Tag: iPhone

My iTablet predictions

A good number of tech writers are reporting on the basic specifications of this new tablet from Apple, or at least what they either think they are or say they heard from a source. One article I read today talked about how Steve Jobs is saying this is the most important thing he’s done so far. So I thought I’d write up my predictions for the new tablet, or at least ideas that I would love to see implemented into it.

I think we all know this device has to be universal in its approach and appeal to everyone, much like the iPhone. The iPhone is great because with all the apps available for it, the machine can be whatever you need it to be. Apple would be silly not to continue this experience, so it was no surprise that this new device is rumored to run the same OS that the iPhone uses.

It only makes sense that this tablet, built on the iPhone OS, will have strong interaction with the iPhone/iPod Touch. For example, the tablet could play a movie sitting in a stand on your desk while the iPhone is your remote control. This is just one very basic idea, but if you use your imagination you could easily see how the iPhone could become a gamepad that is completely on the touch screen, and play a full-screen game on your tablet.

It is surprising to me that no one has talked about this device being possibly subsidized by wireless carriers. Any truly next-gen device that is important and this connected to the web has to be able to connect from anywhere and not just limited to wifi hotsports. Verizon Wireless has told their employees there will be a big announcement for them tomorrow as well. While this probably partially relates to the iPhone being available on their network, I wouldn’t be surprised if the tablet is also announced as available through them and other carriers as well. This tablet could also use the hybrid GSM (AT&T, Tmobile) and CDMA (Verizon, Sprint) chips reported for the next iPhone. It seems that many rumor reports are suggesting that these devices will have 3G chips, so I doubt I’m wrong here.

This means the rumored $1000 price tag would drop by a few hundred dollars. Even getting it down to $600-700 would bring in many more customers for Apple, who is getting its money anyway from the carriers who are taking a hit on the device to lock people into a contract. Carriers already sell netbooks from HP and Dell in stores, it seems that they could sell the tablet just like both AT&T and Apple stores sell the iPhone as it is. As this isn’t a phone, it may be able to do data only, making it even more accessible to people who might otherwise have netbooks or laptops. Much like the iPhone, within 2-3 years the older versions could be reduced in price to only $200-300. Given that iPhone sales doubled in the past quarter to bring Apple record profits, I think it is clear people are willing to pay that. However, as I’ll mention below, I think including voice would be a good idea.

For the record though, I think the device by itself without being subsidized will not cost $1000.  This is simply too inaccessible for most people, and Apple surely wants this to be as big as the iPhone. I think with subsidies from the carriers, a price of $200-300 is more realistic from the start if they want to achieve iPhone-like success.

Still, Jobs says this is important, which makes me think he is trying to revolutionize how we connect to the rest of the world. A front-facing camera is something that is rumored and I think Apple would be silly not to include it, since it would act as a webcam which is already becoming a standard on any type of device bigger than a phone or mp3 player. I think Apple could really be revolutionary with a device that allows for video chat like this. While the device will probably have a speaker and microphone, a bluetooth headset could easily be used to make this able to act just like a cell phone and give you some privacy. If this tablet runs the iPhone OS, there is no reason that the dialer and all that couldn’t be put on the tablet as well. You might even be able to have the iPhone use software to forward the call to your tablet or vice versa. I think including the capabilities of connecting to a wireless voice network would be a good idea for this reason.

As a sidenote, the next iPhone should also have a front facing camera. This is something people have been wanting for years for this very reason. The iPhone could be the mini, portable alternative when your tablet is too big to bring along somewhere.

I say all these predictions because I think this is the ultimate way of our personal communication technology as we go into the future. It will only be a matter of time until cell phones devolve in size and scope into what are currently bluetooth headsets, and we all instead have some type of ‘tablet’ device for everything we need as well as an interface to the headset. I think this could easily happen within 10-20 years (certainly within 40), as we have already shown how the cell phone has gone from a giant-yet-still-portable analog device that looked like a walkie-talkie in the 90s to the current sleek, sophisticated mini-computers capable of rendering 3D games and connecting you to biggest assembled collection of knowledge the world has ever known. One drawback is the tablet may be a little bigger than a cell phone and more of a burden to carry around, but we already carry around laptops and netbooks which are arguably bigger and heavier than what I expect the tablet to be. All you would ever need to carry could be your tablet. Paper, books, etc. would all become obsolete.

