Hot and cold...

After a day to consume the hands on reports, read as much as I could get my hands on, and look at the iPad from every possible angle I have to admit that my initial “must have” lust has run from hot to cold ever hour or so. I’m looking for a device that will let me eliminate the 8’’x10’’ folio I tote around from meeting to meeting to take notes on; something that will let me do basic Office editing, view pdf files, check in on Facebook, maybe drop a quick post to the blog, and keep my calendar and email at the tip of my fingers while doing those other things… and optimally, I wanted to be able to do more than one of those tasks at once.

As the iPhone has evolved over the last three years, many of the original missing features (read: cut-and-paste, mms, etc) have been added, but multi-tasking has remained elusive. Seeing the released details of the iPad seems to indicate that it remains a function that will be missing in action on this device as well. Working in a word document and having to close it in order to open the web browser or messenger is annoying on a phone… and it might just be a deal breaker in something I’m going to want to use as a quasi-laptop replacement.

Specs and details aside, the iPad is one sexy beast in terms of design and I can see how it could be a must-have device for pure consumption of media content. I won’t even complain (too much) about another Apple device tied to the anchor that is AT&T Mobility’s 3G network. Of course release day is still a long time off and that leaves a lot of time for more details, and updated iPhone OS, and for Steve to make an appearance to announce “one more thing…” So for now, I’m withholding judgment while leaning towards wanting the new toy despite its apparent limitations. Check back with me in April and I’m sure my lust will know no bounds.

Fanboy...

I’m hopelessly addicted to all things new and shiny… Gadgets make me happy in a way most people will never fully understand. That I’ve switched my allegiance to the bright and shiny products developed by Apple for my computing and telecommunications needs is letting me develop a personal pool of electronic gadgets that is becoming more and more tightly integrated. My phone talks to my laptop talks to the cloud… If satellite phone service ever gets to a point of being almost reasonable on price, I’d have nearly 24/7/365 tie-in to the grid. I get a warm fuzzy by being able to reach out at any time from any place… Ironic, I know, for someone who doesn’t have all that much use for people. But where I don’t know much about people, I do know that I like having access to the data that populates the web. While maybe not the sum total of human knowledge, it’s getting damnedably close to the sum total of human knowledge that most of us will ever need to know. The more data that I have available at any given time, the more I like it.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to hear an announcement out of San Francisco that will add one more layer to connectivity. Apple’s iPad, iSlate, iWhatever should fill the gap between where it’s inappropriate to have a cell phone out and about and where a laptop could be considered overkill. I’m thinking here about 2-3 day road trips, a bevy of staff and project meetings, and all manner of places around the house and the office. I’m thinking here of something that could reasonably replace the pens and legal pads that I tote from meeting to meeting and from city to city… One more link in the chain of perpetual connectivity tied to the cloud by 3G and WiFi.

I’ve been a slobbering fool for technology long enough to know that many “game changers” aren’t… But my last two years with Apple have taught me to expect the unexpected and that sometimes game changers are exactly that. I know some will argue that other companies have done it first, but they would be hard pressed to argue that any previous attempt at a true tablet is as elegant in form or as integrated with a hardware family as whatever Apple rolls out tomorrow. I’m planning to be all geeked out and tuned in to the real-time tech bloggers tomorrow afternoon at 12:00 CST as Steve throws down the gauntlet one more time. This ought to be sweet.

Dear AT&T Mobility...

Dear AT&T Mobility,

Your 3G network blows enormous hairy monkey balls. If you would like to contest this statement, please advise why 6 calls made over a span of 10 minutes this evening dropped and why it took several attempts at each call before being able to reach the party to whom the call was being placed.

I do understand that it's the nature of cellular communications to be interrupted from time to time, but a drop each and every time I have made a call lasting longer than five minutes over the past week and a half seems a touch excessive.

When I signed our contract, I was under the impression that in exchange for my monthly payment, I would be provided with service that included actually making telephone calls. If I missed part of the contract that covers that or if I need to sign some additional paperwork to use my delicious new iPhone as, you know, an actual phone, please let me know at your earliest possible convenience.

Very truly yours,

Jeff

[Published via iPhone]

Upgrade update...

I was unimaginably relieved to find that when I got to the Apple Store at 6:15 this morning, there were already about 40 people in line… and that fortunately they were in the “walk up” line rather than the line for those who had pre-ordered their tasty new iPhone 3G S. Why someone wouldn’t have just gone online and done the pre-order thing is another question altogether. The sales and activation process worked flawlessly (after the two previous iPhone launch efforts approached the status of epic failures).

