New iPhone OS

Apple fixed almost every gripe I've ever had with my iPhone in the 3.0 release of the OS.

• Full bluetooth - stereo headphones work in iTunes, file transfer, contacts transfer
  
• MMS - send and receive pictures. this took embarrassingly long, but is finally there
  
• cut and paste - apparently you can also shake the phone to undo/redo
  
• landscape mode - text messages and emails work in landscape mode, same as Safari already did
  
• spotlight - search the phone for anything
  
• no multitasking, but push notification - unread email counts and other app information can update in the background, but can't run in the background. apparently backgrounding kills battery life.
  
• a tethering client (but AT&T isn't yet onboard with tethering).
  
• Turn by turn on GPS apps, but not in Google Maps due to licensing restrictions.
  
• calendar update, support for CalDAV
  
• new stock app, but bloomberg's free app already had that base covered.
  
• voice memos. like a personal audio recorder.
  

On the minus side, my first-generation phone doesn't get the updates to MMS and bluetooth, which are the big two for me.

I'm debating buying a new phone the next time they upgrade the hardware (my contract still has six months left). Any idea when the next upgrade is supposed to go through?

OS/X Automator

So, was having troubles with my rsync backup; the destination drive preserves case but is case insensitive (FAT), so things were backing up *every* time. rsync doesn't do case insensitivity, so the easiest solution seemed to be lowercasing everything on the first drive that wasn't code.

rename is missing on OS/X; it has a man page, but no binary. Perl, I'm rusty enough that this turned into a nightmare, and got a script going that worked... if the file/directory doesn't have a space in it. Enter OS/X's Automator.

"Get Specified Finder Items" as the first task, "Get Folder Contents", check "Repeat for each subfolder", and then "Rename Finder Items", "Change Case", "Full Name", "Lower Case". Intuitive, quick, drag and drop, and done. Could have saved a lot of time by trying the Automator first.

Apple goes One for Two

So, after my last post being enthusiastic about the Airport Express using Wireless Distribution Services, I need to add this addendum. They changed the Airport Express, adding some new functionality, but removing the ability to accept 26-character 104-bit hex WEP keys. If you're building an audio network from scratch with the new ones, you're fine. If you're using only the old ones, you're fine. Otherwise, you have to walk a very thin line that doesn't seem to yet be documented anywhere, unfortunately.

I wound up trading an Apple store employee my brand-new 802.11n Express for his used 802.11g, which solved the problem more quickly than tinkering with the tech on this one. Works for me, but *wow*, did Apple drop the ball on being cross compatible with it's *own* products. Argh. Two more hours of my life gone to errata.

Apple WDS

So, I've been MIA for awhile; have moved from Washington, DC to Pittsburgh, PA, and switched to focusing more on Java development.

That said, moving into a new apartment, had a chance to play with the Apple Airport Express again, especially with regards to distributing music. I was thinking of buying multiple Logitech Squeezeboxen, but the reviews on the second generation units were pretty poor, and then I staggered across the Remote App for the iPhone, which got me to looking at what I can do with what I already owned. That led me to the Lifehacker article explaining out most of the following.

It's supposedly easy to setup if you have an Airport Extreme, but with the Linksys WRT54G with either DD-WRT or Tomato firmware updates, you can have a $50 router do WDS (wireless distribution system), and allow you to put music to multiple Airport Express units. The disadvantage is that Tomato won't do WPA with WDS, but only WEP; in layman's terms, it's a less secure solution, but almost $150 cheaper.

Plug the Airport Express directly into the Linksys box, enable distributed audio, and tell each box the other's MAC address. Done. Install Remote onto an iPhone or iPod touch, set the handheld to use the same wifi network as the Airport units, dock it and sync it up. The handheld then can loosely control iTunes remotely.

Multi-room synchronized sound over wifi with relatively low cost hardware and a quick setup time. Awesome.

The iPhone update

So, the World Wide Developers Conference - Apple's geek Superbowl - was yesterday. Followed it on and off via MacRumors Live, which was interesting.

10.6 will be called Snow Leopard. The main keynote speech was iPhone, iPhone, iPhone.

• They let a lot of small applications take the spotlight, showing off the new SDK to be released in July.
• They then showed some firmware updates, and some application updates.
• Finally, they announced a second generation iPhone.
  
• The primary difference is 3G; 2.8x faster connection to the internet.
  
• GPS was also added, and a 16 GB option.
  
• The new phone (8 GB) will be $199, apparently subsidized by AT&T, and probably less susceptible to Jailbreak.

Reviewing the remaining problems:

• The AT&T network still doesn't quite hold a candle to Verizon for voice. My phone regularly drops calls inside the beltway in DC.
  
• Multimedia messages? No. You have to write down the username and password they send you, go to Safari, open up the link they sent you, and type in the username and password from that piece of paper. Perhaps if this was a direct click-through, it wouldn't be an enormous gaffe.
  
