Early thoughts about that phone (but mostly about AT&T)
When I went to stand in line for the iPhone Friday at 11 AM I plopped my chair down and promptly went inside for real service. The nerd queue looked at me like I had some inside track.
My AT&T 3G card had stopped working two weeks ago. Scratch that, my 3G card — compatible with the AT&T network, which they were not yet selling three months ago but which I could not wait for so I bought unlocked — was not working. It worked splendidly for three months and then suddenly nothing. The first rep, though a nice guy, immediately called tech support, put me on the line, and walked away. The exact same thing I would have done from home. Ugh. Long story short: “We don’t know your card and the fact that you are working on a Mac means we can’t follow our script so, despite the fact that the card was working for months, we recommend a) that you buy one of our cards (for $300) and b) that you call Apple.”
That you call Apple. The irony was rich. Everyone in the store was gearing up for the biggest day in AT&T/Cingular retail history because Apple found them to be the least despicable carrier to partner with and they were blaming the malfunction on Apple.* I hung up with the absolutely derailed tech support guy (remember I’m in the AT&T store) and thought this iPhone partnership ain’t gonna last long. Indeed, if not for the special features that Jobs forced upon AT&T (visual voicemail, at-home activation) I see no reason to keep this going.
Luckily one of the clerks was tenacious. He just sat at his terminal googling stuff and asking me to change settings as he came across them. Again, something I clearly could have done from home if I didn’t have a seat waiting for me outside of the store. Eventually he came across a random authentication string that work. All from in-store googling.
Is this really what tech support has come to? True, most of the first-day adopters of the iPhone are technically savvy and can get by without ever setting foot in an AT&T store, but if Apple wants to reach their goal of 10 million phones sold by the end of 2008 they are going to have to figure out how to deal with AT&T customer service. It is as abominable as the phone itself is glorious. Methinks the partnership will not last.
The best thing about the iPhone is how it feels so integrated and seamless, but here are some of the specific things I am really impressed with.
The flick-and-scroll and pinch-to-zoom interaction is unbelievably right. Forehead-slappingly so. In particular the pinching is extremely precise. One immediately wishes the multitouch trackpad on the MacBook allowed the same thing. And one wonders about how the iPhone UI will influence future Mac development.
Visual voicemail. I’ve had this at work for a few years and it is by far the right way to deal with voicemail. Being able to see who called and to choose which message you want non-serially (e-mail-like) is exactly how it should be done. The message itself resides on your phone. No dialing up to get it.
The iPod functionality is truly the best there is. I thought I’d miss the scroll wheel, but I don’t. CoverFlow was formerly eye candy, now it is actually useful. Videos (and of course photos) look great.
EDGE is faster than I expected (but still way below the 3G that Cingular supports).
A few gripes too of course.
No LEAP authentication support for wireless. So no hopping on the corporate network, for now.
There’s no dedicated contacts app, which is odd because the contacts are superbly handled. Just that they are handled inside other apps (phone, e-mail, etc).
Driving a car and operating the iPhone is tricky, nay, dangerous. Some of the features absolutely require two hands.
The recessed headphone jack — which does not work with most connectors — is baffling. Why do this?
On web pages that auto-reload (like a sports scoreboard) the currently selected zoom level is forgotten. So you have to pinch and flick it back. Just seems like an oversight.
I miss having the ability to take a voicenote.
No synching of notes from the iPhone to the desktop, which makes them a lot less useful.
More as I play with, erm, use it more.
[*] Unsurprisingly the problem had nothing whatsoever to do with Apple. It was a missing access string from AT&T. But that’s the end-of-the-line recommendation from all tech support: “call the manufacturer” (because we give up).
Flick and pinch
Sorry to leave you hanging last night. I did indeed get an iPhone right after 6:00 PM. I may in fact have been the first person in Chicago to activate it since my office was right across the street from the AT&T store. I think I was screwing around on it by 6:15.
So, yes, I have it. Yes, I love it. I’ll certainly post a review.
But can you give us some alone time please?
18:00 iPhone
The best part about sitting out here for half the day is the people watching — and not just the nerds in line like me. It’s become a bit of a game to make up replies to the suburbanites fleeing the city who ask “What are you in line for?” There’s a sizable group of commuters who now truly believe that Kevin Federline is in town, for instance.
Waiting hasn’t been too bad actually. The store clerks periodically bring out snacks, water, and even Chipotle for us, believe it or not.
The line-sitters fall into a few camps: plain old dorks (that’d be me), young kids, and people who will have the phones up on eBay as soon as they get home. And then there are the homeless people who have been hired to wait in line. Sad, really, but they’re happy. Paid, free food, and a bit of a fun atmosphere. There has been only one fight between drunks. (This did not involve me.)
