The Quality Without A Name

We saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End on Saturday.  I liked it.  John didn’t.  He thought the plot was too complex, and he didn’t care about the characters.  I thought the plot was just right, and although I didn’t care much about the characters either, the plot was interesting enough to make up for it.

On the other hand, we were sitting in front of some loud-mouthed retards.  We probably will not be going to the south Tinseltown again.  It seems to attract that sort of cretin.

Delia and Todd like to assign numeric ratings to movies.  I don’t think that it’s possible to assign just one rating to a movie.  The problem, as I pointed out on Saturday, is that sometimes you’re in the mood for a certain type of movie, and other times you’re not.  When you’re not in the mood, you won’t like the movie as much.  I felt vindicated on Sunday when John admitted that he might have been overly harsh about the movie because he wasn’t really in the mood for an action/adventure film on Saturday.

President Bush is having a colonoscopy tomorrow.  The doctors do not expect to find any polyps.  Just a head.

We saw the fifth Harry Potter movie yesterday.  Some couple had brought an infant with them, and of course it cried and made noise during the movie.  Aside from that, I didn’t think it was a good movie.  Another forty minutes might have been enough to make it good.

The Mac OS X Address Book (as of Tiger at least) makes it easy to send an address to MapQuest.  I’ve packaged a little AppleScript that sends it to Google Maps:

Click the picture to download the script.  Put the script in your Macintosh HD:Library:Address Book Plug-Ins folder or the Library:Address Book Plug-Ins folder in your home folder.  Then restart Address Book. 

A lot of the complaints about iPhone 1.0 can be fixed in software: instant messaging, iTunes Store access, video capture, ringtones, games, Flash, more Bluetooth support, etc.  Apple probably plans to address all of those shortcomings.  I understand why they’re not already fixed; getting them all into the first version might have delayed the product launch by six months.

My question is, having spent $600 on iPhone 1.0, what will it cost me to get the new features when Apple does finish them?

I’ve owned a Treo 270, a Treo 600, and a Treo 650.  There were some firmware updates to them, but I don’t recall the updates adding any significant new features.  As far as I know (having never used a Windows Mobile-based phone), this is the norm for cellular phones: a firmware update just fixes bugs.  You only get new features by buying new hardware.

On the other hand, if I buy a Mac (or a PC), I fully expect it to last through at least one or two significant operating system upgrades.  I’ll pay for each new OS release (Mac OS X Tiger was $129), but I won’t necessarily have to buy new hardware.

Paid ringtones and access to the iTunes Store would both be revenue generators for Apple, so I expect to see those features added to iPhone 1.0 gratis.  What about the other things, like instant messaging and video capture?  Will Apple charge me $129 for an “iPhone Leopard” firmware update?   Will it just ask me to shell out another $600 for iPhone 2.0 hardware?

The iPhone came out yesterday.  I didn’t feel it warranted waiting for hours in line, and I wasn’t sure I wanted one yet.  But I called the Apple Store (Barton Creek) today and was told that iPhones were still in stock (ha ha to all you suckers that waited in line for hours yesterday!) and I just couldn’t resist.  So now I’ve played with it for about three hours.  Here are my thoughts.

Ways the iPhone beats the Treo 650:

• The user interface is beautiful.  The screen’s resolution is apparently slightly lower than my Treo 650′s (165 dpi vs. 178 dpi), but Apple’s interface looks so much better.  It always annoyed me that the Treo doesn’t use anti-aliased text.  The iPhone does.  This makes a huge difference.
• It appears to sync perfectly with my Mac OS X Address Book and iCal.  My Treo (with Missing Sync) did an acceptable job of this, but not perfect, since its Contacts and Calendar schemata are a little different from those of Address Book and iCal.  The iPhone was presumably designed to work perfectly with these apps.
• Safari works great.  It’s no faster at loading pages over the cellular network than the Treo 650, but the browser does a much better job rendering pages than Blazer (the Treo browser).
• My iPhone plan is cheaper than my Treo plan.  I paid Verizon $105/month for the Treo (including unlimited data and no SMS messages).  I’m only paying $60/month with the iPhone, including 200 SMS messages.  (If I could get a plan with fewer airtime minutes for less money, I would.  I only use about 50-100 minutes per month.  This was a problem with the Treo too.  Nobody sells a plan with as few minutes as I need, apparently.)

Ways the Treo 650 beats the iPhone: 

• I can’t search the iPhone’s address book by typing.  On the Treo, I just start typing a first name, or last name, or first initial plus last name, and it filters the contact list.  It usually takes no more than 2 or 3 keystrokes to isolate the person I want to find.  On the iPhone, I have to scroll and look.  Scrolling is smooth and fast, but not as fast as the Treo’s keyboard search.  As a bonus, the Treo magically figures out when I’m typing a phone number instead of searching by name.  On the iPhone I have to press the keyboard button to dial a number.  You might think this is nit-picking, and I should just use the iPhone’s “Favorites” list to store my commonly-dialed numbers.  But the Treo keyboard search was so efficient that I never needed a separate mechanism for accessing my oft-dialed numbers.
• I can’t install my own ring tones on the iPhone.
• The Treo can sync over Bluetooth.  The iPhone can’t.  (Nor can it sync over WiFi.)

Ways that the iPhone and the Treo 650 both suck:

• Neither works with the Mac OS X Address Book.  The Address Book has a Bluetooth button, , right in the toolbar.  Supposedly, if you pair your Mac with a cell phone, you can dial numbers on the cell phone just by clicking Address Book entries.  It doesn’t work with either the Treo or the iPhone.  In the case of the Treo, it’s annoying but understandable.  In the case of the iPhone, it’s just stupid.
• Neither has a 3G radio.  (Newer Treos do.)

Ways in which the iPhone sucks that have nothing comparable on the Treo:

• The iPhone can’t access the iTunes store.
• It seems to have trouble remembering my home WiFi password, so when I leave the WiFi network and come back later, I have to re-enter it.  This doesn’t happen every time.
• A few days ago, Google enhanced Google Maps.  Now you can change its driving directions just by dragging the route with your mouse.  It’s terrific – totally intuitive, and lightning-fast.  Want to do that on your iPhone?  You can’t.  The built-in Maps application doesn’t support it.  And if you go to maps.google.com in the iPhone web browser, you still can’t.  As soon as you click the “Search Maps” button in the web page, the iPhone takes you to the built-in Maps application.  I feel like Apple might as well have just displayed “fuck you” in inch-tall letters.
• So far, it’s been much easier for me to type with two thumbs in the sideways orientation, but only Safari offers it.  Phone, Calendar, Maps, Notes, etc., only offer the cramped, clumsy portrait-mode keyboard.  Also, once you bring up the keyboard in Safari, you can’t then rotate the iPhone and have the keyboard change its orientation.  You have to back out of the keyboard screen and re-enter it to make it rotate.