Category Archives: Reality Distortion Field

Apple and Mac related stuff.

Reality Distortion Field

My First iPhone App

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Myself and some colleagues started going over the iPad and iPhone Application Development course. It’s a class taught over at Stanford University and available for free (as in beer) on iTunes U.

After two sessions, it was time to get my hands dirty. Today I completed my first assignment: An RPN Calculator.

Left to right: iPhone, Mac, Proud Developer.

Not much credit to me here, I was mostly following a tutorial (but unlike in the tutorial, I made the background gray).

Here’s a glorious screenshot:

I understand that if the App Store was an actual physical software store, all my readers would already be lined up to buy their copy. Well, the good news is that the App Store is not an actual store where you have to go get in line like a schmuck. The bad news is that this app is not going to be available for download at all. It’s really a piece of junk.

But I am already brewing (in my mind) what will become the app that will make me rich beyond anyone’s dreams. The brewing is not going well so if you have any ideas, please feel free to pitch in.

At some later date I may write a little bit about my impressions of Xcode, Objective C, Cocoa Touch and this whole iPhone app development thing.

Reality Distortion Field

Unlocked iPhone 4S: Great success!

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Response (Joe R.) 10/24/2011 09:11 PM
Thank you for your email, iPhones<sic> are locked and are not being unlocked.

Joe R
SWW Dept.

This is the heart-breaking response I received last week when I asked whether I can use a Telcel micro-SIM on my iPhone 4S when in Mexico.

It’s now even more evident that Sprint does not yet have it’s <deleted> together when it comes to these kind of details regarding their iPhone 4S.

I went to a Telcel store today. I patiently stood in line for half an hour. I gambled all of $150 pesos (about $11.50 USD in today’s rate) on a prepaid “Amigo” micro-SIM card. Popped it in and voilà! It works: I have my own local phone number.

So here it is: if you bought an early Sprint iPhone 4S, I can guarantee that at least for me:

  1. AT&T micro-SIM did not work.
  2. Telcel (Mexico) micro-SIM works like a charm.

This agrees with other reports I’ve read online. I’d love to hear about your experiences, as YMMV.

Reality Distortion Field

The road to iPhone 4S II

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…continued from The Road to iPhone 4S

October 13, 2011

T-1. I decide to call AT&T again. This time they are able to cancel my order. So why didn’t the last person cancel it? What changed? This further proves that when it comes to phone or cable companies, you can’t trust what you are told and just need to keep calling.

The representative does warn me: It will take 2 to 3 days for your contract to revert. Uh-oh.

Genius idea: since the phone is presumably unlocked, use my still valid AT&T SIM on it for 2-3 days until the contract reverts. Then start my phone activation and number transfer with Sprint.

October 14, 2011

I leave my house to work. Interestingly, my phone had no service. Common in the area. Later I realize that it was not just bad coverage, but it was dead. No service from AT&T. My genius idea goes down the drain. When I get to the office I try to log-in to AT&T:

I’m not about to cal. Two possibilities:

  1. AT&T’s guy canceled my account, not just my order. Potential problem: I could lose my number. Or…
  2. Sprint started my number transferred too early. Potential problem: My contract with AT&T still says I just renewed and they make me pay the full cancellation fee.

Then… I receive my iPhone 4S. It’s as beautiful as I had hoped. And my number is working! (which means it was #2). I test an AT&T SIM to see if it’s unlocked. Damn.

Reality Distortion Field

Launch-day Sprint iPhone 4S in NOT Unlocked

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Today I got my Sprint iPhone 4S. Of course I had to settle the unlocked-locked-unlocked Sprint debacle. I popped in a good AT&T micro-SIM card from a colleague.

Then I rebooted… I managed to make it into Settings > General > About > Carrier and briefly saw AT&T. Then my phone rebooted into the Activation Screen.

My Sprint iPhone 4S with an AT&T SIM card. The original Sprint SIM it came with next to it.

When I tried to activate I got the following disappointing message:

Only compatible SIM cards from a supported carrier may be used to activate iPhone. Please insert the SIM card that came with your iPhone or visit a supported carrier’s store to receive a replacement SIM card.

Your AT&T SIM card is not welcome here.

Did anyone have different luck?

Reality Distortion Field

The road to iPhone 4S

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Getting my hands on an iPhone 4S hasn’t been a smooth process. Here’s a rough summary of what I’ve had to go through so far to get my hands on some Sirious goodness (haha, get it?)

  • October 4, 2011: iPhone event. I want.
  • October 7, 2011: Preorders begin. I realize I’m not yet eligible for an upgrade so I will get it unlocked instead. Need to wait until November and then pay through my nose for it.
  • October 8, 2011: Brilliant idea from Erica Sadun (TUAW): AT&T wants me to pay $250 extra for an iPhone because I’m still under contract. But leaving AT&T would cost me $80 at this point. Makes no sense. Call AT&T, explain this slowly to two different representatives. The second one finally gets the math, gets me a $250 credit. I place my order. I should get it on launch day! Oh, and they will renew my contract for another two years.
  • October 11, 2011: My order does not show up in the system yet. It should within 24 hours. Something stinks… I had beans for lunch. And something is wrong here. I call AT&T: half an hour later I get disconnected. Call again. 2.5 hours later, mostly on hold, and after explaining the same thing to 4 people and two answering machines, someone can finally tell me what the problem is: I didn’t accept the Service Agreement by clicking on a link in an email I never receive. She re-sends it and I click it. She assures me my spot on the preorder queue will be respected. Four hours later a confirmation email arrives with a 28 day estimated shipping time. Depression sets in. At night, Macworld’s Jason Snell claims that the SIM slot on the Sprint iPhone 4S is unlocked!
  • October 12, 2011: Morning realization: I’m better off switching carriers: I get an unlocked iPhone 4S for when I travel and a significantly lower monthly payment (goodbye old AT&T family, hello new Sprint family). The phone call to Sprint takes about an hour but my phone is supposed to arrive on Friday or Saturday. The first thing I see after I hang up is a rebuttal to the Sprint SIM unlock story. Damn. Then I call AT&T to cancel my order. They claim it cannot be canceled, and blame Apple. What the?! Call American Express to instruct them to withhold all payments to AT&T. You don’t want to mess with Marcos: I withhold payments.
  • October 13, 2011: Sprint say my phone is shipping and due to delivery tomorrow!

