I’m really glad to see the news about the iPhone 3g. I’m interested in how the new mobile me service takes a small step toward cloud-based storage services that I’ve wanted for a while. And the news that Max OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” will focus on speed and stability, rather than features is good, especially considering the following.

You see, I’m a fan of Apple products. Not because I like the brand, but because the products work for me. I do enjoy that the Apple style is rather compatible with mine, and I have to admit that Apple products have influenced my work and choices, but now I’m realizing that I really do enjoy the products simply because they help me do the things I want to do faster and better…until they don’t.

I used to love iPhoto. Even more than taking pictures, I enjoy sharing them. iPhoto did that, and the editing tools made quick work of preparing my photos for sharing. I find iPhoto’s adjustment tools faster and easier to use than Photoshop’s (I started using Photoshop at version 2.0, so I’m more than comfortable with it), and the organization tools — the digital shoebox — have given me been a fair place to keep the large number of photos I’ve taken over the years. And that’s the problem.

I now have over 20,000 photos in my iPhoto library, and the performance of the application has dropped significantly. Further, my whole computing experience falls down when it’s open, even though I’m running a not-too-slouchy 2.16 GHZ Mac Book Pro with 2GB of RAM. It’s gotten to the point that I cringe when I plug in my iPhone after taking a few pictures and it opens to download them. And yesterday I finally worked up the courage to download the 300 photos that had been collecting on my DSLR.

In short, I realize now that iPhoto’s non-performance has taken the fun out of photography.

People suggest that I could archive my old photos to DVD or create separate libraries, but that misses the fact that a huge part of iPhoto’s value to me is in having easy access to all my photos without having to remember what disk they’re on. The storage issue was what had me propose Space Ship, as the 53 GB of photos hardly have to remain on my local hard drive, and it’s keeping me from switching to a MacBook Air, but the performance issue may drive me from iPhoto, and possibly the Mac platform all together.

You see, without easy access to my media, I lose much of the value that the iLife suite brings to me. Why use iMovie if the media browser can’t find the source photos and videos that are no longer in iPhoto? Keynote’s integration of the iLife media browser was great, but again, if my source material isn’t there, why use it? If I have to go through the effort of manually managing my now far-flung media, why use a Mac at all?

Please Steve, I’ve loved Apple products all these years because they did what computers where supposed to do: they made my life easier, more fun, and more productive (even if “productive” means getting an great photo of a family vacation). But you’ve not mentioned the Mac being the center of my digital life in some time, and it’s clear from Apple’s recent product announcements that the company is focusing elsewhere. Please remember that I enjoy creating media as much as consuming it, and I need products and services that support that creativity.

We knew iLife 08 was a bit ho-hum when you announced it in January, but now it’s looking pretty tired.

Cliff and Vasken wrote up some link bait complaining about how the iPhone doesn’t meet their expectations or is a lesser competitor to a crackberry. But I challenge them to find a device that offers what they say is missing or even matches what the iPhone has.

Still, I’ve been using mine for a month now, and I can say there are few things it’s missing or could do better. None of them are deal breakers; in fact, it’s only because the device is so generally good that I’ve got any complaints at all. Call me a fanboy if you want, but I’d be interested in hearing from anybody who’s spent significant time with an iPhone who’d rather go back to their old phone.

Like Cliff, I’m frustrated that the built-in GPS isn’t user-accessible or integrated with the Google Maps app, but having used it a lot in my travels recently I can say that the maps are hugely useful even without the GPS. (though this is funny and useful too) The lack of Flash support is frustrating, but I’m not aware of any mobile browser that fully supports it, and the YouTube app is actually much better because the stream dynamically adjusts its bandwidth based on the connection speed (EDGE is way slower than WiFi, though not nearly as bad as some are reporting), and the high bandwidth stream looks much better on my iPhone than in Flash on my desktop. And despite some whining that not all the YouTube content is available, the Apple press release on the subject did claim that all YouTube content would be available by fall.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have complaints. I already noted issues with data getting lost after a firmware reset, but that post missed a few more general issues:

• No copy/paste/clipboard
• Browser doesn’t save passwords, or synchronize passwords from the big-screen browser
• Form auto-fill seems a little dumb compared to the big-screen Safari, perhaps because the history isn’t sync’d?
• The .Mac RSS reader is pretty good, but it can’t display aggregated feeds the way Safari on a Mac can
• The email inboxes aren’t aggregated as they are in Apple Mail, and I must instead check each account individually
• When using GMaps, is there an easy way to switch out of route-view to search for a single point?
• No search tools — especially useful for finding music or contacts

All of those can be fixed in software. My list of hardware-realted complaints is tiny by comparison. I mean, I’ll agree with those that point out the phone can’t properly orient itself while in orbit and doesn’t have a metal cutting laser, but my own complaints were smaller scale. I was surprised to learn that my Belkin car audio adapter didn’t work, somewhat less surprised to find my camera adapter didn’t (wouldn’t it be cool to offload pics from the camera to iPhone, then view them and upload the good ones to Flickr?) and I’m eager for somebody to develop a small external keyboard (hey, check out Pogue’s iPhone keyboarding tips).

iPhone, complaints, early adopter, version 1.0, progressive refinement, user feedback, apple, smartphone

On Thursday I had trouble answering a call. By Friday night it was clear my iPhone was seriously porked. A visit to the nearby Apple store got me a swift replacement, and a promise that once I synchronized the new device it’d have all the info the old one did.

