Texting has its oddities. In email or SMS mode texting is vertical (portrait) -only, making the keyboard narrow. But when the iPhone is in browser mode and you’re entering text into a page’s <textarea>, the keyboard can go into landscape mode, making writing much easier. What gives? Give us landscape SMS and email capability.

The headphone jack port doubles as a surgical-quality flesh-removing device. It’s REALLY sharp. I keep my phone in my front jeans pocket, and 4 times now I’ve conducted impromptu surgery on my finger reaching for a ringing phone. I now keep the phone upside down in my pocket, so when I reach for it I get to keep my digits.

No Bluetooth sync!? No BT syncing of Address Book contacts and iCal events?! Something I’ve been doing for FOUR YEARS with my lowly Sony Ericsson T610 is suddenly NOT AVAILABLE to me with this $500 phone? Hmm. Note I’m not asking for music sync over Bluetooth because I understand it would take decades to transfer gigabytes over Bluetooth.

The silent ringer switch sometimes moves itself. Nitpick. Many things in my pocket move.

My iPhone hunts for WiFi connections. And it asks me several times if I’d like to join. There’s an on/off setting for this, which is a little all-or-nothing for me. I’d like intelligent hunting, for instance,

• alert me if there’s an unlocked WiFi signal,
• connect to known signals,
• but stay silent and in EDGE data mode if the only signals around are unknown and locked

The interface is laggy. Sometimes it will not keep up with my scrolling in Safari, and will stutter after deleting a few emails back-to-back. X-ing a URL in Safari sometimes locks the interface for 5 seconds. C’mon, iPhone, just clear the URL field so I can type.

Overall I love my iPhone. These gripes don’t really affect my intense enjoyment of the device. I’ll have a What I Like About the iPhone post in a week.

Upgrading to Leopard from a Mac Consultant’s Point of View

by Nathan

Assuming my package does indeed arrive some time today (tuesday, 2008.04.15), I’ll be installing Leopard on my MacBook. I’m thinking about keeping a Tiger partition in case things go crazy. Then again, maybe I should simply go Leopard only on the internal drive. I can always keep a Tiger clone on an external hard drive.

The Leopard upgrade plan:

1. Back up data partition.
2. Back up account preferences.Boot into Leopard install disk.
3. Wipe drive.
4. Repartition into boot and data partitions (possibly a slightly bigger boot partition than I have now for Tiger).
5. Custom Install of Leopard.
6. Run Leopard updates.
7. Install applications.
8. Transfer data to data partition.

Chapter 2

Early returns are in and I believe the update can be tentatively called a success. Update is a bit of a misnomer as I did a clean install, sans Migration Assistant, instead preferring to bring over a few select preferences. FIOS made short work of the rather hefty updates. From my earlier posted list I only need to finish 8 and start 9 to complete my Leopard transition.

Interesting Leopard differences:

• Software updates install after selecting restart not immediately after downloading. Much better than the previous OS X way of installing while apps are running and then tending to strongly suggest an immediate reboot anyway.

• Launching a disallowed app when using an account with parental controls, now forces a dialogue prompt to appear instead of silently failing to run.

Access Prompt

This dialogue explains why the app did not launch and as an added bonus, an admin can simply enable access to this app to Always Allow or Allow once straight from the dialogue. I like to work from a Limited user account and only give myself access to apps that I actually use.

Continue reading »

What do you expect in a set of $15 noise - cancelling headphones? If you answered “not a whole lot,” then you might like these Philips SHN2500 earbuds.

Construction

Good news: it uses only one, small AAA battery, and an AAA is included in the box.
Bad news: the earbuds dont work when the battery dies. No, I dont mean the obvious - that the noise-cancelling fails. Of course it fails without power. When the battery dies, the earbuds will not play audio. Hmm. You could compare this to a car’s thermostat failing closed,causing the engine to overheat rather than failing open and causing the engine to run roughly.

Other construction notes are these:
_Battery/on/off switch is large, maybe larger than it needs to be, daresay I, non-engineer.
_earbud ear canal adaptors come in a handy three sizes, but they tend to slip off in bags and pockets, and at the size and weight of Cheerios, are easily lost.
_the mini-jack is not iPhone friendly, unless you modify it by trimming/whittling off a bit of pliable, casing plastic, a tactic I’ve used with success on a half-dozen mini jacks.
_the on/off switch is large and I suspect easily toggled by shit in your luggage, purse or pocket.

Performance

So-so. In a bar/cafe, noise reduction sliced perhaps 10-20% off the general aggregate patron mumble. I’m writing this on my iPhone on a flight to Seattle, and the drone of engines is at least halved, making the value of these earbuds increase quite a bit in my estimation.

The seal the buds provide my ears is quite good, and contributes substantially to their performance.

Constant low frequencies seem to be eliminated best, and when noise-cancelling is active, the audio signal is boosted.

Battery life so far is unmeasured, save for the fact that I’m still on the OEM battery after around five hours. I’d expect 20 or more hours of use per battery.

Conclusion

If you have the money, I’m sure there are better-performing noise cancelling earbuds out there. Go get em. For frequent fliers, the poor, or those who are prone to losing things like this, I consider it a fair trade for something that fits inside a twenty dollar bill.