Curious's Journal

Moving from the iphone to HTC EVO.

First, why I’m moving away from iphone:

Carrier:

• AT&T Network not so good
• AT&T expensive (I can get on family sprint plan or discount Verizon plan MUCH cheaper)

iPhone’s notification system:

• When a notification comes in, it gives you a pop-up with two options: open the application that relates to the pop-up or close it.
• You have to deal with every notification instantly, you can’t pull down your notifications later like Palm/Android.
• If you have multiple notifications, they simply layer in an nonuseful way
• Hopefully Rich Dellinger will be able to fix it.
• http://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/09/inventor-of-webos-banner-notification-system-returns-to-apple/

Range of utility applications:

• The range of things applications are permitted to do on the iphone are limited greatly by the SDK and the rules developers must follow.
• For example, applications may not utilize third party libraries within their development nor use services like admob.

Apple Censorship:

• To me, it’s not a big deal that Apple censors porn apps.
• However, It is a big deal that apple censors apps with a message it disagrees with.
• For example, it blocked an app because it mentioned jailbreaking:
• http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/rejected_by_apple/
• Some of the more popular cases of censorship can be found here:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store#Censorship

Apple rejections/pulls:

• Apple can decide after it already approved an application to remove it from the store.
• http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/20/found-footage-apple-pulls-islam-muhammad-app/
• Apple rejects things because it competes, or they don’t like the UI
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Voice#Rejection_from_iPhone_App_Store

Why I’m getting an HTC EVO:

• Widgets
• Ability to enable/disable services easily(Note: with a jailbroken phone, you can use sbsettings for this)
• Lots of utility apps
• Google Voice integration
• Integrated sync with google stuff
• Free turn-by-turn navigation
• much better notification system
• Huge screen (4.3″ vs 3.5″)
• A chance to try out another Smartphone OS
• Google explicitly provides an easy way to run “unapproved apps”
• Steve Jobs said that if I want porn, I should get an android
• http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-porn/

What I’m giving up by going Evo vs iPhone 4:

• Better low light camera (has backlit sensor)
• Better games and some other apps
• Better battery life

About Video Chat:

• One of the heavily touted fathers of the new iphone is Facetime Video chat, so I guess I aught say some words about that.
• Apple’s Facetime video chat is currently wifi and only between iphones.
• Most of my wife’s family is moving to EVOs and my family uses android phones so Facetime offers me almost benefits whatsoever.
• Finally, they have stated that they will make Facetime an open standard, which means that if it takes off, there will likely be an android app for it.

Steve Jobs will be giving the Keynote on Monday… here are my predictions:

75% or higher certainty

• Demo new iPhone (name possibly iPhone HD) Release ~end of July
• iPhone will have amazing battery life, front/rear cameras, flash on back
• 4.0 for iphone will be released at or near keynote
• 4.0 iPad beta will be released Steve will say that they will try to keep them at the same release going forward
• Joke about iPhone leak

50% or higher certainty

• Some sort of update on XServers and/or MacPros (it has been over a year and a quarter since these things have been updated)
• New LCDs (it’s been over three and a quarter years since apple has come out with any LCDs except for the 24″ that came out at the end of 2008, and the 24″ is also the only display port LCD apple has released thus far)

25% or less certainty (75% apple will announce these in September)

• Revamped MacTV based on iPhoneOS, designed to be controlled by iPad/iPhone/iPodTouch or from basic remote
• iPod Touch will have a wider form factor (possibly like iphone’s)
• formfactor will allow for extra battery, which will give it more then iPad’s 10hour of video life
• will also have a much larger storage option (next year they may phase out ipod classic)

Note: My predictions have been way off in the past, so I do not recommend gambling on these predictions.

Just found out that this week is World Homeopathy Awareness Week

I’d like to recommend a couple of educational videos:
James Randi explains Homeopathy:

What’s the harm?

Santa got me William P. Young’s “The Shack” for Christmas.

