I’m happy to admit that I’m in the tank for the iPhone.  Its not a perfect device, but it is a magnificently close enough to perfect that I don’t really care.  

In no specific order, however, are the three most delicious things I’ve experienced (perhaps you have your own).

1. live video streaming: To this, of course, I am referring to Qik.  Perhaps there are other applications that do this for the iPhone, and perhaps, you can use this on other devices.  But being able to shoot video on the fly — and stream it to a webserver — is almost magical.   Much like with the camera on the iPhone, once you get into the habit of using it, you find yourself shooting almost anything.  And with a young child, this is, actually a very good thing.  My family has a long history of capturing things on film / video (perhaps it is bred into our Asian DNA), and I never regret the stuff I do capture of my son, with my parents, with my wife, or even with his friends doing every day things.  With video, I’m capturing small details and nuances as he’s growing up, and it is so easy.  You whip out the iPhone. You press a button.  And away you go.

*caveat: you have to jailbreak your phone to use Qik —  I don’t know how long its coming to the apps store soon. 

2. The earbuds:  I didn’t realize this at the time, but the earbuds that come with the iPhone not only function as a receiving device for your phone (duh), or, are clickable so that you can stop music at any time(double duh), but are ALSO clickable so that you can *advance* a song, or *go back* a song.  By double-clicking the little doo-hicky, you can advance, and by triple-clicking, you go back.  What’s amazing, is that by incorporating these actions into this small device that’s on the line to your ears, it makes the actual device small.  Its not this giant thumb-sized thing you have to look at with three separate buttons.  Its this sleek little thing that you can just click without looking at it.  When you’re walking around on the subway, holding a huge bag of medical stuff in a heavy jacket, its nice to just click the damn thing rather than fumbling around for a control. 

3. a tethering device:  easily the most sublime thing about my experience that I know is not quite unique to the iPhone — and yet, in Canada, there are only a few devices that work with the 3G network.  Anyway, a few weeks ago, I did jailbreak my iPhone with the aim to use a service called PDA Net, which is a piece of software available for the Treo as well, although for the iPhone its free.  I got it working with minimum fuss, so let me reassure my American / AT&T using friends: if / when your data plan supports using your iPhone as a tethering device so that you can use it as a wireless modem for your laptop to surf the web … it is almost magical.  The downside is that it drains the iPhone’s battery, which is to be expected.  But as my laptop has a negigible battery I’m usually next to a power socket anyway.   Bottom line: setting it up AND using it is a breeze.  You literally just press a button and you’re off to the races.  I get about 3Mbps down and 300kbps up, which is imminently usable for light browsing, video watching, and blogging.  I’m so happy Rogers (the local wireless company that I have the iPhone with) allows tethering as part of their data plan.  Quite frankly I was having a hard time using 6 gigs anyway, and it allows — as you can imagine — to surf anywhere you get a 3G connection, freeing you from Wi-Fi nodess.

BONUS: Yes, Box.net got some coverage about cloud access via the iPhone, but what’s also cool is using dropbox via your iPhone.  Its now open to the public, and they’ve done a great job creating an optimized iPhone interface via the web.  You can browse all your files, and in a pinch, download them for viewing, watching, or listening.  Smooth.

Now, two of the three things require you to jailbreak your iPhone.  Boo.  Happily this is a pretty painless procedure.  Also, they’re not specifically unique to the iPhone as well.  Fine.  But on the iPhone I am happy to report that they’re easy to set up, and otherwise transformative in the way that you use this device, and the way you interact with new media … and well, life.

Rather, could Android software development suffer because it won’t be able to attract the same number of developers — who are now looking to make boatloads of cash via the iPhone apps store?

Correct me if I’m wrong folks, and Android may surprise us yet,but there doesn’t seem to the same kind of simple application where you click, choose, and download — which is tied into a singular payment scheme.  True, one would think that this would natively exist with software for cell-phone companies that allow you to put everything onto a single bill (I think our Japanese friends have already sorted this one out) but this level of sophistication is something that I will certainly be watching for with Android’s release.

Why?  Well, I’m sure that many developers are looking to contribute to the growing library of Android applications out the goodness of their own heart, I’m sure many of them are also writing with dollar signs in their eyes … particularly with the rash of articles written recently about how profitable it can be writing popular iPhone apps.