Hrm.

Well, the Mac Genius did ask if I had any photos I hadn’t offloaded, as those would be lost in the swap. But, as it turns out, there’s a lot of info that gets lost when an iPhone is either swapped or gets a firmware reset (my phone first got the reset, then when symptoms persisted, replaced).

Things that should be simple to back up on an iPhone, like contacts in the favorites list aren’t, same for special ring tones I’d set for various contacts and they were all lost even after the restore. It may be less surprising that various settings and preferences, the default ringtone or whether to sound an alert when new email arrives, are lost. Those are fairly easy to reset, but a real shock to me was that any data in the notes application is lost. And, unfortunately, I’d started to keep a lot of info in there. Everything from ideas I wanted to followup to trivia that, well, like any trivia, just couldn’t be filed elsewhere.

The loss of those notes was a painful surprise, and a reminder how delicate my digital world is.

Then, while enjoying the iPhone as a diversion between flights in PHX, I realized that my browser cookies weren’t backed up. Cookies aren’t expected to be persistent, not even by me, but it was just another thing and a reminder of my frustration that the iPhone doesn’t save website passwords the way big-screen Safari does (though some websites leverage cookies to make it less troublesome, but when cookies aren’t sync’d…).

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on my iPhone (so don’t ask if you can have mine). Some of this is part of the bargain early adopters take on, but I also expect these issues will be addressed in software soon.

Extra: oddly, the replacement iPhone was retail boxed, and this receipt is very different from how I’ve seen them handle repairs/replacements of Mac products. The best part is the receipt shows my warranty was extended a few weeks.

[tags]iphone, complaints, early adopter, replacement, reset, lost data[/tags]

Though some people prefer the Birmingham choir to Helsinki’s, there’s certainly something to be said about complaining in song, and something more when it’s in a language I can’t begin to understand. One blogger remarked of the video:

To think of what might of been. What if I’d moved in with a bunch of angst ridden Finns,instead of pseudo-happy baptists, and been forced to sing their rants along with them. Who knows where that would have taken me?

Kiasma reports:

Complaining brings people together. There is always something to complain about, no matter how well things are. Therefore, it is opportune to set them to song and benevolently mock our propensity for constantly complaining. Saying out loud what is bothering you is a relief. Complaining is a lifeline. The important thing is that someone is listening.

Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen’s work Complaint Choir gives you a chance to complain about everything. Many commonplace things are a source of irritation: the computer is too slow, busses do not run on time, everything is too expensive and the salary is too small. Complaints are gathered from the opening of ARS 06 onwards in various ways. Anyone can register for the choir to perform a song compiled and composed on the basis of the complaints, a singing voice is not a prerequisite. Choir performances in Kiasma and elsewhere in town are taped and the video is added to the ARS exhibition. The premiere of the choral piece composed from the complaints is in Kiasma on 25 March.

Complaints Choir was performed earlier in Birmingham. There the complaints were mundane and varied, serious and amusing. Through song, we can perhaps understand how much we complain every day. It also becomes equally evident from the finished work that, at first, singing in Birmingham was guarded but towards the end it turned out to be rousing and manifestly great fun, even if the subject was complaining.

Helsinki Complaints Choir, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Tellervo Kalleinen, choir, complaints, complaints choir, helsinki, video

When I finally get around to writing up my impressions of the Pepper Pad, I’ll be pointing to Roger Sperberg’s recent posts at TeleRead about non-PDA handhelds and computers for stand up use. At the moment, however, some of his points remind my of a few I’ve got to make about PDAs here.

I’ve got a Sony Clie TH-55, the top of the line of the last series they imported to North American shores. It’s got a big bright screen (for PDAs), WiFi and a camera that can shoot movies and .3 megapixel stills. It’s got all of that and a battery that I’ve never had below 65% despite hard camera and WiFi use at times, but I still find it nearly useless.

(Some of) my complaints? The WiFi gets poor reception and requires a long wait while the radio warms up and finds a signal before each use. Unlike most laptops, the WiFi isn’t running all the time and it’s like waiting for a modem to dial while it connects. Then, when the WiFi does connect, the web browsing is slow and painful on a screen that still has too few pixels to render most sites reasonably. Though bookmarks help, entering URLs in Graffiti 2 is like pulling out all my eyebrow hairs one by one. The keyboard solves that, but it using requires a desk and going down that road begs for comparisons against the laptop I could be using instead.

Still, these problems might be fixable. I depended on the handwriting recognition on my Newton to take notes in classes and meetings back in the day (far better than on any Palm OS or HPC I’ve ever used), so I’m holding out for something better yet from current handhelds. My use cases are changing, though. PIM apps are on devices everywhere, but I really like using Earthcomber when traveling. I need a great web browser that can remember web-site passwords and auto-fill forms like my desktop browser can. And it’s hard to know what will replace iPods, but I somehow see a device like the LifeDrive, perhaps with a camera, that might do the job.

None of that, however, should suggest that I don’t also see a huge market for products like the Pepper Pad.

tags: clie, complaints, graffiti, handwriting recognition, newton, newton message pad, pda, pda keyboard, pepper, sony clie, wifi