I got the new iPhone. i told myself that was not going t o, that it was too important for me that the Android operating system was more open and available to more manufactures and therefore better, more diverse, and was going to take over the planet and crush apple to dust as Microsoft did to the apple II in the late 80′s and early 90′s however i did it anyway. this Jewel like shiny piece of glass and metal is just too shiny for me to fight it with any reason or meaningful explanation that i can conjure.

while i still think that the eventuality of apple loosing the battle against the more open platform is coming and Apple will face it someday soon. (I’m guessing around the release of the next iPhone next July the signs will be very hard to dismiss.) i think that for this round i will stick with them. not out of a driving need to fit in but the polish, durability and feel of the iPhone in this generation is really hard to ignore. the device feels like what it should. the competitors offerings feel like toy cars all plastic and clicky… they are on the whole not even close to the quality feel of the iPhone. infect, when holding the new 4G in one hand and a Vertu (Nokia’s premium brand of phones available in materials like solid gold and solid platinum) phone in the other you would probably prefer the iPhone over the Vastly more expensive phone not only because it works better but feels equally if not better constructed.

I’m certainly not a fan boy for apple just for quality design and innovation. i have a Toshiba laptop as opposed to an Apple MacBook, and a Windows Home Server instead of a Apple TimeCapsule.

in essence i think that this is more like a competition, apple keeps winning every year however each year more and more teams are getting to compete. eventually someone else is going to win and i don’t see Apples way back into the contest once that happens.

iPhone user 23,200,276 signing out.

Great Laptop, wish it was more durable., I have a T115 and i love it. I had an ACER aspire One with the Atom N270 processor and the battery only lasted for about 3 hours. (half way from ATL to LAX which was unacceptable.) As i make 6+ hour flights all the time i needed something with the battery power to get it done. The T115 really meets my travel related needs. The battery lasts at least 8.5 hours each time i have used it. The ergonomics of the 11.6″ form factor are almost the same as my full sized laptop. (my ACER was the 8.9″ 1024×600 screen resolution was trying at times…)

I upgraded my T115 to 4 GB or ram, it was straightforward (and only cost $30.00) My T115 came with a copy of Windows 7 home premium installed. However, i was not able to use all of the ram i installed because the operating system was installed as 32bit so i re-installed it as 64bit. the windows 7 key from the bottom of my laptop worked fine for 64bit and all of the Toshiba software that was pre-installed on the computer was available in 64bit versions on the Toshiba website. on top of the ability to use all of the 4 GB of ram, my system now has a higher windows experience score. I now get a 3.2 Windows score instead of the 2.9 i had when running in 32bit. All in all this will make a great new companion for me as i travel and do presentations.
I only have one gripe, the finish is super shiny and fingerprints and scratches will be a serious problem. Order a neoprene sleeve for it as soon as you can. Also, as i travel quite a bit it would have been nice if the case was a bit more rugged however, at the sub 500.00 price point, one cannot expect the laptop to be made of metal like more expensive ultralights in the category.

I give the Toshiba T115-S1105 a 4.5/5 stars!

Just over one year ago Apple announced the App Store and told developers that their new platform was going to offer developers the ability to make applications that could do almost anything! As we sit here a year later we now know that is not the case as Apple rejects apps based on what can only be described as murky rules that change based on what apps are submitted such as in the case of Google’s VOIP app.

After speculation that AT&T asked that Google’s app not be allowed onto the app store the matter is being further investigated by the FCC. None-the-less this is not sitting well with the one demographic that Apple should care the most about. iPhone owners…

There are countless blogs spewing rants about Apple and how the company rejected an App offering a feature that they were looking forward to. This creates unrest in an otherwise extremely loyal base of customers. Even worse is the moths of development that many of the coders have spent on working on apps that seemingly meet Apple’s rules only to get rejected for what seems to be emotional reasons on the part of Apple and their partners.

Now enter Microsoft, with a new way for angry and confused iPhone developers to recycle their code by porting their software to windows Mobile. This move from Microsoft allows them to play catch up with other mobile platforms and creates good will with App Store developers by allowing them to salvage months of work and effort spent on software previously rejected by Apple. Microsoft has also announced that their app store offering will be available for older versions of Windows Mobile giving cross-over developers access to a new user base of over 30 million windows Mobile devices.

So i guess we will see if this move from Microsoft enables a change of heart in Apple’s hard line dealings with App Store developers…

read more: Microsoft Courting iPhone Developers — Windows Marketplace For Mobile — InformationWeek.

