How to live WITHOUT the iPhone

In my iPhone 2.0 review, I mentioned that, “…the iPhone isn’t the first (device) to mobilize and synchronize your life, however before the iPhone it took about 3 devices to do this.” So what are those 3 other devices, and how can you live without the iPhone? Right now I’m having to manage to live without the iPhone (because right now I just can’t afford the phone or the plan), however it is possible to manage without it - while mobilizing your life and keeping it all in sync. First, lets look at the equipment: I have a cell phone, a PDA, and finally a Cell Phone.

So first we have the cell phone, in the iPhone its definitely a core component (after all it is the iPhone), nonetheless any phone will do the same phone functions that the iPhone does (except visual voice mail) and in most cases - more (like MMS). As great as the iPhone is there are benefits to not using the iPhone as a phone, to put it simply; with other phones you have a TON more freedom. With the iPhone you’re virtually stuck with AT&T (or whatever carrier the iPhone is sold for in your country). Most phones do have internet, unfortunately to the iPhones advantage they only offer that dreadful “mobile internet.” Still with the increasing amount of people wanting to surf the web on the go, an increasing number of websites are creating mobile versions for normal cellphones. These mobile versions aren’t stunning, but they definitely get the job done. One word of caution though, check with your carrier to see how much they charge for data, it might be cheaper to go with an unlimited data plan. So getting a regular cell phone might not only be cheaper for you, but better suited to your needs.

The next piece of equipment that the iPhone “replaces” is the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). The two subcategories underneath the PDA umbrella are Palm Pilots and Pocket PC’s. However, since this is primarily an OS X focused blog and I haven’t spent much time with Pocket PC’s, I’m just going to be looking at Palm Pilots in this article. The only downside to Palm is that their software feels kind of outdated and old, but besides that it does what it needs to and even a bit more. Setting up your palm is pretty simple, but there’s a feature within Mac OS X that helps you keep all your stuff in sync. In iSync (that program that used to manage a lot of your stuff until most of its tasks got separated into other programs and we all kinda forgot about) there’s a feature that lets you enable iSync on a Palm device (pictured below).

 After you click on the option in the menu bar iSync will set up everything for you. It’s amazingly simple and painless. 

After its all set up you can select what calendars and contacts you’d like to sync with iSync, then everything on your palm with be in sync with iCal (even to-do’s) and Address Book. You don’t have to do anything after that, when you sync your palm pilot with Hot Sync, iSync will do everything on its own, you don’t need to start anything. There are also a ton of different applications you can find on the web (and on Palm’s online store) to put on your Palm device and help you mobilize and synchronize your life even more. One application that came with my handheld, which I highly recommend, is Documents to Go (found here) which lets you take your Word documents and Excel Documents with you. The only downside to this app is that it crashes if you export from Pages. If you don’t have Microsoft Word on your computer than you can choose to use Bean as an alternative (which is what I’ve been using to write some of these articles on the go) and it works great (check out the review here). Even thought the iPhone can view documents like this app can, it still can’t edit them. I, personally, use Palm’s Tungsten E2, but Palm also has a few other options out.

Then finally we have the iPod, there’s not really a whole lot to say about getting an iPod instead of an iPhone, except its difference in storage and price. So those are just a few tips on how you can live without the iPhone, even though its still an amazing and revolutionary product, we don’t all have to have it.

iPhone 2.0 Review

My life is completely digital, and as most of you would agree, it seems like I’m always looking for a new way to make my life easier. One of the most popular ways to simplify your life right now can be done by doing 2 things. First, making your life mobile: usually with small gadgets like sub-notebooks, smart-phones, PDA’s, and more. The second way is by integrating your life - keeping all of your stuff in sync. Now Apple has created a way to do this: the iPhone. The iPhone not only helps you make your life mobile, but it also intigrates it. Sure the iPhone isn’t the first to mobilize and synchronize your life, however before the iPhone it took about 3 devices to do this. This is one of the things that’s made the iPhone the successful product that it is today. Well now with the iPhone 2.0 software, they’ve managed to make that even better.

First off, you have the App Store.   This has made the iPhone into a legitimate mobile-computer. Even though the original iPhone software had tons of PDA like qualilies, the ability to add 3rd party applications really separated the two. However with this app store the iPhone has now topped PDA’s (in this aspect).   Not just because it can install apps, but the quality and power of these apps. For example normal PDA apps are usually slow, ugly, and pretty useless. So, with this in mind, the iPhone manages to pull ahead. Also, on the iPhone you have the ability to download these apps anywhere you have coverage (unless they’re bigger than 10MB then you must use wi-fi). Another thing that the majority of PDA’s can’t do. So the App Store has really helped people continue to mobilize their lives, while keeping it on one small device.