Ray Kurzweil recently suggested we would have glasses which overlay information, and while I still think that may be possible, the only way you could input data would be either a mini-keyboard on a strap around your wrist, or verbal instructions (where you are forced to say everything you need out loud, thus risking privacy). Still, I think we will all just have tablet devices as an all-in-one notepad, media device, communicator, book/newspaper/magazine reader, PDA, internet device, and so on. It just makes the most sense to have this all in one flat, universal device that is always accessible for you. If you need to call someone, you dial on your tablet and your bluetooth headset does the rest. A device that is a little bigger than this Dell device shown at CES, which is still at least managable on your hip or in very big pockets, could be the perfect fit between being portable and small enough to bring anywhere, yet large enough to do everything short of serious work that requires a desktop/laptop (such as writing novels).

Moving on, I think this new tablet may make devices like Kindle a bit more obsolete over time. I know e-ink is great because it doesn’t strain your eyes, but if you need to spend hundreds of dollars, you might as well get the device that does everything all in one. The iPhone screen is too small to effectively use the Kindle software or any other ebook reader. I’m sure much time was spent on the exact dimensions to make the tablet large enough that it can easily display pages of books, newspapers, etc. The screen already seems like it will be bigger than the Kindle, so at that point it just becomes really hard to justify spending $250 on a black and white device that only reads books. I think Amazon, along with other ebook reading devices, will need to dramatically lower their prices to continue selling within 2-3 years, maybe even to the $50 point as we start to make everything digital. At that point though, there is no reason the Kindle can’t still turn a profit as it is a very basic device. This is not to say it is cheap, but it certainly doesn’t require the same type of advanced chips and horsepower of an iPhone or Google’s Nexus One phone, and the prices of both the Kindle 2 and Barnes and Nobles’ nook are currently a bit ridiculous when you consider what you are actually getting hardware-wise.

I must admit that I really can’t fathom how data entry will work. This device seems too big to have a keyboard that you could easily tap with thumbs. Holding the device with one hand and typing with the other seems like it will become a bit of a pain in the ass and would be very slow. A great way to alleviate this would be have an iPhone/iPod Touch “keyboard” app that simply has a full-screen keyboard connected to the tablet over bluetooth. This way you can use the touchscreen of the tablet to click around and work as a mouse, and the typing would become a bit faster by using the smaller device just for a keyboard. This also means that the keyboard won’t take up space on the tablet and it could be propped up and work more like a traditional computer monitor or more similar to the many large touch-screen all-in-one computers being produced (like the HP TouchSmart series).

As for what I hope it isn’t: Just an iPhone with apps that are tailored for the bigger screen, that make things like newspapers and games a bit more accessible due to the added size and horsepower that is likely to be under the hood. I know everyone is already in a frenzy over this thing and no one has seen it yet, but I think it would be a big let down if it is just an oversized iPhone.

I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

iPhone 3.0 Software Review

So as it pretty much became available I was downloading the 3.0 software update and loading it onto my iPhone. Not that it will really matter soon since I intend on getting the iPhone 3GS, but either way I wanted to delve into the cool new features and see what was up.

I run my life from my iPhone. I don’t buy music in iTunes on my computer, I buy it over the air. I have nearly 4 full pages of apps, and more backed up on my computer only because I run out of space on my little 8GB model. I tracked calories that I’ve eaten/burned via exercise, I’ve used it as an alarm clock by itself (now I plug it into an iHome alarm clock), it is my digital camera, I use maps to find wherever I need to go, when I need to IM someone and I’m on the road it is no problem, not to mention I use Safari a lot to look up things I want to know or need to know instantly, even if my computer is just a room or two away. I use Facebook mobile as much as I use the real site on my computer and it is unmatched as an mp3 player. The entire reason I got an iPhone was that I hated having an mp3 player and a phone separate, and I couldn’t stand the media player of anything but an iPod/iPhone. I do banking on the go when I know I need to transfer money from one account to another, I’ve used IRC chat room programs while watching Devils games on TV from another room or if I have them streaming full-screen on my laptop to talk to other Devils fans, I e-mail myself grocery lists so that I just walk around the store with my phone out, and oh yeah, its a cellphone too.

First I just want to say that voice control being only on the 3GS seems rather stupid. It won’t matter for me, but this is clearly a software driven tool and holding out on regular 3G users is just bullshit and an excuse to say it is a “new feature” of the 3GS when we all know that the new phone is really just an upgrade, and aside from a compass there isn’t anything new under the hood. This excludes an upgraded camera and upgraded hardware that run the phone, of course, but we’re talking things that were distinctly not there previously in any form.