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Well, it has been 3 weeks now since i got my hands on the iPhone 3G and I have to say I am still enamored with the quality of the interface. The device feels solid, works well and has few bugs (At least for me it has had few bugs. others have had nothing but issues from the get-go.) The 3G internet speed is zippy (solid 1.4-1.6Mbps when in 3G coverage areas) and quite responsive, certainly enough for surfing the web and for use with my Exchange account for e-mail. The problem now is that I have had enough time away from my Treo 750 Windows Mobile device to start missing some of the common sense type features that for some reason the iPhone lacks even in its 2nd generation.

not to be annoying as I have seen many blogs rant about these issues already but I would like to share my issues with the readership so that they can avoid potentially game ending problems with the iPhone and purchase the device fully informed and ready to embrace the finger dance that is iPhone ownership.

1. The lack of tethering
2. The inability to schedule appointments FROM the device
3. Copy & Paste. (Come on Apple, seriously.)
4. No support for Video.
5. Bluetooth support for stereo headsets and syncing
6. Adobe Flash support for Safari.

No Tethering Tango

With all that 3G goodness how can I be expected to not occasionally tether my laptop to my iPhone for the benefit of using the iPhone as a modem. I have been doing this through Bluetooth and USB for years with smartphones (and even not so smart phones.) this feature that has been around for a decade is strangely absent from this state-of-the-art gadget.

Scheduling Conflicts

My issue with Scheduling is probably my biggest pet peeve of the new iPhone. I work at a company that utilizes a Microsoft Exchange Server this was what stopped me from purchasing the original iPhone (That and it’s lack of 3G.) When I heard that Apple was adding support for exchange in the 3G device I was elated and promptly stood in line with the great and humble masses on release weekend to get one. The realization came on Monday of the following week that I could accept invitations to meeting but could not send one out. I wonder how Apple missed such an important feature. That is the equivalent to making a phone that can accept a call but cannot make them. “Boo Apple!”

Copy and Paste

Really? “Who would ever need that?” I heard something on Buzz Out Loud today driving to work about how Copy and Paste was on Apple’s to-do list for the 3G but that it was not high enough to make it in the first release of the 3G. Here is hoping that it shows up in 2.1 of the firmware. I am so tired of typing things into the Google search bar that I had in my e-mail already.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Well, some how once again the iPhone is missing a feature that is standard on almost all high (and low) end phones. How can Apple leave video off of the iPhone? And include such a subpar camera. I read somewhere that they even used a chip in the iPhone 3G that supports up to a 5MP camera. So it is not a limitation of the chipset. Again a very sad wannabe fanboy must say “Boo Apple!”

Bluetooth 2.what does it matter?

With the iPhone being a high quality music and video player that includes Bluetooth surely it is the realization of a dream for people that want to finally “Cut the cord” completely and use wireless Bluetooth headsets. Right? Wrong. The new iPhone comes with Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR all that that means to you is that it will play nice with the majority of wireless headsets and probably your car if you have one of those “fancy built in Bluetooth car phone systems” (jaded). However that truly is it. there is no data, stereo audio, file sharing, photo sending or any other kind of data allowed or supported via Bluetooth on the iPhone. Why?

Apple and Adobe, when parents fight the kids lose…

I know Apple and Adobe don’t always see eye to eye on many things but I really hope that they can get together on this one. Unfortunately we will never see an Opera browser for iPhone due to the limits of the SDK Apple released for the iPhone so it is truly on Apple to deliver the goods on support for Adobe Flash. I cannot conceive of why support has not made it to the top of the list for a product that was sold on the quality of its web experience.

Now I know that that seems like a huge list of reasons to NOT get the new iPhone 3G. And if any of those reasons are deal breakers for you then I wouldn’t blame you for letting it ride for a few more generations. However, I decided to keep mine for 2 reasons

1. The interface is sweet. And when I say sweet I mean Game changingly sweet. This device is the beginning of the end for clumsy interface design. At the entry-level price of $199.00 the iPhone 3G feels like holding a Vertu in your hand for the cost of a pay-as-you-go trackfone. This device is extremely easy to use and with the safari web browser it offers the usability that I always wanted Windows Mobile’s Pocket Internet Explorer browser to have.
2. The iPhone 3G has all of the hardware I could ever want in a phone. The Devices specs read like a wish list in a modern device (save the fact that it only has a 2MP camera.) The iPhone boasts a HSDPA chip capable of 7.2 Mbps downstream speed, 802.11B/G Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 and a 835 MHz processor. That being said I realize that none of these specs matter unless the software supports them. That also being said, as the hardware capabilities are there already software can be improved. So, Apple, please help make the decision to keep the iPhone a good one by fixing the issues that limit your wonderful piece of hardware.