Tag Archives: iphone

Preparing an iPhone to be sold

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With my wife and I both upgrading to the new iPhone 4, we decided to sell both of our old iPhone 3G’s to Gazelle.com. No hassle and nothing to worry about with scammers.

This made me to wonder, what is the safe way to securely wipe an iPhone? I do not want any of my personal data on the old phone to get in the wrong hands.

EverythingiCafe.com has a great article on how to do this. It essentially boils down to doing a restore of the iPhone and then using the “Erase All Content and Settings” setting on the newly restored iPhone to securely erase all of the data on it.

New AT&T data plans

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Last week there was certainly lots of talk about AT&T’s new data plans across the Internet. The reaction seemed to fall into two camps from what I could see: 1) heavy data users that absolutely hated the plans or 2) people who would save money and appreciated the plans. After doing some comparisons, I think I fall under #2. Here is my thought process behind it.

A quick look at my data usage shows that my wife and I could easily live with the 200MB data plan. Below is my data usage:

The next is my wife’s data usage:

The closest I ever got to the max that a 200MB plan would allow is 170MB. Closest my wife got was 143MB in one month and usually averages below 100MB.

We now have three options here:

  1. My wife and I could both drop down to the 200MB plan. Our phone bill drops about $30, which results in a $360 savings over the course of a year.
  2. My wife drops down to the 200MB plan, I use the new 2GB plan with the tethering option selected (for work and traveling reasons, it would be very nice to have). Her drop to the 200MB plan saves $15 a month, plus my drop to the 2GB plan saves $5 a month for a total of $20 savings. Then with tethering for me costing $20, we break about even with what we pay now.
  3. Keep our current “unlimited” data plans.

I am leaning towards option #2 here. I am not losing anything, since I never went near the “unlimited” data plan’s max of 5GB a month. I am gaining tethering and end up paying about the same monthly bill.

A computer for most of us

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I am really excited about the Apple iPad that was announced a few days ago. It seems like it would solve a lot of computing issues not just for me, but most every day people who aren’t computer experts. This appears to be the first computer that I would feel absolutely comfortable with my grandmother to use, yet powerful enough for me to use it often.

In the morning before I go to work or in the evening when I am relaxing, there is very few times where I do a lot of typing. During these times, my predominate use of my Macbook is for browsing the web, reading Google Reader, checking Facebook & Twitter, and checking my e-mail. Most of my e-mail replies are a couple sentences long at most.

Some times I do this on my iPhone, which works well at these tasks. For me, the iPhone is great for a quick run through of that list above, but not good if I spend more than 10-15 minutes doing this. The iPhone’s battery drains fast, the screen is too small to do a ton of reading, there is a loss of flexibility many of the dedicated apps for these purposes not having all the functionality I may need.

When I do it on my Macbook, I gain the most functionality, but I lose the simplicity and efficiency of the iPhone approach. I get a bigger screen, the ability to type incredibly fast with keyboard shortcuts, better battery life, the ability to run many applications at the same time. There is a price for this though. I easily get distracted with many applications running at the same time. The applications can be incredibly complex, buggy, and unwieldy at times, some with code bases that date back 20 years or more. I would argue that laptops themselves are bulky (even the traditionally very thin Apple laptops) and can have heat issues that can make using one uncomfortable.

How do I see the iPad solving these issues? By taking the best of both approaches.

The iPad gets the bigger screen but still extremely portable, as thin as many books or a new notepad. I can just hold it with my hands, not resting it on my lap. I gain the huge speed and simplicity benefits of an iPhone like touchscreen interface, yet with the bigger screen the applications can be more complex if needed like their laptop cousins. There isn’t the heat issues, the battery is far better than any laptop (10 hours),  a faster processor than phones that doesn’t have to worry about handling the complex desktop Operating Systems like laptops. There is even accessories so I can do camera imports and manage them on the device.

For those morning and evening browsing sessions that I do nearly every day, the iPad would be perfectly suited for them. Of course there will be tasks that my laptop with a full desktop OS would be better suited for. As beautiful as the new iWork apps are for the iPad, I wouldn’t want to work on a complex spreadsheet on it from scratch. I wouldn’t write this long blog post on an iPad (unless I used the keyboard accessory…hmm). Managing my music and video collections will still need that computer, as they would have a tough time fitting on even a 64GB iPad. Plus I don’t even know if an iPad can sync its library with an iPhone yet.

