AirMail

Once in a while I shamelessly promote a product so consider this post a shameless plug for the select few of you out there who can actually afford to get your hot hands on one of those new MacBook Air in a couple of weeks (me not included I’m on a gadget fast ). So to go with your nice shiny new MacBook Air for $29.95 more you can get your hands on a handmade AirMail. The AirMail is a handmade case for the MacBook Air that looks like one of those inter-office manilla folders. It even has a red string closure just like the real thing. I actually saw a blue inter-office folder today and thought it would be cool if they made it in blue with little stripes on it. BTW I will not in anyway benefit from the sales of any of the aforementioned products I think if you have enough money to blow on a MB Air why not blow a little more on the case and help some newbies out.

Reaction to the Macworld ‘08 Keynote

So yesterday was the big Steve Jobs Keynote speech and as always I was at work at the time and had to follow along via several live blogs during my lunch hour. After coming home and watching the keynote last night, I must say that I enjoyed Steve Job’s performance. He’s an excellent presenter and really gets excited about the content. I have a thing or two to learn there. The content however, was not much of a surprise. There were more than a few predictions and some leaks on the Mac blogs that I frequent so the whole icons shaking thing with the iPhone release and new features in maps were no big surprise at all. Worst of all the very name MacBook Air made it out of Cupertino although I wasn’t quite expecting a laptop that would fit in one of those brown inter-office envelopes… I was quite blown away when he took it out of the envelope.. I was shocked at the price a bit, the 1.6 GHz machine starts at $1799 and the 1.8 GHz machine starts at $3,098. A bit too steep IMHO. My major gripe though is that current iPod touch owners have to pay $20 to get the extra apps that Apple will be including on newly shipped units. Seems to me that they ought to get this for free for being early adopters and all. BTW the movie rentals were long predicted and currently there is not much in the store to rent. Most of the movies I haven’t seen has buy and no rental button there. I noticed all of those movies are distributed by Paramount, I thought Apple had all the major studios on board what’s up with that?

Bob Marley on my iPhone

So back in early November a bad thing happened This has been the year for not so nice things happening to me, first I had to spend lots of money fixing my car on my birthday and early November I was using my iPhone and it went all green and funky and hot on me and just died Now where I live we don’t have an official Apple store and the closest one is like over an hour away so I had to do the mail shuffling thing. I called Apple up the next day after said iPhone went green and they told me that they were sending a box for it, problem was that I was going on a conference and by the time they sent it I was between here and Vermont. I wasn’t happy here I was going out of town and my iPhone was not working. It would turn on one minute with a greenish tint to everything, get hot, and just die. Anyway, when I got back I figured out that my neighbor had signed for my package which I gladly retrieved and opened. It had a loaner iPhone (which switched out gladly with my old funky one), the box also contained some handy instructions for shipping your old iPhone and some tape to help re-seal the various boxes. Nice touch! A few minutes later I had the loaner all plugged in and was able to transfer my data and authorize the loaner for use. The loaner worked fine and I had it for a few days before I finally got back a new iPhone from Apple. Apparently, my old iPhone could not be replaced (no surprise there). Anyway, I did the FedEx thing again and while there, this employee at the Fed-Ex wanted to know what was in the little box. Apparently, they were getting quite a lot of these little boxes of late. After telling him that it was an iPhone he had all kinds of questions about it and wanted to know if I liked it or not. I told him I was liking it very much until the day my last one died on me.
The replacement experience was not too bad and I wasn’t charged that dreaded $29 fee but I thought that for those folks without an Apple store nearby its a bit of a hassle if something goes wrong with the phone. I think that Apple should have its customers without an Apple store within a certain distance just return broken iPhones to our local AT&T stores. This just makes more sense to me than dealing with FedEx and all the waiting. I’m thinking that the average iPhone owner has a day job so dealing with FedEx is not the most convenient approach. My “new” iPhone seems to be working just fine now and the only thing that is really green on it now is the Bob Marley iPhone Wall. I do notice a greenish tint in the photos taken by the camera especially in low light settings but really I wasn’t expecting very much from the camera just glad I can use my phone and ipod again.

