Letter From Apple: iPhone's Signal Strength Algorithm Is Flawed.

Yesterday Apple published an open letter regarding the problems that are affecting iPhone 4 and the supposed flaw in the antenna design. Just to quote the “interesting” part of it (trimming down iPhone eulogies and Apple’s declarations of love toward its newly born child):

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

“Totally wrong”. I wonder what does that mean.

Anyway, Since I own an iPhone I always complained about dropped calls and pretty inaccurate signal strength estimations shown by the phone. Either I had at least 4 bars or I had none. Even at maximum strength, the phone was dropping some calls. Simple cross checks with other phones I own (connected to the same operator) made me suspect that the iPhone was making way too optimistic signal strength estimations.

I’m glad to hear that they finally found the “solution” to this problem although I believe that such a flaw shouldn't have been discovered years after the first iPhone release. Too few of us were complaining? Many of us were blinded by the supposedly Apple’s infallibility? Apple wasn’t listening?

I don’t know. After the next software update, although signal won’t improve, at least the iPhone won’t be lying to us any longer.

Run Google Android on an Apple iPhone

Do you own an Apple iPhone? If yes, have you wished you could run a Linux flavour on your iPhone perhaps via dual booting ? Then your wish is answered. "Linux on the iPhone" blog team has successfully installed Google Android (which runs a Linux kernel) on Apple iPhone.

Watch the following video and gauge for yourselves how well Google Android performs on an Apple iPhone.
Read more »

iPhone on a Solaris Host

I'm a moderately happy owner of an iPhone and, as I'm usually running Solaris on my systems, I've struggled to find a working solution to connect my handset to an iTunes instance. One of the major drawbacks of the iPhone is that you really need iTunes: whether you want to upgrade it, back it up, or simply transfer the contents you purchased on the Apple stores, you need iTunes to get the job done.

I'm running several virtualized OS on my Solaris guests with Sun xVM VirtualBox, and never managed to make it work because of some limitations of the Solaris USB driver implementation. A couple of days ago, Sun announced the release of xVM VirtualBox 3.1.2 and in the changelog I read the following:

• Solaris hosts: several USB fixes (including support for Apple iPhone)
  

I quickly updated my VirtualBox instance, quickly live-upgraded my Solaris Express Nevada build 116 to Nevada build 129 (during the installation, VirtualBox informed me that it needed recent Nevada builds for the USB kernel module to work properly), plugged the iPhone in an USB slot of a Sun Ultra 24 and it worked!

Jump Into the Past: a Duke 3D revival

"Damn! Those alien bas***ds are gonna pay for shooting up my ride."

Does this opening sentence sound familiar to you? Two days ago, after installing Duke Nukem 3D on my iPhone, I launched the game and was welcome by it.

I used to play with Duke on a PC powered with a Pentium 133 a long, long time ago. When I saw it on the App Store, by chance, I couldn't resist buying it and playing it again.

The port is really good, although still incomplete. The primary three episodes are there (L.A. Meltdown, I didn't even remember the name!) and the feeling is just the same. I noticed some graphical detriment that I wouldn't call minor:
mirror effects, for example, were things that made Duke 3D so cool,
back in the 90's. Playability on the iPhone isn't so good, either, in
my opinion. The user is given two choices: digital and analog controls.

Digital controls, whose screenshot is shown in the next picture,
is the easiest control to get accustomed to. By sliding your finger
onto four buttons you can control Duke's movements just as if you were using a joystick. While playing you still need to use additional buttons (such as jump or use): these buttons are located on the uppermost right corner of
the screen and they're sufficiently small so as you confuse them one another.

The analog controls, at first impression, seem more intuitive because the user is given two separate joysticks:

Nonetheless, I found these controls pretty hard to manage and quickly switched to using the digital ones exclusively.

If you're feeling some kind of longing for such an old game, Duke Nukem 3D can be purchased right now on the App Store at just 0.79 Eur. Much less than an espresso, here in Spain.

The iPhone as a gaming platform: the App. Store business model is the killer factor

I've been reading many articles about iPhone capabilities as a gaming platform: the last one I read, Wall Street Journal's Apple to Sony, Nintendo: Game Over man!, was quite clear.

