Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

So I’ve had my iPhone for two days, but I can already tell that it’s a love hate relationship. It’s so well designed that I can’t help but love, but at the same time there are just things that don’t work. I’m not talking about the Apple iPhone Bugs List, just things that don’t work the way I want them to.

Unlocking your SIM

First you have to Jailbreak the phone, bypassing activation, then you have update the software on the phone from an Apple restore image, and finally you have to flash the modem firmware. It will take you 1-2 hours if you’re technically stupid and have a Mac OSX unlocking guide or a windows unlocking guide. All this, just to get it working on T-mobile or Verizon.

The headphone jack

So now that you have your $399 iPhone you want to plug your $299 Shure or Bose headphones in. Well guess what, you can’t. The iPhone headphone jack is recessed into the case so that only Apple’s super slim plug can fit in. Your only choice is to perform surgery on your electronics, or buy an adapter:

Your iPhone after headphone accessory

A smart aftermarket accessory maker will find a way to produce a plug that makes the top of the iPhone flush with the case.

Only 8 GB of Flash

The iPod Touch has 16Gb for the same price. As flash memory is rapidly falling per GB, next year should see 16GB iPhones, possibly up to the 32Gb mark. Early adopters will have to wait, however, and live with their paltry 1000 songs and a movie.

Battery Life

The iPhone’s battery dimension are 43.6 x 50.5 x 5.4 mm, and it is rated at 3.7 V and 1400mAh. Yet, with everything (Edge, Wifi, Bluetooth) turned on, it might barely last you five hours. So what should you do? I’ve looked around for higher-rated batteries in those dimensions, and been unable to find anything that perfectly fits… yet. Within a year, I predict 2400-3200 mAh batteries will come on the market to double your battery life.

Telephone contacts formatting

I expect when I enter someone’s name into my phone it will display “Back, First”. However, the iPhone is cool and trendy and omits the comma, leaving you with “Last First”. This is much harder to read.

Now playing

When I hit play on a song, please do not stop it, ever. Not when downloading x, y, or z, on a telephone call, in some random context. I want my music to play!

3rd party apps

Sure, it’s a pain, but once you do unlock and jailbreak your phone you can easily install some pretty cool apps, including a decently accurate faux GPS app from Navizon which triangulates your position from known cell phone towers and then pins you to Google maps:

Your apps know where you are!

Camera

I am really liking the built-in 2MP digital camera and great touch-interface for it that covers the entire display. It blows away every cellphone camera I’ve ever seen, although I know there are some Asian cellphone cams that top even it. It’s nice to see an American manufacturer paying some attention to the cellphone camera.

Coverflow

This is controversial, but coverflow is one of those “I’m better than you features” that you can show off to collective “oooh” and “aaah”. It’s totally useless, but so cool, which counts for a lot.

Visual music browsing

Battery

I just said the battery sucks, but if you do turn off wifi and bluetooth, it tends to last longer than my old iPod. I haven’t been able to drain during my commute to work, at work, and then back home.

I just got home from a weekend at Cornell and promptly canceled my iPod Touch 16Gb order after checking bloglines. Apparently, there are a number of flaws with the new device which outweigh the double capacity it offers at the $399 price point, so I’m going to trade those 8GB for a phone, camera, and email.

Here’s what’s not going so hot with the iPod Touch:

Unlocking, hacking, jailbreak:

According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, “Jailbreak seems increasingly unlikely at this point.” Without the ability to run custom applications on the touch, there’s absolutely no hope for enhancements that make it as fun or useful as the iPhone. While someone may open it up for hacking in the near future, it’s not happening yet.

Shoddy UI:

Check out this photo of an iPod Touch displaying an iPhone error message. While just a graphical glitch, it doesn’t bode well for PR or the myriad other bugs that we’ll probably start to see cropping up in the Touches soon.

Shoddy manufacturing:

People have been receiving iPhone Touches without OSX installed on them, making their $399 mp3 player a brick in their pockets. Yet another bug.

Missing bazillions of iPhone features:

The list of cut features is long: edge, mail, link sharing, notes, calendar, bluetooth, volume buttons, maps, weather, stocks, a dock, or a camera. Some of these (camera, edge, mail, bluetooth, maps) are deal-breaking features.

Bad sound quality:

It’s been shown that the new 6G iPod Classics have worse sound quality than the 5G line. I don’t know if this affects the Touch or iPhone, but it’s something to keep in mind. Update: According to iFix it, the iPod Touch uses the older, superior Wolfson chipset which doesn’t suffer from this issue.

Screen quality issues:

The iPod touch’s screen has a much worse contrast ratio than the iPhone’s, as seen in this Flickr set, which means a loss of detail and negative black sections on the slightly smaller display.

… here’s the minimum opening bid: I am worth $3,328,270 on HumanForSale.com. How much are you worth?

I’m going to lay down the law here on the Storm Worm’s latest incarnation, w32/Ramex.A or W32/Skipi.A or W32.Pykspa.D. Although the official Skype blog refers to it as either “the worm” or “a virus”, their copy makes it clear that the Skype Storm Worm cannot spread without manual user action:

Skype has learned that a computer virus called “w32/Ramex.A” is affecting users of Skype for Windows. Users whose computers are infected with this virus will send a chat message to other Skype users asking them to click on a web link that can infect the computer of the person who receives the message.

Dwight Silverman gives a good overview about what exactly it does to convince a user to open the evil .scr file and infect themselves. After all, who wouldn’t click “NFL Season Is Here!”? That said, a computer worm is actually a lot more serious:

A computer worm is a self-replicating computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other nodes (computer terminals on the network) and it may do so without any user intervention.

If this were a worm, all of Skype’s 10,000,000 users would have been infected in minutes, doubling or tripling the size of the “Storm Worm” botnet. So, you idiot bloggers, before you write something that scary, make sure you use the right terminology. I saw the headlines this morning at work and had a heart attack, and then read the story and cooled off. But, it’s probably not good for my blood pressure o_O.

There is nothing on the major blogs yet, but our friend Amazon.com has a shocking new homepage. I don’t like it much:

According to their remodelling page, they have changed the following:

• Moved all their product categories to the left side using flyout links
• Placed more emphasis on gift lists and wish lists
• Provided more emphasis on their Prime program with a top-level link
• Emphasized search with a larger bar
• Changed to a different shade of blue

They have the following notice which states that not everyone may be able to see the page:

We’re still in our testing phase, and you may not see the new design all the time.

Why change? According to Amazon, “When Amazon.com went online in 1995, we sold only books. Now we have over 40 departments, from tools to toys, and we wanted to make it easier for you to find items in each and every one of them.” If you hate the new layout, let Amazon know by emailing navigation@amazon.com!