iPhone 2.0

DHH on iPhone 2.0's Glitches

Merlin Mann — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:52:28 -0400

iPhone 2.0: The glory wore off in wash - (37signals)

[via DF]

While acknowledging the complexity of Apple’s ambitious launch, David Heinemeier Hansson says iPhone 2.0 wasn’t ready for prime time on a number of levels.

Combined, it’s a rather big disappointment. I’m surprised just how much impact the small griefs have when they add up to a lack of confidence in the system. It’s a great example of the cumulative effects of problems. They have an exponential damage on the experience. […]

It feels a little like Apple got swept up in knocking down every single detraction point from 1.0 that they lost sight of what everyone loved about the first version. Yes, it got cheaper (not really), faster (some times), installable apps, and GPS, but it lost a bit of Apple soul in the process.

David also has a laundry list of complaints on stability and performance. I went through his items and ticked off each of the ones I’ve also noticed (with a 01-10 for how big a problem it’s been for me):

[ 0^ ] “Annoying delays all over the place.” [MDM: Kinda. I guess that's how I'd describe it.]
[ — ] “Changing to the SMS view can take more than 10 seconds at times.” [MDM: Mmm. I haven't seen this. But then I hate SMS and avoid it like the plague.]
[ — ] “Transitions between apps are being dropped entirely or cut short (the latter looks like a UI stutter).” [MDM: Nope.]
[ — ] “It some times requires 3 clicks on the fast-forward button in iTunes to get a response.” [MDM: Nope.]
[ 07 ] “The screen will freeze for 4-5 seconds not accepting any input, then replay ALL your feverous tapping when it finally returns.” [MDM: Oh yeah. Feels like a page out.]
[ 09 ] “Some times the keyboard will not keep up with your input (and I’m not that fast of a typer).” [MDM: I'm a *really* slow typer and I get this almost nonstop]
[ 07 ] “I’ve had applications crash numerous times.” [MDM: Poof. Multiples a day.]
[ 10 ] “The entire phone has crashed twice.” [MDM: Closer to a half-dozen times for me.]
[ 02 ] “Restarting the phone kinda helps some of these problems, but not for long and it feels so dirty and Windows-like to do.” [MDM: I guess. More opinion than observation.]

I’ll also add a few of my own:

Wildly-varying response errors. Similar to the screen freeze I guess, I’m getting substantial lag time — especially between ending a drag gesture and having the thing I was trying to change register the movement. I’m constantly selecting the “wrong” thing for example. Over and over.
The crazy-long Backup time in iTunes. Wow. Can I request a lot fewer of those?
Apps I’ve removed from the phone mysteriously reappear after the next sync
Hangs. Huge, old-school, everything freezes, hold all the buttons and wait til restart hangs.

Hm. I hadn’t really thought about all these at once, but, yeah. That’s a big bunch of broken. Let’s hope an update is out soon that addresses some of these.

”DHH on iPhone 2.0's Glitches” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 23, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

iPhone Apps I'd Totally Buy

Merlin Mann — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:30:59 -0400

As I wrote yesterday, I’m loving the new iPhone apps on the iTunes store. Also, as we mentioned on MacBreak Weekly yesterday, it seems likely that we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what people will do with that SDK.

But it got me thinking about the stuff I want — the itches I want to scratch. So, iPhone developer friends. Please make these three apps.

Prime This

Elevator pitch: Scan barcode to instantly order an item via Amazon

Out and about and see something you want to buy? Maybe a book, CD, or DVD that you want, but don’t want to buy/carry/pack right now? No problem.

Take a photo of the item’s barcode, hit one button, and the item is instantly ordered through Amazon 1-Click using your default credit card and shipping preferences. Done.

Yeah, I know; I know. You want price comparisons, and wish lists, and an API for tagging and “mashups.” Well, suck it up; you’re not who this is for. This is for hardcore, mainlining Amazon Prime power users. That’s why it has exactly one button: “Prime This.”

Suggested price: Free (developer will make a killing on affiliate money)

iParked

Elevator pitch: Location-aware parking reminder

Open the app, hit a button, and your location is noted and added to a map. Optionally add an alarm (for the parking meter or street cleaning), notes and photos (“3rd level; Area G”), and other pertinent data (“Closes at 1am; after hours number is….”).

When you’re ready to go to your car, the app reminds you where you parked (with a walking map), and off you go.