• It doesn't sync via bluetooth; not contacts, not calendars. It doesn't use it's bluetooth to enable bluetooth headsets for listening to MP3s, which is pretty much industry-standard at this point.
  
• No Flash player. This isn't Apple's fault, but they don't seem to be pushing for it, either.
  
• I have a 16 GB USB drive that won't let me store files on it. This is minor to me, but seems that it should be easy.
  
• Safari lets me turn the device sideways, and turn the keyboard sideways, and is awesome. Every other application ignores this API hook, unfortunately. I have fat fingers. This would immediately make the device much more useable. Hell, just give it to me for text messages.
  
• Bad Flickr integration. SDK might fix this, but man, would I like it.
• Bad Chat (AIM/GTalk) integration. SDK might fix this, but man, would I like it.
  

All in all, there are better devices out there, save the web browser, which is top notch. $199 is a much, much better price point. The biggest sadness to me is that the problems they seem to be having... seem so easy to fix, overall?

Meanwhile, my EDGE iPhone, when transmitting, is perhaps the highest-interference device I've owned in a decade. Walking by computer speakers or a home stereo causes them to put out a horrible sound, and it disables my bluetooth mouse at work while causing the guy in the next office to complain his bluetooth headphones are "broken". It's like carrying a tiny electronic bomb.

iBook Conclusion

So, I'd just explained my frustration with Apple. Here's how it wound up.

The Apple Store is great for issues that don't require followup. Your iPod is broken? Here's a refurbished replacement. Unfortunately, since they don't often use the concept of "issue ownership", if you need to go back multiple times for a non-trivial problem, you have to explain, from scratch, what's going on. If one manager is handling your problem, they don't communicate with other managers outside of post-it notes, and work less than half of the hours when the store is open, so they're hard to catch.

I got a call at four PM yesterday that the MacBook they were giving me to replace my iBook was in. They got my voicemail, as I don't answer the cellphone at work. I drove to the store by five. Waited a bit for a free employee, then explained I was there to pick up my laptop. No luck. He came back, I explained the whole thing again. He checked again, no luck. He listened to my voicemail, called the manager who had left for the day, and handed me a box with a laptop in it.

I'm happy to have the laptop. I didn't have the patience left to find out if it's under the original warranty, a one-year warranty, or whether I may buy AppleCare for it. Rephrasing, the employee had no idea, and the manager apparently wasn't thrilled they were called when they had left work for the day.

XP SP3 Pro is installed and running smoothly, really impressed with Bootcamp, much less impressed by XP's installer than with OS/X's. Debated on Vista, but since I'm planning a DirectSound 9 implementation, figured I'd go with the older system. Having to install everything twice is kind of surreal, and I think I'm going to scale back the XP install at this point to simplify things. Now, to find a freeware virus scanner.

The Apple Laptop, Refurbed

A long rant about a broken laptop
So, my iBook died in January. Went to the Apple store, dropped it off, got it back three weeks later with a new logic board. The employee told me "they lost my phone number", and the phone number... was on the receipt they gave me back.

Went home, turned it on, and noted it was dead as a doornail, but in a different way. They told me that there had been a defective batch of logic boards, I got one, and apparently no one thought to even power on the laptop after it had the hardware repaired. Mailed this one back, and got it back in the mail, as I didn't want another "telephone number" snafu.

Went home, turned it on, no wireless. Tried it on several different networks, tried powering it off, tried IPv6. Frustration. Back to the Apple store, it turned out to be dead hardware. Back to the service depot, and back in my hands a week later.

Took home, turned it on, fine. An hour later, no wireless. Another hour tinkering, back to Apple store, and it wouldn't do it again for them. Leaving looking embarrassed, got home, and it was broken again. Took it to several different networks, again, broken. The next morning, it wouldn't even boot.

Took it back to the store, dropped it off, signed a waiver that if they found nothing wrong, I owed $100. They found the power management was preventing it from booting (?). I then asked them to leave it on overnight, and try the wireless. It made it about an hour, and then the hardware died. They asked if I wanted it to be fixed, I said yes.

I called back a week later, to see if it was done, and they said, "it's here, come get it". After going in, they realized that no one had remembered to send it in to be fixed. I'd love to say the employee was helpful, but they just kept saying "I understand, that's terrible", which doesn't really help if you're not acting to address the issue. They then dug up my previous tickets, saw I was telling the truth, and told me they're going to give me a refurbished MacBook to replace my defective iBook.

Whew.

I didn't even realize how annoyed this whole transaction made me until I got to typing. I should have my newer laptop in a week or so, and am trying to figure out whether to install Vista or XP under Parallels. I'm hoping the new laptop has a better track record than the old laptop did, but I'm pretty confident that'll be the case.

