Oops, I Did It Again

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As you can see from the picture above, I pulled the trigger on an iPhone. Yes I’m a sucker for sexy gadgets, but I also had a few practical reasons for picking up the handset.

The obvious one (given who I am and what I cover) is video playback. A decent chunk of my downtime these days is spent in flight – I intend to use TiVoToGo and Apple’s movie rentals. Starting tomorrow. The less obvious reason is visual voicemail. I took a look at GrandCentral (thanks, Eric!), but I use just one phone number for personal, work, and blog calls. I need to be more efficient in prioritizing and listening to voicemail… plus, having a heads up as to when I might need a pen handy.

Three software updates in 8 months also makes me feel good, that this will be an evolving platform. Compared to the last phone I spent my own money on (Blackjack)… which hasn’t seen that promised WM6 build. (I’m not the only one still waiting.)

24 thoughts on “Oops, I Did It Again”

  1. I’m not quite ready to research a new pair of earbuds, so I picked up the smallest adapter at the Apple Store. It’s not horrible, but I’ll probably need something new in the near future.

    I’ve got basic access to my work email which is good enough for now. (Especially, since I have multiple phones.) I’m hopeful that real Exchange support will be coming with 1.1.4 in a couple of months. Speaking of mail, I turned off Yahoo push – I just get too much mail and I want to maximize battery life.

    So far I’m missing three things: I keep trying to swipe entire words or sentences with my finger to copy & paste them. But the feature doesn’t exist yet. The web browser is so good, I expect Flash support. iChat!

  2. Great, Dave! I hope you enjoy it.

    Now you can help push Sling to make a SlingPlayer on the iPhone. I’ve been waiting for that since I got my Slingbox a few months ago. I’m hoping once February arrives one will be just around the corner.

  3. I still have an IOU from my wife for my birthday in October. She wanted to get me an iPhone, but I asked her to wait til V2–hopefully before my next BDay.

    When better widget support happens, the NowPlaying widget for TiVo would really be amazing (being able to view and download form your Tivo(s) via WiFi).

  4. i was hopeful for a wm6 upgrade of the original Q, but i have lost all hope on that front. my contract with verizon is up Feb. and im hoping they come out with their own BB curve by then, otherwise im off the cingular…

  5. Nice list, Stephen. After only a short time with the device I agree many of those would be useful additions/corrections. Particularly – revealing the hidden contacts and incorporating copy+paste would be nice. I’ll take Flash and iChat too. Doubt we’re going to get a hardware upgrade to fix that headphone jack, though. ;) I may just end up replacing my current Shures with a new model. We shall see… I have another complaint to add – too many clicks to get to/from my Yahoo IMAP Inbox to my Sling IMAP/Exchange Inbox.

    I was in a rush to get to a work event this AM and failed to mention other variables in choosing the iPhone – it has one of the nicest looking screens (touchscreen or otherwise) for mobile video. The only other small device I have with a large, bright screen like that is the PSP. But, as I always say I’d rather carry fewer devices… Also, after living with threaded SMS on the Treo 750 for several months any new phone I purchase must have that feature.

    Alex, I’d be afraid to manage from the phone in case I fat-finger something. Does it allow posting iPhone pics, though? That could be useful when I see something interesting/useful while I’m mobile…

  6. Caution about TivoToGo:

    If you’re on windows, everything is great.

    If you’re trying to use Leopard and move tivo shows to iPhone, be prepared for a broken Roxio conversion process that leaves audio out of sync with video. Neither Tivo nor Roxio is claiming responsibility for the problem (which seems to be Leopard-only), and are now actively ignoring requests for if/when there might be a fix.

  7. Petey, is this even after the patch/update that came out a few weeks back? Hm, I suppose I could give TiVo Decode Manager a try or just queue everything up and convert on Windows. Given this unplanned all day event, I’m probably not going to have time to transfer and transcode before I fly out tomorrow anyhow… Will have to check out those movie rentals.

  8. If it were, I wouldn’t have used my own money on this. ;) Ask me again after the SDK is released and we’ve had a chance to study it. And to keep things in perspective, it took us about a year to produce (requirements, engineering, QA, beta, etc) the Palm client. We’re probably sharper and quicker these days, but producing a quality video app is not trivial.

  9. You folks don’t seem to remember that it took a lifetime (well, that of a bee perhaps) to get Slingplayer for Mac. SP for iPhone is gonna be awhile more… plus EDGE isn’t there

  10. The easiest way to use TiVoToGo is to use TiVoDecode Manger and VisualHub(~$20). There are apple scripts that will automatically grab your TiVoToGo shows and convert them to an iPhone optimized format. I do it manually since I do it so seldomley and it works like a champ.

    VisualHub is also great for converting content to go back to the TiVo, it includes TiVo presets (non in HD yet, so you have to set them manually) and even a little utility to enable TiVoGoBack on the OS X version of TiVo Desktop.

  11. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up an itouch if video playback was the primary motivation, especially since itouch is upgraded to include iphone’s wifi features. Maybe your employer picks up the at&t tab?

  12. No, it doesn’t allow you to insert iphone pics. also, since the iphone doesn’t have copy/paste you can’t really insert links. I mainly use it to manage comments/edit existing posts.

  13. MC, I thought about getting the iTouch but I’m already on AT&T and can use the SIM with several other of my phones. Actually my monthly rate with AT&T is cheaper with the iPhone’s data plan though I lost my corporate discount from my old NGS days. (Which is fine, since it no longer applies.)

    Nicholas, I’ll definitely be unloading the Blackjack on ebay at some point. Was going to wait for WM6 though… Melissa’s old phone is a Dash which we’ll also ebay. (She moved to the Blackberry Curve a few months ago.)

  14. does she like the curve? does google maps mobile work with the gps chip? i feel like i would enjoy the curve much more than anything else right now, esp since im the blackberry admin at work and i don’t own one…

  15. TivoDecode manager doesn’t work on my imac on leopard either, at least not with my Tivo HD.

    Specifically, if I tell it to download a show, it happily downloads that show. And once its finished downloading, it starts re-downloading it. Over and over.

    That app also hasn’t been updated for over a year, sadly. Maybe I’ll poke at the source of it sometime.

  16. Jon, she loves the Curve and she can type faster on it than any other device. In fact, she’s doing most of her email just from the phone these days. She has the T-Mo variety which doesn’t have GPS though I did download the Google maps with cell tower triangulation for her. It also has WiFi – which she doesn’t make use of.

  17. Can the iPhone be used as a usb modem for laptop internet access? 3 things are must have’s before I would go the iPhone route, USB modem, SlingPlayer Mobile, and 3G.

  18. Just to answer a question. posted above:

    No, cannot be used as a modem.

    Once SDK kit is released in a few weeks, no reason why Sling or some voicechat can’t work.

    3G isn’t coming until AT&T is ready not only to have an additional 3 million users but also not make $60 extra a month from 3G. No point in waiting 6-12 months + 20 seconds for 3G when you can have internet access anywhere that takes maybe 20 seconds longer now – plus wifi is faster than 3G.

    After 8 months, there have already been 3 major upgrades + the 4th with the 3rd party apps in a month – the iPhone is the best cell phone by far.

    And no, there’s not ever going to be Flash – too many ads suck up too much bandwidth plus it’s an Adobe thing … that’s why it doesn’t pay to annoy Steve Jobs.

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