Curiosity is a powerful driver and in a matter of minutes I found myself digging into the App. Store to choose a game to drive a quick test with. I chose Need For Speed Undercover. The quality of the game seems impressive to me. Rendering, music, responsiveness of the iPhone (it's a game whose user interface uses the built-in accelerometer): despite the size of the display, it seems like I'm running it with a last generation game console. No doubt. At the end of this articles Here are some NFSU screenshots, if you're wondering about its quality.

But the great news for me as an user, as Wall Street Journal pointed out, is not the fact that I'm handling a mobile device which, incidentally, is a great gaming platform too. This is just a technological accomplishment I could expect any other producer to achieve. The news is that I, who never owned a gaming console nor am planning to, bought a game. Let aside the initial investment to buy, for example, an XBox. Console games are traditionally priced at much higher a level than I paid for NFSU, yesterday. Moreover, you have to go and buy it. Even if you downloaded it, you should still need to burn it. Apple's App. Store model is the winner and killer here. Yesterday night I was laying in my bed with my iPhone, wondering whether I would keep on reading a book with Stanza. I thought about the WSJ article, I opened the App. Store, chose a game, clicked on it and... started to play! Right ahead, just after waiting just a couple of minute for the download to complete. I did not moved from there and was charged less than 4 Euros.

Game addicts may well say that the gaming experience is not nearly as equal as it is when using another platform. I have to agree, but that's out of topic. What strikes me most is the iPhone gaming experience as an end user, from the initial purchase. Easy, comfortable, handy, cheap! The App. Store, moreover, is a growing library of applications here at hand: sometimes, what's most difficult is not buying but choosing.

Why I manually manage my iPhone's music

The problem

I own a pretty large music library which is hosted on a dedicated ZFS file system. Access to UNIX clients is provided via NFS and access to Windows clients is provided via CIFS. So far, so good. The problem is that the library is huge, very huge: not only the number of files is high, but some files themselves are huge. Whenever I buy a new CD, I rip it and encode it with a lossless codec in order to store the sufficient information in the case I need to burn another copy of the CD. On the Solaris Operating System, I'm using FLAC to encode such files. Alongside these lossless-encoded files, I use to encode another copy of the files in an easier to handle format, more suitable to use with portable devices. In this case, I use to re-encode FLAC files with an MP3 encoder.

Keeping organized such a library isn't difficult and the only problem I had so far is expanding storage according to my needs and backing it up: since I'm using ZFS, I'm an happier (and a wiser) man.

The problem with iTunes and such kind of programs is that they don't fit very well in the big library and networked storage scenario. Starting iTunes would take long to complete and, moreover, network would be the bottleneck. I never liked such a waste of resources and this is one of the reasons I never, ever, used a program to keep "organized" my music library.

But, what's the matter with the iPhone? Well, the iPhone is a glorified iPod and we all know that Apple is so kind to not allow us to read or write files on our phone but using iTunes.

iTunes synchronization

The iTunes way is very simple and idiot-proof: the iPhone is kept in sync with your iTunes-managed libraries: music, videos but also contacts, application and so forth. Kept I all of my music in just one laptop, that would (probably) be great but as I told you that's not (fortunately) the case.

The first times I synchronized my iPhone I used to:

• Adding files to my library.
• Synchronizing the iPhone.

Unfortunately, if my laptop cannot access the CIFS shares where the music is, iTunes just sees missing files and your iPhone will be empty after the next synchronization. Not so good.

The following times I thought I'd better copy files locally, first, and then synchronize. Good! Well, no. Because, unless you leave those files there (forever!), you'd hit the same behavior I described earlier. Replicating seldom is a good idea. Replicating such a library, definitely is not.

That's the kind of idiosyncrasy I hate in an end user program. Or it isn't an idiosyncrasy at all and it's me who's a strange user. Anyway, that's why I switched to manually manage my iPhone files. No library synchronization. I just copy files from the CIFS share directly into the iPhone. Just as if it was a plain old phone. No stale files on my laptop to keep iTunes happy.

iPhone user experience: is it ready for a color-blind person?

