Real-world iPhone 3G experiences - good or bad?
A post by Ian Hendry over on ZDNet got me thinking about just how well the iPhone 3G delivers against the hype and promise of the past few months.
Shortly after picking up my own iPhone 3G I wrote up some very initial responses, and to be honest I still stand by most of these. The biggest disappointment to arise since then was the bugginess of the OS software, something I had been utterly unprepared-for given the relative solidarity of the original iPhone OS experience. MobileSafari was much more prone to freezing up, third party apps would bail out before even reaching their title screen and dump me back on the home screen, and the GPS I’d loved so much proved to be quite inconsistent, even when tried from the same spot several times in a row.
Thankfully a 2.0.1 maintenance update to the iPhone firmware (available for all users of iPhones and iPod touches on 2.0 software) seems to have ironed out some of these, and general reliability seems improved. So my remaining niggles - battery life probably chief among them - are entirely possible to live with, and as so often with Apple products, I find that the overall experience is so enjoyable I’m actually much more forgiving of the shortcomings than I perhaps should be.
What’s interesting about Ian’s post is that the bulk of his comment is really saying how access to a data connection is the real problem, not the iPhone itself. Essentially the summary is ‘I’d love to show this thing off in the Lake District but I can’t because the signal’s pants’, and I agree - surely these are the times you really want to know where the nearest pub is, what the weather’s going to do etc, as opposed to sitting in your back garden challenging the GPS to spot you again (speaking from experience). So perhaps it’s not where the iPhone doesn’t work, but where mobile networks’ limitations are, and what they could be doing about it.
Anyway, off to press that little ‘locate me’ button one more time, just to see…
iPhone and iPod touch users: get your update on
Apple has unleashed incremental software updates to both iPhones and iPod touches running software version 2.0. The new 2.0.1 software offers a bunch of bug fixes - not specified by Apple, but anecdotal reports (including my own experience) suggest improvements in overall stability (hooray), as well as general speeding-up of contacts browsing, backing up to iTunes, and the keyboard, and possible improvement of accuracy in the meter displaying signal strength.
Get yours by connecting your iPhone or iPod touch to iTunes and hitting ‘check for update’ on the ‘Summary’ page.
Updated: Nullriver’s NetShare app allows your computer to use iPhone 3G network connection
I’m writing this on my trusty MacBook Pro, in the comfort of my own home, which is drenched in wifi coverage. However, the MBP isn’t using wifi - well, not for a direct internet connection at least. Instead, it’s piping through to my iPhone 3G, and drawing the internet connection down from there. All thanks to Nullriver’s NetShare app (iTunes link) which appeared, briefly, on the App Store last night before being rapidly taken down, and then reappeared again today.
Tethering a laptop to a mobile phone’s data connection for surfing the web is nothing new, of course, and is pretty much a staple of other smartphones (this last sentence is a trademark of every iPhone reviewer since January 2007). Yet along with a measly camera, lack of turn-by-turn navigation (it’s coming, we’re promised) and my own personal bugbear, lack of video capture support, the ability to take advantage of all that 3G goodness is one more thing Apple ‘overlooked’ in designing the iPhone 3G.
That’s where Nullriver come in. Their app, with a little judicious settings-fiddling on both computer and phone (if I can do it, it can’t be that hard - just hope you don’t have to troubleshoot if it doesn’t work), lets you create an impromptu wifi network between Mac and iPhone (Windows PC support is coming soon), allowing the Mac to draw down web traffic piped through the iPhone. In other words, if you’re not in a wifi zone but can get any sort of data connection - reports suggest it will work on 3G (near-broadband), EDGE (slower) and even GSM (painful-but-possible) - then you too can surf to your heart’s content.
For a mere £5.99, it all sounds a bit too good to be true - and that’s where I’m curious to hear O2’s stance on the matter. We already know we’ve got it pretty good in the UK when it comes to all-you-can-eat data plans, which lest we forget are subject to the usual fair usage policy. Eagle-eyed customers have already scoured the O2 user agreement and found no suggestion that tethering in this manner is in violation, but nevertheless I’ll be paying just a little closer attention to my next online bill just in case this data transfer lark is going to cost me over and above the all-inclusive stuff.
