49chevy.com

Macworld | Ten things the 3G iPhone is still missing

Yes, the iPhone is digital Nirvana, but there are at least Ten things the 3G iPhone is still missing:

It’s great that the new iPhone has faster data service and GPS. And you could get lost for days in the new iPhone App Store looking at all the cool new toys and productivity tools. But quite a few Achilles’ heels—in the form of missing features—still remain in Apple’s 3G iPhone. What’s most surprising is that these features come standard in some of even the most basic models of rival phones. With these features added, the 3G iPhone could come pretty close to perfect. (This isn’t the first time we’ve complained about what’s missing from the iPhone, and many of the gripes on this list are repeat offenders.)

 

Chief among the missing features:

3. Selecting, copying, and pasting text

Apple fixed a few of the first-gen iPhone’s shortcomings with the early-2008 firmware update (sending text messages to more than one recipient, for example), but they didn’t add an option to edit text by selecting passages and copying and pasting them elsewhere in an e-mail message or note. And with the new iPhone firmware, they still haven’t. This missing feature is more than a little annoying for those who write more than talk, want to copy and paste long strings from URLs, or fix links that get truncated in e-mail messages.

Pope Steven keeps saying that the iPhone is supposed to be a "mobile computing" platform.  But how can it even qualify as a "computer" if it can't cut and paste?  That's like having a car that won't turn left or right.  Hell, the very first computer I ever owned (in 1979...) came with a program called the "Electric Pencil" and IT could cut and paste... and so could my Palm Treo.  So what not the iPhone?  Are the saving that feature for another upgrade... that they will sell me?

Likewise the Bluetooth stereo capability would be nice.  And all the other features mentioned in this article.

At least I finally have Splasshopper on my iPhone (albeit without a search function...huh?) so I can finally leave my Treo behind when I go to the store.  Anybody want to by and old Treo?

Can Your iPhone v2.0 do THIS?

Pop Corn téléphone portable micro-ondes
Uploaded by sassiere

In Praise of Apple's "Time Travel" Technologies

I am pleased to say that last week's fiasco with a crashed (less than one year old) MacBook hard drive has been resolved successfully and amicably. 

Resloved "successfully" due to the realized promise of Apple Mac OSX "Leopard's" Time Machine backup utility and its companion hardware component, Time Capsule.

Resolved amicably due to the enlightened counsel of one Apple store manager (Nicole) and the very capable aid of one "Mac Genius" (Josh).

Nicole's contribution, as noted in a previous post, was to diffuse the very unpleasant confrontation that erupted when I first took the machine to the Genius Bar last week and a technician named "Ben" expressed infinitely more fealty to Apple's replacement policy than he did to this particular customer's concerns about data loss and security.  I'm sure Ben knows all there is to know about computers, but he needs to work on his people skills.

Nicole is the manager I spoke to on Saturday.  She understood perfectly my reticence about walking out of the store with a blank hard drive and leaving behind the one that had all my data on it, even if it was unreadable.  Granted, by the time I spoke to Nicole, I'd checked my backups and determined that I was pretty well covered, but Nicole's contribution was really allowing for whatever arrangements would be required to a) fix my computer and be) comply with Apple's "if we take it out and replace it, it's ours" policy.

Nicole said it would be OK to come back to the store on Monday with my backups and spend as much time in the store as it would require to restore my data to a new hard drive.  That way, when I walked out of the store, the machine would be back in the condition it was before the crash.  And, once I was satisfied with the restoration, only THEN would I have to leave the old drive behind AND measures would be taken to assure the security of its contents.

So I arrived in the store at 11 AM on Monday (after Nicole had checked the inventory to make sure there was a replacement drive on the shelf) and a technician named Josh took over.  Josh did the R&R on the hard drive, and then set me up to install the OS and begin the restoration of my data to the new drive.

And here is where Time Machine/Capsule showed its colors. 

NOW They Tell Me...

