July 13, 2008
iPhone software
I updated the software on my iPhone yesterday to 2.0. So far, not much of a difference. Are there any apps people think are invaluable?
Also, did anyone get a new one?
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If you have an Apple TV and an iPhone — a pretty small sliver of an already pretty small Venn diagram, admittedly — the Remote application is a total game-changer.
I played with Shazam a little bit yesterday, and I can only conclude that it’s the product of some kind of dark pact between the authors and the Prince of the Underworld. Either that, or it’s part of the government’s secret program to trickle out technology derived from the Roswell crash. A movie trailer came on TV with a familiar soundtrack, so I mashed the “what the hell is this music” button. About fifteen seconds later, Shazam told me that it was from the “Raising Arizona” soundtrack. And this it did by listening in using my phone’s mic to music playing on my television across the room with dialogue and voiceover on top of it. Sorcery, I say.
Pandora’s pretty neat, too. I’d care a lot more about that if AT&T had signal repeaters in the DC Metro the way Verizon does.
Thinking about getting a new one, but man, I am struggling with breaking away from a BlackBerry. The BB isn’t as sleek or sexy (or extensible, app-wise), but what it does it does REALLY well.
Someone convince me, preferably someone who used BlackBerries before the iPhone. Go.
Hi Jeff:
I have both a Blackberry 8800 (company issue) and an iPhone (personal). Hands down the iPhone is so much more superior that I tried to have my company support it and offered to turn in my Blackberry. Take the plunge…
I used to carry a (work-supplied) Blackberry. Then I got an iPhone. The trade-off at the time was that I gave up “push” email — instant notification of a received email — in favor of not having to carry an email-only device and a separate telephone. And a separate iPod, for that matter.
The newly released iPhone software, which ships on new iPhones and also gets installed on old ones automatically, now includes “push” email and calendaring for Microsoft Exchange systems. So my iPhone now does precisely everything my old Blackberry did, only better, plus everything my old phone did, only better, plus everything my old iPod did, pretty much exactly the same, which is fine because I really liked my old iPod.
I still use a rotary telephone.
My 3g is on order…and I was real close.
The only seriously amazing looking App I have seen is for Evernote which looks like del.icio.us for real life.
Oh, and jandek, you can do that with the iphone.
That reminds me of the tock-tock-tock-tock . . . Big Ben bong bong faux-grandfather clock sound that tells me someone’s calling on my cell phone.
Couple of new things in 2.0:
You can take screenshots: Hold both Home and Lock buttons at the same time. Picture ends up in your “camera roll”.
Mail allows multiple select for delete/move.
Mail allows you to see/change the from address.
Contacts are now accessible through a home page application ( like on the iPod Touch ).
Apps I’ve Found Amazing:
Shazam ( as mentioned above ): So far, it’s only missed one song. I’ve tried it against a movie playing, songs in the car, sonngs off my computer. It’s amazing.
UrbanSpoon: A really cool way to choose a random place to eat.
I haven’t bought it yet, but Cocktails looks nice if you want to know how to mix a large assortment of drinks.
There’s Evernote and Jott clients as well as Twitteriffic and Facebook.
And finally, I’ve bought two games, BattleAtSea ( a Battleship game ) and Sudoku by EA. They are both very good.
The only downside to using all this stuff is I’m seeing my battery life crumble. Sudoku in particular appears to be eating my battery alive.
I don’t have an iphone, but I’ve heard many good things about the iphone synth…
As Patrick mentioned, the “Mail allows multiple select for delete/move.” and “Mail allows you to see/change the from address.” are huge for me. I carry many email accounts with me, and the whole “What personality is sending this email…oh, crap, change the default and then redo the whole thing” got very very very old.
Got Monkey Ball. Feh. Love the Yellow Pages thing for some reason. We do a lot of eating out in DC, and it’s nice to have all the info handy. The circle would be complete if Opentable would make an app, too.