Mobilemind

One screen of my iPhone is dedicated to essential travel apps and I'd like to share that list with you. For comparison I'm also including a link to and the short list of Travel Tech: Top 20 iPhone Travel Apps from National Geographic Adventure.

My key travel apps for iPhone (prices as of July 3, 2009):

1. TravelTracker with TripIt $7.99

   If you take more than 6 trips a year get this app and sign up for TripIt service on the web. TravelTracker shines over the free TripIt app because it keeps past trips and has many more features. Silverware is a good company and this is a good app. Loved the previous TravelTracker incarnations on the Newton & the Palm, and I got it on iPhone as soon as it came out as a new-from-ground-up, smarter app. I'd hold off on getting the “Pro” version for now though... there are some iPhone 3.0 issues to sort out. In a few weeks I will be upgrading to TravelTracker Pro though, so I can get live flight status plus download and upload to TripIt. Update: A new version of TravelTracker posted to the App Store today—July 3, 2009.

2. TripIt for iPhone Free

   Huh? You just said TravelTracker. I use both. The TripIt app is less cluttered and faster— for the current trip, but I can not easily forward an itinerary or do many other things that TravelTracker does so well. I use TripIt for quick access to info on the current trip, like hitting the rental car info with my big fat thumb as I dash away from baggage claim.

3. The Weather Channel Free

   As National Geographic puts it:

   [The Weather Channel app] gets the nod for customization and the ability to check out conditions in multiple locations at a glance.

4. AroundMe Free

   I admit it, Starbucks pwns me. AroundMe helps me quickly find that essential latte, or a local equivalent and other conveniences (ATM/bank, restaurant, pharmacy, retailer). I've tried coffee-specific apps and a few brand-name bank/retailer/restaurant finders. This particular app works well and seems current most places I go, and does away with having a slew of category/vendor-specifc apps.
   

5. Currency Free

   Fantastic currency converter that auto-updates exchange rates. Shows a purchase amount in multiple currencies of your choice at the same time. Easily switch from entering in one currency to entering in another. Very helpful on my trip to Singapore when trying to figure out what $5 USD was in SGD or what $900 SGD is in USD (answer: 1 nice watch).
   

6. Taxi Magic Free

   Great app for getting a taxi when you aren't in an urban center or near a taxi stand. It electronically hails a taxi and sends your current location to your choice of cab companies. You can even create an account & use it to pay for the ride, without using cash or credit in the cab. Cities supported include: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, LA, Minneapolis, Nashville, NYC, the OC, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, Dan Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington DC.

7. Urban Spoon Free

   The best way to break the logjam of “I dunno, where do you want to go.” Also nice to find something interesting & local instead of the shopping mall-perimeter chain restaurant defaults.

Then there are the airline superstars of iPhone web app-friendliness. The standout here is JetBlue, who has a very useful and colorful web app. Honorable mention to Southwest Airlines, who made great use of the very cool iUI iPhone templates found on Google Code.

To make the most of any of the web apps below, just visit the URL on your iPhone and then bookmark with the “Add to Home Screen” option.

Great iPhone web apps from airlines to add to your iPhone homescreen (actual iPhone/Touch home screen icons shown):

• JetBlue mobile http://mobile.jetblue.com/
• American Airlines mobile http://mobile.aa.com/
• Delta mobile http://mobile.delta.com/
• Southwest mobile http://mobile.southwest.com/

I heard back from @Alaska Airlines on twitter that Alaska is working on it. Go Alaska! No word from United Airlines on when http://ua.flightlookup.com will become more iPhone-aware. Sadly, the very-cool, but Flash-dependent site of Virgin America doesn't make the iPhone cut either (as of July 3, 2009). Btw, lots of airlines are on twitter, as I found out working on @AICC followers.

A Few Extra Travel-related Apps
Rounding-out my travel page I have Aeroguide Lite (Free) to recognize things like that rare Ilyushin Il-62 I once saw over SFO (an Il-62 looks like MD-80/DC-9 with 4 engines or a Vickers VC10).

Other miscellanneous items on the page include: Gas Cubby ($9.99) for recording and charting the MPG, etc. of my own car; FedEx Mobile (Free) for help with shipping; and Google Earth (Free) for miscellaneous mapping and geographical visualization.