To be continued…

Reality Distortion Field

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

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To transform one industry in your lifetime is enough to be remembered by history. But what if you transform several industries, and change the way people think of and interact with technology several times?

Here’s some of the things that exist thanks to Steve’s unparalleled vision, drive, and leadership:

  1. Macintosh
    Hard to remember just how primitive any computer before the Macintosh is.
  2. iPod
    Not the first digital music player, but the first one with the right mix of features, size, capacity and ease of use – replacing Walkman as the default word for “portable music player”.
  3. iTunes Music Store
    Completely changed the way music is distributed and sold, and thus the music industry. Per track purchases and instant gratification. The technology was there, but only Apple was able to put it all together in a successful manner.
  4. iPhone
    No phone looked or acted like iPhone before it, and no phone is expected to look or act unlike iPhone after it. Only four years after its introduction people forget just what a massive change this was and just how primitive a pre-iPhone phone looks.
  5. App Store
    One place to securely find, buy, install and uninstall software. Software distribution changed forever. Everybody (Google, RIM, Microsoft) have exactly copied this model.
  6. iPad
    Not the first tablet computer by a long shot. But it was a completely new vision and the first (and still only) successful one. It takes a lot of guts and an uncompromising vision to distill a product down to the appliance-like minimality of the iPad. Again, no table was like an iPad before it, and pretty much every tablet after it is an iPad clone.

Thank you for always skating where the puck is going, and for taking us along for the ride.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” [Steve Jobs to The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993]

Reality Distortion Field

iPhone 4S

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…and it’s here.

Let’s see what’s new and exclusive to the 4S (meaning, not part of iOS5):

  • A5 Processor: About 2x faster, 7x faster graphics
  • AirPlay mirroring
  • Siri, which looks like something out of a sci-fi movie
  • Much improved camera, and not just megapixel wise
  • 1080p video with image stabilization
  • Better battery life
  • Faster cellular download speed
  • World phone (CDMA and GSM)
  • Better antennas, presumably more resistant to the Grip of Death

As someone that had the 3G and upgraded to the 3GS, I can tell you how huge the camera and speed and battery life improvements were. They made the day to day use of the phone vastly better. And it was good to begin with. Sure, there were other things, but these three were the biggest (oh, and support for multitasking). So I’m really looking forward to the iPhone 4S.

Some people are disappointed because there wass no iPhone 5. Who cares? The only difference between the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5 are the name and the form factor. I couldn’t care less about the name, and the form factor is already excellent, especially when compared to most of the gigantic and ugly Android phones out there.

Ready to pre-order.

Update: I use my phone’s camera a lot, so I was happy to see this sample, unedited photos taken with an iPhone 4S on Apple’s website.

Reality Distortion Field

Mini Lion Review

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Because you asked for it, here it is: a few notes on the new Mac OS X. But I must clarify that I have not used it that much yet.

First, some quick observations:

  • Since I don’t have a multitouch trackpad on my old Mac, the new subtler scroll bars don’t disappear. This is good. Scroll bars serve a purpose: They tell you if there is more content in the window and how much content you can see at once. I want to be able to glance at them without needing to attempt to scroll.
  • Not having a multitouch trackpad has disadvantages: No cool gestures for Mission Control, Launchpad, etc. I’m missing out.
  • Oh yeah, Mission Control is great, and Launchpad might be useful.
  • The new Mail.app is cool and I really really like the way they did threaded messages.
  • They reversed the scrolling behavior: Move fingers up, and the content moves up, like on the iPad. This seems like the right thing to me but it’s going to take some time to get used to. I will try to without going crazy. Those of you who aren’t as patient can toggle the behavior in the System Preferences.
  • I really like full screen apps except for the fact that the menu bar hides until you hover. It’s not that I need to see the menu bar, but rather that when I move the mouse up to push some button or select the URL bar in Safari, the menu bar pops down and pushes down whatever I’m trying to click on. It’s driving me crazy. Breaks Fitt’s Law too.
  • AirDrop does not work on my computer. I don’t know the details on how it’s implemented nor why they couldn’t make it work on my computer… but my hardware does not support it.

The lesson so far: Time for me to get a new Mac.

But here’s what I think is the most significant and profound change in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion – and it happens to be the one thing that you won’t use immediately because it requires third party application updates: Auto Save and Versions and Resume.

It’s a big deal: Apple went back and questioned one of the most basic givens of computer use since the 80’s, the stuff nobody even questions anymore. From now on, you no longer do we need to save your files. It happens automatically, and you can always go back and revert any change. It’s built-in and transparent and easy to use. It’s great.

And they didn’t stop there. Quitting applications is now obsolete! But if you do quit, when you restart the application or even your computer, everything comes back just the way you left it (and you didn’t have to save your open files!).

Maybe it doesn’t sound like much, but it is a is a change to a basic paradigm on our interaction with our computers (Ah! but not our iPhones and iPads). File managing and file systems are going away, and that’s a good thing.

Overall I really like Lion, it feels as fast if not faster than Snow Leopard (YMMV), and it’s very well worth a paltry $29. So download your copy now!