“While ALL iPhone 4s actually have this problem (Craig, let me see you’re iPhone and I’ll show you and it is definitely DUMB that a world class mobile phone has an issue as stupid as “if you hold it in this way it doesn’t work,” I feel that it’s not THAT big of a deal. Simply moving my thumb half a centimeter “fixes” everything, and getting a case (which I ordered NOT because of the reception issue) completely resolves the issue.

The only unfortunate thing is that the iPhone hasn’t morphed into a phone that is also a computer. It’s still a computer that is also a phone. Maybe iPhone 5 will be called iRealPhone.

My official stance: MEGA FAIL but not a big deal. Sort of like running into a screen door.”

PS – I never believed that the issue could be fixed by reporting a different number of bars.  That software could fix an obvious hardware problem is silly.  However, the thought that perception of the public can be altered by software is an obvious one, and is the route that Apple took.  Suddenly the reception issue was perceptibly cut in half, because instead of going from 4 bars to none, you’re only going from two bars to none.  Steve, you’re so sly!

But then I read the post on daringfireball that was trying to drill things home for people:

Gizmodo isn’t being “punished severely for publishing information gained by others in unsavory ways”; they are being investigated by law enforcement for committing a felony themselves.

And then I read the note that Gizmodo received from Apple two months prior, stating that they shouldn’t give cash incentives to people that find leaked prototypes from Apple, because this sort of incentive is promoting people to break the law (breaking the law is illegal, FYI), and that this sort of action is against the law in itself.  Well F – they knew this was going to happen!

I’m now of the mind that Gizmodo is just a bunch of juvenile journalists…

oh wait…. I always thought that.

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

There’s a middleware community of folks that have invested tons of time and effort (and money) into writing a layer of tools that allow other developer folks that aren’t savvy with the native iPhone development platform (which consists of Cocoa Touch and Obj-C) to still be effective at creating Apps using their language/platform of choice.  Apple is now stating that these solutions are no longer acceptable and will not be approved for distribution in the App Store.  Apple has always recommended that people use the native tools, and has never supported the middleware community.

So now there’s a huge uproar of folks saying that Apple has made a terrible move and that Apple doesn’t realize what they’ve done.  They’ve ruined the community and are going to lose revenue in the App Store, etc…

Really?  It’s Apple.  They know exactly what they’ve done, and they did it for a reason.

Yes, it sucks for all those people that invested time to create these middleware solutions that empower developers of other “faiths” to create iPhone apps.  I feel bad for all these “wasted” hours (hopefully we can figure out a way to repurpose all of this spent energy).  However, I think this is a great move on Apple’s part from a business perspective.  They’re ensuring the success of their platform by ensuring that people learn how to use it, and not some other middleware solution that could one day not exist or be 100% compatible with the Cocoa Touch tools.  They’re removing any dependency on third party solutions that could stifle their success.

There have been a lot of angry remarks out there about Apple’s decision (*cough cough Lee Brimelow cough*).  These remarks are coming mainly from the people who are currently using middleware solutions or who were going to use CS5 to create iPhone apps.

But y’know what?  Cocoa Touch isn’t THAT difficult for a developer to learn (specifically a .NET developer), and neither is Obj-C.  Yea, it’s not C#, but it’s not assembly for Christ’s sake.  If Apple had this TERRIBLE platform that was hardly usable and difficult to learn then it wouldn’t be in their best interest to force people to use their platform – the quality of the apps would suffer and the iPhone App Model would fail – but that’s not the case.  They have a very decent developer experience. I made the switch from .NET (WPF and Silverlight) to Cocoa and it wasn’t the end of the world, nor was it a huge time suck.  I’m thoroughly enjoying the entire Cocoa Touch experience now, and the more people that use it, the better the experience will become.  Platform adoption is the reason .NET and it’s tools have become so successful.  What’s wrong with Apple forcing the same approach with their own platform?  Absolutely nothing.

The new chip is the PowerVR SGX545, and it adds FULL support for DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.2, and OpenCL 1.0.

The new chip should output about 40 million polygons per second, which, compared to the iPhone 3GS existing chip that puts out about 28 million polygons per second, is a 70% increase.

It’s not released yet, but the date on their website shows 2010 as the release date, so hopefully sometime this year.  They also have pictures of some augmented reality games that you could play with the device.  Seems pretty sweet!

UPDATE: I didn’t know this was going to be at CES!  Catch some more info on the ARDrone over at Engadget.

January 27th is the day you’ve all been waiting for!  Apple should then be announcing their Apple Tablet and possibly the iPhone 4.0 SDK and/or Tablet SDK (I’m guessing that the tablet and iPhone SDKs won’t be that much different, but I could be wrong).  I would assume that a tablet would be able to run all the same apps that the iPhone runs.

I’m also looking forward to an announcement of the next iPhone, which should, IMO, also be announced on the same day.  I think 2010 is going to be a great year for the iPhone – I’m crossing my fingers for a CPU upgrade, the rumored 5 megapixel camera, and an external design refresh (the current body looks great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s getting old).  Hopefully an updated iPhone will cure the phones of their terrible “air interface” that communicates with the cell towers, finally ending this whole “AT&T sucks” fiasco.

I would also love to see word on a MacBook line refresh, specifically with faster processors and video cards- I love the design and am only looking for a speed increase.

Anything’s possible in twenty ten…

The speculation currently says that these units are going to be for the iPhone, but I could also see these being used in a tablet or in the next generation MacBooks.

If you subscribe to the Apple Hot News feed then you would have seen that the University of Washington (Go Huskies!) was spotlighted as a large connected campus with 14,000 handheld mobile devices on their wifi network,  about 90% of which are iPhones.

“The community isn’t defined any longer by where we are,” says Grant Kollet, Director of First-Year Programs at the university. “It’s not about place; the community is about activity…”

I’ve been hanging out at Starbucks a lot more lately in an effort to beat the heat (they’ve all got great A/C). I live on the top floor of my Seattle apartment building and the heat there is just KILLER lately. If you didn’t know, it’s been a little hot in Seattle (for a Seattle native anyway).

Anyway, I ran a speedtest on SpeakEasy.net and got the following results:

first run

second run

Pretty sweet results.  Definitely not bad for a phone…

Actually.  Even if the phone WAS technically better than the iPhone it wouldn’t make a difference.  The iPhone has such a large following now that it’s here to stay in a big way.  It would take much more than a piece of technology to make the iPhone step down as the king.  There’s such a large community structure around the iPhone now with all the apps in the App Store and the iPhone companies that have been popping up left and right that it’s going to take a lot of work to break down what Apple’s got going for them.  Good luck competing with that.  Nobody’s come close yet.