The National Geographic Adventure List
To get more detailed information on their picks, please see Travel Tech: Top 20 iPhone Travel Apps from National Geographic Adventure. I've add my opinions to their list below where I had feelings one way or the other. For reference, here is their list:

1. Next Flight $2.99
2. Urban Spoon Free
3. HearPlanet reg $5.99 (on sale for $1.99 on July 3, 2009)
4. Air Sharing $4.99(Nix I say, get FTP On the Go)
5. Tweetie $2.99 (Nice, but nix say I. Get free TweetDeck or Twittelator Pro for $4.99, or both as I did)
6. IAmHere $0.99
7. World Customs $0.99
8. Wi-Fi Finder Free
9. The Weather Channel Free
10. Google Earth Free
11. Packing $1.99 (on sale for $0.99 on July 3, 2009. This one *I* might try)
12. Room Free
13. FlightTrack Pro $9.99 (Nix, I say, get TravelTracker w/TripIt)
14. Lonely Planet Phrasebook $9.99
15. Skype Free (I totally agree here–a very popular app, 4M downloads & estimated to be on 10%+ of iPhones)
16. WriteRoom $4.99
17. (Amazon) Kindle for iPhone Free (I totally agree here too)
18. Cheap Gas Free
19. Babelingo $3.99 (on sale for $1.99 on July 3, 2009)
20. Where Free

Labels: Apple, iPhone, technology, tips, tools, travel

Once used on the iPhone, turning off MobileMe sync for bookmarks will result in deletion of all the bookmarks on the iPhone. Furthermore, there is no way to force the iPhone bookmarks to over-write things on the Mac if the sync ever goes awry.

If, like me, you ever end-up with the "good" bookmarks on the iPhone and "bad" on the Mac, there is just no way to sync the good over and replace the bad. However, one can do some tricks with the iPhone back-up preferences file (plist) and Mac Safari export/import bookmarks to achieve a transfer from iPhone to Mac. Once complete, two-way sync will be restored via iTunes. Unlike the MobileMe sync, you can turn off the iTunes bookmark sync to Safari without losing bookmarks on you iPhone.

I'm not responsible for lost data. Back-up everything before you start this process. Do NOT sync the iPhone until the process is complete. Others may have some shortcuts or improvements to this process [eg, convert Mobile Safari plist to Mac Safari plist instead, or use XSLT or shell script improvements, etc.]. I welcome those suggestions and will re-post them. Leave a comment or send email to me at mobilemind (at) pobox.com.

Here's how I managed to save my iPhone bookmarks, recover them to Mac, and switch off MobileMe bookmark sync without losing data. Now I just use iTunes for Bookmark sync.

1. Download iPhone / iPod Touch Backup Extractor by clicking on the big honking icon on that page. (I sent him $10 USD because it worked so well for me. Send him a few Euro if it works for you too.)

If your current back-up is questionable or to deliberately use an older version of iPhone bookmarks do the following. First make a copy of the current back-up, and put it in another location. Then use Time Machine or your back-up utility to find and restore a "good" previous version of the backup, from:

  ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Remember that “~” is shorthand for the user home folder (Home icon in Finder, or Shift-Command-H).

3. Save the “iPhone OS Files” extract to a new folder, and find the Bookmarks preferences file. It should be in:
  newfolder/iPhone OS Files/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

4. Convert the binary preferences file to XML. Open a terminal window and go to the folder with Bookmarks.plist. Then issue this command:

  plutil -convert xml1 Bookmarks.plist

Leave the terminal window open, you'll need it in a minute.

5. Open Mac Safari and do File > Export Bookmarks… to save a backup. We'll use this if anything goes wrong, and it's a handy reference example of the bookmark file format. I saved mine as “Safari Bookmarks.html” and put an extra copy in the same folder as “Bookmarks.plist”.

6. Get or make some shell magic with grep to reformat the XML plist preferences file into a rough approximation of a Mac Safari bookmarks import/export file. I found a great bit of code from Dave Taylor here.

