presentsense

Joining the dark side...

   As a big fan of Apple products in the last 20 years or so, and after coming close to pulling the trigger many times over that span, it might surprise you to know that yesterday I purchased my first Mac. I've said jokingly that I probably hold the record for owning the most Apple products without actually having one of their computers. Well, as of this Friday when it gets here, I won't say that any more.

The Macworld 2008 keynote

Thanks to Bill (miss you too) for reminding me that I didn't ever post my take on Steve Jobs' keynote this week. Here's the recap:

• iPhone firmware update which includes maps with location, customizable homescreen with webclips, and more
• iTunes update with movie rental support
• AppleTV firmware update to support rentals, HD programming, and standalone (non-computer-tethered) operation
• MacBook Air
• Time Capsule

Now my take...

iPhone keeps getting better, and so far, it's not costing me anything. For that, I am grateful, because the gadget budget around here is zero right now. I have tried the customizable homescreen, and it is very cool. I used it and created webclips for several web sites that I visit frequently from my iPhone (specifically Facebook, Accuweather radar, and a local movie site). I am working on creating an icon for this page which will allow you to have a special button on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Haven't quite got the bugs worked out of it yet, more to come

iTunes movie rentals seem a bit pricey compared to my Blockbuster Total Access membership, but I can see renting a movie for the iPhone if I need to travel.

As with the iPhone, the AppleTV enhancement is also a big win for me, particularly since the firmware update will be free when it starts shipping in a couple weeks. It will be cool to access Flickr on my TV, and to utilize full 720p resolution and 5.1 sound. As for renting, I'll let you know. I can't imagine how long it will take to download a move in high-def. Right now, a standard def TV show on iTunes is in the ballpark of 150-200 MB. Not an instant download. An HD file had better stream at first, or there won't be any last minute - "what do you want to do tonight? I know, let's rent a movie from iTunes." Tomorrow night, maybe, but not tonight.

MacBook Air. I guess the only positive for me on this is that there's a possibility that some friend of mine might buy one of these babies and sell me their Mac for cheap, or just give it to me. Honestly, if you really want to evangelize me into the Mac fold, you're going to have to give me one.

Ray Renner blogging in 2008...LINK UPDATED

Good news, Ray Renner is finally blogging. You can check him out at this link.

Ray is a pastor in Anderson, IN, who emerged in the early 1970's "Jesus" movement (hippies, freaks, and old-church burnouts living in varying levels of community). They were doing missional and organic church way before it was cool. I am sure he'll have a lot to add to the discussion of where the church is and where it is headed in the coming days. Be sure to add him to your blog roll.

In the interest of full disclosure, he's also my Dad.

Don't be that guy (or girl)...

We'll file this in the Web/Tech category, because, well...

Chances are good that in the next couple of weeks, you will be hanging out with people you don't see all that often. It might be long lost family members, or the spouses and kids of your co-workers, or the church people that only come around twice a year (or everyone in church, because YOU only come twice a year). Regardless of the situation, I thought it fitting that at this time of year I offer a few hints on how not to be "That Guy."

• Some people think that their cell phone's ring trumps all other adult conversation. You've been there - in a pleasant conversation with another grown up, when "Boo-da-da, Boo-da-da, Boo-da-da, Dee," the cell phone rings, and it's, "Hang on, let me get this..." If someone walked up to the two of you, they would have the decency not to interrupt you. The person calling is unaware of the conversation you are having, and they will not be in any way offended if they have to hang up or leave you a voice mail. The point: you may have a good heart and not want to be rude to the person calling, but in answering the phone you have been ten times more rude to the living breathing human in front of you. DON'T BE THAT GUY.
• Some people derive their self worth from the quantity of personal emails they receive, so they make a point to refresh their inbox or log on every several minutes. DON'T BE THAT GUY.
• Some people love to show off their new gadget of choice, but pay no praise to their family members, who have infinitely more value. DON'T BE THAT GUY. Show off - brag on - your kids and wife, not your iPhone or Blackberry.