Back to the software though, I finally feel like this phone can compete with any other smartphone hands down once the 3GS hits. The 3G is almost there but the lack of video recording and MMS (until AT&T gets around to it) is the one drawback. Still, these updates to the software make it stable, fast, and able to do nearly anything every other phone on every other carrier can do and then some.

I want to begin with the actual features that are there by talking about Safari, something most people seem to kind of be forgetting about in favor of raving about how push is in (though only 1 program, IM+ Lite, I have supports it, and there aren’t many really available). Safari is awesome now. I previously had 3 complaints and they are all basically addressed. The first is remembering information for forms. As I switch between multiple WiFi networks and 3G/EDGE as I’m travelling, staying ‘logged in’ doesn’t happen no matter how many times I check “Remember me.” Now with autofill, it is still an extra step, but one that is a breeze just as much as Firefox is remembering all my form logins. Secondly, having a browser with multiple tabs and not giving the user the option to open a link in a new tab was an incredibly stupid move that could have been easily remedied awhile ago. Thank god it now is, and I don’t have to keep looking for alternative browsers that were even more unstable (and sucked up memory like crazy) than Safari before this update. Speaking of which, third is Safari’s stability – I have yet to crash it. I’m sure that time will eventually come, but compared to a year ago it is now actually usable without me wanting to smash it with a sledgehammer.

Copy and paste is very easy and nice. Combining it with the magnifying glass can make it irritating to have it pop up when you just meant to move the cursor, but that is such a minor gripe that it is one of only two things I could say to criticize it. The other is how you cannot select the exact text from a text message, it just copies the whole message, but deleting the little bits you want to leave off are easy enough.

Selecting multiple pictures is AWESOME. The day before upgrading, I went through and deleted about 70 pictures 1-by-1. I’ve also had my GMail flooded with messages with the subjects as “1″ through “10″ when needing to send a collection of pictures to myself if I’m not able to sync with my computer at that moment, so sending all of them as multiple attachments in one e-mail completely takes care of my complaint with that.

Speaking of Camera/Photos, its faster, and if the 3GS is even faster than that then I will be really happy. One huge complaint was that it always took at least 10 seconds to get my phone out and get the camera up and ready to take a picture without it being horribly blurry from lag, which meant waiting a few seconds. Usually in 15 seconds, the moment I was hoping to capture is gone. 5 seconds or less is pretty good.

Spotlight search is great and works well. I haven’t found a use for it yet because I know where most things are, but I can see myself going “Wait, didn’t I get an email about that?” at some point and needing to search through my messages. Even if I don’t, the search feature SHOULD be there if this is really the smartest smartphone, especially since it goes through everything from songs to email to contacts to notes.

Voice memos will be useful to me. I haven’t really done anything besides test it yet, but this is a feature I can see a need for. It is simple and works perfectly.

I hear Calendar has been upgraded. I’m not 100% sure how, because I’m just not busy enough to use Calendar beyond all-day events for birthdays and such. I already thought the app was great before so any upgrade can’t be a bad thing.

Recent calls showing if you made the call or received it right on the main screen, not to mention the specific phone number (it lists if you call the mobile or home number of someone now, for example) is just one of those things that was slightly annoying before but not big enough to be sitting there writing a rant on the lack of functionality. So to have such a small improvement is pretty neat.

Cursewords no longer have different suggestions and I don’t have to cancel the iPhone trying to get me to make it “LOL” instead of “lol” anymore as if I was seriously dying from laughter. Quite honestly, I bet every iPhone user is sitting there with a small piece of the back of their brain jumping for joy over this, cause I know thats happening to me.

Landscape mode is not something I use a lot, I actually prefer the smaller keyboard for 1-hand entry rather than having to hold it in both, but for the few times when I do want to really hammer out a long message, having just about everything rotate to landscape is nice and yet another feature that should have been there from the beginning.

The only thing I wish at this point would come out is maybe a visualizer for music and the equilizer settings being in the iPod application itself rather than under “Settings -> iPod.” Other than that, the 3.0 software (in conjunction with the 3GS) will fix every issue I’ve had with the phone from a usability standpoint. There is always room to improve and add neat new things, but there is really nothing that anyone will be able to tell an iPhone user that they possibly have besides live TV or Slingbox (and they are working on an iPhone app I think). From the horrible 1st gen model that I refused to buy the 1st gen because it was like an idiot savant – brilliant with very few things, and completely retarded with everything else, the iPhone is now THE king of the ring, even beyond Blackberry due to the Exchange support and remote kill features now being included. It took a few years to perfect, but I cannot imagine having a phone besides an iPhone. It’d be like learning to walk and then going back to crawling.

