iPhone Thoughts, 6 Months On

I was reading Farhad Manjoo's year-end technology wrap-up on Salon, and he talked a lot about the iPhone. He also included a pointer to a post by Harry McCracken of PC World (any relation to Ed, I wonder?) about the iPhone's shortcomings. And it got me to thinking about my experiences with the little guy.

The first thing to say is, I went down Harry's list and kept thinking, "Geez, I don't really give a rip about that." Things like Skype, using Lotus Notes (ugh!), Slingbox . . . he just has an interesting set of priorities. After 6 months with the iPhone, I'm still loving it. It is far and away my favorite purchase of the year, and while I can't wait for the upgrade--Doug's estimate: June of 2008--I have a hard time getting irritated for it's faults.

What do I want in an iPhone Rev. 2.0? Right now, just a few things:

• 3G; while I can live with Edge when I have to, it is definitely far too much slower than 3G. Apple says they'll have it next year. (June?)
• A2DP. I'm stunned that I can't use Bluetooth devices like the Cardo S-2 on the iPhone. That was boneheaded. (Another June fix?)
  
• Better ear-buds. The ones that come with the phone break in just a few months, and at $30/pop, that's not okay.
• More memory. I can live with 8GB, but it's not really 8GB. The OS takes up some space (about .75GB), and I have found that if you pack it too full, weird things start a-happenin'. I have found you need to leave about 1GB of free space, which is pretty annoying. But since the Touch comes in a 16GB model, I'm thinking this problem will be solved soon, too. (June?)
• There are lots of games available on the web for the iPhone now. I don't want them; I want games that are native. Jeez, Jobs; the friggin' iPod nano comes with games--what's up with not having any for the iPhone? Get on the stick!
  

With regard to some of Harry's specific complaints, I wanted to give my countervailing opinion:

• "The iPhone requires too many clicks to get stuff done." With all due respect: baloney. Perhaps Harry can get to stuff quicker or with less clicks on his 8525; I couldn't say. But I do know that on my wife's RAZR, my old v180, the HTC Universal, and any number of other phones I've tested that it's generally a pain in the ass to do almost anything not "dial a phone" related. Where do I go to turn on Bluetooth? How to I use the video camera? (My wife has had her RAZR for 3 months and didn't even know it had a video camera!) How do I download ringtones? Etc. On the iPhone, I never get lost in menus and I rarely guess wrong about where some feature is located. The interface is simply superb, and as a guy who documents software for a living, believe me, I've seen a lot of lame interfaces. It may take "more clicks," but who gives a rip as long as it's fast?
  
• "The iPhone doesn't have enough storage to be my primary media player." Well, it doesn't have enough space, that's true. On the other hand, it's far and away the best media player I've ever tested, and I've tested a bunch. I've tested several that had 30GB or 60GB of storage, and frankly the extra space isn't worth the screen that's not as good, the interface that's not as good, and the lack of quietness that those devices always have.
• "The iPhone's virtual keyboard is surprisingly good; the 8525's real one is better." Maybe. On the other hand, I'm not using the iPhone to type notes on; I just use it for SMS and answering the occasional email, and it's just fine for that. I don't want to trade a virtual keyboard for a real one unless I get something of the quality of an HTC Universal or an OQO version 2. And those babies cost over a grand, and weight 3 times as much. I don't think that's a good tradeoff. Your mileage may vary.

One final thing I wanted to mention: as a phone, the iPhone is by far the best cell phone I've had. It's reception is better and more consistent, I can hear better with the stereo earbuds, and it's interface--in case I haven't made this clear--is excellent. So I don't know what the people are expecting who complain, but I have been way happy just on the phone end.

It's not a perfect device, by any means. But it is the only device I have ever actually be willing to carry on my hip; all other devices have gotten tossed in a gear bag. The iPhone? Naw; I clip it on my belt in a beautiful Vaja case. And while you may not know it, for me, that's saying a lot.

