iPhone4idiots

Back from vacation! Happy New Year to everyone. I never thought eBooks would be popular. Honestly, the iPhone and iPod screens are just too small to appeal to the masses. Worse yet, the Amazon Kindle doesn’t use the same file type as the Sony Reader (or Apple iPad). Thus, you would be converting files sometimes or restricted to getting all your eBooks from one specific store. Maybe its just because I have friends that prefer to drink, watch movies or play games instead. Who knows. However, with the iPad now on the scene I may have to rethink this a bit. My grandmother (who reads like three books per week) said she’d never read off of one. “What could possibly be the advantage of that?” Well, I can think of at least two. First, you don’t spend your time going to the library or bookstore to find new material. Just browse online. But why would my granny want to save time? What about material you don’t want others to know what you are reading. Whether its my porn, her guilty romance novel or some guy reading Cosmo or O. People have a much more difficult time seeing what you are reading on an iPad (or Kindle). Some numbers – eBook sales accounted for just 1.5% of total US book sales in 2009. In the first quarter of 2010 it was 5%! Wow, big jump and the iPad is just starting to hit the market. While obviously the growth rate can’t be maintained is there any doubt eBooks will account for over 10% within a year or two? The real question is whether or not it can take as much market share online as music has done. So what do you think? Are eBooks catching on and if so how come no one requests any?

I haven’t written much about Apple TV. Frankly I own the original and hardly ever use it. I want to stream all the videos on my Mac/PC (avi, mkv, flv, rmvb) to my Apple TV not just mp4. Also, I don’t have the patience to sync first. Well now you can do this with the 2nd generation Apple TV. There are two hacks (AirFlick and AirPlayer) that allow you to do this. You don’t even have to jailbreak your Apple TV (although that would be simple to do as well). This almost makes me want to buy one today! I mean its only $100. The selection of shows is terrible, but if you can stream any file type from your computer then you pretty much can watch anything within a few hours after it airs. Hmmmm, Santa are you listening? However, there still is the problem of live sports. It’s really hard to avoid seeing or being told the scores of big games. Also, there is no 1080p or iOS integration. I guess its just a question of how important is saving $50 per month (actually my Comcast bill is closer to $100 with HBO, Sports Package and HD DVR receivers) and how big a sports fan you are. What do you think??

PS – Happy Holidays! We are taking a few days off like most people. Will catch up on requests right after the New Year. Hope you get everything you want. Now its time to go watch my favorite Christmas movie, Bad Santa

I was hoping to get a nice Christmas gift in an untethered jailbreak for my iPhone 4 on 4.2.1 (I’m still on 4.1 and want to add Find My iPhone for kids and wife). Recall, redsn0w provides an untethered jailbreak for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 2nd generation only. Many (especially those with iPhone 4’s) are waiting with 4.1 until there is an untethered jailbreak or stuck on 4.2.1 with a tethered jailbreak or no jailbreak. Despite all their hard work, the Dev Team has tweeted they will miss this deadline. However, they are very close and look for new jailbreak shortly after the new year. They have asked for beta testers this weekend to try a backup version of redsn0w. This is only a Mac version and you have to be on 4.2b3. In other words let the professionals do this and wait for the general release. It won’t be long and a new unlock will follow not too long after!

Word Lens, Quest Visual, is just plain awesome! If you haven’t seen this app yet, check out the one minute video here. The app instantly translates printed words from Spanish to English or English to Spanish. All you do is use your iPhone camera to focus on the words and you don’t even need an internet connection. Now this only works for printed words not handwriting or cursive. While the translation isn’t 100% correct it’s good enough for you to understand. While the app is free you have to make a $4.99 in app purchase to get the conversion to display either way. Thus, its $10 if you want both the Engish to Spanish and Spanish to English versions. Reviews have been mixed with most complaining that they thought it was free and were upset they had to pay $4.99 to get the translations to work. I haven’t tried it yet, but early reviews show it does a good enough job. I can see this coming in handy. I remember going to Spain thinking I took two years of Spanish at Vanderbilt University so I should be able to get around. Sadly, pescado (the word I learned for fish) didn’t appear on any of the menus. Really could have used this app back then. Not to mention a street sign here or there. I think the five dollars would have been a wise purchase before we left. The developers are planning to add additional languages soon so you might want to check before your next trip abroad. How much longer before you talk into your iPhone in English and it translates and emits the phrase in Spanish?

