Category Archives: Travel

The unintentional iPhone 2.0 beta tester – part 2

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Continued from Part 1…

Thankfully I was able to get her phone operational again by holding down the button at the top edge of the phone until it asked me if I wanted to power it off.  I powered it off and back on again and all seemed fine, but I lost just a tiny bit of confidence at that point in time, kind of like when a car has an issue and you never quite trust it again.  It happened to me a few more times that night – some times it would let me power it off and some times I would have to hold that top button and the button on the front at the same time until the phone reset itself.  More recently none of those tricks seemed to work and I had to do the top and front button reset dance numerous times before the phone finally came to life.  That one was really scary.

I am not a stranger to computers and failure.  I am in my 22nd year in infrastructure and see bugs all of the time.  But this one hurt a little somewhere deep inside because, like many, I had fallen in to the fuzzy, happy world where Apple would never, ever make mistakes like this.  And this was just one little piece of the issues that would rock my happy little Apple world and slap me right back in to reality, where you remember that these are things engineered, designed, coded, and tested by humans.  Humans are imperfect and make mistakes, and now the entire world knows that Apple makes them as well – Activation, 2.0, MobileMe,  Welcome to the real world Apple.  That’s a lot of things happening at the same time that should have been avoided.  It will be interesting to see if Apple learns anything from this.  Scaling is hard.  Enterprises are hard.

The 2.0 software and the App store are an amazing example of systems and integration.  But they are not perfect.  I have applications crash on me all the time.  I actually blame Apple for most of these as I don’t believe any application’s crash should be able to take down the phone’s OS, but it sure seems like that happens a lot.  Those apps that just crash back to the icon screen I believe are probably the developer’s issue to resolve, but the rest should sit firmly on Apple’s shoulders.  If you are running applications from the App store I would encourage you to check for any updates daily.  The developers seem to be working hard to get any bugs eliminated and I have seen a ton of updates to applications over the last 2 weeks.

I don’t know if Apple has a beta program for these developers and their testers, but they need to get one in place if it doesn’t exist.  Right now we, the people, are Apple’s beta testers and that would bother me a little less if I hadn’t paid 10 bucks for that privilege on my Touch and if Apple would have just stated that initially.  Let’s be honest, Apple still would have picked up thousands and thousands of people that would be willing to test their software – and probably pay for the privilege.  But, no application crash should ever take down the entire phone.  Period.  

It’s probably a good thing that Apple is out of iPhones all over the country or this could be a bigger black eye than it already is.  It will be interesting to see how many people stay up late at night clicking that Check Now button in iTunes when the next release rolls around.  Apple, we need 2.0.1 or 2.1 or what ever you are going to call it, soon.

What do you think, will you be cautious the next time Apple releases something or will you move ahead as you normally do because it is the next great thing from Apple?

The unintentional iPhone 2.0 beta tester – part 1

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There is so much to catch up on since Apple released 2.0 for the iPhone and iPod Touch that it’s hard to figure out where to start.

On July 11, 2008, we were getting ready to leave for a vacation to Myrtle Beach when I noticed the 2.0 software release for the iPhone was out.  Since my wife has the original iPhone I decided to download 2.0 and apply it once we got to the beach.  2.0 downloaded so fast that I figured I might as well apply it before I got in the shower, so I did.  (By the way, this was less than 10 minutes after my wife begged me not to touch her phone before our trip as she likes to use it when we’re on the road.)  Hey, it’s Apple, and Apple has never let me down before.  What could happen?  Well, thousands of you probably know the rest – after the 2.0 update the phone reset itself and needed to communicate with Apple’s servers to activate.  Since those servers were totally overwhelmed, nothing was happening.  So I jumped in the shower and figured it would be done by the time we were ready to leave.  No such luck.  I checked the Apple forums and found I was definitely not alone, but we had to get on the road so I grabbed my wife’s iPhone, her laptop, my laptop, and my backpack and we headed out the door. 

She was not a happy camper.  No phone to play with on the road trip meant no Goggle Maps.  It doesn’t matter that the awesome Garmin Nuvi 350 was less than 5 feet from her head, it was not her phone and Google Maps.  So she asked to use my iPod Touch since it was jailbroken and had FiveDice on it.  Well, unfortunately I had restored it to factory default to get ready for the 2.0 software for the Touch, which didn’t come out for another 13 hours.  If the software had been available for the Touch I would have never touched her phone at all.  So, no FiveDice.  Strike 2.

Then it hit her that we packed the Nintendo DS and that would surely give her plenty to do for a while.  Except that it was packed in the trunk of the car, which was an amazing feat in itself as we were originally going to take the mini van but decided to take the car to get better gas mileage.  The DS was buried deep in the bottom of all the luggage, beach chairs, and body boards.  Strike 3.

