One Month of iPhone 3G – Afterthoughts

It’s been one month since my iPhone 3G has served me. All I can say is this device has allowed me to use the internet on the go. There are also some features of the iPhone 3G that I like in particular:

For example, I really, really love the intelligent auto-correction thing. It has allowed me to type fast without worrying that I am going to produce a typo. However, this only works if you are typing non-offensive dictionary words. So make sure you double-check what you have typed before sending the SMS/email. Trying to type “f**k you man” will produce “duck you man” and will make you look stupid. Be warned.

Another thing that I really like is the ability to send and receive emails on the go. As you can see, my fellow friends are having fun comment raiding on a particular picture on Facebook.

Apps, lots of them. I love having the ability to install apps that can help me identify songs (Shazam and Midomi) or allowing me to kill time (or as my friends describe it “looking like a retard”) by playing accelerometer-controlled games like Super Monkey Ball, Cube Runner etc (These games are controlled by tilting the iPhone itself).

One last thing that I also liked is the ability to write chinese characters with handwriting recognition. On the above screenshot, you can see that I have typed my chinese name using handwriting recognition. Pretty neat.

Now… Like I said, nothing is perfect. iPhone 3G has lots of bugs and problems even with the latest firmware. Here’s hoping that the next firmware will fix all these issues:

Keyboard lag: Sometimes your keyboard will suddenly feel the force of the vortex and go into 1 character per second mode. This bug is really, really annoying. Some people has suggested that activating the “magnifying glass” a.k.a hold your finger onto the screen will temporarily fix the issue. I usually just quit the offending app (usually SMS or email) and relaunch it.

Various lags: Contacts take up to 3 seconds before you can smoothly scroll and sometimes certain parts of the iPhone system suffer from abnormal lags.

Installing apps using App Store: If you’ve got an iPhone running the latest 2.0 firmware, AVOID installing apps using the App Store on the iPhone itself. I have run into numerous problems that has caused my iPhone to get stuck at the apple boot screen and I was also required to restore my iPhone several times.

App crashes: This one is also quite annoying especially when you’re trying to show your friend some cool apps you’ve just installed. You launch the app and then, boom, it goes back to the home screen. This will never stop until you restart your iPhone.

Insanely long backup times: This is one of the most annoying thing to happen especially when your iPhone needs to get restored due to some stupid problems. My backup takes at least an hour and this does not even include the sync process. Some dude over the internet posted a video that showed his iPhone backup taking as long as 8 hours! How ridiculous is that.

Horrible 3G performance: Ok, I don’t really know who to blame for this. But Optus 3G performance is freaking horrible in Australia. Some dude even did both ping and bandwidth tests on all carriers and Optus has a staggering 1200++ ms ping while the others only have 200++ ms ping. Also, the bandwidth on Optus 3G is between 5 to 7 times lower than its competitors. Cmon Optus, fix this please.

As you can see there are a lot of problems plaguing the iPhone 3G now. The stability of this device is horrible, so horrible that it’s giving a bad image to the Mac platform. Please Apple, fix them soon! /endrant

Misu: Hands-on Review and Thoughts

Previously, I wrote about three different apps that allows you to take control of your iTunes/iPod music here. I stated that I did not have another iPod to test Misu. Earlier today, a friend of mine requested me to fill up her iPod with songs. I saw it as a perfect opportunity to test out Misu. I would like to thank Ollie Wagner for giving me the opportunity to test out Misu’s app at its fullest potential.

Upon launching Misu, you can click on the iPod icons to swap their places. This allows you to choose which iPod is providing the music, and which one is receiving them.

Here, you can see that my friend’s iPod is smaller than the amount of music that I have. Misu intelligently prompts you to choose if you want Misu to stop copying music when the target iPod is full, or you want to overflow the target iPod (I have no idea what overflow does because I chose the first option).

Misu’s progress pie doesn’t seem to be accurate. It was stuck at 100% for quite some time (about 5 minutes). I think this could be due to the “Stop copying when Full” option. Nevertheless, it’s just a cosmestic issue and harmless.

When copying is finished, a pop-up will appear asking if you want to copy Misu’s app into the iPods so you can launch Misu from any Mac. This is a very clever option in my opinion.

The copying of approximately 4gb worth of songs took about 10 minutes for me. After copying, I realised something – the songs are actually copied into a folder inside the target iPod. For some reason, I had the impression that Misu would automatically add the songs into the target’s iTunes library. I think this feature is not impossible and I hope it would be added in future releases.