So what firmware is on your iPhone or iPod Touch?? I’m sticking with 4.1 on my iPhone 4 because I don’t what to lose my jailbreak by upgrading to 4.2.1. About the only thing I would like on 4.2 is Find My iPhone. The 4.2 jailbreak will be out very soon (I’m hoping its an X-mas gift), but whenever it’s certianly real soon. I would think anyone not jailbroken would have updated to 4.2 by now, but then again a lot of you might be like my sister in-law. She hardly ever connects to her computer so she was still on 3.1.3. My iPhone 3G was still on 3.1.2 for a long time as I was afraid the hardware couldn’t handle 4.0 (I finally updated a few months ago since Apple claims to have addressed this issue with 4.1 – mine seems fine). So my new poll question is simple. What is your iPhone or iPod Touch’s current firmware version. Don’t know? Just tap Settings – General – About and see what’s listed as the Version. This is your iDevices operating system and something you should pay a little attention to. I actually have a PC still running Windows 98 as I find it the safest and least likely to get spyware and viruses since it has fewer options. The poll is in the right sidebar.

Firemint’s Real Racing 2, $9.99, is the follow up to the great app of the same name. Real Racing was arguably the best racing game on the iOS platform and won the Apple Design Award in 2009. The second version includes 30 cars, 16 tracks and 15 racing locations. However, the big news is online multiplayer (for upto 16 connections)! This is what I’ve been waiting for on numerous games. As I’ve stated over and over again, Apple will be a major player in the gaming industry. Online iOS gaming is a big step. If it’s what I hope, I be driving circles around players from across the world. In addition to online multiplayer the game includes career mode, time trials, head to head races and championships. Career mode promises over ten hours of gameplay. Winning races allows you to purchase new and better cars. This is available now for your iPhone and iPod Touch. An iPad version is coming sometime later. I know how I’ll be spending my workday today and tomorrow. Look for updates in the comments. I really hope the online multiplayer experience is smooth.

So there was no school yesterday due to snow (yes Nashville schools close for a quarter inch of snow). While the boys played with friends I sat around chatting with a couple of moms while being treated to cocktails! Yes, that beats going out in the cold and sledding. I’ve accepted my advanced years. One subject came up while I pulled out my iPhone to check Twitter – iPhone etiquette. My wonderful hostess felt this was rude. It made her feel like I wasn’t interested in her or what she had to say. The more I thought about this the more I realized how absurd this was and that iPhone etiquette needed to change. Continue Reading…

So if you love tech/social media like me you probably realized Microsoft died a long time ago. Death to the Darth Vader of tech. The company that was easy to love to hate. Sure they are still a player and Windows isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, but about the only product they have with growth potential is X-Box. The three companies I see battling to be the dominate player are Apple, Google and Facebook. While I love all three in many ways there are also things I can’t stand which got me thinking – which do I consider more evil? Continue Reading…

Let’s try something different since I have bloggers block. I try to make 2 posts per week and was going to add the crappy app review for Amateur Surgeon you see below when I remembered this is wordpress. Thus, it’s a blog I can throw my stream of consciousness thoughts against the wall on. I’ve got some quick thoughts and would like to hear some comments to help my writers block. One, fire Jeff Fisher. Man the Titans are bad and its his fault. So disapointing. Two, people paying $300 to convert their iPhone 4’s from white to black are crazy. Even if you have the money I’m like really. I bet half of them keep their white iPhones in cases or skins after the conversion! Three, remember those rumors about iPhone coming to Verizon in Q1? Haven’t heard much about that lately. The never ending tease. Four, Google is releasing another smartphone – The Nexus S. Didn’t they learn from the Nexus One to let someone else do the hardware for them? Five, the Microsoft X-Box Kinect is selling faster than the iPad its first month (2.5 million sold at $200 each). It’s destroying the Playstation Move (which only has 8 games??) and I can currently only find it to buy on Ebay. Maybe as opposed to moms beating other moms over Cabbage Patch Dolls this year teens will stab each other over Kinects? We can only hope for the YouTube videos. Happy Holidays!

Amateur Surgeon 2, Turner Broadcasting System $0.99, is a fun little game where you perform some crazy operations. Examples include pulling a rabbit out of a clown’s colon, giving a pig thumbs or fighting a squid lodged in a sea captain’s stomach. The operations are performed with tools like a pizza cutter, dustbuster, tongs and lighter. Using any of the “surgical” tools requires nothing more that tapping or swiping and almost no skill. Nevertheless, its pretty fun and you have to move quickly or your patient will die. While I found this game fun for about 24 hours I doubt I’ll play it again.