So What’s Up With Windows Phone 7?
On the MailChimp blog.
Today Is My First Day At...
Today is my first day as a Mobile Engineer at MailChimp. @drewconner and I are tasked with creating awesome mobile stuff here at MailChimp's (shiny!) new Mobile Lab. Needless to say, I'm super excited. :)
New Challenges
So I'm leaving Xeko. And I'm bummed about it. I'll miss all of the great people there, the sweet office at King Plow, and what the company stands for. I'm leaving so I can learn (hopefully lots of!) new things and find new challenges in mobile at a very exciting place. Tell you more soon.
P.S. Xeko is doing better than ever and will continue to do so without me. The engineering team there can only be described as awesome.
Samsung SSD (Corsair P256) Garbage Collection Works On Mac OS X?
So I was under the impression that Samsung's garbage collection tech only worked on NTFS file systems. My drive, a Corsair P256, has very noticeably slowed down in day to day use. And earlier today I complained about the lack of TRIM support in OS X:
The results above suck. Well below what my drive did out of the box.
For the hell of it, I decided to log out of my machine to see if garbage collection would kick in. About 2 hours later I ran XBench again:
And Again:
I'll be leaving my machine logged out more often until Apple gets on the TRIM bandwagon.
How Will Apple Fix The iPhone 4 Antenna?
@jhaile is curious. I am too. My best guess is there'll be a firmware update that makes things much better. The issue will not be eliminated entirely but I think it will improved to the point of being effectively unnoticeable. I think software has a lot to do with it. I'm not talking about changing how the "bar gauge" works, either. I read someplace (location escapes me) that iPhone 4 runs entirely different software for its radio/baseband stuff. This would explain some initial quirks.
Edit: Before anyone says it: it's obvious that there's a hardware issue in play as well (signal attenuation when shorting the two antennae) but I think Apple will find some way to improve the performance dramatically. Such a fix could come at the expense of battery life.
iPhone 4 Antenna Problems
I love my iPhone 4. And it's unfortunate but the antenna issues are real. I have a bumper. Without the bumper I can make the Radio Javan iPhone app buffer by holding the phone in my left hand. And I'm left handed. With the bumper, it's better but I couldn't load a web page this morning holding the phone in my left hand. It worked once I switched hands and held it differently. Irritating.
That said, call quality does seem a little better and it does *not* drop calls when I'm not holding it (#fail?). My 3G and 3GS dropped calls at 285 and 400 like clockwork. The iPhone 4 does not. (I use my car's built in handsfree system and the phone sits in a cup holder.)
This is just my experience. YMMV.
AT&T's New Data Plans
Basically, AT&T's new data plans do the following:
- Save most iPhone users $5 a month. Cool.
- Provide tethering for $20, but no additional bandwidth to go with your paying said $20. Lame.
- Cost heavy data users much more per month. Lame.
- Screw iPad 3G users a month after its release. Lame.
My Thoughts on the Apple iPad
My initial thought was wow, this is pretty lame. I was disappointed. I still am. It's a big iPod Touch. It does offer some in-between functionality around document editing via a customized version of iWork, which I think will be key to its success (if it does indeed succeed). It's my opinion that there were a great number of missed opportunities for the iPad but it's worth noting Apple's target market for the iPad is (apparently) not me.
The iPad has a fast, new processor that Apple designed in house. It's an ARM processor and it makes sense that they did this given the purchase of PA Semiconductor some time ago. Various blog posts point to animation being silky smooth and the UI being nice. Having not handled one, I can only go off what I've read as far as hardware quality -- it's great. The price is good. It starts at $500 and goes up to $830. I don't see the point of spending $130 extra to get a 3G enabled version. Generally, I will either be at home or at the office. Both have wifi. If I'm not at home or at the office, then I'll use my iPhone since it's in my pocket and easy to get to. I suppose the usefulness of 3G will depend on the user. The data plans are reasonable, but I'd rather pay an extra $15 and tether directly to my iPhone, where I already pay $30 for a data plan. The 3G enabled version of iPad will also ship a full 30 days after the wifi enabled version ships. This is bad for developers since testing on device is important. The simulator is good enough in most cases but users don't run simulators.
Onto the not so good stuff.
iPad is a terrible name. Feminine hygiene product jokes trended to #2 on Twitter today.
The iPad has limited software. I expected more. I expected more of everything. And I don't just mean multitasking and standard connectors like USB. I expected the iPad to really fill the gap between my iPhone and Macbook Pro by actually interacting with the two in a meaningful way. Syncing via bluetooth would have been a good start. Perhaps allowing one to use the iPad as a secondary monitor via wifi would be another way to bolster its usefulness. iPad is sorely lacking in the productivity-make-my-life-easier software department. There's more, but I digress.
How about the target market? What is it, exactly? Well, I believe the target market is currently media consumption. It's a big iPod Touch. It'll be great for video, music, reading, and so on but not so great for your average business person. That's why Apple needed iWork for the iPad to succeed. It needed a business use case. I do believe the target market will grow with the release of iPhone OS 4. With any luck, it will fill in some of the gaps I've mentioned and give the iPad a shot at being in my bag with my Macbook Pro. At this point, I only plan to purchase one for the purpose of software development. I want to help expand that target market.
Detailed Account of Blipr - Beginning to Present
I've published a post about Blipr on the return7 blog. It talks about expectations, costs, risk, failure, etc. related to Blipr. You should definitely measure the effort and deeply research the market involved in creating a quality iPhone app (if you want to succeed). Check it out here.
Amro Mousa
Mobile developer at MailChimp, Co-Founder of return7, Web developer, just all sorts of developer