That is not even getting into the added benefits the iPad gives to common people, like:

  • Security: there hasn’t been one virus or high-profile security breach for iPhones (excluding jailbroken ones). This is despite the iPhone being an obvious target for hackers given its dominance.
  • App Store: one stop shop to finding applications, applications get updates easily, and reviews to know the apps are good or not.
  • No multitasking: What? A feature? For those who get easily confused about multiple apps running, sucking CPU and battery life, this is a feature. It took months for one family member of mine to realize that they should quit applications instead of just closing their windows and leaving them running. My grandparents have a hard time keeping track of one application, never mind 5. Keep it simple. In the end, I bet limited multitasking will be introduced, but not until Apple gets it right.
  • Flexibility: Apps make this device work far longer than any computer would normally last. Those special digital photo frames you can buy? Get an iPad, dock, and it doubles as one when you aren’t using it. Plus higher quality display and more storage.

I predict that the iPad will become the computer of the future for the common people, while being a valuable companion for geeks who really do not need to use a full desktop computer every time they need their Internet fix. I know I will be in line for one, my mother is also wanting one too.

Apple Tablet event predictions

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I freely admit that I soak up any Apple related news and I cannot wait to see what is in store tomorrow for what is rumored to be the big Apple tablet unveiling. Here is my predictions:

iPhone OS 3.2 released

Not sure what exactly would be in this update to tell the truth. The iPhone really needs a a revamped notification system. Perhaps with the introduction of the tablet maybe Apple will include an e-book app that automatically syncs with your e-book purchases, like the Kindle iPhone app does for Kindle Store purchases? Only obvious improvement to me worthy of a minor version increase, although I am sure there will be a bunch of small improvements they will throw in.

iLife & iWork ’10 released

Apple seems to do iLife & iWork releases every year or two in January, so this could be one of those years. The big obvious upgrade we have been waiting for is 64-bit support. It would be interesting if they actually made iWork.com useful (meaning editing files too) outside of viewing files you put up there.

Additional U.S. Carrier(s) for the iPhone (at least T-Mobile in the next few months, Verizon in summer)

Rumors have been going around crazy that AT&T exclusive contract for the iPhone ends in 2010. Some rumors say it even ends tomorrow (1/27/2010). Given that the iPhone is currently only GSM 3G, I think the most obvious new carrier is T-Mobile if any new carriers are announced tomorrow. A long shot is an announcement about Verizon getting the iPhone in the summer, but I don’t think that will be announced this far in advance.

The Apple Tablet (I love the name Apple Canvas, but I am guessing they will go with iPad or iSlate)

  • 10 inch “Tablet” device running a new version (4.0?) of the iPhone OS announced, for sale in March.
  • OLED Screen, incredibly thin
  • Wireless-N connection built-in
  • 3G Wireless that can be used either by subscription or content purchases will include the bandwidth costs. That way impulse book, movie, tv, and song purchases can be made anywhere, subscription or not.
  • Fully functional communication device (e-mail, web browser, apps, etc).
  • Built-in multitasking (iPhone OS 4.0 in action)
  • Tons of e-books, movies/TV content, music, etc.
  • Wireless syncing thanks to Wireless-N, no ports outside of power port, includes MobileMe subscription

Only way to find out: watch tomorrow!

Edit: Expanded on my original predictions.

Reason #1040 why I love my iPhone

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Amazon.com came out today with their own native iPhone application. In itself, you may wonder why did they do that? Amazon.com had one of the best web sites designed for the iPhone, a striking simple and easy-to-use site that allowed you to do everything needed to empty your wallet with just a single-click. Why bother with an iPhone app?

Well the Amazon app is somehow even faster then the web app. It is easier to use and even has some really unique features. Like the feature that lets you take a picture of any item, sending it to amazon where they have a human analyze it, and within 5 minutes getting an e-mail with a link to the item on Amazon.com, ready for purchase.

How cool is that? I can instantly see myself going to a store, finding an item that seems overpriced, send a picture to Amazon, and by the time I do the rest of my shopping find out if Amazon has it for cheaper. Or at a friends house, seeing an item but not knowing the exact name, and checking to see if Amazon has it.

Did I mention that I love my iPhone?

