Monthly Archives: June 2010

The Quickie iPhone 4 Review


Got it in a day early (thanks, Apple!) and just had a bit of time to play with it. Here are the highlights:

Style

As nice as you’ve heard, although (as usual), absolutely a magnet for fingerprints. If you liked the current line of iMacs and MacBook Pros, this fits the same line style perfectly.

Activation

Smooth as can be. No fooling around was required at all–just plugged it into iTunes and it transferred over my old phone’s activation and software without a problem. Do be sure to back up your old iPhone first, if you’ve got one. Carolyn (who’s meant to be the recipient of my old iPhone as part of the Great Bickford Technology Pass-along) hasn’t activated hers yet as you need to upgrade to iTunes 9.2 first to get going and she hadn’t done that as quickly as her tech-obsessed husband has.

The Screen

Nice, but not earthshaking. Fonts do look better, but it’s still the same physical size, so don’t expect to be reading full-format web pages full of teeny, high-res type unless you have better vision than I do. It’s more of a qualitative difference than a game-changer.

Multitasking

Having Pandora running (at last!) while using other apps is a huge plus. Most other apps seem to use the multi-tasking model for quick app switching, but it causes some real problems as there’s not an obvious way to close an application (although I did discover that a double-press of the home button followed by a long press of an app icon in the new launcher that appears lets you do this). All last night, however, I was getting what sounded like text messages going off telling me that such-and-such an application was “going to sleep” to save my battery, even though I’d already switched to another application and assumed I’d closed it. I didn’t figure this particular trick out until well after a nigh-sleepless night.

The Camera

Here’s where most of my hopes lie in terms of improvement. The first iPhone 3G camera was a nightmare. The 3GS camera was barely usable for the most casual of pictures. My hope is that this one–being the camera I’m virtually guaranteed to actually have with me at all times–will be the one which manages to be about as good as an old basic point-and-shoot. Certainly the responsiveness is far improved–it actually takes shots immediately if there’s enough light–and the simple LED flash does a reasonable job of at least getting light on subjects. The resulting images range from “viewable but reasonably ghastly” to “looks decent”. If I can manage to keep most of my pictures in the second category, all those spur-of-the-moment casual shots of kids and events have a chance of making it into the scrapbook at last.

The Bottom Line

If you’ve already got a working 3GS iPhone and your wife’s phone hasn’t got a cracked screen, it would be hard to justify the extra $360 (with California tax!) that I had to shell out to get the newest and best. It’s an incremental upgrade to be sure. That said, I’d wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with an older iPhone, or for those wanting to know what the whole iPhone nuttiness is all about. The applications available for this platform (which also run on your iPad or iPod Touch) are nothing short of amazing in their variety and there are sure to be several you’d be lost without.

I May Be an Apple Zombie…

This feels way too familiar.

On the day of the iPhone 4 pre-order launch, the company I’m contracting at was half shut down as all the tech staff spent the morning trying to get through to Apple’s ordering system so they could drop hundreds of dollars on a phone with tiny incremental improvements over the one they already had.

And me? I was as guilty as anyone, tapping away on my new iPad attempting to order a new iPhone on launch day.  (Although I will point out in my pathetic defense that my purchase was to replace the iPhone 3G I’d spent hours in line waiting in line to buy two years ago, but which now has a cracked screen). And yes, I did manage to eventually get my order in–my moment of triumph replaced almost immediately by a feeling of shame as I realized I just may have a problem…

Darn you, Apple, and your lovely, lovely toys!

Fascinating Graph of the Day

This is fascinating

As always, I wonder about what data points might have been left off the graph, but it’s interesting to ponder at a minimum. Can any readers think of a purely domestic produced good or service that’s been rapidly dropping in price that counts in the other direction?

Coyote Blog also adds in the observation that the poor feel the trade effect even more than the rich, as the goods and services most consumed by the rich (e.g. That nice meal at Paolo’s) are not subject to trade competition the same way that clothing and household goods most consumed by the poor are.