Assorted Afflatuses

While the new iPhone 2.0 software has yet to formally go online, Apple put up a downloadable software restore package, which, unsurprisingly, the hoard of Apple-obsessed people online late last night managed to discover. As such, I downloaded the software and upgraded my iPhone to the version 2.0 firmware.

The third-party applications for the iPhone are nothing short of amazing. They add a tremendous amount of value to what was already, far and away, the best mobile platform. I've used the Palm OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile. Nothing on any of those platforms comes close to replicating the experience on the iPhone.

But rather than jabber on in vague generalities, I've written up a few short reviews of the iPhone applications I've had a chance to take for a spin.

Image courtesy B Tal

For my part, I do not plan to snap up the new iPhone. Given AT&T's spotty 3G coverage — especially in not-on-the-cutting-edge Lewiston, Maine where I go to school — I cannot justify spending $299 for what is essentially the same phone, on top of the $15 rate hike I would sustain on my already insane monthly AT&T tariff.

Nevertheless, I read some of the early reviews, which by and large echoed my thoughts: faster Internet, better location via GPS, way more expensive in the long run, not terribly different than the original iPhone. At least one reviewer, though, resurrected the MMS issue. Since the day Apple began peddling the original iPhone, many members of the digerati have bemoaned the iPhone's lack of multimedia message or MMS functionality.

But I cannot understand why. I have never sent an MMS in my life. Nor, for that matter has one of my friends ever remarked, "Oh, let me send you an MMS of that photo." As far as I can tell, no one actually uses multimedia messaging. The MMS is essentially an email, with the difference that most carriers charge some outrageous per-use fee for each one sent. Especially on the iPhone — with unlimited data and all — it makes far more sense to send a plain old email.

I see Apple's omission of MMS as a well-planned feature, not a glaring omission. By not even including the ability to send multimedia messages, Apple gently nudges people away from spending 40 cents to send a photo via MMS. Instead, people use the convenient "Email Photo" button integrated in the iPhone's Photos application. Anything that helps consumers escape from the nickel and dime lunacy of America's wireless carriers is good news — and good choice architecture — in my book.

My two visits to the AT&T store to activate other phones took what seemed like an eon. I had to wait as other consumer asked the salespersons simple questions about phones and rate plans, which the AT&T reps seemed unable to answer in a way that gave the consumers any real guidance. I had to cajole the salesperson into giving me the phone I wanted, rather than some lesser model that gave them a higher commission. I had stare blankly at an unattractive wall of replacement power adapters while the inept salesperson spent half an hour activating my phone.

Needless to say, it was not pleasant.

Buying my iPhone, on the other hand, was as close to cell phone buying bliss as is possible to be. I strolled into the Apple Store, asked for an iPhone, paid and left. At home, I connected the iPhone to my laptop, and, within about five minutes, I had everything up and running. Veni, vidi, vici. So simple.

If AT&T's marketing copy is to be believed, their new policy aims to make consumers' lives easier. Yes, of course! For I so enjoyed spending my Saturday afternoon cramped in an AT&T store waiting for a sales rep to activate my phone.

Of course, the AT&T people would argue that I, a sophisticated computer user and gadget addict, represent a tiny minority of iPhone buyers: the "average consumer" could not possibly navigate the iPhone activation process, with its Byzantine twists and mad Visigoths waiting to take the first-born children of all those who fail to check the correct box.

That, however, is as ludicrous as their unlocking policy (i.e., completely insane). Consider Apple has sold well over 100 million iPods. That represents over 100 million people who successfully plugged their iPods into their computers and downloaded music to their devices.

The first-generation iPhone, I will admit, was not quite as simple as to setup as the iPod. I had to enter some contact and billing information to pay for the AT&T service. But the process is as simple as they come. Anyone capable of navigating the financial transaction required to buy an iPod could handle the extra mental strain.

No, I suspect profits provide the true motivation for AT&T's tyrannical policy. Like the original iPhone, the net price of the new iPhone 3G probably sits around $400. This time around, however, AT&T subsidizes the cost of the phone, such that consumers need only pay $199 for the device. AT&T, then, recoups from the $200 loss through the tariffs consumers pay for their wireless service.

