It's Only Apple, But We Like It

In one week Apple will hold its annual September music-themed event. This year the slogan on the announcement reads, “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.” Others say this is a Rolling Stones reference. I have no clue. I didn’t listen to the Stones. What I do know is that the announcement image this time around gives little-to-no allusion as to what may be announced at the event. No “hidden theme” so to speak. It’s just a shadow dancer with an iPod.

And what’s up with that? We haven’t seen Apple bring out the shadow dancers in at least a year or so. I do notice that the iPod the shadow dancer is holding has the cable coming from the bottom of the device. Perhaps he/she/it is holding an iPod touch? That would make sense. The iPod touch is practically the flagship iPod these days.

This brings me to chipping in my two cents on hopes and predictions of what may transpire next week.

iTunes

Let’s start with iTunes. The rumor mill has been saying we’ll see iTunes 9 with social networking integration. I suppose this means you’ll be able to tweet or post to Facebook whatever song you are listening to. Gag. I could care less. It just sounds like more feature bloat to me.

What I would rather see is for iTunes to get the Snow Leopard treatment. Few new features, major refinement. iTunes is still a Carbon app. (Carbon is the transitionary language used for porting Classic Mac OS 8/9 apps to OS X). With Snow Leopard, Apple ditched Carbon and moved everything over to native Cocoa. I mean, they even rewrote the entire Finder from the ground up. And it did wonders for the Finder’s performance.

iTunes has been begging for a revamp for a couple of years now, in my opinion. I’d like to see Apple rewrite iTunes from the ground up, throwing out years of crufty code that has built up and bogged down performance.

I’d rather see this than have social networking in iTunes. I have a feeling I’ll be disappointed.

iPhone OS 3.1

iPhone OS 3.1, which has been in beta with developers for a couple of months, will be available for the iPhone and iPod touch. I just hope it does for iPhone 3.0 what iPhone 2.1 did for 2.0. And that is to be what Apple should have shipped a couple months ago.

iPod updates

It’s basically a given that the iPods will get refreshed. My thoughts are short and sweet here.

The iPod touch will remain at current price points, but move to 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. They will also see the inclusion of a camera. Many spy shots have surfaced over the past month showing this. If the photos are to be believed (and many do) it looks as if there is a pinhole next to the camera. My bet is that is for a small mic for video capture. Because video is kind of stupid without audio. The location of the mic makes sense for trying to limit the use of it to video capture. It would be odd to use a mic there for VOIP calls. And let’s face it, if you want to make a phone call on an Apple device, Apple would rather have you by an iPhone.

Internally, I think the iPod touch will gain a faster CPU, GPU, and more memory like the iPhone 3GS did earlier this summer. Externally, I think it will stay the same with the addition of the camera.

The iPod nano…I’m not sure. Traditionally, Apple has modified the overall design every year. However, rumors say the nano will retain the same design and gain a camera. This seems odd to me. Mainly because the iPod nano does not have Internet connectivity. See, the iPod touch has wi-fi, and can upload pictures to Flickr or MobileMe or wherever. The iPhone 3GS can upload video to YouTube and other services. Apple’s touchscreen devices have browsers and email clients. Cameras make sense.

Unless the iPod nano is getting drastically redesigned with a touchscreen (which would be cool, but I doubt it) I can’t see it gaining a camera. I really have no idea what Apple may do with the nano.

The iPod shuffle was just updated around 6 months ago. Perhaps more color choices than black or silver. Perhaps nothing.

That leaves the iPod classic. I think this is going away. Yes, it is iconic. Yes, it is the only iPod that holds more than 32GB of data. But if the iPod touch moves to 64GB, I think that seriously narrows the market. There is more incentive for a consumer to sacrifice some storage for the benefits of the iPod touch OS. Besides, how many people really fill up 120GB on an iPod?

Also, many of the manufacturers of the 1.8” hard drives that the classic utilizes are scaling down production drastically. Perhaps that is because Apple isn’t ordering too many of them these days.

The Mythical iTablet

Nothing to see here, people. Move along. Seriously, I’m not expecting the tablet this year. Developers will need time to makes apps for it. If Apple is planning to release it in 2009, it will get its own special event, likely in October. Why October? Because Apple has done events for the holiday season in October.

