It’s the end of the iPhone era for me.

I had been pretty impressed with the US iPhones that had leaked into NZ, and I bought an iPhone 3G on the first day they were available in NZ (using my own money even!) and upgraded it to a 3GS soon after that came out.

And it was great. Apple really were the first people to get the smartphone right. It was fast, had a useful screen and the touch interface had Apple’s usual attention to detail. My iPhone and I had a lot of good times together.

But by the time the iPhone 4 was released I just wasn’t as interested. It wasn’t just the hardware, or Apple’s control-freakery or any one thing in particular, but somehow I wanted to try something else.

What did happen was a Samsung Galaxy S II running Google’s Android operating system. I’ll be writing more about that later, but first I thought I’d finally get around to publishing my list of iPhone gripes.

These are my personal gripes. I know that some of them are probably features to other people, or can be fixed with more or less ease, or will be fixed in iOS5 but it’s really too late for that for me. So, in no particular order, a bunch of things that annoyed me about the iPhone:

1. The failure to use the lock screen to display useful information.
2. The way the weather app icon doesn’t change to match to match the weather.
3. That the Maps icon is an American highway map.
4. The difficulty of finding good apps – you can find a multitude of apps but it’s very hard to tell which are any good.
5. The “icons, icons, nothing but icons” menu system.
6. That the iPhone 3GS had very limited message notification and ringtones. You hear that “ding-ding” sound and every iPhone user in the room wonders if the message is for them.
7. The way that iOS4.2 added new message tones for the iPhone 4 but not for the older 3GS.
8. The lack of buttons, particular the way that the single button is used for search, task-switching, app-closing, and screen shots (about 10% of my photos are accidental screen shots),
9. The lack of a physical camera button. Trying to do tricky shots wth the on-screen button is hard.
10. The multi-second delay in starting the camera.
11. The way that Apple offered free iPhone tracking… for the iPhone 4 but not the 3G or 3GS.
12. The volume and mute controls on the 3GS have annoyingly sharp edges – and the mute button is too easy to activate when putting it into a pocket.
13. There’s no icon on screen to show whether mute is on or not.
14. That the iOS4 ‘upgrade’ killed the performance of the iPhone 3G and 3GS and Apple tried to stop you downgrading again. (This was improved in later versions but the performance is still noticeably crappier than it was.)
15. The way that the 3G doesn’t get security fixes any more after just two years. (Launched July 2008, last fix Nov 2010).
16. Apple choosing what political views are acceptable in apps sold in the app store – and there’s no other way to get apps.
17. The inability to cache downloaded maps on your phone.
18. The rotation-lock option cunningly hidden in a leftward swipe of the dock-thing when in task-switching mode.
19. That you have to install iTunes to activate the phone or copy music to it.
20. If you switch to a new PC, iTunes tries to get you to wipe everything from your phone (this can be prevented).
21. That you can’t use the volume controls for page turning when reading electronic books.
22. Lack of easy auto update for applications.
23. If you’re in one application and click a link that takes you into another (e.g. a YouTube video link in the browser), there’s no obvious way to get back to where you were in the first application.

Coming soon: my list of Android gripes. :)

I was taken aback by what I found in my post box today – a letter asking me to complete a survey about my respiratory health. The Medical Research Institute tells me that (link to scan of letter (PDF)):

You have been randomly selected from the electoral roll to participate in the first phase which involves completing the questionnaire on the other side of this letter.

Personally I thought that it was illegal to use the Electoral Roll for any purpose other than elections, but it seems that there is an exception for approved scientific/health researchers.

I’d be surprised if the response rate was very high or very representative.

And no, I didn’t fill it out. Feel free to use the code and URL on the letter to go and answer it for me.

Just having a look at the Summary Offences Act to see if it was illegal to be drunk in public (apparently it’s not) and found these:

Defence for public urination

Every person is liable to a fine not exceeding $200 who urinates or defecates in any public place other than a public lavatory. It is a defence in a prosecution under this section if the defendant proves that he had reasonable grounds for believing that he would not be observed.

Rewards

Every person is liable to a fine not exceeding $200 who Publicly advertises a reward for the return of any property that has been stolen or lost, and in the advertisement uses any words to the effect that no questions will be asked;

Postering

Every person is liable to a fine not exceeding $200 who, without the consent of the owner or occupier affixes any placard, banner, poster, or other material bearing any writing or pictorial representation to any structure, or to or from any tree;

Disturbing people

Every person is liable to a fine not exceeding $200 who, in any public place, unreasonably disrupts any meeting, congregation, or audience.

Peeping only happens at night

Every person is liable to a fine not exceeding $500 who is found by night without reasonable excuse peeping or peering into a dwellinghouse;

My first computer was a 1990 i386 with 2MB of memory and an 80MB hard drive, scrounged from the offices of a local shipping company. Complete with serial mouse, IBM Model M keyboard, and 15″ color VGA monitor, it was my parents’ hope for making me into a competent writer, but it better succeeded in making me a PC gamer. This ancient machine, 17 years old, is incredibly outdated in the physical basis of every technological detail, except one: its hard disk.

This is the introductory paragraph for a rather lightweight article about hard drives. It’s also a great example of a writer saying something obviously stupid purely because it suited the rhetorical framework that they had chosen to use.