By allowing consumers to simply walk in and buy the device for the subsidized price of $199 without committing to a two-year contract and wireless plan, AT&T runs the risk that the consumer hacks the phone, exports it to an excited Chinese cell phone user and costs the company $200 in revenue. It is, then, understandable that AT&T would want to take steps to avoid this.

But that is not to say AT&T could not have accommodated those who wanted to activate their iPhones in their homes or offices. AT&T could have sold the phones for $399 in the store, but provided a $200 service credit to those people who took the phone home, activated it from the comfort of their Aeron chair and agreed to a two-year contract.

I still love my iPhone, my Mac and just about every other product I own that bears the Apple logo. (The $29 iPod photo connection gizmo was not worth the money.) I am, however, coming to realize how much I dislike AT&T.

Apple CEO Steven P. Jobs announcing iPhone 3G

Image courtesy James Mitchell

I'll start with the good. Since Apple announced the iPhone SDK back in April, many — myself included — wondered how applications like instant messaging would work, since Apple forbade developers from running background processes, even after the application quit. In other words, for an instant messaging application, it would not have been possible to receive instant messages while using another application on the phone, such as Maps or Weather.

Fortunately, Apple debuted a brilliant solution to the problem with a push notification service that allows developers to ping a person's iPhone when new information becomes available. Hooray!

Apple's .mac replacement, MobileMe, is nice, but hardly revolutionary. It only makes me feel slightly less idiotic for giving Apple $100 every 12 months for a suite of Internet services. Still, I welcome the over-the-air magic synchronization features, à la Microsoft Exchange, especially since they cost me nothing more than I pay now.

Then came the much-anticipated iPhone with 3G radio, or "iPhone 3G." When first I read of the announcement, I felt good. For $200 less than I paid for the first iPhone last June, Apple would sell me an iPhone with super-speedy 3G data connectivity, a real live GPS module for genuinely accurate positioning and a blessedly non-recessed headphone jack. What was not to love?

Once again, AT&T, that demon of a service provider, stole the whiz-bang magic from Apple's product announcement. While Apple dropped the initial purchase price of the 3G iPhone (with 16 gigabytes of storage) to $299 from $499, AT&T increased the price of the special iPhone cellular service package.

Now, instead of paying $20 a month — plus the price of my voice plan — AT&T wants $30 for the special suite of iPhone cellular services. That lovely little piece of fine print moves my cost of upgrade to $540 from $299, assuming I have the iPhone 3G for 2 years. For not only do I have to buy a new phone, I have to give AT&T even more money for their less-than-perfect service.

I was also a little put out that Steve said nothing whatsoever about the Mac.

After I bought my iPhone last June, it quickly became apparent that I no longer needed a laptop computer. My phone does a more than adequate job of retrieving my email, keeping my calendar in sync and giving me access to information online.

With that in mind, I have been hoping, since June 2007, that Apple would release the chimerical prosumer Mac, a rung above the iMac and a rung below the Mac Pro. I may be a sophisticated computer user, but I do not need two quad-core processors. I would, however, like a Macintosh without a built-in monitor with a little more pep than an iMac and a little more room on the end-user side to modify the hardware.

I suppose there is always next year.

On Friday, 26 October, insane Apple fanatics once again gathered outside of the Cupertino-based company's retail stores to obtain the first publicly available copies of Mac OS X "Leopard." As I possess some dignity and a certain measure of sanity, I waited until Saturday morning to pick up my copy. No queues of crazy people. No problems.

By and large, I like Leopard. Apple has made a number of subtle, well-conceived changes to key applications, like Mail, iCal and the Finder, that add extra polish to the already stellar Mac OS. QuickLook — the nifty new technology that permits one to open a full preview of common document formats like Word, Excel and Keynote files — makes hunting down documents and photos far less of a chore. iCal no longer keeps event information squirreled away in an awkward drawer on the right or left side of the calendar. Instead, version 3 of Apple's calendaring software implements a rather charming pop-up editor that the software displays inline with the rest of the schedule.