Steve Jobs

I think he’ll be at the event, he’ll do a little talking, but let other executives like Joz and Schiller do the heavy lifting, just like the November 2008 event when the unibody MacBook Pro debuted.

What do you think will happen next week?

The Name is Leopard...Snow Leopard

On Friday, August 28th Apple released Snow Leopard into the wild to feast upon Macs everywhere. Mine arrived via FedEx about 2:00 pm. I’m guessing that with the $29 price point, many users are upgrading, as the FedEx driver who delivered my new kitty said he had over 1,000 boxes from Apple on his truck, and there were easily over 10,000 Apple boxes in the Lincoln, NE facility when he arrived earlier that day. And that’s just in Lincoln, NE, folks.

I set about installing Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro immediately, as I had already backed up in anticipation. I also upgraded any software I could to latest versions (many of which already were sporting Snow Leopard compatibility). I chose to do the standard issue upgrade from the installer, knowing that if it was super glitchy I had a backup I could do a clean install from. The upgrade process of dusting some Snow on Leopard took about 35 minutes.

And I am happy to report that the upgrade process was flawlessly smooth. The benefits of going to Snow Leopard are simply staggering. The chief attribute that stands out above all the rest is speed. This is one fast cat. Booting up is faster, going to sleep is faster, many apps run much faster (CandyBar is a great example. I’m used to opening it then checking Twitter while it loads all the system icons. It takes only a couple seconds on Snow Leopard), and even shutting down is faster (5 seconds by my clock).

Visual Changes



Visually, there are very few things different than Leopard. All the menus within the Dock are now black with white text and a stunning blue highlight (like the Spotlight search bar, not Aqua). Personally, I think these new black menus look very wonderful. I wish they were persistent throughout the system such as contextual menus or menus from the menu bar, which are still translucent gray.

Exposé

Exposé has been one of my favorite features of Mac OS X since it debuted with 10.3 Panther. I can’t think of a day using my Mac since that I haven’t invoked Exposé at least once. However, it is also a feature that hasn’t seen any (user-visible) improvement since its origin. That has changed in 10.6 Snow Leopard. Exposé has received a bit of an overhaul in how it displays windows. It used to be that windows scaled to fit the screen in an inconsistent way. Some windows were quite large, some were quite small, and they ended up in various areas of the screen without any rhyme or reason. Now windows scale to a near uniform zoom level and arrange themselves in a grid. Hovering your cursor over a window while using Exposé then pressing spacebar activates QuickLook to enlarge the window briefly, so you can make sure that is the window you wish to select.

Exposé is a great feature that is now married to another great feature of OS X – The Dock. By clicking and holding on the icon of an open app in the Dock, Exposé is triggered to show windows from only that app. Similarly, if you click and drag a file from the Finder (or wherever) and hold it over an active icon in the Dock, Dock Exposé kicks in, showing windows for that app, which you can then drop the file into the desired window. Making Dock Exposé spring-loaded was a great idea. Props to whoever at Apple coded that.

One last thing about Exposé – if you have minimized windows, those show up as well. They appear as smaller windows beneath a thin line separating minimized from non-minimized windows. It’s a nice trick.

(Note concerning minimized windows: you can now choose to have minimize windows behind the app’s Dock icon instead of piling up in the right side of your Dock. Problem is, there isn’t a visual cue that windows have been minimized to the app icon aside from Exposé.)

Stacks

The list view of Stacks gains the same black theme as other menu items in the Dock. Fan view looks exactly the same. However Grid view received some new-feature-love in Snow Leopard. Grid view now supports the ability to drill down into folders. Clicking on a folder in a Grid view Stack now shows the contents of that folder, and places a back arrow (very similar to the back arrows in the iPhone’s user interface) at the top left of the open Stack. If the number of contents of a Stack in Grid view exceed the visibility of the Stack interface, a scroll bar now appears. These enhancements actually make the Grid view useful, though I still prefer List view for Stacks with many items.

There are a few other nuances of the user interface that have been refined, but I should leave some stuff for you to discover on your own.