Yes, the hard drive does still take the basic form that it did 17 years ago. But when kept to the same level of required similarity, so does the memory, the CPU, the motherboard, the case, the power supply, and the keyboard. Indeed, the only two major physical design changes I can think of when it comes to the common PC is the replacement of ball mice with optical mice, and the rise of the flat-screen LCD monitor.

Don’t you just hate it when reality gets in the way of a good line?

I wrote to Green Cabs and asked them what they thought about the “0 SMOG” license plate. This is the response I received from Callum Brown (Managing Director):

I think it is a statement about the world the driver wants to live in as opposed to an advertisement about Green Cabs..

Possibly true but I still believe that it is misleading. On the other hand, I also think it’s not worth getting upset about and I have no intention of doing anything further about it.

I quite like the new Green Cabs that are zipping around Wellington these days. They’re green in colour and use only the Toyota Prius, a hybrid petrol/electric car that is arguably more environmentally friendly than most other cars. Indeed, I seem to recall reading that Priuses do particularly well in stop-go city traffic where taxis spend most of their time. It all seems like a good idea for a business and I wish them well.

However, I do have a problem in that one of the Green Taxis has the license plate “0 SMOG”. While Toyota Priuses produce less emissions than most other cars, they still rely on a petrol engine and they still pump out various emissions, some of which contribute to smog.

I think we can safely assume that the presence of the plate is trying to imply that the taxi in question produces no smog rather than it just being a political exhortation. So, does this mean that the taxi driver is guilty of false advertising?

P.S. I hate it when manufacturers choose product names that are hard to refer to in the plural. I eventually ended up with Priuses because it sounded the best.

Some time ago I subscribed to eMusic.com for a number of reasons. Firstly, no matter how much I like my old favourites I crave the novelty of listening to music I haven’t heard before.

Secondly, I have completely and utterly lost the habit of buying CDs and I’d hardly know what to do with one once I got it. Thirdly, I can’t really be bothered with the hassle of finding and downloading music illegally. (RIP Oink, I miss you and your universal catalogue of well-ripped and properly tagged music.)

Fourthly, and in some ways most importantly to me when it came to actually signing up and paying money, eMusic did it right. The music you download from them is unencumbered moderately high-quality MP3s. No silly Apple or Microsoft enabled controls on what you could do with it or where you could listen to it.

I enjoyed using the service and got some good music to listen to (we’ll ignore the album of death-metal I downloaded by accident). But last year it didn’t seem worth it to me any more as I had no income and no decent internet connection, so I let my subscription lapse.

But eMusic is cunning and every so often they’d send me a little reminder email, “Come back! We has musics! Join us!” And then they got even more enticing and offered me 75 bonus downloads if I signed up again – so I did.

But there’s a new twist on the old service. eMusic’s catalogue was always a bit patchy and it was often a case of finding something good to download rather than going there with a particular artist or album in mind. But now it’s got even harder as:

We’re sorry. This album is unavailable for download in your country (New Zealand) at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Even worse, eMusic is sending me titillating emails that are promoting the very albums that I’m not allowed to download!

Yes, the music industry is back to its old tricks of trying to impose their will on their customers, saying that they’d rather not take our money so that their “product/marketing geniuses” can continue to play their consumer segmentation games.

I thought they’d learnt, that the invisible hand of the marketplace had given them a good slapping around and that they had resolved to not be so stupid any more. Apparently I was wrong and we’re going to have to go through another round of watching the music industry indulge in self-destructive behaviour. Maybe one day they’ll finally get it and they’ll actually make it easy for me to give them money in exchange for music.

Vodafone charges $60/month for a mobile data plan with 1GB of traffic. However, if you use data without having a plan (as any modern phone can) they charge $11.25/MB. Therefore 1GB of traffic will cost you approximately $11,000.

That’s the same 1GB of traffic for either $60 or $11,000.

I do not believe that there is any possible justification for such a huge discrepancy in these prices. It’s merely Vodafone acting in a rapacious manner in an attempt to maximise profits extracted from those who don’t fully understand what they’re doing with their shiny new phones.

Once again another Guy Fawkes where the squawks of the fearful and timid are louder and more annoying than the booms and shrieks of the fireworks. Once again we have to put up with ever more restrictions, stern warnings from politicians and the whining of the Fire Service. I unashamedly support the Guy Fawkes celebrations and the fireworks that go with them.

• I like the beauty of a roman candle shooting into the night.
• I enjoy the community aspect as people flock to the big public displays or have a few friends around to the back yard BBQ/party.
• I like the anarchic feeling as people indulge in the pseudo-dangerous activity of playing with decorative explosives.
• I appreciate the absurdity of celebrating something so irrelevant to our modern lives (neither the Catholics nor Protestants seem like much of a threat to our society).

Some might argue that fireworks are dangerous and can cause people to be hurt. While this is undoubtedly true, I think it’s important to note that the number of injuries is generally low (and probably lower than other mass activities) and most are very minor. We don’t need the safety nazis interfering, for our own good, with another pleasure enjoyed by the mass of New Zealanders.

Last night Kim and I went for a walk. It was a still clear night and the sight of the fireworks sparkling in the sky against the lights of the city was quite beautiful. Parties were everywhere and people were having a good time. I thought it was wonderful.