So I’m just sitting here sucking off wifi across the street from Caribou. When the light turns red and the traffic piles up I lose signal. A guy and I bought extension cords and have strung them the length of the 100 or so people who are here so all the nerds can compute. We’re happy.
A little over an hour now.
Data in the cloud
In response to my weak rationalization about why I am getting an iPhone Ian asked about which web apps I use. So here they are (with the offline apps they synch with on both Mac and PC).
| function | web app | offline Mac app | offline PC app |
| Gmail | Thunderbird | Thunderbird | |
| calendar | Google Calendar | iCal* | Sunbird** |
| contacts | Plaxo | OSX Address Book | Thunderbird |
| lists/notes | Backpack | Packrat | [none] |
| project collaboration | Basecamp | [none] | [none] |
| RSS | Newsgator | NetNewsWire | FeedDemon |
| blog authoring | Movable Type | Ecto | Ecto |
[*] Does not support two-way synching.
[**] The latest build of Sunbird (0.5) does support two-way synching. If I have to do that (like on an airplane) I use Sunbird on the Mac.
Of course this says nothing of all the other data that lives out in the tuboverse. Flickr, Ancestry.com, Google Spreadsheets and on and on. But these have no desktop equivalents at all so I don’t include them here. Suffice to say, most of my most critical data lives somewhere online.
iPhone, I am ready for you if you will have me.
(HTML tables! Yay, old school layout!)
Urban oasis
A few years after the Wacker Drive demolition and rebuild the little Vietnam Memorial plaza on the Chicago River is open for passersby. Between State and Wabash on the south side. It isn’t exactly a full-on riverwalk, but it does make the waterway seem less like a gulch. Really quite nice.
This is right across from the former location of IBM in Chicago. Makes me miss the area all the more. What a great place it would have been to get away from the office hubbub. Might have even been able to rig a Wifi repeater to shoot across the river. Oh well. I’ll just sulk in the skyscraper canyon we’re now in.
For Chicago River fans out there, here’s a video of me taking the water taxi east on the main branch to the Michigan Avenue quay.
Sluicing through the blog archives I am struck at my obsession with this river. Go with the flow:
Brita City (re-engineering the river)
Escher streetscape (watching the drawbridges let sailboats in)
A unique phone call (floating past a bridge on fire)
Tipping Point (the Eastland disaster)
Available: loft apartment w/ lake and river view (man who lived in the Michigan Ave. bridge)
Man vs. sailboat (outrunning the drawbridges)
Lord of the Gizmos
Can I tell you how many times I’ve been asked: Are you getting an iPhone? No, I cannot, for I cannot count that high unassisted by spreadsheet.
People, of course I am getting an iPhone … but maybe not for the reasons you suspect.
I’ve needed a new phone since January. My trusty, bulky Sony Ericsson S710a was simply not cutting it any longer. I was prepared for a new phone but then heard that the iPhone was coming. Months in the future of course, but on the horizon. So I waited. Waited for the details to trickle in.
Not everything impressed. When I found out it would be on my current carrier Cingular I was happy. Then I remembered it was Cingular and I was sad. Because Cingular sucks, but they have good international coverage, which is the only reason I am with them. Then I learned that the iPhone would not support Cingular’s nascent 3G network. And I was really sad. This will most certainly suck.
But the real reason I am going to get one is that I am coming around to convergence — when done right. Everything I have seen suggests that this device can synthesize a phone and an iPod perfectly. True, it will not be the 80GB version I haul around, but it has caused me to rethink my iPod strategy. I carry an 80GB mostly because of long-distance travel, not for my commute. Who the hell listens to 80GB of music in a typical session on the iPod? No one. But the large capacity is ideal for when you are away from your main music library for a time and want choice.
The iPhone has me rethinking. The only other device I always have on me is my laptop and, while it does not have enough free space to house my entire collection, there are multiple options for expansion including swapping the CD drive (which I rarely use) for a second hard drive or using a tiny external drive. I might just do this. Unload the 80GB and use the iPhone exclusively for listening on the go.
The other reason the iPhone makes sense to me is coincidental. I have been moving all my critical data to web services in the last year. E-mail, bookmarks, to do lists, calendar, project plans, backups, everything is now accessible via a web interface. And this, despite the protestations of OSX developers everywhere, is the only way Apple is currently allowing developer access to the platform — through web apps. I still love offline, cross-platform access to data, but this will do for a mobile device.
So what’s my plan on Friday? Well, there is an AT&T/Cingular store right across the street from my office. As soon as I see a line form, I’m out there.
