Lately, one of the things I've really been getting into is NPR. It has now become part of my daily routine to wake up and tune into to WNYC for "Morning Edition," and catch "All Things Considered" when I get home from school. But, I'm not always at a computer or near a radio when my favorite shows are on. So, when I got my iPhone, I thought it would allow me to get my radio fix anywhere I was. Not so true.
There are two major flaws in the iPhone which it keep it from playing radio. The first is the lack of certain iPod accessory compatibility. There are several iPod radio tuner add-ons, including Apple's own (pictured at right). None of them work with the iPhone, which is not surprising as it could interfere with the iPhone's WiFi and cellular radios. Yet still, the iPhone would be able to get Internet radio streams, right? Wrong. Audio stream file types, such as .pls and .m3u, will not play on the iPhone, even though standard audio files (MP3, AAC, etc. -- really anything that will play in iTunes) linked to in web pages will work.
This flaw is a large yet still unchecked problem in the iPhone, and really should be fixed. I mean, it's one of the many really simple software problems that could be solved with a little free update -- all Apple needs to do is enable basic .m3u and .pls streaming in the iPhone's iTunes. If Apple could just do that, iPhone users around the country -- and soon to be around the world -- may be just a little happier.
As I said over at Macworld last week, carrying around an iPhone hasn't yet freed me from the tether of carrying around my 30GB iPod as well. Since they're about the same size, I often find myself slipping them into a pocket together, or laying them down on the desk next to each other.
Then I started to notice something odd with my iPod. I'd go to adjust the volume and the meter would jump all over the place. Once could have been a fluke, but after a couple times, I hit upon a realization: it only seemed to happen when the iPod was in close proximity with my iPhone.
It doesn't happen all the time: my guess is that it's when the EDGE radio is at its most active, transmitting either data or voice. Somehow, that appears to wreak havoc with the iPod's touch sensitive scrolling, even from several inches away. Pointing the antenna end of the iPhone (the black plastic part) at it seems to make it fluctuate the most.
I don't know much about FCC regulations, but I thought that devices weren't supposed to cause harmful interference? This never happened with my old phone (a CDMA/EVDO handset). Anybody else noticed this with their iPhone, or with other phones?
Last night I got a message on the iPhone that my Visual Voicemail was 92 percent full and that I should delete some messages. Being the daredevil that I am, I decided not to delete any messages and let the mailbox fill up and see what happened.
I would never tell my boss this, but I actually let a couple of calls go to voicemail purposely to fill it up. I know, I could have just called the voicemail myself, but that would be cheating.
Tonight my mailbox filled up and I found out that it works no differently than what my old AT&T voicemail did with my BlackBerry. If you call my phone right now, you'll get a message saying "The mailbox belonging to Jim Dalrymple is full and cannot receive anymore messages. Please try again later."
I was thinking that maybe the messages at the bottom would automatically delete or some other magical thing would happen, but nope, it just won't take any more messages. And in case you're wondering, it took 40 voicemails with a total time of 17:47 to fill it up.
Today I noticed something peculiar about my iPhone. Despite my presence in the massive IDG office and lawn tennis complex, the iPhone was telling me that it was using AT&T's EDGE network for Internet access.
We've got an in-building network, appropriately named IDG, so that didn't really make sense to me. When I went to my iPhone's Settings window, the phone claimed to be connected to the IDG Wi-Fi network, but no dice. I restarted: nothing. I started to think that my desire to use iFuntastic to add the "Wonder Pets" theme song as my ringtone had led to the destruction of my iPhone's networking capabilities.
In a last-ditch effort, I re-entered the Wi-Fi settings area, tapped on the blue arrow next to the IDG base station, and entered the advanced network settings panel. And I found something interesting: it didn't list any assigned IP address for my iPhone. I've seen this sort of thing before on my Mac: it's what can happen if a wireless base station is turned on, but not actually hooked up to the Internet.
I went back to my MacBook, unplugged its Ethernet cable, and confirmed that the problem was with our Wi-Fi network not being connected to the rest of the office network. Our IT staff showed up and fixed the problem, and now my MacBook and iPhone are using the office Wi-Fi with ease.
This little adventure taught me something, however: the iPhone's really quite smart about networking. It didn't get confused about the fact that it was connected to a Wi-Fi base station. Since that base station couldn't supply it with network access, it switched to EDGE and got the job done.
Yes, that's exactly how such a device is supposed to work. But my long experience with computers and various gadgets tells me that most devices wouldn't do it that way.
As has been established, I'm a champion of syncing your iPhone to multiple computers. But here's a sticky situation that results from such a set-up. Let's say you're at work, and your iPhone is set to sync music and videos with your home Mac. What can be done?