Lessons learned, when dealing with an Apple product:

• If it's a laptop or desktop machine, it's definitely broken, and it requires a part to be fixed, call Apple, and do it through the mail. The speed of their mail repairs was *stunning*, maybe 36 hours to get me a box, send them the box, perform the repairs, and have the laptop back in my hands.
• From previous experience, if it's something they can replace at the store (iPod, iPhone, etc), go to the store. Be nice. I went through three or four 3G iPods one year, as they had a batch that didn't play well with USB 1.1 on my Windows desktop machine, and they kept getting fried until I figured out what was doing it.
• They hire slackers and geeks that fit the Apple image. None of the ever friendly employees at the Apple store will ever officially take ownership of any problem you have. If one manager offers to leave a note for another manager, call back to make sure the original manager actually got the message. ("I'll leave a note" fell through for me at least three times.)
  
• If you have an issue that requires multiple visits, you might want to convince an employee to take some ownership of the issue and meet back up with them specifically. From my experience, it's much preferable to do it through the mail.
  

Or, a shorter summary: if it's going to require multiple visits, handle it through their mail service.

Apple Headphones Snafu, iTunes U

I have an iPhone, given as a gift to me around Christmas. I had quite a few gripes where I felt let down by it, and will probably move back to a much less featured phone when this one gives up the ghost.

So, a friend had an iPod Shuffle. They lost it for a few weeks - the thing is really, really tiny. They bought a new one. A few weeks later, they found the old one, and decided to give it to me, as I can use it when I go running.

After figuring out the cord had gone bad, I ordered a 3rd party one ($5 on Amazon, instead of $25 to Apple). That worked, and after loading it up with songs... nothing. Some quick trial and error later, I realized the Apple iPhone headset doesn't work at all with the iPod Shuffle, but plain headphones work just fine.

It's a minor frustration, but seems a design flaw; the iPhone headphones are pretty darn standard. Other than that, the Shuffle works as promised.

Scrolling through iTunes, it looks like they recently added iTunes U, which is an aggregation point for free educational podcasts. Of interest is MIT's Algorithms course, based on CLRS, which always seemed more learner-friendly than Knuth's books. For those playing along at home, Knuth's books (starting in 1968) are the original authoritative text on the subject, but much slower going for the student, IMHO. Also good, CMU has put up Randy Pauch's speeches, both the Last Lecture and the Personal Productivity.

iphone gripes

I got an iPhone mid-December, and posted several places about two weeks later a short list of gripes, both with the phone and with AT&T. This was written at update 1.1.2; we're now at 1.1.5, and somewhat improved. Here's the repost, with updates in italics.

iPhone issues, from more important to nearly meaningless:

• Once every other day or so, it jams. Half the time it eventually comes back after about a minute, the other half of the time it requires a reboot. Edit: Fixed by an update. 1.1.14?
  
• No reception at work. Edit: Still no luck. No reception on large chunks of highway 295, inside the Beltway in Washington, DC. I work on 295.
  
• It doesn't sync via bluetooth. Not even contacts or calendars. Edit: No change. This makes me consider a jailbreak.
  
• No chat client. Assuming I can use a web client, but this one just seems silly not to have on the main screen. Edit: No change. Assuming the upcoming SDK (released yesterday) will help out?
  
• Safari doesn't save my logins/passwords, so I get to retype them every time. Think if you had to re-login to LJ every time you got a reply via email. Edit: Some folks commented this is specific to me. I don't know.
  
• Added later:It doesn't support my Motorola S9 Headset when using it as an iPod. Would have liked to listen to my music while I was jogging with the headset I already own. Edit: Apple Support said "too bad", this one isn't even close to in the works. That confuses me.
  
• No Flash player. YouTube works, but nothing else. Edit: No plans for a Flash player, ever. Apple considers Flash 'too slow'. That feels like an excuse.
  
• I have an enormous amount of storage space... that it doesn't allow me to use as storage space. How hard would it be to enable this as a USB drive? Edit: Nope.
  
• The EDGE network, what it uses when WiFi is unavailable, is really really slow. Edit: New models will have the next network up. Good to hear.
  
• Photo-feature doesn't integrate well at all with Flickr. The camera is very sensitive to shaky hands. Since there's no tactile feedback and it's not a flipphone, it's hard to take a self-picture. Edit: iPhoto with the FlickrExport plugin is about as well as I'm going to do.
  
• Until they open the SDK, no games, and very little offline content. Edit: June.
  
• Half the apps support the phone being turned sideways. The other half, not so much. Edit: Nothing yet. Hoping this gets pushed into mail.app sooner instead of later, as sending email is painfully slow with the smaller keyboard.
  
• In the weather application, it takes me a minute or two of trying to press the button to get to the setup screen. I don't know if my screen is dead there or I'm physically incompetent. Edit: That part of the screen is a wee bit off; a sharp poke with the pinkie finger does fine here.
  

