Just over eighteen months ago I purchased my second iPod, this one with video. It was to replace my ailing iPod Mini that only held a 5 hour charge, had a faulty click wheel and had trouble syncing. The Mini lasted 30 months before reaching this state. Shortly after buying my iPod with video, I started noticing skipping in the middle of my songs. Sometimes it would skip places in the song, but more often it would jump to another song. The tracks played fine in iTunes so I returned to the Apple Store and the Geniuses there look at it. Apple promptly replaced it and claimed it was a hard drive about to fail that was causing the issues. I continued to have periodic issues with the new iPod but mostly on tracks that had skipped previous to the replacement.

Upon connecting it, iTunes informed me the iPod was corrupt and needed to be restored.

Fast forward seven months. I bought an iPhone and noticed that the skipping was happening again on new tracks with my iPhone. I had Apple look at both my iPod and my iPhone and they found nothing wrong. Three months ago, after getting more tracks with issues, I took my computer, iPod and external hard drive that I keep my music on into the Apple Store. There were a couple of settings with my library that the tech found, namely I had moved the iTunes Library XML file to the external drive and it needs to remain on the main drive. This resolved most of my issues, but then we discovered that the skipping tracks were corrupt. We never looked at the iPod.

Then the hard drive with the music was corrupted and needed to be restored. I was able to hack my iPod and pulled my music off so it wasn’t totally lost.

Fast forward to this week. I don’t sync my iPod video often, but wanted to update it Wednesday night as I had finally completed updating all the ID3 tags for my music. Upon connecting it, iTunes informed me the iPod was corrupt and needed to be restored. So I complied with the iTunes request and clicked restore. Three hours later, iTunes informed me that the iPod restore had failed and I needed to reconnect it. So, once again I obeyed the mighty iTunes and reconnected and initiated a restore. Then I headed to bed.

Once enough sectors go bad, the drive just crashes.

Upon rising in the morning, I immediately proceeded to my computer to check my email and see the status of my iPod. The restore had failed again. I removed the iPod from the dock and immediately felt the hard drive spinning. Before I was able to get the iPod more than an arms length away, I heard that dreadful noise….Whhiiiiirrrrr, click, click, whhiiiiirrrrr. As someone who has spent years building and repairing computers, I knew that sound like I know my own voice. The hard drive would spin up to boot, the arms move into place unsuccessfully usually hitting a platter, and the drive spins down. The hard drive was dead and I was lucky if none of the platters had cracked. A trip to the Apple store confirmed my fears.  I never bought Applecare. I have never used any extended warranties I have ever bought, but I wanted one now. It would be $145 after tax and shipping to get my iPod repaired. A new nano is $149.

Before resorting to buying a new iPod, I thought I would try cracking the case open and seeing what Icould do with it. I had heard rumors that the drives used were the same connectors as Compact flash cards. I had a few of those at home for my DSLR, so if I could get it open, then maybe…. But for those wondering, the drives used now have a special ribbon cable for a connector and it is not compatible with Compact flash.

After reviewing a number of threads on the Apple discussion boards, I found a pattern of people with issues like mine. First tracks start to skip. This is caused by bad sectors, the iPod can’t read the next part of the song. Slowly this number of skips begins to increase. Because I had to pull my music from my iPod back to my computer, I had a large number of corrupted tracks (I am still finding some). Once enough sectors go bad, the drive just crashes. So this afternoon, I am off to the Apple Store once again. This time to get a new Nano and to get Applecare for my iPhone. The warranty expires Sunday, and I can’t risk losing my lifeline like my iPod.

With the launch of MobileMe they pitched that they would “push” my calendar down to my phone from the MobileMe cloud. Problem is that it doesn’t push down my subscribed calendars. There have been many work-arounds people have suggested, but none of them are clean , easy, and free as of yet. Apple does sync these calendars between computers (if you have two Macs for instance), but doesn’t push the events to prevent duplicating.

Why can’t Apple treat the iPhone/iPod Touch like another Mac and sync the subscribed calendars but not the events? Both of these devices have the ability to connect to the internet and retrieve the feed data so MobileMe doesn’t need to push the data down. This avoids the duplication issue and still allows us to have our subscribed calendars. At this point my trial period expires on October 9th, and while I enjoy all the features it does have, I am finding it doesn’t replace my web hosting package (I did think I could do more with iWeb) and without my calendars it doesn’t seem worth the cost.