...that I can cross post my blog entries to Facebook. OK, let's see if this works.... Hey gang, read all about my Apple Crashed Hard Drive Woes below....

Apple's Replacement Policy SUCKS - Part 3

OK, the POLICY sucks... but the PEOPLE can be reasonable IF you can talk to the right person.

I called the store back and asked to speak to a manager. Somebody named Nicole came on the phone. I explained the dilemma. And unlike Big Ben The Enforcer, Nicole was ENTIRELY reasonable. She said I could come in to the store Monday morning, they'd swap out the hard drive, and then they will wait while I go to the side somewhere where and perform the restoration from my Time Capsule. It will probably take several hours, but when I'm done I should be leaving the store with a) a restored computer and b) once the computer is restored, somebody will destroy the old hard drive, erasing whatever data is on it so that I don't have to worry about somebody purloining my account numbers and passwords.

Now... THAT all sounds reasonable.

Stay tuned for a final report come Monday.

Apple's Replacement Policy SUCKS - Part 2

So, this morning I'm thinking: if security is an issue, then I really should bite the bullet and get a new hard drive from the MacAuthority. Then I have a new hard drive, AND I can keep my old one.

But wait: I just called Apple and asked: "what happens to my extended warranty if I replace the hard drive with a drive from a third party?" Answer: the warrant is voided.

So, unless I'm willing to let Apple walk away with hard drive and all its data (even if it's unreadable), the net cost of this fiasco is: $250 down the tubes for a voided warranty + $150 out of pocket for a new hard drive = $400.

So let me see if I can call the store and talk to a reasonable person....

Apple's Replacement Policy SUCKS

OK, I had my first really unpleasant experience at the Apple Store today.

It pretty much started about 11:30 this morning when my not-quite-one-year-old black MacBook crashed and wouldn't reboot. There was nothing I could do to get it to start up again. I'd press the "on" button and all I got was a grey screen.

So I logged on to the Green Hills Apple Store website and snagged a 1:45 PM appointment at the "Genius Bar."

At the store, when my number came up I was greeted by the rather imposing figure of a "Genius" named Ben. It would only take a few minutes to learn why they like to put big gnarly guys behind the counter.

After performing a few simple diagnostics, Ben determined that the bad news was that the hard drive had died. Kaput. Finito. Finale. El Morte. Dead. Shit happens.

The GOOD news is: I am on the three year "Apple Care" plan for this MacBook. So the hard drive is covered.

The other GOOD news is that I'm pretty well backed up. I'm running the Leopard OS which has the Time Machine automated backup program and I've got an Apple Time Capsule dedicated backup drive in the basement, and the last backup was performed this morning about an hour before the crash. I've also got a three-week old stand alone back up on an external firewire drive. And another backup on a USB drive. So, one way or another... I've got everything.

But here's the REALLY BAD NEWS: Apple's policy regarding replacements under warranty states that once they have replaced your hardware, the old unit becomes "property of Apple Computer." So what they want to do is remove my hard drive and replace it with a brand spanking new one... and then they expect me to walk out of the store and LEAVE MY OLD DRIVE AND ALL THE DATA BEHIND!

Uh, excuse me? Say what? Just walk out with a blank drive and leave all my data behind? Seriously??

Sorry, I don't think that's gonna work.

Don't Try This at Home!

Belkin Flip - The Best of Both Worlds

After I got my MacBook, as I became increasingly enamored with the Mac OS, I started to think about ditching my not-quite-two-years-old Dell XPS 400 desktop box (tower, actually, next to the desk...) for something like a Mac Pro.  But boy, those Mac Pros are very high-end, and pricey to boot.  And it's not clear yet that I need any more horsepower than the Dell has (3 GHz, 1GB RAM, 500 GB RAID1 HDD). 

My next thought was "maybe the Mac Mini," which is a lot of computing power in a tiny box.  But then I began to read that the Mini is really a re-configured MacBook -- the same guts in different box, BYO keyboard and screen.  The two models share the same defificiency - no dedicated video processing/RAM.  So not much to be gained there.

