Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of anything..

And now for something completely different…A Car Stereo Review

by

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated.  I’ve just not had the desire to write too much about technology.  I was thinking about writing about my switch from Android to the iPhone 5, and I said “Naa, people see those all the time.”  And I’ve been having a fairly boring life technologically speaking, so I didn’t want to write about upgrading a lab, or using MDM systems.  Oddly enough, this review has nothing to do with computers, but my car.

My 2005 Mazda3 does not have the flip-up GPS option installed so I’ve been using my phones as GPS units.  I have a mount and a really kick ass bluetooth FM transmitter that’s worked so well for me, I bought one for my mother to use in her car and she loves it.  The sound quality is excellent and the mic is very clear.  Overall I was happy with it.  The mount was good, but often fell while driving which can be fun of course, and the bluetooth unit was obtrusive at times (they have a smaller one that doesn’t have the arm, but they didn’t have that when I bought it).

I decided to start looking at stand-alone GPS units, mainly because I didn’t want to rely on cellular data for navigation.  It became a problem while driving through Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh for work, and often while I’m working in the burbs I lose cell coverage and can’t navigate.  I was looking for units with lifetime map updates and traffic with a large enough screen to see easily.  The ones I really looked at would be between $150 and $200.  I didn’t want to drop $200 on a standalone GPS that I won’t use enough to justify the cost…plus I really didn’t want to have more wires and devices hanging around the car.  So I began thinking about in-dash units…

I was doing a lot of looking online for factory units, but those require so much altering and even then my car would probably not be able to use it without changing a lot of electronics, so that was out.  I went to look at fold-out LCD 1-DIN units, and in-dash 2-DIN units, but the cost on these are so high (the best price I saw was $700 plus the dash kit!) While these dash units are good brands and would probably be very nice, I didn’t have $700+ to drop on a unit.

After visiting some forums and even looking on eBay I came across a unit from a company called Eonon. The unit I saw was $270..still a bit much, but it was an entire stereo replacement with a 7-inch screen.  I read reviews and found that users were relatively happy but some of the weird issues put me off.  I decided to let it sit for a while and just continued with my phone.

A few weeks ago I found that Eonon released a newer updated unit for the Mazda3, and a forum I frequent was having a group buy.  After reading the reviews of the new unit being FAR etter than the old unit, and almost every user was happy I decided to bite the bullet and buy one.  Of course I was very hesitant to buy from some company in Hong Kong that I never heard of with a device running Windows CE 6.0, but I took a chance..besides, it comes with a 2-year warranty.

After a few days I received the unit (really fast, from HK!) in a really nicely packaged box.  First impressions: the build quality of the unit is pretty good!  It looks like it could be a factory unit, the buttons feel pretty nice, the screen is big, the knobs are solid, it just looks petty nice!

Eonon D5151 Out of Box

Eonon D5151 Out of Box

Looks 9/10

The D5151 looks really good in the car, it really looks like a factory unit.  The screen is not bad, in bright light it’s definitely difficult to see, but I’ve had similar experience in a Prius so I wouldn’t fault it too much.  You can chance the boot logos, backgrounds, and the LCD colors to help customize it.  The buttons are a little flimsier than the stock stereo, so I took a point off for that.

Stock on Left, Eonon on Right

Stock on Left, Eonon on Right

Radio (6.5/10)

The stereo is of course the base of the D5151.  The radio interface is far better than the old one, it’s easy to read and easy to use.

Radio Interface

Radio Interface

The sound from the stereo is pretty good; however, I did find some issues with it.  When you set a preset (say I set 93.3 on #1 and 104.5 on #2) it will play whatever preset you’re on just fine.  Oddly enough, when you switch to another preset for some reason the numbers that show what station you’re on (in the center of the stereo) will stay on the first preset.  Seems to be a small software bug that hopefully can be fixed.  The radio does play whatever station you’re tuned to just fine, it just shows a different number.  It’s not as bothersome since I use my steering wheel controls and don’t look at the screen much anyway, but it’s still an odd problem.

The second issue I found with the stereo is that the tuner seems to be either really sensitive, or really crappy.  I normally get perfect signal with the stock radio, and this one gets the same quality most times, but while driving I’ve noticed the signal dipping in and out randomly.  Not sure if this is hardware related or software related..but it’s a bit annoying so hopefully that can be fixed.

Finally, after some time the radio has some random pops, not very loud and no set pattern, just random clicks or pops.  I have read online that these go away after a bit of a “burn-in” period, so hopefully that is the case.

