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.

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.

Photoswap is a highly addictive iphone photo swaping service… I took a picture of my laptop with the below text on the screen (as each picture was received):

Photos Received:
Blurry picture of carpet
Picture of a half painted bird ornament?
Concrete floor
Bed with random crap all over it
A bathtub that really needs a bath
Hardwood floor (what is with all the floors today?)
Rain patterned rain boots
Yummy home made cookies!
Lots of little magnets stacked together/ like a battery?
—Reply image with text letting me know what the above was
—Duplicate reply image!?!
Blurry picture of a picture of a guy in front of a computer?
Stack of christmas treats
Blurry kitchen table with a fruit tray
Some bored looking dude in a pink floyd shirt
Set of tools
Pair of boots

I fail to see how any of the above was objectionable…
Maybe the Pink Floyd guy didn’t like being called bored looking?!? What do you think? (note, I never got to send a picture of the text with “pair of boots”)

BTW This is what it looks like when you get a temporary ban:

I got this case because I often take pictures of computer screens and notes with my iPhone and they are always blury… This case fixes it with a slideable “macro”lens… I’m not crazy about the hard plastic mixed with hard rubber on the case.. I wish they made the whole thing hard rubber. Since this seems to be the only case that has a lens like this right now it’s hard not to give it a lot of stars . I put with and without lens pictures below. They were taken from roughly the same distance away (the lens slightly magnifies so it seems closer). As you can see, what used to be washed out is now very readable. The case is not cheap, but it is worth it for me .

Vendor Link:http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/clarifi

As of this blog entry there are two ssh clients in the US AppStore:

pTerm $4.99 (site link) (app store link):

• based on putty code
• author states that 1.0 has serious bugs, 1.1 which should fix the bugs still waiting for approval
• ssh/telnet/raw tcp support
• pinch to zoom terminal
• 80×24 fix terminal size
• supports cntl sequences, missing arrows/tab
• xterm/vt100 terminal support
• Future Plans: port-forward if apple permits, scroll, resizeable terminal, more config options

TouchTerm $2.99 (site link) (app store link):

• vt100 terminal support
• supports scrollback, custom colors
• command history

One more SSH client is still waiting for approval (site link):

• If rumors are to be believed it sounds like it is going to be fairly extensive client
• Price expected to be $4.99
• Resizable windows
• Will have a built-in ssh server and crap to enable graphical input

If you have a jailbroken phone, install OpenSSH and MobileTerminal for free

I’m an advid collector of cover songs, so I have lots of songs that share the same titles. The iPhone has a built in app that lets you list songs by song names… it looks like this:

Apple recently came out with a remote app that lets you control your itunes via your iphone. The SongList is includes the Artist!

Oh thats not all! the Remote App has SEARCH!

Some guy named Tom has some other wish list items.

So, yea… I jailbroke my 3G iPhone (blog.iphone-dev.org/post/42858313/thanks-for-waiting)…

I jailbreak the phone and start setting up bind, wifi share, and all sorts of other stuff… I then discover that when wifi is up, it doesn’t bring up 3G even if the wifi has no default route… BASTARDS!

oh and the way they deal with diskspace is annoying… had to extract named and crap out of the .deb…

Bah humbug, so close… yet so far away…