Corporate Stupidity

A couple of months ago, Farhad Manjoo of Salon posted about this last summer's snit between NBC Universal and Apple. The short form: NBCU wants more control over the price of downloads of their content from iTunes, and Jobs was insistent that the price remain the same for everything ($1.99/download). So NBCU said "Screw You," and walked away from iTunes, taking their bat and ball with them.

Why am I writing about this now? Because NBCU's policy only became effective early this month. And so now, while the writers are on strike and it might be a good time to download shows from iTunes that you haven't seen before, you're hosed, because they're gone.

And I don't mean just the latest seasons; NBCU pull their entire catalog. And this isn't just for NBC shows; it's for NBCU-produced shows. So while Heroes and 30 Rock were on NBC and are of course gone, so is Monk, which is on USA. And Eureka, which is on SciFi. And so on. Don't matter about the channel; just matters about the production company. And who the hell pays attention to that?

This is asinine from so many different directions that it's hard to unpack. But consider these few main points:

• NBCU loses all the iTunes users. That's a lot of users. Yes, they're offering their stuff through other channels--e.g., Heroes is available through Amazon.com's UnBox--but how many iTunes users are going to want to fart around with a new format, try to come up with conversion tools, or whatever? (You can currently only watch UnBox videos on your computer.) Those iTunes users are lost.
• If NBCU jacks up the price--as they clearly want--who will pay? While I would hesitate to say "all," I have to believe that the vast majority of their content is available through torrent download sites. One of the great advantages to iTunes is that it is reasonably priced and easy to use. If NBCU makes it unreasonably priced and difficult to use, who on Earth is going to pay when they can use some other difficult method that's free?
• I don't know how much NBCU was making for their downloadable shows, but for their back-catalog, not only are they not stealing away their own viewers, they're getting that legendary holy grail of business: money for nothing. They upload their episodes to iTunes--episodes that may be years old--and people pay for them. That revenue is now gone. And for what?

As a personal user, I have purchased 'way more TV episodes than I probably should have, simply because it was easy and reasonably priced. I watched half of last years' episodes of Monk through download. All of Heroes. A few episodes of Eureka. And now NBC is getting no revenue from me--none--because I simply don't watch commercial TV. I'll wait and order the DVDs from Netflix. That's not a lot of money--$100, maybe--but now NBCU will get none. Multiply that by tens of thousands, and that's a lot of dough. That they were getting for no extra work.

I always knew that entertainment companies were idiotic about new media distribution formats, but this really takes the cake. NBCU wins the Doug Corporate Boneheads of the Quarter award. Congratulations, guys!

Grocery Store Rant

When the fambly and I moved from California to Austin, we were able to leverage our real estate in CA to get a pretty nice house in Austin, which turned out to be in a frou-frou neighborhood.

The nice thing about our neighborhood is that it is close to everything, including downtown, but feels like its own little neighborhood. Plus we can we hear all the big concerts in the nearby park; last summer we listened to the Stones by opening our windows, and I could hear Dylan while I walked the dog.

On the downside, there's a lot of pretty conservative folks here--a problem for a yutz from Santa Cruz--and all the stores like to be "upscale." Which means that the hardware store looks more like a boutique. But the worst, as far as I'm concerned, is the local Randall's grocery store.

First of all, everything there is overpriced; the nearest H.E.B. is quite a bit cheaper (and a lot farther away). But also, they introduce new products, and then as soon as I learn to like them, yank them away again. I've lost track of how many "Doug enjoys this!" items have come and gone in this place, while still being available at Albertsons or H.E.B. But the worst is, they've upgraded their store twice, and we've only been here 5 years or so. And how do you reckon those upgrades are paid for? Not lower prices at the checkout, I'm telling you.

First, it was adding faux-wood floors to the produce section and a Starbucks outlet. Aside from the fact that I don't give a rip what my grocery store floors are made out of, there's a Starbucks right across the friggin' parking lot! I hate to break it to these folks, but when I go to a grocery store, I want groceries, not Starbucks, not wooden floors, and certainly not marble tile floors (which is what they are putting in now). Groceries. You know: milk, eggs, butter, bread; that sort of thing.

