The Install

After backing up my iPhone and downloading the sizable update image from the Developer Center, I used my MacBook and iTunes to install the new OS (using Option+Click on the the Restore button). The installation of the new software took around 20 minutes to complete. Once my iPhone rebooted and aquired activation, I connected it to my Windows machine to restore the backup and sync, which took around one and a half hours to complete.

First Impressions

Performance

Prior to installing the beta (version 2), my phone was running a jailbroken copy of OS 2.2 with a lot of extra ‘unoffical’ stuff installed, some of which seriously reduced performance. Since my copy of 3.0b2 is not jailbroken, I don’t have any of these apps installed and as a result, my phone feels much “snappier” than before; however, I have no way of knowing how much of a performance change is due to the new OS vs the lack of “extra baggage.” Apparently beta 2 resolves most of the performance issues present in beta 1 (I’ve read reports of people requiring a reboot on a daily basis with the first beta), but since I did not have access to the first beta, I can’t compare those either. After a few hours of use, however, it seems fast enough for daily use. We’ll see how this plays out.

Update: After using the OS for a few days, I did notice slowdowns that required a reboot to solve. I probably had to reboot my device once every 3 days with beta 2. I’ve just upgraded to beta 3, so I’ll soon report back on it’s stability.

Discovered Issues

• MMS (b2): Apple/AT&T are not supporting MMS during the beta period. There have been mix reports of success and failure on various sites around the ‘net. In my experience, it seems to be more of a carrier configuration issue than a software issue. As of yet, I’ve been unable to send or recieve MMS on my iPhone. I called AT&T and spoke to someone who said she would provision my phone for MMS, but it’s not working yet. After that modified my icss file according to these instructions. Still no MMS and I’m no longer recieving text messages when someone sends me one, and I’m not getting a ‘blocked’ response when sending images to the special MMS email address.
• Tethering (b2): While this needs further investigation, enabling and connecting to my laptop caused some serious performance issues, at least right after enabling. I did not play with this long enough to get online.
• Messaging App Landscape Mode (b2): Sent message bubbles do not expand/reflow horizontally to take advantage of the wider reading space. They stay the same width as in portrait mode.
• Keyboard Crash (b2): I’m not really sure how to classify this, but on at least two occasions the keyboard would show up with all of the letter keys transparent. The number/symbol keys worked fine, however. This only occured in Safari.

Note: Number in parenthesis indicates the beta version this was noticed in.

I’ll be updating this post with further information as I play with the software, so check back to see what’s new. I will also be updating and creating some additional iPhone related posts in the near future.

Update: I have some screenshots that I’ll be adding soon.

I’m doing it. I’ll post my thoughts when I get signed up. And who knows, maybe this will even result in some software for your iPhone!

I’d recommend checking them out, though you may need Google Chrome or a late version of Firefox or Safari to view them.

Let me explain myself. First, I must mention that I consider myself quite the technology aficionado (no surprise to many of you) and I attempt to stay abreast of the latest “web2.0″ trends. I try new web services often and usually abandon them quickly. When exploring a new service, I try to find a way to enhance my life with its’ functionality. Unfortunately the majority of these new services fail to meet that goal and I never log in again. Occasionally, however, I stubmle across a new gem with potential for greatness.

Google Latitude is one such product.

For the past year, many people have been touting “Location Based Services” (LBS) as the next big application for internet connected mobile devices; I’ve maintained a passing interest in this since I got my iPhone. There are a few small players experimenting in this area (such as Loopt), but nothing huge. The largest social networks (Facebook and MySpace) are strangely absent from this area, even though both networks offer decent iPhone applications.

When Google released it’s Latitude product a few weeks back, I immediately signed myself up and added a few friends to my network. Currently my location is updated by hand and at random intervals, since the functionality has not been released for the iPhone (it is rumored that it will be an addon to the Maps application). After playing with the iGoogle widget for a few days, it seems clear to me that Latitude is intended to be a location platform not a service. Its current interface is not much more than a basic proof of concept; Latitude will not truely shine until the API is released and it becomes a behind-the-scenes service that manages your location data and its distribution to outside services and applications (like Facebook or MySpace).

Facebook is the current home of my most extensive social graph, with over 800 connections. While Facebook could easily develop their own location service and integrate it with thier iPhone/BlackBerry applications, I think that this would be a terible move. In my perfect world, Google would host the platform (Latitude), giving me a central repository for my location data. I could then select the web applications with which I would like to share the data (and updates about it). Such as Facebook and MySpace, or any other location based service that I deem will add value to my life.

