AddingUnderstanding

Unless one has been living under a rock the coming of iPhone 2.0 software and the iPhone 3G are well known. Apple has a free Apple Remote application that allows an iPhone user to control their AppleTV or iTunes using the WiFi connection from the phone. This is all well and good. The application is great. Uncharacteristically for Apple there is a big gaping hole in the application. It is not a security hole but is a major piece of the application that is missing.

The application provides for the ability to search one's library which is nice. However it has no means to use the phone to make purchases for the AppleTV. This matters so much because entering text to search the store via the standard Apple Remote is a painfully slow experience of choosing a single letter at a time on screen. How cool it would have been if the remote application made finding and purchasing things on the AppleTV possible.

However lest anybody think the iPhone isn't bringing new folks to Apple there was the guy in line this morning extolling how he not only uses Exchange but does so willingly and runs his own Exchange server who was there to buy an iPhone. Worse yet he was bragging about convincing small businesses that Exchange is a good investment for them. Sigh. Now back to saving the world one server at a time...

While I love my iPhone it has been frustrating that there wasn't a quick way to check minutes from SMS. The phone tells you there are two ways to check minutes (which amount to the same thing). One method is to navigate to the phone preferences, then AT&T and finally to the button to check your minutes which actually sends the *646# code to get the SMS message. So there is obviously the option of adding a "View minutes" user to the contact list and bringing it up that way. For me the annoyance has always been that I wanted to send an SMS to get this information.

Sometimes the obvious solution is just a little too obvious. When you invoke either of the prescribed methods you get a message back from 1 (02). It turns out that if you text "min" to 1 (02) you get a response with your minutes. In fact it seems that anything you text to that SMS short code will get your minutes. This makes a couple of things easy... One is that if you have a "conversation" open with your minute balance you can check your balance with any reply. The other is to add it along with your Google, Twitter and other SMS short codes as a contact in your address book so you can SMS to "View Minutes" or "Minutes" or whatever you want to call it, perhaps "Addictive evil phone company overlords"... you get the idea.

So the much awaited gPhone, nee the Android OS for the open handset alliance, debuted this week. Yawn. So Google's going to hock an OS that while it has the trendy underpinnings of Linux and the Open Source code-word attached won't at the end of the day (or year rather) give us much more than we already have on our Blackberries, Treos and iPhones. (Not to even mention the plethora of Windows Mobile cell phones with these capabilities).

A couple of disclaimers to start with. First I've already been called an Apple apologist for the analysis I'm about to present here. That argument may makes it easier to dismiss what I have to say but it isn't the case and in fact I still get much of my search traffic to this site from my criticisms of Apple which I'm derided for on Apple fan sites. Second, I'm the owner of an iPhone and at one time I may have had ringtones on it that weren't Apple sanctioned, rather weren't RIAA-sanctioned but we'll get to that in a minute.

Background

To be certain Apple is a publicly traded company. As such it has one real motive at the end of the day. Like all companies in a capitalist society it is in the business of making money for share holders. There are companies that pursue this goal in different ways but the profit motive is what keeps the board in place and Steve Jobs in the CEO chair.

We've been road-tripping in the Prius. The posts about the trip will resume shortly now that the computer is back online. In the meantime I have several observations about the lackluster GPS and navigation system in the Toyota Prius. As far as I know it is the same system in all Toyotas. For some things it is great. In other ways it is horrible.

Seeing the country

This is our first trip into new country with the GPS. Actually I was in many places we're visiting twenty years ago but I haven't driven the area at all. The navigation system has an interesting effect. On one hand it knows the destination and is good about getting you there. Since I put in an address each morning marking that night's resting place I don't spend as much time with a map and thinking about the directions along the way. The Toyota system has a few options such as allowing you to choose from two quick routes or one short route. The short route choice nearly always results in seeing parts of a route that one wouldn't choose when looking at a map. Ironically at the same time because one doesn't need to study the map before getting to town to know where to find the night's lodging I don't have the same sense of many towns as I otherwise would.

As if any further proof was needed that cell phone preferences have a lot to do with where you live and what the network coverage is MacSlash has this comment:

I sure hope this update somehow results in better reception. I've dropped more calls since June 29th than I did in my 12 years with with SprintPCS. --MacSlash

Our experience has been just the opposite. In a typical day I'd drop a dozen cell phone calls - and that was when I didn't use it much. With the switch to AT&T I haven't dropped a dozen calls since June 29. All of this reminds me I need to go see if I accidently left the Sprint phone on a call while roaming.... oops.

This is untested but just might work. Once you have the web gallery button on your iPhone you need a gallery setup on .Mac. For those of us in the middle of projects and unable to upgrade what if you visit your local Apple Store and put your .Mac ID on a machine just long enough to create the web gallery. Presumably one need not go back in through iPhoto regularly. There is the risk that upon upgrading to iLife '08 it won't work with the 'foreign' gallery but might be worth playing with.