So the App Store definitely improves on the iPhone’s ability to make your work life mobile, but what about keeping it all in sync? Well, when the iPhone was originally released it would sync exactly like it does now. However, if your appointment changed or got cancelled it wouldn’t show up until your next sync. Thats why Apple imbedded push-sevices into the new software. Apple first targeted the business market by adding Microsoft Exchange support. However, Apple felt that push is something the average consumer should also have access to so they introduced Mobile Me. Mobile Me is Apple’s Dot-Mac replacement; basically what it does is give you a lot of the features you’d have with Enterprise - just on a personal level instead of a business level. It’s still $99 a year (which breaks down to like $8.25 a month - even though you pay yearly). So it will push all your contacts, calendars, and mail accounts. (Note: Mobile Me also has more features than the ones mentioned above, but they weren’t really relevant to the 2.0 review - these features will be talked about in other articles.)

Apple manages to pack in one more feature that lets you sync and mobilize your life even more: Email Attachment Support. This new feature lets you open iWork and Microsoft Power Point files. This is a great feature, because now you get to view your important work documents that you might need on the go. The only downside to this great new feature is that you can’t edit these documents. I’d love to see Apple come out with an app on the App store that’s basically like “Pages to go” so to speak (and they could easily charge about $20 for it).

Then of course Apple threw in a few extra features to make the iPhone easier to use: including mass move and delete of email, contact search, image saving (from both email and web), and a scientific calculator mode (when you rotate the phone into landscape mode). However, the last thing they did in the 2.0 update was continue to spread their horizons by adding a ton of new languages into the iPhone (you can find a full list on Apple’s site).

So in conclusion, the iPhone 2.0 update is packed full of features and a very welcome update. Are there still things that need fixed/improving? Yes. However I think that Apple definitely knows what they’re doing and how to keep improving their already great platform.

The 2.0 Update is free for all iPhone users and $10 for iPod Touch owners.

Note: I don’t want any comments saying “why do you keep saying iPhone 2.0 if its for both the touch and the iPhone?!?!” Well, Apple actually calls it the iPhone 2.0 software (even for the iPod Touch it’s called the “iPhone 2.0 software for iPod Touch”)

Software Review: Bean

Watch the video review here

Download Bean at www.bean-osx.com

I give it a 5/5 Easily and recommend it for ALL OSX users!

Coming Soon!

Hey guys I wanted to keep you guys up to date by letting you know what’s coming up. I haven’t been taking a break, I’ve been working on some big articles that I hope you’ll enjoy.

However, the next few articles (about 4 or so) all relate to each other - so stay tuned because I’m going to give you some tips on what’s out there and some cheaper alternatives. It’s some pretty cool stuff if you’re trying to sync and organize your life. These articles will begin to roll out next Monday (July 21, 2008).

So once again, stay tuned, and be sure to read some past articles if you want -  leave comments - that kinda thing

~Chris~

PS - I’m going to keep this series of articles in their own category so you can find them easily 

Just a thought: Mobile-Me/Dot Mac

I’ve always thought that the whole $99 a year bill for Dot-Mac (now Mobile Me) was dredfully expensive, however Apple could REALLY improve their customer base if they advirtised it as $8.25 a month instaed of $99 dollars a year it would just seem a WHOLE LOT CHEAPER for example $8 is cheaper than a normal montly texting plan (most are about $10 a month). So yeah that’s not acutally a bad deal Apple, I’d just change the way you advirtise it

How Leopard Changed Me

So I wanted to just take a moment to talk about Leopard, and how it’s changed the way I use my computer. There are a good amount of things I could mention on this subject, but there’s one in particular I wanted to talk about today in particular, and that’s backing up. Before getting leopard I never backed up, for 2 reasons: 1. I didn’t have an external hard drive until right before I upgraded to Leopard 2. It was too much work. However, enter Time Machine, and I now have backups back until November 07’ (I’m typing this in July of 08’). Before then I knew that I should backup and that I’d be totally done for if my laptop were to die (considering I have a 13GB/3,000 song music library, and a few irreplaceable files). However, it never really made a large difference because I didn’t know how much having a backup would change the way I feel about them. Now that I have backups, its made me feel so secure in the way I compute. Having the security in knowing that if something were to ever happen (God-forbid) I’d be secure and within a few hours having everything back. Unfortunately, with technology it goes bad after time and hard disks fail, so if you ever have some cash that you can spare, definitely get a external hard drive (I got my 500GB Western Digital MyBook for about $129) and start backing up. It’s definitely worth it, and Time Machine makes it so that you don’t even have to do anything, it takes care of it all for you.

