Freyburg

Apple updated the iPhone system software to 2.2 late this week, and so far I’m impressed. New features include street views (for some cities) in Google Maps, a redesigned Safari, and the absolutely welcomed ability to download podcasts directly into the iPhone from the iTunes store. Never mind that the process is a little clunky, just the fact that I can do it is pretty impressive. Equally cool, bit not as glitzy, is the fact that you can now hit “update all” to update your apps, and they’ll update all at once. More importantly, the icons now stay just where you left them, rather than you having to move them around every time a feature gets changed. Other than that…it’s the same iPhone as always. Apparently Apple has added a bunch of “emoji” icons, which is important to the Japanese market, but doesn’t do much for me.

Just doing a test of blogging from my Iphone. Which, until Apple allows me to cut and paste and include links, is of limited use.

Yep, the other side of the coin has dropped and I’ve got another article up about Flash on the iPhone up at Mac | Life, this time accentuating the positives of Adobe’s graphical powerhouse on Apple’s iconic mobile device.

…is the title of my latest article over at Mac | Life. It’s already getting some vigorous debate from Flash defenders and detractors, so join in with your two cents, wouldya?.

That’s the contention of Daniel Lyons, the ex “Fake Steve Jobs” and current columnist for Newsweek. Lyons claims that Apple has gone from being a niche player in the PC business to a monopoly force for content distribution…and he’s got a point. Macs are selling better than ever before (and I’ll never, EVER switch back to PC) but the real money and influence is in the iPhones, iPods, and other content-centric devices Apple continues to sell like mad. But at the same time, Apple controls essentially every point of entry for that content, much like Microsoft did (and got slammed for, hard) with Internet Explorer.

But where Apple differs from Microsoft is execution. They’ve put us all in a gilded cage but damn, those are some shiny bars, and it’s really comfortable inside this cage, and…well, you get the idea. It comes down to convenience versus principle, and I have to admit that for me, the ability to tote everything around on my iPhone trumps ethical qualms I have about Apple’s choke hold on how we access our movies and music. Which sort of makes me Apple’s bitch, though I’m not alone.

This one’s about the iPhone Underground.

Yes, you read that right, my latest article at Mac | Life is all about the Apple products the Dark Knight needs to strap to his belt in order to better fight crime. And speaking of comics-related matters, San Diego Comic Con is a huge, crazy festival of nerdosity the likes I’ve never seen. And I’ve seen a lot of nerdosity in my time.  

So A couple of my iPhone articles are online on the newly revamped Mac | Life, including how to work around using SMS and how to revirginize your phone. I’ve also been informed that my article about iPhone hackers and the App Store is out in the print edition. W00t!

This one is about the Canadian reaction to the Rogers data rates for the iPhone. And next month, I’ll hopefully have an honest-to-goodness-in-the-paper-magazine article in Mac | Life.

Rogers has announced their data plans for the iPhone. It’s all there in their chart…no unlimited plan, 2 gigs of data for $115, and a lot of even worse plans with less data. I didn’t have time to write about this wrinkle when it came out, but others have covered it in my stead quite nicely. They’ve mounted a pretty weak defense for this push for the status quo, and given they announced the plans today it’s pretty sad that they’re already on the defensive. All I can say is there is NO way I’ll be getting a new iPhone with these rates in place. I’ll stick with my first gen iPhone, which has served me well using only wifi for my data.