What I really want is an iMac -- in a box by itself, not built into a display.  But that doesn't exist.   Yet, anyway.  Steve, you listening?

The solution for my "Mac at the desk" quandary turns out to be a product I discovered at CompUSA, something Belkin makes called the "Flip."

Laptops offer a great way to work - and play - almost anywhere. But sometimes you just don’t feel like sitting in front of a tiny display and cramped keyboard.

Thanks to Flip, you can now use your big monitor and full-sized keyboard for both your laptop and desktop computer.

Click. Flip.

It’s simple.

Just place the remote anywhere on your desk and press to flip your monitor from one computer to the next. Something old. Something new.

Flip is also great for connecting your old and new desktop computers, giving you instant access to files, programs, and games on both computers.

Amazingly, this thing works exactly as advertised. You connect the hub to your "KVM" devices (I had to look it up too, it means "Keyboard Video Mouse").  You plug the extensions into your desktop and laptop outputs (VGA and USB).  And then voila, you press the little button and your display -- and the controls -- switch seamlessly from one platform to the other. 

One minute, I'm working in a Windows environment; press the button, and the next minute I'm organizing photos in iPhoto, using my 20" (Dell) wide-screen display.

The guts of the device, the hub and cables, are hidden away behind the display on my desktop.  The only part that takes up any noticeable space is the little button that does the actual flipping.

This is precisely the kind of arrangement I would have wound up with if I'd gotten a MiniMac.  A MiniMac would have cost me another $1000.  This arrangement, where I can easily switch between my Dell desktop and my MacBook, cost....a whole $49. 

I figure computers should be good for three years.  So I will revisit the whole issue a year from now.  Maybe by then Apple will have figured out how to put the iMac in its own box.  Hopefully I can still get a copy of XP when the time comes.  I want nothing to do with Vista. Not when I can run XP inside the MacOS.

Like I said... the best of both worlds.

One Foot Through The Portal

This will come as a shocking surprise to anybody who knows me but... about 10 days ago... I bought a Mac.

This after 28 years of CP/M, DOS, and Windows, starting with Windows 1.0 through XP.

Why the change? Because I think I got tired of things not working.

I've actually been contemplating this change for quite some time. A few months, anyway. I dunno, maybe the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials finally got to me: I wanted to be cool Mac Guy, not that shlub PC guy. A case of identity denial maybe. And all my friends are using Macs now... you know all those creative people who record music, make movies, etc. I don't actually do any of that stuff, but some days I think I'd like to.

The final straw was about two weeks ago when I decided I wanted to record some music on my computer. Of course, all my musician friends have been telling me all about their Macs and recording stuff with Garage Band. And I admit coveting that ability. But first, I thought I'd see if there was comparable software I could run on my PCs instead.

I did some research online (i.e. I Googled "garage band for pc windows") and found a program called Sessions made by M-Audio, a subsidiary of the company that makes Pro Tools, which is pretty much the industry standard for digital audio recording.

So I called my neighborhood music store, Corner Music on 12th St in Nashville (nowhere close to my actual neighborhood, but, then, neither is my neighborhood pub, McCabe's in Sylvan Park...). I asked them about Sessions. They said, "we don't have that, but we have the newest coolest thing which is even better and costs twice as much...." It's called Sequel, it's made by a company called Steinberg which I guess is some big German company, and it retails for $99 instead of the $49 sessions would have cost. So, like an idiot, I bought it.

And then I brought it home. And installed it on my big powerful desktop PC, an 18 month old Dell XPS 400 Whiz Bang Machine. And then I started the software, and tried to record something. And the software just flat didn't work.

That's when I threw in the towel and went to the local Apple store. I watched a demonstration off all the nifty programs like iMovie and iPhoto and Garage Band. And I said, "wrap one up." I made my first digital recording of my guitar that night (although I haven't made one since...)