Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

When it came time to  upgrade my old iPhone 3GS a couple of years ago, I wavered between the new iPhone 5 and some flavor of Android phone. For a variety of reasons, not all very well thought out, I ended up with the iPhone 5. I had an iPad, and a small investment in apps, so it seemed the way to go. About 9 months ago, around the time of one of the iOS 7 updates, I found my phone would often (as in "constantly") turn itself off and show it needed to be charged when the meter showed about 30% charge remaining. A quick Google showed I was not alone in this annoying behavior. I'd plug the phone in to charge it and it would instantly show as having 35%+ charge remaining. Sometimes doing a hard reset by pressing and holding both the Sleep and Home button would temporarily remind my phone it did indeed have juice, but not always. "Miscalibration," was the term I saw bandied about. I tried backing up my phone and restoring it. No dice. This got worse and worse...

Okay - I'll admit it: it doesn't take much to buy me off. I've bitched about buying and downloading mp3's to Linux machines and Amazon's non-support for a while - in fact those posts are some of the most visited on my site. But still I stick with Amazon. It's like some trailer park relationship. But now I'm willing to kiss and make up because now Amazon Prime memberships get FREE MUSIC STREAMING! (I'm doing the happy dance). I signed up for Prime around Christmas because (I told myself) I needed a package in a hurry. While normally I might have just popped for the extra shipping, the fact that Prime accounts get free 2 day shipping AND video streaming was enough to get me to fork over the cost of a Prime membership. You can do a free one month trial, so why not?  I don't watch a lot of stuff, but I watch some, and it's a nice deal. I even bought myself a Roku device (from Amazon!) for Father's Day this year to make it easier. But fr...

Since I worked from home yesterday I ended up deciding it would be a good idea to upgrade my iDevices to iOS 5 the very first day it was available . Remind me to never do that again. Not surprisingly, everybody on this side of the space-time continuum made the same foolish choice. My first attempt to download the upgrade started by helpfully informing me it would take around 23 minute to download...then 29...then 38...  Which was bad enough except when it finished, iTunes gave me a terse little error message that said, "there was a problem downloading" blah, blah. Son of a bitch ! After several failed attempts (each longer than the last) I Googled the error message and speculated my anti-virus software was not playing nice with iTunes. Thank you Kaspersky. After disabling it I started the download process again, (it took about 90 minutes) and finally got my iPad updated. The whole process, with backing up, restoring, etc, took roughly 2 and a half to 3 hours. Note ...

So Apple finally announced the iPhone du jour yesterday. Am I the only one out there who feels slightly underwhelmed? Okay - these are the features most prominently displayed on the Apple website: Faster processer - nice, but I never felt my 3GS was cripplingly slow. Meh. Better camera - nice, but it's still a camera in a phone, with all the limitations that come with that. Slightly more compelling but still - meh. Siri - voice commands. I tried Siri before Apple bought it and never found it all that useful. A gimmick. Note to Apple: I'm saying "meh," now - is there a command for that? iOS5 - this is actually the most interesting thing being trumpeted as part of the new phone. Oh wait - I can get it as a free upgrade to my current phone in a few days. More on that below. iCloud - sounds like this is an iOS5 thing. See above comment. So I'm not seeing any reason to rush right out and replace my old 3GS. The biggest complaint I have with it is that battery...

Yesterday the Apple website breathlessly teased us about an announcement to be made today that promised to change our world. Today they revealed the Beatles are (finally) available on iTunes. Are you freaking kidding me? Don't get me wrong -- I like the Beatles, it's just that this has to be one of the lamest announcements ever. While the history of the conspicuous absence of the Beatles audio library on iTunes is interesting, in a geeky sort of way, it's not like mp3's of Beatles songs weren't available on the web in great abundance (albeit through unauthorized channels). Any one possessing a CD, borrowed or otherwise, can rip Beatles tunes to their heart's delight. My iPhone is full of Beatles songs. So what? All this means is now Apple ( and whoever owns the rights to the catalog now ) makes even more money off Beatlemania. Yawn.

Somewhere in Cupertino, a great disturbance in the Force is felt... http://www.padgadget.com/2010/09/30/ipad-runs-windows-95/

The US Courts have declared that "jailbreaking" your iPhone is a perfectly legal activity. Apple has been waving its corporate arms and screaming that jailbreaking is illegal -- citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- and making apocalyptic predictions of "potentially catastrophic" cyberattacks by hordes of iPhone-wielding cyber terrorists. The courts said, "Uh, no." While Apple is free to declare that jailbreaking voids warranties, it's not against the law. I guess all those Android-toting desperados are now free to switch carriers once their contracts run out, since the iPhone is obviously a much better platform for their nefarious deeds. You can thank the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this latest bit of sanity in the world of corporate nonsense.