I took Dave's example and removed some stuff like the sorting (more on that in a minute). Then I added the necessary opening and closing tags for a Bookmark file, with some comments. Here is my shell file for you to download: plist2bookmarks.sh

7. Save the shell script and make it executable. Save the shell file to the same folder as the converted Bookmarks.plist file. Then go to the terminal window and make it executable by you (the owner) and your group.

  chmod 774 plist2bookmarks.sh

8. Execute the script and direct the output to a new file. I called my output file "MobileSafariBookmarks.html" (no spaces to make the shell command easier).

  ./plist2bookmarks.sh >MobileSafariBookmarks.html

9. Clean-up the “MobileSafariBookmarks.html” in your favorite editor to make it match the folder hierarchy of your iPhone Bookmarks. I used Dreamweaver CS4 and TextMate to open my reference file ("Safari Bookmarks.html") and the new file ("MobileSafariBookmarks.html"), bouncing back & forth to make sure I got the tags right.

Have your iPhone handy to check the folder structure. That helped me as I did edits. The comments put in by “plist2bookmarks.sh” should help you understand how and where to create folders (or nest them).

Keep in mind that the iPhone has a few built-in bookmark folders and bookmarks, like the “History” folder and the bookmarks for “Yahoo!”, “Google”, “AT&T MyAccount”, and “iPhone User Guide”.

10. Prepare to import Mobile Safari Bookmarks into Mac Safari. Make sure you have a back-up of your Mac Safari bookmarks. Then open Safari, use Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks, and delete ONLY your bookmarks. Do NOT delete Address Book or other items. In m case, I selected Bookmarks Bar and deleted all the items there. Then I selected Bookmarks Menu and deleted all those items.

11. Import the Mobile Safari Bookmarks into Mac Safari. Use File > Import Bookmarks… to import “MobileSafariBookmarks.html” as cleaned-up in step 9.

12. Verify Mac Safari against Mobile Safari before you disable MobileMe sync of bookmarks. Remember, that will delete the iPhone bookmarks. Carefully check the list and URL addresses of the bookmarks now in Mac Safari against the list and structure in Mobile Safari on iPhone. Quit Safari on the Mac when you are done. Quit Mobile Safari on the iPhone too.

13. Take a deep breath and delete the bookmarks on Mobile Safari by disabling MobileMe sync of Bookmarks. On iPhone, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Then, under Accounts select your MobileMe account. Change Bookmarks to OFF. iPhone will warn you about deleting bookmarks. That is OK, because we now have them in Safari and will soon sync with iTunes from Mac Safari back to iPhone.

14. Disable iTunes automatic syncing for devices to allow us to make changes. Do not connect the iPhone yet. Start iTunes. Open Preferences and select Devices. Check the box that says "Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods". Close Preferences.

15. Connect the iPhone and change iTunes to Sync Safari bookmarks. After the iPhone connects, it may sync anyway. That is OK. Select the iPhone in the left panel. Then select the tab labeled Info in the large main panel of iTunes. Scroll down to the shaded bar for Web Browser and check the box next to Sync Safari bookmarks.

16. Apply the change to sync. Click the Sync button in the lower right corner of iTunes and wait.

17. When the sync is done, all the bookmarks moved manually from the backup to Mac Safari, will be restored to the iPhone. From now on, the iPhone and Mac Safari will sync via iTunes. Changes on one will be reflected on the other after each sync. As an extra bonus, the MobileMe "push" should be a little shorter and a little less battery draining, since bookmarks are no longer synced over-the-air.

If you want, you can even turn off iTunes bookmark sync and add/restore your original Mac Safari bookmarks, either to keep things separate or to merge them back to iPhone later.

Labels: Apple, iPhone, technology, tips

It'd be cool if there was a “geek work cribs” that showcased the preferred tools of geek celebs (and minor celebs). If there is, I don't know about it. Nonetheless, we all find posts and pages to that effect here and there. Recently, fellow geek (and elearning celeb) Aaron Silvers kindly posted a page-by-page list of what's on (and no longer on) his iPhone. There are some cool ways to do things like this that I'll share too.

First, get an account (or two) at iusethis.com, but do NOT populate it- yet.

