Archive - Aug 8, 2008

My iPhone is, or was, in Memphis today.  It must not have gotten scanned as it arrived in Memphis, because it goes straight to "Departed FedEx Location", with no "Arrived at FedEx Location".  Oh well.  So long as it get's here.  At least now I have a firm date, kinda.  It's supposed to be here Monday, which is actually perfect, because I have that day off to go into town and get it all sorted.  It sucks not having a phone, but I've got all short days in between me and my iPhone now, so it should be too bad.  It's just tomorrow and the next day, not that long.

While the iPhone was a successful product well before the App Store launched this year, having something like the App Store available sure isn't helping the competitors much.

A one-stop-shopping for everything iPhone and iPod Touch that makes buying and installing a new application roughly as simple as buying a song from iTunes much be giving the competition fits. Plus, that's a lot of potential revenue they're unable to take advantage of.

Not blind to this, T-Mobile has announced that they will start looking into their own App Store-like store that would be used by all handsets in their line-up.

A quick scroll of my blog, Facebook or MySpace pages will show you that I am a hard core Apple fanboy. So it was not a surprise (if not expected) that I would drive down to Charleston for the grand opening of the Apple retail store on King Street. Come on, it was the first Apple Store in SC! My poor girlfriend agreed to go with me not knowing what she was getting herself into. I owe her big. Anyway... we walk up to the store around 8:30 am - the store will not be open for another 1.5 hours - and I estimate that there was 200 people in line already.

So I finally took the plunge to the iPhone 3G. I have had it now three days, and I am going to list my pros and cons here, with a more detailed write up in a week per my norm. I really want to put it through its paces.

Continued after the jump…<!--more-->Pros:

– 3G (mighty fast compared to edge)

– GPS (makes the locate feature of Google Maps useful)

– New design - feels really nice in your hand.

– Speaker phone - much louder and improved.

– Performance - in my initial use it feels snappier than my old phone.

– Weight - slightly heavier, makes it feel better in your hand.

Cons:

– Battery - this sucker goes fast

– 3G to Edge - the hand off will drop calls at times

For ages and ages I've wanted this song (link opens iTunes) as a ringtone.

I didn't even enjoy The Life Aquatic but I fell in love with that song.  And Dave bought a ringtone maker software program back before we had iPhones, when we had mortal phones, but something about the rights on the song wouldn't allow him to use it.  Or maybe my phone wasn't compatible.  Who knows.

And when I got my iPhone I checked out iTunes looking to make this some my ringtone.  Nope.  Couldn't.  Some songs can be ringtones, others can't.  I whined about it.

Otherwise known as... Essential (FREE!) iPhone Apps for New Users

So, these are mine (in no particular order):

1.) Facebook App

Though still a little buggy (hello crazy repeating Wall!?), it still makes mobile Facebooking fun and...relatively easy...

Every app that has not been updated since the 2.0.1 update was released stopped working over the last few days. Luckily, uninstalling and reinstalling each app fixed the problem, but why did it happen?

iPhone OS X 2.0

Prior to the release of the iPhone 3G, Apple announced that they would be releasing a new software update that would come as standard to all iPhone 3G users. After they new OS was announced at WWDC '08, a stream of software developers bought in to the Apple Development Programme and with the new, easy-to-use, iPhone SDK, started coding their own little to cover your iPhone's SpringBoard.

Apple today took down a $999.99 iPhone applications appropriately titled 'I Am Rich'. It lasted only a few days but according to the story at The Channel Wire 8 unfortunate fools bought it and are now out a grand (well, almost a grand...I guess with taxes though more than a grand). I have to admit, I think it is rather funny. I am sure the developer who put it up at that price knew he was swindling the victims as the app had no real function but the people who were going to mess around and actually buy a $999.99 app are idiots and almost deserve what they got! I really don't feel that bad. Maybe I should build an 'I'm Almost Rich' app and charge $499.99?