The whole Apple vs. Adobe soap opera continues. When will somebody cancel this show? The latest installment comes from Adobe, who's now running full pages ads in the Wall Street Journal and posting open letters. The latest is entitled, " Our thoughts on open markets ." As the founders of Adobe, we believe open markets are in the best interest of developers, content owners, and consumers. Freedom of choice on the web has unleashed an explosion of content and transformed how we work, learn, communicate, and, ultimately, express ourselves. Yeah right. This is because (sniff) Apple won't support Flash on the iPod/iPad/iPhone. Oh boo hoo. Guess what: when I use the Lynx browser on the console of my Linux box I get no Flash support either. More significantly, the Adobe EULA for Flash forbids anyone who has installed their Flash tools or plugin from working on Flash technologies. It is a closed, proprietary platform. Closed: not open. As far as open markets, A...

This just in: a clever person out there has managed to successfully hack his iPhone so it will boot into Google's Android OS (which also means -- he's made it boot into Linux!). Apparently he's only got this working on an older iPhone (not 3G or 3GS) but by golly -- the fact he's done it at all is pretty astonishing. There's an embedded YouTube video that demos this unnatural act in all its perverse wonderment. Somewhere there is a great disturbance in the Force. Thanks again to Slashdot for bringing this to my attention.

In an oddly serendipitous set of circumstances, Gizmodo "found" what they claim is a prototype for the new iPhone in a bar in Redwood City.The real deal is scheduled to be launched this June. By the time they got their hands on the prototype, the owner had remotely killed it, but they do have a number of photos, as well as descriptions. My impression is the styling is heavily influenced by the iPad, including an aluminum band around the perimeter. Although I won't be rushing out to buy one (not until my AT&T contract expires anyway) it appears to be a handsome device. I will be upgrading to the 4.0 firmware once they make it available for the 3GS. Check it out , fanboy! In other iPhoney news, the beta release of the 4.0 firmware has already been jailbroken .

Omigod! Against all that I thought possible, Apple has approved the Opera Mini browser for iPhone (presumably an iPad version can't be far behind). Omigod! I'm downloading it now !

Latest rumor in the continuing soap opera that is Flash vs. the iPhone: ITWORLD has an article that says there are reports that Adobe is planning to sue Apple in a couple of weeks for Flash non-support. The problem is apparently with the new Apple SDK ("software development kit" for you non-geeks) license, which locks Flash out of the iPhone (and iPad!) even tighter that it previously was. I can picture some Suit at Adobe sputtering, "But they have to have Flash! Everybody uses Flash!" Having a version of a site with Flash and one without is going to be a pain in the ass for the average web developer. Guess which one they'll go with if they want to woo the iPhone/iPad user? Although I use (and like) products from each company I have no great love for either Apple or Adobe -- from a corporate point of view they are both arrogant pricks as far as I can tell. So I'm going to enjoy this pissing contest immensely. Word to Adobe: few if any technology battl...

I'm not sitting here (like some colleagues) eagerly awaiting the arrival of an iPad. I have an iPhone which I like a lot, but I don't see the iPad as being that much of an improvement. It's an interesting device but, as is typical for Apple, is overpriced and over designed. Still, I'm hoping it's wildly successful for one reason, and one reason alone: it has no Flash support. Confused? Let me explain. Full confession: I hate Flash. Or rather I hate how it's used by lazy designers to build non-compliant non-accessible websites which are only visible to a subset of the web population. Don't get me wrong: Flash is a tool, and like all tools, there are somethings it is very well suited for. But mostly it is used by ad agencies and design firms to add sizzle and sex appeal to their presentations to clients so they can sell services. Its use contributes to what I once heard referred to as "bandwidth drunkenness." So, the iPad won't support this bli...

The news is now out that Opera Mini for iPhone was submitted to the iPhone App store yesterday. Opera has a page where you can sign in and win a bright shiny new iPhone by guessing when Opera Mini will be approved and available for download. I signed in but didn't see a choice for "when Hell freezes over." Because - seriously - that's going to be the winning guess. Anybody remember the ugliness that erupted over Google's Google Voice app? Expect a repeat. Actually compared to what this will no doubt morph into, the GV business will look like a love fest. Which is a shame because Opera makes a fantastic browser, especially the Opera Mini. I've used versions for the various Nokias I owned for years and loved it. By the way, if you're tired of IE, add Opera 10 to your list of alternate browsers to install.