I have contacted the company regarding all of these issues and will update with any word from them.

Bluetooth/Phone (9.5/10)

I pair my iPhone with my car automatically.  I use it as a phone and for playing music a lot.  The sound quality of the phone calls is really good.  I can hear the person clearly and apparently they hear me very clearly.  Siri even works very well through the mic!  The music streaming is also really good.  I don’t seem to notice any issues with playing music via bluetooth, I wish the screen would show music info while playing, but it just shows a music note on screen.  I can control bluetooth audio via my steering wheel, which is nice, and if a phone call comes in it just rings through the speakers and shows the caller ID on my screen no matter what I’m doing (radio, gps, etc).  It’s really a nice step up from the old bluetooth FM transmitter.  I only took a half-point off because of the lack of music info on screen..nothing major.

Navigation (Stock: 5/10 Upgrade: 9/10)

This section is probably the most important one.  The GPS software that comes with the unit is KudosGPS, and I gotta say, it sucks.  The interface is very Windows 8 looking, which isn’t a problem, but it’s very simple and doesn’t function that well.  It was quick to load, and it did a fairly good job with navigation, but when you turn your car off and turn it back on it completely forgot that you were navigating somewhere and seemed to forget my state and city everytime.  It was only a $30 add-on, but I was very underwhelmed with it.

I decided to install iGo Primo on the unit right away and the difference is amazing.  iGo is really the way to go if you’ve got a Windows CE device and you want a good looking, very nice functioning GPS system with lots of points-of-interest and updated maps. It’s a little slower to load, but it looks WAY better, had many more points-of-interest, and it allows me to add so much to it (like better voices and themes).

iGo Primo GPS

iGo Primo GPS

Overall

I like it.  For under $300, I have a fully functioning touchscreen GPS, in my dash with bluetooth/hands-free capability.  It looks like it’s from the factory, it sounds pretty good for the most part, the GPS (once replaced) works really well, and the installation was a breeze!  Honestly, if they fixed the radio issues and replaced the stock GPS with a better one like I did I would totally say this is a 9/10, but overall with the stock GPS I’m giving it a 7.5/10 (8.5 with the new GPS).

Would I recommend this company to others?  Probably.  I’m going to give the radio a bit to see if any of the audio issues get resolved, I’m also going to see if their customer service gets back to me about anything (I’ve read online of software patches).  I will update as things progress.

First Impressions on Lion Server

by

I haven’t forgotten about the posts on upgrading my servers, I’ve just not had the time to.  I also got extremely delayed with getting the hardware itself.  Let me just give some first impressions on Lion server and the new hardware.

Hardware

The Mac Mini servers are very fast, quiet, and easy to store of course.  The Promise Pegasus is a great piece of hardware also.  Six SATA drives in a box smaller than a mini tower with a single cable for data.  Setting up the hardware was so simple it’s only one sentence: Take out of box, configure, plug in Promise, done.

Software

Now on to the bad part; Lion Server.  I like Lion as s desktop, I haven’t had any issues with it thus far, but I really dislike Lion Server.  Initial server setup was also very simple; it asks a few questions, configures some services for you, and you’re done.  After it drops you into the desktop, you’re on your own.  So manage the server in the past you had a few tools; Server Admin, the main config GUI for all services; Workgroup Manager, to configure users and computers on the network; and Server Monitor, a simple monitoring tool that gives you the server status at a glance.  Lion includes those tools with the addition of one more: Server.  Server is basically what separates Lion desktop from Lion Server, one single app to “control” the services.  This sounds great, but wasn’t that what Server Admin was for?  Yes..it was.  But now Apple decided that they wanted to make things more difficult and separate configurations into two programs, one of which (Server) is stupidly over simplified.

Server vs Server Admin

Server is basically a simplified version of Server Admin.  When I say simplified I mean VERY simplified.

Looks good, but wait until you go in more...

Now, compare that to the old Server Admin overview shown below.

Looks similar....but...

Now these two look like they give relatively the same information, right?  It tells you everything you need to know about the sevrer at a glance.  If you notice that on Server you have a lot more items on the sidebar though, and Server Admin has very little.  This is because Server Admin allows you to select what you want shown, so out of the many options (there are 11 total) I only need to show those 3; however, out of those 11, only 2 are available in Server also (Mail and Podcast Producer).  Why is this a problem?  Server Admin allows you to really edit lots of different settings with your services, it also allows you to edit more advanced services (DHCP, NAT, DNS).  Server allows you to edit the most used services (file sharing and web) but they are VERY limited in what you can edit.

