Archive for June, 2007

iPhone: my motivation and my plan

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

In honor of iPhone week, here is my 2 cents as we count down to iDay.

I have wanted an iPhone since I first heard the rumor that Apple would make a cell phone and there are a few reasons. I’m one of those people who have never liked their cell phone, each one dissapoints as much as the next, and while I haven’t owned as many phones as most people I know, I have had the first Blackberry phone from Nextel, a Treo 600, Treo 650, VX6700 and finally a Blackberry 8700c. While all of these have worked, none have been plesant to use and I could write a long essay on my annoyances. It isn’t the hardware that I haven’t liked, but the software and ever since the first time I used a iPod I have faith that Apple can really make the first cell phone I will enjoy using. For this level of usability I am willing to deal with EDGE and the lack of wireless sync. The second reason is I do get sick of carrying around both my cell phone and my iPod and finally it will be nice to own a device that will natively sync with my Mac.

My Plan

Like most people I have to work on Friday, and since I live in Tampa — which is a big area, but still only have the size of the greater SF area — I hope that it will be possible for me to just show up after work and get an iPhone. I am going to do what I can to get off early and there are a few outlets for me to try in my area, I just hope this is good enough.

Verizon is really taking their time

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

Verizon started to install fiber in my hood as early as January 2007, and back in April they even had the box in front of my house completed. It has been some time since I’ve seen any activity, so I gave them a call to check the status, the CSR indicated that my address still wasn’t showing up in their system and that they’d probably send me a flier when it was ready. So yesterday I get some mail from Verizon trying to sell me DSL at a 3Mpbs! What a joke! Six months to install seems like too long and then they would bother advertising 3Mpbs when I get 15Mbps with Bright House Networks! So still I wait.

What would you do for an iPhone?

Friday, June 15th, 2007

Jeremy from Living Digitally asked me how much I thought iPhones would be going for on eBay at launch. I really didn’t know what to tell him, I am probably being naive, but I really hadn’t considered that scenario. I guess I am hoping that there are enough to go around. The worst part is that in the past, every time I have seen gadgets go for unbelievable prices on eBay I have always persacuted the manufacturer for letting it happen and even pointed to Apple as a great example of how to service your customers while at the same time ensuring some eBayer didn’t get to profit from your product.

This also got me thinking, what would I do for an iPhone; and if I do happened to get one on the first day and can sell it on eBay for double, would I even keep it?

As much as I want an iPhone I am not willing to stay over night to buy one, or to pay a cent more than retail for it. And if the touch screen doesn’t live up to it’s hype, I will promptly return it within the 14 day return policy that most cell phones have.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t wait for the next 14 days to be over so we can finally see if this thing lives up to the hype.

External eSATA pocket drive

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

pocketdrive-1.jpg

From the very beginning I intended to use my old MBP hard drive as a pocket drive and I finally got around to buying an external case. I really wanted one that was USB powered, but since the drive itself was SATA, I also wanted an eSATA port. This feature came in handy when I wanted to test out enabling the eSATA port on my Series3. The drive does require a lot of power via USB, and interestingly enough only works in the right hand side port on my MBP. This is actually ok, just as long as I don’t have to use the dual USB cable that came with the enclosure.

I picked up an enclosure for $24 from Newegg and despite a few reviews stating the drive rattled, it looked like it hit the spot. It come with a few screws, so of course I used them, and what do you know, my drive isn’t rattling. Anyways, I formated my drive with both a FAT32 and HFS+ partition so I could use it to sneaker-net files between windows computers if needed.

powerdrive-2.jpg

BTW, I took these pictures with my new Nikon D40, I am still learning how to use it so would appreciate any pointers.