Saturday, June 30th, 2007

John Gruber’s initial impression:

Overall day one impression: the iPhone is 95 percent amazing, 5 percent maddening. I’m just blown away by how nice it is – very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun.

Also:

I’m getting like 165 Kbps on EDGE, down at the shore. Either AT&T really did roll out a network upgrade or those EDGE doubters were idiots.

And Jason Kottke says:

I’m kind of amazed that this thing lives up to the expectations I had for it. It’s an amazing device.

Stephen Frank’s thoughts:

It is like a piece of advanced alien technology sent back five years in time. There’s nothing else like it, and just like the iPod, every hardware manufacturer in the world is going to try to mimic it, with comically tragic results. Shiny hardware is not enough — it’s the software, stupid.

Dan Benjamin also has some thoughts on his Twitter page:

EDGE is pretty decent, used it quite a bit yesterday and it wasn’t bad - certainly not as bad as the critics made it seem

just want to say that the iPhone keyboard had pretty much a 0 learning curve for me, it just worked as expected (or rather, better than)

It’s looking like the only real problem for most people is going to be the network speed. I’m anxious to see more real-world testimonials of how day-to-day use is.

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Posted on June 30th, 2007 | 3 Comments »

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

I just heard Apple is releasing a phone tomorrow! Some of the reasons I won’t be taking the day off work to buy one:

1. AIM/iChat Support. I send IMs more than I talk on a phone. I’ve seen some nice proof-of-concept AIM chat ideas that use the web, but I’d like to see how the IM scene pans out.
2. I’d like to see how slow this web browsing experience really is. I’ve heard EDGE is pretty bad.
3. While the reviews of the touchpad are pretty solid, I’d like to give it a go myself before taking the plunge.
4. No copy/paste of text…
5. No MMS (picture messages) - I’d like to also see how easy it is going to be to take a picture with the iPhone, then email it to, say, my flickr account. Hopefully things like that are a fairly painless process.
6. No voice dialing
7. I’d like to see how easy it is to be playing music, browsing the web, then decide you want to change tracks. I’d think you’d have to go ‘home’, then open iTunes, then change the track, then go back to the web. Does Safari stay open? hmm.
8. No Flash support
9. Little details like, do I sell my current iPod? Do I have my iPhone and my iPod?
10. I already have a phone. Yep.

Note: I will own an iPhone very shortly, don’t worry about that. These are just some of the reasons I’m not one of the hordes of folks camping out to get my hands on a phone. I’d like to wait for the second generation, or at least give it a shot in person to see how much I like it. If I can hold out until they switch over to a higher-speed network, I think that’d make the decision to purchase a lot easier. Tomorrow, and really this weekend in general, is going to be nuts. I pity any Apple store or AT&T employee.

Edit: More anecdotal evidence of improved EDGE speeds before the iPhone launch. This could definitely sway my decision.

Posted on June 28th, 2007 | 6 Comments »

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

30 days with ubuntu. - Part 2 of 4.

Click here to see my previous entry.

The 1505n in general is a really nice computer, especially for the money I spent on it. Here are the specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5300 (2MB/1.73GHz/533MHz)
15.4 Inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WSXGA+
1GB, DDR2, 533MHz 2 Dimm
256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 TurboCache
80GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Ubuntu Edition version 7.04
24X Combo CD-RW/DVD
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/g Mini Card (54Mbps)
85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

All in all, a pretty zippy machine, for the type of stuff I generally do around the house. It feels really sturdy, has an amazingly clear screen (1680×1050 resolution), and the keyboard ‘feels’ nice. It has a nice tactile feedback and so far, typing has been a pleasure on it. The battery life is somewhere between 5-6 hours under normal usage so far - the battery indicator initially reports I have almost 7 hours left, and degrades from there. But at some point, around 2 hours to go or so, it drops drastically and warns me I have 30 minutes or so left. Not sure if that’s a GNOME bug, or just a kernel issue that will be hammered out over time. But still, the battery life is stellar. It also doesn’t get too terribly hot on my lap when I’ve used it outside. The fans rarely have to kick on, and only for short periods of time.

(more…)

Posted on June 23rd, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

“And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said ‘not at this point … you don’t have any’.

It is imperative that Habes Corpus is restored as soon as possible, and I’m really glad that the Congress is working to do just that. I find it ironic that we are somehow carrying the moral and ethical torch in this “war on terror” yet we treat even our own citizens with brutality and disrespect.

Posted on June 22nd, 2007 | 7 Comments »

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

Your next computer will be a big ass table.

Posted on June 21st, 2007 | 1 Comment »