Will Apple and the iPhone be poaching the best and brightest for the lure of cold hard cash?  Hard to say at this point — particularly as I’m sure people program and dev for a great many reasons.  

But with application development (for the iPhone, for Facebook) clearly being much more than a basement hobby, and something so profitable that it can power a real business, it seems reasonable to think that from the developer side at least, free vs. fee is, going to be, for some, a bit of a no-brainer.

On the flip-side, of course, is the mind-set of the user of the respective systems.  Will iPhone users, because of things like iTunes, be conditioned to paying for software?  And will Android users, being used to open-source ethos (whether they call it that or not), be used to software that is free?

I guess we’ll have to wait until 10:30EST today (and likely much later) to find out.

Yesterday, for example, I found myself on my couch surfing on my iPhone (via Safari) while watching TV, while my computer was sitting about 5 feet away from me.  I could have gotten up to use my computer, but the problem is that its facing away from the TV.

Yes, aside from the thought “jeebus, WHEN did you get so colossal lazy?”, the other thought that also popped into my mind was that the browser in the iPhone was perfectly acceptable for recreational surfing.  And it allowed me to surf while doing all kinds of things, including watching TV, without hauling out my laptop *and* a TV tray *and* its electric plug.

(having a baby meant getting rid of that TV tray, as its an object with a high center of gravity, and a high risk of damaging small fleshy things, which would put me at a higher risk of getting personally damaged by my wife)

So, its no surprise when I heard that the iPhone, as a means browse the internet, has actually *doubled* its share of the browsing pie. This isn’t merely mobile browsing, but *all* browsing.  Now, the actual numbers are a lot more humble than what I thought, at about 0.3%, but given the kind of positive experiences I’ve been having I’m not at all surprised.

I do wonder if and when Apple grants people the ability to use the iPhone as a tethering device for laptops, how it might change the uptake for the iPhone as a browsing experience.  Not that its currently being allowed in the States, but apparently, in just another month its coming to Canada. Tell you what: when it does come, I’ll try it and let you know. ;)

Even though I’m a couple months late to the party, here are my thoughts

1. its a magnificent piece of technology. The iPhone has its faults (see below), but its a great piece of hardware.  Silky smooth crystal touch screen.  A nice solid un-plasticky kind of weight.  A user-interface that is slick, easy to read, and otherwise gorgeous.  It has something almost super-naturally tactile about it (given the whole touch-screen thing, that’s the point, I suppose) that makes you want to touch it and hold it all the time.

2. typing is atrocious. In spite of how awesome the UI is, the fact that it is almost 100% touch screen necessitates that the keyboard is also part of the touch screen.  This means, unlike most data phones, there are no keys to provide touch-feed back when you’re typing.  As someone who’s migrated from a Blackberry, this makes typing an atrociously frustrating chore, and although, I admit, I’ve only had it for a couple days, there is just no way I’ll be composing lengthy emails, or blogging for that matter, via iPhone.  Perhaps my fingers are fat and pudgy, but even so, I find myself making far too many unintended keystrokes, even after about 10-15 hours of usage, and I just don’t see it improving.

3. iPhone “apps” are awesome. The iPhone apps store is one slick piece of work.  You browse apps.  You find apps.  You download them directly to your iPhone.  And you have a new app.  I am not planning to jailbreak the phone, and yet, there’s still a ton of stuff available.  Some of it is crap.  Some of it is surprisingly good.  Like, for example, “Epocrates”, which is a program that is popular amongst medical students and physicians, originally developed for the Palm Pilot.  There’s a free iPhone version which is just as good as I remember it (allows you to search a comprehensive drug database, cross reference for adverse events), but given the iPhone’s excellent graphics, also has a “pill display” portion, where you can actually see what pills look like.  This is an application that could have easily sold for bongo bucks — but its free.

4. 3G isn’t as fast as I thought it’d be. Caveat — I live in Toronto, and the 3G coverage is pretty excellent.  I understand that in the states, or, other areas in Canada, the coverage can be quite spotty.  Having said that, sure, the 3G network is meant to be between three and five times as fast as the EDGE network.  But, it doesn’t really feel that fast.  Why is that? Personally, I think its because unlike with the Blackberry I was previously using, which was an EDGE network phone, I was probably browsing mobile-optimized web pages.  With the iPhone 3G, I am browsing web pages — which, perhaps, are three times as heavy, in terms of data size.  Its able to stream video, however, which *is* something to see.

