Degutis Insights » Technology

iPhone 4 – My First 24 hours or The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Al — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:00:01 +0000

Here’s a summary of my experiences, good and bad, with the iPhone 4 after using it for 24 hours.

Good

Fast. A hell of a lot faster than my iPhone 3G
Great display. Debates aside, holding it up next to my iPhone 3G the iPhone 4 display is amazing
Better camera with good video. First photos: http://post.ly/kY8M
Ability to choose the image size/resolution when emailing photos, including full size
Folders! I can get to all of my favorite apps from the first home screen
Direct access to inboxes. Not the unified inbox option, which I don’t want, but a direct way to get to any accounts inbox. The only way I can use the unified inbox is if I can choose which accounts to include instead of including all of them.
Backup during syncing to iTunes is a lot faster.

Bad

Glass on the front and back means more smudges.
Emailing videos compresses them. I need to find a way to easily (over the air) move videos around to my iPad, Macbook Pro and online.

Ugly

I cannot get my two A2DP Bluetooth devices (Jabra Stone earpiece and Kensington headset) to be seen by the iPhone 4. Apple, Bluetooth keyboard support is nice but how about getting A2DP working.
Reports are coming out that holding the iPhone by it’s new antenna, you know… the edge of the phone, causes the signal to drop. IMy tests show that there is an issue with this. I immediately ordered one of those expensive rubber bands (aka Bumpers) which I’m hoping will address the problem. Seems like they should have included a “Bumper” with the phone.
[Update:] the problem seems intermittent. I tried showing off the issue to a half dozen different coworkers this morning and the signal was fine. I made sure I had the palm of my left hand overlap the two antennae (the alleged cause of the problem) but the signal never dropped.

Unknown

Battery life. I’ve read reports of people getting good battery life, in one account up to 38 hours under “heavy use.” Since I live in an area that has crappy Internet, thus WiFi at home isn’t a great option, is out in the boonies, and is surrounded by trees, the phone is constantly going in and out of 3G service. More importantly, the phone is expending battery power to find and connect to the 3G network frequently. During my full day of testing which included shooting videos and trying to email those videos and full size photos over the constantly alternating Edge/3G network, I got 12 hours of battery life. Definitely an improvement over my iPhone 3G and I’d expect it to be better under typical use.
Using the provided headset, since my Jabra Stone doesn’t work with it yet, Judy said the call quality was a lot better. I haven’t tested it with just the phone by itself to see if the second mic really helps with noise reduction.
FaceTime. I’m still waiting for someone I know to get the iPhone 4 so I can test FaceTime with them. A local (i.e. Chicagoan) contacted me on Twitter last night to see if I wanted to try FaceTime, but I was on my slow WiFi at home so it wasn’t worth trying it.

Threatening Spam

Al — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:49:08 +0000

A coworker received his disturbing spam email the day before Thanksgiving.

________________________________________
From: w5wade@eastlink.ca [w5wade@eastlink.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 6:11 AM
Subject: Keep very secretxxx

This is Scot, head MZP Squad. I wish to let you know that i have been paid by a client to assasinate you at convenience. I have never met you before, but they gave me the full description of your identity

The reason why they want you dead was never not disclosed to me. My guys are now contantly watching you waiting for my
instruction to terminate you at convenience.

THIS IS MY MESSAGE:
Listen very well, the Police cannot do much to help you out in this right now because you are being watched,any such attempt is very risky and can push us to terminate your life without any other option.

We DON NOT want any trace whatsoever. So, you are advise to send your reply within 48hrs to: johnsonp46163@msn.com

WARNING: Like you have been told, any attempted attempt to involve third party will be too bad

Bye for now

Obviously, she was disturbed by the message. Who wouldn’t be. As best as I can tell, the goal of the message is to solicit an email response to verify that your email address is valid and then the flood gates (of spam) are open. If you receive this email, or something similar, just delete it.

Nintendo Wii Price Drop

Al — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:30:33 +0000

Nintendo has dropped the price of the Wii by $50 to $199.99. We’ve enjoyed playing various games on the Wii. There are games for everyone in the family, from the preschoolers to the grandparents. One of my favorite games to play is the Soccer Practice which comes with the Wii Fit Balance Board (sold separately). I do poorly because I crack up when I get hit in the head with a soccer shoe.

The Nintendo Wii is for the causal gamers, which makes it perfect for family game night.

Buy a Nintendo Wii for the family.

Install Snow Leopard for only $70

Al — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:24:58 +0000

Install the $30 Snow Leopard upgrade for an extra $40. Seriously?

iPhone MMS Launch Party

Al — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:00:38 +0000

We’re having a party!

