iPhone4 the First 24-ish Hours

Yes I got an iPhone, yes you can call me a sell out, but as I stated at the beginning of this blog “We will be testing anything and everything we can get our hands on” so do not look so surprised. I have not abandon Android all together, just for a bit. So with out further ado..

I have had this thing for just over 24 hours now, there are somethings I really really like and things I do not and then something’s that annoy me to the very core of my being.

Likes
The phone does seem to be a little more responsive than my Nexus One (She is dead by the way, power button went out). It does integrate rather well with my now Mac household. The App store is much easier to use, the OSK is leaps and bounds better than any Android device I have used. Facetime is nice to have (would be nicer if I could use it on 3G or 4G (if Att would get off their duff) but that is an Att issue not the phone). Most of the apps do look better; they are laid out better and for the most part have more options than the Android counter part. I am even growing to enjoy the almost square body style and rough edges. And of course the best part, the screen resolution (still a bit upset about the new MBP line and the resolution issue, but I digress). Most of the Android phones were stuck on that 800x480 resolution, which was fine on a 3.5” or smaller screen, but the 4.0” and higher did not go over well with a lot of people.

Dislikes
I am on Att now, but again that is not a phone issue. I can only have one signature for emails. I can have 30 different email accounts, but one signature. It does not look to good when I send an email from 25th hour and a signature for my primary Job and vice versa. I cannot make custom ring tones for anything but the ringer. So no custom Text Tones (that is what they are calling them now?) I had to enter my Google Apps account user name and password about 1700 times, where I only had to once on my Android device, but that is not so much a phone issue. I am excited to be one of millions when the time changes again to be late because for whatever reason Apple does not know how to make a clock. The email imap push does not quite work. I get that 99% of mobile email apps do not check your folders for new emails and notify you. On the Android it at least checked them, so you could view your folders and see you had a new email, but it would never alert you. This poor thing does not even check your folders, if it does not hit your inbox you have to manually check the folders. Sigh, this would be a question to all mobile email apps, why is it so hard to check the folders and let me know I have a new email? The is no voice activated search, by default, I have to type everything out, but at least the OSK is much better. They did finally fix the Stereo Bluetooth issue, so I am happy to say I can listen to music on the way to the office, all three blocks I have to drive.

To my core
Now these are not as much the phones issues as Att or both depending on how you look at it. I cannot tether my data to my lappy with out paying 45$ a month for something I already pay 30$ a month for. Now before I get emails about your thoughts on it, I don’t care. The fact remains that the phone comes with a built in hotspot for this, but I have to pay extra to use it. Just don’t put it in there and if I want it ill buy it. There are huge debates on line about if it is wrong or not I think it is, but that is just me. Att is the 5 Reich, but I knew that going in. My signal is awful in the house, I can make phone calls, but I am on Edge no matter what I do, luckily I have Wi-Fi. Ninety nine percent of the apps worth anything cost money, but that is okay, I can now start writing apps and selling them unlike on Android. As long as I break even on selling verses buying Ill be happy.

I know your next question is going to be, have you jail broken it yet, no I have not, not because I haven’t wanted to, but because I was to wait until my lappy is back form the doctor. I will post again on my feeling after that maybe some things will change…

//j

Samsung Nexus S

I know, I know I should have never picked one up. We all knew it was going to suck, but my curiosity got the best of me and here we are. I picked one up thinking it might be a good birthday present for myself, turns out it ended up feeling like a present you would get from your Grandparents. So close to cool that you feel like they tried, but to far in to the crappy realm that you wish they would have gotten you nothing at all or just cash.

Pros
It has a 4" screen that looks great.
It has the Near Field Communication built in.
...... nope that is all of the pros, moving on.

Cons
It is not any faster than my Nexus One.
The screen looks nice but is off, way off. I was trying to type an email and kept getting an s when I was trying to hit a. I thought maybe it is because I am use to the 3.7" screen and missing it, sadly this was not the case. I stopped typing and tried hitting just the a, still got an s and typing in portrait mode forget about it, your words come out in a fashion that not even Google can give you a "Did you mean XXXX".
No MicroSD port (I knew that going in, but it still sucked)
The battery did not last any longer than the (over a year old now) battery in my Nexus One.
My biggest complaint is no indicator light, which could explain why the battery did not last any longer. I was constantly checking for emails like a love sick seventeen year old girl, checking it see if he/she (have to keep this PC) text back.

So just two weeks after this new "high end smartphone" found its way in to my possession, it went back to Best Buy. the up side being they did not charge me the 10% restocking fee, nor did the girl even look in the box, oh well.

On a side note, I found out this morning that Honeycomb will not be released for phones, only tablets. So in learning this, I am thinking if the iPhone does release on T-Mobile I will be getting one. At least I know that I am going to get screwed by Apple and I do not have to play this rule changing game with Google.

