It’s a little bit late compared to Typepad, but the Wordpress iPhone app is out today. Now I can blog from anywhere! Anytime!

The question is… Will I be motivated enough? Typing on this virtual keyboard is serious business!!

I can’t take credit for the title of this post, it’s really just a part of the discussion on one of the TWIT podcast this past week (or was it the week before? I can’t remember). Last week Google announced an astonishingly underwhelming software platform. I mean, it’s not horrible or anything, it’s just disappointing that a lot of people were expecting Google to throw their hat in a complete consumer product, rather than a half-assed promise to deliver some sort of product nine months from now which may or may not be any good.

Well, Google released the Android SDK today. The SDK was pretty impressive, giving us a good preview of the the OS user interface (via Engadget). However, one can’t help notice how much the “mockup” looks like a Palm Centro, or any myriad of Palm or Windows Mobile device that’s been available so far. One also can’t help but notice how the UI takes many lessons from iPhone’s UI. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose, but didn’t everyone expect a *lot* more from Google than just another software platform that looks just like any other software platform?

I listen to podcasts when I bike to work every morning (my form of reading the newspaper while having breakfast?), and one of the panelist on TWIT made a lot of sense, although I can’t recall it verbatim (and I’m too lazy to listen through a one-hour long podcast to find the exact quote)….

Google’s Open Handset Alliance is exciting, because geeky programmers around the world just all simultaneously orgasmed and are now struggling to hold their drool inside what is presumed, to be their oral cavity. To be frank, that was not my first response to the announcement. I had a really, really busy day at work when Google hit the press; so my first impression was, “Oh, there are some new info on the Googlephone, great!”

It was another day of soul-searching later, that I said to myself, “Wait, is that all there is to this news? That’s it? Really? You mean, I didn’t miss anything? I mean.. I combed through my RSS reader for hours and hours looking for more detailed information, something more exciting, something with actual substance…. and… really? That’s it?” For at least a few hours, I thought I was caught in some sort of temporal anomaly and was missing vital information that Google has apparently announced to the entire world minus little ol’ me.

The truth is rather, disappointing? Underwhelming? Indeed, the news outlets were positive on Day 1, and almost all universally speculative and introspective on Day 2. How many times have we been promised a “mobile phone OS based on Linux & open-source”? This harkens back to the Linux PDA days, and we all know how that went. The only difference between Google’s announcement and all the other dozen open-source mobile OS initiative, is that Google has a lot of money. Shitloads of money. Certainly a lot…

Since I got my iPhone, I’ve been buying a lot of TV shows on iTunes, so I can carry them with me and watch them wherever I am. Most of the time that watching is done when I’m in my room, right before bed (I don’t have a TV in the bedroom right now). However, the freedom of watching a TV show or a movie when I’m out eating dinner (by myself, of course, that would just be rude in the face of other company), or waiting in line at some place, is quite priceless.

So I was a little disappointed when NBC decided to have a bit spat with iTunes, and decided to pull all of their shows off of iTunes by the end of the year. What really gets to me, is how senseless the arguments the media companies are raising against Apple. This doesn’t pertain to just NBC, but all media companies dealing with iTunes as a whole.

Think back to when Universal was negotiating with Apple for their new music agreement. Their argument was that they’re not making enough money from iTunes Music Store, they want more control over pricing. Similar arguments has been brought up over the years with Apple multiple times, and they’re all along the lines of more control over DRM, more control over pricing, more profit for the record labels. Time and time again they insist that they can’t make enough money from iTunes Music Store alone.

Yet, look what happened these past few months….

When I first got my iPhone, I noticed that some of the black looked weird on video playback. I thought it was just a problem with all iPhone screens. Then the reports about iPod Touch’s “negative black” screen came out, I got suspicious that some models of the iPhone exhibited the same issue as well. Seeing Engadget’s post about iPhone display problem yesterday confirmed my suspicion.

I immediately scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar, went in and exchanged my iPhone after work. The concierge at the Genius Bar was taken by surprise; he said it was the first time he’s seen this on the iPhone, although it was seen plenty of times on the iPod Touch already. He promptly exchanged my iPhone, and I walked out the Apple Store within 10 minutes of my appointment with a brand new iPhone and a much better screen.