Boy does this new iPod Nano look familiar…

Its September 5th and those of us in the Apple camp were expecting some big announcement by our favorite company. After reading through a few proposals at work I decided to take a break and log on to Engadget and TUAW to see what went down. I expected an iPod that looked like the iPhone I really did so I was happy to see the iPod touch. I also was looking for a larger screen Nano of some sort but when I saw the new nano I almost fainted coz it looked like the thing that I saw in my dream. I had this silly dream a few weeks ago that I went into a department store and found this weird looking iPod like thing. It was short and stubby just like the new Nano and had the same color as the silver/white one. I can’t believe the similarity to the thing in my dream I’m seriously weirded out right now but anyway there it was/ here it is in living color. I was planning on getting a new iPod w/out the phone but now that the price of the 8GB iPhone had been reduced to $399 (same price as the 16GB iPod touch) I’m seriously considering getting an iPhone instead. I am wondering if I should hold out for the 16GB iPhone though. I just might. I figured I got rewarded once by not plunging into the iPhone market early so maybe I’ll be rewarded once more if a wait a little longer. I do feel sorry for folks that has gone out and bought the old 4GB iPhone though. Here is some advice if you find yourself in that boat.

Got my hands on one… but did not get one

I was forced to go to the my local AT&T store today because I was trying to refill my prepaid account and the #9 key on my clunky Nokia phone stopped working for no reason I can think of. Its not like I dialed a bunch of 9s with this phone or anything but for some reason I’ve been having trouble with the number 9 key. Anyway, since I could not do much of anything with the phone I took it in. Whilst there I noticed that they finally had an iPhone display so I went over and decided to tinker with it. There was a guy standing next to me who apparently designs UIs for cell phones and he was taking a good look at the iPhone and admiring the interface. He was fascinated with the phone feature and said that he loved it but could not justify the purchase because all he really would use it for is the phone feature. Her said he wish there was one that just did phone for like $200 or so. I told him that he might get his wish in the near future coz I heard a rumor that Apple was cooking up something along those lines. Anyway, I started playing around with the iPhone a little and I have to tell you I was so nervous I actually dropped the demo unit… good thing that it was attached and did not drop to the floor. Remembering some of the stress tests I saw I wasn’t about to worry. My hands were shaking I just couldn’t help it. Anyway, I remember being wowed by the screen it was so crisp and clear. I fired up the video and was watching an episode of Lost. I wish that I had one of these things when my Mom came to visit this past week and wanted to watch movies. I could have handed it to her instead of disturbing my downstairs neighbors. After a few more minutes of playing with it I went back to what I came there for- to get a new phone. I decided that I could not afford an iPhone at that point no matter how nice it was but I didn’t want a phone that was too expensive either so I could at least save up for the big day when I got an iPhone ( hopefully by then the trim down 2nd gen $200 model or whatever). Anyway, I chose this Sony Erickson flip phone and realized later that my Boss had the same phone. It didn’t bother me any and I decided to take that one and fill it up with some minutes. While I was waiting for the sales person this young man and his Dad came in to return their iPhone b/c apparently they could not get it to activate. I wanted to help them having read all the blogs about activation issues but thought better of it and decided to mind my own business and go home. Ignoring the pounding in my chest I kept my tips to myself and left after paying for my new cell phone with this big smirk on my face.

iPhone Stress Test: What Happens if you dropped this thing on the sidewalk?

PC World has this interesting vide where they put the iPhone through a series of scratch tests and drop tests. I have to say that it was painful to watch them do this to the little iPhone they actually took a key and ran it across the screen of the iPhone as well ad dropped it on the concrete more than a few times. To see the results check out the video. Its not for the faint of heart especially if you own one but a good video nonetheless.

