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I was heading down to Wonthaggi to see a client yesterday. Wonthaggi is about 1.5 hours drive from me so I thought some new tunes might do the trick. For 3 hours in the car you need some good music!

So I plugged my iPhone in to my PC and the insufferable iTunes application opened up. I thought that I might be able to drag some music from my collection right onto the phone icon in iTunes and hey presto – new music. It was never going to happen.

It seems that the iPhone is so amazingly clever that you can’t do that. No, Apple insist that I wipe everything off the phone and fully synchronise with this PC. How long is that gonna take? I only had a few minutes.

I initially loaded the music onto the iPhone from my media centre PC (which seems logical right?) but today I was in the office using my office PC. I have 4 PCs that I might use for this task too. Just load some files on right? Nup.

You see because I have six  different PCs that I might use for this task (too many for Apple to deal with by a factor of five – oh but they will actually let you “authorise” five of them). I would have to have all six (actually five, the sixth one Apple won’t allow me to have) loaded up with exactly the same songs. That means converting my entire CD collection from wma format to Apple’s proprietary control system on six (five) different PCs. Yeah right…

But that is the only way Apple will allow me to add to my iPhone music. So now I have this useless thing that won’t allow me to add music without wiping everything off first and waiting an hour for the privilege of starting again. FFS Apple must hate me! Why do they insist on treating me with such disdain and contempt?

I say that because there is simply no valid technical reason that Apple should not allow you to drop mp3 and wma files straight onto the iPhone to play (even through iTunes). So there are only two choices left. Either:

1. Apple can’t develop decent software
2. Apple insist on complicating things to the point that consumers will lose all will power, give up and buy everything through iTunes.

I’m inclined to think that it’s number 2, and that’s exactly the reason that I bought an iRiver instead of an iPod for my car in the first place.

I avoid buying music from iTunes like the plague. Why would I when I can download DRM free mp3 files from Bigpond for less without having to navigate using that cesspool of a program called iTunes?

So buyer beware: Whilst iPhone was once the best thing since sliced bread, don’t expect that it is a phone and an mp3 player. It is not an mp3 player, just a portal to the Apple iTunes revenue farm. Put your credit card away and don’t give it to them.

The app store kept me interested for a little while, but I can seriously say that I don’t rely on any of them. In fact apart from the facebook app, I wouldn’t use any of the 150 apps that I have downloaded on a weekly basis. I’ve even been fully rehabilitated from the games.

I am seriously regretting the purchase of this iPhone. I had a play with the HTC Android phone and the HTC Sense with WinMo on it at my customers office yesterday. The HTC sense is a very nice piece of kit that runs fast and smooth. It’s about friggin time that a Windows Mobile device offered a decent experience, and the HTC sense delivers. Bring on WinMo7 too.

The Windows Mobile move to integrate social media with email and contact management is just awesome. Even the HTC sense makes the Apple iPhone app concept look like kindergarten.

Sorry Apple, I’m over it. I want to load my music on my phone! As soon as I can I’m outta here! I would take a HTC sense of this any day. Making the switch back to PC.

It appears that the hailed religious leader of Apple fanbois, Steve Jobs is stupid.

According to the wired report on the now famous “Town Hall” meeting (seems a bit religious doesn’t it – for freak’ sake they make computers), Steve says about Adobe,

They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5. – Wired Article

Apparently he’s never seen the smoking pile of garbage that is iTunes. In terms of designing to usability standards it is on a par with if not worse than Adobe’s lazy products like Acrobat Reader. It is slower than a snail, unbelievably irritating, and incredibly hard to use. Did they design this program to convey the complete disdain that they hold you in as a customer.

What about Quicktime? What a piece of rubbish! It does not conform to any Windows usability standards… and you have to wonder, was it designed with that in mind? – To make windows seem bad? I flat out refuse to install it, and thankfully more and more the format is irrelevant anyway. Kudos to flash!!! I can think of once or twice in the last 12 months that I’ve visited a site that needed their buggy piece of rubbish video player.

