iLove my iPhone

The Deathstar hovers over the iPhone

I’m now 42, which of course is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. I’m delighted by some friends’ gifts of Amazon gift cards to help load up my Kindle with new books. That device is revolutionizing my reading, which is a major component of my lifestyle. But my birthday gift to myself, courtesy of the AT&T Deathstar, is my new iPhone.

A week and a half after its nationwide release and a few days after my old cell phone contract with another carrier had expired, I went in quest of an iPhone at my local AT&T store.  They were, as expected, out of stock.  At the end of a forty-minute endurance test they managed to order me one (actually two, due to an ordering snafu on their part), which arrived two days later.  Others in town have waited more than a week for theirs, so I presume my prompt service reflected lesser demand/greater supplies for the 16GB white model I was seeking.

It took almost another hour for me to pick up my new toy and escape the Death Star’s minions, but all great quests require patience and endurance.  And I have not been disappointed.

Two days of messing about with the handheld wonder, including loading it up with various applications, leave me delighted with its capabilities.  It is ridiculously easy to use and puts the internet in my pocket.

Phone

I’ve made and received calls, which have come in clearly despite my residence getting only a few bars of AT&T signal strength.  I told the phone to sync with my Gmail contacts list when I hook it to my Windows XP computer running iTunes.  That worked like a charm, allowing me to edit my contacts far more easily than on my old phone’s keypad or the iPhone’s better-but-still-annoying virtual keyboard.  I shifted frequent contacts into the easily-accessed favorites list and find that I don’t yet miss voice dialing, although I’ve added (but not yet tested) an application that claims to do that.

iPod

Listening to podcasts and music is better than on my iPod Nano for the most part.  The touchscreen interface allows far easier access to the album listing when playing a song, the cover art is much more visible, and the volume control buttons are quite handy.  My one complaint thus far is that it is harder to navigate within a lengthy podcast.  I can tap the screen during playback to see where I am in the recording, but sliding the playback position back and forth lacks the fine control I have with my Nano’s scroll wheel.  The iPhone forgot where I was in a podcast once when I paused it to go shopping, but remembered on other occasions.  Hopefully that glitch will remain quite infrequent.

Internet

At home, using my wireless network, the internet is blazing fast on the iPhone.  The EDGE network which I have to use here in Bartlesville when out and about is far slower and a bit annoying.  I used the 3G network in Tulsa yesterday and that did indeed speed up the browsing, but it put a noticeable drain on the battery life.  So I only plan to use 3G when I’m annoyed by EDGE surfing and consequently want a very quick way to turn 3G on and off from my home screen, rather than navigate through several layers of menus.

The iPhone is a wonder at rendering large web pages and allowing you to quickly zoom in and out to fit its small screen.  But I’ve already reconfigured my bookmarks in its Safari web browser to use the mobile versions of my favorite websites since those load faster and require no zooming.  I have Safari on my Windows XP machine and make most of my bookmark changes there for convenience – they automatically sync back and forth with the iPhone when it hooks up to iTunes. At first I wanted my iPhone to sync with my Firefox bookmarks, since that is my real desktop browser.  But now I like having Safari running with its own mobile-oriented bookmarks.  And when surfing on a desktop I can quickly tag webpages in Google’s notebook or my new Instapaper application for later viewing on the iPhone.

I do find it extremely annoying, however, that the iPhone lacks Adobe Flash, which is used by some websites for animations and even menus and controls.  But there is nothing like running around on shopping errands with the internet instantly accessible.  I can check prices and availability on the web or with the iPhone’s Save Benjis application, and I can get directions and maps using the phone’s GPS and cell tower triangulation capabilities.  The GPS is not turn-by-turn and doesn’t yet rival standalone units for navigation, but it will nevertheless be quite handy on vacations.

Email and Calendar

I’m using Gmail on the iPhone and it easily configures for that use.  My friend Josh Williams alerted me to a workaround to get push Gmail that I may try.  I haven’t tried out Apple’s MobileMe service, which has been plagued with startup problems and failed to impress Walt Mossberg.  It would be interesting if my employer enabled ActiveSync so I could access my work email and calendars more easily on my iPhone, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.  Plus that puts me in a higher-cost data plan if AT&T discovered I was using Microsoft Exchange in that manner.  So for now I’ll stick with WebAccess for my work email and the kludge of publishing my work calendar from Microsoft Outlook from my office desktop to Google Calendar.

eBooks

I’m not tempted to read electronic books on my iPhone since my Amazon Kindle has a much better display and interface for that purpose.  The Kindle is a lousy web browser but a superb text reader.

Applications

I haven’t had enough time to really give the iPhone applications a fair trial, so I’ll refrain from reviewing most of them.  Here are the apps I’ve loaded and am trying out, in order of familiarity thus far:

Google Mobile App – a must have, with improved functionality for Google’s many web applications

Remote – fantastic remote control for my Apple TV, adding functionality I never enjoyed before

Facebook – youngsters don’t use email much these days, preferring instant messaging and Facebook; I refuse the former and endure the latter

Instapaper – quickly store webpages for later browsing

iWant – quickly locate nearby services (restaurants, gas, etc.)

BoxOffice – movie locations, showtimes, ratings, etc.

Break – Breakout game

Pandora Radio – my favorite way to discover new music

Save Benjis – look up online prices for items by barcode and model numbers

Evernote – note-taking with text, photos, etc.