I have been a die hard Google fan for years well since Gmial was introduced, hell this blog you are reading in hosted by Google, but in the last couple of years they have made choices that put them in the same boat as Microsoft and we all know how I fell about them. A person can only take so much before they give up.

//j

MSOffice for Mac

I am typing this from Word 2011, so I will apologize now for any issues you have reading this or crashes it may cause.

When I first got the Mac a guy at work had an extra copy of MSOffice 2008, I gladly took it off his hands. Things were nice; Entourage would let me sync my Google Cal and contacts, Word, PowerPoint (which I loth) and Excel all worked fine. Then 2011 came out. I went a head and upgraded, it only cost me 40$ (Student discount is amazing). Someone at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to replace our beloved Entourage with Outlook.. WHY??!!?? Okay first thing I notice, my Calendar no longer syncs, my contacts will sync until I add a new one, and then it breaks. You can recover from this crash, but it requires you to one remove all of the home directory files for all Microsoft Programs and or reinstall MSOffice 2011. Why oh why did they replace Entourage? The good (ish) news is, I called tech support and they are more than aware of the issue and assure me that there will be a fix in the first half of 2011.. I will repeat that, there will be a fix in the first half of 2011. So they are telling me (and you if you are using this almost concept of Office) that we have up to eight months of this before they fix it, baring any delays. Well that is that, Microsoft does it again or does not do it again depending on how you look at it.


//j

MacBook Pro

You read that correct. Your fearless Ubuntu user has taken the dive and sold out and got a MacBook Pro. It was time to replace the 17" "laptop" and the Netbook. It was becoming exhausting to carry one or both around. I wanted one machine that would do more than both of them. It is the 13" model with 2.66 GHz Core 2 duo with 8GB of ram and a 500GB hard drive. Before you ask it is a workhorse. As I type this I am updating the Android repo, running updates on my Server 2003 ENT VM, running updates on my Ubuntu 10.10 VM and listening to This American Life and it is only using about half the power it has. So lets get into it.

I got this bad boy about a month ago. It only had 4GB of ram and a 320GB Hard Drive, so I upgraded it a bit. The process was painless. Easy to open and replace hardware. The DD copy of the Harddrive took more time than it was hard to do. The cats at the office were taking bets on how long I would keep OS X on here. So far they have all lost. I must say I am liking it more than I thought I would. I will go into that more in a bit.

Lets look at applications for a moment. Yes I am using a Mac, but I have not quite taken the plunge to full Mac apps. I am still using Chrome for my browser, Picasa to manage my pictures, VMWare for my VM's (yes it is Fusion, I have not even tried to get server on here, plus server and I have had issues I will post that later.) I did switch to Adium even though I can have Empathy but I am liking it a lot. Of course I have skype on here and Dropbox. The bigest change was having MSOffice again, it has been a while I am still on the fence about how I feel about it and will post something later. I am using iTunes for music, but not to sync my iPod, I do not really need to keep 80GB of music on here and I remember why I disliked iTunes, but that is a whole other rant. I am using MacPorts, for those that have no clue what I am saying, MacPorts allows me to use Linux apps natively on a Mac, not like Wine and hopefully one day I will have time to play with Garage Band, but it will not be soon.

Coming from Linux it was easy to learn, it is based on Unix after all. After starting on Windows and using Linux for the last five years I can say Mac is the best of both worlds, for the most part. You get this nice pretty GUI that works with out having to "play with it" and you have your terminal if you want to get your hands dirty. You have apps that just work with out fighting with them or having to recompile them, as long as they are not MacPorts and the keyboard alone is enough to make the change. Forget the backlit keyboard, this thing is amazing. On most laptops when you type the keyboard bends either on one side or the middle. The keyboard does not move and the buttons are smooth and easy on the fingers. Every lappy should have these keyboards.

No I have not tested out BootCamp, I have never been a fan of dual boot, that is why I use VMware. At first I felt dirty for having "betrayed" my beloved Linux, but that has receded and I am happy I took the leap to Mac.

Carbonite backup solution.. not really a solution

At 55$ a year for unlimited offsite backup space this sounded like a great idea, then I tested out the 15 day free trial. Come to find out this could be as bad as buying a time capsule. Let me tell the story.

I go to the website (after seeing the commercial 17 million times, I had to try it) download the trial, installed it on the new MacBookPro and setup the directories I wanted backed up. The initial push (about 1.3 gb) took about two and a half days. That was 0630 to about 1600 of constant upload. On a side note the same amount took about 7 hours to push to Dropbox. After the initial backup all was good, until Monday morning when I added three files, one PDF and two Word files for a total of 300K and that is being generous. Tuesday I check it and they were still in the que to be uploaded. Their site says about 1GB per 24 hour period can be backed up, so why after nine and a half hours was 300k still not uploaded?

