Finally deciding to write a post from my iPhone will probably yield interesting if not terrible consequences, but as the general consensus goes, it’s probably best just to get on with typing and let the iPhone spell checker dude inside the phone work his magic! It isn’t always the that the ‘man inside’ knows right as some of the spelling suggestions are pretty dire, though with a slight comical element! It would probably ne the right time here to put in some of these silly mistakes, but currently I’m not the mindset to remember any!

Though the spelling and grammar/fat finger compensation is good, it’s even crazier when it temporarily stops or more likely just suspends rational thought for just a moment! In that small window of time you suddenly realise that yes, you do suck at typing on tiny keys meant for small burrowing rodents (who cant (sic) spell by the way). On the plus side, its pretty good fun (which for some reason likes to render itself as ‘food fun’ when typing fast) if you learn to love its faults and forgivings!

That headphone problem with the itsy bitsy hole on the iPhone: I solved it. Well I say solved it, I really mean took a knife to a headphone splitter and make the end of it fit. So, bringing me swiftly onto my next point, I can use my new Shure E210 headphones with them (at least that’s what I think they’re called).

So back in the day when I first started this site I had a review that I posted about my ‘awesome new’ (I hope I didn’t say those exact words) headphones. That was then… 2 years later I’m on my 4th pair of Shure headphones (all free by the way). It’s not that they’re unreliable or anything (read: keep buying Shure products) it’s just that I’m picky and they have generous customer support people. Hence no bad feelings (yet).

More on that (and more) another time…

You know when you’ve had an interesting night when you wake up the next morning to find your contact lenses the wrong way round in their little containers… (That would be left in the right one and vice versa!)

Seriously, its so unbelievably irratating when this happens (and believe me, this is the first time!). I just happened to be in a rush so I hurridly put them in, and behold my sight was for lack of a better word, screwed.

Being unfortunate enough to have different sight in either eye, wearing them the wrong way make one eye nice and strong, possibly slightly too strong for comfort, and the other comfortably blurry. Headache inducing I must add.

Yes, I solved it eventually, but not without the confused and idle stares of those bewildered on the train due to someone ‘taking their eyes out’.

It also begs the question, what happened last night?

Finally I get my computer back from Apple. Much better. So, so, much better! You don’t realise how bad it is to be stuck using Windows all the time at work, and then going home to no beautiful *functioning* iMac. Well now its back. It works this time, but what I actually mean is I haven’t found any more faults yet…

I’m not sure why or how I’m finding it so hard to cope with the general shitness of Windows at the moment. It might be because I actually have to do something with it. I was expected to use Paint to create images for documents… What is that about? I had some completely stupid restrictions on my computer so that I couldn’t install any more software, so nothing even like The GIMP to do work with. Then again for the stuff that I’m doing, the program really needed is OmniGraffle Professional.

The GUI is just terrible. There was no effort, absolutely none, put into the creation of Windows XP. I assume that’s generally accepted by everyone because it should be. They don’t even put in any effort to make the ‘taskbar’ look nice. It has the ability to go to one side or the top of the screen, yet, the rendering of it is awful in that position. The icons aren’t even centered, and the buttons (even the start menu) doesn’t even have rounded let alone finished and joined up edges. Why Redmond why?

Then again I suppose its difficult for people without proper Human User Interface Guidelines and such a thing as Aqua. When you’re copying another operating system, everything just happens to be that little bit behind. Shame really… Linux managed to make it all look pretty polished.

But why bother polishing a system that is flawed from its very beginning? I mean why attempt to make GUI look half respectable when the idea of having a window that fills the whole screen as the basis for the OS is around. Firstly, in Windows, Gates wants you to have two window sizes, full window, and not full window, which is usually just too small a size to be of any use! When you’re in full window mode as one could call it, you can’t have any windows on top, or at the side, or available to pull down or quickly glance at… You just can’t!

It makes it so impractical. Well maybe if you’re writing a report, and you want to be so focused and in a ‘I’m so not going to look at any references’ frame of mind, then just one window is great. The other 99.5% of the time, no. ‘It can’t happen here’ as The Mothers Of Invention might say. The impracticalities of it are outstandingly huge. Yes you might need to try something different to realise what you’re missing. But once you’ve seen the light, no going back! Also have a go at hovering your mouse cursor over a window that can scroll, and try scrolling, it’ll only scroll if its active. What an annoyance!