Which brings me to another issue I only thought of today. Once I signed up for MobileMe all my music and applications I bought through the iTunes store were being logged under my MobileMe user name and not my Apple ID that I had previously established. If I let my MobileMe account expire, will I still be able to use my applications and get my application updates or will Apple no longer recognize the user name? If the application is free it doesn’t matter, its the ones I paid for that I want to make sure work.

UPDATE:

After writing this post, I began digging around my RSS feeds and trying to catch up. I came across a reference to the service Calgoo being free now. Using Calgoo and Google’s Outlook sync I was able to achieve my holy grail of sync. Technically I don’t need the Google product, but I was already using it, so there was no need to change. Google also supports CalDav now, but requires that you be on iCal 3.x which is only available to Leopard owners (I am still running Tiger) and has several known issues.
Calgoo offers a desktop application that creates connectors between calendar services. It works with Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, 30 Boxes and Sunbird. I set up the application on my Mac at home and connected a new calendar called Work to the feed from Gcal for my synced work calendar. So on a regular basis (every hour) the Google sync grabs my Outlook calendar and puts it on Gcal. Then (also on an hourly basis) Calgoo grabs the feed from Gcal and puts it on my iCal at home. When MobileMe sync runs it updates the web calendar and my iPhone. The caveat is that my Mac has to be running at home in order for me to use Calgoo.
While this solution does work for me, it would still be simpler for Apple to allow the iPhone to fetch calendar feeds like iCal does. And It still hasn’t convinced me to pay for MobileMe yet.

Over the course of the five years, I have had a total of 5 defective phones. The first was not diagnosed as being defective until 6 months after the warranty was up, but 5 months before I was eligible for an upgrade even though I brought it into AT&T 6 times complaining. Eventually I signed a new contract and upgraded the phone, but that upgrade was replaced 4 times in 4 months. AT&T tried to charge me for the phone twice. Each time I had to replace it I spent an hour on the phone being bounced around to 3 or 4 customer service agents to get the transaction completed.

When the original iPhone price was cut, I decided to buy one and change my plan again because I knew if there was a hardware issue I would be working with Apple and not AT&T. Approximately two months ago I changed my plan again to a family plan and gave my kids a phone. Since this was before the change in pricing and plans with the 3G iPhone, the whole process was a little bit of an ordeal. AT&T at the time couldn’t have the iPhone be a primary phone on a family plan. So I set my kids phone up as the primary, but I couldn’t set it up as a family plan with the iPhone yet. I had to first assign it a standalone plan (450 Anytime minutes, my previous plan) and then call in and have them change the plan to a family plan and add the iPhone. Well this is where things fell apart. Due to all the prorating going on I didn’t notice that they screwed up the first month’s bill. I certainly did when I went to pay my June bill though.

AT&T ended up signing my kids’ phone up for the 450 Nationwide Anytime minute plan, the iPhone for the Family Plan, iPhone data package, Extra line, and the Smart Manager so I can limit the text messages and downloads my kids use. Yesterday I called to correct this error and spoke to someone in billing, which for some reason was the wrong department so she transfered me to sales. I did have to wait for a total of 10 minutes to get into the problem. Once I explained my problem to the rep, she put me on hold again to investigate. When she came back on the line she told me that I did indeed overpay and she had issued credits to my account and set up an alert because another credit would be needed in the next billing cycle. Looking on the website to pay my account at that moment I saw the new balance immediately reflected. Before this incident I would have to repeatedly argue my case to get resolution which was usually a compromise. When I did get a result I was satisfied with I was always told it wouldn’t show up on the website until my next billing cycle. Clearly things are changing. I am not saying AT&T is the best cell phone provider, but they are hearing people complain and it appears they are taking action.

I rebooted the phone, but there was no change. I restored the phone, but there was no change. I couldn’t imagine being without a phone for any period of time, so I scrambled to see if I could get into the genius bar that afternoon. It was 3:30 on Sunday afternoon, the store closed at 6:00. I was lucky enough to be able and get an appointment and grabbed the kids (who had to skip swimming because of this) and scrambled to the store.