I own an iPhone since a couple of months and I must admit that, as far as it concerns my user experience as a color-blind person, it is the best mobile device I worked with in a long time. It isn't perfect, though.

If you're wondering what color-blindness is, you can start reading this Wikipedia article. I seldom notice the effect of such an impairment and when I do, I'm usually interacting with a computer.

There exist many forms of color blindness and mine is called protanopia. Protanopia differs from other forms, such as deuteranopia, because we experience an abnormal dimming of light at some wavelength with the result that, for example, red is easily confused with black.

In the case of the iPhone, I must admit that I'm experiencing just one problem: missed calls. There's a fancy icon down there indicating the number of unchecked missed call. When you open the corresponding window, guess what? Missed calls are "highlighted" using the good ol' red fonts while received or dialed calls are black. The background? White, just to make it worse. I tried looking for some other color scheme but there's none. Just the good ol' "iPhone experience" that Apple is providing us.

This rare impairment affects almost 1% of the male population. Not much, indeed. But for us, there are no red characters to catch our attention. They just fade to black, hiding between the others. If you're working with a color-blind person, please follow good sense: don't rely on colors and please, do not use red to catch their eyes. Just rely on the tools your word processor is offering you, such as that yellow marker whose existence you probably wondered about sometimes.

Pushing gmail to your iPhone (without GPush)

As I told you some posts ago I bought GPush and struggled to make it work. At the end I started to be notified about incoming mail, although with some glitches from time to time. Now, very shortly after GPush was released, you don't need it anymore: Google Sync is now pushing mail to your iPhone.

This is really good news because now you can sync your mail, your calendar and your contacts with your iPhone. As I was already using Google Sync for contacts and calendars, setting up GMail push was really easy: just the flip of a switch!

If you haven't set up your Google Sync account on your iPhone, just follow the instructions on the Google Sync web site.

As far as I can tell, mail is pushed to the iPhone almost instantaneously. Nonetheless, there's a thing I'm not really happy about. I miss is a notification popup: no one is ever shown and the counter on the mail icon is the only information you're given when a mail is pushed:

I would expect a mail to be managed just like an SMS or even a phone call: checking periodically sort of defies the purpose of a push notification...

An update about GPush: it finally seems to work

If you're part of the club that wanted Google mail pushed onto your iPhone, the release of the GPush application did sound like good news. Unfortunately the application hasn't worked that well after its release and people started to complain. I was one of them: in this blog and directly to Tiverias Apps.

It was probably a scalability problem: they never tested an application with such a great number of users and GPush wasn't exactly the kind of application that passes unobserved. We were waiting for it! On its website support page Tiverias Apps has been constantly giving feedback to the users about the problems that we were experiencing. Finally I'm glad to state the following: GPush is working flawlessly for me since a couple of days.

There's some glitch, still, but I'm confident they will be resolved in a GPush application update. Specifically, I still can't change my account settings without uninstalling and reinstalling the application. It just ignores the change.

It was worth what I paid for it.

Update: You don't need GPush anymore if you want to have your google mail pushed to your iPhone.

Don't buy GPush (yet): it's not working

So happy was I, yesterday: I thought my emails were going to be pushed to my iPhone, thanks to GPush, something many users were waiting for.

Yesterday I bought the application and I had no problem configuring it. It's a pity that, since then, I just receive one (yes: one...) notification. After that, silence.

Tiverias Apps, GPush producers, states that they're experiencing problems with their servers and that their developers should have isolated the code paths which are causing the problems that we're experiencing. Just hope it's not a scalability issue: sending push notifications to a great number of GMail users seems no easy job to me.

If you feel like buying the app, please wait for these problems to be solved.

Update: GPush has started to work.

GPush: Gmail push notifications for the iPhone

It finally has come true. I wish it was an Apple supported feature, as I think it should be; even so, I'm glad that GPush has finally made it into the App Store.

Nowadays GPush has very basic features:

• It only lets you configure just one GMail or Google Apps account.
• You cannot define filters.
• The only way to stop incoming notifications is disabling GPush notifications in the iPhone control panel.