And, for cheery counterpoint, the good stuff.

• The camera does take a damn nice picture if I brace it on something first.
• Google Maps. Weather. Stocks. YouTube. Sync with Google Calendar. IMAP/POP/Exchange mail.
• I repeat: all of that earlier stuff, with a convenient and well-thought-out interface.
• iPod. An 8 gig iPod, with solid-state memory and an easier-than-ever interface with coverflow.
• WiFi. This is money. If they (A) open the SDK and (B) allow Skype, this could be ludicrously cool. Edit: SDK, yes. VOIP, probably no.
  
• It holds 1000 text messages. My Verizon phone held 50.
• Call forwarding. Verizon didn't have this, but I can punch a number for it to forward to. For example, my desk number when the reception doesn't allow the phone to work at work.
• A usage counter that shows me how long I've used the phone during this billing cycle. Another thing Verizon left out.
• The sound quality, from reports of folks I've talked to, is "far superior", "much clearer", and "wow" better than my last phone. This is heartwarming.
• edit: Airplane Mode, which shuts off transmission, is kinda nice. It'd be nicer if I had more than a small number of offline applications to work with. :)

Edit: And now an add on about AT&T.

The service and reception I'm seeing are far, far worse than Verizon's coverage here. AT&T actually signed me up for two accounts, then billed both accounts to my old address that they received from Verizon. After shutting off my service, I called, fixed the address, paid, and was fine.

A month later, the second account they signed me up for defaulted, went to collections, and I found that out via an early-AM phone call from West Credit Management Services. This irked me, and I'm *still* trying to get the last trace of this off one of my credit reports. "Absolutely livid" may describe my thoughts towards AT&T. Recalling this makes me cranky, at the very least.

Meanwhile, I can't quite understand how AT&T, Verizon, and other large companies charge so much, when smaller carriers like Cricket charge so little. $50/month for unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, unlimited wireless web, and then $0.10/minute for roaming outside of their core coverage area. DC isn't one of their areas, so I'm stuck there.

All in all, I'll probably downgrade to a much less expensive phone when my contract is up.

iTunes

Someone mentioned iTunes crushing their pre-organized directory structure for music, and sucking everything into it's own directories. Someone else said because they heard that, they'd never use iTunes. My reply:


It's pretty trivial to avoid if you know it's coming. It *sucked* for the first few people it happened to, but once it's happened to a friend or two, you *know* when it asks "organize your music collection?", to say no. That's it. That's the only sticking point.

iTunes is one of the two slickest players on the market. It has the ability to import whatever quality MP3 you want. It's a great podcast and videocast player/aggregator. It downloads album art for you, and you can view all of your albums by their album cover, flipping through things visually with CoverFlow. When you pop in a CD, it finds the Artist/Album/Track data for you.

It lets you do dynamic playlists, so you can dump "breaks, downtempo, male vocal, glitch" into the genre field of your ID3 tag, and have it find things for you. It burns CDs as either audio or data. It can print those album covers it downloaded for you, for the CDs it let you burn. It has a feature to let you back up your entire music collection.

It lets you share audio across a network; if you turn the feature on, everyone on your local network can see your music and play it on their machine from your hard drive. It's an open protocol, so projects like MT-DAAPD can run on a fileserver in your closet, and your laptop can have access to them anywhere in the house. It's trivially easy to setup an Airport Express to have AirTunes, and use that laptop to play to remote speakers, maybe over in the kitchen, and maybe down in the basement. Internet radio integrates right in, so you don't need to keep Firefox hogging resources to listen to things on Shoutcast.

It integrates into the iTunes Store, which is amazing if you want it... and goes away *entirely* if you don't. The iTunes Store also lets you buy DRM-free music, if the extra fee is worth it to you. I'm not a fan, for the record, but am amazed by the wealth of features iTunes offers, and the absolute ease of configuring the damn thing.

Firefox Extension, MacWorld Conference

So, for those of us who work in a quieter office, I think there's a Firefox extension I want. Before any web page plays any sound or music, I want a warning tone. So if someone links me to a site that has a song playing in the background, I want a four count beep (beep beep beep beep) and then whatever the actual sound is.

That way, I at least have a second to turn down my speakers to a reasonable volume after I've been tricked into clicking on a link to a Rick Astley video.

Anyone know if something like that exists for Firefox? Safari?

In other news, MacWorld is today. Rumor mill suggests a 16 GB iPhone, 1.1.3 software release, Open SDK release, but still no GPS. On the laptop front, a thinner/lighter model, possibly with an all solid-state drive. Also, wireless everything; hard drive with integrated wireless, or ubiquitous wireless networking in a laptop using WiMax, EDGE, or EVDO. iTunes might become a Netflix-like video rental. Should be interesting. 9 AM PST, no live webcast this year.