Are my eyes really blue?

I was asked today what I’d like to see in the iPhone. Leaving aside flights of fancy like direct download from the iTMS, a terminal client, a VNC client, text dictation, etc etc, I narrowed it down to a tiny handful of things that I think are reasonable expectations:

* Phone-side spam filtering, ideally feeding back to Yahoo or Google or whoever

* Support for the receipt of MMS. (They can always be sent in the form of e-mail, but not being able to receive them to a number kind of stinks)

* Multi-recipient SMS. (I admit, it breaks the carefully-crafted chat metaphor, but sometimes you gotta.)

* Some way to get text into the Notes app other than endless tapping. (Although I wouldn’t be surprised to see this sync with the Leopard version of Mail.)

My suspicion is that we’ll see a lot more things happen about the time that Leopard drops, especially in the sync area. Remember, it was supposed to be out by now, and inasmuch as the iPhone runs a version of OS X, it’s definitely Leopard (CoreAnimation is a critical part of the UI, and that’s 10.5 all the way). I wouldn’t mind seeing the new Movies widget in Dashboard as an iPhone app, though all things being equal I’m not sure I’d use one of the four remaining squares on that.

You’ll notice I didn’t say anything about ringtones. Not that I wouldn’t mind having Yakety Sax or the Vandy version of Also Sprach, but honestly, I almost *like* the extremely limited selection of ringers – it’s a nice backlash against the endless stream of bad hip-hop clips at $3 a throw. In fact, one of the best things about the iPhone is that AT&T was denied any control over UI or apps load – so it’s not burdened with “Cingular Video” or “My MEdia” or a 5-provider java mail client that replaced the perfectly useful open Moto mail piece. AT&T is a bug, not a feature, and if I had my way I’d be using this trick on T-Mob instead of Big Orange…but it wasn’t my call.

I’m still enjoying the hell out of the iPhone, make no mistake, but I find it’s not replacing the laptop when I’m at home on the couch. That’s not entirely surprising, just because 1200×800 beats the hell out of 480×320 any way you cut it. Especially when trying to catch up on a dozen feeds at once. But I am irritated that i can’t just touch the laptop screen and zoom in on Safari. =)

Now I’m just being an ass. 🙂

i get my iPhone tomorrow. Probably. At least that’s the plan. Likely as not I will be spending most of the day troubleshooting and raising hell with wireless procurement trying to get my account sorted. But hey, whatever it takes. By this time tomorrow night, the laptop will no longer be my primary connection to the Internet. Now all I need to do is make sure the Google secure Wi-Fi network works on it..

Also, here’s a tip: when choosing a co-location facility, make sure that their backup power actually comes on when the power goes out. That’s why I co-loc with my brother-in-law and not 365 Main ;]

There’s now a place in my building to go get coffee. This is a huge breakthrough. I had previously considered trying to rig things up with a French press and a bag of coarse-ground Kenya AA, or a funnel and some paper filters – we have a water cooler that does some sort of hot-water output which I had previously used for tea, but the infrastructure associated with coffee made it too tough to get the black gold until now.

Funny thing was that the guys in the shop at my last job had to have their coffee, and we had an actual pot down there as well as the stand upstairs, but I never had the compulsion to drink it that I have picked up in the last 3-4 months. I don’t know how that came about, and I apologize for repeating myself, but coffee to me is where boba tea was for my wife 5 years ago: every waking minute is spent drinking one or figuring out where the next one is coming from.

Coffee has a civilizing effect on me. I don’t know why that is, but if you go back far enough, you can see it working on me in high school, when the ground-up-dirt-and-all-with-no-milk-or-sugar brews in AP Physics got me my last A in a science class. Or in college, where the 4-cup coffepot at 8 AM was the only thing getting me to my early class January of my freshman year. Or now, where for 2 bucks or less I have a distraction, a stimulant, and a 30-second time out all in one. Not just good, good for you. Or so I hope.

My iPhone arrives at the end of the month. This will be my third pass at a smartphone in the last four years. The first was the SonyEricsson P800, which was an interesting touchscreen-based device but one which was ultimately too flawed to be useful. The second was the Nokia 6620, which was just too bloody big. But his is dead solid perfect…from all my testing. Most of all, it’s a complete replacement for my laptop 95% of the time…which begs the question, do I even keep a laptop? Couldn’t I just get by on the iMac at home?

It’s going to be quite a summer down the stretch…

…that asserts that God is in the details.

It’s wrong.

God is in the backups.

Reading this article has convinced me more than ever that most people are just plain dumb. Harsh? Maybe, but the fact that more people can identify the American Idol winner than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, coupled with the fact that less than half the country could identify Saudi Arabia as the main source of Sept. 11 hijackers, plus the fact that four in ten Americans seriously think that Iraq was behind those attacks…

Either people are stupid (likely), or the clown shows that pass for news in this country have failed to inform people (equally likely). Either way, I’m starting to feel the same way I used to feel about work: it’s no better anywhere else, but at least different dysfunction would be a change of pace.

My doctoral dissertation was going to be the definitive exploration of how the methods and styles of Southern politics were becoming nationalized. Ten years on, I find it tough to see how the process isn’t complete.

Continue reading “I called it ten years ago…”

The ongoing health issues have now caught both my in-laws, although each of them seems to have a simple surgical resolution, on the face of things. Both at once is kind of problematic. My knee is way down the list, although it’s officially official: I need to have my knee scoped to clean up 21 years of neglect. It’ll be a one-day thing, outpatient in the afternoon and fine by morning (theoretically), so it can kind of wait. Meanwhile, the heat hasn’t subsided. Although we did escape to the mountains at the weekend for two days largely away from computing, cell phones, and news and the wider world in general. It was almost worth sleeping on the ground just to truly be away from it all…looks like time to update my list of stuff I’m enjoying.

I don’t know what it is about the hot weather that makes me depressed, but it would explain a lot. I always hated summers growing up, and I think the steady diet of humidity and 90 degrees is probably why. Now I’ve gotten used to California weather, and when the high pressure sticks over the Bay Area, I go completely pear-shaped. And now they’re saying that it’s going to be like this until Friday?

No wonder I love the fog so much. If the next five days weren’t packed to craziness, I would have long since split for Skyline Drive in the evenings and maybe even a trip to the city this weekend once the weather lifts. of course that’s always assuming it does lift…and that awful stretch last June makes me think it might not be over as quickly as they think.