browngeek

Over the last few weeks, four mysterious “water bubbles” started to appear on my iPhone’s screen. They looked like dead-pixels, but slightly bigger. Since they did not hinder the performance of the touch screen, I largely ignored them.

Then, a few days ago, one side of the iPhone’s headphones stopped emitting sound. Well, this I cannot ignore. Especially given the new law in the state of California - hands-free cellphone usage starting July 1st - I need the headphones fixed. So, armed with my pleasant past experience with Apple’s Genius Bar service, I went to the Palo Alto store on July 4th to get the iPhone and the headphones fixed.

After a 15 minute wait, I was ushered to the Genius bar where Brian was waiting for me. After a curt hello, he asked about the problems. I handed him my iPhone and explained the bubbles. Brian quickly consulted his colleague who pulled out a magnification lens from a drawer and peered closely into the bubbles and proclaimed - “Yeah, I’ve seen these before”. Brian then asked me if I had backed up my phone recently and I replied yes. He then said, a little nonchalantly, he is going to replace my phone with a new one.

Excuse me, but aren’t you going to first question me about what I did to the phone to get those bubbles in there, if I had dropped it in water or snow or toilet, if I have sweaty hands, if I misused it, if I do not clean it every day. Any question that will incriminate me for being at fault for putting the bubble in the phone. No questions? The phone was barely under warranty (less than a week before 1 year) and you *still* did not question me? Well, that is very refreshing. Brian then calmly handed me a new iPhone and a new pair of headphones. He then asked me to restore my backup from iTunes when I activate the phone. I said thanks (And still no questions?) and left. Happy to be an Apple customer.

The happiness did not end there. Back home, I plugged in my new iPhone. iTunes asked for my phone number and if I wanted to restore from a backup. Now, by “restore” I was expecting it to simply sync my contacts and iTunes playlists and calendars and little else. After that, I was fully expecting to redo all my customizations manually. Again, Apple is two steps ahead of me. By “restore”, they mean a complete frigging restore. When the restore was done, I had everything thing back where it was. The icons were back where I had dragged them, bookmarks on the home screen were back, the camera photos, the recent call history, everything. The only thing that were not restored, understandably, were the passwords for the wireless networks and email. Even the most recent searches in the Maps app were back! I was blown away.

Apple really gets it.

I completely cancelled all television as you know today.

I switched to the television of tomorrow. TV, on demand. 100%.

I love Apple products.

But today I hate one product - the iPhone Developer program.

I applied for a beta developer certificate and I receive this email -

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Apparently, it was not just me but pretty much everybody got rejected.

So, you can download the iPhone SDK and start writing apps now. You can even test the app in the Aspen simulator. But if you want to install the app on your iPhone, you are out of luck. You have to wait…until Apple decides to let you in.

WTF? Is Apple only allowing high-profile companies (EA and AOL) to build the first wave the iPhone apps? Or did they under-estimate the number of developers that are itching to write an app for the next big thing?

Whatever the reason, Apple screwed up with this. I hope they fix this shit ASAP and make me love them again.

A few months ago, I was toying with the idea of getting a PS3. Not for its great gaming prowess - my short gaming life was over a while ago (I played the Halo Series, and nothing else) - but for its Blu-Ray player. The PS3 is the best Blu-Ray player on the market for its price (sub $400). Which brings us to the question of who won the HD format wars - Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?

I certainly think that Blu-Ray has a huge lead already, with six of the eight big studios endorsing it. The other two however are HD-DVD exclusive. There are rumors that Apple will announce at the Macworld that the Macs are joining the Blu-Ray camp and that Micro$oft will announce an HD-DVD integrated XBox soon. And there are many other such news that show that, though Blu-Ray has an advantage, the HD format war is far from over.

In fact, it may *never* be over.

And that brings us to the question, should we, the consumers, really care who wins? The more I think about it the more I believe that both these formats are DOA. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are largely only formats to store large files (pun intended). Nothing revolutionary.

The point here is that from VHS to DVD, it was a giant step forward (analog to digital, bigger storage, easy navigation, no need to rewind tapes). From DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD its only a small step (bigger storage). Again, I’m only talking about the media storage and delivery aspects. The high-definition format is definitely here to stay (If you don’t have a HD TV, you suck). But not the above two forms of storage and delivery. The winner of the HD format wars is going to be…ta-da..On-Demand Delivery.