For the Price of a new Mac Mini…

My curiosity got the best of me this afternoon and I found myself wandering into the local AT&T store to check out the iPhone. The first thing I noticed was all the iPhone accessories they had a whole rotating rack full of goodies. I was waiting on the rep who was helping another customer and since I was in no hurry I took a quick look around the store to see if I could espy the object that got me there in the first place. I noticed that there was no demo model on the floor but being that this is the iPhone I thought the reps had stashed it in a secret place and can whip one out at any moment. No such luck. The rep informed me that they didn’t have a demo model and won’t be getting one until sometime next week. You see that was the main purpose of me going there in the first place to have a look at the demo and play with it a little before I even think of plopping down any hard earned dollars which I didn’t have to plop down anyway but I was determined to go check it out for myself and see what all the big to do is about. Anyway I asked the rep a few more questions and I was informed that if I was a go-phone customer that they would transfer my number and all that without charging any activation fee so all I would have to do is plop down money for the phone itself. So I walk in, pay $599 plus tax and take the device home (assuming they had one in stock) end of story. So that’s $599 plus 8% tax which come out to $646.92. Interesting that an entry level Intel Mac Mini costs the same if I ordered it from Apple and ~ $46 less if I order it locally with my Alumni discount. So for the price of a Mac Mini I can have a phone that connects to the internet and allows me to play video and audio… I still think that its a bit steep a price to pay and still plan on waiting until all the hype calms down and they release generation 2. BTW the iPhones were sold out yesterday and they got another shipment in that was sold out again by the time I got there today so that 2-4 weeks waiting time on the Apple store makes a lot of sense.

Checking Up on the AT&T Line

So today is i-Day or iPhone Day if you want to call it that. After work I went to check to see if there was a line at the nearest AT&T store. I drove all the way across town and swung around the little mall and noticed a line was starting to form. There was some blue tape on the side walk of the store indicating where the line should be formed and all looked quite orderly and quiet. I should have snapped a picture but forgot my camera. One thing that I noticed was that most of the folks standing in line were young and was wearing black at least the ones in the front of the line were wearing black. I decided to swing the car around and go home coz as it was just 5PM I wasn’t about to wait in line for an hour for a phone that I’m not prepared to purchase. Its not that I don’t want to eventually get an iPhone its just (1) I’m waiting on revision 2 when some of the initial bugs have been worked out and (2) It will cost me $ 600 for the phone (no point getting the 4GB model if the OS takes up 700+ MB), the cost of a 2-year contract plus $36 activation fee + tax. I can get get a Macbook Pro (which I need more) for the sticker shock. So… I looked at all the young folks waiting in line and swung my car around and moved on. Sucks to be a responsible grown-up sometimes huh! I didn’t check the other store to see what the line was like there. Tomorrow I’ll go to the store again to play around with one at least. Not buying just checking to see if I want to add it to my birthday list. I got my first iPod by having my friends chip in… Will see if this is what I want to do for next birthday or not.

Apple’s Laptop Tech Support Ratings 2007

Last year laptop mag rated Apple’s tech support at the top of the heap this year not much has changed. Apple’s laptop tech support still received an A grade. The only other vendor that also received an A was Gateway. I’m glad for that because I recommended one of those to a friend of mine (she didn’t want a Mac so I could not force her). Nice to know that the tech support at Apple is still one of the best… so when I consider getting a Macbook later this year I know I’ll be in good hands if any problems should crop up.

Finally a Date

No I didn’t finally get a date but the iphone has finally got a release date of June 29th according to the new iphone ads. Strange that June 29th happens to be the same day that prints for my major project is due so no calling in sick for me. I wouldn’t do that over a piece of gadget anyway. I’m sure there will be plenty for all of us. Funny today I came across an iphone case from some company called Case-Mate whilst browsing through the latest copy of Macworld magazine. Anyway, I liked the third commercial the best affectionately, titled “calamari.” I have to admit that after seeing Pirates of the Caribbean 3 last weekend I had a craving for seafood all of a sudden. What is with that? I got a kick out of the commercial though apparently I’m not the only one that this happens to. In my case though its probably not too fair coz seafood is like the only meat that I can digest properly thus the only meat that I eat. Other than that its vegetables and tofu lots of tofu. Nice to see that the suspense is over maybe now the blogs will calm down until after the phone is actually out and folks have gotten their hands on them. If I get one at all it will probably be release 2. While watching these adds it was really eerie to think that a lot of the features of the upcoming Microsoft surface will be in the palm of your hand. Its like Microsoft took the iphone made it 30″ and mounted it in a table (Check out this photo).