I won’t try to do a comprehensive review at this point, but suffice to say that if you are on the fence, go ahead and do the deal. It’s much, much snappier than my year old 3G and even with the added speed, it has seemed to be a touch easier on the battery in what I would describe as heavy use. I’ve already covered some of the basic updates like copy and paste (finally) as well as some of the features that are still lacking, such as support for MMS (boo AT&T) so I won’t cover that ground again this afternoon.

What I’m really looking forward to is the new apps that I’m sure are being developed to take advantage of the new capabilities… seriously upgraded graphics, real-time turn by turn navigation, and a metric crapload of storage. Toss in video capture and voice control that I’m just now getting around to testing out and I’m predicting a winner for Apple. There are a lot of commentators out there saying that it’s an evolutionary phone rather than a revolutionary one. I’m OK with that if only because they got so much right in this model.

It’s a beautiful (if insanely hot) day, I’ve got a fantastic new toy, and I’ll be enjoying a tasty beverage at the Flying Saucer in just a few hours… It has been a good, good day all the way around.

Version 3.0...

I've had a few hours tonight to digest the latest iPhone OS upgrade from the fine people at Apple and have to say that it's almost turned my year old iPhone into a new machine. It's much more responsive to input and seems to be loading apps slightly faster. Like almost every other smartphone on the market it now supports copy/cut and paste and voice recognition (hello 2003). There's also a snazzy little search function that seems to be very well integrated with all aspects of the device.

The overall feel is still the same. Same basic inputs, gestures, etc, but for those not ready to pony up the extra $200 plus for a mid-contract upgrade, 3.0 might very well be the thing to tide you over until your next upgrade.

Of course no review of the iPhone is complete without the obligatory bashing of AT&T, so here it goes... AT&T sucks. They have screwed the pooch on upgrading their G3 network capacity and as a result punked out on teathering and friggin picture messaging for iPhone until "later this summer." it's 2009... In the name of all that is good and holy, spend a few dollars from your overpriced data plans and hook yourselves up with a little extra bandwidth so I can send a friggin picture in a friggin text message.

With that said, if you haven't upgraded to 3.0, go, go do it now. Tonight. For the slightly more obsessed among us, I'll see y'all in line on Friday morning.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Reserve price met...

Let me start by saying that the original device specs aren’t any better now than they were a few days ago when I first read them… but after having three days to do the research and to come to the realization that the inner techie in me wasn’t going to be satisfied until I once again had the latest and greatest model hanging on my belt, I’ve bitten the bullet and pre-ordered the new iPhone 3G S. In theory that should mean that I can walk into the store at 8:00 next Friday morning and come home with a shiny new bauble sure to quench my thirst for new toys for a few months. With a marginal discount for being a touch less than a year into my contract with AT&T, the total will be somewhere north of $399.99 once taxes are added on, but really, can you put a price on having that childhood Christmas morning feeling and knowing that you’re going to get exactly what you want… except MMS and tethering, of course.

Breaking up is hard to do...

Since October I have had the opportunity to own three of the leading smartphones on the market today. My typical preference for BlackBerry led me to the Bold and, briefly, to the Storm. My abject love of all things new and shiny led me to the iPhone. Having carried a BlackBerry device for the last five years, and it pains me to say this, my friends in Waterloo just are not keeping their devices terribly fresh. The handsets themselves are leaps and bounds over the old models, but their underlying operating system, web integration, and ability to add features just don’t hold up. By contrast, the iPhone is a remarkable piece of equipment. Its web browsing and the availability of 3rd party applications put it in the top tier of handhelds. It doesn’t handle a large volume of email as well as a BlackBerry and the lack of cut/paste functions can be irksome, but I kept coming back to how smoothly integrated the entire device seemed to be.

After carrying all three and living with each of them as my “daily driver,” my final decision is to keep the iPhone. It was a bit of a long goodbye to RIM while I gave them every opportunity to wow me with their new flagship handsets. I won’t rule out having another berry in my life someday, but they’ve got some work to do to earn back my business. As for now, I’m going to have some lightly used phones for sale (suitable for jailbreaking) once I cancel their contracts. I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m breaking up with a long-time steady… or am I trading her in for a newer, sexier model?