All I’m saying here is that while Steve’s flamboyant rant had the Apple underlings in rapture, it was a ruse.

Apple make money from iTunes and the App Store. If they gave it away for free by letting flash roam around on the iPhone and iPad unguarded there would be no profit and no business.

It has nothing to do with how rubbish Adobe products are, and Macs crash more frequently than windows because they are Macs… don’t go blaming flash (which is actually one of the more reliable Adobe products, probably thanks to its Macromedia roots).

So cut the bullshit Steve! Stop throwing stones because that Apple store you got is one freakin’ huge glass house!

The release of the Apple iPad this morning threatened to impress. It looks great – as expected like a big iPhone. 1.3cm thick, 700grams, impressive screen. Super mobile computing!

But I had hoped for something game changing. I had hoped that Apple would bring something new to the slate form factor with some radical new input method like mind control or eye tracking… Something that was just out there!

Coming down off of the high of finally meeting the unicorn (Apple Tablet has been a myth for 5 years now), I am starting to feel a little disappointed.

One of the biggest benefits of having a tablet is input. Taking notes, drawing, handwriting recognition. Apple iPad has none of that. It even appears to have kept the same virtual keyboard as the iPhone – which is good enough for a 3 inch screen, but hardly ideal for a 10” one.

On the iPhone, input is frustrated by constant switching form letters to numbers to symbols and it appears that Apple haven’t really even addressed this with their legendary innovation… Nothing.

In the end, it appears that we’ll have to wait for MS and partners to come back with a decently priced super mobile digitizer tablet that handles handwriting recognition, sketching and note taking. At the end of the day they already have all that right now, but just not at the right price!

So it turns out that the Apple iPad is a consumption device for consumers. Disappointing.

Since i’m a touch / tablet geek I have an iPhone, several UMPCs and several tablet pcs.

I’m fairly proficient at typing so there is nothing faster than typing. But the reason that I have tablets is that it’s often not convenient to pop out a keyboard to type. You can’t always have a flat surface handy to rest your laptop on (although I’ve seen plenty of people try).

So with all touch and tablet devices input is the question.

The combination of the capacitive touch screen, virtual keyboards and predictive correction is great. I use it all the time for quick emails. SMS is so easy with this too.

When writing something like a blog post on long emails, the virtual keyboard on the iPhone is way to slow.

On the other hand, my tablet pcs are excellent for that job. They are a lot bigger than the iPhone so not as discreet. However handwriting recognition quickly becomes a very fast method of input. The good news is that with windows 7 it is even faster! In fact with my experience at pen input, handwriting is fast catching up to typing as a method if input.

So the tablet pcs fill that space. Very mobile, great for longer more detailed input.

So whar about the UMPC? Well they are not as good as either the tablet or the iPhone for input. But what they do have going for them is windows! There are so many things that you just can’t do easily with an iPhone… For me that’s things like access files on the network, play windows media content, access certain websites, backgrohnd instant messaging etc etc. UMPCs can do all of that well…

Wrote this on the iPhone… Very hard work!

This is a test post from wordpess for iPhone

The Microsoft Windows based Tablet PC has been around for over 7 years now, and Microsoft are pushing ahead with lots of tasty touch and multi-touch support in Windows 7.

What are the big hardware vendors doing though? Nothing.

Playing it safe with boring convertible Tablet PCs. No innovation. No imagination. I mean, I am a big fan of the Tablet PC, but convertible laptops are hardly risky.

HP have tried a couple of things, like the original TC1000 and TC1100. The TC1000 was a huge step outside the square on form factor. Unfortunately it was dismal failure because of the Transmeta Crusoe processor, but the TC1100 fixed that.

It was a compact 10 inch machine that weighed only 1kg. It could be used purely as a slate Tablet, but the design of the convertible keyboard that it came with was just brilliant. It was such a versatile machine.