The biggest improvements in Leopard, however, are under the hood. Though clever and thoughtful engineering, Apple has managed to dramatically improve application responsiveness and performance. In large part, they have accomplished this by better leveraging the dual- and quad-core processors that reside in newer Intel-based Macs. Everything — from Safari to Spotlight — responds much more quickly on Leopard than on Tiger with the same hardware.

Developers can also leverage a host of amazing new tools like Core Animation, the visual fireworks behind many of Leopard's visual improvements. Apple has also ushered in the era of Objective-C 2.0 with Leopard's Xcode 3. It finally frees developers from Cocoa's often confusing memory management scheme with garbage collection and, with properties, eliminates much of the monotony of creating accessor and mutator methods.

On the other hand, two integral elements of Mac OS X took a sharp turn for the worse. I speak of the Dock and the menu bar. As many commentators have already noted, the "improved" transparent menu bar is not only a superfluous use of transparency, but also quite detrimental to usability. With some desktop pictures, it is next to impossible to decipher the menu's text composited over the unsightly visual mélange of gradient and photograph.

Apple's decision to make the Dock a pseudo-three-dimensional reflective shelf is, to my retinas, what the Ottoman army was to the people of 15th century Constantinople. Its presence, superimposed on the two-dimensional desktop, is quite incongruous. But, more than the simple visual unpleasantness the new Dock imposes, I really dislike the new Stacks feature of the dock. Where once I could stash folders and files, and click once to open them or click and hold to view a folder's contents, I am now forced to use Apple's ridiculous "Stacks."

Fortunately, I managed to whip up a special, modified version of Apple's once-default Aqua Blue desktop picture (and my neutral desktop picture of choice) with a strategically positioned strip of white at the top, which gives one the illusion of an opaque menu bar. (Interested parties may download a copy from my flickr account).

Nonetheless, I strongly recommend that every Mac user make the leap and upgrade to Apple's latest cat-named operating system. Apple's subtle improvements and the amazing potential of Leopard's new system-level features make Leopard an essential upgrade.

Since EMI began peddling wonderful DRM-free, high-quality AAC files on the iTunes store in May, I have hoped against hope that Vivendi's Universal Music Group would do the same. Universal, as it happens, controls three of my favorite pseudo labels — Deutsche Grammophon, Decca and Verve — whose classic and jazz music sound sound far better with that extra 128kbps of audio data.

Of course, Universal, in its perpetual ineptitude, decided to put its snazzy new DRM-free, high-quality music everywhere but iTunes. Initially, I was angry. Yesterday, however, Amazon.com launched their "MP3 Downloads" store, which sells, among other music, the new Universal stuff. While I would compare the experience of browsing their store to wrenching a pair of jeans out from someone's grip on the first day of the Nordstrom anniversary sale compared to the serene minimalism of iTunes, I still managed to find a few songs worth purchasing, all of which sound terrific.

But my mild happiness turned to letdown when I discovered that Universal did not make its wonderful Global Concert Hall series of live digital recordings, released under the Decca and Deutsche Grammophon labels, available to Amazon.com. I really like the Global Concert Hall Series. It has featured the New York Philharmonic and the world-renowned Chamber Orchestra of Europe performing everything from Schumann to Chopin. The live recordings from iTunes teem with vivaciousness and energy, but the 128kbps bit-rate has always left me somewhat underwhelmed, especially compared with higher quality classical recordings in my library.

Take heed Universal! I want my Global Concert Hall and I want it at 256kbps!

It is no secret that Apple CEO Steve Jobs likes to surprise his audience. But nothing in my recent memory has created as much of a stir as Apple's decision yesterday to slash iPhone prices by $200, just two months after their release. Apple's share price fell by nearly five percent after the announcement. Investors, however, were not the only ones seething.

Admittedly, when I purchased my iPhone at the end of June, I knew that it would eventually see a price cut or some kind of improvement. But, as most industry analysts noted, such a drastic price cut two months after a product's introduction was, to say the least, unprecedented. I felt betrayed, wronged, and, above all, quite irate.

Even when I purchased a Nikon D50 for $1000, scarcely weeks after its release, it took Nikon over three months to cut the price by $100, or about 10%. Apple, in this instance, waited a scant two months to cut the price of the iPhone by nearly 40%.

