confessions of a serial hobbyist

So a couple weeks ago my N95′s battery cover broke and I once again swapped to using my iPhone as my main phone again. Yes, the iPhone is my “backup” phone, what of it? Anyways about that same time the big iPhone 2.0 firmware came out and the AppStore opened and millions of “normal” people were subjected to the idea of using their phone as a small computer instead of as just some thing taking up pocket space and eating money from their bank accounts monthly. I’ve been a long time smartphone guy and have been working in the mobile industry as a developer for quite some time so this is all standard. I installed a few apps and games, played around, and really enjoyed them for a few days. And then I went back to using my iPhone like I did before the store opened and before apps were available.

I just don’t really care enough I guess in day to day life? Or maybe I’m not the right target market for apps on an iPhone? But if I’m not, then who is? I’m the guy who buys multiple phones a year and makes mobile products for a living so if I’m not fitting into the target demographic does anybody?

And then I think back to using my N95. I did use it for a few things I don’t use my iPhone for. It was (and is again) my main camera for taking pictures of daily life. And I had a few really cool apps on it that I quickly stopped using after a few days.

No matter what phone I really only fall back to the same few actual uses…I use the web browser a LOT (numerous times a day)…I use the email client occassionally (maybe once or twice a day)…I use the SMS client a lot…and I once in a while actually make a phone call or look up a contact…and I once in a while will look up directions to figure out just how lost I managed to get. That’s about it. That’s 99% of the usage of my phone. And while potentially very cool, anything that falls outside of that usage will be played with briefly and then forgotten. It’s the fact that if it’s not a daily need it likely doesn’t matter.

Developers (myself included) really want users to care so they can sell their products, and operators or device makers (depending in the case) really want users to care so they can get their cut. The problem is that people don’t need at least 90% of the crap being released on a daily basis, so why should they care? What would they care about long term and not just for a few days before forgetting all about some cool app they tried?

I don’t know I’m just ranting…and now I’m done.

And yes I fully enjoy the irony that is my rant on not caring about/using apps on phones was written in the WordPress app on my iPhone.

So here I have the iPhone app from WordPress and I’m wondering, will this actually encourage me to write more often? Will the “easiness” of posting mean I’ll be less lazy? Or does it mean I’ll be more likely to throw a post together when I’m just sitting around waiting for whtever it is in life we spend our time waiting for…

Or let’s be honest, it will probably just lead to more random posts out of boredom.

But overall the app seems to work well, and let’s me throw a post together rather quickly. The listing of posts is easy to scroll through and while I know a lot of people still aren’t fans of the touch only keyboard I find the lack of effort required to press the keys makes me able to type much faster than most people expect. The ease of adding a picture, or even an iPhone screen grab (taken by pressing the power and home buttons at the same time, added to your camera roll) is nice. Unfortunately you have no real way of doing much other than having it added to the bottom of the post. I’m assuming either I’ll keep having to “finish” the posts on my laptop, edit the HTML on the iPhone (complicated by the lack of copy and paste), or just be happy enough with the photos at the bottom.

So I finally broke down and got an Xbox 360…

As someone who’s worked in games for as long as I have, this is terribly late in the game to get one, but c’est la vie. I finally picked it up for Rock Band, mostly so friends and I could play online together. Note that as of yet I’m like $600 in the hole between the 360 and Rock Back and we haven’t played a single game online yet…but still, the justification stands. And really Rock Band is the only game I’ve bought for the 360, any other games showing up as played by me are games I’ve borrowed from friends.

And speaking of, I did shove my gamer card on the side-bar there…mostly for me to keep track of (really, who comes to this site but spam bots and google bots). I have to say the community aspects like this that Microsoft rolled out for Xbox Live are amazing. It’s simple ideas like Achievements and Gamer Points that take players and make them WANT to play more different games on their system in order to get more of these imaginary useless numbers. And more games sold is more money in Microsoft’s pocket – good for them.

Lastly, it’s a bit odd because I’ve had a hi-def TV for some months now, but this is the first real hi-def signal going in there (sure I have a DVD player that upconverts to 1080i, but that doesn’t count, it’s a standard def signal being upressed, very different). Some things look amazingly better, some things I can’t really tell. However the lack of jaggies and pixelated images (yes Wii, I’m looking at you) is refreshing.

So in preparing for the flight to my parents’ house for Christmas, I had the first actual impact from upgrading to Leopard. I know, I know, how can an operating system upgrade actually impact my life? Time. No not Time Machine…not automated backups, but actual time…that thing that can’t be gotten back once lost.

So Thursday I had a 1pm flight to catch. I needed to finish a load of laundry, get dog food, take the dog to the kennel, get my laptop/n95/n800/iphone loaded up with everything I’d need / want for the trip, and finish packing in time to catch a taxi to the airport.

Only one of those things I didn’t have to do, thanks to Leopard, and most importantly a single feature: Back to my Mac. Yes, I’ll admit, I’m one of the moronspeople that have a .Mac subscription.
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Ok so the title may be a BIT harsh…but as of yesterday’s firmware update to v20, it’s changed how I’ve used the device – and that is most definitely a plus.

Honestly of all of the updates in the new firmware, there are three I actually care about:

1. Demand Paging
2. New Music Player/Podcasting functionality
3. Camera Improvements

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