The Hopp Stop

Hmm, that’s pretty annoying, the touch sensor under the “Send” on-screen button in the SMS texting program doesn’t register my button press. I can’t send texts now. Maybe if I reset the iPhone, the problem will go away. Nope. Arrgh. OK, let’s restore the device to its original software state. Maybe the software I installed on it is causing problems. Not a big deal, since the iPhone’s contents are automatically backed up when you sync and reinstalled when you restore the device. Wait, what is this error message? “Contents not restored due to iPhone timeout during sync”? What the fuck? OK, I’ll just choose to manually restore the contents within iTunes. Wait, there’s no manual restore/backup choice, it only occurs automatically in certain situations? What the fuck, Apple. I’m getting tired of minor glitches with my iPhone. It’s making me nostalgic, as this is like owning a Treo 650. Nostalgic in a way that makes me want to throw it out the goddamn window.

Apple’s entry into ringtones last week has triggered an explosion of analysis by the various Mac blogs that I read. Even David Pogue has gotten into it.

The most detailed analysis comes from John Gruber, the Daring Fireball guy. He makes some good points, including his excoriation of the record companies, but I would disagree with one point of his. He classifies iTunes songs into three buckets: non-purchased songs (e.g., ripped from a CD), iTunes songs not eligible for ringtones, and iTunes songs eligible for ringtones. Gruber then goes on to criticize Apple for not allowing users to take songs from bucket 1 and do whatever they want with them with respect to ringtones. He wants the ability to put an MP3 from your ripped CD on your iPhone, and perhaps also full access to the ringtone editing controls found in iTunes.

Here’s his closing paragraph from the post:

“Faced with the choice between doing what’s right for customers or charging them money for something they shouldn’t need to pay for, Apple chose the latter. There is no middle ground. And any business that hinges on your customers “not knowing any better” is a bad business.”

Maybe that’s true. But a more likely outcome is that the record labels told Jobs that they wouldn’t let him sell any ringtones unless the only ringtones available in iTunes (the software, not the store) were purchased ringtones. I would not be surprised if the contract between Apple and the record labels re: ringtones has explicit language implementing this restriction.

You may say, “But wait? By extension, couldn’t the record labels tell El Jobso that they wouldn’t let him sell any music, ringtone or full song, if he let iTunes users put non-iTunes purchases on their iPods and in their libraries?” And I would say, Good point. But the iTunes music sale contracts were negotiated several years back, when the record companies were desperate. They may still be desperate, as the ship most certainly keeps sinking under their feet, but now they know the kind of market power Apple has and they are perhaps willing to blow holes in the hull of their boat to avoid giving in to Apple.

See NBC’s actions with respect to video sales in iTunes; the video content owners don’t want to get in a situation where one seller of digital video content controls 90% of that market, and thus they may be more willing to pack up their toys and leave.

• For Two Proud Programs, One Hard Tumble – New York Times
  Some armchair psych analysis of Lloyd (good lord don’t make it Llloyd after Saturday).
  (tags: sports)
• Dolby Volume set to eliminate loud commercials – Engadget HD
  How many times have I read that this type of volume leveler is on the way or is part of a new TV? Enough that I yawn when I read this. Not holding my breath.
  (tags: tech)
• cabel.name: I’m On My Fifth Xbox 360
  I’m on my second. Good work Microsoft!
  (tags: tech gaming)
• MICHAEL ROSENBERG: U-M fans: Brace yourselves, this season can still get worse
  Interesting column. Makes me think about reconsidering my views on Lloyd, but ultimately we’re talking the two worst losses in 40 years, in two consecutive games. Bye bye.
  (tags: sports)
• Rick Ankiel highlights
  For a great defensive play, open up the 4th link from the bottom, “Ankiel’s strong throw.”
  (tags: sports)
• Rick Ankiel redux — The Hardball Times
  Nice overview of Ankiel’s turnaround from pitching depths.
  (tags: sports)
• mgoblog: Upon Further Review: Offense Versus Oregon
  Pretty depressing to read how poorly Henne played. WTF is wrong with that guy? Don’t people usually get better as they get older in college, with better offensive talent surrounding them?
  (tags: sports)

The iPhone and its supporting software need a bit more development time. Most everything on the iPhone works well and is stable, but the Mail application crashes quite frequently and Safari crashes somewhat less, but still about once a week. Compared to a Treo crash that takes down the whole phone, this is not a big deal on the iPhone, as you are just returned to the home screen. It is still annoying.

Also annoying is the state of the helper software. I have a massive quantity of appointments in my Outlook calendar, since I use that for work. Attempting to sync on my home Mac (with Outlook calendars synced to that machine via Plaxo) generally results in multiple duplicate entries (same for contacts) and an incomplete sync, with the iPhone attempting to sync for hours until it runs out of battery life–not sure why it is not charging while connected via the sync cable, but anyway. I’d blame the duplicates on Plaxo, as that sync service seems to go out of its way to create duplicates, most likely so that you pay for the premium version that has a dupe-catcher. No thanks. I’ve given up on Plaxo for that reason. But the hours-long, ineffectual syncing? That’s Apple’s bad. They apparently didn’t include business users in the parameters for effective syncing.