If I want a frou frou fancy-pants grocery store with all the hard-to-get stuff and organic produce and so on, I'll go to the bloody World Headquarters Whole Foods 5 miles away. In the meantime, stop taking away my yogurt breakfast bars and keep your marble tiles.

But the worst thing in the new remodel there is, they took out the "Express" checkout line and installed those idiotic "self checkout" machines. Let me ask you this: when you go to a store that has those things, how long are the lines manned by actual human beings vs. the lines at the "self checkout" machines? Personally, I always see lines where there are real, genuine people, but hardly ever at the self checkout.

This is a greed thing, pure and simple. Higher prices, smaller stock, fewer employees, greater profit. None of it is for the customer who--in case I didn't make this clear--just wants groceries.

I could go into what's lame about these self checkout machines--they're really badly designed--but I'll leave that for another post. I think by now everyone knows that I am hardly a luddite--I am a regular poster to Gear Diary and own an iPhone, for crying out loud!--but I am happy to complain about corporate greed and lame engineering when I see it. And that's what this is, kids.

Silliness

• For a long time I've wanted Hollywood to make a film called "Mary," starring Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary Beth Hurt, Mary Elizabeth Mostrantonio, and Mary-Louise Parker. I mean, after all, why not?
• Do you ever wonder if the airplane shoe bomber realizes how many millions of hours in productivity he has cost people in this country? I mean, because of that one guy, millions of people are forced to take off their friggin' shoes every day. It's insane. My guess is: not.
• How come every season has one name except Fall? Fall is my favorite season personally, but why is it that it is named Autumn and Fall? Yes, yes, I know it's because it's descriptive, but we don't call Summer "Hot", Winter "Cold," and Spring "Thank God I can finally go outside in my shirtsleeves." Did Autumn bribe a Senator in 1827, or something?
• A lot of people see a relatively simple invention and slap their heads and say, "I wish I had thought of that!" In my Dad the engineer's case, it was the weed whacker. "Some fishing line and a little motor on the end of a stick? I should have thought of that!" The guy had a couple of patents, but lamented not inventing the weed whacker. What's yours?
• Why is it people say they trust someone "implicitly?" "Implicitly" means that it goes without saying, so if someone tells you that they trust you "implicitly," they are telling you, and so it obviously is no longer "implicit." Why can't they say "I trust you completely," or "absolutely," or even just "I trust you?" But by declaring your level of trust as "implicit," you are immediately negating it. Goofy.
  

The Writer's Strike

While it certainly doesn't have the cachet of the Iraq war or a massive fire in Southern California, I have been following the Hollywood Writer's Strike with some interest and, unsurprisingly, have some thoughts.

The issues seem to boil down to the fact that the writers want a piece of the New Media pie--internet downloads of the shows they wrote for, and such--while the studios and producers would prefer to give them, well, a pittance.

Now, I'm a writer. I don't write "Pushing Daisies" or gags for "The Daily Show," but I do make my egg and butter money putting words down. And my view of the system in general is the same as how I view computer software: without the creative people, the sales folks don't have anything to sell. Without software engineers, no software, and no product. Without writers, no scripts, and therefore no shows.

I may be harsh, but "producers" aren't really "producers," nor should they be called such. Producers, in the film/TV sense are really financers and salespeople. They put up the money, and they sell the product. You need them, of course; no money, and nothing gets created. But without the writers, nothing gets created. And you can't make money off of something that doesn't exist.

So my bottom line is pretty clear: the producers should stop trying to keep all the swag to themselves, and share it fairly with the writers. Because while they don't like to admit it, without writers, they're nothing but bankers and salespeople. And while there's nothing wrong with bankers and salespeople, you just don't see a lot of them riding around in Ferraris and hanging on the arms of famous actors.