Water and fire
There was a torrential afternoon downpour yesterday that caught all three of my kids — which includes my one-year-old baby girl — and their Ghanaian babysitter in the rain at the park. They got drenched. And they loved it, especially the toddler. Apparently this is good news, for in Ghana it is said that if a baby gets rained on and does not cry it will live a long life. Who knew?
My three-year-old boy, however, has a problem. A few weeks ago we were out for a stroll and we passed the neighborhood fire department just as the engines were preparing to roll. They laid on the sirens and that really loud, low bellow before they left the station. This noise, compounded by the soundboard of the open garage and the fact that we were approximately 20 feet away, scared the daylights out of my kids. My wife and I were startled too. It was like standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. (Not that I’d know.)
Now, whenever a fire truck blares by — and this is often as we are on a major route out of the station — my three-year-old freaks out. Runs amok, hands covering his ears, shaking, scared mindless. It has gotten so bad that if he thinks something sounds even remotely like a siren (which in the city is like background radiation) he loses it or if he thinks there’s a likelihood of fire, say, because he sees open flame on the grill, he freaks. Pavlovian, yet heartbreaking. We’ve offered to bake cookies and head to the firehouse tomorrow to have him meet the nice firefighters and confront his fears. He’s less than sure about that.
I don’t believe there is any west African folk wisdom for this problem.
Update: Thelovelywife took Andrew to the local firehouse with a platter of cookies to confront his fears.
The firefighters were totally accommodating, letting he and his brother and cousin play in the engine cab and with the hoses. And yet, Andrew had his hands at his ears the whole time — scared that there’s be a fire emergency in the neighborhood at any time. And in fact there was. Engines rolled. Tears flowed.
Moodbuster
Been in a funk all day. But the funk has broken, so to speak.
I was playing tennis with my brother, getting my ass handed to me on a platter on a crappy public court (massive weed-strewn fissures down the hardtop, sandstorm-grade dust blowing over from an abutting dog track — nice design there, city, net two cranks too low) and it was freaking hot. Perfect to maintain my stroppy disposition.
But then I see a couple near a park bench. One or both of them is deaf because they are signing like mad. Not sure if they were arguing but whatever they were saying it was intense. And then one of them gives the sign (I’m guessing here) for “Screw this, let’s SMS” and they pull out identical smartphones. They regain composure, sit down and start texting back and forth, right next to each other, happy as clams.
It was the most beautiful thing. I think I broke my brother’s serve after that.
Instant messaging peeves
In a bit of a mood today so here’s my chat annoyance list.
When status says “not available” or “do not disturb.” I have never understood this. If you are using a chat application but not accepting messages what’s the point? Log off.
“I just e-mailed you.” Yes, thank you I see your note sitting right here in my inbox. This is only slightly less annoying than people who call you to let you know that they’ve e-mailed you right after clicking send. E-mail is asynchronous, people. Look it up.
“On the phone” or, worse, “otp.” Yes, that’s why I chose to ping you instead of ring you. And if you can’t do two things at once, why are you on chat? IM isn’t for uni-taskers.
When people treat IM like an e-mail. “Dear John, I am writing you to follow up on the matter we discussed … [18 lines later] … Sincerely, Mary.” Nice selection of medium there, Mary.
“Are you using [insert app here]?” This would be like asking people if they are using Outlook before sending an e-mail. Who cares?
| 12:51 PM | Mary: you there? | |
| 12:51 PM | John: yes | |
| 1:47 PM | Mary: just seeing if you are around |
And the obverse:
| 2:15 PM | Mary: there john? | |
| 2:15 PM | Mary: hello?????? |
When you know someone is typing (“Mary is typing …”) and it takes forever. People, put down the Strunk and White and hit return. Chat. Not oration.
OK, all done. Damn you, Mary.
Beauty in the breakdown
Not sure why it has taken me to so long to upload this, but here’s a great time-lapse video from the winter of 2004-2005 of the deconstruction of the Sun-Times building from the IBM building. A monument to the pre-Trump era. Click for video.
Thanks to Jack Blanchard and Jeff Berg.
Man, I miss that view.
Mission Elapsed Time: 20:00:21:06:42:40
Recently this blog (and my Flickr account) turned 20 years old, forever in Internet years. I went back through it all, retracing digital footprints made on what feels like a different planet. Here are some highlights.
The Terror Tourist
A roughly monthly exploration of places in horror fiction — real or imagined, geographical or psychological — culled from The Heavy Leather Horror Show.
Subscribe to the podcast or the email newsletter or just read through the archives posted here.
The Ampcamper
How I hauled myself, two teens, an 80 lb dog, and a whole load of crap 4000+ miles across six states in twenty days using an electric vehicle. And survived to tell the tale.
