“You think we need this phone anymore?” I asked my wife.  Although I’d retired ye olde twisted copper line a few years back, going that one step further and losing the VOIP phone - well, that felt a little reckless.  But the fact remained that aside from a weekly call to my wife’s family in Germany, our use usage of that line had dwindled down to getting the occasional cold call for donations from the Police Benevolent Association of New York City (where I hadn’t lived for several years).

Live Simple.  Lean and Mean. (or our pale bourgeois version of it, at least) - to us, it seemed like a good idea at the time.   It turns out we weren’t alone: a recent US government survey claims that 17.5% (or 1 in 6) US households now depend exclusively on cellular networks for telephone service.

Nevertheless, I’ve found these major home network revisions require (ahem) particularly well documented key stakeholder buy-in, so I waited a week or two and asked Anja once again if Skype could be a workable Vonage replacement for her calls home.  Only after getting further assurance did I finally make the ‘Dear John’ call to break it off with Vonage (at one point, to spare the call center operator from having to go through his whole customer retention script with me, I think I might have actually said “it’s not you, it’s me”).

As it happened, though, both Anja and I came to rue that fateful day: my comeuppance coincided with a switch to the iPhone – or should I say to the remarkably dismal (in the NYC metro area at least) AT&T voice network that comes tethered to it like a ball and chain.  For her, it turned out she hated having to either boot up the laptop and run Skype or try to cradle a tiny cell phone on her shoulder during those leisurely Sunday morning calls home to Germany after all…

She’s one resourceful e-shopper, though, and soon came across what I think could be the Next Cool Geek Accessory – the retro cell phone handset. While she uses hers only at home for purely ergonomic reasons, I can imagine these things starting to turn up on the streets of the Williamsburg (and other ghettos of hip) in 2009, just as black horn rim glasses did 10 years ago.  For the rest of us (those of us old enough to remember), making a call with these huge ancient headsets is somehow strangely reassuring.

Yep. I like this thing - both for the sheer comfort and clunkiness of it, as well as for the juxtaposition of vintage design and current technology - there are even Bluetooth and USB versions available.

Who knows, if my AT&T voice coverage ever improves enough to make it worthwhile, I might just get a Bluetooth handset for my iPhone…

As nice as the device is (and the more I use it, the more I like it), I’ve again found myself once again with a few thoughts on what could make the iPhone even better…

a (ahem) better network In a previous life, I wrote a fair amount of music for television commercials.  Once I was called back to do some alterations on a spot for an aerosol carpet deodorizer because of changes required by legal at the ad agency - in the commercial, the effectiveness of the product was illustrated using a (somewhat silly) ‘odor-smelling wand’ prop.  However, it was discovered that the number of (entirely fake) beeps coming from the prop didn’t accurately match the (entirely real) numbers coming from the focus group, so the spot needed to be reedited – such is the attention paid to truth in advertising and potential litigation.    How then does Apple get away with showing 3G web pages loading this quickly in their iPhone 3G ads?  (I mean, whose little blue Safari browser bar moves across that quickly?)

Good old-fashioned voice coverage is even more of an issue, though - I (along with an informal sampling of my fellow NYC iPhone users) are still occasionally suffering from the AT&T dropped call syndrome, and what’s worse is that despite having all the latest firmware upgrades, I still have to stand in the far corner of my living room to get enough bars to make a phone call from my apartment - and this is a 7 minute subway ride from Manhattan (i.e. not exactly the boondocks).   Even in the middle of New York City, coverage can be spotty:  I recently stood on the corner of 14th St. and University Place (Union Sq.) and had no voice service whatsoever (incredibly, I had to walk west along 14th St. past 5th Ave. before I had any bars).  The AT&T cell network needs some work, at least in the New York City area.

system-wide ‘undo’ It’s a little surprising the iPhone is missing a global ‘undo’ command at the operating system level, but I’m guessing it’s the result of a conscious design decision to keep the iPhone OS as lean and mean as possible (in computer science terms, a global undo requires a certain degree of ’statefulness’, but the iPhone is largely a stateless device).   However, as iPhone Apps get more interesting and powerful, the lack of an ‘undo’ command is only going to become more of an issue (and meanwhile, what if you delete an SMS conversation by mistake?)
One cute idea would be to leverage the iPhone’s onboard accelerometer (which makes how the device itself is held a user input for flipping the display axis and for certain games) - because a rapid physical shaking of the iPhone would make a neat ‘undo’ command, wouldn’t it?  (reminding us all of our childhood Etch-a-Sketch…)

system-wide text ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ Again, a pretty basic function, but one the iPhone doesn’t support.  Here’s a great mockup of how this could work – from vimeo, a video sharing site I like a lot.

axis flipping for the mail app Again, back to the accelerometer – I get a fair amount of HTML emails. While the iPhone does a good job displaying them, it would be nice to be able to hold the device lengthwise and view what are essential web pages with the wider horizontal aspect ratio - as I’m already able to do with the browser, camera roll, and video player apps (and since the functionality is already in place for those apps, it would be very easy to implement).