Why? Because from DVD to On-Demand delivery it is a giant step forward (instant delivery, browse and search, no scratched disks, instant gratification). The cable providers already have a huge selection of HD movies and shows available on-demand that are downloaded instantly to your DVR. Some of them (Dish Network, TiVo) allow you to connect to the internet and pick from an even larger collection. And, of course, there is Apple TV that hooks to the iTunes collection (where soon you should be able to rent HD movies). Speaking of renting, Netflix is already offering on-demand movies and soon BlockBuster and others will follow suit. This means no more rental queues, no more lost mail, no more driving to pick movies. Instant gratification, and environment-friendly too!

So, while Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will still be fighting and continue to have their own markets, its the On-Demand delivery that is going to become mainstream.

As for my plans of buying the PS3 - only if the Halo Series moves to Blu-Ray format. Ha!

Google just released a preview video of its new Andriod mobile platform. Many have made jokes about the video - Sergey Brin’s hangover look or how cold it is. The real joke, however, is the 10-million-dollar developer “challenge”. Its not a challenge - its a PR gimmick. Google’s attempt to attract media spotlight.

Shouldn’t I be enthusiastic about this challenge - myself being a developer and all. No. The real developers, the ones that are passionate about building apps on the next cool platform, don’t do it for the money. They do it for the heck of it - or for fame amongst peers. Sure, there will be plenty of developers that will take up Andriod’s challenge - after all, Google is known for being very developer-friendly. And therein lies Android’s pitfall. Courting developers from the outset.

Again, being a developer myself, I appreciate and agree that developers rule. But not when it comes to building mobile apps. The apps that run on your cellphone should have the simplest and the least confusing user interface. The unfortunate fact is that developers suck at designing simple user-interfaces. By definition, developers are more analytical than the average user and therefore can handle - in fact, expect - complex user interfaces. Thats why ALL mobile apps are too cumbersome and suck ass. They are designed by developers. Except the iPhone.

Why did the iPhone succeed? Yes, there was a lot of hype built in - but the key reason for its success is its darn simplicity. And why is the iPhone so simple to use. Its squarely because the user-interfaces were developed by designers, not developers. Designers are more creative than analytical. They understand the average user. They *get* the simple user experience.

Apple shunned the developers by releasing the iPhone without an SDK. Google shunned the cellphone users by releasing an SDK without a phone. The iPhone is already an household name. And Andriod?

I was using VirtueDesktops as the virtual desktop solution on my Mac OS X, Tiger. It allowed to separate my apps into different desktops (named Browse, Code, Photos, Misc).

While VirtueDesktops is a slick software and worked really well, I had a major peeve about it. The desktops are not cleanly separated. Apps opened in one desktop should be visible only in that desktop. Unfortunately with VirtueDesktops, Cmd+Tab will show all apps that are open, across desktops.

This is because of the underlying design of the Mac OS. Applications are “document” driven - each window you open is a document within the same app. Other major OS, like Windoze are “window” driven where each window you open becomes another process of its own. That’s the reason that on the Mac, Cmd+Tab always shows exactly one instance of each open app - no matter how many windows (documents) are open. Its one of the most pleasing things in the Mac - Cmd+Tab always shows one row, for all the open apps. Alt-Tab in other OS, there are 4 rows of all open windows - Yuck.

Back to VirtueDesktops. While by design, it could not provide the clean-separation of desktops, the irritating part is that Cmd+Tabbing to an app does not really go to the desktop where that app is open.

So, Spaces was one of the features of Leopard I was looking forward to. Its the first virtual desktop solution from Apple for the Mac. And since it is part of the OS, I was expecting the clean-separation.

Alas, it did not happen. Cmd+Tab always shows all the open apps. It appears that Spaces does not, after all, hide the document nature of the OS. That was a definite bummer for me. And although Spaces does change desktops when Cmd+Tabbing to an app, it does it to the extreme. It *always* does. Say I have Finder open in one desktop 1 (Oh, another annoyance of Spaces - cannot change Desktop names!). And I am working in Desktop 2. To create an instance of Finder in 2, I need to Cmd+Tab to the Finder app, which switches to Desktop 1. Now I create another instance (document) of Finder. Then I have to manually drag and drop this new instance into Desktop 2 by opening the Spaces view. Really Frustrating!

For Spaces to be useful, it needs to make the clean-separation of desktops. Period.