For the techie geek like me, I would’ve preferred MacFuse + iTunesFS over Misu if I would like to painlessly copy music over from one iPod to another. Misu, on the other hand requires you to do one more step when you connect your iPod to your own computer, and that is to add them to your iTunes library and then sync them to your iPod. In the meantime, Misu is great and easy-to-use for people who don’t wanna fiddle with MacFuse. I believe there is a lot of room for improvement for Misu.

With more and more people getting iPhones and iPods (and storage getting bigger and better), Misu will no doubt be popular in the future because with the snap of a finger, you can have your friend’s music collection.

Interested in trying out Misu?

Misu is available for a free trial (with 15 songs limit) or you can get it for $19 per copy or $29 for 3 copies.

Clueless Blogger Writes on Why Vista Beats Mac OS X

I was surfing around and noticed that this article ‘Five reasons why Vista beats Mac OS X’ was linked in 9to5mac’s site. I was curious so I clicked on it, expecting it to be an article with constructive arguments based on hard facts. But no, it made me laugh my head off. No surprise the article had negative rating (at time of writing it has -68 rating after 142 votes).

The first reason he gave was that Vista runs more software. Ok, fair enough Vista DO run more software. However, what was wrong is that he argued Virtualization software like Parallels won’t let you run even the most basic games such as FreeCell, Hearts, Pinball, Solitaire and Minesweeper. If that’s not funny enough, he argued that it’s because Parallels doesn’t support DirectX9. HAHAHAHAHAH!! Since when the f**k does Solitaire and Pinball require DX9? Also, recent versions of Parallels and VMware Fusion are already supporting DX9. This just shows how f**king clueless this guy is because he wrote his article only about 2 days ago.

Then, he also said that Vista is safer. He argued that this was because the MacBook Air got hacked first in the recent hacking competition (PWN2OWN). I’m sorry but the MBA wasn’t hacked REMOTELY. On the first day of the competition, nobody managed to hack any of the 3 laptops (MacBook Air and 2 others that ran Windows Vista and Linux). So the next day, the rules was loosen and contestants were allowed to physically access the laptops. What!? It doesn’t take a genius to agree that it is much easier to hack a computer when you have physical access. Also, of course the MBA was hacked first. Who the f**k wants a black ugly Windows laptop that’s worth half the value? Vista more secure than Mac OS X? Then try running it without anti-virus and anti-spyware, dumb ass.

The 3rd reason he gave was “It’s the money, stupid”. He argued that a Vista machine is cheaper than a Mac. Even though that’s true, I don’t see his point here. If a Vista machine is 10 times cheaper than a Mac then he probably got a point. But no, I personally don’t think that couple hundred of bucks difference will make the London Bridge fall. Besides, you’re gonna spend a lot more money on a Vista machine by getting software licenses for your anti-virus/anti-spyware products. Have fun on a sluggish machine, bro.

The 4th reason he gave did not even make sense. He argued that the Vista is open while the Mac is closed. He said that Vista can be installed on all pc’s while installing Mac’s on pc’s will get you sued. While it is true that Mac’s can’t be installed on PC’s, it doesn’t justify as a valid point. That’s like saying the OpenOffice suite is much better than Microsoft Office because it can be installed on all kinds of OS.

The last reason he gave was even more ridiculous, he said “Two words — Steve Jobs”. He argued that Steve Jobs was a master marketer. So what? Who the f**k cares if a well-marketed product is actually good. He even said that Steve Jobs sends his lawyers after people who leak information on Apple products. Again, so what? It does not meet the point of argument that Vista beats Mac OS X. I really think this guy is f**king clueless on things he say. I’m willing to bet he didn’t spend more than an hour using a Mac. Hang on, maybe he did…. The last time he used a Mac was probably during the 80’s!

Adobe + Web TV = Adobe Media Player

Adobe has just released a media player that allows you to watch all kinds of programs and even tv shows such as CSI: New York. Sure, Hulu has a wider variety but I was surprised that Adobe Media Player’s shows are watchable from Australia. Hulu is currently restricted to the US.

Let’s hope Adobe puts on more great content on its media player.

Adobe Media Player can be downloaded here

Factory Unlocked 3G iPhones are Coming to Australia

According to one of the Administrators of MacTalk forums, resellers have been provided with info regarding the iPhone by Apple Australia. And… The good news is, it’s not gonna be locked to one carrier! The iPhone is also going to be released in Australia last week of June.

So what does all this mean? If the 3G iPhone is going to be announced in WWDC 2008, which is going to be in the first week of June, it means Australia is getting 3G iPhone for sure. Also, with no carrier lock, it could mean that 3G plans will get more competitive pricing.

Personally, I can’t wait for iPhone in Australia. Porn Web and Email on the go can prove to be useful at times.

Does this also mean that other countries will have factory unlocked iPhones when 3G version rolls out? What do you think?

Source: MacTalk forums