The first two issues are easily resolved by setting up an additional GMail account and configuring GPush to notify you about incoming mail in this account. Then, you can configure filters on the other account and forward to the GPush account only the mails you're interested in.

It's the first release and every software has its glitches. GPush is one thing I was really missing and I'm glad it's been deployed.

Sending emails from the iPhone at full resolution: yet another use for the "copy and paste"

As you may have noticed, whenever you send a photo by email with your iPhone share functionality, the photo is down sampled to a mere 600x800 px². That's not so bad for an email, when bandwith and pricing could both be issues. A JPEG at such resolution could fall in the [100, 150] kB interval, depending on the dynamics in the photo itself. That's a huge difference from the average 1 MB of the original JPEG at its full resolution.

The down sampling process it's definitely bad in these cases:

• If you're unaware of it.
• If you're aware of it but don't know how to circumvent it.
• If email is the only vehicle you use to transfer photos from the phone to your PC.

As far as it concerns point one, ignorance is your friend but the process may nevertheless be bad. The iPhone not informing about the quality loss seems bad to me, too. Both of the camera phones I owned before the iPhone used to inform the user when the photo would be down sampled. Information, is good.

Points two is what this post is about and point three is where problem gets worse for people like me who have not got any iTunes-compliant PC to connect the iPhone to.

The iPhone 3G S shots photos at the decent resolution of 2048x1536 px² (don't know whether that's optical or not) which gives you photos of approximately 17x13 cm² at 300 dpi² or 34x26 cm² at 150 dpi² (the minimum output resolution you should use depends on the characteristics of the sampling technology used to shoot it). If you want to bring your photos to your PCs for further editing or printing you can rely on an email or an USB connection to a PC which correctly recognizes your phone. I tested Solaris Nevada up to build 116 and the iPhone is not recognized: that game's over for me right now.

When you enter the camera roll, you can select multiple photos and send them via email, amongst other thing, by using the Share button shown in the following screenshot.

 

That's a fast path but that's when the down sampling takes place! If you want to send your photos at full resolution you should make your selection, copy and paste them into a new email and send it. Copy and paste does not modify the copied data and your email will contain your original photos.

Do you want to jailbreak your iPhone? You might be a criminal, according to Apple.

In the statistical distribution of the events that may lead you, iPhone user, to desire to jailbreak your phone, a significant event, at least according to Apple's lawyers, is the probability you're a criminal. More specifically, a drug dealer. So likely, that this is the first example they provide to the Copyright Office of the United States of America.

You might have been reading my concerns about the iPhone and the limitations that Apple is willingly enforcing. My concerns are sincere concerns from an user standpoint.

I've just been reading Apple's response to the following question, submitting by no less than the Copyright Office of the United States of America:

Does “jailbreaking” violate a license agreement between Apple and the purchaser of an iPhone? If so, please explain what provision it violates and whether “jailbreaking” constitutes copyright infringement?

You can download and read the entire response, if you want. I don't want to spare you such joyful reading, but I really feel like citing this one:

For example, each iPhone contains a unique Exclusive Chip Identification (ECID) number that identifies the phone to the cell tower. With access to the BBP via jailbreaking, hackers may be able to change the ECID, which in turn can enable phone calls to be made anonymously (this would be desirable to drug dealers, for example) or charges for the calls to be avoided.

That's the kind of issues raised by the situation in which you're using something that may harm yourself and the others. Now, Apple just forgets that nowadays you can install your applications on a very wide range of mobile devices. The Java Virtual Machine for mobiles is installed in millions of devices, so is Windows Mobile. Substitute it with the OS you like. It's just Apple that's protecting you even from yourself. Or it's just protecting its monopoly and cash flow?

Whichever the answer, if you'd like to be able to use your phone and you're not a criminal, you're not evil, and you're not a drug dealer, you can for example sum up to the Defective By Design initiative and protest against Apple.

Has the apple got rotten?

