.

This leaves emailing multiple pictures at one time. It took me a while to figure out how this worked. I usually select a picture and then while looking at it, click the "email" application. With 3.0, tapping on the "email" button while looking at the Camera Roll lets me select any number of pictures that I can then "share" (which means email). Pretty cool, but as with earlier versions, a scaled down (800x600) picture gets sent rather than the native resolution (1600x1200).

But here's something cool I noticed - if you select a bunch of pictures using the email button from the camera roll and then "Copy" them, you can open up the email application and paste them into the body of a new email and magically, they get sent in the native resolution, and even have "real" filenames (if you consider "IMG_0102.JPG" and such a real name anyway).

iPhone, AT&T, MMS

Well, I got my first MMS message on my iPhone the other day. Ugh. It came as a text message (SMS) which read:

I sent you a multimedia message. You can view my message w/in the next 7 days via the web at www.viewmymessage.com using ID A1843 and password M6572

Well, that's pretty handy, except that I then need to open up a browser (by clicking on the provided link) and then key in the cryptic userid and password that I am forced to remember or write down because cut and paste is a concept foreign to the iPhone development team.

This is now my new number one priority, along with being able to record movies, send MMS messages, transfer files using bluetooth add cut and paste and receiving MMS messages. Wait, ok, I'll throw you a bone - if you add receiving MMS messages, I won't need to cut and paste ids and passwords back and forth, so that's lower priority.

AT&T - you meed to hire people to proofread the things you put on your site. This text, for example, is not really English:


See how you've used "this" twice in the second sentence? This is kind of stupid. Here, I'll reword it for free for you:

Your login is being verified. Depending on your Internet connection speed, this may take a few minutes to complete. If it does indeed take a few minutes to complete rather than a few seconds, you should contact your Internet Service Provider and tell them that AT&T says your connection sucks and you want your money back.

See - much better. The first one is free. After that, it costs money.

Revelations

Sometimes it takes a near-death experience (even on someone else's part) for us to see what's lacking in our own lives.

The big story in the news this morning was about the Quantas jet that had to make an emergency landing because of a hole that appeared in the fuselage - good reason to land in my book. Kudos to the crew and passengers for staying calm and landing safely.

What's the relevation, you're asking.. If you check out the news story, you'll see that there's a video clip shot from inside the plane - no doubt from a cell phone camera. So here I am, watching this video clip thinking "jerk, you're supposed to be panicking, not making a movie" and then it hits me - my freaking iPhone 3G can't make a damned movie.

WTF Steve - what's up with that? If my plane is going down, I want to record it at 30 frames per second, not a couple of stills per minute. When're you going to fix this? And would it hurt to have a few "features" with the still camera - maybe B&W pictures, Sepia tone, you know, cheesy things that I thought were cool in my iPhony (Sony Ericsson W810i phone).

iPhone 3G

Patience paid off.  I walked into an Apple store yesterday afternoon and walked out with a new iPhone.  Unlike everyone who felt compelled to stand in line for untold hours (don't you people have lives, jobs, self-esteem?), the whole process took under 30 minutes, most of that time being spent waiting for AT&T to adjust my account so that AppleStoreGuy could activate the phone in my name.

I got the white one, mostly because they didn't have any 16GB black ones.  I think I wanted a black one more, but I convinced myself I only wanted the black one because they didn't have any.

I haven't spent a lot of time with it yet, but I've done a few things - I connected to my home wireless network, I paired it with my Prius, I took a couple of pictures.  I even synced it with iTunes on my desktop which magically copied all of my contacts from my old phone to the iPhone.

I am disappointed in one aspect though - Bluetooth.  I can't remember having a phone that had Bluetooth that didn't let me transfer files from my phone to a PC (all of the pictures I post here are phone pictures).  I remember hearing horror stories from Verizon users about how their phones had crippled Bluetooth stacks.

On the other hand, for Halloween this year, I'm going slightly non-PC - I'll color my teeth blue and roll around in a wheelchair - get it?  Crippled bluetooth?  Yeah, ok, it's a stretch.

Economic Stimulus Package

I try to stay up on current events, but I confess, the economic stimulus package caught me off guard. When I first heard about it, I thought it was something pornographic-related. I mean, really, "stimulus" and "package" in the same sentence? I thought maybe it was some sort of cheap vibrator.

I'm happy to say, I was completely wrong. It's not a cheap vibrator (nor an audio vibratory physio molecular transport device - for Rocky Horror fans in the crowd), it's intended to stimulate our not-recessed economy. The idea is simple - the government sends me a check, and I go and buy something with it (sadly, what I buy will likely be made in China, thus stimulating the wrong economy - will China quiver when their economy gets overstimulated?).

What a great idea Mr. President! I say, bring them on! In fact, how about this - don't send me a check; instead, just send it to Steve Jobs; and he can send me a new iPhone3G, ok?