For example, editing file sharing on anything other than 10.7 looked like this in Server Admin before:

10.5 File Sharing

This window gave you everything you needed to set up proper file sharing with users, home directories, NFS, FTP, SMB, AFP, and a bunch of other things.  It gives you great control over your network file system and user access.  This is what you get with Server:

10.7 File Sharing Configuration

That’s it.  Those are your settings you can edit. Notice the lack of FTP and NFS…as well as lack of a REAL permissions editor.  This is totally unacceptable in a server environment.  NFS is still there (it gets enabled when you use NetBoot) but where is FTP?  it’s not in Server or Server Admin.  Well, Apple decided FTP isn’t needed really, and basically removed it.  Let me rephrase, they didn’t REMOVE it completely, it’s hidden.  Apple’s basic FTP server is still there, but there are not settings in GUI for it at all, it’s all command based now, and to enable it you have to type this command in terminal.

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

Now, on a server, that’s pretty ridiculous, especially since FTP config was easy and clean in pervious versions of OS X Server.  To get around using the basic FTP, which has limited functionality, I decided to install a third-party server.  I will make another post on how I accomplished this and about the frustrations I had with it.  Long story short, went with PureFTP.

My frustrations with LDAP also came back.  I’m not sure if it’s an issue with our old LDAP database or setup, but I simply couldn’t restore the server LDAP backup for the life of me.  I tried several different methods but nothing worked.  I ended up exporting user data (without the passwords) to the new server using Workgroup manager.  This worked fine, but I lost every password. I was upset with this, but I knew it was the best method to try to get the LDAP working normally again (I constantly have trouble with the old LDAP server due to corruption…so this hopefully would fix that).  The user editing in Server is horrible.  It’s way too simplified, and doesn’t allow much configuration..thankfully, you can use Workgroup manager still.

After setting up a new image and setting shares for home directories and resetting passwords, I tested our lab with home directories and logins and SUCCESS!  It all worked!  So now the network accounts are faster, and the LDAP seems to be working fine now.

Moral: Lion Server sucks compared to older versions.

I’ll be updating again on how I got PureFTP installed on the server and configure it for LDAP.  I’ll also go over how I got SFTP working with users jailed to their home directories….but breaking AFP, then fixing it again.

A Long Overdue Thunderbolt Review-type-thing

by

Two months ago I said I would write something about the Thunderbolt..it was only supposed to be about two weeks but life happens I suppose.  Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to cave-in and buy the thing but I found a coupon for $50 off and thought, “well, this might be good!”  I bought the phone only a few weeks after I decided to root my original DROID (which from now on will be referred to as OG, Original Gangsta) and install cyanogenmod 7.  Being the happy owner of one of the best Android phones to ever come out I had high hopes for what was supposed to be Verizon’s new super flagship phone as well as the first phone to use their 4G LTE network.  What I got from it was a mixed set of feelings that make me miss my OG sometimes.

Let me get this out of the way first, I like this phone a lot.  It’s a great device, it’s fast, it’s sexy, it’s big..but it’s not perfect…far from it, and most of the reason is due to the crap software that is on it…let me explain.

The UI and Software

My OG ran stock vanilla Android (what devs call AOSP: Android Open Source Project). This basically means it’s the bare Android OS with no added UI tweaks and no added bloatware crap (with exception to some Verizon apps).  This is the best way to run Android for the most part because it’s not using the CPU or RAM to run some fancy/ugly user interface over top of it, it’s not going to have built-in apps syncing crap in the background, it’s just plain ol’ vanilla ice cream (and I like vanilla ice cream).  And it works!  It doesn’t waste CPU (meaning it’s faster) and it doesn’t background sync unnecessary apps constantly (meaning battery savings) unless you install them.  But of course, HTC and other companies want to change it to suit their own phones and needs.

Stock Android Screenshot from N1

This is a Screenshot from a Nexus 1 running AOSP 2.2

Now, the Thunderbolt (as with many HTC phones) doesn’t do AOSP Android, they use Sense UI, it’s their own user interface which they designed to put on mobile devices for a “sleek” and “unified” look.