Suggested price: $5

That Reminds Me

Elevator pitch: Lightweight, location-aware alarm app

Tell TRM the really mushy kinds of things that fall somewhere between a todo and a wish and a curiosity.

buy a lottery ticket on my birthday
pick up a crazy notebook next time I’m in Chinatown
grab a takeout menu next time I’m at Andy’s

Using functionality similar to OmniFocus’s flexible, location-aware contexts, add new items to your list with optional alarms and start/end dates. Then forget about it.

Next time you’re geographically near where you need to be, you get a reminder and a map to get you there.

Suggested price: $5

The Question to You

What’s the iPhone app you crave? What would take great advantage of Location Services, the camera, SDK features, or what have you? What itch do you want to have scratched?

”iPhone Apps I'd Totally Buy” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 17, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

3 iPhone Media Apps (that Feel a Little Like Magic)

Merlin Mann — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:22:09 -0400

There are so many amazing new apps on the iPhone store that I hope to review here (and I’ll certainly spend time on a few more over coming weeks), but today I want to point you to three applications that make me feel like I’m a music fan of the very-near-future — where personalized data flies through the air, phones play rock music based on your personal preferences, and everybody listens to Silkworm on moving sidewalks and in tricked-out rocket cars.

Remote

Free | Download

Apple’s own Remote lets you turn your iPhone into a foxy little remote control for accessing shared iTunes libraries plus your AppleTV box. In seconds, the contents of all shared material pops up in a very sexy, browsable interface that’s similar (if not identical) to the built-in iPod functionality. Powerful and fun stuff — double fun if you’re streaming music to multiple Airport Expresses (“Airports Express?”) in which case you kind of feel like George Jetson.

Tip: This is a handy way to star-rate stuff as you’re wandering around the house. Remember why we star-rate? Yep.

Making it better: This can be a real battery hog if you leave it running the whole time (you do also have the option to not leave it running, which is considerate). But if the connection drops, it takes a few seconds to come back up. Which is bad if your mix suddenly pulls up a very loud Iron Maiden song during the baby’s nap, and you can’t get to the pause button in time. Or, so I hear.

Screengrabs:

Shazam

Free | Download

Hear a cool song on the radio and don’t know who or what it is? Hold Shazam up to the speaker for a few seconds, let it upload your audio snippet to the cloud, and in seconds you’ll find out the artist and album, as well as the name of the song. There’s other stuff you can do (tag it, buy it, whatever 2.0), but the magic is in the identification, which for me has been well over 80% accurate on the first try.

Tip: For best results, turn the music up a little, hold the iPhone’s mouthpiece (down there by where your mouth goes, duh) very close to the sound source, and try to minimize extraneous noises.

Making it better: Shazam fails like bad clams if it can’t get a steady connection to their server — and you don’t find this out til after you’ve recorded the snippet (during which time you could have been writing down a string of the lyrics to Google later). Next version ought to fix this if possible. Very frustrating on an otherwise swell application.

Screengrabs:

Pandora Radio

Free | Download

Wow, have I ever been missing the boat by not using Pandora. The popular streaming service, which utilizes the alchemically wizard-like Music Genome Project, finds songs you might enjoy based on songs and artists you already enjoy. And it’s really good at it. Thumb-up the ones you like, thumb-down the ones you don’t, and skip past up to 6 songs per hour per “radio station.” And, man — how awesome are the explanations?

Tip: Create a lot of radio stations (so you can skip a lot if you get bored). In adding new stations, focus not just on artists — try also adding 5-10 of your favorite songs as stations. The MGP seems way smarter about the genomic qualities of a given song, as opposed to bands, who can obviously be kind of all over the map, style-wise.

Making it better: The home screen gets crowded really fast. Add a way to a) organize radio stations into categories while also b) letting me quickly bubble up which stations’ 1-hour/6-skip windows have recently reset.

Screengrabs:

Personal: A Word about the Silkworm Documentary

Almost totally unrelated. If it wasn’t obvious in the screengrabs, I’m a huge fan of the late, lamented band, Silkworm. (A propos of nothing, I was wearing a SKWM shirt when my daughter was born)

If you are or were a fan, too, and want to help see the documentary about every indie rocker’s third favorite band make it to a proper completion and release, please consider making a small donation to help make it happen. I did. Thanks.

Here’s the trailer for Couldn’t You Wait.