• Mac OS X - http://osx.iusethis.com
• iPhone - http://iphone.iusethis.com

Next, get AppFresh, a Mac OS X application that helps you keep apps, widgets, preference panes and plugins up-to-date. Conveniently, it also connects to you iusethis account for Mac OS X. Run AppFresh, and it will create a list of your Mac apps and check for new version. Add your iusethisaccoutn via the AppFresh preferences.

Once the list is populated by AppFresh, you can easily click to add items to iusethis.com from AppFresh. Now you have a readily updated list that you can share as a page or RSS feed (see link at bottom of your apps or event page on the iusethis site).

The iPhone section of the site isn't quite as auto-magically updated. I'd love to see AppFresh or something like that scour your iTunes directory to populate such a list though (hint). Fortunately, the folks at iusethis do make it easy to find iPhone apps on their site or add your favorites while their forms pull in data from the iTunes App Store.

Now for the mobilemind iusethis lists:

• Mac OS X apps: http://osx.iusethis.com/user/mobilemind
  Recent changes: http://osx.iusethis.com/feed/mobilemind
  
• iPhone apps: http://iphone.iusethis.com/user/mobilemind
  Recent changes: http://iphone.iusethis.com/feed/mobilemind

Once you are signed up and sharing like this, iusethis will also identify like-minded neighbors by way of your application set. Note that the respective OS X and iPhone sites also have overall lists for New, Interesting and Top apps.

Hey Aaron are we iusethis neighbors? (PS- I too dropped Appigo To Do for the freeRemember the Milk app.) Poor Appigo, first To Do dropped for the free RTM app, and now AccuFuel has been replaced with the $4.99 Gas Cubby. All good apps, just a matter of preferences and $4-$5.

Labels: Apple, technology, tips, tools

I saw that 9to5 Mac picked up a story on iPods as mobile training devices for soldiers to learn new spoken languages. I immediately recognized this from some demos I'd seen from Carol Wideman of Vcom3D. Fantastic to see that this is in the field, well-received and effective. We'd met several years ago and a NATO training council meeting and this was mostly a concept then.

The story is written up on the Fort Hood 1st Cavalry web site, including some pictures of the ipod with battery and the wearable holder/case. (Note- The webmaster must like the yellow/black Purkinje effect.)

I'm glad to see Vcom3D get well-deserved recognition. Now its time for some forward-thinking corporate trainers to look at off-the-shelf and thinking-outside-the-box solutions like this too. I'm sure there's plenty of time- and cost-effective training applications for virtual characters that model real language and cultural gestures-- and plays back in common digital video and interactive Adobe Flash formats.

Labels: Adobe, Apple, learning, technology, virtual worlds

Here is a new utility web page to easily create javascript: bookmarks (bookmarklets) that paste a custom text string into a web page form in Mobile Safari on iPhone or iPod Touch– http://mobilemind.net/iphone.

On iPhone and Touch, that page will automatically re-direct to http://mobilemind.net/___, which includes all the instructions and code needed to make a bookmarklet that pastes text (an “iPastelet”).

On the iPhone/Touch, Save an iPastelet provides a form to enter your text string and a button to update the page URL. Then you need to save the bookmark, then immediately edit it to remove the http:// prefix and mobilemind URL. The directions on the page explain it all.

On desktop machines, the page does not re-direct, but instead takes you to the “classic” iPastelet Maker that I posted last December. The desktop browser version of iPasteletMaker creates a bookmarklet for you to save in your desktop browser (Mac or Win) and then sync to your device via iTunes.

This approach might be a little more handy if you already sync broswer bookmarks and want to create a bookmark Scrapbook folder with lots of these.

Thanks to Erica Sadun for the original bookmarklet code and inspiration. Special Thanks to Craig Hockenberry (IconFactory / Twitterific, Twitterific for iPhone), Joe Maller (Transmogrify), Joe Hewitt and the iUI team (http://code.google.com/p/iui/), and Ankur Kothari (Make the most of the iPhone SDK) for inspiration and examples.