QuickTime X

Apple drastically revamped QuickTime. The user interface is now black with inline controls that fade in and out as needed (along with the title bar). The result is a playing video that just floats in the middle of your screen. Hardcore QuickTime 7 Pro users will outcry at the lack of some very high end features, but QuickTime 7 is an optional install that will reside in the Utilities folder. For me, QuickTime X does it for me. The ability to do minor trim edits (anything else I can use iMovie for) is fine. The big seller for me is the ability to do a screencast recording. If I am unable to do a screen share via iChat to help out friends and family, I can record a quick tutorial video and send it to them. Perfect.

Under the Hood

It’s no secret that the majority of Snow Leopard’s enhancements are under the hood. Consumers won’t notice these enhancements outright. The only way mere mortals notice these things is through perception – such as “speed” and “stability.”

As for the perception of increased speed, many refinements and optimizations to Mac OS X as a whole contribute a lot towards that. However, within a few months, I believe users will notice vast speed improvements as third-party developers update their applications to take advantage of new “under-the-hood” technologies in Snow Leopard. Chiefly I am talking about Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL.

Grand Central Dispatch will allow developers to easily split up tasks in their apps between the different processing cores in our modern-day Macs. This was achievable in Leopard, but it was extremely difficult. Now this can be achieved much easier now that Apple has laid down a uniform path for all developers.

OpenCL allows developers to access the extreme processing power that is often idle in our graphic processors. Applications that require a lot of computational processing power will now be able to call upon the GPU to churn through data faster. I imagine in the near future, apps such as Photoshop will take advantage of this and be able to complete tasks like PhotoMerge much faster.

As for the reliability of Mac OS X overall, things are very promising. Instead of adding “300+ new features” to OS X like in Leopard, Apple introduced very few features. Instead they went through OS X with a fine tooth comb and did a massive spring cleaning. This is reflected in that many users will regain around 6 or 7 GB of hard drive space (I’ve heard reports of up to 20 GB). Apple threw out a lot of cruft, and good for them. One of those pieces of cruft was support for PowerPC legacy machines. My grandfather is actually affected by this, as he bought an iBook G4 about a month before the Intel MacBook was released to replace it. He is stuck at Leopard unless he buys a new machine. But the last PowerPC Mac was released nearly four years ago. It’s time for OS X to move on.

Conclusions

So far, my Snow Leopard experience has been delightful. Everything is snappier, all of my apps work correctly (as far as I can tell), and I’ve only encountered one slight bug (with the 4-finger Exposé gesture on my MacBook Pro’s trackpad). One flagrant bug. That’s about 39 fewer flagrant bugs than when I went from Tiger to Leopard. The refinements are wonderful. The price tag was perfect. $29. You can’t beat that. If you have Leopard, you’d be silly not to upgrade to Snow Leopard (unless a critical app you use isn’t compatible yet).

Overall, I’m very glad Apple sat this round out for adding loads of new features. I believe Snow Leopard has laid the groundwork for Apple to build an amazing next generation of OS X.

Twitterrific 2.1 Fluffs the Blue Bird's Feathers

Yesterday Apple finally approved the first substantial feature update to my favorite Twitter application for the iPhone – Twitterrific. The app had been sitting in the approval queue for quite a few weeks. The new version brings a flock of new features. I’ll go over my favorites here. The colossal list of all the changes can be found at Twitterrific’s version history page.

First and foremost, I had started with Twitterrific since the opening day of the App Store. But version 1.x lacked many advanced features, especially when Tweetie came on the scene. I had resisted Tweetie for quite a while, but when I started managing a second Twitter account, I ended up on Tweetie out of necessity.

I switched back to the blue bird when version 2.0 came out and was instantly won back. Over time though, I did find that the new blue bird was missing a few features that Tweetie had that I really loved. Twitterrific 2.1 has taken care of all that, and is reigning supreme yet again.

Here’s what Tweetie had that Twitterrific now has:

• New “Load More…” button to retrieve older tweets in the timeline.


• Added a photo viewer for images on yfrog, Twitpic, and Twitgoo. (This is instead of just loading the web page for the photo, as Twitterrific had always done. This is MUCH faster.)