Viva, Dahlquist, friends. The man loved to rock.

”3 iPhone Media Apps (that Feel a Little Like Magic)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 16, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Apple's Bad Day

Merlin Mann — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:44:25 -0400

This is not the Friday Apple had wanted. There’s a lot of frustrated people out there right now. A quick survey of the damage so far:

London launch of iPhone 3G marred by software problems

“It just goes dead,” said would-be customer Mark Phipps, who left the store frustrated and without an iPhone 3G.

Macworld | iPhone Central | Crowds, activation delays hit iPhone launch

Problems with the iTunes server caused some enthusiasts who had waited in line for hours to walk out of the store unable to use their new iPhones, according to the disgruntled customers.

iPhone launch-o-mess-o-rama | The Macalope: An Apple blog - CNET News.com:

Also, the horny one is seeing reports that the iPhone 2.0 update is now available through iTunes, but it’s effectively bricking peoples’ iPhone since the Store is down. The update gets installed, but the phone can’t reactivate. Probably want to wait on that one, too.

Today @ PC World iTunes Store “Unavailable”: This iPod Touch Owner is Stuck in Update Limbo

I’m still locked out of updating my iPod Touch via iTunes. But one thing Apple has managed to do is bill me for Apple App Store software downloaded to my PC earlier this morning. I JUST received an e-mail confirmation my credit card has been billed.

MacNN | MobileMe problems continue, upset customers

Problems began when the company shifted its scheduled downtime for the .Mac/MobileMe transition, moving the end of it to 2AM Thursday. A lack of access continued throughout the day for many customers, however, and as of Friday morning in the US the service is still not fully functional.

And just wardial a few terms on Twitter:

I don’t mean to pile on here; I’m just amazed at the perfect storm of issues Apple is fighting today — and wondering what the hell went wrong. I wonder if it’s all related to server scale in one way or another.

It’s brutal to watch all this and, at least so far anyway, it feels like a pitiful way to introduce a bunch of enthusiastic new customers to a company that consistently earns its premium from customer experience.

My advice to anyone considering touching any part of this frayed wire today is to stay the hell away. At least until tomorrow or Monday. Wait for things to sort out, back up your .Mac data, and hang out until things start to settle down.

And, if you have a brick, don’t play with it. Wait. Don’t fiddle. People get weird at times like this and end up doing stupid stuff to make it worse. Just take a walk, have a drink or three, and let things calm down.

And, godspeed my Apple friends who are working on this today. Hang in there, gang. It won’t be Friday forever.

”Apple's Bad Day” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 11, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

First Look: Evernote for the iPhone

Merlin Mann — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:31:14 -0400

(Oh, man. I’ve got a crazy busy day today, but it just got a lot busier thanks to an intoxicating morning with the iPhone 2.0 update and the iTunes App Store. I’ll try and sneak in a few little posts today on the amazing new apps as time permits)

Evernote (iTunes App Store Link)

Free
works with Evernote web and desktop apps

I need to do a full post on Evernote here some time soon, because it really is a nifty little application for collecting, storing, and organizing practically any kind of information you can throw at it. The iPhone version is a stripped-down, all-business version of the app that will scratch an itch for Evernote fans who are fatigued by having to email everything to the mothership.

More after the jump, including how to take screengrabs like this on your iPhone 2.0…

The Evernote iPhone app is crazy-simple to use, and rightfully focuses on mobile capture. Photos, voice, and text can be sent directly into your Big Evernote Database — including the handy inclusion of location data which will show up in Evernote as Lat/Long, all thanks to iPhone’s 2.0 location magic (and yes: the location stuff works fine without GPS; I do wonder how that will affect sales of what’s starting to look like a costly 3G iPhone I can personally do without).

You can also access your existing stuff in browsable list form, or by searching, And, yes, once the photo you take in Evernote has synced with the EN site, the OCR makes any readable text in the image searchable from the iPhone app. Very nicely done.

Cool New iPhone Feature: Built-in Screen Capture

Nota frickin’ bene: How did I get screengrabs on an uncracked 2.0 iPhone? Easy. Click the Home button and the top (Power) button at the same time to capture a PNG of the current screen to the Photo Viewer (grabbable later via iPhoto). Hat tip to Jason Snell for this awesome little bit of magic.

”First Look: Evernote for the iPhone” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 10, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"