Bottom line, if £5.99 is all this app will ever cost you to get on the internet beyond free wifi coverage, then it’s the bargain of the century for iPhone-equipped road warriors.
UPDATE 2nd August 3pm: at time of writing it appears the app has once again been removed from the App Store. We’ll be keeping an eye on it and you can also follow Nullriver’s blog to stay updated. The app should still work fine for those who managed to bag it. Advantage Apple…
iTunes 7.7.1 available now
Fans of having the latest, bugs-ironed-out* iterations of Apple-flavoured software on their Macs should fire up Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update) now to nab the latest version of iTunes.
Apple claims the update ”includes fixes to improve stability and performance.” What’s not to like?
*no guarantee offered that all bugs have been ironed out
MobileMe: 2 (ish) weeks later
Amid the furore of iPhone 3G release news and comment cluttering these hallowed pages of late, I’ve shamefully neglected Apple’s other major re-imagining project that happened at the same time: the transition from .mac to MobileMe. For the uninitiated, .mac was a suite of web tools including email, calendar and online storage space. MobileMe is pretty much a suite of web tools including email, calendar and online storage space, but with some funky new functionality including, in theory at least, seamless and live syncing of your data across pretty much any device you care to name (as long as it’s an iPhone or iPod touch, in the case of mobile devices).
Such has been the rockiness of the road to MobileMe launching, Apple has now started a near-daily blog to keep users updated as to the status of various services.
I signed up for a 60-day trial just after the iPhone launched, and actually must say I’ve been blissfully spared the many teething problems others have reported. The web apps (accessed by visiting www.me.com) all work smoothly and cleanly, and data syncing, after a frustrating wiping of certain numbers on my iPhone which might be my fault anyway, is pretty much as advertised. Because I don’t use Mail as my primary email client nor iCal for my calendars (tethered to Exchange at work, hence the weird setup as discussed below), I haven’t suffered too much from the 15-minute delay when data is changed on the computer and has to sync back up to the ‘cloud’.
I should say I haven’t quite ‘taken the plunge’ fully and moved my life over to MobileMe. I’ve kept my Gmail account and have everything forwarded from there to my ‘@me.com’ address (somehow I don’t want all my email tied up in a subscription-based email system) where I check it on the phone, web or through Mail on those occasions I do fire it up.
I’m also using some horrendous voodoo-like setup to keep my Exchange calendar (pulled down through Entourage) synced up with iCal which then syncs with the cloud and therefore my iPhone and web apps - far from ideal and ripe for data mixup somewhere along the line, but so far so good and once set up, not really a huge problem as I’m rarely away from Entourage for more than a couple of days to sync it all up.
Because Exchange is (regrettably) my primary server environment, I probably would have overlooked MobileMe altogether were it not for the fact that my iPhone just won’t talk to our Exchange server for love nor money (I’ve tried both, it’s quite unresponsive).
Will I keep on the subscription? Still undecided to be honest. Whilst the suite of apps is pretty impressive, very simple to use and generally responsive, I’m still not sold on what it really offers me over and above simple syncing between my computer and iPhone. The feature I’d most like to use - scheduled back-ups of certain data to the iDisk online storage to keep my ailing hard drive from maxing out all the time - is disabled in the trial version, but currently I’m thinking I could spend the amount of the subscription on a basic hard drive and fire up Time Machine. I’m going to wait it out in the trial though, and see how I feel at the end of it…
What are your experiences with MobileMe? Avoiding it like the plague, or think it’s the best thing since sliced processor cores? Fire off in the comments.
iPhone 3G round-up 2: Stephen Fry’s first impressions; new ads
More round-up action on the iPhone 3G (as if you haven’t had enough!).
Dork Talk: Stephen Fry on the iPhone 3G
Most Apple fans probably don’t need reminding of the great Stephen Fry’s appreciation for all things Designed by Apple in California (second only to the great Douglas Adams), so I’ll let you read for yourself his admirably objective (well, mostly) take on the new iPhone 3G that’s apparently out now. Read it here.