• Tap on the avatar in the author info view to view the avatar full size.


• Added following and followers buttons to author view.

Granted, these are not drastic things that I couldn’t live without, but they round out the experience of the app. Possibly my favorite is the custom image viewer, especially for Twitpic. The old method of loading the whole Twitpic web page was time consuming and cumbersome, as you’d have to zoom to see the image every time. Now you get a wonderful fullscreen image that loads quickly. Nice.

Some other new features that I am loving is the “Address Book” view (signified by a rolodex card), a YouTube videos play within the in-app browser, the built-in web browser supports landscape view, in-app email support, and the ability to translate a tweet to your native language.

The “address book” is a wonderful feature. From either the timeline view or posting view, you can bring up your followers, who you’re following, and a search area to view an account and create a mention or direct message. Very nice.

Utilizing the in-app YouTube viewer and in-app email in OS 3.0 is nice. An app’s experience is greatly improved when you don’t have to leave the app all the time.

For iPhone 3GS owners, you getting some special attention and love, too!  You can record, post, and view video from yfrog and TwitVid. The developers note that for yfrog, you need to activate the video setting on yfrog.com.

Also, apparently Twitterrific 2.1 is “optimized for the iPhone 3GS.” Whatever that means. (Not that I’m bitter that I don’t have a 3GS.) (I’m just messing with you all.)

Overall, Twitterrific 2.1 is a solid feature upgrade that really gives the blue bird some new pluck. Twitterrific 2.1 is available in an ad-supported free [App Store] version and a $3.99 ad-free Premium [App Store] version.

P.S. ~ It’s not a bad idea to follow @Twitterrific on the Twitter. App specific news is regularly pumped out there and helpful hints and tips for the app are offered as well.

Convertbot Belongs on Your iPhone (or iPod touch) [u]

There are plenty of times that I want to convert one value to another. For some reason, it usually involves recipes. My wife and I have many recipes that are scaled to feed an army. We’re a three person family. And our just-over-one-year-old son doesn’t exactly eat a large portion.

(Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll eat us out of house & home when he becomes a teenager).

Now, there are other times I’ve needed to convert various values. My go-to place for such a thing has always been Google. See, if you go to Google and type in 48.5 ounces to pounds Google will tell you 48.5 ounces = 3.03125 pounds. Handy, huh?

Great thing is, that even works on my iPhone via Safari.

But I love great design and user interfaces. Heck, I use a Mac, right? How could I not have an appreciation for those? Well, it just so happens that there is an app for that. And it belongs on your iPhone.

I’ve had my eyes on Convertbot [App Store] by Tapbots for quite some time now. It is a gorgeous little app that lives to serve your every conversion whim. It has a wonderful robotic-inspired user interface, complete with sound effects that just makes the experience gush with gadgetry.

And this little app does a lot. Currency, Data Size, Length, Mass, Speed, Temperature, Time, Volume, and Area are the main categories, with many denominations in each one. There is a nice demo video over on the aforelinked Tapbots site. The app normally sells for $1.99.

However, as of this publication, Convertbot is FREE for a “very limited time.” So skip the demo, go make sure it’s still free on the App Store, and add it to your iPhone’s utility belt!

UPDATE: I just discovered there’s is a virtual ton of extra measurement categories that can be enabled in the app’s preferences! They include Angle, Data Rate, Force, Fuel, Illuminance, Power, Pressure, Radioactivity, SI, Typography, and Work.

Get Ready to Dip Your Leopard in Snow

According to MacRumors, Apple today has bestowed the Great Seal of Golden Master upon Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the next major refinement of Mac OS X. Golden Master is software-speak meaning that the new cat’s code has been frozen and is ready to be pressed to disc, boxed up, and shipped to Mac lovers everywhere.

Well, most Mac users will benefit. If you have an Intel Mac you’re good to go ahead and upgrade. However, if you have a PowerPC Mac (iBook, PowerBook, Mac mini G4, iMac G5 or earlier, or a Power Mac) you’re out of luck. Snow Leopard only supports the Intel-based Macs. But hey, it’s been almost 4 years since Intel Macs made their debut, and that’s a long time in technology years.