Labels: Apple, technology, tips

I saw my friend Aaron twitter a question about this topic, so I thought I'd pull together a quick post with some resources for those with a Mac (and 1-2 for Mac or Win Firefox) and general tips. Briefly the tips are:

• Test using Safari with User Agent set to Mobile Safari
• Preview with iPhoney application for more context & rotation testing (add latest agent string)
• Use Firefox extensions User Agent Switcher, Web Developer and Firebug, and Firesizer
• Use iUI code with CSS/HTML/Javascript for iPhone-style interface
• Visit the Apple Web Apps Development Center and Apple iPhone Dev Center
• Check out the Google Groups iPhoneWebDev
• Register for iPhone DevCamp 2

Safari- Go to Preferences and check the box for Show Develop menu in menu bar.

Then you can use the menu Develop > User Agent > Mobile Safari 1.1.3 – iPhone. That will allow Safari to present itself to website (and your code) as the iPhone web browser. Hovering over a menu option will also display the full User Agent string.

iPhoney- iPhoney from MarketCircle is basically a shell around WebKit that acts like the iPhone browser, Mobile Safari. It does support rotation, but isn't exactly like iPhone (address bar can't scroll (but can be hidden), it does add vertical/horizontal scroll bars in some cases were iPhone wouldn't). That said, it is a nice way to get a quick "iPhone Preview" of any site from your laptop or desktop computer.

Tip: I found that I get more "iPhone-like" results with many sites by having iPhoney use a custom user-agent. The User Agent string below matches exactly what a web server sees for my iPhone user agent with the current firmware, whereas the iPhoney returns a slightly different version (Mobile/1A538a). Just use the appropriate menu item to enter the text below as "Custom User Agent".

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3

Switch User Agent- Firefox users (even those already using Firefox 3.0) can use the User Agent Switcher extension to also mimic the iPhone web browser user agent, with the same User Agent string as above.

Firefox extensions for Javascript development- While you're at it, you may also want to get a couple of other Firefox extension that are generally useful for web development– the Web Developer extension is from the same author as User Agent Switcher, and the latest Firebug extension beta release seems to work well with Firefox 3 (and help a lot with debugging). Firesizer isn't is compatible with Firefox 3 (yet) now, and it allows you to quickly switch Firefox to different screen sizes... helping you preview an iPhone sized window of (or even test other web sites & apps at common sizes like 1024x768).

iUI- iUI is set of CSS, HTML and Javascript that hails from Joe Hewitt of Facebook, who also originated Firebug. iUI is available from the Google code site, and includes code to provide a more iPhone-like look and feel to your web applications while providing the ability to handle page orientation changes (rotation between landscape & portrait views).

Apple Developer pages and Google Groups- There are a bunch of resources on the Apple site and there is an active iPhone Web Development Google Group too. Visit the Apple Web Apps Development Center and Apple iPhone Dev Center. Then check out the Google Groups iPhoneWebDev.

iPhoneDevCamp- Finally, there will be a second iPhoneDevCamp at the Adobe offices in San Francisco. It is scheduled for August 1-3 2008, and you should watch the official iPhoneDevCamp 2 website for more information.

Labels: Apple, Firefox-Thunderbird, technology, tips

The TryPhone site run by MobileComplete is very nice if you want to check out the menu structure and general user interface of most popular cell phones. It breaks down a bit on more complicated user interfaces with gestures, button double-clicks and shortcuts. It gives you the general idea, but the graphics are a little coarse and something is definitely Lost in Translation compared to an actual iPhone.

They do have some Captivate-esque animated demos, but they seem to be driving the TryPhone simulation rather than playing animated captures or video of the phone. Anyway, check out TryPhone if you're looking at a new mobile for a Christmas gift. Just be aware that the iPhone emulation gives a weak impression of the experience.

Mac users- If you're developing pages to be viewed on iPhone, check out iPhoney from MarketCircle. It is basically a shell around WebKit that acts like the iPhone browser, Mobile Safari. It isn't exactly like iPhone (address bar can't scroll, not multi-touch obviously, and adds scroll bars in many cases were iPhone wouldn't). That said, it is a nice way to get a quick "iPhone Preview" of any site from your laptop or desktop computer. You can even rotate the phone to vertical or horizontal/landscape view.

Tip: I found that I get more "iPhone-like" results with iPhoney by using a custom user-agent. The one below matches exactly what a web server sees my iPhone user agent as, whereas the iPhoney returns a slightly different version. Just use the appropriate menu item to enter the text below as "Custom User Agent".