The Great Technology Battle of 2008

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A week ago today, I was ready to declare war on my e-mail, address book, and basically my electronic existence. My life is built around technology. It has been part of my existence as long as I remember. It is my career. Yet, it was slowly drowning me. How could I turn this around I thought? Technology is supposed to help, not supposed to drown you. If anyone can figure out how to harness technology, it should be me. I had to do something.

The signs were clear: I had to do something…

 

  • My inbox was overflowing. I had over 40 labels in my Gmail account (many redundant), hundreds of e-mails a day, and many unread e-mail’s. Most of this was due to three e-mail accounts worth of e-mail being forwarded into my main Gmail account, years of laziness in figuring out how to organize it, and no time to do it. Most of what I didn’t read was just filtered into a folder, to be occasionally deleted without me even looking through them.
  • I had three address books (my Mac’s address book, my POS cell phone address book, and Gmail’s), none that synced with each other and none that were close to 100% up-to-date. My Gmail address book was in the worst shape due to the horrific feature of Gmail adding every person I have ever e-mailed into it. My Mac one wasn’t much better…it still had the phone number for my grandmother that was 2 or 3 numbers ago.
  • My bookmarks are scattered everywhere, between three web browsers (Safari, Firefox, and Camino), none of which were in sync.
  • My calendar situation was ironically in the “best” shape, as I had a central calendar I kept everything on. Only issue is access as it was hanging on the wall of my apartment, not very good if you need to check it from work or a friend’s place. Anything I wanted to write on the calendar would either be scribbled on the back of scrap paper (hoping I remember to take it out of my pocket before washing the pants) or worse, committed to a memory that does not remember such details well.
  • I had too many gadgets. Just a few years ago, I had 3 cell phones (2 from work), an iPod, and 2 computers. I had since narrowed it down to an iPod, a cell phone, and a computer. I knew I could do better though.

 

What did I have going for me? An immense knowledge of technology, the desire to figure out how to do it, and the will to do it.

Here is my progress:

 

  1. It was time I joined the smartphone junkies. Since there is really only one smartphone that plays nice with Macs and really only one smartphone that could do what I had planned, it was time to get an iPhone 3G.
  2. The iPhone immediately retired an aging POS flip phone and a 2G iPod Nano. Two devices become one. My entire digital personal life is now down to two devices: an iPhone and my Macbook. When I left the apartment, I knew I had to carry my iPhone and my wallet. That is it. The fog began to clear my mind.
  3. Finally I could schedule my life on-demand. The calendar on my iPhone? Always up-to-date. I enter every event into the iPhone, even when I should work out at the gym (Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 12 PM in the gym at work, reoccurring event). Plug in my iPhone into the Macbook twice a day (morning when I wake up and evening when I get home), all changes instantly synced with iCal. No more guessing, no more pieces of paper to lose.
  4. One address book to rule them all. I hated paper address books. They were typically bulky and who carries a pen/pencil around 24/7? So I kept three ones scattered online, on the POS flip phone, and on my Mac. Now it is all organized into one: the iPhone, synced with the Address Book application on my Mac. Two hours of organizing, adding, updating, and deleting later…and my address book is finally up-to-date for the first time in memory. I even added some birthdays in there.
  5. The inbox battle was delayed several days, but arrived Thursday night. By Friday morning, I went from 40 labels in Gmail to 5 (possibly going to four once I figure out how to deal with one of them). All filters were deleted. Everything went to the inbox. Any e-mail lists that I didn’t delete? I completely unsubscribed from them, roughly 25 of them to be exact. My sword was swift and deadly (and still swinging even today). When I was done with an e-mail? Delete it or archive it one of my 4 or 5 folders.
  6. My iPhone and Mac are now setup to use IMAP with Gmail. Both devices are now synced 100% together.
  7. My separate e-mail accounts became truly separate again. Instead of lumping my personal e-mail with my web site e-mail and my CSFBL e-mail, it is all separate now, ready for me to deal with each of them respectively when I can. All setup with IMAP of course, on my iPhone and Mac.
My progress is staggering. My personal digital life has changed drastically in the past week. E-Mail’s are now being answered promptly, I am no longer stressed trying to keep everything accurate/synced, and I even feel much smarter now I am organized. My digital life is now contained in an iPhone and my Macbook. That’s it. What an improvement.
What is there left to do?
  • Switch to using Safari on my Mac. It pains me to do it (been a loyal user of Firefox since Phoenix 0.1). But my iPhone syncs with only Safari. Might as well keep everything consistent and simple.
  • Time to clean up the bookmarks. Delete old ones, organize them, and bookmark only what I truly need.
  • Clean up my RSS feeds. I need to figure out how to best do this. Google Reader is great, but I have 300-400 feeds I keep track of in there, many are redundant. I need to clean house on those. Google Reader on the iPhone works alright, but I hope it either comes out with a native application soon or someone does a better iPhone RSS reader.
  • Keep the iPhone apps I truly need. Given the release of the app store a week ago, my iPhone is quite the mess at the moment, with icons everywhere. Need to clean it up and keep only what I need to use.
  • Better time management. I can be much more productive with my time. I really need to get going on reading Getting Things Done.
It is a start, but a drastic step forward. More later on this.