In general, though, while the AT&T network is a disappointment, the device itself certainly is not – and recent sales figures reflect just how popular the iPhone has become: during the last quarter, Apple sold 6.9 million units, more than were sold during all previous quarters combined. In fact, over the last quarter, the iPhone sold more than any other mobile device (smart phone or not), beating out both the (often free) Motorola Razr in the consumer space and the RIM Blackberry line in the enterprise space.  Further evidence of the iPhone’s success can be found reading between the lines of a recent blog post from a Microsoft blogger concerning the new Office 2008 web apps and cross-platform cloud computing – iPhone compatibility is given top billing, over even Mac OS compatibility.

So the iPhone is a hit - as a believer in the importance of good product design, I’m glad to see it.

The AT&T network, though, remains a work in progress - at least in our neck of the woods.

Who knew? Porn on the New York subway. But then again, wasn’t it inevitable?

The place: A crowded afternoon N train from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The culprit: a Sony PlayStation Portable held by a young man sitting and watching in solitude, yet surrounded by plenty other strap hangers trying to get home.

What exactly happened here?

The first thing that got me was the audacity of it. With his PSP packed with genuine XXX fodder, simply put, what he was watching was nothing short of hard core pornographic visual certainly not intended for public transportation.

The next thing I noticed, no one seemed to pay attention. Hence - at least for the duration of my ride - no one seemed to mind.

What about the woman next to him, seemingly asleep? Another nearby busied herself reading, of all things, scripture. There were plenty  of other men and woman immediately around us while others got on and off the train.

Now, I know New York subway commuters have long learned to mind their own business.

But the video that unfolded in front of all of us (the sound was muted) clearly lowered the bar on anyone’s standard of privacy; clearly was so out of the ordinary that for its mere ostentatiousness, I figured someone would have to bring it up.

Above and beyond my own discontent about the young man’s obvious lack of social skills, I quickly found myself rather intrigued by something else in this - the apparent disconnect between device and audience.

What used to be a consumer video experience “curbed” by the lack of technology’s reach, a TV set and a VCR simply didn’t lend itself to any practical use in full public view.

This kept anyone’s viewing choice a private matter. No matter how sexual, violent, or mundane the footage was, consumption and intent remained locked inside the home.

Fast forward, today’s “anytime anywhere” video consumption capabilities have changed the playing field. The new paradigm: Anyone’s personal video experience is super-portable, devoid of any particular time, place, and for that matter choice of companion viewers.

Think about it.

Sprint Nextel recently started delivering WiMAX-enabled wireless broadband service powerful enough to give you downlink speeds of 25 Mbps or more while driving down the highway.

Essentially an open pipe into and out of the World Wide Web, it’s going to be interesting to see what passing cars are watching in the back seats once content is no longer limited to wholesome satellite subscription services or Disney DVDs brought along for the kids.

And what about in-flight Web access, such as the service recently announced by American Airlines for select domestic trips?

No matter whether on a highway, on an airplane or inside a subway car in New York, what’s OK for the person to the left of you might be unacceptable to the one on the right.

Clearly, with the pervasive nature of digital content and enabling delivery devices, the meaning of “privacy” is undergoing change.

As to my personal opinion, I am in favor of self-regulating one’s public conduct. Anything beyond that might quickly collide with core principles such as net neutrality or freedom of speech.

Still, our old-world definition of privacy seems to be changing as more of our new world trends towards digital and portable at once.

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.

I’ve been thinking lately about how business issues (the shifting landscape of allegiances between companies) affects what (and when) technologies become available.

Not for nuthin’ (as they say here in New York) - here are a few thoughts…

no Flash on iPhone’s Safari browser
I think Adobe would be more than happy to write an iPhone Safari Flash player, but Apple is probably hoping the growing number of iPhone users will drive wider adoption of their Quicktime platform for streaming.  More on that here.

no Hulu-iPhone app
OK, so no Flash - but at least we get a bundled YouTube iPhone App that streams via QuickTime - because despite YouTube’s parent Google being behind the competing android smartphone platform, the two companies get along quite well, thank you (witness the iPhone’s rock solid gmail support).   Why not, then, a similar Flash-workaround Hulu iPhone App?  I imagine Hulu would love to see the swelling ranks of iPhone owners use their service (batteries permitting),  but don’t hold your breath: AT&T would have a major problem with that, because of the additonal bandwidth required (the average Hulu program is a lot longer than the average YouTube snippet).  This, by the way, is also the reason you won’t see an approved iPhone App any time soon allowing you to use the camera to shoot rudimentary video - as cool as that would be, AT&T doesn’t want us emailing anything that big around…  (although ‘jailbroken’ apps are out there if you’re brave and/or foolhardy enough to go off the Apple reservation and unlock the thing).