HTC Sense UI Screenshot

This is Sense UI

While some people like the look (which I don’t think is terrible mind you) and the feel, I don’t like it, I hate it.  There are several reasons I hate it actually the first and most important being that it’s clunky and slow to respond VERY often; it feels like my OG before I rooted it…this shouldn’t happen on a 1Ghz phone with 700+MB or RAM.  So what I did to “fix” this was install ADW.Launcher and use that as my home app.  It’s faster, and it looks and feels more like a stock phone now.  Second, they package a whole mess of crap in with it; they have a “friendsteam” which gathers your Twitter and Facebook and whatnot into a widget on your screen and displays it and updates it for you; a weather widget (which is actually nice, but i should have a choice to remove it);  and their own Facebook and Twitter syncing built in.  This is stuff I’d like to install on my own and not have running in the background constantly asking me to log in and sync; if I want Twitter and FB, let me install them myself.  They also use their own MMS app which is very slow compared to the AOSP app.

 

You might be thinking, “man, this is cool that it’s all built-in, why are you hating on this?”  Because I like to be able to choose what to have installed on my device.  Because of these built in apps (which mind you, aren’t really apps, they’re more like utilities) I have two Facebook apps, and two Twitter apps and it’s kinda dumb to waste space on stuff like that.  I also find it annoying that they START UP WITH THE DEVICE…even when I DON’T USE THEM.  What a waste of CPU and battery.  Once CM7 is released for the phone (not Alpha-builds) that will be my savior.  Verizon is also guilty of bundling tons of bloatware with this device.  When I received the phone it was PACKED with tons and tons of useless crap..and you can’t remove this stuff!  I’ve written about carriers loading bloatware onto phones before, this shit needs to stop with Android.

The Battery

Smartphones are notorious for having crummy batteries.  My OG was actually pretty great before the last few months of using it.  I used to get over a day with it and I was happy.  When deciding on a new phone every review I read had the same complaint with regard to the Thunderbolt: The battery is terrible.  Now, I’m never far from a power source, and I have around 4 or 5 micro-USB chargers from my older devices and ones that I found around the lab, so this wasn’t too much of an issue for me.  My first day on the phone I got through the entire day of heavy use and texting without it dying, it got to about 5% by midnight (from 8am or so).  The second day, same thing.  On the third day that’s when it ended.  Without using it too much I made it to about 2pm before it started dying on me, I charged it and it was low again by 9pm.  Now I see what the complaints were about.  I tried using task killers to kill unwanted tasks, I synced data less, I lowered brightness, nothing helped.  I read around online and found the best way to get more mileage was to turn off 4G.  I figured, I don’t need 4G all the time, so it’s fine, if I get more battery time out of it this is what needs to be done.  After turning off 4G, I get through the day again.  A few weeks ago an update was released that helped the 4G radio consume less power, so since then I’ve actually been able to leave 4G on and get through most of my day with it…so good on them for fixing that.

The Hardware Itself

This is where the phone really does come out.  This phone has some weight to it (it’s heavier than my OG which was a brick) and it’s got that big bright screen.  The screen makes it so easy to read things on and to watch videos, the rubberized back makes it easy to hold, the weight makes it feel like you’re not going to crush it in your hands.  It is a nice, solid phone.  It’s also fast when you need it to be.  Playing games, running apps, downloading, it just runs fast (especially with ADW.Launcher).  Of course Verizon’s network helps too, I get 4G everywhere in NYC, and the 4G speeds are really good (EVEN INDOORS! Take that WiMax!).  I have plenty of space on the 32GB MicroSD card they give you and on the internal storage (8GB but only about 2.5 are available).  The only complaints I have about the hardware and design: no dedicated camera button, I really miss this, but it’s fairly minor; the bluetooth volume is super low, I’ve read that it only does it with some headsets but my Jabra is so low I cannot use it; and the GPS takes forever to lock on, sometimes 5-10 minutes.  Now, some of this is probably software-based so a fix may be in line (apparently there might be an update in the next month or so to address some of these issues as well as the random reboots caused by the last update) but until that fix is out these problems will remain.

Overall

So to sum this up in a few lines (TL;DR); I really like this phone a lot, it is a great phone by design.  The 1Ghz Snapdragon processor and the large amount of RAM really make this phone fly with apps and games and with Verizon’s 4G it really is a speedy phone in all faces.  However, the phone has many kinks due to some bad software that comes bundled with it and a broken update from HTC.  Most of it’s issues are solely based on the software so hopefully we will see fixes for them in the future.

 

My Experience with an iPad

by

Happy New Years to all!

