WTF with Movable Beast, Steve?
You’ll all find out soon enough. In the meantime, the site is going to be focusing back on its roots - mobile devices. I’m going to have another outlet for my Apple fixation soon enough! Stay tuned (and sorry about the mess right now…)
So. Do I Want A Kindle or Not?
You know me.
I can’t seem to let something new go by without buying it. The Apple TV came out earlier this year and (except for watching YouTube movies and showing slideshows) has been a bitter disappointment, and just about any other really cool techie toy that is announced can get me reaching for my wallet at light speed.
The Amazon Kindle is another matter. I like the idea, but there are some things that are keeping me from buying one. First, it bothers me that there are “only” 90,000+ books in the Kindle library. Yeah, that sounds like a lot, but why is it that when I search for electronic versions of some of my favorite books of all time I find that they’re not on that list. I’d love to see some old science fiction classics show up in Kindle format, or be able to grab old editions of any magazine to peruse (yeah, those old National Geographics are fascinating!). The price ($399) isn’t that bad considering the built-in EV-DO connection, but it surprises me that it isn’t somewhat lower since it only has a monochrome screen with 4 levels of gray.
I think the pricing structure is good as well. You can get many books in Kindle format for much less than the Amazon paperback price, and considering that instant delivery is built in, that is astounding. On the other hand, why would I want to pay $0.99 per month for blogs that I currently get for free? I guess in some ways I’m NOT getting them for free in a mobile format (I have to pay for my iPhone service, don’t I?), but I still have many other ways of viewing blogs in full, throbbing color.
I also want my local newspaper(s), not just the stinkin’ New York Times. Not that I’m a raving conservative or anything, but the Times is the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever read. It would be nice to read about the issues that affect ME locally, not what some overpaid and undertalented NYT hack thinks. When I’m able to pull up Kindle versions of the Rocky Mountain News, for instance, I’ll be a bit more interested in the newspaper capabilities of Kindle.
And how about magazines? I have a very focused group of magazines that I read: MacWorld, Aviation Week and Space Technology, QST, SpaceFlight, Southwest Art, etc… Why does Amazon think that I want to read Time magazine? Once again, the content is what drives this device, and the content that I’m interested in just isn’t there. I’m not sure reading Southwest Art in 4-grayscale monochrome is going to make my day anyway, since I enjoy looking at the works of art in full color.
All these things being said, I still think I want one. The content will come eventually, even if it takes Jeff Bezos beating up publishers and threatening to pull their dead-tree editions out of the Amazon store (which is responsible for huge sales…) to get them to agree to creating Kindle versions of their libraries. I also like the idea that I can move PDFs to the Kindle. Since ANY document I have on my Mac can be printed to PDF format, anything I have sitting here can be turned into Kindle fodder. Yum!
Of course, this is all dependent on whether or not Apple comes out with an über-iPhone subnotebook next month. Would I pick a really lightweight tablet Mac with a beautiful color screen over a rather utilitarian-looking grayscale device? That’s for damn sure!
Technorati Tags: Kindle
Second Experience With A New iPhone
What with the price of the iPhone coming down $200 and my $100 Apple Store credit from the first iPhone, I decided that it was time to get my wife a new phone. She had been using an old Motorola flip phone that basically sucked, and she had been eyeing my iPhone lustfully since Day One. With her birthday coming up in about a week, I thought it was a perfect time to buy one.
The second experience was just as good as the first, although it didn’t go as quickly. The purchase process in the phone was definitely faster (I was in and out of the Apple Store in about five minutes). When I bought my iPhone, I set up a new number on AT&T so everything was up and running immediately. For Barb’s iPhone, I entered the “transfer” information during the activation and within a few minutes I received notification that the phone was activated. Yeah, it could SEND phone calls, but it couldn’t receive. It ended up taking about 12 hours for the change to make it through the combined systems of T-Mobile and AT&T, which isn’t that bad when you think about it.