I already expressed my complaint about the iPhone more than once. From an user's standpoint, I could reformulate them just saying that I felt deception and disappointment discovering that the iPhone does not allow me to use services like instant messaging applications (because of the one application at a time issue), push mail and VoIP services. Oh yeah, some of them you could sort of use them. For the best result: you pay them for a redundant service. If you just want to do something you can do using first class free services (such as Google's), or with well established hand held devices (such as a BlackBerry) well, the story is different.

The ban of Google Voice from the App Store just was the last straw. The Federal Communications Commission has (finally) sent a letter to Apple and AT&T in order to cast light upon what's going on with the iPhone and the App Store policies.

If you're interested or feel affected, as I do, you can of course read the letter directly from FCC's website. The letter's quite self-explanatory, asking questions such as:

Why did Apple reject the Google Voice application for iPhone and remove related third-party applications from its App Store?

Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications?

Please explain any differences between the rejected apps and any other voice over Internet (VoIP) applications that remain in the store.

This question just goes straight to the point I'm doing since quite a time:

Please explain whether, on AT&T’s network, consumers’ access to and usage of Google Voice is disabled on the iPhone but permitted on other handsets, including Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices.

I understand that companies such as AT&T and Vodafone subsidize the cost of such a terminal, widely broadening the audience of such a technology. I wouldn't personally pay, ever, more than 500 Eur just to wear a logo on my phone, which is one of the things the iPhone does well. On the other hand, you cannot limit my freedom of choice giving me access exclusively at an "application store" where I can install all sorts of stupidware but cannot install Google Voice which, as many other Google's technologies, is given for free and it's high quality, too.

I'm an Apple customer since a very short time. Nonetheless, I feel Apple's practices as one of the most opaque on the market. I did look for informations about some why, but never found any clear because. Such as multitasking. Such as IMAP IDLE. Such as Google Voice...

I'm not making any further comments given that the situation speaks for itself. And if you've got an iPhone and you're experiencing the same limitations I am, well, there's nothing more to say.

Let's wait to see what happens after the FCC move. Meanwhile, a word to the wise. Do you want a phone? Don't be the iJail.

Vintage games: Monkey Island Special Edition on the iPhone

The ScummVM project and the porting on the iPhone were a good omen. But LucasArts' release of Monkey Island Special Edition for the iPhone on July 22, 2009, confirmed the rumors about LucasArts being porting some of its vintage games to the iPhone. Really good news, though, especially for all of the Monkey-fans out there like this 30 years old guy which grew up playing with them.

If right now you're launching the App Store beware the size of the download: 351 MB. If you're not connected to a wireless network then wait for it.  Hurry can cost you very much if you haven't got a flat rate. The size of the application, though, is well justified: a brand new orchestration, spoken dialogs, graphics delivered in two versions (original and Special Edition).

When I first launched Monkey Island on my phone I was really excited. During the application bootstrap I felt that nostalgic impression of remembering  something that you thought it had gone. It's a game, I know, but hey, you're a kid just once. And I was with Monkey Island.

The first impression was pretty good. I didn't remember well the game and the new graphics it bears weren't a shocking surprise to me. They are polished, greatly fit with the application and remember the last Monkey Island PC releases so much. Reading the game instructions I learnt that the gesture to switch to the classic view is a two fingers slide. As soon as it appeared, I clearly remembered. That cross shaped pointer which was a watermark on LucasArts' adventures!

Here are some screenshot of the two look and feels of Monkey Island Special Edition. The first is the map of Melée Island:

 

  

The maps are similar and the new look recalls The Curse of Monkey Island. The first thing you should get used to is the new pointer. At the beginning, the good ol' cross pointer was easier to use. The asymmetric pointer with the rotating arrow isn't that usable to me, at the beginning, especially on this device: my brain focuses a point and the finger goes there.

The second snapshot is a view of the village. On the classic view, there you have the verbs and the objects you collected. On the new view, the object are inside the chest on the right corner, at the bottom of the screen whilst verbs are on the face icon on the other side of the bar. A gesture which is available only with the new graphics is that double tapping an object invokes its default verb. Opening a door has never been so easy!

  

 

I think the game is really worth what it costs: less than 6 Euros. You will need plenty of time to amuse and get to the end.