Now that that’s out of the way I present an update! It’s been a fun 5 months, and I’ve been busy and I really have not had much to write about in with technology ranting or whatever, but I feel the need to actually write something now.  It might be funny to see me write about it because of my February post on the iPad, but I am writing about my experience with my iPad.  Now you might ask “you said you wouldn’t buy one!” Well, I didn’t buy it.  I won it at work back in September (see!).  So after 3-4 months of using it I felt I should write something about it, so here we go.

When I first got it, I was excited (who wouldn’t be) but I found out quickly that I really had no practical use for it.  Everything I would want to do with it on the road (send/read email, calendars, Facebook/Twitter, etc.) I can do on my phone.  And what’s more, I can do those on my phone from ANY location as opposed to anywhere with wifi (this iPad is wifi only).  I began downloading and installing apps and games and found that while a lot of the iPhone versions of apps and games are free, iPad versions aren’t.  I’m cheap, so I don’t buy apps.  A lot of the apps I wanted for the iPad also had free counterparts for Android, so I might as well use my phone instead.

I did find it useful at home when I didn’t want to take out the 17-inch laptop.  I can check Facebook and Twitter without an issue (and the apps are usually better than using my laptop anyway) and watching Youtube videos on the iPad is great actually, much better than the site!  I also use it to play Scrabble with friends.  All of these are just secondary things that are just helping push my laziness even more, nothing totally useful for me at least.  There are two apps I found particularly useful though; VLC and Remote.

Everyone knows VLC (and if you don’t…you SHOULD), it plays any video file on the iPad without having to convert it, and you don’t even need to sync your computer and iPad, you just drag the video into the VLC list in iTunes and it’s done. I found this great to watch downloaded video’s and ripped DVDs while witting around, just put a pair of headphones on and you’re good to go.  I like being able to hand off the iPad to someone to show them Archer or something.

Remote is an iTunes remote control program.  I can control my home desktop iTunes from the iPad from anywhere I get my home wireless signal.  This comes in handy when you want to listen to music while you’re cleaning, or cooking, or in the other room.  You can raise the volume, change and search songs, make palylists, etc.  I also found it can wake a sleeping computer up to connect to the iTunes library.  The only thing is that iTunes needs to be running on the machine for it to work of course, a very minor issue I think.  I found this extremely useful during a party when I just left the iPad out and asked people make playlisst and add whatever they wanted to hear to the list.

So all in all, I do enjoy having the iPad but I still believe that it’s not something I need.  It’s fun, it’s helpful, but for me it’s just not a real replacement for anything just yet.  Maybe when I get a cable provider that utilizes it I will change my mind, but right now, not yet.

TUAW’s iPhone 4.0 Wish List has Some Stupid Wishes

by

Yesterday I came across this post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).  I read through it and couldn’t help but laugh at some of the requests; not just because some are silly but because some phones already do this and iPhone users used to ask, “Why do I need that?!” I felt I should write my opinions on these requests.  Mind you, I have never owned an iPhone, but I’ve witnessed countless people with them and have used them a good deal troubleshooting for people while at work, I also own an Android-powered DROID; just a disclaimer.

Before I even get into the list I come across this

This is the first of a series of letters to Apple on your behalf, telling the gang in Cupertino what would make their wonder-phone even more wondrous

And it even goes into a real letter to Apple.

Dear Apple,

While it’s clear the iPhone is the best smartphone on the market right now, you have a lot of competition creeping up. We want to help you blow them out of the water with the iPhone OS 4.0. Here are our suggestions:

Now, if you know Apple AT ALL you know that they really don’t listen to the user. TUAW certainly knows this since they write about Apple all the time.  Apple’s idea of market research is “Steve said this was good, so it’s good.”  This isn’t always the case of course; they brought back firewire to all of their laptops after omitting it on most for a time, but Apple really isn’t going to listen to you all that much.  They will look at the market and see what other phones have that they missed, and probably include some of those.  For instance, people use removable-media on their devices a lot, some people prefer it over internal media of course.  Will Apple ever put a microSD card in their iPhone or iPod? Probably not.  Why?  Probably because it’s something else that could break that they don’t want to have to worry about, but it’s probably because they don’t want people to add more space to their devices without buying a whole new device.

Now to the list (please read the article if you’re going to ask questions or complain or whatever, I will only be posting the main idea of each item, not the description of the idea)

1. The lock screen needs to change

This one is nothing too crazy.  The lock screen could change of course to show more information; a list of to-do’s, emails, whatever.  So this one I really don’t have an issue with.  Other phones do this a bit; on Android you get your notifications with an icon in the top menu bar as well as a different colored blinking LED on the front of the phone.

