The iPhone Experience, or iPhonica!!!

aaron cohen — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:22:34 +0000

We got iPhones last weekend and I thought I would note down some of my initial thoughts and questions. Some have been answered, and some I'll just put out there for the internets to answer if they can. After a week, I'm pretty pleased. Except for a few features, it hasn't completely blown my mind, but my expectations were higher than anything I've ever had expectations for.
Without further adieu, and in no particular order, my questions, observations, and experiences, with answers when found, are below the fold:

*Does the iPhone play AVIs? No.

*Wrong iTunes account set up on iPhone? When I got the iPhone, Oliva Schow's iTunes account was assigned to it. I'm not sure if this was because of the computer used to set up the phone, or if the phone had already been out on the street. Anyone else experience this?

*Porting the number? Someday I will write up the story of the 3 weeks I was without a phone when Sprint tried to port my number over from ATT 4 years ago. This time, I got a text message an hour after leaving the store saying that there was an issue porting my number. Needless to say, I was nervous. Apparently, however, the password had been entered incorrectly and the operator was able to get it going for me. The fact that they have an entire call center devoted to call porting was a refreshing change from 4 years ago, but it still took 16 hours or so for the port to complete.

*Contact birthdays in iCal? I like to enter the birthdays of my contacts into the address book, but there didn't used to be an easy way to do it. Now it seems like there is, but I don't use iCal anymore. Can you do this with Google Calendar, or automagically on the iPhone.

*No video purchase off of the iTunes store? Nope.

*Battery came somewhat charged? The battery came about 75% charged, which meant I could play with it in the car on the way home. I liked that.

*No plastic caps on the USB cable. I'd heard Apple had try to environmentalize their packaging and one way they did it was by not including the caps for the USB cord that I always ended up losing anyway. Noted.

*Problems!!! 3 days after bringing the baby home, there was a total failure. I couldn't get the iPhone out of phone mode (an ironic problem to have), so I tried to reset it. It wouldn't get past the white apple screen, so I tried to restore it. I thought that did it, but there a VM indicator that wouldn't go away. I've had phones that perpetually showed a voice or text message indicator that was off, and these are not phones you want to use. Also, the date and time was seriously off. I could understand if the time zone was off, and one of my favorite sayings is, "It's X 'o clock somewhere," but let's be honest, there's no way it was 5:27 AM on May 9th, last Wednesday night at 8:43 PM. I reset again and again it wouldn't get past the white apple screen. I restored again, got it working, and made an appointment the next morning at the Apple Store. I sat with Jake at the Boylston St store at 8:50 AM and was steeling myself for battle. Jake was unfazed by the seeming software issues, so I twice went back to a minor issue with a button being too raised until he graciously gave me a new baby. So far, I haven't had any issues with this one.

*Double tap space bar for period. When sending a text message from my old phone, you literally needed 4 key strokes to get a question mark, so needing one key stroke to get to the punctuation on the iPhone wasn't an issue for me. But imagine my delight when I discovered, by accident, that you could double tap the space bar to get a period. Genius. And if you want the pure genius rating, Apple, add in some other key combinations to get the comma, question mark, and exclamation mark.

*Mail app does not go horizontal. It's so much easier to type in the horizontal mode, I wish the mail app would allow this.

*Pandora app is killer!

*Google Reader app really needs to allow for reading oldest first. Who reads their RSS newest first?

*Picture viewing is awesomely amazing! Just recently discovered this, looking at pictures on the iPhone is an incredible experience. The colors are brilliant, the details sharp... I can't say enough. I want to take more pictures just to look at them on the iPhone. Why would you ever print a photo again. Wow.

*Haven't used the iPod function too much, but what I've used has been fine.

Do you have one yet? What's your favorite app? What's the smartest way you use your iPhone? What do you wish it could do? What's your favorite feature?
+++++
Edited to add:

*Yahoo StatTracker doesn't work on the iPhone. Booooo!
*Keep your finger pressed on "123." button and drag over the punctuation or number you want and go right back to the letters. Yay!

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aaron cohen — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:48:05 +0000

"The Los Angeles City Council voted ...to ban plastic carryout bags in the city's supermarkets and stores by July 2010 -- but only if the state fails to impose a 25-cent fee on every shopper who requests them."

We need to use less plastic. Plus the plastic bag advocacy group is called the "Save the Plastic Bag Coalition", which, admit it, is a silly name. I don't want any packaging manufacturers to go out of business, but I cheer on every plastic bag ban.

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matt — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:15:09 +0000

And in local news...

A couple living on America Way has been charged in connection with a raid in which Jamestown and Narragansett police seized 1½ pounds of marijuana, three guns and materials used in the packaging of marijuana for distribution.

The police said Michael Netro, 54, and his wife, Erin Netro, 26, were each charged with one count of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver in Friday’s raid.

Drugs, guns, and a 28-year age difference? I bet they had an interesting wedding.

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