As a surprise, I’ve also set up her phone with her home email account, added some favorite bookmarks, and set her weather widget to show the weather at home. It must be nice to be married to an ACN and have someone set up all these great things for you! 
The iPhone Ranch Moved This Morning
Just a short note. I moved The iPhone Ranch to a new server this morning, so you may have either experienced some “weirdness” for a short time or you may see some odd things happening for the next day or two. I don’t think you will, but just be forewarned if anything odd DOES happen.
iPhone Games and Ringtones on September 5th?
There’s a lot of speculation about the Apple Event scheduled for September 5th. It’s widely expected that Apple will announce some new wide-screen iPods that will probably look a lot like iPhones. But many of us are also hoping that games and ringtones are going to be announced at the same event.
The latest version of iTunes has several internal links that refer to installing and removing games, and I seriously doubt if that would have been added to the software if not for something happening soon. There’s also a great deal of talk about being able to create a ringtone from any song purchased from iTunes, which would also be cool. I’d love to be able to edit the ringtone, however…
You can be sure that I’ll be watching anxiously next Wednesday to see what Apple announces!
Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod
iPhone on the road
Every year, my wife and I visit northern New Mexico to go to art galleries, attend the Santa Fe Opera, meet with old friends and make new ones. We just got back from our trip and had a few comments:
1) While we were driving to New Mexico, we spent part of the drive on the I-25 corridor. When we got off of that and drove between Walsenburg, CO and Taos, NM, the phone was basically in a large roaming zone. For most of that time, I still had service, but I noticed that my battery drained rather quickly.
2) There’s nothing worse than thick adobe walls for killing your cell phone signal. Here in Colorado we live in a wood-frame house, and there’s never a problem getting a signal. While we were staying in NM our room had thick adobe walls that shielded us from all sorts of signals and most of the time I had the dreaded “No Signal” notification on my iPhone. Fortunately, I was able to get a Wi-Fi signal from the office at the Inn, so getting email or doing some quick searches on the iPhone worked.
3) There are a lot of iPhones in Denver, but not so many in Taos and Santa Fe. That meant that pulling out the iPhone usually attracted attention.
4) I found myself wishing for a small pocket-sized GPS receiver that could work with the iPhone. I have a Garmin Nuvi 650 in my car, but when I’m away from the car I’d love to be able to get directions to a restaurant or museum from my iPhone. Since there’s no built-in GPS, some sort of external key fob GPS receiver would be wonderful.
Technorati Tags: Apple, GPS, iPhone
How to use .Mac Web Galleries with your iPhone
In case you’re living in a cave somewhere and don’t have some sort of 3G connection to the Internet in that cave, Apple made some big announcements last week, one of which affects the iPhone. The .Mac service received a much-needed boost in capabilities, and there’s now a nice little function that you can invoke in iPhoto ‘08 that gives you the capability to create “web galleries” in .Mac. These need to be created in iPhone ‘08, but once they’re set up, you can add to a gallery using your iPhone and its camera!
The process is deceptively easy:
1) Launch iPhoto ‘08. Select a photo or two, then create a new album by selecting File > New Album from Selection… Click on the “Web Gallery” button at the top of the dialog. This is where all of your iPhone photos will end up on your Mac when you send them to your .Mac account, so you may want to give it a special name. I called mine “Steve’s iPhone Gallery” since I’m an incredibly original kind of guy. Be sure that you check the “Allow photo uploading by email” box so that your iPhone recognizes the gallery.
2) The new Web Gallery is created and the photo(s) you selected is/are uploaded to .Mac and given a special name. For instance, you can visit my iPhone Gallery by visiting
http://gallery.mac.com/stevensande#100003. And would you believe that this is how you can view your galleries on your iPhone? Yes, simply point to that “gallery.mac.com” address that corresponds to your .Mac account, choose the gallery you want to view, and leave the rest to your iPhone.
