MacNoob

Leo [LaPorte] says it, Veronica [Belmont] says it and I say it.  THE NEW iPhone 2.0 SOFTWARE IS VERY UNSTABLE! I had been the proud owner of my new 16 GB iPhone 3G for less than a week when it locked up for the first time.  I took it out of its case to make a call and the little silver apple was all that was on the screen and the phone was completely unresponsive.  After trying several reboots [by holding the "Home" and "Display" buttons simultaneously], it would not get past that same screen.  I finally had to follow the restore procedure (holdong the “Home” button while connecting to my Mac via the USB cable) to get the phone working again.  This procedure completely wipes the phone and any data on it, restoring the iPhone to its “out of the box” state.  Fortunately, Apple has seen fit to include a rather complete backup procedure for the iPhone within iTunes so a restored phone is somewhat complete and current.  The bad news is the restoration process can take over two hours depending on how many applications you have installed and how much media you keep on the device.  The really bad news is the iPhone can seize at any time and, for me, seems to do it when I need the phone the most and can afford a lengthy restore process the least.

So far, I’ve had to restore my iPhone FOUR TIMES in less than THREE WEEKS!  I’m working on the fourth as I write this post.  With exception of the first crash, I can say definitly that the lockups occurred while trying to update applications.  It may have been the cause of that crash also, but I can’t say for sure.  The second and third crashes happened when I tried updating applications over my Wi-fi network.  Shortly after the second crash I heard Leo Laporte relay a similar story on his “Macbreak Weekly” podcast.  He added that if he only updated or added iPhone applications through iTunes and then synced the phone, he had no problems with crashes.  I decided to follow his advice and got the longest contiguous run without a crash, seven days.  I thought Leo had clued me in to an acceptable workaround.  Until today.

Before connecting my iPhone to my Mac today I started iTunes, checked for and updated all the applications that had new versions available.  There were seven.  I connected my iPhone and the sync process started normally.  I left the room for about ten minutes only to return to the little silver apple on my iPhone’s screen and a spinning beach ball in iTunes.  So not to act too hastily, I gave the sync another ten minutes to see if I had just caught the phone in the middle of a reboot.  No such luck.  The iPhone and iTunes were hung up like a couple of chihuahuas.  It left me with no options except disconnecting the phone, rebooting the Mac and starting the [now 2:34 and counting] restore process.

I’ve been parusing the iPhone forums and blogs in recent weeks and know that my case isn’t an isolated one.  Apple has managed to stick its thumb into my eye a couple of times in the last two weeks and I’m not alone by the looks of things.  Between the MobileMe e-mail fiasco and this flakey iPhone experience getting more and more press, Apple may need to hire a good PR person for damage control.  The “I’m a PC” guy may yet get the last laugh.

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The MacNoob family is vacationing in Maui for the next ten days. We’ve rented a really nice two-bedroom condo with a sunset view of the Pacific. I did bring my Mac and our rental does have a solid (if not speedy) Internet connection. I downloaded the new WordPress 1.0 app for my iPhone and I’m going to try to post from Hawaii using it alone. I’ve always found typing on the iPhone a bit problematic since my fingers more closely resemble Vienna sausages than Virginia Slims. What the hell, if this doesn’t earn me some geek cred, nothing will.

Stay tuned…

P.S. : Still no MobileMe e-mail!  Four days and counting…

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It isn’t often I come across an app that I find completely indispensable after only a couple of week’s use. I downloaded Evernote based on a recommendation from one of the TWiT podcasts and it has become one of a handful of applications I can’t live without. I find myself using it several times per day and it has become such a part of my workflow I can’t imagine how I functioned without it.
Evernote is for keeping track of notes (of course), but it does so much more I find it hard to decide where to begin with my description. First, it is a client app that resides on a Mac or PC that includes several tools for collecting and organizing random data. This can be text, pasted from any document, audio, pictures, links or entire web pages just to name a few. Second, it is a web service that continually synchronizes your notes and provides almost all the functionality the desktop application does for adding, modifying and organizing your data. Third, it is a mobile application for Windows Mobile or iPhone 2.0 devices with a neatly tailored UI for small screens that stays completely synchronized as well. I haven’t tried the Windows Mobile version, but the iPhone application lets you record audio notes, picture notes with OCR (from a saved photo or new snapshot) and regular text. The OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is especially cool. I can take a snapshot of a receipt, for instance, Evernote recognizes the text and I’ve got a record of my transaction I can search, cut and paste to my expense report or do anything I would do with any normal picture! Great for keeping track of expenses.
One of the most powerful features Evernote offers is the ability to organize. You can attach any number of tags to a note, name it anything you wish and Evernote automatically saves notes with meta data like location, time and date. All your notes become instantly searchable by any of these criteria as well as by their content. This video provides a nice introduction.

Being an IT guy, I use Evernote to store product keys, installation notes and procedures, all the static IP addresses on my network and much more. The really great part is I don’t have to carry it with me. Any computer with an internet connection enables me to see, search and manipulate all my notes using any browser. I can also modify existing or add new notes as well. Like I said, I’m having a hard time imagining how I did my job without it. I’m sure I did it quite a bit slower.
The most amazing thing about Evernote?…..IT’S ABSOLUTELY FREE! ALL VERSIONS! FULLY FUNCTIONAL! There is a paid version, but all it adds is the amount of monthly bandwidth you’re allowed and phone support. Unless you’re a complete freak (like me) you probably won’t need it though.
Needless to say, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND EVERNOTE. As a matter of fact, you need to be really creative to dream up an excuse NOT to use it!  Get it here.