Ok, if thats too much to ask, at least,
1. Have a way to open a new instance of an already open app in a different desktop.
2. Cmd+` should rotate between instances of the same app across spaces.
3. Allow changing name of desktops. Seriously, Desktop 1, 2, 3 and 4 are so un-Apple!

In the end, Spaces leaves me underwhelmed. And the news that VirtueDesktops has reached its own end is not helping either.

Virtually between a rock and hard space.

The new Dashcode tool in Leopard is pretty nifty. In 60 seconds, I created a very useful RSS widget for the comments on “theWhole > sum(parts)”. No kidding. The tool is packaged with a slew of templates for various kinds of widget and is definitely a surprising little gem.

The RSS widget is neatly parked in my Dashboard. Now in one keystroke (F12) I will be on top of what is happening in this blog. Not that much happens, but that is not the point.

My MacBook Pro started to act funky a few weeks ago. First, it shutdown a couple of times with no warnings. The battery would then drain out from 100% to 5% in an hour.
My first thoughts were that the Lithium-Ion battery was losing its life. Then, a few days later, the trackpad started to get “sticky” and I was unable to click. This pretty much rendered the laptop unusable. Then I noticed that the laptop was not sitting properly on the desk. I flipped it over, and yikes, the battery was swollen out of its sockets. It looked like a giant popcorn. Needless to say, I was concerned about it exploding and promptly removed it - which made the laptop immobile, like a desktop.

The 1-year warranty on the MBP had expired a few months ago and I did not have the AppleCare protection plan. So my first thoughts were “Great, I have to plunk down $140 for a new battery”. Then I realized that I had purchased the computer with my AmEx card that comes with a Buyer’s Assurance Program which extends manufacturer’s warranties by an additional year. A phone call to AmEx and they said “Sure. Just send us the invoice for the repair and we will reimburse it”. Armed with this backup plan of getting the battery (and any other repairs) for free, I went to the Palo Alto Apple Store to get the MBP fixed.

The two guys that say “Welcome to the Apple Store, How can I help you?” were flabbergasted to see the swollen battery and immediately took me to the Genius Bar. The guy behind the counter (named - Will), added me to the list of waiting customers. After a 10-min wait, Will beckoned me. When he took a look at my battery, he had no “OMG!” reaction. Instead, it was a subtle “Oh yeah, I’ve seen this before” reaction. After verifying that the MBP was registered to me, he informed me that Apple has a special “extended” warranty for batteries and will replace it for free!

I was very surprised. Perhaps the swollen batteries are a common problem and Apple wants no sour customers, or perhaps they did have a “special warranty” on batteries. Either way, Apple technically need not replace the battery for free past the 1-year warranty. Try getting your Canon camcorder fixed after the warranty expired. Right - I tried and it didn’t work. I left the store with a new battery and the thought - “Apple *does* care about its customers.”

There are 300 reasons to upgrade to Leopard (Vista 2.0) - including the venerable Time Machine. Most of them are big and well publicized. But here a list of 7 little-known gems that is going to make me super-love Leopard.

1. Automator - UI Recording and Playback
   “Use a new action called Watch Me Do that lets you record a user action…and replay as an action in a workflow.”
2. Finder - Path Bar
   “Just choose Show Path Bar from the View menu and the path is visible at the bottom of the Finder window. You can also drag files to any location in the Path Bar.”
3. iChat - Tabbed Chat
   “Consolidate your chat windows into a single tabbed window.”
4. Imaging - Enhanced Wireless Capture
   “Wirelessly import images from many 802.11-enabled digital cameras and Bluetooth devices.” aka the iPhone.
5. Photo Booth - Video Recording
   “Use Photo Booth to make movie clips.”
6. Spotlight - Dictionary Definitions in Spotlight
   “Quickly find the definition of any word by entering it in the Spotlight search field.”
7. Terminal - Tabbed Windows
   “Keep multiple Terminal sessions going in a single, tabbed window.”

Via Flickr

The sequence of events-

1. East coast trip last week.
2. Loads of photos.
3. Plugged in iPhone to Mac in the morning.
4. Photos started to sync to iPhone.
5. Didnt want loads of photos on iPhone, so manual kill of the process.
6. Somewhere there, the Address Book on Mac got corrupted. But automatic backup was there.
7. Well, I didn’t know about the corruption since the Address book on iPhone was fine.
8. Plugged in iPhone again last night.
9. The corrupted file overwrote iPhone and the backup.
10. The End.

Moral of story - Even though the Address Book issue is a known one, have a separate, manual backup of everything!