I’m hoping that is what Google has in mind, but they are laying out the pieces slowly and trying to get each step of the puzzle correct. There’s huge potential for LBS, and Google is making a very “googlesque” play here. I just hope that companies such as Facebook continue opening their platforms and playing nice together; I don’t want to need a seperate application to update location information on each of my 12,031 networks. I want one platform that can be updated with my choice of program and will push the information out to my networks. Simple!

Note: there’s also Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, which provides a similar service but already has an API and some programs that work with it. I haven’t played with it much, but I have similar concerns… and it would be nice if location data could be passed between Fire Eagle and Latitude, even though they’re both supposed to do the same thing.

To reflect the change in regime, President Obama’s crack web team has put up a brand new site at Whitehouse.gov, and I must say, I like it quite a lot! It has a very modern, up to date feel and seems easy to navigate. I wish I knew more about the backend, but a (very) cursory glance at the source didn’t shed any light (I’m assuming it is a custom coded backend).

Kottke has a most revealing glance at the change in Whitehouse.gov/robots.txt, which is what prompted my first glance at the site.

Hurray for change… here’s to the future!

However, during yesterday’s conversation, I came to a realization: we are nearing or at the point where the FM transmission step can be eliminated. Because of the growing presence of mobile Internet connected multimedia hardware (such as the iPhone), the hassles of classic radio transmission can be bypassed, opening up the potential for everyone to ‘broadcast’ their own audio content to an audience that no longer needs to be tethered to a computer. Currently, services such as Last.fm or Pandora provide native applications to stream audio directly to the iPhone (even over the Edge network, though it requires more buffering). While I haven’t done much research, I believe there are also native iPhone apps that allow you to stream music from Live365.com, which brings live broadcasting to a wide number of users for a price substantially lower than what one would pay to set up a traditional broadcast station. However, for those who have more time to configure their service, there are ways to stream live music using QuickTime. Apparently the Tuner application in the app store will provide connectivity to a generic shoutcast stream (but it isn’t free for the end user).

Just another way that our connected world is providing new opportunities for more and more people. Oh, and of helpful note- the iPhone cannot make or recieve calls while using edge data, so I would only do this on wifi or the 3g network (which does support simultaneous data and voice).

Over the past few days, I’ve been enjoying my new iPhone 3G immensely. There are a few annoyances, such as buggy software, a little DRM issue I had with the app store, and various other things. However, one issue that was really bothering me was the inability to sync my iPhone calendar with my Google Calendars. I keep all of my events on my Google Calendar, using several calendars (some of which are shared) to keep up with everything.

Apple does provide the ability to sync (using iTunes) your iPhone and Outlook calendars – unfortunately that requires you to use Outlook along with extra plug-ins to retrieve your Google Calendars, and you only sync when you connect to iTunes. Even worse, I read that you could only sync your main calendar in this manner.

Then I ran across the perfect solution: NuevaSync! NuevaSync is brilliantly simple – it simply provides a gateway between your Google and the Exchange syncing features of the new iPhone 2.0 software. This means that you can sync all of your Google Calendars (bi-directionally) with the iPhone calendar. Better yet, all this happens over the air, in real time – no syncing with iTunes to update your calendars!!

The setup couldn’t be simpler – simply sign up for a new account at NuevaSync, supply your Google account details (you can sync both calendars and contacts if you wish – I chose only calendar syncing), and follow the simple setup instructions for the iPhone. In minutes you’ll be getting synchronized with your iPhone calendar!

The only limitation I’ve noticed so far is the inability to select what calendar you would like to use when creating new events (however, you can see the events on all calendars). New events created on your phone go to the default calendar. However, I think this is an iPhone limitation, or something I’ve simply overlooked. A small price to pay for the huge convenience of OTA synchronization with Google Calendars!!

Shortly after beginning my own “sms revolution,” a few people began complaining that messages they received contained an “@” between each word of the message. Of course I immediately think “well obviously that’s an encoding problem.” And sure enough… here’s how you solve it:

Navigate to Options -> SMS Text and change Data Coding to 7 bit. I’m assuming it was previously set to UCS2. A quick word of warning: if you need to send messages containing some foreign characters, you must leave your encoding set to UCS2 and tell your friends to get a better phone. Another bonus is that now your messages can actually contain 160 characters instead of the 62 character limit of the extended letter set.

The more you know…