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It is quite apparent Apple had some scaling issues with the 2.0 version of the iPhone & iPod Touch software update. I heard about all the activation issues with the new iPhone on Friday and elected to stay away from the lines and aggravation. I did try to update my Touch all day without success until about 11:00 PM that night. I was really pissed at first but after reconsidering the numbers involved I realized that nobody can scale servers for the amount of traffic Apple must have gotten hit with. Think about it. Apple has sold around six million iPhones and probably two or three million Touches. If just a quarter of those devices were trying to update to the 2.0 software (122 MB in size), you’re looking at 244,000 gigabytes (244 terabytes) of data that needed serving. I don’t care who you are (Google, Amazon, EBay, etc.), there is just no way to beef up for that much simultaneous traffic. I do fault Apple for pushing the “GO” button for all this activity at the same time. For example, they could have released the 2.0 update for the iPhone and iPod Touch at different times and released the new iPhone on a different date altogether. Now I don’t pretend to know Apple’s server architecture or how much bandwidth they own, but I’m sure there are a lot of smart folks in Cupertino capable of doing the same math I just did. If the iPhone activation went through the same pipe(s), it’s no wonder they couldn’t get people through their stores any faster than they did.
I hate to brag, but by waiting until today I was able to get to my local Apple store [in Houston] and spend less than 30 minutes in line. In fact, the whole purchase took less than an hour, and I had to port my number over from Verizon! I’m writing this post as my new iPhone syncs for the first time and haven’t even made a call with it yet. I’ll have my impressions of the new device in a day or so after I’ve had a chance to smudge the screen a bit.

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Just a quick post to let everyone know that MacNoob.net now has iPhone formatting.  If you view MacNoob with an iPhone or iPod Touch you’ll see something completely different now.  Thanks to the folks at bravenewcode.com I was able to install their wpTouch theme into WordPress that senses the browser type and formats MacNoob accordingly.  You can even add MacNoob to your iPhone’s home screen!  All you iUsers out there give it a try!

I’ve spent the last several weeks pouring over the iPhone SDK.  It’s been great dipping my toe into the programming pond again.  I’ve been an IT manager far too long.  Spending my days managing a department, fighting budgets, crafting enterprise security strategy and disaster recovery has taken me away from my first love, programming.  I don’t claim to be a great developer.  Maybe not even a good one, but writing code is how I got started in this business some twenty plus years ago and getting involved with the Mac and iPhone SDK has re-invigorated me.

When I bought my Mac last October one of the biggest surprises was discovering the developer tools that ship with OS X.  I’ve been a Microsoft Developer Network Universal subscriber for over ten years and quite used to shelling out several hundred dollars per year for access to Visual Studio and Microsoft’s SDKs.  Granted, the MSDN subscription included several operating systems, all the Office versions and servers and a host of other tools plus an extensive linked documentation library.  After all, it is Microsoft we’re talking about.  Even if you did only want a version of Visual Studio comparable to the XCode suite that ships with Leopard, you’re going to have to fork over three or four Ben Franklins to Mr. Softie for the privilege of writing Win32 code.

Since enrolling in the iPhone SDK beta program I’ve realized just how much of my programming skills have fallen by the wayside.  The “use it or lose it” truism absolutely applies in my case.  As I said, I’ve been an IT manager way too long.  I’ve had to go back to my bookshelves and dig up all my old C and C++ books because even though I’ve written twenty to thirty thousand lines of code in my life, some of even the most basic syntax escapes me.  One book in particular, Herbert Schildt’s “Teach Yourself C” was instrumental in shaping my professional life.  Working through the first edition of that title is how I learned to program.  Opening it again after fifteen years was like shaking hands with an old friend and it was very refreshing to see the XCode environment still supports even the most rudimentary terminal application building.  It didn’t take long for me to realize how much standards had changed, so I went to Amazon and bought the latest edition.  You see, I absolutely believe in the “crawl before you walk” theory and would never try to take on Objective C (the programming language of the iPhone) without a sound refresher in ANSI C fundamentals.  I think there are way too many developers out there that code things without really knowing the full extent and implications of their actions…but maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

I know I’m rambling, but it’s important to understand the context of this post.  I see the iPhone SDK as the third rail of platforms.  Windows, Mac then iPhone in that order.  With Microsoft’s utter failure to entrench Windows Mobile as a viable platform they have left the door wide open for Apple to establish an ipso facto standard in the mobile space.  With the release of the iPhone SDK early next month they’ve done that in spades.  For those of you Gen X folks out there, think back just ten years ago about the computer hardware running on your desktop.  Never mind, I’ll do it for you.  A really good PC sported a 300 MHz P3 processor, 128 MB of RAM and 4 to 8 gigs of storage.  Now consider the iPhone.  It beats all those specs quite handily and the very near future promises a doubling of that capability.  Also consider Apple’s uncanny ability to deliver devices that define their own niche.  In other words, products and software that create market where none [or very little] existed before by virtue of their well-designed and beautifully engineered user experience.  The iPod + iTunes comes to mind of course, but this goes all the way back to the Macintosh and arguably the Apple IIc.

Giving away the development environment and SDK is absolutely the right approach.  Other players in this market are already behind the proverbial 8-ball.  One thing they can never match is the near rabbidly enthusiastic developer base that Cupertino enjoys.  If Apple can get someone like me excited about developing again, just imagine the impact it will have on seasoned OS X code monkeys!  Given the richness of the iPhone SDK, it won’t take long for these many thousands of talented developers [who have already registered] to create magic beyond anything we can imagine today.  I feel the iPhone and iPod Touch are just the beginning and the mobile space is now Apple’s to lose.