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iPhone Mobile

iPhone + Flip Phone

After having lunch with my brother and sister-in-law this afternoon we decided to go to the Verizon store and look for a Palm Pixi, I haven’t seen one yet and wasn’t convinced the screen was as small as my brother claimed. So we head into the store and my brother guides me through the store, showing me his favorite phones, and why he likes them. Then we get some help and find they don’t have a Palm Pixi, but they have the Pre+, so the guy helping us gets one out of the back and let’s me check it out. It’s actually a really nice device, but, I digress…

The iPod Touch 3G

Something my brother said while he was talking to the salesman really got me thinking. He said “You know what would be perfect, an iPod Touch with 3G, and no phone.” When I heard that I thought to myself “That’s a screwy idea.” Wait, no wait, that’s NOT such a screwy idea. Think about this for a couple of minutes. What if you could have an iPhone/iPod Touch with 3G and no phone and have a cheap flip phone for all your voice communication, on the same phone number? That would be awesome. Why? Well here’s the thing. The iPhone sucks battery, and face it, most of the time you don’t use it for talking. It’s mostly about e-mail, texting, Twitter, and Facebook isn’t it? Yes, that’s what I thought. Here’s my brothers, and my, logic. One of the best cell phones I ever had was a cheap “free” Samsung flip phone. No bells and whistles, just a simple voice phone. The thing worked. The sound quality was great and the best thing about it? I had to charge it about once a week.

That’s just crazy talk

Yeah, well, maybe it is. I’ll give you that, but in my brain it makes sense, especially if I can have them both on the same number. Allow voice and text on the cheap phone and use the iPod Touch 3G for all your social adventures, and texting of course. The big advantage is battery life, and from my experience, a better pure phone. This may not be the case for most folks. It would seem that most people text way more that they actually talk, but for me it works.

Then again maybe Apple can just get to work on a battery that’ll last a week on a charge, even under heavy use.

Categories
Life Mobile

Merry Christmas, it’s iPad Day!

The Apple iPadThe iPad un-boxing pictures are starting to show up, pictures from Apple Stores, as well as the tweets.

Un-Boxing Pictures

Craig Hockenberry’s iPad
Seah Herber’s iPad
Dave Winer’s iPad pictures

Apple Store Pictures

Chris Parrish from U Village Apple Store.
Mashable has a story and pictures.

Tweets

Gus Muller – Tweeting in line from the Apple Store, Alderwood Mall, Lynnwood, WA.
Chris Parrish – In line at U Village Apple Store, Seattle, WA.
Emilio Cavazos – He doesn’t say, but I’m betting the Apple Store at Fashion Fair.

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Development iPhone Mobile

Yeah, what he said

Marco Arment: “But the biggest reason why there’s no iPhone SDK on Windows or Linux is that it doesn’t need to exist. The iPhone is the premier platform where the most money is being made. Developers will come to Apple — Apple doesn’t need to come to developers. (Google does, as the underdog.) It’s the same reason why there’s no OS X or Linux port of Microsoft Visual Studio, and you don’t see a lot of Mac owners yelling at Microsoft for not porting its sophisticated development environment to their chosen operating system.” – I really like this Marco guy. He’s about as blunt as can be, but he makes fine points. He’s also the creator of Instapaper, an application that’s quickly becoming my favorite little utility.

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Mobile

How we love the iPhone

TechCrunch: “But every single day I have some kind of AT&T issue. And many of the aforementioned people I know do too. So rather than making us pay the $150 for this device, why not just send one to every customer living in areas that you yourselves admit has service “below our standards“?” – Yep, that’s right, AT&T has a device you can pay $150.00 for that will use your existing broadband connection so your AT&T based service is better. What the? So, get this, most folks pay around $120.00 per month for the “honor” of using the iPhone, they could care less about the service provider, unless that provider’s service is horrible. Instead of fixing their network in San Francisco and New York they’ve found a way to make a profit off of it. Wow, just wow.

Let your money do the talking

Look, I don’t have this issue with AT&T where I live. The network seems to work just fine most of the time, cellular still has a long way to go to match the quality we get with land lines. Here’s the thing. Either you live with the poor network, or move to a different carrier. Yeah, it’s that simple. Ahhh, there’s a catch. You can’t take your iPhone with you. That one thing is keeping people on a network they’re unhappy with. Another wow. Really? You’re picking your network because you won’t give up your iPhone?

If you won’t let your money do the talking because of the device, should you complain about the service?

There are other phones

The Palm PreI don’t actually own an iPhone, I have a Palm Centro. It works for me. I only have voice and text services so the device isn’t as important, I just need something with a QWERTY keyboard. Sure I’d like to have one, but I’m not yet willing to play the extra price for the service. At one point back in the summer I’d looked at switching to Sprint because of their great pricing. You can get the same services; unlimited text, and data, with 450 voice minutes for $70.00. Sprint, as you may know, had an exclusive deal with Palm. The Palm Pre is an amazing smart phone, in fact I think it’s the second best smart phone on the market. Of course I think the iPhone is better, but the Pre is a great number two! I know they’re in trouble, and folks have criticized their hardware, but they do have an amazing operating system in WebOS, and they’re not going away anytime soon. If you want to spend a little more and get what most consider the best cellular carrier in the country you can now get the Palm Pre Plus through Verizon and you can tether with up to five devices. Nice.

What if?

If you’re an iPhone user and you could use your phone on Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile, what would you do? Would you switch in a heartbeat? My brother is a Verizon fanboi so he lives with the phones he can get his hands on. I’m not convinced he’s liked any of his smart phones because he keeps buying new ones. I know, I just know, he’s waiting for that glorious day to come! The day the iPhone is available on all the major carriers, then I’d put money on him buying one the day it’s available. I also know people that are living with AT&T service, because of the iPhone, and are due to commit to a new two year deal, but won’t do it because they’re hoping the exclusive iPhone deal will AT&T will lapse and they can switch carriers. Interesting isn’t it.

Yeah, people love the iPhone.

Categories
Mobile

I like Palm

ars technica: “In January of 2009, shares of Palm traded at a little over $3 as everyone awaited details of the once-mighty smartphone maker’s plans to save itself from certain death. In the wake of the Pre’s successful unveiling later that month at CES, Palm’s stock price more than doubled, and optimism about the Pre’s prospects eventually drove shares to a high of over $17 in October of last year. But as of this past Friday’s earnings report, sales are way below Palm’s and Wall Street’s expectations, the company has little cash left on hand, and shares of PALM have dropped all the way back down to $4. There’s a growing consensus—as expressed by the market—that there are only two possible futures for Palm: acquisition, or insolvency.” – Darn. I’ve always been a Palm fan. I had a Handspring Visor and used it for years, and I’ve even written, and contributed to, applications that run on the original Palm platform. The new Pre, and more specifically WebOS, are beautifully designed. In fact I’d put them firmly in second place to the iPhone. I would hope they won’t go away, but I’m not sure who would be interested in acquiring them at this point. A few months back I’d have said Microsoft was the perfect place for Palm but with the introduction of Windows Phone 7 (what a horrible name) I think Microsoft is now in a fairly decent position to be a good number three or four in the market. About a year ago I considered moving to Sprint for my cell service and the Pre was a natural choice, hard to beat unlimited use for $70.00 a month, the same plan on AT&T, with an iPhone, would run $119.00.

Anywho, I hope Palm can manage to stick around. They’re now offering the Pre at Verizon, which is a very popular carrier, and Verizon still doesn’t have the iPhone of course. Once the iPhone hits these other carriers it could be game over.