PEBCAC

First post from iPhone to wordpress blog.

We’ll see how long until this is pulled

The inverter on my home macbook still seems to be malfunctioning. It needs to go back in the shop. ugh.

My work mac is still acting up too.

My iPhone still has a burnt pixel.

Apple, at least this week, is annoying me.

However, they still make a superior product.

I’ve become a total fanboy.

from digg:

There are a few different ways to create ringtones for your brand new, shiny iPhone. While some bystanders might find the playing of your favorite song annoying, it can quickly inform you to exactly who is calling without taking the phone out of your pocket, purse, or man-bag.

read more | digg story

Oh yeah, in case it’s not clear, I love my iPhone. It’s one of the best cells I’ve owned as far as reception and call quality. The basic business features (email, calendar, tasks, notes) are seamless too. The media player is, of course, superb. The ‘App Store’ is pretty awesome and has already sucked down $15 from me…and I’ll be buying more. Simply, much like the rest of Apple’s products, it’s wizardry. I’m obsessed with scratches and smudges…but that’s my issue. The phone is freaking great.

I piddled away too much of my time this weekend playing with the iPhone. It was only two or three hours, but it was still too much time to waste.  

For some reason, iTunes started syncing and seeing the iPhone today-on the windows side! Woo hoo! I also purchased a new case. It initially scratched the touchscreen upon installation, because the instructions were inadequate. Thankfully, I had on a screen guard. The new case is a Griffin Elan Form. After some fidgeting, cleaning and test runs, I think it’s going to be the new permanent case (Until an Otterbox). I recommend the Elan. So far, so good.  

I got the iPhone Tuesday night. It showed up early. Here are the state of things:

I still can’t get my Vista box to sync with the iPhone. None of the features. I can’t get it to sync consistently with music on the mac either. Hell, I can’t even get iTunes to import my entire library from an external drive without it crashing. It’s really frustrating, this is not the normal apple experience. And, theoretically, I have some computer expertise.I never have liked iTunes though.

My opinion is that iTunes is simply poorly written, at least for sure on the Windows side, and needs an update. Hopefully the gods at Apple will hurry this along.  In the interim, I’m fairly pissed. Having said that, the rest of the phone functions wonderfully. I love the interface and the call quality is great. GPS is a cool feature, SMS is ‘conversational’ and I’m looking forward to playing with the app store. It’s like having a mini Mac. Now, I just need a case. Otterbox!

I waited in the Apple Store line (not too long) for the iPhone…they ran out of 8gb models. Thankfully, my favorite Cingular store was able to order me one. There is a 7-10 day waiting period, not bad. This will give me time to find a case. Mmmm… it’s getting closer everyday, I can taste the sleek plasticy goodness.

I can’t wait until Friday, Hopefully I get my iPhone. And, hopefully, I’ll get it for free or close to free. I have a ton of things to do, but I’m going to find time for this purchase, or send Steph. With apps like iCall and GPS, I’m ready. I also eagerly await the Otterbox for the iPhone. Otterbox is awesome, they make a superior product. I probably won’t even carry the phone until I have the case. They’re that good.

Well, I’ll post my impressions when I have them. Hopefully before the end of the coming weekend.

I’ve been working this evening on a non-apple laptop and I’m miserable. I want my Mac back. I’m spoiled now, I admit it. The laptop I’m working on is a solid Acer, but it stinks compared to my mac. It’s clunky and poorly designed, the saving grace is that it’s running Win2k…not sure what that says. At least my work Mac is due to be picked up tomorrow.

Both my work and home MAC decided to die this week. Ugh. Both are in the shop, I hope to have their speedy return. I won’t be blogging much in the interim. Working on the Win2k machine doesn’t seem productive and I don’t like sitting at a computer desk at home–as is necessary to work from the media server.

This weekend, depending on the schedule with my father and the BikerRun at work, I need to get my macbook back into the shop. The screen is still flickering and it’s getting more pronounced. Thankfully, we still have applecare.

The new 3G iPhone is due July 11th. I’m going to pre-order as soon as I can, …provided they don’t charge a premium for data services. I’ve been holding on to an aging cell phone in anticipation of this. Woo Hoo Apple!

from digg and arstechnica:

Over the past few years, we have watched Apple climb the music sales chart courtesy of the iTunes. Last month we learned that Apple passed Best Buy to become the number two retailer in the the US. Now, Apple has ascended to the top of the charts, surpassing Wal-Mart for the first time ever, according to the NPD MusicWatch Survey.

read more 

We took the macbook in to get serviced today for the flickering screen, unfortunately it wouldn’t reproduce the effect there. Thankfully, we have Applecare and it’s covered for another year. The new Apple Air is nice, I’ve worked without optical drives on subcompact laptops before, so I think I might have found my next work machine. However, I’m still getting the kinks out of working in a dual boot enviorment with XP and Parallels at the office. Some specific work applications are finicky. It’s still better than Vista or XP only though.

Well, we’ve been through a replaced ‘upper’ and a replacement battery…but now (of all times) it would seem as though the screen is acting up. The connection between the case and screen seem to be loose. The screen is flicker and altering its brightness here and there. We’ll see I suppose. I still love Macs though and applecare will take care of it no doubt.

from digg:

Sources report to Thinksecret.com that Apple’s iPhone is on track to be released in January, this after the company faced numerous difficult technological and engineering hurdles. The phone is said to feature a 3 megapixel camera, 2.2 inch display and complete iTunes integration.

Okay, I’m psyched, but is this gonna be MVNO? What’s the PC integration going to look like? Most importantly, imho, what’s the DRM gonna look like?

read more | digg story

Intro

Basically, I’ve done the Brasso thing before, but needed to again. On Saturday, I dropped my iPod, which must be out of its case, transfering it to my DLO transpod FM tranmistter.  The scratches were pretty bad.

Part II

I spent 50 minutes again, taking numerous cycles to polish in numerous directions, lightly, and letting the Brasso dry. Used microfiber and lint free clothes for everything. Wiped off with basic electronics wipes

Part III

As evidenced below, reults can be seen in the pics. The seeming scratch in the ‘final’ photo is actually a thread. I was running out of batteries and not feeling up to reseting and shooting the final pictures. Nonetheless, the results were about perfect.

Before

 

 In Process

Done!

Apple’s newest OS, Leopard looks rather bland. The ‘Spaces’ feature is standard on KDE and other linux GUI’s, Spotlight is boring…the only decent thing, so far, is 64bit code changes, but not very sexy.

Where is the native XP support, not a ‘better bootcamp’.

Where is improved gaming?

A built-in word processor?

Spaces…uhm, this is a unix/linux feature from years ago. spotlight is an aborted effort from os9 and timemachine is a modification on windows system restore….available since windows me.
So far, a let down…we’ll see what happens in the next few days and before shipping…back to bed…home sick today.