It turns out that dust had gotten into the headphone jack (probably when I went to the gym that morning and used my headphones). This caused a short circuit that fooled the phone into thinking headphones were still plugged in. The great people at the genius bar (they have been very helpful to me on many occasions) took my iPhone  in back and used a special machine to remove the dust putting my phone back in action. Since my phone was fixed I began to walk away, but then I turned around to ask if there was any technique to clean it myself so that next time it happened (I am confident it won’t be the last) I didn’t need to scramble up to the Apple Store to get it cleaned. However, Apple doesn’t recommend doing this on your own. The genius that helped me did recommend looking online for a plug to cover the ports when not in use.

Most cell phones have a rubber or silicone protector to go over their ports, but the iPhone doesn’t come with them. I looked online at over 40 pages of results for various Google inquiries and found no plug of any kind for the headphone jack. There are companies that make them for the dock connector, but not the headphone jack. I found several articles that homebrew solutions using erasers and other paraphernalia, but they seem like they will just cause more problems over time. Has anyone found these plugs anywhere?

UPDATE:

It looks like Apple is struggling with keeping their servers up. I was able to get to the SDK page a little while ago, but a lot of the links were broken and I didn’t try downloading it (I am away from my Mac at the moment). Sporadic attempts to get through to the proper page may occur.

You also need to have an Intel Mac in order to proceed, so if you are like me and waiting to buy a new Mac, now is the time.

It looks like Apple took the store down this morning and when they brought it back up they increased the memory options on both the iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPhone is now available in a 16GB version for $499 and the Touch comes in a 32GB also for $499.

It doesn’t appear any other items were updated, so those waiting for a multi-touch MacBook Pro or even a speed bump will have to wait a little longer.

If you haven’t experienced either of these devices, I suggest you run out to your local Apple store and spend some time with them. I truly fell in love with my iPhone and wonder how I got by without it. Warning: if you happen to be a bit of an internet junkie and don’t already have a smartphone, these two devices are not conducive to your social interactions.

UPDATE:

Apparently I missed the official press release which addresses the DRM:

Once a customer buys the DVD, they insert it into their computer, enter a unique code into iTunes and iTunes automatically copies the movie to their iTunes library within minutes. Customers own the iTunes Digital Copy of the movie and it has all of the same great viewing options as other iTunes Store video content, including the ability to be viewed on a computer, iPod with video, iPhone and Apple TV. Each DVD will only transfer its iTunes Digital Copy to one iTunes library.

So this apparently handles the rental issue…for now. The rental stores like Blockbuster won’t have the actual case with the DVD so the code won’t be available. If they do have the case, I would guess they remove the code. Netflix only sends the DVD so no code there as well. Of course this raises other questions:

1. Will the code be available and thus the file if you buy a previously viewed DVD from the stores?
2. How long will it take hackers to break this code and DRM?
3. Since the movie can only be in one iTunes library, what happens when my kids, who have their own iPods and computers want to have a copy of the movie for themselves as well as me? If I let them sync to my Mac, they lose their media. I don’t see this one system limit as acceptable when that isn’t the way the movies,TV shows and music work now.

I started my investigation into the smartphone market. The big that I found is that I had to buy additional software to get one to work cleanly with my Mac, and even then there was much to be desired. I was convinced that maybe the Blackberry Pearl was for me. It was compact, the syncing was pretty decent to Macs and there were some really good deals going around.

I wasn’t ready to bite the bullet yet. In August my iPod started really acting up and skipping tracks when they were halfway through. I took it in to the local Apple store. I waited for my appointment for 20 minutes during which time I played with the iPhone more extensively than I previously had. I found overall the interface was very nice to work with, however the keyboard was a little funky. My feelings towards the device shifted from pure hatred to mere dislike.

So I stepped up to the Genius Bar when my turn came around and the techs there diagnosed a hard drive problem with my iPod and replaced it right on the spot. I was shocked. I thought for sure I would have to mail my iPod in (and would be lucky if they did it for me) and be without the thing for a week at least. Then the tech said something that made me go from disliking the iPhone to considering it.  he informed me that when the iPhones act up and need replacing they swap them out right on the spot just like they did with my iPod. I have been back a couple times since and have seen it with my very own eyes.