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3B48b Safari/419.3

Labels: Apple, simulation, technology

Not sure if I got frustrated, creative, generous, or all of the above. I made a web form called iPastelet Maker that lets you easily create custom bookmarklets that paste text into web forms on the iPhone. Use it to create bookmarklets for common recurring entries, like user ID's, email addresses, IP addresses, host names, etc. You might even create a bookmark folder called 'Scrapbook' and keep a bunch of common text snippets there. If you have a few services/servers you log-on to and use the same email/ID's over & over this can be really convenient.

Since they are bookmarklets, they obviously only work in a browser, and work best in Safari/Mobile Safari. However, it is best to create them with your desktop browser (preferably Safari on Mac and IE on Windows). Then, use iTunes to sync your bookmarks over to the iPhone and voilá.

It's free stuff, so feedback is welcome, but support is nil. Thanks to TUAW and Erica Sadun for awareness, code and inspiration.

Labels: Apple, technology

It seems like just a month ago (ok 2 months ago) that Apple sent me an email with information on the first iPhone Tech Talks. Now more iPhone Tech Talks are scheduled during October and November for Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Atlanta. As a bonus, despite the proximity to his residence, I can assure you that my friend and anti-fanboy curmudgeon Jeff will not attending the Minneapolis session.

See Apple iPhone Tech Talks for details.

• Boston, MA 10/09
• Philadelphia, PA 10/11
• Washington, DC 10/12
• Seattle, WA 10/22
• Minneapolis, MN 10/25
• Atlanta, GA 11/05

I'm excited to be going to Learning 2007, but sad that the iPhone Tech Talk in Seattle conflicts with it.

PS: Yes Jeff, I do have an iPhone once again, even if I am not sorry that I returned my initial iPhone after 7 days. It did help that it was now $200 less. Note that unlike others, I am NOT whining about price slashing. I love the new price, and I paid activation twice and a re-stocking fee once-- unlike the loudest whiners. Also, unlike them, I'll cheer when the price goes down again. So there. Don't complain about what you paid then or others pay now. The parable of the workers in the field strikes me as somewhat relevant. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? -- see Mathew 20.

Labels: Apple, events, technology

Apple just sent me an email with information on iPhone Tech Talks that are scheduled for

• Los Angeles, CA 08/02
• San Francisco, CA 08/24
• Chicago, IL 08/28
• New York, NY 08/30
• New York, NY 08/31

It looks like an interesting day,and I will admit to a small amount of "return-ers remorse"

Bring your notebook, your code, and your iPhone After a morning of in-depth presentations and demonstrations, you'll work with the experts to design, code, debug and test your solutions on iPhone. Access to your code is required.

Of course since I no longer have an iPhone and I'm not in L.A., San Francisco, Chicago or NYC, I won't be going. I'm sure Jeff will notice the conspicuous absence of Hudson, WI as a venue-- and feel no disappointment whatsoever.

Labels: Apple, events, technology

A short list of the reasons why my iPhone went back to AT&T on Saturday.

1. Couldn't accept meeting invites on it.
2. No Cut/Copy/Paste.
3. The keyboard.
4. Not enough fine tuning control over email:
• Can't control size of email initially downloaded
• Only checks at pre-defined intervals; 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour...
• Doesn't put things in "Sent items", instead you automatically cc: yourself on everything
5. No indicator lamp or LED- can't tell at a glance if I have voicemail/email/SMS messages-- or even if the thing is powered on.
6. No encrypted password vault or 'eWallet' utility (I depend on this to 'remember' things like seldom-used low-stakes passwords, etc)
7. No video out; can't use it with the cool display glasses I recently bought.
8. No removable memory or 'mountable storage'; can't use it to transport files. The SanDisk folding SD card + USB that I use with the Treo has spoiled me.
9. Lack of 3rd party applications/extensions.
10. No "museum mode" for the iPod features; most of the training things I want to do I can do better on a video iPod or desktop.
11. No Adobe Flash.Yet?
12. It's good, borderline great, but there HAS to be a better one coming 12-18 months from now.

Labels: Apple, technology

Already my close friend and personal curmudgeon has scoffed at my switcharoo (see his comment here). I have little to comment on his comment, other than to share that perhaps Microsoft provides a most excellent operating systems for the type of person who shuns human contact.