Now there's a new way to blog on the run. BlogPress Lite is a free iPhone app from InfoThinker, written with the support of the Blogger team at Google. It supports adding photos, with hooks into your Blogger Picasa account. The full version supports blogging platforms. Needless to say I'm writing this while lying in bed, since I'm not quite ready to get up.

Certain sectors of my office were abuzz following the announcement of Apple's latest piece of iCandy, the iPad. The fanboys were salivating all over their keyboards, barely containing their gadget lust. Other were less impressed. I texted youngest son and his reply summed up the skeptics' point of view: "It's like a giant iPhone that doesn't have a phone, is more expensive and less portable." My take: they'll probably sell a bunch as soon as they are available, and then sales will drop off dramatically. Smart things Entry level price point is about right, though you are still paying the Apple tax. Keyboard dock is a smart move, given that touch screens suck for much more than lightweight typing Uses iPod/Phone apps right out of the box, at least most (what are those mystery apps that won't work?) Does a lot of stuff Not so smart things These are going to be fragile devices. Think of all the cracked iPod/Phone screens you see walking around....

Okay -- Apple has finally announced what the fan-boys have all been waiting for: their new tablet. gdgt.com live blogged the event and my comments are based largely on theirs, so I could turn out to be completely full of crap. However, that's never stopped me before. They call it the iPad. Cute. It looks a lot like an oversized iPod touch or iPhone. Apple claims up to 10 hours of battery live. We'll see about that. My iPhone does well to make it through the day with a full charge unless I do nothing but use it as a phone, and what's the point of that? It's got a 9.7 inch display, is 1/2 an inch thick and weighs a pound and a half. Since it strongly resembles an oversized iPod/Phone, my first question would be: will we see the same sad cracked touch screens that about every 4th iPod/Phone seems to be cursed with?  Maybe it's time Apple rethought the notion of Real Glass (which Really Breaks) and go with an alternative. Other specs: comes with WiFi/Bluetooth...

And now for a short break from ponderous holiday thoughts. Here's my latest geeky thing. I confess, I love my tunes, which is one of the reasons I finally opted for an iPhone -- it's a great portable music device. And not just when using it as an MP3 player. Lots of devices do that. It also has great streaming audio functionality. Apps like Pandora , Slacker and Shoutcast (to mention but a few) were what sold me. But when I'm home I don't always feel like listening to streams on my iPhone. I've got other stream players, such as my Roku Soundbridge and Linksys WMLS11B . Here's a brief discussion about one way (out of many) to manage tunes for these two devices. Both of these have remotes that let you browse for music servers on your network or  select preselected streams. While useful, both devices have only low-res displays which means a lot of drilling down using the remote -- not a very fast or intuitive method of looking for stuff. Since I can...

Youngest son (and fellow Colbert Report junkie) clued me into the launch of a new app from the Colbert Nation which features clips of all of Stephen Colbert's " The Word ." Now you'll never be more than a screen tap away from Stephen's truthiness. This may be the single best reason ever to get an iPhone. You can view the featured (most recent) Word, or choose by date--all the way back to 2005. You can go by the title and by most popular. Or select Random and pull up some long-forgotten Wisdom from any of the past five seasons. Best 99 cents you'll ever spend! Screenshot shamelessly nicked from TheNoFactZone -- best source of information on All Things Colbert. Follow the link for more information and additional screenshots.

Actually this happened a couple of weeks ago, right before I took the young scholar off to George Mason University. Looking back, most of my cellphone decisions have been driven by the whim of my offspring. We got cellphones in the first place at the urging of our oldest, who foolishly thought it would make his mother easier to get hold of. Now we've switched to AT&T because the youngest wanted an iPhone. Since we regularly found ourselves standing on the sidewalk to make calls due to T-Mobile's crappy coverage, I was game for a change. And I get a modest discount from AT&T's mobile price thanks to my employer. Not to drag this out, but in the end we all ended up with iPhones -- youngest and me with 32GB 3Gs models, mom with the 8GB 3G. Mom (who shows slight Luddite tendencies) was the straggler. But after a weekend session of showing her what mine would do, she decided she liked the idea of having a cool phone. Thank you, Steven Jobs. Overall I'm fin...