iPhone feature request #1

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I would like to make an iPhone feature request. Who knows if anyone at Apple will listen, but here goes nothing.

  • I have my home button setup to show the limited iPod controls (pause, previous track, next track, close, iPod) when pressing it twice. What a fantastic little hidden feature! It would be even better if you could rate songs on this screen, so you don’t have to wait for the full screen iPod application to load (thus closing whatever you have open).

I know I said I would not do it, so I did it.

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I know a few weeks ago, I said that the iPhone plans were overpriced. Ok, that is putting it mildly…I flipped out. I also said I could not get one until December due to my Verizon Wireless contract.

Yet yesterday, my wife and i purchased two iPhones. Yes, you read this right, we bought two iPhones. What gives? That is about as close to a flip flop as you can get.

Alright, I have to go to my defense on this one. A few factors are at play here:

  1. My wife’s 2G iPod mini is on its last legs and showing signs of dying. That means shelling out at least $150 for a new iPod to replace it.
  2. My 2G iPod nano is starting to act flakey (freezing when trying to play a song for example), with firmware restores not helping.  That means shelling out another $150.
  3. We hated our cell phones with a passion. They were not due to be replaced until December though.
  4. I have issues at times remembering appointments, events, etc. that I agreed to attend. I really need my calendar with me. I hate paper calendars…I lose them all the time, forget to bring them with me, or just forget to use them.
  5. Some phone called the iPhone came out with a new model. You have may have heard about it.
  6. I worked out the budget to pull off using an iPhone family plan. Am I completely happy about it paying this much for a plan? No, but we determined it would be worth it.
So we had a choice. Spend +$300 on new iPods with a chance of buying iPhones in December, or pay $160 in ETF fees with Verizon and then pay for two new iPhones ($299 white 16GB models). In the end, we ended up about $140 in the positive if you assume we would have otherwise gotten new iPhones in December anyways. Why pay for new iPod’s when we were going to get new iPhones within 5 months anyways?
So my wife and I are now in the possession of two new 16GB iPhone 3G models. What is the verdict?
  • The touch screen takes some getting used to, but I am getting the hang of typing real quick and my wife seems to be doing well with it too. I can type with two thumbs pretty quickly now. I could see if someone sends 100+ e-mails a day from it where it maybe a problem, but even my decent e-mail needs seems quite doable.
  • The UI is absolutely gorgeous and easy-to-use. In fact, so easy-to-use that we occasionally say “that’s all you have to do?” when doing a particular task. Like being able to mark phone contacts as favorites and just press the home button twice to bring it up.
  • The App Store is amazing. There are already some great applications on there (I will write later about what I installed) and the potential is there for so many more. There are also some quite huge duds on there (the Mobile Banking application from Bank of America is beyond horrific).
  • AT&T coverage is really hit and miss in New Hampshire. I can already tell it maybe an issue. A positive is our home is fine coverage wise. We went out to the New Hampshire seacoast (our state’s lone 17 miles worth of ocean views) and the beach we settled in had maybe 0.25 bars if the breeze died down for a moment. So a day of catching up on reading blogs on the beach was thrown out of the window. On the way home, we stopped by a place for some ice cream and where there used to be coverage in our Verizon days is a big black hole now.
  • Speaking of AT&T coverage, there is no 3G coverage in New Hampshire, so that means we have to deal with EDGE unless we find a Wi-Fi access point. EDGE is slow but usable in my belief. Rumor has it is that the Manchester, NH area will get 3G in the Fall, so hopefully that comes true. In the meantime, I look forward to going to Boston soon so I can try 3G on the phone.
  • I have subscribed to several video podcasts now. They are going to be great to watch during my lunch breaks.
  • The iPhone will use my iPod connector in my car, but suggests I use airplane mode. I can say no and it works, the only thing is my stereo system in the car could receive interference from the iPhone. A quick test shows that it seems to work fine. A good test will be my commute tomorrow.
  • Best feature on the iPod application: the ability to easily turn on shuffle when in a playlist. Why this was never added to the regular iPods is beyond me.
  • Google Maps with GPS on the iPhone rocks. We used it both on the way to the beach and on the way back to look up locations of everything from ice cream shops to grocery stores.
  • Organizing my contacts and calendar on the iPhone? Priceless. Already worth the price of the iPhone.
Anyways, that is a good initial review of my thoughts on the iPhone. It is by far the best phone I have used. It has some minor quirks and I know AT&T is going to be tough to deal with for two years, but it was worth the price and effort to switch over.