Shopping spree

I went on a bit of a shopping spree this weekend on the eve of my birthday, which happens to fall on the day of the Lord’s resurrection. Oh, and I’m named after him. Start bowing.

It started by going to Walmart with the intention to purchase a few items for my apartment up where I work. The Walmart up there sucks, and I have a small car, so buying any kind of furniture (and getting it into the apartment myself) is not going to happen minus the Bed-in-a-Box (which was no longer in the box when the box broke as I was removing it from my car, thus leaving me to carry a wrapped up, air-shrunken queen size mattress up a flight of stairs) and a small desk and computer chair.

I needed a sofa in case I have company over, and to sit on and watch TV a bit, so I purchased a futon (good in case someone needs to crash after drinking too much), which at $119 was $100 cheaper than the one where I have my apartment, and looks better. It is metal instead of wood, but I thought it was nicer than the more expensive wooden one. I then walked over and got a wood/metal-combo dining room table + chairs, which they don’t even have where I work (minus a folding card table and 4 folding, crappy chairs for the same price).

To finish off the room, I’m considering a SUMO beanbag chair, though that will wait awhile considering the price of them and the necessity of other luxuries, like a new car.

Next up was a TV. Initially I was thinking of a 42″ or 46″ flat plasma TV, to bring up to the apartment for hockey playoff and then bring it back home, until I found a 50″ plasma on sale. Needless to say, the 50″ was purchased, had to be completely removed from the box to fit in the back of the Suburban I got a ride in to Walmart to pick all this up, and also a TV stand that has nice glass shelves and the TV hangs on it. Putting together that thing was a bitch, and lifting a 102-pound TV onto it to hang wasn’t much fun either, but I managed it with Tracy, and it looks great.

Considering how big it is, I built the stand and setup the TV here and will be bringing our old one up to the apartment, which I can then leave there without any intent to cart back (until I leave the apartment, in which case it will probably go with me to the next one). Transporting a 50″ TV in a Cavalier (or, hopefully, a Firebird in the near future) is simply not feasible whatsoever.

Tracy got me a Wii for my birthday, which is pretty awesome. I’m doing a lot more with my consoles lately, and even though the Wii is very lacking in online features besides downloading some old and awesome NES games, the games I have played have been great so far (Wii Sports, Super Mario Galaxy, and Mario Kart for Wii). Playing on the 50″ was a ton of fun.

This led to us heading to BestBuy today, initially to pickup an s-video cable to hook up our laptops to the TV for reasons such as watching shows that we forgot to record on the DVR on the TV rather than a tiny laptop screen. Tracy watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles tonight and the quality was as good as watching live TV, streaming from FOX.com, so much so that I was shocked and watched 5 minutes out of disbelief. This was all streaming over WiFi as well, with no hiccups. Felt good for everything to just work without a problem for something that has a few points for errors to pop up.

While at BestBuy, I picked up an iHome alarm clock that lets my iPhone charge and become my alarm clock, which I had been wanting to get for awhile so I can combine everything into 1 (speakers for my iPhone, an alarm clock, and a charger) for the apartment. The price was a lot higher than if I bought everything separately, but I’m on a minimalist kick and intend to keep a lot of this stuff around for awhile even if I move it back into my main house once I’m done with the apartment there.

I also got a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. This was a tough decision since it was only 4 months ago that I picked up a Logitech G15 keyboard, but a necessary one. First of all, as much as I adored seeing my CPU and RAM usage (with the 4 CPU cores broken up into different lines) on the little LED screen, that isn’t a good enough reason to keep it around because I simply do not play any games or use any programs that take advantage of the LED any longer. When I played WoW, I used it to see who would talk in Ventrilo while I had the game up, and could also switch it to see a few in-game stats on the fly if I needed to, but since I quit that went out the window. With that in mind, I also noticed I have no use for the macro keys to the side, which I probably would hit accidentally if I assigned them to do anything useful in Windows itself.

