The Digital Consultant

Thanks to my main man Paul I had the opportunity to contribute to the local launch of iTunes U along with a few others. (see here for my paltry contributions) As a "reward" Apple loaned out a MacBook Pro to contributors for about a month and a bit (so generous!) I saw this as pretty ridiculous at the time and wasn't going to bother given we had already created the content (I am already toting a MacBook with Snow Leopard and 2GB of RAM) But I do regular full image backups (love my SuperDuper) so in the end thought what the heck, take it for a spin.
It didn't take long to get the beast set up and I was immediately glad I did. Quicker processor and twice the RAM made it super snappy and I had forgotten how much I liked the backlit keyboard of my old aluminium PowerBook. But it wasn't all spped and nostalgia. The SD/SDHC card reader was probably what I liked the most. I have a Panasonic HDC-SD5 which gets a lot of use. I'm addicted to browsing clips on the card for selective importing (I get stabbing head pains just thinking about tapes now) and the "built-in-ness" made it much quicker than my USB card reader.
I'm due for a new machine in a few months. It will definitely be a MacBook Pro (13 inch). I'm eyeing off one of those 128GB SSD's to slot in as well to see if they live up to the hype.
Rank has some priveleges.

I am generally more than satisfied with the iPhone 3GS. But there are a few things that can be annoying. Like that little bit of grit in your shoe.
The browsing experience on the iPhone/iPod Touch is the best you can get for a handheld device but the more closed nature of the system presents limitations. Some things on my list are...

1. Too many menus to go through just to turn wi-fi on and off
2. Even worse for bluetooth!
3. Can't "quick check" my calendar without having to enter my security code (can't it just appear on the splash page please!)
4. Mail application could do oh so much more (but it does GET the mail!)
5. Delicious bookmarking!! (the bookmarklet isn't working for me. Yet.)

But sometimes you have to live with these things. It's a tradeoff. (Leo Laporte has likened it to Mussolini's Italy) A colleague has jailbroken his phone and cited greater flexibility as a major upside. I smell a holiday job coming on! I don't want to try it while I'm hip deep in work.
"Fly by the seat of the pants days" where have you gone?

This post is way overdue and will have lost a bit of its lustre considering the events to follow in the next week or so. But what the heck, it's about me. I have been in the market for a new smartphone for a while now but decided to get serious a month or two ago. I've been using an iPod touch for a while now and being a MacBook owner I was hearing a lot of "So are you getting the iPhone soon?" But with technology (and me?) it's never quite that simple. I had been pretty happy with my Treo 650 apart from its lack of WiFi so I started to build a shortlist of features;

• 802.11g
• 3G
• expandable memory (preferred)
• hardware keyboard (preferred)
• decent camera that can capture video
• decent audio capture
• synchronise with my MacBook

If you know anything about the iPhone you can start to see the divergence. So I listed the things where the iPhone fell short for me;

• No Copy/Cut/Paste (massive for me as I use the "smart" more than the "phone")
• Ordinary camera with no video
• No expandable memory (I commute for almost 90 minutes a day so I need to store some stuff)
• and like everyone has got one? Ugh!

BUT

• it's a a super nice iPod (apart from the storage limits)
• the Safari browser is the best mobile experience you can get at the minute
• the user interface is as smooth as
• the iTunes Application Store is very compelling

You know what finally flipped me was the price. I don't use the phone that much. I hammer the productivity, documents, audio and video capture stuff pretty hard. (It's why the keyboard is an issue.) I'm on a tiny plan, no data, and I rarely go over. I don't want a larger plan that I know I won't use. You can sort of get the iPhone outright but you do so by getting a pre-paid then paying for it to be unlocked but it works out expensive.
Now when the 3.0 version comes out with cut/copy/paste that could be a whole different story.
This isn't just about the iPhone however. The Nokia E63 and E71 caught my eye. Great looking handsets and ticked all the boxes and the prices were definitely right. No touch screen though which I thought may take some getting used to. The Blackberry Bold met all my requirements on the surface as well until I was joining one to the the network at work and found the web proxy cannot be defined by the user. Deal breaker.
So I settled on the Treo Pro. Nice looking device running Windows Mobile 6.1. It couldn't be that bad. Half the world was using it. Right?

Maybe 3.0