I had no intention of taking her laptop to the beach that day, but I grabbed her PowerBook because I didn’t know if I would have to complete the activation process on the same computer that had started it on or if I could use my MacBook Pro.  Unfortunately I wasn’t smart enough to grab the power supply and the battery on her PowerBook has seen better days.  If we’re lucky we’ll get 30 minutes on a full charge.  So I turned on her PowerBook and killed every program that started up and launched iTunes.  I turned the screen down to 1 little bar and hoped I could find a wireless signal.  Thankfully the hotel we were in that night had wifi and the iPhone activated itself almost as quickly as I plugged it in to the PowerBook.  Success!  We can now use the iPhone as a phone.  ”Apple must have resolved their capacity issues.”  ”Hey, where’s all your data?”

Next came the fun of holding my breath through the longest initial restore of data to a device in my lifetime.  I would continually take the screen down to 0 bars, then back to 1 a little later to watch the restore progress.  The battery indicator was down to 14 minutes and had turned red.  Not good.  Turn the screen back off.  With just 7 minutes of reported battery life left the iPhone retuned to its glorious former self.  It was a phone with all the data she had on it previously.  Life was good.

“Hey Valerie, check out all these cool apps I loaded on here for you” I said with the joy of a child on Christmas morning.  ”Watch how…hey, why is it just a black screen with an Apple logo in the middle of it now?”  Uh oh.

That would not be the last time that I saw that black screen with the Apple logo.

To be continued…

Cringely says Adobe, I’d rather see Garmin

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I love reading Robert X. Cringely’s articles.  Always have.  He’s definitely one of my favorite writers.  In his most recent posting he states that Apple appears to be looking to unload its Pro applications in preparation to clear the way to acquire Adobe.  Interesting idea, but I’m not sure I agree as Apple’s Pro apps are some of the tops in the industry and Apple has made acquisitions that sure up that side of the business.  It might be nice for Apple if they controlled Flash, but I’m not sure any of that affects me much as a consumer.  Plus, those Pro apps only run on OS X, not Windows.  That may come in to play with the company that would want to acquire such applications.

While listening to my weekly fix of MacBreak Weekly, the topic of GPS came up and I was happy to hear that some of the folks on the show feel the same way that I do about the Garmin Nuvi GPS – it’s an excellent product.  So that got me thinking.  I don’t care about an Adobe acquisition as much as I would like to see Apple acquire Garmin.  I have used Magellan, Tom Tom, and Garmin GPS systems in my car and I have always felt the Garmin was the best.  I have the Nuvi 350, which fits easily in a pocket and takes us through turn by turn directions.  I like the interface better and I definitely like the maps better.  I’ve always found the Garmin to be very accurate as well.

Whether or not the rumors are true about the 3G iPhone having built in GPS, I think it is a safe assumption to believe it will be in there some day.  It’s just the way most phones are headed.  Nothing revolutionary, just evolutionary.  Many already have GPS included.  So why not take the best GPS technology and marry it with one of the best phones out there?  If not an outright acquisition, at least license the Garmin technology for the GPS solution that Apple uses?

If I remember correctly, I believe that even Garmin is working on a phone.  That could be an interesting product depending on how well they implement it and its final size, weight, and especially battery life, but Apple has already set the bar pretty high with the iPhone, so Garmin will have its work cut out for it.

So Apple, you know what you have to do; acquire Garmin, kill the Garmin phone, integrate Garmin’s GPS technology in the iPhone, wrap your interface around all that tech, and price it aggressively.  Oh, and figure out how to achieve decent battery life.  Easy, right?  So go get started already – I’ll be over here waiting with my credit card.

Driving more gently seems to be working

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I’ve owned a 2007 VW Passat for the last 10 months that typically gets anywhere from 350-370 miles on a tank of gas.  With gas prices getting higher and higher I decided to try to drive a little more “gently,” meaning less aggressive starts at lights and stop signs, a little slower on the interstate, etc.

Well, I had to fill up for the first time since trying this new method and I had driven 450 miles.  Not too shabby for making such a small change to how I drive.  That translates to less stops at the gas station, which translates to less money coming out of my pocket for gas.  That’s a good thing.

Loose Ends – Quick Update

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First, Colorado Springs is absolutely beautiful.  I’m out here for an HP Executive Briefing that went very, very well and the place is just amazing.  We’ve definitely added this place to our short list for future vacations.  I wish I had brought a decent camera as the one on my Treo700wx is as close to garbage as one can get.