3) So, you’ve taken a picture with your iPhone camera and now you want to post it to your web gallery for everyone to see? That’s too easy! Tap on the “Send to” icon at the bottom of the photo on your iPhone. A menu appears; click on “Send to Web Gallery”. When the list of albums in your gallery appears, tap on the one you want to send your photo masterpiece to. It creates an email (how it is really transporting the photo to .Mac), and you can change the “Subject” line of the photo to give the photo a title, and/or add content in the body of the message that will be the description.
4) Wait a little while for your photo to be uploaded. The interesting thing is that the photo will be synced with iPhoto the next time you open it, so it will be automatically added to the new album you created. I plan on adding a ton of photos as I wander around Santa Fe, NM in the next couple of days, so have fun visiting the gallery.
If this is any indication of the future integration that we can hope for between our iPhones and Macs, the future is very bright indeed! By the way, this also works with PCs — as long as you’ve purchased a .Mac account.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Digital Cameras, iPhone, Macintosh, Vista
Listening to streaming podcasts on your iPhone
The iPhone never ceases to amaze me, and when I posted the first “Talkin’ iPhone” podcast yesterday, I thought it might be interesting to see if I could actually play the podcast on the iPhone from the player that appears when you pull up The iPhone Ranch in a web browser. I was absolutely sure that this was not going to work and absolutely stunned when it did!
All you need to do is connect to the Internet through the iPhone’s Wi-Fi connection (EDGE is way too slow), then point Safari to The iPhone Ranch - you DO have it bookmarked, don’t you? Now when you see the “player” for a particular episode of “Talkin’ iPhone”, tap on the “Click to Play” image. A QuickTime Player image will appear with a play button superimposed on it. Tap on that play button and the QuickTime Player expands to fill your screen, and within seconds the podcast will begin to play.
If you don’t want to waste valuable storage space by downloading podcasts to your device via a USB sync, this is a great way to listen to them.
Update 1.0.1 Details
OK, Apple has posted the details of the iPhone update here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306173. Most of the fixes appear to be related to security with Safari. Heck, I’d be happy if it just resolved the issue with Safari crashing, so I guess I’ll have to do some testing.
Other bloggers are reporting that blind carbon copy (BCC) has been added, but I’ll be damned if I can find that either on the device or in the User Guide. If you have any hints or tips, be sure to call our hotline at 303-800-4568 and leave us a voice mail message!
Technorati Tags: Apple
iPhone Update 1.0.1 Now Available - Screenshots!
I got a big surprise when I synced my iPhone this morning - the first update for the device was available! I quickly grabbed my camera and started taking screenshots so readers can see what they’re going to experience. First, a window showed up noting that software version 1.0.1 was available for downloading and installing:
I took a lot of screenshots, so check out the rest of the story after the break!
Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone
Introducing “Talkin’ iPhone!” - The iPhone Ranch Podcast
It’s really hard to keep me from talking. I’m so enthusiastic about the iPhone that I’ve taken my podcasting background (I run Podbus.com, a podcast hosting service) and put it to work on Talkin’ iPhone!, a semi-regular podcast about nothin’ but iPhone.
Right now, you can’t subscribe to the podcast through the iTunes Store since it hasn’t been added to the directory. But you CAN listen to it here by clicking the player button below, and you can also subscribe by opening iTunes, choosing “Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast”, and entering the following URL: http://www.iphoneranch.com/?feed=podcast.
And here’s a new feature for iPhone Ranch readers and Talkin’ iPhone listeners - you can now leave me voice feedback by calling 303-800-4568 or Skyping stevesande and leaving voice mail. Long distance phone charges may apply. If your comment is less than 10 minutes long, includes your name, and is insightful, I’ll use it on the podcast!
My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-58f8ffb50900f5065fd4478ef5a5fd5f}
One Month With An iPhone
Wow, after all of that anticipation waiting for the iPhone to appear it seems amazing that I’ve now had mine for a month! Here are some random thoughts about that first month:
? AT&T’s coverage doesn’t suck as badly as I thought it would from my previous experiences. In fact, as soon as I can get all my clients used to calling me on the new number, reprint my business cards, and update my company website, I’m going to drop my T-Mobile account. That’s something I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do.