It’s time to celebrate MMS on the iPhone here in the United States of America. Thank you AT&T for bringing this innovative new feature (well it’s not that new considering it was launched in 2002) to the iPhone.

We have an iPhone cake and lots of alcohol.

Be sure to drink heavily, errr, I mean party heartily and then send some photos via MMS (drunken MMS ar the best).

Snow Leopard – a service pack that needs an update already

Al — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:04:07 +0000

I purchased and installed the Mac OS X Snow Leopard update. I knew it wasn’t going to bring a lot of new features but the reviews touted modest performance gains and a few UI gems.

I installed it as a fresh install, not an upgrade, on my 18 month old Macbook Pro with 4 GB of memory. After using it for three days, I have to say I’m disappointed and think it should have been a free upgrade. I’m glad it only cost $30.

Online reviews and comments claim a noticeable increase in performance. I’m wondering if this is the infamous Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field in affect. Here’s are my experiences so far:

I’ve seen more spinning beach balls (i.e. waiting for the app or OS) in the last 3 days than I have in the last 3 months, especially with Safari 4. Firefox 3.5 has been running fine, without a visit by the spinning beach ball.
iMovie is also slow. Trying to edit video clips is painful because it pauses for 2-3 seconds.
Mail.app crashed for the first time in a year, if not longer. I’ve had it lock up occasionally under Leopard, but it only took 1 day for it to crash with an error message in Snow Leopard. This may have to do with the Microsoft Exchange email that I added today, which is a new feature so I can understand this one.

I’m anxiously awaiting the 10.6.1 update. I will not be installing Snow Leopard on my iMac until 10.6.1 comes out and proves itself worthy on my Macbook Pro… unless I revert back to Leopard that is.

~ Posted by Al

Windows 7 RC’s window flicker

Al — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:06:53 +0000

I’ve been using Windows 7 Release Candidate exclusively on my work desktop since it came out on May 5, 2009. It runs great but I’ve encountered one problem that is extremely annoying. The windows behind the active window will flicker.

A video is worth a thousand flickers…

~ Posted by Al

Cool slow motion HD video

Al — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:16:04 +0000

The end with the koosh ball and Jello are very cool. You may want to click on the video to bring it up in the larger size on the Vimeo website.

I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.

Twitter as my news feed

Al — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:00:00 +0000

I like Twitter (see this video that explains Twitter). I use it as a means of communication with my immediate family. I have also plugged into it as a source of news. Initially I was interested in tech news, comments, rumors, etc. While tech info is still a primary interest, I found myself expanding the people I follow o Twitter to others I found interesting regardless if they are marketers, lawyers, librarians, etc. Using TweetDeck I am able to follow a good number (albeit a relatively small number compared to hardcore Twitter users) of diverse people and grouping them into different categories. Using this approach I have a Family & Friends group, a Tech Heads group, and a Locals group which includes people from the Chicagoland, Rockford and southeast Wisconsin.

These groups allow me to see what’s going on in tech, in business and in the local area. It allowed me to get a feel for the extent of a recent power outage in McHenry county. When ex-Illinois governor “Blago” was impeached my Locals group was abuzz with the news.

Twitter is a great way for me to get regional, national and tech news. If I’m at a computer, I’ll typically have it running so I can stay plugged in. If I need to work without distraction I’ll turn it off, but I do feel disconnected.

Posted by Al Degutis (aka Frumpa on Twitter)

iPhoto 09′s amazing face recognition

Al — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:25:05 +0000

I picked up my copy of iLife 09 the day it came out, eager to try out iPhoto’s face recognition feature. After launching iPhoto for the first time, it took under an hour for it to process all the photos in the library, searching for faces. Once it identified most of the faces you start tagging them with names. As you are tagging names, the process becomes simpler because iPhoto appears to learn from what was being tagged and makes recommendations which you can accept or reject. It’s not perfect and at times suggests the wrong person, especially when it comes to toddlers and infants, but does a fairly good job.

An example of an accurate suggestion:

An example of an inaccurate suggestion:

iPhoto is also Linux friendly, well at least in terms of recognizing Tux:

iPhoto also likes to play Where’s Waldo:

Overall it is an impressive feature. I can’t speak to how it compares to the face recognition feature of Google’s Picasa, other than iPhoto does all the work locally whereas Picasa only provides face recognition on Picasa Web. I’m not about to upload my entire photo library to the web (with the exception of my Amazon S3 backup) so the local face recognition with name tagging is perfect for me.

Posted by Al Degutis