5. battery life sort of sucks. Coupled with the fact that there is no easy way (read: impossible) to change batteries, and the fact that most people will want to use the iPhone as a cool doo-hicky — and not merely a phone — you’ll perhaps find that the length of time your batter lasts is between 3 – 5 hours.  Now, actually, compared to laptop batteries, this isn’t that bad (in my experience), but the problem, as I stated, is that you can’t change the batteries, and furthermore, for most people, they’ll also need the iPhone for one other thing: to make calls.  Yesterday, I nearly ran out of batteries before the end of the day, and it wouldn’t have mattered so much except that I had to make a few unexpected emergency calls.  I was sweating bullets, silently praying that I wouldn’t run out of juice while I was making those calls.

6. The camera is crippled. Displaying photos is nice.  Taking photos, however, sucks.  There’s no zoom.  There’s no flash.  And it suffers mightily from a longish exposure time, requiring your hands to be pretty still to avoid a blur on the photo.  Especially at night.  Having no zoom also sucks, and I didn’t realize how sucky this was until I actually needed it (case in point: I wanted to take a photo of an insect the other day — don’t ask — and I had to get so close to it that I was within eating distance)

While there are a ton of things that could be better (I don’t even want to think about how fragile it is), there’s one unmistakeable thing about the iPhone.  It is an amazingly unique piece of hardware that does some things so well that it makes you forget (most times) about the others.

Well, I hope their public relations folk are well rested, because they may need to use their spinning techniques on the tech-loving public once more.

Why, you may ask?

Well, as pointed out by an astute Rogers customer, John Forsythe, Rogers is actively hi-jacking unused domain names, as a “clever” means of scooping up type-in traffic for monetization purposes. Specifically, they’re re-directing unused domain names to their own pages, with Yahoo advertising on the top.

Mr. Forsythe blythely points out that this even extends to subdomains that don’t exist on real domains that do. For example, there’s the ironic example of the non-existant subdomain of Google (example.google.com) which redirects to a page with Yahoo advertising.

Yes — wtf indeed.

Even if this doesn’t raise your ire, if you own a blog or website of any kind, you can see how it might, in fact, cause that rising sensation of bile in your throat, because Rogers (in Canada, anyway) is monetizing subdomain traffic from *YOUR* domain as well.

As John recalls, this isn’t the first time this kind of type-squatting chicanery has ever taken place; VeriSign had tried something like this in 2003, and as a result had a huge bulge in its traffic numbers, with its own site VeriSign.com becoming the 20th most visited (and then reaching the 10 ten) site on the Internets. Yes, the numbers were provided by Alexa, but it still gives some scope of the kind of traffic bumpage these kind of shennanigans can provide.

Eventually VeriSign and ICANN settled things, but it carries on for quite a few cable companies in the States; Rogers, I believe is the first Canadian one to adopt these kinds of practices.

This issue is a hotly contested one, and having exceeded the limits of what I actually know about the topic (extremely minute) in the first paragraph, I’ll kick it back to an interesting discussion at BroadBand Reports.

Post Script: In spite of the unashamedly attention-grabbing headline, unlike the iPhone which has mass commercial appeal, and in spite of the fact there are real issues around the concept of ‘neutrality’, I think its doubtful that this topic will ever raise enough ire to get to the mainstream press.

// via: reddit

Most of it being negative, thanks to Rogers’ bald-faced, shamelessly blatant attempt at profiteering, that is, as one glance at their voice and data plans suggest.

I have nothing further to add, actually, other than to say that at times like this, I begin to wish and hope with all my might that companies that happily provide so little and ask for so much, get their delicious comeuppance.

Not just the usual “demand is soft, interest is down, Rogers stock takes a brief dip and everyone moves on”.

No, I mean some sort of catastrophic, humiliating, trip on that step you didn’t see in front of a world-wide audiene, public pie-in-your face, step in a cow-pattie at your wedding kind of comeuppance.

I mean, I don’t think it will actually happen come July 11th, but hey — a man can only hope.

{although some more recent news suggests that perhaps Apple might snub Rogers after all}