Exposure – Flickr photos

WHERE - various location-based services in an interface I find annoying thus far

WordPress – blog from anywhere

Units - unit conversions

SpeechCloud Voice Dialer – voice dialing on the iPhone

myLite Colored Strobe and Flashlight - turn your screen into a light

More Cowbell! – enhance your songs the Bruce Dickinson way

AOL Radio – various stations

Fans in the UK

Have some fun checking out the genre fans in their homes as photographed in the United Kingdom by Steve Schofield.

iWait for the iPhone

Lines are forming around the world today as folks eagerly purchase the second version of the iPhone.  I plan to purchase the new iPhone myself in a couple of weeks.  Why the delay?  Because the service contract on my small minimalist cell phone of the past few years won’t expire until July 19, at which time I will be far from home enjoying the cool weather of the Pacific Northwest.  Only when I return to the wonders of late July in Oklahoma will I be able to join the iPhone revolution.

The new phone will be a leap in size and complexity for me.  Some years back I picked my current Samsung SCH-a570 precisely because it was cheap, tiny, and feature-limited.  No camera, no downloads, no ringtones, nothing but voice and text messages.  I keep my phone numbers private, so I get few calls to boot.

So why in the world am I going to buy a vastly more expen$ive phone and, due to the change in carrier and necessary data and text messaging plans, more than double my monthly cell phone bill?  Not for phone calls, of course, and certainly not for the mediocre camera in the iPhone.  It’s for the internet, love.

I’ve written earlier about my desire for mobile, near-instant internet access.  One of the cheaper versions of the newly popular ultramobile computers might be tempting, but they seem too much and too little.  They are too much of a computer for what I want, since I really just want to browse the net and not mess with Unix or the painfully slow Windows boot-and-update routine, nor spend time managing the limited disk capacity.  And they are also too little, since they mostly rely upon Wi-Fi for web access, lacking easy access to cellular data networks.  My recent stay in San Antonio cemented my frustrations with the miserable Wi-Fi technology one encounters outside the home.  A group of us went to the National Educational Computing Conference there and I stayed at the Hampton Inn downtown.  The staff was extraordinarily friendly and helpful, but the hotel Wi-Fi simply did not work.  I could only connect successfully to a local pay-far-too-much-as-you-go Wi-Fi service.

Leery of the costly non-hotel Wi-Fi service, I instead used my latest gadget, the Amazon Kindle, to check my email, compose some brief replies, and browse a few columns and articles.  The Kindle only took seconds to make a connection to Sprint’s EVDO service – strong clear signal, no need to login, and absolutely free on the Kindle (at least for now).   I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading three complete books on my Kindle in the past few weeks, and am happily filling it up with both purchased and copyright-free texts.  So, given my satisfaction with my Kindle, why would I invest $2500 over the next two years – about $1500 over and above my current cell phone cost – in the new iPhone?

The Kindle’s superb reflective e-Ink screen makes it a wonderful device for reading books and long articles, but it is not a practical internet browser.  It lacks the necessary control interface and screen color and contrast to allow one to surf the net comfortably.  Filling in text boxes and selecting links on the Kindle is cumbersome, and most graphics look awful in four shades of grey.

I plan to continue to save links to long web articles on Google Notes for later retrieval via my Kindle, since its screen is so much easier on my eyes than any backlit display.  That approach is better than printing hard copies all of the time as I had been doing.  But I need something that can display web pages in their original formats, with full color and zoom capability.  And time and again when viewing an oddly-composed webpage on my Kindle I wished I could touch the screen, a la the iPhone, to scroll and zoom the image.

The new applications appearing for the iPhone are also quite appealing.  Google and other websites are releasing free software to enhance the use of their mobile services on the unit, and I’ll be able to use my new iPhone as a remote control for my Apple TV.  The iPhone can also, of course, serve as an iPod for acquiring and playing back music, video, and podcasts.

So in a couple of weeks I’ll have a plethora of digital gadgets: a touch-screen GPS unit for automobile navigation, my old push-button GPS for navigating in Canada (since the touch-screen unit only does the continental US), a Kindle for reading books and long text articles from the web, a Sandisk Clip dedicated to audiobooks, an iPod nano, and a new iPhone.  I’m running out of room in my cargo shorts for all of this stuff, so I await a future in which all of those functions are combined into a single device with a superb display, long battery life, convenient size, and constant cheap connectivity to a wonderful wireless world.

The Christian Nation Myth

A 2007 poll by the First Amendment Center reported that over half of the American people believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation.  Anyone who actually takes the time to read and comprehend the Constitution will recognize the absurdity of that myth.  The Constitution is abundantly clear in founding America as a secular nation with staunch religious neutrality.  The first amendment is quite direct in its separation of church and state:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And the only mention in the original Constitution itself of religion, besides the utilitarian dating of “in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven” is in Article VI’s separation of religion from the government:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Are you still uncertain of what the founding fathers intended?  Then consider the Treaty with Tripoli’s Article 11, negotiated with Muslim rulers in North Africa by George Washington’s administration and unanimously approved by the Senate in 1797 during the administration of John Adams:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

So how do our two serious candidates for the presidential election of 2008 deal with the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation?  Barack Obama told the religious right’s CBN News:

I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism.  Whatever we once were, we’re no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.  We should acknowledge this and realize that when we’re formulating policies from the state house to the Senate floor to the White House, we’ve got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community.

And now for John McCain, from his interview with the website beliefnet.com:

I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn’t say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.

McCain’s spin doctors later tried to re-interpret his statement, but methinks he is in need of some remediation.  I would assign the following:

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: Is America a “Christian Nation”?
Farrell Till: The Christian Nation Myth