And the pricing this time around for a major OS upgrade is terrific. I remember paying $129 each for 10.3 Panther, 10.4 Tiger, and 10.5 Leopard. Snow Leopard will cost less than going to dinner and a movie – a cool $29 for an individual license and $49 for a 5-license Family Pack.

It’s good to note that those aforementioned prices only apply if you already have Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. If you are running an Intel Mac with 10.4 Tiger, you’ll need to buy the Mac Box Set when it is updated to include Snow Leopard. That runs $169, but is a deal in and of itself, as you get Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09, & iWork ‘09 all in one shiny box.

Now for some shameless plugging: I’ve added a box at the top of the sidebar to pre-order Snow Leopard on Amazon.com. Why don’t you treat yourself to a lovely pre-order, which will also give me a pecuniary kickback. Come on, we both deserve it. I used the word pecuniary, that has to count for something. That link will take you to a page to choose from any flavor of Snow Leopard you need.

(Oh, and if you buy anything else in the same shopping session, I’ll get a kickback on that, too. You need a new MacBook Pro, right?)

(One more thing: if you’re reading this in an RSS reader, here’s that Amazon link for you. *wink*)

More Colors than a Box of Crayons

If you’ve ever had to do any amount of web design — no matter how basic — you’ve likely had to match colors for sidebar widgets or some other material. I know any time I add a new widget to the sidebar of this blog, I have to pull out a color picker.

Back in February, my best buddy from Britain, Samantha, wrote an article about a little utility named Pipette. Pipette allows you to use a eyedropper tool to sample a pixel of an image and then grab the hex code so you can easily color-match on the web.

However, I did have a gripe with Pipette — and it is a snobby spoiled Mac user gripe. It’s ugly. The pallette is boring, the icon is 128-pixels when the rest of the Mac world has long since moved to 512-pixel icons. Also, it’s annoying that the window disappears when the app isn’t selected, meaning I can’t just leave it over on the side of the screen for easy access.

But it served a great purpose. And it did its job very well.

And then I stumbled upon Colors by Matt Patenaude. Colors does everything Pipette does, but does it with some modern Mac OS X gloss. The icon is gorgeous and so is the UI.

It also has a couple more tricks than Pipette. Not only can you grab the hex code (#rrggbb) but you can also grab #rgb, rgb(x,x,x) and rgba(x,x,x,x,). Also, you may choose whether or not to include the # sign.

In my book, Colors trumps Pipette in form and function (though I only see myself using hex code). Enjoy.

iPhone OS 3.0.1 fixes SMS threat, maybe more? [updated]

On Friday, July 31, 2009, Apple released iPhone OS 3.0.1 for the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS in order to patch up an SMS vulnerability in response to the threat’s prominent exposure at the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas, NV. The researchers who discovered the vulnerability prior to the conference said they let Apple know about 30 days prior with the warning that it would demonstrated at the conference on Thursday, July 30, 2009.

It is slightly alarming to me that Apple waited to patch this until push came to shove. Perhaps they were hoping to just be able to roll the fix into OS 3.1, which is currently in private beta with developers.

When Apple rolled out the new update to OS 3.0 on Friday, it listed a sole item in the release notes: Fixes SMS vulnerability. However, I have noticed other improvements over 3.0 since installing it on my iPhone 3G.

Faster Syncing

After installing OS 3.0 in June, syncing had slipped into taking close to 4 minutes. Most of that was in the backup process. Now, backup takes less than 10 seconds.

Faster Shutdown/Startup

With iPhone OS 3.0, shutting down took nearly one minute and starting up about three minutes. Now, with 3.0.1, shutting down takes about 20 seconds and starting up about 45 seconds.

Much Improved Battery Life

I have said many times on this blog that my iPhone 3G had it’s best battery life under OS 2.2, and had dropped with 2.2.1, and then plunged to a near ridiculous level with OS 3.0. After a couple days with 3.0.1, I can say that my iPhone is at least back up to 2.2.1 levels. I no longer have to seek out a charging source every 4 or 5 hours.