no Disney/Pixar content on Amazon’s ‘Video on Demand’ service
As a result of selling Pixar to Disney in 2004, Steve Jobs became Disney’s largest individual stockholder, and was given a seat on the Disney board.  iTunes video (via Apple TV) happens to compete directly with Amazon Video on Demand (via TiVo and the Sony Bravia).  Although Jobs has described Apple TV as nothing more than a ‘hobby’, could Apple have influenced Disney/Pixar not to play ball with such a direct internet video competitor?

no NBC/Universal content on Sony’s ‘Video Store’ service
NBC/Universal is the only major studio absent from the recently launched Sony Video Store service - since NBC is partnered with Microsoft on MSNBC, could NBC be a little reluctant to sign a deal with Microsoft’s game console arch rival Sony?

I’m just sayin’….

I always considered those 3rd party rubberized iPhone protector/sheaths too bulky and ugly: an almost complete negation of the sleek Apple design (something like the pocket protector for the 21st century).   Then I discovered that although you have some leeway dropping your new iPhone onto a linoleum or wood floor (having thoroughly tested out both scenarios within just the first few weeks of ownership), if dropped even one or two feet onto a completely non-yielding surface such as a sidewalk or tiled airline terminal floor, that glass screen is gone, son: a spider web of cracks.

The real cost of the iPhone is heavily subsidized by the service plan contract, so it’s easy to forget just how expensive these things are (check out the price of an ‘unlocked’ iPhone 3G on eBay).  Just repairing the glass alone is a $250 trip to the Apple store, but I was resolved to repair it as inexpensively as possible.  Not surprisingly, there’s a healthy online iPhone 3G parts market out there already, and several days later I had my new glass panel/digitizer and was searching for directions as to how to open the thing up and do the repair.

A few things: on a hardware level, the iPhone turns out to be very conscientiously designed, well-machined, and solidly built – if you’ve ever opened up a computer or two, physically it’s more like a Sony in there than a Dell (which is gratifying, given the price).  Secondly, the replacement process is a considerably more involved than the parts sellers would have you believe: at one point you’ll be holding your wife’s hair dryer on the broken glass/digitizer, trying to melt some very tenacious adhesive just enough to be able to pry it off its fragile plastic bracket.

That moment with the hair dryer was the low point, when I was convinced I’d end up at the Apple store with a handful of iPhone parts in a bag, prepared for the full scorn of the Geniuses in return for a rescue.   But I pressed on, and after some mistakes on my part involving the placement of some impossible tiny and fragile ribbon cables and a bit of poor “glue-control”, I finally just about had the thing back together.  As I put the last microscopic screw in, I calculated there were at least five ways in which I might have irrevocably broken something, but lo and behold… my iPhone came right back to life!

That the phone worked perfectly when I was done with it wasn’t the strangest thing, though: earlier on, with the glass and LCD screen removed and everything in pieces spread out on the dinning room table, I happened to get a call, and the phone rang!  It was a little creepy, actually - like a chicken with its head cut off, or maybe something out of a Stephen King story: “The Smartphone That Would Not Die”.

In an action aimed directly at the iPhone (which now accounts for almost 39% of Apple profits vs. only 30% for all Macs), the EU is now considering requiring that all mobile devices allow easy user battery replacement, but expect Apple to fight the major hardware redesign that would entail.  In the meantime, while it’s gratifying that it worked and it’s nice to know the device is so solidly constructed, I would *not* recommend opening up your iPhone.

Unless you’re the type that builds ship models inside bottles in your spare time, that is…

Does the world need another blog post on the iPhone?  I’m gonna go with ‘probably not’ – but as in most big cities where a car culture doesn’t hold sway, we’re all about our mobile devices here in New York – it’s something to do on the trains we ride and the streets we walk, so maybe our smartphones matter a little more to us here.  With that in mind, here’s the first of a few posts on some thoughts I’ve had about my “leetle friend”…

1. no adobe flash
And don’t expect it anytime soon.  While I’m sure Adobe would be happy to whip up an iPhone/Safari-optimized Flash Player, it think Apple would rather sit back and see if the iPhone can’t instead help drive more adoption of their QuickTime platform for video streaming .  Although Adobe’s Flash is the ubiquitous video streaming browser plug-in, Apple’s Quicktime does a perfectly credible job of streaming video content in the open MPEG-4 format (witness the Quicktime-based youtube iPhone App).
If that’s Apple’s strategy, it appears to be working - content providers are coming around: hit the NBC.com site from your iPhone, navigate to a show, and you now can stream episodes in MPEG-4/Quicktime - despite NBC (along with Fox/Paramount) happening to also be behind the well-received (and Flash-based) Hulu initiative (on a wifi network, the experience is pretty impressive).