But seriously folks, here is a log of computers I've owned since 1985. In most cases one PC or handheld replaced another of the same type, but there were periods of overlap (eg, the PowerBook 180 soldiered on to 1996).

Some personal favorites were the Apple //c (hot rodded with a memory board), the Mac SE that got me through grad school, the PowerBook (my first laptop), the SmartBook (amazing value 'Wintel' machine like a PowerBook, the Palm Vx (still sweet for its role), and all the "serviceable workhorses" called ThinkPads.

Stinkers? There were a few in the "What was I thinking" category- the '93 Gateway that we managed to use grudgingly use until '97, the Newton (did you say 'Newfoundland'?), the HandSpring Visor (translucent blueberry plastic? uggh), the iPAQ h6315 (that they dared to claim was a phone, except it locked-up routinely while a call was ringing in) and the Treo 600 (non-removable battery and volatile storage, but I was desperate after the HP "phone"). The late model PDA iPAQ (h4150) was almost Palm Vx-like, but added WiFi, very cool. The oldest iPAQS were hot stuff at the time, but in hindsight the dual-PC card "sled" was more like a ridiculously sized toboggan. Oh well, here's the list in all its glory (or embarrassment).

1985
1)Apple IIc (256K) 1MHz 65C02

1987
2) Apple Mac SE 2MB/40MB 68020

1993
3) Apple Powerbook 180 8MB/80MB 68020
4) Gateway Intel 486-33 16/285

1994
5) SmartBook II 486-66 32MB/250MB

1995
6) Newton MessagePad 120 StrongARM 110 162MHz (sold after 90 days)
7) SmartBook IV 486-100 64MB/500MB

1996
8) ChemBook Pentium 133 128MHz/1GB
9) ComTrade P-150 128/4

1997
10) HP 320LX Handheld SH-3 12MB/4MB

1998
11) ThinkPad 770 P-II 233 256MB/5GB
12) Palm III 2MB 8MHz DragonBall

1999
13) HandSpring Visor Deluxe 8MB 16MHz
14) Sony VAIO 490 P-III 600 256MB/20GB

2000
15) ThinkPad T-20 P-III 700 256MB/10GB
16) Palm Vx 8MB DragonBall EZ 20MHz

2001
17) Compaq iPAQ 3650 32MB ARM 206MHz
18) Compaq iPAQ 3670 64MB ARM 206MHz

2002
19) Compaq iPAQ 3870 64MB ARM 206MHz
20) ThinkPad T-23 P-III 1GHz 512MB/60GB

2003
21) HP iPAQ h4150 64MB XScale PXA255 400MHz

2004
22) Handspring Treo 600 32MB TI OMAP 310 144MHz (returned after 6 days)
23) HP iPAQ h6315 64MB TI OMAP 1510 166MHz

2005
24) ThinkPad T-42p P-III 1GHz 512MB/60GB
25) Palm Treo 650 24MB XScale PXA270 312 MHz

2007
26) MacBook Pro, Duo Core 2.4GHz 2GB/160GB
UPDATE-
27) Apple iPhone ??MHz Samsung ARM/8GB (returned after 7 days)

Labels: Apple, technology

I love computers. Apple is putting the excitement and fun back in computing for me with the MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPod. I plan on using all of those devices to create elearning and/or delivery elearning in the next 30 days. My journey is just begining, and it started in Shanghai (or at least that's where my MacBook Pro started with FedEx).
(Visualization of package tracking via http://packagemapping.com/, accessed via the cool Firefox/Thunderbird extension that works with DHL, Fedex, UPS and US Postal Service tracking numbers.)

The next few hours will be some get (re)acquainted time for me and Mac-- it's been 11 years since I stopped daily use of a Mac. I'll post some entries here about my preparations and experiences switching from my ThinkPad T43p with Win XP to MacBook Pro and OS X.

Oh yes, one more thing. I won't be able to install much software tomorrow, I have to be in line somewhere for something-- it might be here or here.

Where are you going to be Friday at 6pm? Maybe these links will help:
Apple retail- iPhone Availability Information
or
AT&T Wireless Find-a-store (hint pick "Apple iPhone" in the list box).

Labels: Apple