? The only bug that really seems to bother me so far is when Safari Mobile crashes while loading complex pages. That’s a bit annoying. I haven’t really seen many other issues, which means that this was a very clean device. I guess taking all of those developers off of the Leopard project and putting ‘em to work on iPhone was a good idea!
? I’m starting to see many iPhones in the wild. Several of my consulting clients have them or are thinking about getting ‘em, and every time I show one to someone who hasn’t yet stopped by an Apple or AT&T store to play with one, I think I sell one more… Too bad I can’t get a commission!
? Some of the web apps people are generating for the iPhone are pretty good, while others are pure crap. Good apps will tend to win out over time since nobody will download the junk and that will discourage the developers who just don’t get it.
? I’ve used my iPhone for a month and have had it sitting in my pocket unprotected most of that time. Total number of scratches? Zero. I do think I may get an iSkin Revo just so I can keep it looking new. I hate the InCase leather belt clip case that I got at the Apple Store…
? Do I find myself missing 3G data service? Not really. EDGE is sufficient for most of my mobile surfing, and if I really need speed I can usually find a Wi-Fi hot spot somewhere close by. Would it be nice to have 3G? Of course!
? What other accessories do I need? I’d like to be able to charge my iPhone in my car if I need to, so I’ll probably buy one of the Xtrememac InCharge Car Chargers for those situations where I’m not near a power outlet and absolutely need to “top off” the iPhone’s battery.
? I found it really amazing that I can actually view and use many of the administration tools that I need to work with for my websites. I couldn’t use these at all on Windows Mobile, and found it difficult to use those tools with a Palm Treo.
? I have been recommending to friends and relatives that they might want to wait until the 1.1 revision of the iPhone software comes out before buying one. Hey, I’m used to using new devices so some of the little quirks just seem “normal”. Someone coming from a DumbPhone to an iPhone might find those quirks annoying as hell. I’d guess that Apple will have an update available sometime in August.
Fudder.de: The very first iPhone
German bloggers at Fudder.de have dragged up this wonderful photo of an Apple design from 1983 that never made it into production. This was to be a desk phone (you know, that type that has a wire hanging off of it?) with an LCD that would let you do a number of things, including writing checks (how quaint!). One of the bloggers is Marc Esslinger, son of famous designer Hartmut Esslinger of frog design. The elder Esslinger designed a number of devices for Apple, including the Apple IIc - Apple’s first “portable” computer.
It’s cool to see the entire gallery of Esslinger designs - click here to view. And it’s so nice to know that Apple still has that passion for good design.
Technorati Tags: Apple
The iPhone “Security Issue”
Geeeeeeze. Some organizations really go overboard in their hatred of the iPhone. SPI Labs, which just happens to be part of SPI Dynamics, a company that makes a security assessment tool, came out with a “warning” about a security issue with the iPhone related to the fact that it can dial numbers with a simple tap on a phone number listed on a web page or in an email. Apparently, they see this as a huge problem, with concerns about the following attacks:
Using iPhone With Kerio Mail Server
I’m a huge fan of Kerio Mail Server, which is Exchange-compatible groupware software that runs on Windows and Mac servers and can be accessed by (for those of you who know what this means) Exchange, IMAP, POP and Webmail. KMS has also has the ability to push email to BlackBerrys through a third-party add-on, and also supports push to Windows Mobile devices.
Since I have a number of clients who are using KMS, I’ve been interested to hear what they have available for iPhone now, and what the plans for this company are in the near future. I received an email from Chris Peluso, Kerio’s Director of Sales for North American, stating that at the present time KMS users can point their browsers to https://mail.domain.com/pda, where mail.domain.com should be replaced by the usual webmail path to the mail server. I tried this out, and it worked very well. Chris also mentioned that Kerio will have an announcement specifically regarding iPhone support coming out in the very near future.
It’s great to see that we’ll soon have a number of enterprise-quality groupware solutions available for iPhone!
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Joy of Tech!
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MacLevelTen