What about you? Any techno-peeves to add to the list?

Kindle...part 2

Steve K. pointed out that the Kindle's design is utilitarian by choice. Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com's CEO) wanted the reader-device to stay out of the way of the stuff being read. I get that, but with that thought in mind, then how can you possibly charge $400 for the thing?

Parable: I have had two different VoIP service providers, and the devices I use to run the phone over the internet are boring little boxes. They don't get in the way or distract me. And neither one cost me a dime. The VoIP providers knew I would be paying to use their service, so they comped me the box to get on the service. Kindle's business model is no different. Amazon knows that in order to use their reader, I have to buy e-books from them, right? (Am I missing something here? OK, yeah, I can subscribe to blogs on the thing, which are free...meh...)

But wait, you say - Jobs charges me over $300 for an iPod, and I buy tunes from iTunes - shouldn't they comp me the iPod? No - of course not. I can use the iPod for tunes I didn't buy from them (and I mostly do), and iPods are cool - read: worth money.

Sorry, but I still don't get it.

Kindle...wtf?

A quick review of Kindle, Amazon.com's new e-book reader and service. Here are my impressions:

• Technologically, it's slick, mostly because of the built-in EVDO. In layman's terms, this thing just connects up directly to the mothership without wires or service plans to dick with. It doesn't take a visionary to see this sort of "hassle-free" connectivity baked into an iPod one day.
• Aesthetically, it's FUGLY! Go to amazon.com and look at the thing. You mean to tell me that in 2007, the age of iPhone, someone would roll out something so absolutely boring and utilitarian in design that it would make a toaster seem interesting? Come on, amazon, who's smoking crack over there? Even real-life ink and paper book publishers care more about how their product looks.

Typepad on iPhone

Typepad, the blogging platform I use, has just opened a portal for publishing from the iPhone. This is my first blog post from my iPhone.

Hello world

Another round of iPod announcements

Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple, Inc.) held a little get together today in San Francisco to announce the latest in the world of iPod. Here's what he had to announce, boiled down:

• Refreshed iPod shuffles, including a RED one that will send $10 bucks to African aid causes
• Completely redesigned iPod Nano. They are still impossibly thin, but now they have an increased screen size, and the ability to watch video on them.
• Refreshed "iPod Classic" with sizes of 80 GB and 160 GB. This is the one that will hold all your songs, if that is what you are looking for. With the Classic and the Nano, Cover Flow is available, although without the multitouch screen, it doesn't work the same way as it does on iPhone.
• ...Enter the iPod Touch. This is cool and quirky at the same time. From a capabilty standpoint, this iPod does it all. It has a big screen (like the iPhone), multitouch (like the iPhone), and WiFi (like the iPhone), but (and this is a big but, I think), because Apple wanted this baby to have no moving parts, storage is limited to 16 GB in the largest model. I find it hard to believe that someone serious enough to own the Touch is going to like leaving a lot of their content at home, not to mention that the video capability of this baby will require the files to be that much bigger. It seems odd that the flagship model of iPod is 1/5 the size of what's currently being sold as the flagship. I think we may be witnessing a divergence. If you want to have everything at your fingertips, get the Classic. If you want to actually do something cool with a smaller subset, get the Touch.
• iPhone - no changes here except a massive price cut. The 8GB iPhone will sell for $399 (yesterday it was selling for $599). The 4GB model is gone. Not surprising, as the 8GB was outselling the 4 by about 9 to 1.
• WiFi iTunes. Everybody that doesn't have an iPhone is saying, "Whaa?" That's right, even though the iPhone was connected to the net, you couldn't use it to buy music. Now you can, with both the iPhone and the iPod Touch.
• Starbucks. OK, here is how I understand the Starbucks thing-a-ma-jig. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, and you go into a Starbucks, you will get a Starbucks icon on the main screen. If you push (or mash for you Kentuckians) that icon, a screen will come up telling you what is playing right then and there, and give you the opportunity to buy it. Steph and I think this is pretty cool.