I hope all of you had a great 4th of July weekend, and will continue to read and comment on “Tech Talk” as I get back into the swing of things.

BTW - I might right more on how Leopard has improved my computing experience, but who knows we’ll see.

iSlayer’s new widget: Organized

So the oh-so-amazing widget maker “iSlayer” (makers of iStat Pro, etc) has released a new widget called “Organized” (leopard only),basically to sum it up really quick - it replaces the World Clock and iCal widgets in dashboard, combines them, and then adds 2 more features. The interface of the widget is that clean iSlayer UI that we all know and love (at least if you use iStat Pro you do). It’s a calendar with 4 tabs under it: Clocks, Notes, Events, To Do. So basically, its kinda like iCal at a glance! The clock tab is simply the world clock, and you can add more clocks onto it, you don’t have to open a whole new widget, just to have another clock.

World Clock and “Organized”

The notes tab is the notes feature you find in Mail, simply put into widget form. The only downside to this is that it doesn’t sync with mail; so you wont find your mail notes in this widget and vise versa. However, it does borrow from the iPhone interface a tad which is nice. Also, if you’re not a big fan of the Marker Felt font that is featured in notes you can turn that off in the widget’s prefs.

Notes in “Organized”

The Events tab does however sync with iCal, and shows the events that are today/upcoming if you’re on the today view or if you click on a date it’ll show you the events for that day. You can click on an event to see its details, however you can’t create new events in “Organized” (they do give you a button to launch iCal though).

“iCal” (widget) and “Organized”

Finally you have the To Do tab. It does exactly what you’d expect it to, however you can add new to do’s and a new calendar to ad the todo’s to. You can also complete and delete to do’s and view their details.

To Do in “Organized”

So basically its a great widget, and I’ll probably adapt to it really soon, however I just think its odd that you can create stuff in Notes, but not sync them with Mail. Then not create stuff in Events, even though that IS synced with iCal. Also you can create to do’s AND CALENDARS in this widget, which are also synced. (Not sure why you’d need to create a whole new calendar for your todo’s at random.) So basically they just need to do syncing and creating in all the sections and then it’ll be flawless. So I give it a 4.5 out of 5 (simply because it has a great interface and its easy to use, it just needs complete functionality). Its a great widget and you can download at www.islayer.com (once again, its leopard only folks)

Re: iPhone Physical Keyboard

So I wanted to say a quick word about this whole “physical keyboard on the iPhone” rumor. I really hope it doesn’t happen, I like the virutal keyboard, its clean and effective. Sure its a little different, but so was the iPod. I like the fact that the buttons can change as needed and that its not in the way. So, no I really hope they wont do it. What do you think about this rumor? Leave your comments.

MacBook Design Change

Usually if one little thing changes when it comes to product design, its all over the Apple blogs. However, I ran across this yesterday (on apple’s website), and no one seems to have reported it anywhere. Apperently, they’ve changed the way the back vent is designed.

This is good considering the MacBooks are known for having some heat issues, however I can’t help but feel somethings going to get stuck in there…..hopefully nothing ever will, but it seems like this will definately help.

WWDC Recap - Finally!

