How good can it be, if it isn’t HD?

Although I grew up on Windows, like most who are on the front of the curve I run OS X now. As much as I love OS X and Apple hardware, I’m very annoyed that Apple doesn’t make a Mac anymore. Sure they have the MacBook Pro, the Mac Pro and the iMac, but what if you want to be able to upgrade your hard drive or video card? Or maybe you want a Blu-ray drive. Apple only has the Mac Pro and while it is an awesome machine, I don’t have much use for a $3k 8 core Xeon powered monster.

I’m sick of compromising portability and power with my MacBook Pro, but now that Apple has the MacBook Air, I can go back to having two computers and rather trying to have one that does it all. This of course means my MBP is gone and I need a good desktop. If I didn’t already have a 20-inch cinema display and the iMac had a eSATA port, I’d just get an 20-inch iMac, but instead I think I’ll build a hackintosh. The funny part is I really don’t want to. While there was a time when I wouldn’t dream of buying a computer that I didn’t build, now I would rather do just about anything than to build a computer myself. I really don’t feel like I have much of a choice and after my MBA is delivered and my MBP is gone, I’ll head down the path. Who knows, maybe I’ll have some fun along the way.

The funny thing about Apple is although their products are usually very successful, there always seem to be a lot of people disappointed with their announcements. I’m not sure how Apple got to the point where everyone thought they could be everything to everyone, or if those vocal online are just trying to counter all the fanboys, but either way there is plenty of banter going both ways.

My friend Kevin and I have never seen eye to eye on the industry name for Apple’s latest MacBook. Kevin thinks that an Ultra-portable has to be more portable than a laptop can be, and I side with the marketing people in that it’s as portable as a laptop can be. So for me the Air is as close to perfect as any laptop I’ve ever had — and I love ultra-portable laptops. Although I wrote perfect in the subject of this post, I didn’t really mean it — so sue me. It would be perfect if it had more USB ports, built in 3g, and a replaceable battery — oh, and costs half as much, but hey. Despite not being perfect, it’s the closest I’ve seen because it’s super small and light, has a full size keyboard, boasts 5 hour battery, — I’ll believe it when I see it — runs OSX, and more powerful then just about any laptop I’ve had (besides my MacBook Pro). So as you’d expect, I pre-ordered one already. We’ll see if it lives up to my expectations, but so far the only Apple product that didn’t is the Apple TV — and there’s hope for that yet.

Shortly after I fell in love with NetworkNewsWire, I learned to love Newsgator for no other reason than so I don’t have to read the same news twice. The biggest thing I had to give up when I got my iPhone was Newsgator Go! I have been using the mobile version of Newsgator.com on my iPhone and while it’s ok, anyone who has used it knows it doesn’t work that great on the iPhone. Now Newsgator has released a iPhone optimized version and I have to say they’ve done a great job. It’s really nice! Now if I could just get an equivalent to Google’s mail application, all would be right with the iPhone.

I have had a few devices that I’ve sync’d with my computer and it seems that the iPhone is the slowest of them all. It takes 7 minutes to sync everything but media. Then it only takes 2 minutes to sync my podcasts. Maybe it’s just me, but 9 minutes to sync — not including video or music — is too long, especially considering the amount of changes that were made.

**Update** The reason for my long sync was Office 2004, once I updated to the preview of Office 2008, my iPhone syncs really fast!

**2.0 Update** The first few times I synced after updating to 2.0 took forever, but just keep syncing, and eventually the “backing up iPhone” flys by like it did before.

The problem is the applications — every time you add new apps it has to back those up which takes forever and for whatever reason it seems to take longer when I install the apps via iTunes than when I use the iPhone’s app store.

Two of my favorite things work terrible together. Gmail is the best web mail application, I can’t imagine email without it, but the lack of IMAP is a real bummer.

POP has always sucked when used to keep up with your mail in more than one place, and Gmail manages to make it worse by; not giving you enough control over what gets POP’d, not marking items as read when POP’d, and putting sent items in your inbox. So until Apple and Google get together to make a Google mail equivalent to Goog’s Java app, here is the work around I use.