iPhone 3G plans are insane

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For many years I have wanted the perfect cell phone. I had been sick of unreliable phones,  awful user interfaces, little to no syncing with computers, and cell phone plans that are borderline criminal. I longed for a cell phone that made me proud to use it, not forced to use it.

The iPhone fits almost all of the criteria above. For a phone, especially a version 1.0 one, it is spectacular. My brother has one and loves it. My best friend has one and loves it. The reviews I have read love it. The user interface is beyond beautiful, simple, and easy to use. It is one of the few phones that makes syncing simple and without hassles. If it weren’t for my Verizon Wireless contract not being fulfilled until December 27th, 2008, I would have probably gotten one by now already.

Yet there is one huge hangup with the new iPhone 3G: its phone plans. They have now crossing that line between borderline criminal and outright criminal.

The first iPhone plans seemed somewhat reasonable. AT&T Wireless isn’t the greatest service, but I could live with that as long as it worked well in Manchester, NH and my condo, which it does.  A $109 for 2 iPhones on a family plan, 700 minutes, unlimited data, unlimited nights/weekends, rollover, unlimited mobile-to-mobile, 200 text messages, and visual voicemail? I can handle that. About $34 more for 2 phones to get internet access and visual voicemail seemed reasonable. The text messages are an outright disgrace (it costs more to send a text message on AT&T then watching a freakin YouTube video), but I don’t use those much.

The new iPhone 3G data plans are a joke. For a family plan if my wife and I were to each get an iPhone would cost about $140 plus taxes to equal what the old iPhone family plan offered. Data rates went up, text messaging was taken away (so I had to add $10 worth of messages to my estimate), and I am sure they found a way to raise the price on the voice plan too.

Given how the economy has been the past few months with few hopes of improvement in the near future, how the heck does AT&T and Apple expect to sell a ton of iPhones if no one can afford the cell phone plan for it? Right now I pay $75 for 2 lines with Verizon, 500 minutes, 250 text messages per line, and your standard cell phone plan features (unlimited nights, etc.). To get an iPhone for my wife and I would effectively double our monthly cell phone bill. Yes, having an awesome phone that I can sync everything to and use the internet wherever I am would be awesome, but doubling my cell phone bill awesome? I don’t think so.

The iPhone seems a perfect candidate for a family plan. Yet it barely, barely, gets a discount. Most cell phone plans only cost $9.99 more to add a second phone line. The iPhone? You get the the priviledge for $50 more a month. Are you kidding me?

My wife and I would love an iPhone, for different reasons. Yet in December, when our Verizon contract has finally been fullfilled, I don’t know if we can afford it. AT&T now stands to lose 2 customers they could have switched from Verizon Wireless. Their loss.

Update: According to AppleInsider, it is even worse then I feared. Apparently for Family Plans you either have the option of $30 for unlimited text messaging or paying per text message. There is no SMS plan in between these two extremes. This is complete bullshit. Now the iPhone family plan for 2 lines will be $159 + taxes, more then doubling what I am currently paying for my cell phone plan with Verizon.

It is official, my wife and I are not getting an iPhone 3G. AT&T just officially lost a customer and Apple officially lost 2 iPhone purchases.