2. A new home screen. The iPhone is the smartest phone on the market. Make it smarter. Introduce a location-aware home screen.

This is another one that I really don’t have an issue with.  I actually like this idea and wonder why more phones/devices don’t have it.

3. That new home screen? Let us access it by vertically swiping.

This one confused me a little bit. I can see the desire to have all of your feeds and shit within a simple swipe, but why?  Do something like Android and use a drop down menu at the top.  You select the top menu and slide it out, this way you don’t accidentally swipe vertically while you’re reading something and open your home screen. The mock-up looks nice:

Mock-Up home screen for iPhone

Credit: Teehan+Lax

But it reminds me of the drop down in Android, just more refined.

4. Overhaul app navigation.

This is another one I really like.  Tape the home button when on your app menu and it shows all of your homescreens in a nice “exposé” style manner.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7soM07Y3qNI]

This should be standard too.  If hold my home button on my DROID it brings up my running programs and I can switch between them (more on multitasking later).

5. 85% of us want multitasking and 3rd party background apps

This is where I get a little annoyed with iPhone users.  Now, multitasking is something that the Palm Pre does with WebOS, as well as Android phones, but the iPhone falls short here.  It SHOULD have it, but iPhone users used to ask me “Who needs that?” or “Who cares about that?”  Well, apparently 85% of the people polled care about it enough to respond to TUAW.  This is a good demand…until I see the next line: “but not at the cost of battery life.” What? Really? You want to run multiple applications at once and not use battery life? What kind of engineering do you think Apple does?  Come on now, be realistic!

6. Almost 80% of us want Flash, even if it’s a bad idea.

Again, a pretty good request.  I want it on my DROID too.  Apparently it’ll be out for Android before the iPhone though.  Also, running Flash on anything MacOS related is a death sentence.  They realize this in the post, but I’m just throwing it in there also.

7. We love that you introduced landscape mode across virtually all apps in iPhone OS 3.0, but 70% of us want the ability to selectively turn it off.

Okay, this really isn’t built into the phone?  Android has it built in already…why didn’t Apple?  I don’t know. But it’s actually a legit request also.

8. When we leave an app, we want it to remember where we were.

This one is part of the whole multitasking thing. When multitasking comes, this better be in it, or you’re doing it wrong! (Yes, Android for the most part has this, and I believe WebOS does as well.)

9. 65% of us want the ability to remove Apple-branded apps.

This next one is a fair request, but it just won’t happen. Apple doesn’t care…really.  They don’t want you to remove their apps on the iPhone because, well, it’s their apps.  There are ways apparently to hid the app from your screen, but not to remove them. These apps are so small what should it matter? This is what you’re getting with a brand; the device and the apps to come with it.  Same on most devices.

10. 60% of us want a universal “documents” folder.

Okay, fair again, but a question is why doesn’t it do this anyway? “We realize this breaks the sandboxing model that prevents one app from blowing away data belonging to another one, but we have every confidence you can make it work.” Yeah, and when an app comes out that removes all of your pictures and documents who are you going to blame for allowing this? Thought so.

11. Better Support for Codecs and Add-ons.

This one is basically asking to allow WMV and AVI stuff to run. I suppose this is another valid request. Next!

12. The iPhone is a hard drive with a screen, so….[Give us Disk mode in the OS. 50% of us want to use our iPhone as an external USB/Wi-Fi hard drive.]

One of my favorites. I wonder why Apple doesn’t allow this.  Maybe it’s because they don’t want people to be able to remove their apps so easily, or copy some over, or maybe it’s because they want their users to use iTunes.  You know, one of their most popular pieces of software.  It’s all about controlling the environment the phone runs with.  You can use other programs to add songs, and documents and pictures, but adding apps is all iTunes.  There is really no third party app vendor, is there? You’re stuck with iTunes, like it or not.

So that’s really my $.02 on this blog entry.  It’s probably biased, but it’s me being honest.  I like the iPhone.  I think it’s a great device, but it does have some stupid flaws that can easily be fixed (as well as being a shitty phone).  Unfortunately these requests might fall on deaf ears,  Steve Jobs is not going to listen much, he’s going to make you listen.

Fixing or adding any of these features to the iPhone will still not help if you’re sitting on a shitty network. I’ll keep m DROID and use an iPod Touch (or my 6th Gen iPod Classic).  I’ll at least be able to do everything I can on an iPhone while actually being able to make phone calls.
There will most likely be a part 2 from this article, so I may just have to wager in on that one as well.