First you need a good IMAP service provider, since just about everyone has an AIM account, just login to mail.aol.com and configure your mail. Then go to Gmail and create a filter that will forward just the mail you want to receive on your iPhone, to your AOL email address. Now from either Mail.app or directly from the iPhone, configure a new email account. Call it GMail and configure it just like Google instructs, but instead of using their POP server, use AOL’s IMAP (imap.aol.com) server (be sure to use Gmail’s SMTP server though). If you set it up in Mail.app and sync over, you’ll have to edit the SMTP settings on the iPhone manually, cause the settings don’t sync over correctly — it should be obvious what the problem is, just don’t forget the special port number.

The only down side of this method is that you have to mark any email that makes it to your iPhone as read twice. But the good part is that you can send messages from your iPhone that not only appear to come from your Gmail account, but they also show up on gmail.com as if you’d sent them from the website.

If you’re wondering why I just didn’t use Yahoo’s IMAP service, it’s cause the iPhone won’t let you configure a different SMTP server on an Yahoo account or a different from address. I thought about configuring the account manually, but I couldn’t figure out the settings. I even tried to sniff my iPhone’s traffic while it retrieved my Yahoo mail, I figured out the IMAP server IP, but I was not able to figure out the user name or the password since they were encrypted (I tried the ID and password I use to sign on to yahoo.com, no dice). If you know how to brute-force this let me know, I still have the TCP stream.

**Update** Yeah, Gmail adds IMAP support, so no more work arounds! But you can still use this if you want to make gmail push mail via Mobile Me.

My friends Ryan and Chris at Engadget have written the most comprehensive iPhone review you could imagine. It it 13k words, so you may want to take it in short segments. Also here’s a mini review from yours truly.

Good
UI is fantastic, fast and couldn’t ask for anything more.
iPod, phone and photos functionality is fantastic.
www.apple.com/trailers/iphone is a great example of a great iPhone web application.
WiFi integration is unbelievable, it really does just work.

Bad
I love Gmail and like the review says “One Engadget editor called the Gmail integration “a crime against humanity”. Email in general is really bad.
Safari crashes and it doesn’t identify itself as a mobile browser, so it always tries to load the full page, which can be painful over Edge.

Conclusion
The iPhone is the best phone I’ve ever had, hands down, but I can’t wait for software updates to resolve the issues.

I had tons of fun waiting in line for my iPhone — good thing since it wasn’t necessary to wait — and when they finally opened the doors, I was right up front taking pictures for Engadget’s live line coverage. In the process, I was standing behind the #1 iPhone customer (that’s me to the right) when the St Petersburg times took the picture for the front page of the Saturday June 30th edition. Definitely a fun experience.

Read (PDF)

Like many, I had nothing but trouble activating my iPhone with AT&T. I was porting a number over from T-Mobile and adding to an existing AT&T account in my name. The problem was the porting, the email indicating the reason for the delay wasn’t very clear that I would have to wait 6 hours before using my iPhone, because until it is activated it is basically a brick. After 4 hours of waiting for it to activate, I called AT&T and Apple, and while Apple support was great, (other than not being able to help me) AT&T support didn’t have a clue what was going on. After two calls to each number I figured I had to wait it out and exactly 6 hours later I received an email indicating my number wouldn’t port. So being impatient, I tried to request a new number at which time the activation process indicated that I didn’t pass the credit check, which really bothered me considering I have been an AT&T customer in good standing so long they changed their name and back again. So I activated it as a goPhone till I was able to make a trip to the AT&T store.

When I got to the store I had to wait behind a few others with the same problems, the employees were very nice and helpful — especially considering the fact that since I bought my iPhone at the Apple store they didn’t credit for the activation. They told me that my number had ported over already and that my credit check was successful according to their system. So they called the porting department to verify everything was in order. Since I’d already activated as a goPhone they gave me a new SIM card and instructed me to activate again, but this time choose to use an existing AT&T number. Lucky for me, this time it worked.

The bottom line is that AT&T activated system wasn’t working and was reporting incorrect information. If you are having the same problem call AT&T and ask them to check the status of your port, if everything is ok, then try again.

I’m not sure what Apple could have done to make this any easier, but it seems that AT&T dropped the ball, the least they could do is give you a demo mode instead of denying you from playing while you wait.

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.