The last advice: don't shake the phone. That's the gesture to get an hint. Hints in an adventure are no cool.

Open or closed?

Apple banning Google Voice application from its App Store was the topic of this earlier post. I'd just like to tell you about what I think about open and closed platforms and open and closed formats. The problem, in my humble opinion, reduces to this.

Open doesn't always mean free (as in beer)

Open doesn't always mean free (as in beer). I can, and I would, pay services based on open technologies. And I would obviously pay a song encoded with the FLAC codec (an open source free lossless codec). The openness of a technology such is FLAC guarantees me that I would be able to use it in whichever platform or device I chose (between those where an implementation would be feasible, of course).

Choice

Deciding between an open or a closed platform is a choice. A choice which must be checked against your requirements. I'd been a happy Solaris user since Solaris could be run only on top of Sun Microsystems' machines. That, then, was a closed platform. Nevertheless, it perfectly fitted my needs.

Dozens of example could be made and I'm not going to digress any further. I'm also perfectly aware that these are just personal tastes but the point I want to make clear is that, as far as it concerns end users' everyday lives, what's bad aren't the platform themselves. Closed platform are a legitimate choice as far as they don't reduce my freedom to act (which is a characteristic of the iPhone I'm complaining about). I'm running several platforms nowadays including Sun Microsystems' Solaris, Microsoft Windows (yeah...) and Debian GNU/Linux. Microsoft Windows isn't exactly open and I run it because I need a couple of programs which are essential for the client I'm working for. I don't feel absolutely coerced when running Windows. It's my and my client's choice. Moreover, I didn't need to dedicate a machine to Windows, I just virtualize it on a Solaris box using Sun xVM VirtualBox.

So what? Well, as you see I don't think that closed platforms are necessarily a bad choice. What I do think it's a bad choice is using a closed format. Closed formats are bad.

Formats

I think that closed formats are evil because I don't think it's safe relying on a third party to access the information I'm storing in such a format. I wouldn't buy music, nor store photographs, nor doing anything else, using a closed format (or when an open one could fit my needs.) Closed formats limit the domain in which I can do my choices. If I chose, for example, an Apple proprietary format to store my music or my own personal video, I would be running the risk of depending on the availability of an implementation for the OS (or the device) of the day.

Things get worse when purchases are taken into account. Back in the 80's, you could buy an LP or a book and then go home and enjoy your purchase. You wouldn't even worry about "Could I be able to play it back?"-like statements. You would be buying a physical support, that's true, but you were interested in the information it contained. The medium was just that: a medium. The big difference is that no matter the manufacturer of your Hi-Fi appliance, you could bet you could listen to your record! And no matter the paper type, you could just read it with your own eyes.

Years passed by and information is more and more often sold without physical mediums. You're probably already buying online the records of your favorite singer. Maybe you're even buying electronic books.

This introduces the first problem, which is the major one: the format the information is packed with.

When you have to send a document by email, you probably think about the file format you're going to send. Maybe you know that the guy you're sending the mail to is a Microsoft Office user. Maybe you don't want anybody to edit your file. Maybe you don't even care. The fact is: you have to choose a file format amongst the available ones.

No matter the OS, you can probably read PDF files and examine TIFF files. You can probably play an MP3 file without much hassle. You wouldn't worry sending, receiving or archiving such files on your hard disks. These format are mainstream formats (in their domain). Even so, portability sometimes can be an issue.

Other formats may also me considered de facto standards, as maybe is the case of the Microsoft Word file format. Nevertheless, the odds of you having portability problem with Word files is still high nowadays. Microsoft never wanted its Word file format to be portable, before the format war against OpenDocument (and still I have some doubts...) The point is: you use Microsoft Office, you know whom you can interact with. But: would you buy a book in the XPS format? Would you encode the video of your wedding using a Microsoft's of Apple's codec? I wouldn't, because I want to reduce dependencies from proprietary technologies which, tomorrow, couldn't be available on the devices I'll be running. Or they couldn't be available at all.

