3G iPhone – what I saw & was told

Posted by John Minnihan - 03/06/08 at 05:06:50 am

I saw a 3G iPhone on the plane last week (carried by an insider). Here’s what I can repeat:

1. The Enterprise apps will seriously threaten RIM. IT departments will be able to remotely enable/disable the handset just like a Blackberry. Exchange integration is tight & will be true push. The App Store [may] also be integrated into an enterprise portal. That may not be available day 1, but sounds like it is coming.

2. AT&T will heavily subsidize the phone for up to one year of sales. Details on the contract weren’t shared, but I understood it to mean AT&T was eating the cost-difference on the handset in order to maintain carrier exclusivity, at least for another year. Target street price in US: $199 with possibility of only one-year contract – that is speculation based upon the rest of conversation.

3. Apple was pissed that AT&T announced this (duh, but interesting to hear it confirmed).

4. The AT&T 3G network is up & running right now. The phone will be announced by Apple "sometime in June", with near-immediate sales availability.

5. The 3G form-factor, casing & color appear identical to the first-gen.

6. A "whole team of engineers" is working on bringing real GPS to the iPhone.

7. Battery life is a bit better than first-gen iPhones.

8. Connection & web usage on the 3G network "screams" – is "very fast".

9. I own a first-gen iPhone and will replace mine in August

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Apple Software Update on Windows & Mozilla

Posted by John Minnihan - 27/03/08 at 07:03:37 am

I originally posted this as a comment to John P.’s Digital Daily post on this topic.

 

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080324/lilly/

 

Summary: Mozilla CEO John Lilly is calling foul on Apple for both placing Safari into the update service as well as making the default action ‘Install’.  Lots of folks have jumped on Apple for the default setting; Lilly says it violates trust.

—

What does this have to do with trust?

 

I’ll answer myself: nothing.

 

Continue reading Apple Software Update on Windows & Mozilla…

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GMail – 502 Server Error

Posted by John Minnihan - 27/01/08 at 06:01:03 pm

This is the second time I’ve encountered a 502 error while attempting to connect to my mail account. 

This is not a very encouraging sign, as I’ve used the service for only about four months. 

Google has hundreds (maybe thousands) of servers assigned to GMail.  What actually happens in these cases?  Is a commodity server box failing while it is still in rotation?

I’d like to see a better explanation than a mildly fancified 502 page.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Leopard Kernel Panic

Posted by John Minnihan - 26/01/08 at 05:01:41 pm

I’m really beginning to wonder about Leopard.  In all the time I had Tiger – on both a G4 Powerbook as well as on this Macbook Pro – not a single kernel panic, ever.

Just had my first one this morning on Leopard.  It looks like the Airport driver crashed hard.  Something else that is interesting -  Leopard apparently still uses the Darwin kernel.  I didn’t know that:

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Converting .DOC to .PDF. Is this difficult?

Posted by John Minnihan - 26/01/08 at 02:01:46 pm

If you are using a Mac running a recent version of OSX, the answer is No.  In fact this is super easy and is available from inside Microsoft Word.   If you run Windows, this feature isn’t available without an additional plugin from a third-party.

 

Continue reading Converting .DOC to .PDF. Is this difficult?…

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Facebook and trust

Posted by John Minnihan - 06/01/08 at 11:01:45 am

I IM’ed a friend yesterday to let him know I no longer used facebook.  He asked why, and I told him I no longer trusted facebook.  The truth is – I never really trusted them; it simply took a while for that to sink in and for me to take action.  I wiped as much as I could from my account & deactivated it – not surprisingly, you cannot delete your account. 

Trust is the single most important factor of any of my online activities.  Simple utility isn’t the differentiation any more, as there are many choices today for even arcane services.

I simply don’t trust facebook at this point. Beacon was designed as a social-spying program, etc… and Zuckerberg himself seems like the type of person 1 I wouldn’t trust if he lived across the street. I’ve read a lot about him & the litigation around the formation of facebook, and one quote that stands out is "Just how many enemies he has collected at such a young age.”2

I think 2008 will be a watershed year for facebook in ways that the company isn’t expecting.  I can afford to be wrong – they can’t.

1 http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1764.html

2 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071130/ironic-yes-but-zuckerbergs-privacy-violated/

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Facebook, Scoble, Twitter and Instant Whatever

Posted by John Minnihan - 03/01/08 at 04:01:12 pm

This is pretty interesting.  As the blogosphere started to get into this story, I (and many others of course) already knew the plot, the main characters, and the cliff-hanger ending to "today’s episode".

Kara Swisher: http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080103/free-the-scoble-5000/

Techcrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/03/plaxo-flubs-it/

How? Twitter. 

You mean this Twitter?  Um, yes, that one.  Twitter is about instant whatever.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

iPhone 6 Months Later

Posted by John Minnihan - 30/12/07 at 02:12:43 pm

I replaced my Treo 650 with an iPhone last summer, and have been pleased with the results.  Here’s what I’ve noticed in the past six months.

Email

It is not push, but when I pull it – it is fast & complete. Though I initially ran my own email server (for years), I’ve recently switched to Gmail IMAP & everything works & syncs perfectly. I have no complaints about email on the iPhone. Viewing a typical Word document attachment functions ‘out of the box’, but complex docs lose formatting when viewed.

Web browsing

The iPhone shines here. I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said… it is simply the best mobile browsing experience I’ve had. Bookmark handling is a bit clunky though, but is usable.

Calendar & Address Book

If you have a Mac, you’ll appreciate how effortlessly you can manage your calendar & sync it to the iPhone. Previously, I didn’t use iCal on my Mac because I couldn’t sync it to anything useful. With the iPhone, my Contacts (Address Book), iCal and Safari bookmarks get synched each time (or as I’ve config’ed) I connect. This is exactly what you expect from a mobile device that is attempting to extend your desktop.

Physical Case

Surprisingly durable – no major scratches after six months. The glass face is probably fragile, but certainly not prone to casual scratching. I carry mine in my front pants-pocket, and have been fortunate enough not to have dropped it (yet…)

Camera

Pretty darned good for a phone-camera. The camera isn’t really that important to me, so this isn’t a deal breaker. But the photos from the iPhone are significantly better than those from the Treo.

Video

You already know that iPhone doesn’t do video.  I’ve missed this feature a few times, so I hope (probably unrealistically so) that a future update will magically provide video capture support.   I’m not naive, though, so I fully expect this to come in a new hardware package (i.e. iPhone v2).

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Popularity: 43% [?]

Gmail, Apple Mail & the iPhone

Posted by John Minnihan - 17/11/07 at 11:11:42 am

Since Gmail began supporting IMAP, setting up Gmail to work with both Apple Mail & the iPhone is a common need for those of us with both iPhones and new Macbooks.

I began using Gmail about two weeks and had noticed the inconsistencies mentioned in the below article, and was both pleased to see that the solution was so simple as well as slightly embarrassed that I hadn’t yet resolved the issue myself.

Here’s the HOWTO:

http://5thirtyone.com/archives/862 

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Popularity: 1% [?]

One-way data roach motel

Posted by John Minnihan - 25/10/07 at 02:10:32 pm

This is simply a fantastic quote (and in my mind incredibly on-target):

“This mantra of ‘openness’ is everywhere nowadays. Facebook gets $15 billion valuation after it ‘opens up’ its platform to outside developers. Never mind the fact that Facebook is a one-way data roach motel where users’ metadata remains behind the company’s walled garden.”

Ouch.

http://counternotions.com/2007/10/25/motorola-on-iphone/

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Popularity: 5% [?]

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