Short description: It’s about a guy who ends up talking to the personification of God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. I’m about 8 chapters in, and the book is really starting to drag. They talk about a lot of things that I don’t really care about. If you are interested in William’s view of the trinity or his theology, you may find this interesting. However, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make it through this book.  I will try though.

Also, the irony that “Santa” got me this book is not lost on me.

Found here: http://www.opera.com/browser/next/

Pros:

• The password save bar (seen above) offers an option to save across site or just the specific page.
• Full screen support!!! (I wish firefox and/or chrome would get this.)
• Feels fast (not noticeably faster then chrome though)
• Tab mouse-over thumbnails seem nift

Cons:

• No ability to reopen closed tab (firefox/chrome support this)
• Google Wave doesn’t work well – the scrollbar doesn’t work (firefox/chrome work fine)
• Opera doesn’t support greasemonkey scripts
• Extension support seems to be limited to widgets and basic user.js support

Todo:

• Test widgets
• Test Opera Unite

So, fios died…. To get internet I setup tethering on my iphone… my ssh socks proxy solution apparently wasn’t good enough, so I installed blacksn0w and and a tether file thingy.. didn’t work so I tried a network settings reset… thats when the phone locked on the apple. I put the phone into recovery mode, but Apple won’t let you restore the phone with out internet access?!?! WTF apple? So, here I am at midnight outside a McD restoring my phone so I’ll have my alarm clock and folks in the SOC can reach me if need be!

Thank goodness for McD, and go to hell internet requirement for iphone recovery!

Welp, I’m off to get a snack so I don’t feel too guilty for stealing internet.

I’ve been looking for a good ebook reader that would let me take notes, annotate, and highlight. A capacitive screen tablet seems like it should do just the thing. The problem with the tablet are as followed:

• iBook does not appear to have any of the necessary functionality
• review sites indicate that the rounded back make it unsuitable for typing on a flat surface
• There is an apparent lack of rotation lock, meaning that if your reading laying down on your side the words will run perpendicular to your eyes.
• And, it’s not e-ink

Now, you may be saying, “Hey! Amazon or Barnes and Noble could add some of this functionality to their iPad apps!”. Yea, but because of Apple’s control over the app store their competitive ebook readers may never make it to the iPad. Welcome to the walled garden. I will keep an eye on this though. Once it is jailbroken, apps like sbsettings and non-approved apps can be added to the iPad. I may become more interested in it then.

Here is a screenshot of SBSettings app for jailbroken iphones. Notice the rotation on/off add on that enables/disables auto screen rotation.

Free jailbreak app, here: blackra1n.com/

You literally plug in your iphone,  run the application,  click on a button (the only button the app has), wait for aproximately 3min, and your iphone is jailbroken. Unlock and “Hacktivation” coming soon.

FYI: if you paid ANY money for jailbreak you paid someone who stole the work from others that was given away free.

Tethering. Only used it for emergencies or as a backup when a link goes down wherever I’m at. Hopefully they figure out how to do it in 3.1 even without a jailbreak.

Currently have an iPhone 3GS running 3.0. It is running 3.0 because there is currently not a jailbreak for 3.1 on 3GS. I’m seriously thinking about  I really want Snapture via AppStore and it’s only $1.99 there, but requires 3.1. More apps are destined to be 3.1 only due to features of the API.

Why I’m still jailbroken:

• Disable shutter sound (yes, turning off ringer, turns off sounds. But, I keep forgetting to turn it back on) Snapture, a 3.1 apps supposedly eliminates this issue though.
• Ability to quickly toggle Wifi/3G/etc
• Being able to broadcast video live from iPhone (doubt I’ll ever use this feature, but I’d love to have it)
• Being able to ssh/scp to/from iphone
• Being able to theme the iPhone

The other issue is that if I ever need to restore the phone, Apple only permits restores of 3.1.

F’ it. Here I go.