How many devices do you have?

I had to get a new router this week for my house, and one of the things it does is creates a virtual map of the devices the have addresses on the network. I guess I never noticed before, but I have 8 things on my network that are trying to talk to the outside world. Wow.

• My laptop
• Stephanie's laptop
• The "Media center" computer (where I keep all my music and iTunes for various devices to sync to)
• Wes's computer (World of Warcraft 24x7)
• PlayStation 3 (which folds proteins for Stanford University when we aren't playing games on it)
• AppleTV (which syncs to the Media Center computer, but also can go to YouTube)
• iPhone (which uses Wi-Fi when I'm home to check email and other stuff).
• Broadvoice phone adapter (my "land line" for the home office).

If my kids ever tell you they are bored, don't buy it.

iPhone - my take...

A couple weeks ago, Stephanie (now my wife) bought me an iPhone for my birthday. I thought I would let you know my take on it after having used it for a little while...

• First, let me start by saying that this is hands down the best phone I have ever used, period. Just like every new technology, it has its bugs, but the bottom line is this: there has never been a "smartphone" that comes as close to actually being smart as the iPhone.
• Second, I don't own a Mac, so don't read this review thinking that I am a crazy Mac evangelist (I do have quite a few of Apple's cool products, but no Mac).

As a phone...

Yeah, it has tons of cools widgets, but the first question you should ask is, "How is it as a phone?" It's superb. Calls are clear, contacts are easy to find, and in-call controls show up when you need them, and go away when you don't. When you are in a call, 6 buttons appear on the screen for useful things like Speaker, Mute, Hold, etc. When the call ends, those buttons go away. Add Call is another nice feature which allows you to call another person and start a 3 way call. The speaker is a bit too quiet for me, making a Speakerphone call hard to pull off say in a moving car.

As an iPod...

Coverflow is a cool way of rifling through your albums to find the song you want to play. I would guess the next gen iPods will have to incorporate a touch screen in order to utilize this feature. The inlcuded headset is nice, and the phone will mute and unmute the music gracefully before and after a call comes in. It would be nice if the iPhone would do crossfade playback, but as of now it doesn't. Seems like something Apple could easily fix with a firmware update.

Surfing...

While much better than any other phone I have surfed on, Safari is easily the weakest link the iPhone has. It crashes unexpectedly, the bookmarks are hard to get used to, and the browser does not support Flash, which renders a lot of today's webpages less functional than they could be. That being said, once you get used to it, it is very handy to be able to access the web from anywhere at any time. The iPhone data plan (a requirement to activate the phone) is a cheap $20 a month for unlimited access, and the iPhone senses when you are in range of a WiFi hotspot and automatically uses it if it can, speeding up the process. AT&T's EDGE data network is slow, but think of it as a lifeline for when you are not range of a hotspot.

Other cool tools...

Maps is great. I have used it a lot. It uses Google maps as its data source, and the look and feel is very similar. Driving directions are easy to page through, or if you want to go off the beaten path, just slide the map around, zoom in, zoom out. Traffic info is available for many major cities. I knew there was going to be a traffic jam in downtown Jacksonville before I got there last week.

The camera is good for a phone based camera, and the multitouch interface really shines when zooming and cropping photos.

Text (SMS) messaging is nice, with entire conversations saved as long as you want them, but the inability to text (MMS) photos to another person is mysterious. Instead, the iPhone opens an email window and attaches the photo into an email. Not helpful if the person you want to send the pic to is not online at the time.

Weather is handy, but it would be nice to be able to see radar or a more detailed forecast. The weather tool gives you the high and low temps for the next six days, but only gives a cryptic cartoon-like depiction of the actual weather conditions for the day. I wish I could tap to get more detail.

YouTube is cool, and once their entire catalog is transcoded to the iPhone supported format, I can imagine that a person might watch a lot less TV.