Second, after sitting on a conference call for 90 minutes with a Treo that just kept getting hotter and hotter glued to my head, I finally broke down and purchased a decent bluetooth headset.  I picked up the Jawbone at the Palm store at the Pittsburgh airport of all places.  I know what you’re thinking, but their prices were actually better than the Apple store and they sell ones that are already charged.  Nice perk.  I picked up the black model.  The noise canceling seems really good and I can hear really well with this thing instead of the straining I used to do to hear from some of the others I have purchased over the years.  Hopefully this one is a winner.

Third, if you use VMWare Fusion, make sure to check out the update that came out tonight.  No problems with it so far, although anymore I tend to only fire up my WindowsXP VMWare guest to perform anti virus and Windows patch updates.

Fourth, are you running Firefox version 3 beta 5 yet?  If not, you should take a few minutes and check it out as the performance is excellent and it is very close to becoming my main browser, although Webkit has yet to let me down.  Very impressive release so far.  I think I heard the final release comes out in June.  Pick your operating system and try it out.

Fifth, I’m finding it harder and harder to avoid the iPhone as I am finding it harder and harder to find free WiFi where I need it.  The iPod Touch I use for so many things is nice when I have connectivity, but I almost wish I could have an iPhone with just the data plan.  I don’t really need the phone piece as work gives me a Treo that I have to have with me, but everything about the iPhone and iPod Touch is so much better that I can feel I will eventually break down and end up with an iPhone.  We’ll see how things look after the release of iPhone 2.0 in late June.

Lastly, I finally joined Twitter.  Why?  I don’t know, Robert Scoble told me to.  After having it for one short week I have learned that, for me, it is not a matter of being followed, but a matter of who you follow that makes it interesting.  I’m there as blindsquirrel.

That’s about it, looking forward to getting home.  I like seeing new cities, but I still can’t wait to get back home to Pittsburgh.

Note to self – don’t check bags when flying USAirways

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I’ve learned my lesson.  If I fly anyone other than USAirways I can safely check my bags because I know I will have them shortly after landing.  If I fly USAirways, I know I need to give myself at least an additional 30 minutes minimum to get my bags from baggage claim.  I don’t know what happened, because there was a time when they prided themselves on having your bags on the carousel in Pittsburgh before you reached it, but now I don’t think they even try.

Not sure if it is due to cutbacks or workers that just don’t care about the customer anymore, but the mighty has definitely fallen with USAirways baggage handling.  It’s a shame, because the last couple of flights I was on there was no room in the overhead for any more bags, so the overflow needed checked anyway.  Maybe more people would check their bags if it didn’t take so long to get them after they landed.

Mad dash through DFW airport

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One of the great things about traveling is getting back home. This past week I went down to Dallas for work for a few days. Huge city. Beautiful city. Enormous airport. We got to the airport a full 2 hours before our plane took off, so we had plenty of time to kill. Our flight was at 7:35am at gate B26, so we just hung out at the gate and waited for boarding to begin around 7:05. 7:05 came and went. Then 7:10, 7:15, 7:20. Still no call for boarding. So we went up to the counter to ask if there was a problem with the plane and they told us the flight to Pittsburgh had been moved to gate B5.

B5? B-frickin-5? You guys never said a word. Never posted a message. Nothing. So we took off like fools for gate B5, 21 Gates away and not much time before the plane was to take off. You have to picture me in my best “sprint” trying to keep my backpack on my shoulder with one hand and my pants up with the other. Not a pretty site, but it was effective enough to get me there just before the plane took off.

I hate rushing through an airport. That’s the entire reason I get there 2 hours early. Would it have killed American Airlines to make an announcement that the plane had switched gates? When we got on the plane, one of the flight attendant said she had been there for the last hour and a half and that the plane was always leaving from B5, but our boarding passes definitely said B26, the web site said B26, and the Departure screens all said B26 when we arrived at the airport.

Of course, someone was already in my seat, but there was an empty row close by so I just sat there instead – until a couple got on the plane at the last minute, Guess where their seats were? That’s right, so I collected my backpack, ipod, headphones, and cell phone and headed back towards my original seat when I saw another row completely empty. So I jumped in there and the flight attendant told me I would be fine. Then, as they were about to close the door a guy hopped on the plane and started for his seat, which was the one I was now sitting in. You have to picture that due to the gate incident, someone sitting in my original seat, moving to another seat, and now needing to move my seat again, I was not a happy camper. I think it must have shown because the guy looked at me and told me to stay where I was and he sat in the seat next to me.

Comfortable? Not really, but at least I got home. I was really surprised to see that the weather in Pittsburgh was even nicer than the weather in Dallas for once. Always good to get home. Plus, now I know that I will never own a Ford Taurus – not the best rental car I’ve ever used.