The first email I sent to support looked like this. "I am testing this for the next 15 days. My initial backup went off with out a hitch. I added some files this morning (in total no more than 300k) they have yet to sync. Is this normal? Is this because I am using the trial? " In response I get a bunch of jargon about "We value you as a precious customer of Carbonite and it is a pleasure to assist you. Your account under email addressjbeitler@XXX.xxx shows that the your computer is well connected to our Back-up Servers and the initial backup for your computer is progressing normally and is up-to-date." And they instruct me to not do an automatic backup because some of the mac files cause issues. Well I did not do an automatic backup and just to be on the safe side I double checked to make sure the files in question were not being backed up. Of course they were not so I sent a response of "Thank you for your quick response. My issue is this is not happening. I configured it on manual. The initial back up went fine. I added three files this morning (no more than 300k). The folded is amber in colour on the configuration and so are the three files. The other files in said folder are backed up. So my question is why? " Then the next email is just the run around, repeating what they said in the first email. Okay fine so I wait until this morning to call tech support and maybe get some better answers.

I call tech support at 0807, they open at 0800. I am placed in the que and the automated attendant informs me that due to high call volume I would experience longer than normal wait times. She then tells me my estimated wait time is less than one minute and I am the first caller in the que. Don't worry I am confused as well. So after about 15 minutes and the automated attendant chiming in with her sepal a few more times I am connected to a real person. She goes through her normal check list to verify I am me and then we get in to the issue. After I tell her what is going on, she informs me that the server I was trying to backup to was down for two days. Umm what? Down? As in.. okay fine. So then I ask why they do not have a failover or redundancy in place. The reply I get is not what I am expecting. She tells me this happens sometimes and that when the server comes back online my files will be backed up. Holy cow, are you kidding me? So I inform her I am just testing it out and why would I pay them to not backup my files? And what would have happen if my computer went down and their server was down? She replies, You would not have your files backed up. Wow okay, I tell her I will not be using their product and thank you for allowing me to test it out and hang up.

Those that know me, know I have been using Dropbox for a while now, some of you are even the reason I have almost 3GB on a free account instead of 2GB. In the two maybe two and a half years I have been using DropBox I have never had an issue, plus I can sync my files to more than one machine, Dropbox is platform agnostic and I can retrieve my files on my cell phone. All things that Carbonite will not allow. Yes you get unlimited backup (when their server is not down) for only 55$ a year, but it is tied to one machine, you can not view your files and it will not work in Linux.

Maybe in a few years Carbonite will get their act together and it will become useable, but in the mean time I am going back to DropBox.

//j

World Cup

I just wanted to take a moment, before the match starts, I know I have been slacking. It is World Cup, I will be back at it after the 11th of July. In the mean time, email me things you want me to play with / destroy.

Thanks

//j

The iPad (I still can not believe I touched one, I feel dirty)

So after two showers (and I still can not get this feeling off of me), I will tell you what I think of the iPad. If you are an Apple fanboy, please stop reading now, I do not want to get emails about, "How much better apple is than anything else". 1. Its not, I am sorry. 2. Apple is better than Microsoft, but that is like being better than having AIDS, not that hard to do, and 3. I really really do not what to get emails from you, so you can stay and read if you promise to keep your thoughts to your self on this one topic. Deal? Ok moving on.

Do any of you remember the first Blackberry's? It was large, I mean large, but it was cool, you could do more than make phone calls with it. Well the iPad is nothing like that, you can not make phone calls, sad pants. This is nothing more than an over size iPod Touch and I do mean OVER SIZED. Okay enough about that lets get into the "fun" part, using it.

I connect to wireless (you have no usb or network card). All is going well for about 20 minutes and then it locks up on me?! (My guess is because I am using a real router and not an airport, but that is for another time.). So I reboot (this one had almost no apps on it so it boots rather quickly). I then try to tether it to my Nexus, which went well (Froyo and then new HotSpot is GREAT), the only down side was the speed was slower on the iPad than on my phone?! Okay strike two. Now you have two option to get a 3G card in it, but you can not open it (with out voiding your warranty, if you change your mind, strike 3) or wifi card, but At&t have made some changes to that please see here. Strike 4. Then you have the appstore.. Oh god, I am not going to say much on this expect see here for more details, (my Dr. said my blood pressure was to high and I don't want to have a stroke at 27, So I will leave it at that).

One more thing, off topic. I am eating my bite sized Cheez-It's that are a little smaller than normal. .I thought the old ones were bite sized but what the do I know? I am just a blogger.

So in the end the iPad got 16 some odd strikes, if you buy one I am sorry. Wait no I am not I warned you.

//j