I then tried syncing just the calendars with my work PC and Outlook. Some success, but after 20 minutes, the Apple sync program crashed after using 50% CPU time and massive amounts of RAM. That’s a mature utility there.

Hopefully they’ll keep working on the sync conduits. And the Mail app. Still half-baked.

Just want to give a shout out to Tivo for enabling the eSATA port on the Tivo Series 3. Although not officially supported, it’s an easy five-minute process to set up an additional drive. I plugged in a 750GB drive and now have a total of 1TB of drive storage on the Tivo, for a total HD recording capacity of 131 hours. No more worries about college football games, etc. filling up my Tivo.

So the iPhone is great, amazing, love it. Yes indeed. There are a few annoyances that I have with it, after several weeks. Some are Apple’s fault, some are not.

-Super-annoying GSM buzz. Also known as the “Blackberry buzz” (see here for Wall Street Journal story describing the issue, let me know in comments if article is not freely available.) This is a problem that has come about with the rise of smartphones, as they can cause interference with audio systems and speakerphones and emit an obnoxious buzzing noise. I’ve had two Treos, a Moto Q and a Blackjack and have only ever experienced the buzz when the phone is too close to my speakerphone at work.

The iPhone is a massive offender, as placing it on the same physical surface as any speaker system results in a horrible buzz. At home, I have to place it on top of my laptop if I want to keep it on my desk; apparently the laptop breaks the buzzing connection. At work, I have to keep it on a pile of papers a couple feet from my computer speakers, or up on my bookshelf. Beyond the annoyance of actively managing the location of my iPhone, it has meant that I can’t use it as my music device at work. From any position on my desk that allows me access to the controls and a view of the screen, the iPhone is too close to the speakers and buzzes like a madman. This limitation on music playback is the biggest downside to the device so far. Short of a firmware update, I’m not sure how Apple addresses the problem (and that’s only a guess, as I don’t really understand why the iPhone is so much worse than other devices I’ve owned).

-Wonkiness with e-mail program. After a couple weeks of trouble-free e-mailing using my Fastmail IMAP account, I’ve run into repeated problems where the mail app crashes immediately upon selecting it. I failed to follow the proper rules of eliminating potential causes one by one and instead restored my iPhone twice (basically taking it back to original configuration), thinking the Mail app had gotten corrupted. No dice. Next thought: let’s try ruling out the e-mail account. Ta da! Yahoo worked just fine, but so long as the Fastmail account was enable, crash city. I poked around on the web and discovered a Fastmail user forum thread on point (gotta love the web). One user has just posted a workaround, but even if it works, it’s an ugly hack that doesn’t make me a happy iPhone user.

Whose fault is this? Fastmail’s or Apple’s? I’d have to guess that it is Apple, and they have a non-standard IMAP implementation somewhere in the Mail app that is causing problems. They don’t fully support the IMAP protocol (no IDLE? c’mon) and have used a proprietary setup for the touted Yahoo push IMAP account, so they’re likely to be crapping on the standards. (They also have a flawed implementation of how to handle URL links in outgoing e-mail messages in the Mail app on OS X that leads to much frustration for mail recipients; don’t get me started on that.) Also, Fastmail is a leading IMAP provider, much favored by the Internet cognoscenti. However, without canvassing forums for other leading IMAP providers to see if they are having the same issue, I can’t rule out the possibility that this is Fastmail’s fault. See the Duke WiFi issue, whereby Duke University initially blamed the iPhone for campus-wide WiFi network problems. Turns out there was a flaw in Cisco’s hardware that had previously gone undetected. We’ll see.

-Cord wrangling. Every time I pull my iPhone out of my pocket, I have to wrastle with a couple feet of headphone cord. Although I have a little bit more cord to deal with on the iPhone than I did with my iPod, due to the cord adapter made necessary by the iPhone jack location, most of the problem is not Apple’s fault. Rather, so long as headphones have cords and users need different lengths of cords, there will be an issue of too much headphone cord.

The best solution I’m aware of so far is that adopted by the headphone maker Shure. Shure uses very short cords that run down from the headphones and meet at the neck and terminate in a jack. Included in the headphone kit are cord adapters of various lengths, so you only have as much cord as you need. Unfortunately, I own a pair of Etymotic canalphones, so I’m out of luck until I upgrade.

Etymotic came out with a set of Bluetooth headphones, but they’re clearly a first-gen product. The headphones are like regular ear buds or canal phones, but with large rectangular boxes attached to it, and there is still a cord running between the headphones. Also, you need to connect a Bluetooth adapter to the iPod via the dock connector. You might think that this wouldn’t be an issue on the iPhone, since it includes Bluetooth support, but Apple hasn’t enable the A2DP Bluetooth stereo protocol yet. Hopefully that’s just one of many features to be enable with a subsequent firmware or software update on the iPhone. (Another iPhone bugaboo: many/most iPod accessories that use the dock connector don’t work with the iPhone, so the bundled Etymotic Bluetooth adapter might not even work.)