Riding the iPhone Rollercoaster

Sitting in a starbucks with itunes ads all over the place I am reminded of the last apple event announcing the online store coming to the iPhone & iPod touch. Theoretically I could buy that Marvin Gaye song I'm listening to, but one thing stands in my way ... Apple.

They released the update with the music store for the iPhone but I'm not upgrading. Why? Well I'm on another turn of this rollorcoaster ride of being an iPhone owner.

The anticipation of this ride was the best part. We heard rumors for months before hand stocked with patent filings, fake ads on youtube, and the leaked announcement on diggnation.

Then there was the line to get on this ride, people were lifecasting, the news was all over it, and people were calling it the launch of the century.

Of course we early adopters will never forget the $200 price drop & $100 credit.

The next high I got was when I found my way through jailbreak and started installing third party apps. I could now play games, keep track of my checking, and draw on my iPhone.

Now apple has come out with a new update that will kill all those apps if I install it. So I like so many iPhone owners are holding out on the install. Who is the biggest loser in this situation? I say it is apple. Now they won't have their music store on these phones for impulse buys and they also have a core group of users making awsome apps that make this phone more appealing to potential buyers. Sure people like the photo capabilities and coverflow but I get more ohhs and ahhs with ttr (iPhone Guitar Hero) and sketch (high tech etch-a-sketch).

I would like to think someone at apple will read this and have an epiphany but I'm thinking I have a better chance of mutating into a superhero.

Apple's missing Buttons

Apple anounced a new line of iPods today and a update to the iPhone which adds the iTunes music store to this wonder gadget.

from: engadget

Apple did it to us once when they first announced the iPhone, they left out the youTube button only to announce it at a later time. Now they have announced that they will be adding the iTunes store to the iPhone, but there are still three spots left on the homepage. Will we be seeing a games button there soon? What else could they be plotting to add. It does look out of place, that new little button there on the bottom of the screen, a little lonely.

Will there be the addition of sanctioned third party apps in this void at the bottom of the screen? With the abundance of iPhone hacks out there that prove this can be done, will Apple give in? There is already a hack that allows multiple homepages on the iPhone and one that allows you to scroll this page so the possibilities are endless. It is doubtful that Apple will implement these hacks but they still have a little over three months till Christmas to entice those who haven't given in already.

Safari on Windows - a review

So today (or in fact yesterday because I finally am posting this at 1:11 am) Apple released a beta version of their web browser Safari. I took the bait because whenever I have looked at a site in Safari (on a mac) it rendered a web page completely different than Firefox, Opera, and IE. To be fair I have noticed differences in the way a page is rendered between Firefox on Windows and Firefox on Mac, I'm just hoping this isn't the case for the windows and mac versions of Safari. I'm tired of having to go through every single version of every browser to find a happy medium, it's either that or writing a different CSS file for every browser and having a javaScript or PHP function to select the correct one for the appropriate browser.

After using Safari for a day, well not quite a day because it was hard to use it exclusively, I have found some pros and cons.

The first pro is that it seemed to render faster, i.e. the Digg page that announced the product to digg's users and has over 8300 diggs and 1134 comments at the time of this writing (a recipe for a very big web page). It also has a very slick looking interface, my history carried over from firefox after install, and more real-estate for the web page.

My main con would be that Safari doesn't implement add-ons yet (I must have ad-block, greasemonkey, de.licio.us, and over a dozen other extensions in firefox). This could be coming in the future as Apple's webkit is going open source (the engine underlying Safari). I also was missing Firefox's "spell check this field" feature which I use regularly in forums, comments, twitters, blog posts, digg submissions, and anywhere else I am placing my words on the web.

So yes I'll use Safari, but as it stands it won't be for much more that debugging websites and trying to render large websites (by the way, digg when are you going to page out your comments?). As it stands that is how I use IE, unless I'm watching movies in Netflix's "Watch now" or MLB.tv which don't support Firefox yet (I'm running vista so don't correct me about MLB).

I'm wondering when we'll see the release of the firefox add-ons "open this page in Safari" and "Safari Tab" (Damn I shouldn't of said anything, I could have finally found my first Firefox add-on)

I can see why Apple is trying to make this move, they are trying to put yet another application on the desktops of the Widows iPod users (rumor has it that it will eventually be bundled w/ iTunes and quicktime) to help coerce then into buying a Apple computer once they become familiar with their products but why haven't they incorporated more into the browser. Right now it seems like Firefox lite, which is what Apple seems to do best, they seem to always take the minimalist approach which may hurt or help them in this market. Most of the users I know that have gave up IE on Widows only did so because Firefox gave them more thus leading IE to incorporate more to win back some users. The users I know that still use IE only do so because it is familiar and came with their system. So Safari's only chance in its current state is to appeal to the minimalist user who uses iTunes and the developers who will use webkit to develop what I hope to a long list of Add-ons to rival Firefox and make it a better browser, it still has a long way to go.