The customer support experience I’ve had with Apple has always been very good. Although I do wish that I didn’t have to do that with almost every first generation Apple product I’ve purchased. I have exchanged an iPod Nano that couldn’t play Apple Lossless formats (even though it played everything else just fine), older iPods where the hard drive failed after less than a few weeks of usage; and my Macbook Pro’s power button has sunken in, which means I will have to take that to the Apple store eventually down the road.

Despite how well their products are designed, it’s also pretty widely known…

After two weeks of being an iPhone owner, I have to say this is by far the best experience I’ve ever had with any phone. Although iPhone is still not perfect, it is closer to achieve that nirvana of consumer electronic than any other device I’ve ever laid hands on (a close second, would be Tivo).

I’ve ran into a few annoyances so far with the iPhone:

• I missed being able to manually manage music. Even though creating a playlist for the iPhone is still pretty much the same thing, it just creates one extra step that I didn’t have to deal with before.
• I’m guessing the above change was made due to the “always disconnected except for sync” nature of the iPhone. I think Apple realized people will need to answer their iPhone at any given time, they can’t wait for the “disconnect first” method of previous iPod and all USB mass storage devices. So unless you are syncing, the iPhone is always disconnected. I think they could’ve created some sort of logic to handle manual management as well… but they just didn’t have the time to do that, so manual management is out.
• As a result of the above change, USB storage mode is turned off, so you can’t use the iPhone as a hard drive. Well, not unless you have other apps to hack it, I suppose.
• For whatever reason, iPhone also do not charge from USB when the computer is turned off. My previous iPods can charge from powered USB hubs

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FYI, I still don’t have an iPhone yet. Why?

Despite of how much I love the iPhone, I still don’t believe in signing  a two year contract for AT&T/Cingular. I’ve been a customer with Cingular back since when they were PacBell PCS, I have no reason to be locked down to a contract to prove my loyalty to a carrier. Especially since the iPhone isn’t subsidized at all. If signing a contract meant I can save a few hundred dollars, then at least the value proposition is existent. There is absolutely no reason to a sign a contract for a phone that will inevitably be unlocked (and probably be available at the same price).

Service issues aside, the iPhone itself is simply one of the most brilliant consumer product ever made. It is a device that will completely reshape the mobile phone market. The problem is, the other phone manufacturers seem to be thinking, “Wow, the iPhone has a touchscreen, we must all move to touchscreen-only phones as well.” I’m not saying that iPhone’s touchscreen isn’t brilliant, but it isn’t the end-all solution to the woes of the mobile phone design we’ve seen in the past decade.

There are already several manufacturers that’s decided to manufacture their own versions of a touchscreen phone. Some of which has been offering touchscreen capability for years (for example, most of HTC’s Windows Mobile based phones). The problem with these phones isn’t whether or not your buttons are placed on a screen or engraved into a rubber…

Courtesy of Time Magazine online:

The iPhone breaks two basic axioms of consumer technology. One, when you take an application and put it on a phone, that application must be reduced to a crippled and annoying version of itself. Two, when you take two devices—such as an iPod and a phone—and squish them into one, both devices must necessarily become lamer versions of themselves. The iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and a mini-Internet computer all at once, and contrary to Newton—who knew a thing or two about apples—they all occupy the same space at the same time, but without taking a hit in performance. In a way iPhone is the wrong name for it. It’s a handheld computing platform that just happens to contain a phone.

Read the whole article here.

This year’s Macworld keynote was all about the iPhone, and a bit about appletv. Despite that the next release of OS X, Leopard, is pretty much around the corner (anywhere between now and summer?), there had been very little talk about Mac at all.

Part of that may just be Apple is very satisfied with where Mac hardware & software is right now, and any model changes & upgrades wouldn’t require such a big announcement at Macworld. I think part of the reason may also be article like this one in Information Week:

“Microsoft had two serious issues. First, they had to make this update of Windows revolutionary enough that it came close to justifying the delay. Second, they had to come up with something that would stand up well with its main competitor in the desktop OS market, Mac OS X. Have they succeeded at both? I’d argue that the former’s almost a non-issue: Vista will sell well, because the world won’t have a choice. As far as the latter, well, probably, but you’d be hard-pressed to say Vista’s better than Mac OS X.”

“Windows is…well, Windows is very eager to tell you what’s going on. Constantly. Plug something in, and you get a message. Unplug something and you get a message. If you’re on a network that’s having problems staying up, you’ll get tons of messages telling you this. It’s rather like dealing with an overexcited Boy Scout…who has a lifetime supply of chocolate-covered espresso beans.”

“This kind of

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