Well this is customer service! Realizing that if I bought an iPhone I would not be dealing with AT&T for tech support, but rather Apple, I reexamined the iPhone.  i started piecing together what I needed the phone to do, what I felt was a fair price for data access, and what the cost of the handset was going to be.

turns out I wasn’t going to be eligible for any handset discounts form AT&T. This moved the price of all smart phones to $300 minimum. The Blackberries started at $400.  The data plans for the Palm, RIM and Windows smartphones started at $40 and were not unlimited. Apple just knocked the price on the iPhone down. I could find the 4GB for $300 now. And the data package was just $20 more than what I was currently paying for voice.

My biggest problem is I wasn’t going to be able to sync my iPhone (without losing some data) with both my work PC and home Mac. However Google came to the rescue. I was able to export my calendar to Google on a daily basis and use Google’s subscription to iCal format to sync Google and my Mac, which of course allowed me to get my entire schedule on my iPhone.

With just about 6 weeks under my belt with the device, I wonder how I ever got along without it. I build all my to do lists, grocery lists, shopping list, weekly menus and other notes on it. I can find out movie listings in a couple clicks if on the road. I am constantly up on the news and mail. I have saved a few car rides that kids get bored on by playing a movie. In short, it is a huge benefit. My job as a User Interface Designer became more interesting when I realized how badly normal websites are on small screens.

The down side: I could really use the ability to extend it without hacking. I look forward to the SDK in February.  I should have gone for the 8GB as i quickly fill up the hard drive with just music. The camera could use a zoom. I am an internet junkie now that it is on my hip. It needs Flash.

Is it right for everyone? No. Am I happy with my choice? You bet. Like anthing out there, if you are considering it, make a list of pros and cons and see who wins.

By introducing Safari on Windows Apple has introduced the SDK (as they call it) for the iPhone. Developers won’t be able to make their apps run directly on the phone and must use AJAX instead(Flash is reportedly not going to be supported). Having Safari on Windows will allow the vast majority of developers to make sure their application will run on Safari’s JavaScript. Now hopefully a developer will make sure it works in all versions of JavaScript on all major browsers, but Apple doesn’t care about that.

In addition to this, Apple is showing that it is doing something Microsoft has decided to undo. Apple is opening more than iTunes to the other OS. I expect by the time Leopard launches we will see Windows versions of iWork and iLife. I don’t expect major applications like Final Cut or Apeture to show up, but remember Apple dropped “computer” from its name. Microsoft has restricted its applications to VMware and Office, but the deal on Office is only for 4 more years. Watch that go away by then.

Last but not least, this is a great opportunity for the small web designer/developer to now test their application and site on all the major browsers without having to shell out for an additional computer. Not everyone can afford a Mac, nor do they want to use a Mac. Now they don’t have to. They can install Safari and use it for testing purposes.

Now is it the best browser? I don’t think so. It has usability issues (I found another issue today in that you can’t use backspace to go back in browsing history like ALL other browsers). I personally prefer Firefox with its extensions and themes. but I would pick Safari over IE because I know the CSS I write will work.

Update: Issue number 4 and a reason to have it on Windows. Wordpress’s WYSIWYG editor for writing posts doesn’t seem to work properly. I only have Code version available to me while writing this post from inside Safari. It looks like Wordpress is one of those small teams that need to test their JavaScript to see that it is compatible with Safari.

OSX Leopard

Lifehacker has a really good write up on how most of the os features look like eye candy. As a designer, I like eye candy, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of using the product and doesn’t eat up too many resources.

Here is a quick rundown of the features revealed and my thoughts on them:

1. Desktop: Lifehacker nails it here, most of it is useless, however Stacks will make my life easier. I tend to drop everything on my desktop and get frustrated at how messy it is. If I can drop them into a folder, smart folder or something similar and access them from the dock I will be much happier. Lifehacker does help the unorganized a little with this quick tip on how to mimic stacks in Tiger.
2. Finder: Leopard will get a new Finder finally. This version will act more like iTunes in its search method. It even has Coverflow, the old iTunes plugin that lets you search albums by looking at cover art. This never really worked well for me in iTunes, but I think I will like it when going through design work. Now when viewing files, they will actually appear in the Coverflow. For spreadsheets, word docs and other office file, I don’t like this, but artwork, movies, and photos it will rock. Imagine you are looking for that one photo you have of your family for the holiday card, but you can’t remember which folder it is in or what you called it. Now with Coverflow you can open the folder and view the photos just like scrolling through your real world photo album. I am curious if it will render HTML pages with their related CSS if you look in your development folders or any folder you are using to design a site in.
3. Quick Look: So you need to read that Word doc, but don’t want to open Word or OpenOffice.Org? Quick look will allow you “preview” the file without actually launching the application. This can be a time saver especially for artists and PSD files.
4. Time Machine: Awesome idea, but nothing new.
5. Spaces: I don’t really see the need for this, also shown last year.
6. 64 Bit: this is good news for all of you running the Intel chips. Us PowerPC guys will have to upgrade to care.
7. Core Animation: Same as last year, but looks pretty cool.
8. Boot Camp: This is built in to Leopard now so that we can run Windows on our Macs. I am not really thrilled about this as it means having to reboot every time you want to switch OSes. I think Parallels handles this better.
9. Dashboard: There is a handy new widget that looks up movie show times. Nice, but is it a new feature?
10. iChat: now you will have fun laughing at your friends and colleagues with Photobooth like effects! Is that board meeting or video conference cal boring you? iChat will allow you to turn the other person upside down or into a Obi One Kenobi like hologram, just make sure you mute your microphone before you do it. actually the iChat theater concept of showing a movie or slide show in iChat while having a video conference is kinda cool, but they can drop the Photobooth effects.

Safari on Windows

I know I didn’t mention it above, but Steve announced this as well today. He is gunning for IE7 and Firefox and did so by making available the beta of Safari 3 for Windows. I played with it for a few hours today and here are my impressions.

1. Something I never noticed in Safari on the Mac (I use mostly Firefox) is that it isn’t user friendly. It is missing the basic commands on the menu bar. I wanted to go to my homepage and there was no home button. In addition to that the text on the tabs was dark on a dark grey background. I had a hard time reading. For a company so focused on usability, they missed the boat on that one.
2. Bookmarks leave me lacking. When I click to open up my bookmarks, I don’t necessarily want my current page hidden. I prefer a sidebar, not a whole page.
3. Bugs. I know it is beta, but there are a couple of bugs I discovered within 5 minutes of launching the application that should have been caught. I run two monitors, one laptop and one external in my work setting. I put all my primary apps on my laptop and secondary (Outlook, Firefox, Excel) on my external. When I moved Safari over there and clicked to maximize the browser so I could view the Apple website, the window disappeared. Upon finding it in my taskbar and right clicking to restore, my only option was close. Maximize, minimize, and restore were greyed out. When I relaunched the application (since I had to close it), it popped up on my main monitor maximized. I use my windows machine with the taskbar on auto-hide. In the maximized role the browser now opened in, I couldn’t get to the taskbar. I had to use Alt+Tab to change apps and even then I couldn’t get the taskbar to show up until i reduced the size of Safari. to me these are two huge glaring errors that should have been caught before beta.

iPhone

There isn’t much to say here. Apple’s idea of a SDK for it is to build a Web 2.0 application and run it in Safari. this is lame. However, what most people don’t see is that this could be the push that makes the Web-Desktop finally explode. For years people have talked about a system that had no OS other than a web browser installed. Once launched you go to a website like Goowy . Now this really hasn’t taken off yet, but if you can image having one of these set up so you can access the needed files from your iPhone? all of a sudden that Safari browser will become really useful. Will it interact with the phone’s OS, probably not. This does limit it and mean that the iPhone is not as smart as the competition, but expect a boom in web based desktop solution.

One More Thing….

.Mac, oh how I have wondered why you still exist… Well now I know. The new finder will allow you to view all machines on your network and see all the shared files just like a mapped drive in Windows. They appear as if they are an external hard drive on your machine. this gets even cooler when you incorporate .Mac. You know that proposal you worked on all night, burned to a CD or threw on a thumb drive and took to the office? Well it turns out it was corrupted, or scratched or some other nightmarish situation. Well you have .Mac right? Log on to your work Mac open finder and see your home computer (which you left running). Search the files on that computer until you find the proposal and tada! you are ready to go. It looks like .Mac combined with the new finder is setting up SSH on your systems automatically.

I only see two catches here:

1. How many people use Macs at work? Can this be made to work on Windows? If it can, sign me up.
2. How often do you leave your computer on? Now that we are entering a time where energy is expensive and global warming is apparent, I shut my systems down whenever I can.