Another nice impracticality and general annoyance is perhaps when you’re thinking ‘hmm, I’d like to open an image in one folder, and compare it with an image in another folder.’ Let’s also assume in this case, you’re one of those many people who doesn’t possess a decent image organiser/editor (even Picasa anyone?). Well in Windows, provided you’ve got over the full screen window problem, you’ve got no hope! If you’d act as a normal person and double click on the file to open it, you get a nice ‘Windows Picture & Fax Viewer’ window popping up with the image in it. By this point you should be thinking two things; wow, it actually works and why call it a fax viewer too? Who ‘views’ faxes on their computer, I thought you read a fax as well (providing it had words on it, but thinking about it, who sent complex images by fax? like no one.), then again that might be me with rational thinking again! You might want to open the next window now, so you can go about the action of comparison between the images. You’d navigate to the other folder, open the file with a (swift) double click and… it would open it in the same ‘Windows Picture & Fax Viewer’ that you already had open. Oops! Now you’d just have to go back to the other file and open that again. But most likely it will open it in the same window. How useful. Isn’t it just great how Windows lets you have lots of Windows (or not) of the same application, sorry I mean program, open.

Yes, at the end of the day the solution is inevitably obvious, but who cares. The point of this is to again reiterate how terrible certain things are about a too popular OS.

Leopard would be worth getting, I might have to get it soon! I just love some of those new features!

I will start out by apologizing for my lack of posting things in the last few weeks. I have been conducting a test of the iPhone in the best way possible, that is thru not actually having a computer to use and having to rely solely on the iPhone for internet and the management of various forms of communication that I would regularly do…

My computer or iMac to be more precise is currently being repaired by Apple to sort out this annoying issue with the Cd drive importing things at hideously low and slow sped, and unlike the Apple store, this repair is taking its time… AAGH! Still, it gives me a good chance to a) show off my iPhone to the nice Apple store employees when I’m at the store b) show it off to everyone else at various Apple events that were on, such as the Leopard launch and c) try out my iPhone to its full potential an thus write a kind of review.

First that I should say is that it does exactly what it says on the tin… Everything Apple says about the iPhone, it can do. Plus more. The amount of ‘more’ that you want to add to it completely different for everyone, but its really up to you. In my case I unlocked it for Orange Uk, activated it, installed Installer and now I can use Navizon and message people using MSN or AIM. Pretty cool.

Instead of just treating this as a normal kind of review, I’ll just assume the iPhone is perfect and talk about what’s bad with it (its easier that way!).

-The recessed headphone jack is rather annoying. The Apple headphones/headset that come with the iPhone aren’t that bad though. If it wasn’t for the lack of the noise canceling ability I would happily use then as the button to answer calls and pause music is pretty good, I’m getting used to using the headset, isn’t that sad! I will however probably invest in the Shure headset thingy that enables you to use any headphones with it, and it includes a button and a mic! That might go well with my soon to arrive replacement headphones (3rd pair 4th pair!).

-The lack of anything telling you when you are coming to the end of the 155 character limit in a text message is irritating. Especially when you’ve on pay as you go and are trying to save money!

-When the phone is on silent and you are listening to music via the headset, there is nothing to tell you that a call is being received other than the vibrating thing. This is marginally annoying especially when they could implement a thing to ring in the headphones only!

-The battery is weird. Sometimes it lasts for ages, or at least seems to never go down. Other times its not as good. Its probably related to my Wi-Fi usage but hoo haa, the battery’s better than I expected so its all good. I couldn’t imagine listening to 6 or 7 hours of music on my 4th G iPod and seeing very little hit on te battery meter. Isn’t that cool!

To be continued…

EDIT:

Another annoying thing that I’ve found with my iPhone happens to be that when I have a voicemail message, the red dot will show on the voicemail indicating this, which is all well and dandy, but when I’ve listened to the message it doesn’t want to go away and will sometimes persistently keep bothering me about it! It did eventually go away, but I haven’t a clue why!