CantBarsed.com Blog

Category: iPhone

  • My iPhone Story – MyPhone Story So Far

    It’s no secret I’m an “Apple fan boy” and I’ve been waiting to order a proper UK iPhone since playing with one in the Apple Store in Florida over the summer.

    The only decision to be made was whether to drive into town on a dark cold winter evening to buy from my local O2 store or buy from Apple online and wait a few days for delivery. No contest!
    So on Friday 9th November at 6.02pm and a few seconds I logged on to Apple’s site half expecting the site to be broken but everything worked fine and a few minutes later my iPhone was ordered.
    The iPhone arrived, as promised, the following Tuesday and I had my own sad unboxing and picture taking ceremony.

    Apple packaging is always gorgeous and I can never bring myself to throw it away so everything ends up in the loft and I’m going to have to buy a bigger house or start a museum eventually!

    I lost my previous Sony Ericsson mobile at the Latitude festival in the summer and replaced it with a Nokia N95 switching to the O2 network because I knew O2 had won the exclusive UK iPhone contract. The Nokia N95 is a nice phone, I liked the GPS feature but I couldn’t surf websites reliably on it and the camera combined with my photographic abilities were both disappointing.

    As an existing O2 customer (if you want to keep your number and existing contract) activation is different so I’ve put together an O2 step by step activation series of screenshots for anyone who wants to see exactly what happens. It took around 20 minutes from start to activation but I was taking screenshots along the way so that’s a worst case scenario and it was relatively straightforward but dull.

    If you’ve ordered an iPhone and you’re waiting for it to arrive read my iPhone setup Guide and when your iPhone arrives you’ll be ready to synchronise and play in minutes.

    I’m not going to hack my iPhone for a couple of reasons. First of all since I have an O2 contract so the phone features work(!) and secondly because Apple have agreed to open up development early next year and I can wait a few months for some “official” widgety enhancements.

    However I do hugely respect the efforts of the hacking community because I doubt Apple would have released the SDK without being pushed, it’s not in their nature.

    By belatedly following the advice in my iPhone setup guide I’ve now got all my contacts, photos, music and bookmarks neatly organised on my iPhone.

    I work mostly online so the most important iPhone feature for me is WiFi support and internet browsing. I prefer the Firefox browser but Safari is a capable and reliable alternative and now for the first time ever on a mobile device I can browse my websites and login and make urgent changes from the iPhone – that’s a huge step forwards in Joe World!

    I have literally hundreds of passwords which I need access to on a daily basis and I normally use RoboForm on PCs and 1Password on my Macs. They’re both excellent web form fillers and password managers and I recommend everyone gives one or the other program a try – especially if you’re using the same password for all your online services.

    I was scratching my head trying to figure out the best way to store all my passwords on the iPhone and was interrupted by the latest 1Password software update which now supports the iPhone – brilliant!

    1Password generates a special encrypted Safari bookmark which is synchronised to your iPhone along with your other Safari bookmarks and although it’s not automatic on the iPhone it’s the best available unless you know different?

    My friend Antonius has a hacked iPhone (it took him all weekend and the rest of family gave him a wide berth) so we met up to compare notes over a pint in the pub. The hacked interface is amazing with lots of toys to play with and I sincerely hope Apple takes a positive attitude to build a community of iPhone developers so we can all enjoy their efforts.

    Time will tell, thanks for reading, if you have any questions fire away, I’ll try to answer them…

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  • iPhone – Apple In My Eyes – CantBarsed.com Blog

    I’ve seen an Apple iPhone inspired future and it’s the stuff of science fiction. All the crucial elements are already in play.

    iTunes was the Trojan horse which let Apple loose on Windows giving PC users a glimpse of Mac loveliness as they traded up their mp3 players for iPods and got used to doing things Mac style.

    Making a success of the iTunes Store was the next crucial move which has made it (almost) painless to pay for our music, it’s certainly a lot less hassle than all that peer-to-peer nonsense – and with music becoming available at higher quality and DRM free there’s no excuse to steal music anymore.

    Switching Macs to Intel CPUs has made it easier for programmers to get Windows software running on a Mac which both encouraged long time Mac users to stick with the platform and enticed more people to switch to Macs offering a comfortable transition.

    The recently released Apple TV is a stealth device – it also integrates seamlessly with iTunes and iTunes Store on both PCs and Macs. To the casual observer Apple TV appears over-priced and near-useless BUT it’s being flown in under the radar to provide essential mission support as the iPhone establishes a bridgehead.

    I firmly believe the iPhone will do to the mobile phone market what the iPod did to the mp3 player market and history is going to repeat itself – people are going to start trading up their standalone iPods, mp3 players, mobile phones and PDAs to the iPhone. We’ll hear the same old bravado from other manufacturers about how they’re not worried while they frantically scramble to produce iPhone clones but they’ve missed the big picture and there’s no way back for them now.

    In less than two years all we will need is a TV (‘cos they’re big and fun to watch together), a computer or games platform (to work and play games) and an iPhone (because they’re Star Trek-like, damn sexy and portable). The stealth role for Apple TV reveals itself as the infrastructure to wirelessly manage everything on your iPhone, computer and TV screen using iTunes and Safari.

    The next battle for Apple isn’t with Microsoft or other device manufacturers but with Sky Digital and terrestrial digital TV for control of our eyeballs. Movies and TV shows are already available via the US iTunes Store and these can be streamed wirelessly over the Internet to your iPhone, computer or TV screen. The only question is when Apple TV is renamed Skynet – finally the big picture is clear for all to see.