The main reason for the switch is my left wrist is starting to feel the pain coming on from typing for 20 years now, and having used an ergonomic keyboard before, it isn’t too big of a leap for me. The quick keys all over the keyboard are actually going to be pretty useful. I’m going to have to train myself to use the Back/Forward keys just under the space bar a little bit, but I have already found use for the Zoom button between the keys when I’m working in Photoshop, in which I zoom in and out extensively. I’m missing a few keys as I’m typing, but I’m sure that will correct itself the more I get used to the keyboard. I also really love the plastic addon that goes beneath the keyboard in the front, which angles it the opposite way (the top of the keyboard slopes downward). Unfortunately on my home desk, it makes it so I cannot close my keyboard tray, so I will use it only at work I guess. The wrist rest is so soft and perfectly molded that I have no issue at all with it not being detachable (I always use the included wrist rests generally anyway). I like the keyboard so much that I’m considering buying another one of these keyboards just in case this one breaks and they have ended production at that time.

Wait though, there is more. Initially I wandered over to check out cables to hook up the Wii and 360 to the HDTV. The Wii looked good enough (and isn’t really a graphics-displaying beast in the first place, as a major design feature is slacking on power in favor of innovation and style), and the 360 is going to mostly remain in my apartment for awhile, plus it seems to have an HDMI slot on the 360 itself, thus I believe (could be wrong) that I can just use the one HDMI cable I already picked up for my cable box.

From here, I wandered over to check out Wii games. I intended on getting at least Super Mario Galaxy, since it got pretty good reviews. I also didn’t get a Gamecube, and therefore didn’t play Super Mario Sunshine. Lastly, I never actually owned Super Mario 64, though I did play it quite a bit at some friends’ houses, which means I never really got the full experience of the game. Feeling deprived of Mario experiences, I had to pick it up to make some peace with myself as a gamer.

Another game I was considering was Mario Kart, which I wound up getting, along with a second wheel (already have 2 remotes/nunchucks, and the plastic wheel is only $15). After that, I got a wireless Gamecube controller for the Wii, and a “Wii Classic Controller,” in case I get a Gamecube game for any reason, and both can be used for any of the games I can purchase in the Wii store. I’m trying to get things at least in pairs as Tracy has taken an interest in playing, and I have some coworkers who I play video games with sometimes during the week (mainly Guitar Hero).

Tracy also picked up a game, Rune Factory Frontier, which is good as she is into micro-management/life simulator games as well as RPGs, which apparently the game has married nicely.

This puts the total at (minus the Wii which I did not buy):

-Futon
-Dining table and 4 chairs
-50″ plasma TV
-TV stand
-Super Mario Galaxy
-Mario Kart Wii
-Additional Mario Kart plastic wheel base
-Wireless 3rd party Gamecube controller for Wii
-Classic Controller for Wii
-Rune Factory Frontier
-iHome iPhone alarm clock w/ remote
-Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard

Oh, and a small bag of Swedish Fish that I grabbed in the BestBuy checkout line :P

I don’t even want to get into the total cost, I just want to enjoy my toys.

I also drove down 45 minutes around where I used to work at Verizon Wireless to have some pho today. Tracy came and had a grilled chicken dish, which she said was the best chicken she had ever had, along with a great dressing for the chicken and some white rice. I also ordered us two full orders of egg rolls, which at this place are about half the size girth-wise of a regular egg roll, and that comes with some fantastic fish sauce. Not only was the food great, but I was very glad that Tracy liked something new I introduced her to, especially when it is from a cuisine as different as Vietnamese from her usual tastes of southern-fried country cooking.

My birthday tomorrow will not be celebrated too much as I’ll be preparing for my trek on Monday and resting on the final day of my weekend. I have to wake up extremely early to head down to another section of Houston to pick up some documents, which means I can’t party too much Sunday night, and which also means for the first time in 7 months I will once again have to deal with rush hour traffic in Houston. While I usually do some packing and such Monday morning, all that will have to be finished by tomorrow night. Going out to dinner is still under consideration, but the Pho might suffice if restaurants are too busy.

The last thing to discuss is an awesome present I got from my Dad. He went to a Devils game on March 1st, and was in the Fire lounge at Prudential Center apparently, right near where Mike “Doc” Emrick and Glenn “Chico” Resch call the game from. He actually got them to sign the cover of the game program and personalize it (Doc called me a “Houstonian,” which is awesome even if only semi-true). To me this is right up there with anything else I got, especially because I am completely reliant on them to bring me the Devils as I can’t go to the games, and also because any real Devils fan completely appreciates this duo who is one of the best broadcasting teams across all sports. I view this as just as cool (if not a bit more nifty) than even a player autograph.

Speaking of the Devils, they will have home-ice advantage against the Hurricanes in Round 1 of the playoffs, starting Wednesday or Thursday. GO DEVILS!!!!!!

-Falaris