Piracy and DRM

The problem with multimedia file formats is even more acute, though, because anti-piracy measures sort of obliged distributors to use some sort of DRM. DRM shouldn't be reverse engineered but if a public specification isn't available (because it would defeat its primary intent), you're left alone if you run an unsupported platform. You'd probably think twice before choosing a closed format, in this case. Unfortunately sometimes, you're left with no choice, as was the case with the old iTunes DRM file formats. No way to play them back in an unsupported platform. So we're back to the question: what did I buy? The medium? The information? A file is an ordered stream of bits. But I'm not buying the bare bits. I thought I bought the right to listen to my music whenever I can but the reality is that I must be running this or that platform or the file I paid for will be unusable. I'm buying the right to enjoy that song. When I buy a CD, I can bring the CD with me and listen to it wherever I want.

It's a chicken and egg problem: you want to prevent me from committing a crime (piracy) by limiting my freedom. Including the freedom to break the law, which is something I personally would not do.

I might understand why they do that, but I am not satisfied with such an answer. That's why I go buying my songs where I can avoid worrying for such details. Orwell's 1984 is a good reading nowadays: DRM sounds like psychopolice prevention to me.

To be fair in the case of Apple the DRM problem has been almost solved, but still you're marrying with the platform where you can run iTunes if you want to access the store and we know that Apple, despite its flagship OS being an UNIX, is not pampering so much the GNU/Linux community. Let alone the Solaris' one: we're still waiting for QuickTime... That's why I'd buy from Amazon, rather than from the iTunes store.

Can it get worse than this? Sure. Have you ever bought a CD or a DVD just to discover that you'd run into problems while trying to reproduce its contents on your computer? Yes, I have. And if you're running an UNIX, reproducing a DVD may be an odyssey. My Solaris post-install scripts have a "compile libdvdcss" section, just after installing Sun Studio. Once more: I might understand the reasons of the IP's owners but, since I paid for my DVD, I would like to reproduce wherever and whenever I want, rather than being subject to such kind of coercion whose ultimate (and only) reason to be is prevent me from breaking a law (including when there wouldn't be any law to break).

Different problem, different solution

The previous sections might make you think I'm absolutely against closed platforms and closed formats. Well, that's not exact. As I said, the more it concerns everyday's life, the more I support openness of formats. Choices often imply compromise.

For a bunch of valid reasons, I'm running a pretty great set of services on top of the Solaris platform. Since the 90's. My reasoning is that the implementation (Solaris and Sun's servers) is analogous to the physical support. The value is the services themselves. And I never ran into any problem accessing them from whichever platform I was running: Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, *BSD, etc. Solaris was just like the plastic the record was made with. Just a medium. And the medium was chosen with requirements in mind, such as resilience.

Conclusion

I hope I made it clear. While I think that openness is a virtue in absolute value, I do recognize the benefits of running a closed platform, depending on your requirements. That said, I stress the importance of your freedom. The platform should never be an hindrance and should never be limiting, or annihilating, your possibility of choice.

When I bought the iPhone I was perfectly aware that I was buying a closed platform. More closed than many others we're used to, nowadays, despite what many people may be thinking. This was a test to assess if, and how much, the platform could fit my needs. And there's no better assessment than trying ourselves. After trying I do not feel free. I'm not free to use the programs I'd like because Apple is deciding for me. I'm not even free to develop and distribute a program of mine, because the gate to the App Store is Apple's filter which, as we saw, seems to be based on commercial decisions and partners' pressure rather than fair competition. I'm not even free to plug the iPhone on my computer because I'm not running a supported platform! While this is Apple's choice, it doesn't seem fair to me (the user) preventing me from using the phone as an USB storage device. Not even to download my own photos and videos.

Google Voice banned from the App Store. No VoIP, no Skype, no Voice. Which application will be killed next?

The title is ironice. Skyp, indeed, is there, but Skype calls over 3G aren't allowed due to contractual restrictions. Taking into account that Skype won't stay logged in unless you don't keep the application open, I fail to understand what should the application worth for. Anyway, today, while checking the news, I stumbled upon this article.

Earlier today we learned that Apple had begun to pull all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they “duplicate features that come with the iPhone”.