About 3 weeks ago Apple held its annual conference at Moscone West, where Apple C.E.O. Steve Jobs would take the stage to commence the weeks activities. He opened by saying that they were going to be talking about iPhone that morning. Then after lunch they’d be having a session with Bertrand Serlet who will introduce Snow Leopard.
The keynote started with a talk about the iPhone 2.0 Software. First topic: Enterprise support in the new software. To sum it all up really quick; this means than an employee can do push forwarding/active sync with their business or a business with their employees. Also adding support for VoIP, etc etc, To the average consumer this means nothing, to businesses and their employees this means a lot.
Next in the program came a long talk about the iPhone SDK (Software Developers Kit), if you don’t know what this is, this lets third-parties build applications for the iPhone. Scott Forstall (SVP of iPhone Software) started by giving a run through of the SDK for those who may have missed it back in March. There wasn’t a lot to this part, just him showing how quick and easy it is to build an App in the SDK. Then he let some various developers show off their creations, starting with Sega. Sega had presented the first stages of their game for the iPhone, Super Monkey Ball back in March, and simply showed how it had evolved since then. Then eBay showed off their application for the iPhone; which I found useless because first off, I don’t use eBay at all. Also, I don’t really think many people are going to spend time bidding on items through their phone. Yes, I understand the iPhone is a mobile computer so to speak, but it still seems pretty useless.
Then Loopt, TypePad, and the Mobile News Productions made their presentations. Loopt, a social network that uses the iPhone’s “location base” to find friends nearby. This was the beginning of developers talking about “location base” (besides when S. Forestall mentioned it) which hinted at GPS in the (rumored) new iPhone. TypePad presented a nice looking blogging application, but I wouldn’t use it simply because I don’t want to have to pay for a blogging service. The Mobile News Network application uses your location to find news thats relative to you, you can also view the photos and video that are related to those articles.
Thats when Pangea Software took the stage, at first I seemed excited for their presentation because, Pangea is a Mac game developer. However, I lost interest when they mentioned they were simply porting some Mac games over to the iPhone, both really boring. The first was Cro Mag Rally (a game which was a big deal when OX 10.1 was released), the second was a puzzle game named Enigmo (which looked pretty boring to me). (All the bloggers who I pay attention to were saying they were bored back when Sega presented, and now it was just plain dreadful.) Then this guy came on stage who made an application called “Band” for the iphone which lets you play software instruments on the iPhone - interesting but still nothing too exciting. Then a man from MLB came up and presented a baseball App for the iPhone which had some really cool features, considering this was being run on a phone (for example, you can watch the game almost as its happening; its like a minute and a half behind he said). Finally, there were 2 more developers who presented, an anatomy application for medical students, and another game (which looked really cool but it seems like it’d be really hard to navigate on a phone). Then Scott closed with Apples push notification solution which lets Apps notify without running in the background (which would suck up CPU power).
Finally Steve, came back on stage and gave us a quick run through of the new features that will be in the 2.0 software which are: contact search, iWork and Office support (so you can read documents sent to you via email; you can’t edit to my current knowledge), Bulk delete/move of eMail messages, the ability to save email images, also when you turn the iPhone landscape while in calculator it transforms into an advanced calculator, it now has parental controls, and finally tons of language support. Jobs closed by saying that the new software will be free for iPhone users, and $9.95 (USD) for iPod Touch owners.
Then Steve said that they had something new for us, finally in anticipation of the rumored iPhone 3G we were sitting on the edge of our seats. However, we were disappointed again, because he asked Phil Schiller up on stage to introduce: Mobile Me. I started watching Apple’s stock as it fell due to disappointed Apple fanboys who were anticipating the iPhone 3G. Basically Mobile Me is dot-Mac’s replacement and is the same as Enterprise except its for the average person and not business executives. It simply keeps your iPhone in sync with your computers (both windows and Mac) and vise versa. So that if some of your information changes, such as a calendar appointment or an address change, all your devises are updated so that you always have the latest, up to date information. I think Mobile Me is a nice replacement for dot-Mac, and its very useful, but that $99 a year price tag is just too high for me.
At this point there was only 15 minutes left in the keynote, and Apple stock had dropped about 10 dollars. Thats whens Steve started talking more about the new goals for iPhone, the first one: 3G. That’s when the crowd went nuts, and Jobs unveiled the iPhone 3G. The new iPhone features a black (or white) plastic back, with recessed headphone jack, and metal buttons (the volume rocker and silent switch), besides those 3 things; there aren’t many cosmetic changes to the iPhone (thank goodness). Obviously, the iPhone 3G has 3G internet support, which is supposedly just a hair slower than actual wi-fi, which is amazing if thats true for everywhere (its not a surprise when you’re getting good speeds in a big city). The iPhone also packs in “real” GPS and better battery life. Apple also says that iPhone will be available in 70 countries by the end of the year, which is a remarkable feat.
However, the most amazing part of the iPhone 3G (at least in my opinion) is the remarkable price drop. When the iPhone was originally released, the iPhone 8GB was $599, the current (original) iPhone is $399, and now its only $199, The 16GB model is available for only $299, which is so amazing. Sure, it seems like there are way more strings attached, but whatever I’ll take it!
So enough of iPhone and the keynote, now I need to talk about OS X (10.6) “Snow Leopard.” Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Okay, maybe I’m not giving it a fair chance, but c’mon I posted a blog about this in April. 10.5 is not mature enough to be passed off for 10.6, however in a way Apple justifies its move to 10.6. What Apple has done is they’ve put a hold on the new features in Snow Leopard and focuses directly on performance, this is good, because Leopard definitely needs some improvement. So, in a way I’m all for Snow Leopard (and I like Apple’s play on words with how they make the name alike Leopard but not exactly Leopard), but at the same time can’t help but feel that this shouldn’t be a “major” upgrade (meaning it should be like 10.5.5 instead of 10.6). So thats my little WWDC recap. Sorry its late, and sorry its so long.