I fully admit that I’ve been ignoring this little place. To my five or six readers: I’m sorry.
To that end, I’m temporarily handing the mic to you. What questions do you have that the Girl Genius could try her hand at? No limits.
Leave your questions in the comments.
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Well, we knew that. But now, AT&T won’t even sell the iPhone to New Yorkers online. Despite the actual reason for this being the high occurrence of online fraud related to ordering an iPhone online (as per this TUAW story), some online customer service agent actually had the gall to tell a Consumerist editor that New York doesn’t “have enough towers to handle the phone.”
What? That’s like admitting your service is too awful to carry the phone that is singlehandedly keeping your employer afloat. Oh wait, it is.
Yes, we keep hearing talk that one day, in the magical, mystical future, Verizon will have the iPhone. I honestly can’t imagine the amount of ship-jumping that will take place. Maybe when that happens, AT&T’s service will actually work in the United States’ most populous city. That would be great. It’s incentive enough for me to stay, along with the fact that I have no idea how crippled any iPhone on Verizon’s network will be. They routinely turn off Wi-Fi ability in the phones they sell (BlackBerry Storm being the freshest in my mind), and anything coming out of a Verizon store will likely have their branding all over it. No, thank you. I do not want.
Eventually, Verizon will be plagued with the same issues that AT&T users are experiencing now, like dropped calls.
Ultimately, America’s wireless companies need to put more money into actually improving their networks. What does a large part of their money go into right now? Advertising.
Tell me, dear readers, when was the last time a commercial actually influenced which network you were going to choose? They probably haven’t, aside from perhaps a commercial that let you know which phone a network was carrying.
Most people get locked into networks because of a phone only. Other reasons? It was the closest store. Those things aren’t likely to be swayed because of a silly commercial (I’m looking at you, Headless Luke Wilson).
What’s the biggest influencer of consumers? I think it’s word-of-mouth. “Provider XYZ has awesome service and awesome phones and the most helpful personnel!” That’s ten thousand times more likely to get me in the door than anything else. We pay for a service, and we want it to work – even if we live in New York City.
C’mon, networks – I dare you. Give us something to talk about.
It’s been a little while, and for that – Well, I totally apologize. When you’re broke (as I am), it’s hard to write about technology. (I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that stuff tends to get expensive.)
So here’s a list of things I’ve liked recently.
Katamari Forever – excellent.
Batman: Arkham Asylum – very excellent. (As in, almost everything that makes an action video game good is in there. If you can, buy it.)
De Blob – also good. I’m a year late, but it may be the best $20 I’ve spent on my Wii.
At this point, I think I’m almost better off writing about video games. (I can do it, too – if you need someone, contact me.)
But I think what I’ve been waiting for most has been Tweetie 2. I’m a verified iPhone addict, and that turned me into a Twitter maniac. If you’ve seen Zombieland, the next line will make a lot more sense to you: Mad Mac user became mad iPhone addict became mad twitterer. And compared to something like a television with no power cord, getting and reviewing an iPhone app is simple.
What was the catalyst for that shift? Tweetie 1. The original app let me do almost everything I ever needed to do on Twitter, and the man behind it all, Loren Brichter (follow him on Twitter here) is completely receptive to his userbase. When we have a problem, or a bug, or just a general comment – he’s there. Unlike a few other developers. I had a weird crashing problem early on with the app (I was an early adopter for the original Tweetie and have been praising it ever since), and he walked me through everything I needed to do to get him crash reports (Yeah, at the time I didn’t know how to retrieve them), and that, along with the way he conducts his business, will keep me coming back for Tweeties 3, 4, and 5 – if it comes to that.
It looks just a little bit different from Tweetie 1.
(This is with the font size turned all the way down – the default size is 15, which was a little too big for me.)
Tap any individual tweet, and you get the single tweet view screen. If you have pictures uploaded (more on that in a second), you even get a small thumbnail of the picture in question!
In the event that you were replying to someone else, a button reading “in reply to…” becomes visible and you’re taken to a threaded conversation view.
Retweets have been differentiated from “Quotes,” meaning that this version of Tweetie will, in fact, play nice with Twitter’s new retweet system API. (This fact does seem to be confusing to some people, but my guess is that as soon as it comes into play on Twitter.com, things will be a lot more clear.)