Oh yes, the iPhone is a phone. Using your voice to make calls indeed seems a functionality duplication. But that's not the point. The point is that Apple has created sort of an ecosystem (which is exaggeratedly proud of) around the iPhone SDK and the App Store. It seems that things are all there to start a developers' competition. Something which, in principle, goes at progress' and users' sake. With some gotchas, to use an euphemism. The reality is bitter than that: Apple itself is a blocker. Its dos and don'ts too often play against the end users' interest, as is the case with its Google Voice ban. AT&T being the evil behind the scene is not a justification to me. It's Apple who's banning. I won't either comment on Apple's ethics, if it's true that Kovacs himself personally approved Google's project. Was it true... well, it would simply confirm that Apple's more interested to worthy compromises rather than its users, which are still a wealthy niche.


This brings me back to the adagio: open or closed platforms (and formats)?

Taking screenshots on your iPhone

I'm not fond of using images often, but I do recognize that they can be useful at times. These days I've been blogging about my (yet relatively short) experience with an iPhone 3G S and I would have used some screenshot here and there. Today, by chance and without Googling for it, I discovered why: just press the Sleep button (you find it on the right uppermost corner of the phone) and while you keep it pressed, push the Home button too (the one with the square ;). A screenshot will be taken and it will be saved in your camera roll.

Useful, if only I could connect the iPhone on some virtualized guest OS and retrieve the image...

A trip to Monkey Island with your iPhone

Yes. How many night did you spent in front of a monitor, playing with Guybrush, in Monkey Island? I confess I grew fond of that series of game. Yesterday, with great surprise, I opened the App Store just to see that the number one application in the Top 25 list was LucasArts' The secret of Monkey Island.

I was just (well, still...) a teenager at the beginning of the 90's when I used to play at The secret of Monkey Island at my PC. It was so different a game. I really got caught up. Because of Monkey Island I started playing adventure games. Only adventure games. The Monkey Island series, the Indiana Jones series (although earlier), The dig, Grim Fandango.

I mean, I really, really miss those adventure games. I grew up with the golden man logo of LucasArts. A game, was LucasArts'. Period. I never got used to play a shoot'em all game. Well, maybe just a couple of games from LucasArts' Jedi series. Not even now can I sit and play those games. Not even to just admire their incredible graphics effects and their incredibly realistic 3D engines. I just get bored.

Whilst the story and the magic of Monkey Island always kept me awake so many nights. I'm now buying the game, to feel a little of that magic, almost 20 years later.

The iPhone 3G S battery: you'd better save it with a proper setup

One week with the iPhone 3G S, by now. Experiencing some concerns, too, as I told in another post. One of the greatest concerns I still have is about battery life. After completing some full recharge cycles, the battery was performing poorly. I mean: still using the factory settings, the iPhone wouldn't last from dawn to sunset. And when I had to make a couple of calls, I charged it twice in a day. Not reasonable.

Turning 3G off

Although I'm not using any push service nor other background applications, the first thing I tried to turn off was 3G. It surely depends on hoy good the network coverage where you live. In my case, at office we've got a pretty bad coverage and 3G seems to improve it very much. Deactivating that option made thing go worse and battery drain was not reduced. This weekend, at home, I turned it off again and here, with a good and stable coverage, things got a lot better.

Turning WIFI off

I noticed that, even if I only connect to a wireless network at home, the iPhone would probably be scanning the networks all day long. Deactivating WIFI when not using it greatly improved battery life. I consider this to be the setting which impacted me most.

Reducing screen brightness

The iPhone's got a relatively big and brilliant screen. That drains a lot of power, too. I reduced the brightness to almost the acceptable minimum (here in Spain the sun is pretty bright, too) and the improvement isn't once more negligible.

Conclusion

Yes, what I said it's pretty obvious and you probably would avoid it, but the sad reality is that the iPhone battery wouldn't last a day with those option turned on. Depending on how much you use the net, you should consider keeping the charger (or an USB cable) with you instead of continuously turning these options on and off. In my case, I'm using the iPhone just like... a phone, and it's not a nuisance to turn these settings off.