But of course, to get people to pony up the money on a product like this requires sustained effort. It requires lots of marketing and some patience.

So what did they do with it? The hid it under a rug of course and did no marketing to speak of. When it failed to sell in large enough numbers, they reverted back to the usual dumb strategy above. Play it safe…

HP have tried a *bit* harder with the Tx2. They have targeted it at consumers and done some online marketing. They’ve built in a multi-touch n-trig digitiser to get some ooh and aah action going, but will it work?

There is a lot of interest in the Tx2, but I doubt that it will sell in huge numbers. The price is better, but the specs aren’t awesome. But hey, I should give them credit for having a go, even if it is a little safe for my liking.

The netbook trend shows the potential of the ultra mobile computing market, but why can’t PC manufacturers see past their noses? The only big consumer brand playing in the UMPC space is Samsung, and they are minnows in the PC world.

We have had a Samsung Q1 in the house for six months now and it is always in use. It’s often in the kitchen being an online recipe book. For emailing, web browsing, IM and media it’s awesome. I personally wouldn’t be without a device like this, but it’s just too darn expensive to be a big hit.

If just one of these four big PC manufacturers took a risk and innovated in this space, the result could be incredible. There is a huge demand for mobile computing devices as netbooks and the iPhone has shown. But the iPhone only chips away at the edge of the potential. Ditto for netbooks.

Unfortunately, it seems that the hardware vendors have overwhelmingly taken a “we tried that once and it didn’t work” approach. They are too busy not making mistakes to ever learn anything. I think that they will pay for this missed recession proof opportunity.

In the meantime, the entire space will be stolen from them by an iPhone like device from Apple. More Apple devices in the hands of people mean that the Microsoft hegemony will die.

If it’s not Apple, it will be Google. Google and T-Mobile are about to go to market with a slate UMPC style device to run Android. There is a demand in the market here, and the capabilities of the hardware are able to meet it. It’s just a question of who is going to take the risk of making something to meet the demand.

Hopefully Microsoft will wake up like they did in the Netscape v Internet Explorer era and do something about it. But the cosy and boring little arrangement that they and the big four have going must come an end. They need to kick the big four into action before it’s too late.

From the pre-launch hype to the post release headaches, I’ve been pondering this question, “What is an Apple iPhone 3G really good for?”

There’s been lot’s of suggestion, but precious few with any substance. A colleague of mine, Jim Stewart of stewartmedia.biz told us in a video blog that his iPhone is an important business tool because it has Facebook on it…???

Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook just as much as the next be-my-freind-to-build-my-hungry-ego guy… but is that really all there is?

Ok, so it’s a phone… that looks cool… that you can browse the web on… riiiight. *yawn*

Oh, and you can email on it. However, MobileMe, the supposed replacement of BlackBerrys and Exchange doesn’t actually work.

IT wire’s top ten productivity tips for iPhone consisted of things like how to turn the caps lock key on, and how to kill crashed programs… Hang on a minute…! What? An Apple iCrash? I was told that such a thing did not exist!

So sure it’s got a nice sexy casing and a large screen that drains your batteries faster than you can charge them.  But, now cracks have started to appear in shiny white iPhone casings.

And of course, you can’t change that battery, so the whole phone is throw-away tech.

Now I admit that this thing is so alluring that I am tempted to buy one, but that rational side of me is screaming out:

“Please, please, please tell me that there is something useful about this thing?”

I beg of you Apple, please stop marketing your electronic gadgets to me!

Apple iPhone 3G smells stinks to me like the American consumer culture at its peak. As their unsustainable consumer economy crumbles down around them, at least they can take comfort in their cracked but shiny white iPhones.

Instruction to believers:

Apple drones, you have been told what to do by the great fruit shaped corporation in the sky. The iCreator wishes you to proceed to an Apple Worship Altar Store to buy your iPhone 2.0 now. Forget that you ever owned an iPhone 1.0 and please be sure to stow it safely in your desk draw, never to be seen again!