Sending a tweet is easy, as per usual. Click the compose button, and you get the usual screen. Click the button containing your remaining character count, and the keyboard disappears, leaving you with a lovely little screen containing everything you’d want to insert into a tweet, including a way to look up other users (to mention in your tweets) and geotagging.
If that’s all you want to do, you’re golden. But if you want a little bit more from your iPhone Twitter app, well, you’re in luck. Using your own image service and URL shortening is a snap (and if I’m not mistaken, Tweetie 2 is the first client to add this feature). Edit your profile *inside* the app. Link Twitter profiles to users in your iPhone address book. Swipe to go home. Edit what users your other accounts follow. Pull your timeline down to refresh (much better than the arrow of the old days). Fun stuff – and intuitive.
So far, I have only three gripes (and they barely even matter to me) – the new usericon (see it from the Tweetie link I posted earlier) doesn’t seem to have the same Apple-esque feel of Tweetie 1′s happy blue bubbles, and the themes from Tweetie 1 have yet to make their way into Tweetie 2 (I’m sure a zillion people will be clamoring for the iChat bubbles, but not me). I’m getting used to the new colors, though – I missed mentions showing up in blue, so that much makes me happy. I’ve also encountered a single bug that I can’t replicate. When you close the app, it picks up exactly where you left off. Once, despite exiting the app from my main timeline, it pulled up the last individual tweet I read. Since I can’t replicate this, I’m taking it as an isolated incident.
All in all, this is a solid rebuilding (and yes, it was completely rebuilt) of one of my all-time favorite apps. If you’re on the fence about buying this new app, take the plunge. It’s worth it. Besides, it’s only $3 – if I can afford it, so can you.
Buy Tweetie 2 here.
Read the help manual for Tweetie 2 here.
OMG! You know that thing I said about probably never having sources at all?
…it’s still true. I’m just honestly wondering if I can get more hits this way.
Since last week’s iPod event featured exactly zero (that’s a goose-egg, nada, zilch, 0) tablet references, we are forced to just keep speculating.
Sure, we keep hearing snippets of rumors, but those might not even be true! (That being the entire nature of rumors and everything.)
So what else can the Girl Genius do but make a wishlist? That’s right, absolutely none of this is confirmed. At all. We’ve theoretically got until February to think about it, but I know what I want now.
I have a couple of reservations about this supposed tablet design (like a giant iPhone) and the possibility of a touch keyboard similar to the iPhone’s. I just don’t see it working that well. It works on the iPhone, sure, but that’s because it’s an awful lot easier to hold and type at the same time. I don’t think a giant iPhone would be that comfortable in my hands, and keeping it flat on the table doesn’t seem that comfortable, either.
Honestly, I think the whole idea would be fantastic as something about half the size of the current MacBook Air, physical keyboard included. I don’t know how feasible this is.
I definitely want to see the oleophobic screens as used on iPhone 3GS – the number of times I have to wipe off my 3G any given day is just ridiculous.
I’d love for gestures to be ported over from the new MacBooks – do them anywhere on the screen to just make it work. Other touch controls would be easily ported over from the iPhone, but I don’t necessarily like the idea of using the same iPhone OS.
Durability has to be a given, so solid-state drives would be necessary. I’d like to be able to toss the machine into a bag without having to worry about it.
4 USB ports would be nice, as well as an easy way to connect a tablet and another Mac!
I would prefer for this to not come attached to any wireless provider, like some netbooks. If you want to use it online, use WiFi or get a USB solution from your wireless network.
It would be nice if this thing cost less than an entry-level MacBook, but I won’t hold my breath.
What do YOU want to see in an Apple tablet? Let me know in the comments!
For whatever reason, it looks like quite a few people aren’t interested in upgrading their Mac OS to 10.6 – I’ve seen a lot of people wholeheartedly approve this week’s early release of the upgrade, but for every two people that want it in their hands on the 28th, there’s another one that says, “Meh, I probably won’t upgrade.”
To those people, I ask: What would it take? Because I’m weighing the benefits of the updates versus the price ($29, or a dinner out for two), and I don’t see why people aren’t more excited.
All it took for me? (Well, other than being a giant Mac nerd?) Looking at the first page. Let’s investigate, shall we?
I got to right about here and started squeeing. Repeatedly.
I feel like this wouldn’t be complete without a list.
So, all of that’s just from the page of improvements. The other pages have their own merits, but I don’t need them. I know I’ll be updating as soon as I can, and it will most definitely be worth it.
