I tried to throw it a curveball by entering Dengue Fever, my favorite Cambodian Psychadelic Surf-Pop band, thinking, OK Pandora, what are you going to do with that? Pandora came through, not only identifying Dengue Fever, but serving up The Concretes, The Dials, and others - a bunch of bands I hadn’t heard before, but liked quite a bit.
Music you like, but haven’t heard before? It doesn’t get much better than that.
What’s at the top of my list for the next round of features and upgrades to the iPhone?
I don’t think it is cut and paste. I’ve had a few instances when a little cutting and pasting would be useful, but not too many. I like how the iPhone integrates its apps in such a way that cut and paste isn’t always necessary. For example, I recently went into Google maps to search for the local REI. From there, I was able to instantly pop over to Safari to visit REI’s website and look up their hours. Had I wanted to, I could have popped the address right into my contacts. I much prefer this integrated functionality to having to cut and paste each piece of information between apps.
I’m more looking forward to Notes syncing on the iPhone, or the option to have a landscape keyboard in mail and instant messaging. How about you? What are your hopes and dreams for the next set of updates?
You knew it already, your iPhone is amazing: a phone, a video iPod, a web browser. You’ve read the news on the bus, replied to email in line for a movie, taken pictures, made phone calls, and recently, even sent text messages to many friends at once.
But wait, there’s more! Now, thanks to Pettitte Mallette’s iPhone ruler, our Safari web app of the week, you can measure things with it too! (as long as the things you want to measure are somewhat small).
I haven’t actually used the ruler yet, but I like the idea enough that I’m keeping it on my home screen. Well, for now, on page 2 of my home screen.
If you haven’t guessed already, the iPhone ruler does only one thing - it puts a 2 1/2 inch (or 6 1/2 centimeter) ruler on your screen. The developers promise this is just the beginning:
In spring 2008 we will replace this ruler with a new one that will transform your iPhone or iPod Touch into an amazing device.
Don’t try this at home - I accidentally ran my earbuds through the washing machine - and fortunately, they survived! They were a bit ragged afterwards, but they still worked - even the inline mic/button.
Still yet - I don’t suggest it. I did the same thing once with a pair of iPod earbuds, and they never played a sound again.
For me, the most exciting thing about the recent set of updates announced yesterday at MacWorld was that they were, in fact, updates! This never happened on my MotoRazr! If there are any lingering doubts, these announcements prove that the iPhone’s evolving feature set make it much more like your computer than a cellphone or portable music player. This set of updates, Apple’s future updates, plus the additions of third party development starting next month, will add up to one exciting year for the iPhone!
My favorite new features - WebClips, which will add quick access to any Safari Apps, and multiple recipient text-messaging, which will make it easier than ever before to bring people together at your favorite burrito shop.
What are your favorite updates? What are you looking forward to in future updates from Apple and third party developers?
I knew that I wanted something slim, something svelte, something that wouldn’t add bulk to my trim and elegant iPhone. After looking at quite a few options, I went for the Incase, in black. At first, I wasn’t so keen on the topo-lines on the back, but they’ve grown on me. I’ve been impressed with how easy it is to grip the phone, and use the buttons. It doesn’t obstruct the camera in any way. It is slightly more difficult to use the “mute” button on the side of the phone, but it isn’t a big nuisance. I also like how the case helps the phone “stick” to flat surfaces. I’m in the habit of putting it on the dashboard of the car during a speaker-phone call, and so far this has worked out just fine.
If you do go with this case, you’ll need something to protect the iPhone’s screen. I went with three simple “matte” screen protectors they had at the Apple store. I’ve been real happy with them so far, and they’ve saved the screen from at least one nasty scrape.
The iPhone’s touch-screen keyboard is certainly slick - but it takes some getting used to.
The biggest adjustment for me has been the need to plow ahead through the inevitable typos and let the iPhone software guess what I’m typing and fix the spelling as I go. It has been pointed out that the iPhone doesn’t really have a spell-checker, per se. It makes guesses about what I’m trying to type, but doesn’t always catch obvious typos. Also, if I ever accidentally “accept” a typo, by clicking the little “x” to ignore a suggestion, that typo itself seems to become a future suggestion. Yikes. Adaptive and smart, but perhaps a bit too much so!
So, I’m doing my best to unlearn spelling, trust suggestions, and not accidentally accept too many typos. I’m also finding that I’m using the iPhone primarily for “inbound” communication like email and RSS, and perhaps a bit less for outbound email and blogging. We’ll see if this changes as I get used to the keyboard.
Related - The omnipresent Pogue has a nice list of iPhone Keyboard Secrets that is woth a look, including this one that has helped me out:
“The suggestion feature can be especially useful when it comes to contractions, which are normally clumsy to type because you have to switch to a secondary, punctuation keyboard to find the apostrophe. So you can deliberately leaving out the apostrophe. Just type “im,” “dont,” “cant” and so on. The iPhone proposes “I’m,” “don’t,” or “can’t,” so that you can just tap the Space bar to fix the word and continue.”
Nice tip!
What sorts of things are you typing on the iPhone? Got other iPhone keyboarding tricks? Let us know in the comments!
I was very happy to see this note over on iPhone Alley saying that iPhone note syncing will arrive later this month with Leopard. I’ll finally be able to put some fast loading bus schedules on my iPhone! They bring up one worry though: “This may or may not require a .Mac account.” Yikes! I hope not!
I was pretty bummed to see today’s report from Greenpeace, confirming suspicions that the iPhone, despite the slick design, is not the greenest consumer electronics product out there.
Greenpeace found that the iPhone “contains toxic brominated compounds (indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVC.”
Earlier this year, in a promise to bring us “A Greener Apple” Jobs wrote, “Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in its products by the end of 2008.” 2008 is coming up fairly quickly - does this mean we’ll see a greening of the iPhone some time next year? A complete overhaul?
Apple products always look sleek and clean. What can we do to make them green, too?
For music lovers, this has to be the iPhone’s first killer app. You give Pandora Radio an artist you like, and it dishes up a personal radio station, based on a particularly sophisticated analysis of the music.
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