Improved Wi-Fi Reception

Ever since day one with my iPhone, I have had great wi-fi signal throughout my apartment. This was quite necessary from July to November 2008, as my city did not have 3G service during those months. I noticed that immediately after updating to 3.0, I no longer could receive wi-fi signal in my bedroom nor kitchen, the two rooms farthest from my AirPort Express (about 25 feet). After installing 3.0.1, I now have full bars throughout the apartment.

So, those are a few things I have noticed. Have you noticed anything new (good or bad) with OS 3.0.1. Be sure to also say which model of iPhone you are using, as there are three flavors now.

Update: Added Improved Wi-FI Reception.

Happy Birthday, App Store

One year ago today, the App Store graced iPhones and iPods touch everywhere. I remember that July day very clearly. I arrived at the Village Pointe Apple Store in Omaha, NE at 6 am to stand in line. I bought my iPhone 3G (16 GB, black), and then waited…

I waited because the iPhone 3G was so freaking popular that the activation servers had melted! Well, I assume they melted. I remember leaving my iPhone docked to my Mac, waiting for the activation to complete. I gave up and took a nap. A good two hours later I heard the siren’s call from the home office. It sounded like a sword unsheathing. It was the sound the iPhone makes when docked. I bolted from my bed and ran to my iPhone! Activation Complete.

The first thing I did was to explore the App Store. To see what was available. I remember my first download was actually a purchase. Twitterrific Premium. I assume most people’s first download was a freebie. The next app was Facebook. Yes, I like social networking. Then, Apple’s Remote app. Then AIM (which sucks, and still does. Apple, can we please just have an iChat app?)

To say the App Store is a hit would be an understatement. It’s no wonder Apple is giving away iPods touch to the college kids two summers in a row. At a 30% cut on paid apps, it’s a money maker for our favorite fruit company. Even factoring in the costs of the servers and such, Apple’s profit out of 30% of a 99-cent app is likely much greater than a 99-cent music track. Although the sheer volume of music sales would clearly blow away the profits of the App Store.

Anyways, to commemorate the App Store’s first birthday, I thought I’d share a little list of my favorite apps. [All links go to iTunes]

• Twitterrific 2 (ad-supported free, ad-free $3.99): My favorite Twitter client. Honestly, I am surprised I have worn a hole in the upper left corner of my iPhone’s screen, that’s how often this app gets used.


• Remote (free): A very awesome app to control iTunes and your Apple tv. Straight from the fruit company, so you know it’s delicious.


• 1Password ($4.99, $5.99 Pro): Syncs with the wonderful 1Password on the Mac. Allows you to access sites and auto-fill logins and passwords securely on the go.


• Delivery Status touch ($2.99): A great app to track your deliveries. This has become even more handy with the introduction of Copy & Paste in OS 3.0, as before it was a bit of a bear to get your tracking info into the app. This app supports more couriers than you can shake a stick at.


• Groceries ($3.99): I bought this app thinking it was a neat idea. Now, it is used weekly for shopping trips. The user interface is top notch, And the ability to add custom items to the database is great. Needless to say, it comes with quite a great deal of items in the database right from the start.


• Stanley Level (free): My wife and I were hanging pictures in our apartment, and like a true geek, I don’t own a level (it’s strange that I actually own a hammer). Well, our pictures were looking a little crooked, and I explained to my wife that I don’t have a level, and we’d have to go get one. Then, I remembered that the App Store has everything, from Twitter clients to Fart apps, and yes – even levels. There are many free level apps out there, and some may even be better, but you can’t go wrong with a Stanley level, right? Guess what, it actually works, and it works darn well.

Well, those are a few of my favorites. Happy birthday, App Store. Live Long and Prosper.

One Year with the iPhone 3G

I want to share a fond memory from this past year that I’ve had an iPhone.

On July 11th, 2008, I nervously waited in line at the Village Pointe Apple Store in Omaha, NE. Home was about an hour away in Lincoln, NE. I was waiting to get my hands on an iPhone 3G. I was nervous because my wife was pregnant and due any day. Thankfully, our son waited until July 15th to enter the world.

