What do you want in iPhone OS 4.0?

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Disclaimer – I know that for many of you the first "feature" you would like to see is the iPhone on another carrier besides AT&T. In all honesty that day probably isn’t too far away. The Apple AT&T Exclusive Contract ends in the 2010-2011 timeframe and I’d bet money that we’ll see a 4G Verizon iPhone. So my focus here is not going to be on carrier support.

 

While iPhone OS 3.0 certainly brought a lot to the table and went a long way towards bringing some long awaited features and capabilities to the iPhone. The over 60,000 available 3rd party apps have also filled in many gaps. Although the 3.0 update makes a great phone even better, the iPhone is not perfect and there is still room for improvement. Also yes I know that there are apps and workarounds for some of the items I’m listing below, but I feel that these features should be BUILT-IN!

 

So I thought I would start a NEW list of the features and enhancements that I would like to see come in the next major update. 

 

Flash support

This is now my number one feature request. Safari on the iPhone was definitely a breakthrough in web browsing on a smart phone. However, without an Adobe Flash plug-in there are still way too many sites that are inaccessible on the iPhone. Why doesn’t Adobe just do it? The problem is that although 3rd party apps can be written, Safari on the iPhone doesn’t have support of plug-ins. So the ONLY way that the iPhone can get Flash support is with Apple’s help. There, I said it.

 

Now in no particular order, the rest of my list….

 

Mail Needs an Overhaul

Unified Inbox

In both Calendar and Contacts, I can either look at a single calendar or a single group of contacts. However, in Mail I can still only look at one inbox at a time. While I can live with that, the back back back method of switching between different email accounts is a pain. If we can’t have a unitifed inbox (like there is in the desktop version of Mail) we should at least have popup menu to easily switch between accounts.

Spam Filter

It would be great to either have a built-in Spam filter or at least allow 3rd parties to create one. My favorite one on Mac OS X is SpamSieve. I’d love to see it as an iPhone app.

Mail to a Group

I have groups of contacts, yet I have no easy way to email to a group other than having to key the names in each time.

Multiple Signatures

It would be great to have multiple email signatures or at least one per account. I do both work and personal email on my iPhone. As it stands now I have to have one generic one.

Mail Rules

All of your mail comes into the Inbox whether you want it to or not. In the desktop version of Mail or Outlook you can set up Rules to automatically file messages, respond to them, mark them as read, etc. I’d like to see Mail Rules in Mail on the iPhone too.

  Continue reading “What do you want in iPhone OS 4.0?”

Hey AT&T! Summer is almost over! Where is my MMS?

MMS-sendingErikBernskiold

For the Northern Hemisphere, as in the United States, Canada and most of Europe, Fall begins on September 22, 2009 at 5:18 pm EDT.

AT&T promised us that we would have MMS messaging for the iPhone this "Summer".  Although AT&T did recently announce that MMS is coming on September 25th (3 days after summer officially ends), there is still no word on Tethering support (which was given no timeline at all except for "in the Future").

I’m not a fan of AT&T nor do I hate them. I’ve had AT&T service for years before the iPhone. However, I’m starting to see WHY so many people complain about their service. The mere mention of AT&T in a public setting will usually get you a few glares and eye rolls.

We can speculate and take AT&T at their word that in order to allow for iPhones to do MMS, they had to do some network upgrades. However, the odd thing is that MMS is hardly new technology. All other AT&T phones can do this and have been doing this for years. Tethering is also not a new thing. Again, other AT&T smart phones can do this. What this really says is that although AT&T allows both MMS and Tethering on other phones, these features must either be rarely used by non-iPhone users or that they are so hard to do on other phones that most people don’t ever use these features. So it was OK to offer these features with the existing network to non-iPhone users because they couldn’t handle the traffic. Studies have shown that because the iPhone is so easy to use that 80% or more iPhone users do web browsing and email REGULARLY on their iPhones. So it’s a sure bet that iPhone users will also be using MMS too!

Note to AT&T: Advertising that you have the biggest, fastest 3G network doesn’t really mean much if you can’t actually do anything on it!

We all know that the minute Apple announces iPhone availability on another US carrier such as Verizon, that they will see an immediate increase in market share especially from those hold outs that have refused to go on AT&T’s service. Now what will really be interesting is how many people will LEAVE AT&T to go to Verizon for their iPhone service?

 

 

 
 
 

UPDATE: Seth, the AT&T Blogger responds!

Vent mount for your iPhone

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Last week I reviewed the New Navigon Turn-by-Turn Navigation App for iPhone. During that review I didn’t have a mount for my iPhone in my car. I knew what kind of mount I would want and therefore I ordered it from Amazon. 

Here’s a short video on how the Arkon IPM129-ST Removable Air Vent Mount works.

 

 

The Bottom Line

If you need to mount your iPhone in your car and you don’t have round vents (like on the Mustang), this mount works great. It ranges from $8-$12 on Amazon and you can order it here.

