Jules Says

Addressing the iPhone concerns

Update: Today Apple announced improved functionality:

Battery life rating is up to 8 hours talk time, a whopping 10+ days of standby, 6 hours of internet use, 7 hours of video playback and 24 hours of audio playback. In addition, the original 3.5” plastic surface has changed to “optical-quality” glass.

Pretty awesome :)

Original post:

A few days ago, Forbes ran an article entitled Why You May Not Want an iPhone. I'm not overly worried about most of these, but I thought I'd address their concerns.

I currently use a Treo 700, which I synch with 2 Intel Macs. I use Apple Mail and iCal. I pretty much use all the features of the treo except the video and the MP3 player. I also have an 80G video iPod.

My thoughts regarding the iPhone concerns:

1) Lousy battery life. From what I’ve read the iPhone is rated at 5 hrs talk/music/movie/internet time. My Treo is rated at only 4, and I rarely run out of juice. Plus, I expect I’ll be synching the iPhone even more frequently because of the better iCal integration, so that’ll help keep it charged. Yes, I wish I could buy a spare battery and keep it charged, but I’m willing to live with it. Other battery issues are the same ones you’ll find on any smartphone.

2) AT&T's use of the slower EDGE network. I have Verizon right now. My understanding is EDGE is faster than my current network for data downloads, and a little slower for uploads. But other than sending the occasional phone photo, I don’t really upload, and the slowdown for a single photo is negligible. Slow browsing… well, it’s first-generation full browsing on the phone. I’ll live with it. Plus, you can swap to wi-fi, which is even faster. They use the silly example of having to spend $10/month for wifi at Starbucks… well, then don’t get your wifi at starbucks :)

3) Lack of 3rd party apps. “But it’s not clear if Apple will let other people write software for the iPhone, at least right away, and that could be a reason to stay away.” As I understand it, they’re not releasing an SDK right away, that lightweight apps (like most widgets) can be built without one. In fact, here's a Cult of Mac article showing a couple of apps that are already ready to go. Heavy duty apps? Maybe not right away, but supposedly later in the year. In

4) Potential incompatibility with MS Exchange servers. Not an issue for me. I assume this is an issue if you need to use a VPN client to get at your mail. Also, it seems we don’t really know yet whether this will be an issue or not.

5) Lack of a keyboard. I'm not at all worried. I got used to Graffiti on the old Pilots, and I got used to thumb-typing on my old Blackberry (in its first incarnation as a clamshell) and then on the Treos. I’ll get used to this too :)

6) Cost. (Didn’t the author say there were 5 reasons?): Yes, it’s pricey. So were both of my Treos. $90/month for all the services? I pay more than that now.

The only thing I’m not sure about is how much I’ll use the music features. I plan to get the extra memory (I’m remembering long ago debating with myself about whether or not to spend the extra $100 to get a 20MB drive vs a 10MB drive :), but I love having my entire music collection on my iPod. I’ll probably give movies a try while traveling, though, and maybe some podcasts.

So... will I get an iPhone? Yes. The only real question is whether or not I'll stand in line to get one on day one.

Verizon V640 Wireless Broadband for Mac: a review

Well, it's been a couple of weeks and a couple of trips out of town, and I now feel qualified to rate the Verizon V640 Broadband Wireless card for Macs (known as the EVDO ExpressCard).

The short version: it's now working well everywhere I need it to.

The longer version: it's been glitchy getting going, and still has problems. The first problem:

After a week or so of using it successfully in Austin and San Antonio, I lost connectivity. I called Verizon, and had to explain to the tech person what a V640 is, that I couldn't possibly be calling from that device. I was told there seemed to be an outage in my area.

I was on hold for so long I forgot about the call, and disconnected the call.

I called back, again explained that the V640 wasn't a phone, and this time was directed to tech support. I basically had to reinstall everything, after which the card worked fine. There was no outage after all.

A week later, before I left for Wisconsin, I was synching up my Macs, and for the first time tried to send mail from the laptop. No go. I could send mail from my .mac account, but not from any other email addresses. My Time Warner SMTP server wasn't working.

Again I called Verizon. Again I explained the device. I was told I needed to register separately for SMTP server access. It would take several days to implement this. Several days!? The rep told me to check for messages on the device for a temporary password. Messages on the device? Apparently if I use their software to connect (which I didn't and don't) there was a place for Verizon to message me. I loaded up the software. I found no messages, indeed no place for messages.

So I had connectivity on my trip, but was only able to send from a single email account. I never heard from verizon about smtp service, and was simply too busy to deal with it. And now that I'm home, it's not as urgent. But I do need to deal with it. Seems like a crazy system, not automatically offering access.

I have 2 other complaints about the V640: I've had several hard crashes while it's live. At first I thought I was just crashing when I had the card in and I ran out of juice. But no, just this afternoon I had a fresh charge with the card in. I closed the Mac, and when I reopened it 15 minutes later, it was crashed. The other issue: it's hell on battery life. I get just over 4 hours on a charge with Bluetooth disabled, and not even 2 with the card running.

Still, I can get online everywhere I've tried except for at 35,000 feet somewhere over Missouri. Had to try, though :)