Freyburg

I have a new article on Mac | Life, this time about GPS on the iPhone and how it can be unreliable in a variety of circumstances.

Despite the perennial cries of “people don’t want to read books on their phones,” that’s precisely what’s happening according to an article in the New York Times. Everyone has their smartphone with them at all times, making it easy to read on the go and tote a library of titles in your pocket. I’ve read at least 3 or 4 books on my iPhone, and plan to keep doing so until Apple comes out with something better, like their mythical tablet device.

When I first saw the video features on the iPhone 3GS, I was at best mildly interested. I already have a Flip Cam, and with a year or more left on my iPhone 3G contract, I wasn’t about to go out and score a new phone. But Hand Held Hollywood almost makes me want to go out and get a 3GS, just to pull off what these guys are doing. The blog posts periodic updates about all the different apps available for the iPhone to make the lives of filmmakers easier, and it not only looks great but is pretty damn informative about some of the great production tools available via the iPhone.

In fact, this blog makes me want to dig out the Flip Cam and start doing some quick and dirty Freyburg-centric content soon, given enough time. Maybe our upcoming trip to Japan and China will be fodder for some vlogging.

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.

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.

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.