I could have waited a week or so (yeah right!) to make sure our son was born before galavanting off to Apple Land to get an iPhone. But hey, I had plans! And they worked gloriously. See, I wanted to tell the world about my baby as soon as technologically possible. I had a first generation iPod touch at the time, but I had already scoped out the hospital to see if they had wireless. They didn’t.

Shortly after getting my iPhone, activating it, loading it up and putting some third-party apps on it, it was time to get down to business. I had also gotten a MobileMe account so I could wirelessly sync my contacts, calendar, bookmarks and push my email. Well, on my Mac, I composed an email announcing the birth of our son, leaving blanks for length, weight, date and time of birth, etc. I also created a MobileMe gallery with a placeholder image from my the unltrasound, and added that link into the email. Then I added everyone I wanted to receive the email into the BCC field, and saved it as a draft.

Sure enough, after my boy was born a few days later, I snapped a photo of him (after he was cleaned off), sent it up to Mobile Me, filled in the placeholders I left in the email, and hit send. All from my iPhone. I called a bunch of family. Then, a little while later, the phone calls from friends started rolling in.

That’s how the iPhone played an important role in the birth of my child. I’m sure someday, if/when we have another baby, an iPhone will play a role in that.

So that is one of my fond memories of the iPhone this past year. Do you have any special memories from using the iPhone? Leave them in the comments.

Besides the iPhone playing a role in informing loved ones about the birth of my son, other things have happened with the iPhone in the past year. However, I don’t find any of them to be particularly as endearing as the story I just told.

For starters, the iPhone, in my experience, wasn’t the best experience until the OS 2.1 release in September 2008. Before that it was a drag to sync the iPhone because of the excruciating length of time it took to run the routine backup. And there were other various bugs and issues, but I’m having trouble remembering the specifics.

And then in March 2009, the iPhone community started getting excited again with the announcement of added features in OS 3.0, which was released in June. OS 3.0 brought a lot of nice features. Nothing earth shattering, mind you. But it also brought its share of bugs. Most notably, there are a lot of stutters in graphical transitions and my battery life is worse than ever. Not to mention that I used to be able to connect to my home wifi without issue in my bedroom, and now I can’t at all. Granted, I’ve rarely felt the need to turn on the wifi on my iPhone since Lincoln was blessed with 3G last fall.

It sounds like many of these issues will be fixed in OS 3.1, which is now in beta testing. Maybe next year I’ll mention 3.1 in my Year Two post (if I remember to do one). Maybe with iPhone OS 4.0 (just guessing. Seeing a trend, folks) I’ll hold off until 4.1, which seems to be the trend for a truly stable OS.

Glyphboard Brings Character(s) to iPhone OS 3.0

Neven Mrgan, a designer for Panic Inc., has cooked up a pretty sweet little web app for users with iPhone OS 3.0 on their iPhones and iPods touch. Yes, you did just read a sweet little web app. Remember web apps? That was Apple’s solution for third-party developers before the iPhone SDK and App Store.

So, what does this little web app do? Well, Mac users have for years been able to use the option and shift keys to modify the output of other keys. For instance, if you type option + shift + k you get a cool Apple logo that looks like this . If you’re on a PC, you’re out of luck. Other characters include Trademark ™ (option + 2) and Copyright © (option + g). Now, the iPhone OS’s heart is OS X, so it can also display these charaters, but the soft keyboard doesn’t support a lot of these characters.

This is where Glyphboard comes in. Now, clicking that link on a Mac or PC won’t help you much, but if you view it on an iPhone or iPod touch running Software 3.0, you can do something cool. By adding that page to the Home Screen, it will create a standalone web-based application.

In Software 2.x, web apps ran in Safari, and if you scrolled up enough, you’d see Safari’s address bar. One of the cool new features of iPhone OS 3.0 is the ability for web designers to make their web app completely standalone. Essentially, adding Glyphboard to your homescreen is quite like installing a Dashboard widget on OS X.

Glyphboard allows you to copy and paste many special characters from Glyphboard to other apps. It’s quite slick.

Bonus: because it is a web app, it can be updated at any time, without being held up in the App Store approval process.

I believe this is an essential web app for anyone using iPhone or iPod touch Software 3.0. A few screen shots below. Enjoy.