But, around noon, Apple released a statement that, among other items, contained this statement:

Frankly, I still feel somewhat cheated, despite the fact that I will eventually receive a hundred dollar rebate. But, I suppose that is literal price of being on the cutting edge.

Mention of the Bose brand in conversation usually results in one of two discussions. Audiophiles sneer and assert that Bose ought be called "blows" for the mediocre audio quality its products offer. The rest of the world praises the ear-pleasing audio quality of Bose speakers, but recoils slightly at their inflated prices. Despite these differences, however, everyone can agree that the Bose brand oozes pretense.

Not that Bose does anything to make their image less ostentatious. Their advertising never makes mention of the price, as if to associate their Wave Radio or Lifestyle speaker systems with other super-premium luxury items whose price is only disclosed to the small portion of America's bourgeoisie who can afford them.

And, on one level, I wholeheartedly concur with the audiophiles. Bose speakers always imbue music with an excess of something I can only describe as "cheer." They make Bartök and Kabalevsky sound almost uplifting — something that, to anyone who knows anything about classical music, is conceptually impossible. I also cannot fathom why Bose sets such outrageous prices. They must have fantastic margins. When it comes to noise-canceling technology, however, Bose QuietComfort headphones set the bar for quality. David Pogue could not be more correct when he says, "The world just falls away," in his review of noise canceling headphones.

So, when my previous pair of noise canceling cans — a venerable set of Sennheiser PXC250 headphones — decided to malfunction a few weeks ago, I figured I would splurge and buy the best.

For the most part, the Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones meet my expectations. My Bartök sounds a trifle too jolly to be Russian, and the noise cancelation is marvelous. The included carrying case, however, contained something so incredibly pretentious I burst out laughing.

Inside the padded carrying case Bose provides a dozen business cards, which state:

Bose has redefined the meaning of narcissistic. Not only do they think the customer will love their headphones, they also seem convinced that total strangers, who merely catch sight of the Bose logo painted subtly on the side of the earphone, will inquire about the product's loveliness.

Frankly, I think Bose would probably do better business if they dispensed with their air of snobbery and, instead, appealed to the average American. It is the average American, after all, who would want speakers with a touch of added cheer.

Yesterday I recounted my adventure with push IMAP email from Yahoo! on my iPhone. In the time between then and now I sent an email to the Yahoo! technical support team, in the hope that someone would be able to provide a solution to my conundrum. I wrote:

The Yahoo! technical support representative who responded to my email used his English language skills, no doubt honed by a Harvard English degree, to craft this very insightful response:

What a revelation! I can access Yahoo! services on the Internet with my iPhone. No one would never draw that conclusion. Apple, after all, calls the iPhone an "Internet communicator." I, for one, took that to mean it played music. Perhaps I can visit other websites too. Or for that matter, maybe I can use my iPhone to make phone calls. It would never have crossed my mind.

If anyone from Yahoo! quality control reads this email, this man needs a promotion. Never have I received such an insightful and informative response from a technical support technician. Wasted talent, to say the least.

Are They Yahoo?
Why is my email unavailable on my actual computer?

With so many advantages, then, I figured I would take Yahoo! up on their offer. I signed up for a mail account, found a suitable user name and input the settings into my iPhone to start receiving the push IMAP goodness. Remarkably, the whole shebang sang. The second an email was sent to my new Yahoo! address the iPhone leapt to life and immediately informed me that I had a new email to read.

But when it came time to setup my computer the experience dove like the Dow, sinking from peachy to painful in a matter of seconds. I opened Mail on my laptop, pulled up the preferences and entered the appropriate settings. Unlike my iPhone, my MacBook Pro refused to cooperate, claiming that the server could not be found. So I tried again. Zilch.

I next turned to Google, hoping to find an answer. After five minutes of sleuthing I discovered that the iPhone uses a non-standard method of communicating with the Yahoo! servers that permits the iPhone — and no other devices — to access push IMAP email on their servers.

For $500 — in addition to the extra $20 I now pay to AT&T — I cannot have access to my Yahoo! email on my laptop with OS X Mail. I can live without custom ringtones and the sometimes molasses-like speeds of AT&T's EDGE data network. Locking my desktop email client out of my email, however, is something that I cannot tolerate, especially at that price.