But speaking of streaming…

2. no streaming (or over-the-air 3G sync) of audio podcasts
While there are a few nice iPhone IP radio apps out there (Pandora and Flycast come to mind), what about podcasts?  With this shiny new 3G network we’re paying for, it’s a little disappointing to have to wait until getting back to the mothership (i.e. a computer runnning iTunes) to sync up and get the newest ones.

Streaming and/or syncing podcasts via 3G would be a Cool Thing (I’m never satisfied).

However, as is often the case when a seemingly obvious (and perfectly technically possible) idea remains unimplemented, dig a little deeper and you’ll find a business-side issue:  in this case, it involves AT&T - my guess is we’re just all on the internet with our 3G iPhones a lot more than they had planned on, so they’ve been caught a bit unawares… (take one exceptionally well-designed mobile device, put it on one speedy all-you-can-eat data plan, add water, and stand back…)

But there is at least one alternative:  Podspew, a website that AT&T and Apple can’t be too happy about.  While it won’t sync podcasts onto the iPhone itself, what it wilI do is convert a good selection of popular podcasts to simple MPEG-4 web links that the iPhone can then stream via Safari and Quicktime (totally subverting Apple’s podcast model, come to think of it).  It works well and is worth checking out (until they get that cease-and-desist letter, that is…)

At any rate, it’s probably obvious by now I’m on the internet a lot with my iPod , walking around and taking the subways here in New York City.   Which brings me to the next issue of battery life, but that has to do with chemistry and electrical engineering rather than with 0’s and 1’s (remember Dell’s pickup truck-destroying laptop? - that was at least as much about pushing the physical battery design envelope as it was about any manufacturing defects – but that’s another story).

Did I mention I love my iPhone?

Just off a subway ride on the 6 line, from 38th street to Time Square.

While on the train and others prior, I notice again and again, people don’t seem any happier since jumping on the consumer gadget band wagon.

Although plugged into countless iPods, Kindles, and Zunes, typing into Blackberries, and watching videos on PSPs and iPhones, if New York subway riders are at all indicative of the larger mass - despite all our digital consumer innovation might - it just doesn’t seem to have made anyone genuinely more content compared to, let’s say, reading the newspaper or a hard cover book (as many might have in the past).

If that’s true, what user experience element is it that our consumer digital technology industry keeps ignoring?

Asking the experts might help.

Just back from this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in New York, Intel’s Director of User Experience, Genevieve Bell, gave a purposely simple but rather powerful talk about the art of truly matching our every day lives with the appropriate digital technology.

Amazing how different a role consumer digital innovation plays depending on where you go around the globe.

Back to the us, the New York subway, in all fairness, the news these days must add to anyone’s level of discomfort. I concur.

From political battles and hurricanes, to mortgage woes and banks collapsing, OK, so maybe there’s good reason to stay somewhat bleak and subdued while hasting from one hectic place in Manhattan to another, never quite “catching up”.

Still, isn’t it exactly right here where the US consumer electronics market is making substantial money? In large cities like New York, rich with affluent first adopters and technology aficionados looking to buy into personal devices designed to make it all easier, more bearable, dare I say it - more fun!

Looks to me, mission yet to be accomplished.

Off I go, my Blackberry in hand, trying to catch the next train out.

I’m not easily excited by gadgets-of-the-future, but this is potentially pretty cool - Intel is working on wireless recharging for mobile devices.

Imagine not having that ‘wall wart’ AC adapter/recharger for each of our laptops, cell phones, and PDAs - and imagine if a cross-platform standard was developed, such that you could buy a ‘recharging-enabled’ coffee table or desk pad that would recharge the battery of any compatible mobile device within range: in other words, just set your smart phone down on your desk (or work on your laptop) and they’re recharged! (of course the mobile device would have to announce its particular electrical requirements in terms of good old volts and amps, but that seems workable…)

Until the current smartphone boom we find ourselves in started up, the telcos and cell phone manufacturers had been struggling to find compelling reasons for you to re-up on a new phone - while better cameras, infrared data sharing, and music download partnerships all fell short, maybe 4-5 years out, *this* could the next big reason to upgrade… (that is, once we’re all bored with email, web browsing, and GPS)!