 

AT&T FamilyMap vs. MobileMe Find My iPhone

familymapvsfmi

A couple of months ago I reviewed AT&T’s FamilyMap service. This service allows you to track the location of the cellphones you have on an AT&T Family Plan. However, since that time Apple introduced the Find My iPhone feature, which works with iPhones and iPod touch devices as long as you have a MobileMe account ($99/year or less). After I posted my FamilyMap review, many of the blog readers here signed up for the free trial and many said the same thing. "It’s just not accurate enough." Now while I didn’t have a problem with the accuracy of it, I do have a problem continuing to pay for a service I may not need anymore. 

 

AT&T FamilyMap

This service works by giving you a website that you can go to and "Locate" your loved ones. Depending on the phone the accuracy and the ability to pinpoint the location can vary widely. For example, a phone with a built-in GPS is liable to be more accurately found than a phone without one as it would have to rely on cell tower triangulation. AT&T FamilyMap starts at $9.99/month for up to 2 phones and 14.99/month for up to 5 phones on the same family plan.

 

MobileMe – Find My iPhone

The MobileMe Find My iPhone feature only works with iPhones and iPod touch devices. You log in to the me.com website, click the settings icon and then click the Find My iPhone link. Your iPhone’s location will be pinpointed on a map. You have to have a MobileMe account to use this feature and MobileMe retails for $99/year (or less if on sale). In order to find more than one iPhone, you would need the Family Pack which is $149/year (or less if on sale). 

Continue reading “AT&T FamilyMap vs. MobileMe Find My iPhone”

My DVD to MP4 Media Conversion Project is Done!

emptydvdracks 

You might remember my post from May when I was in the middle of converting my Movie DVDs over to a hard drive. I have successfully converted my DVD movie connection to .MP4 H.264 format! This means that I can now enjoy any movie I own on any HDTV in my house via Apple TV or I can take the movies with me on my laptop or iPhone. I actually finished the conversion a couple of months ago, which was much earlier than I anticipated.

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How did I do it?

I have over 380 standard def Hollywood DVDs. Painstakingly one-by-one I converted each one over to an .MP4 file using Handbrake. All 440 movies total (some were already digital or home movies) were imported into iTunes and reside on a Drobo connected to an intel iMac. This iMac serves as my iTunes server. It’s the one that all of my Apple TV’s are sync’d to and it’s the one that I use to sync my iPhone to for media ( you can sync an iPhone to more than one computer for data and media separately). I also use this iMac to sync my iPods too. So it has it all, music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, best of the best photos, etc. 

Continue reading “My DVD to MP4 Media Conversion Project is Done!”

iPhone 3G S Review and a little fun with Woz

iphone3gsinmyhand1 The iPhone 3G S is Apple's newest offering for an already insanely successful product. The iPhone's success has exceeded everyone's expectations and even the naysayers can't deny that Apple came from nowhere and all of a sudden became the market leader that every other phone maker now aspires to be like. If you don't believe me, look at all the other smart phones that were recently released and you'll see "me too" like features and advertising. So what do you do when you have one of the most successful phones ever created? You improve it to keep the momentum going. My original iPhone review 2 years ago has had over 135, 000 reads. If you Google "iPhone Review" mine will come up on the first page. The reason for this success is that my first review was one of the most in depth reviews written. I spent almost 24 hours writing it. Then the iPhone 3G came out last July and I followed up with another in depth review. Now it's time to take a look at the iPhone 3G S, however, this review will not be anywhere near as long or in depth as the last two. It's not because I don't feel like writing, it's just that there isn't as much to cover that I haven't already said. If you have read my iPhone 3G review last year and my iPhone OS 3.0 Review a few days ago, you're 95% there in knowing about the New iPhone 3G S. (Also see my iPhone 3G S Unboxing Video here). Continue reading “iPhone 3G S Review and a little fun with Woz”

Unboxing my iPhone 3G S 32GB

Well today is iPhone 3G S day and while I have a full review coming sometime this weekend (no later than early Monday morning), I thought I would share a first look at the outside of the iPhone 3G S in this video. Now keep in mind that the on the outside the iPhone 3G S is pretty much identical to the iPhone 3G form factor:

iPhone OS 3.0 Review: What’s New and Noteworthy?

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Now that the New iPhone OS 3.0 Software update is available, I thought I would give you a first look and point out some of the new features that you may overlook or not discover right away. The good thing is that at first glance iPhone 3.0 looks just like iPhone 2.x. This is what makes it hard to know what’s there because there isn’t a lot that jumps right out at ya. Also hundreds and hundreds of the enhancements are under the hood to improve performance and give developers the hooks to write more powerful apps.

Continue reading “iPhone OS 3.0 Review: What’s New and Noteworthy?”

iPhone App of the Week – 6500+ Cool Facts

coolfacts

This one is for the trivia buffs (or to combat them 🙂 ). Cool Facts is an iPhone (iPod touch) app that now boasts 6,500+ Cool Facts. I was actually surprised by some of the entries. Not that I think I know a lot about a lot of things, but some made me go “wow, I’d never heard that before!” This app is a great conversation starter (please resist the temptation to use it on a date. You know who you are).

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The app displays the facts in a random order. You can swipe your finger to go to the next fact or shake your iPhone/iPod touch to go to the next one. It seems that shaking is actually a little more responsive than swiping.

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6500+ Cool Facts is a FREE download from the App Store. Get it here.

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