Podcasts, my friend. iPhone can sync podcasts separate from music and videos -- and I take advantage of that feature so that I've always got current podcasts when I head home from work. While that does mean that every time I sync music and video, my podcasts are wiped from the iPhone and need to be resynced, it does mean that I've got a way to get audio onto my iPhone during the day.
Great idea, I said to myself, but how the heck am I going to make a fake podcast that contains audio files from my own hard drive? Dummy up some XML and drop it in my Personal Web Sharing folder? Guh. What a pain.
Enter Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software, who (in 2005!) found the need to create fake iTunes podcasts. Since Jalkut's an actual programmer, he couldn't just dream about it: he did something about it. More specifically, he created Typecast, a simple Mac utility that lets you drag audio files from your hard drive into a window, press a button, and watch as the files appear magically within iTunes as a podcast.
Jalkut created Typecast without the iPhone in mind, but it sure came in handy for me today, when I wanted to load up an audiobook and a stray MP3 file that somehow had escaped from my regular selection of podcasts. And instead of waiting to load that audio when I got home tonight, it's on my iPhone right now.
While Apple boasts about the ability of the iPhone's browser to display the real, not watered down Internet, there are things that can be done to make your site more accepting of the mobile browser. On the far-end of the spectrum, there's designing an iPhone-specific version of your site; if you're looking for a somewhat less time-consuming approach, consider this advice from Craig Hockenberry of the Iconfactory:
...just add a <meta> tag that lets the iPhone know how wide to display the initial page. I added the following code to the <head> in my template yesterday:What does that line do? Well, since the iPhone displays the entire site zoomed out, specifying a viewport width means that the iPhone will zoom by default to that size, leaving less unused space around your content.<meta name="viewport" content="width=808" />
Every browser besides MobileSafari will ignore this information. But it does something very important on the iPhone: it optimizes the viewport for your content.
Of course, in order to find the right width for your site, you'll need to engage in a little old-fashioned trial and error. The 808 number above works for Craig's site, but it probably won't work for yours. But it's a good way to "optimize" your site for the iPhone without having to go overboard.
There's a new web-based instant messaging client for the iPhone, and it's kind of, sort of, from AOL. It's TinyBuddy, written by AOL employee James Burke and hosted by the AOL Greenhouse. It's not an official AOL project, but Burke's used his up-close knowledge of how AIM works to make a instant-messaging client for iPhone that's a bit different than all the others when it comes to security.
TinyBuddy uses AOL's OpenAuth servers to authenticate you, meaning that the TinyBuddy web site never touches your password -- so it can't store it and use it later. Instead, TinyBuddy's embedded JavaScript only handles a special authentication token provided by AIM. I'm pretty sure the other people doing AIM clients for the iPhone, such as JiveTalk, aren't harvesting passwords for re-sale to criminals, but TinyBuddy's approach makes the whole thing even more transparent.
To try TinyBuddy, just type x.aim.com/ty into your iPhone browser. And for more on Burke's development effort, visit his Tiny Notes page.
One of the things I missed about giving up my BlackBerry was the distinctive screaming of Ozzy Osbourne belting out the opening line to Crazy Train every time I got a phone call.
Well, I am happy to say that Ozzy is back -- this evening I tried the iPhone ringtone hack that my colleague Dan Moren reported on earlier today. And it works.
I'm always nervous about hacking any device, but I just couldn't resist having Ozzy on my iPhone.
The world seems right again.
Let's hold off on those gloomy pronouncements about the iPhone's adoption rate for just a little while longer, OK? In the wake of Tuesday's news that AT&T activated 146,000 iPhones at launch, the "Apple-is-doomed" crowd began its predictable round of panicky pronouncements about the iPhone failing to meet expectations. Nice story, but it overlooks two important things:
1. The activation figures only represent the first 30 hours of the iPhone's release, and we already knew there were some activation delays that first weekend; and
2. Activations ain't sales.
Apple addressed that second point Wednesday, announcing its fiscal third quarter results. The company says it sold 270,000 iPhones, again for the 30 hours that the iPhone was on sale during the third quarter. That's still short of the more fanciful forecasts, but it's still nothing for Apple to hang its head over.
To put that 270,000 figure in context, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told analysts in the subsequent phone briefing that AT&T informed Apple it had sold more iPhones in that first weekend than it had sold in the first month of any other wireless device in the company's history. Furthermore, Apple expects to sell its 1 millionth iPhone by the end of the September quarter -- it took the company seven quarters to reach that figure with the iPod, and nobody would seriously argue that device was a disappointment.
That's one man's take, of course. What do you think of the iPhone sales figures? A strong showing for the first day or so or a sign of trouble on the horizon for Apple?