New ads in the wild
If you simply can’t wait until you’ve seen the latest Apple ads, why not head straight over to Apple’s site for the latest iPhone 3G advertising gubbins. There’s the hallway ad plus one new one, in the vain of the previous iPhone ads (and mercifully free from Messrs. Mitchell & Webb) - and for a taste of what else may be coming have a look at the US site for even more iPhone 3G adness. You lucky things, you.
New iPhone rumour round-up: new OS, Orange to offer iPhone in autumn?
Apologies for slackness of posting - hey, it’s sunny for once! At least with Wordpress on my iPhone I might actually have a hope of updating on the road.
Anyhow, whilst I promised myself I wouldn’t make this site add to the myriad rumour-peddling hype machine already out there on the web, a couple of tube-alighting stories caught my attention that deserve highlighting.
New iPhone OS ‘2.1′ seeded to select developers
It seems that Apple may have been taking heed from some of the more vocal critics of the iPhone’s ever-dwindling list of absent features, for this week a new build of the iPhone’s OS was seeded to select developers. Headline additions include some extra bits of wizardry required to make turn-by-turn GPS navigation a reality (it knows which way you’re pointing it!!!) and other bits of wizardry to allow third-party apps some limited CPU time in the background to make ‘push’ notifications a possibility. Nothing is expected to make its way to your consumer iPhone before September, but in the meantime keep an eye out for a more incremental ‘2.0.1′ build that has been spotted visiting some major Apple sites, likely to level out some bugs in the 2.0 release.
Orange to join O2 in offering iPhone in the UK?
This rumour (for it is very much that at this stage) spread around the web like the proverbial wildfire, although there seems precious little factual info to back it up at this stage. Nevertheless, it’s not hard to imagine Apple being less than impressed by O2’s handling of the recent iPhone 3G launch, and considering breaking cover to work with other carriers in the UK. Certainly this would help attain that mass-market penetration they’re obviously going for with the new handset. Ambitious rumours put the ETA as soon as the autumn, so again keep em peeled (or just keep checking TWA, of course). The only bit I don’t get is the criticism of O2’s rates - surely they’re pretty darned hot and, as we’ve already seen, among the best in the world for all-you-can-eat data plans. Some people are never satisfied…
Another UK Apple Store on the way: Liverpool opens this weekend
Are you based in Liverpool and itching to get your mitts on some of that Apple retail goodness enjoyed by so many other cities in the UK? Jealous of the recent announcement of Leicester’s first retail store? Don’t worry! Be happy. For Apple will, this very weekend, make all your shopping-in-an-Apple-store-related dreams come true.
If you’re heading over for the launch (complete with much balloons and goody-bag-related joy, no doubt) why not drop us a line with some pics or something.
Apple store coming to Leicester Highcross Centre
Leicester-based fans of all things Apple retail rejoice: a brand shiny new Apple store is coming your way as part of the redevelopment of the Highcross/Shires shopping centre on the High Street. September 4th is the date to pencil into your, um, iPhones/iPods/Macs/MobileMe calendars/old-fashioned diaries.
Having lived in Leicester for a number of years for uni, this has of course come about five years too late for me. Hope you enjoy it, you lucky folk you.
Hunter Davies tries out a MacBook
Bit of fun for Saturday morning. Head on over to The Guardian’s often-excellent ‘dork talk’ column, currently guest-written by various tech (and non-tech) luminaries whilst Stephen Fry gets back in action following some nasty injury or other, for a great piece by Hunter Davies on giving up his Amstrad PCW9512 (I had one of those!!!!) for an Apple MacBook laptop.
As a Mac user who came from PCs I think it’s really easy to get complacent and assume Mac OS X is the near-pinnacle of UI design. As Hunter points out in his piece, what could be easier than a button labelled ‘exit’ on the keyboard to get out of a program, or another button to ‘print’ just like that? My favourite bit is the idea of calling up your daughter to ask her to Google something for you - awesome.