Fazal Majid's low-intensity blog

I thought I would escape the frenzy of iPhone hype by filtering out any mentions of it from my feed reader. In fact, I was quite resentful of the way the iPhone launch pushed out the release of OS X 10.5 Leopard to October 2007. On my way to my cousin’s wedding on Friday June 29th, I passed by the San Francisco Apple Store and saw the line. It was actually fairly tame, as it only went halfway around the block (when the store originally opened, the line went all the way around and spilled over into Market Street).

Of course, when I came back, I had to see one. One of the petty annoyances with my Nokia E62 was how it would take several seconds for the address book to load. The iPhone, despite having a much more computationally intensive user interface, still manages to have lightning-quick responsiveness to user input. That itself convinced me to buy one.

The iPhone mostly meets or even exceeds the hype. The user interface is exceptionally good, let alone for a version 1.0 product. Some quick notes from a Nokia E62 switcher (my previous phone was also using Cingular/AT&T):

• Email and web are very snappy. The SSL implementation on the E62 would take forever to negotiate with my home IMAP server (as in several minutes), the iPhone’s is instant. The E62’s web browser, despite being based on the same WebKit code base as Apple’s Safari, could not run two concurrent AJAX XMLHttpRequest concurrently, Safari has no such problems.
• The battery life is very short, well under 2 days, and it takes a long time to fully charge.
• The glass screen does not scratch, but it does show fingerprints and smudges.
• The virtual keyboard is surprisingly effective. This was the single biggest area where I thought it would fall short, but it actually performs far better than the E62’s chiclet keys. Part of the reason is that the E62’s keys actually wobble when you press them, which doesn’t make for precise typing, and they are so tiny anyway that it’s hard to type accurately without pressing other keys in the process. The iPhone’s magnification effect as well as the fact you can slide your finger to correct a misregistered virtual keypress, makes for much faster typing. The predictive text engine is also far superior to schemes like Symbian’s, or T9. T9 is unbearably annoying in the same vein as Microsoft Word’s noxious autocorrect functionality or Clippy, I always disable T9 on any phone that has it, the iPhone’s system is unobtrusive and eminently usable in comparison.
• The sound quality on the iPhone is not at the same level as the E62, specially for the speakerphone.
• No voice recorder. A rather silly omission.
• The calendar does not support To-Do list items from iCal. This is ridiculous.
• You cannot use iTunes music files as either the ring tone or alarm sound. This was probably to appease AT&T and the RIAA, who seem to believe they have a divine right to make you pay over again and again for the same music. Even if I were prepared to accept their racketeering and pay the obscenely expensive charge for a ring tone, I seriously doubt they would have what I used for mine on the E62, the finale theme from Sibelius’ Kullervo op. 9.
• The recessed phone jack is incompatible with most earphones like my ER-4P, but it works just fine with B&O A8, whose jack is actually a fairly thin molded connector wrapped in a rubber jacket that easily slips off to accommodate the iPhone jack.
• Safari has no option to remember passwords for you, unlike the desktop version, and it does not recognize the standard http://login:password@site/ convention either, which makes logging onto Temboz harder than it has to be.
• The Bluetooth functionality in the iPhone is pretty minimal, limited to using Bluetooth wireless headsets and not much more. You cannot beam business cards or photos. Unlike the E62, I cannot use it as a modem for either my MacBook Pro or my Nokia N800. Since there is no SSH client on the iPhone, this could bite me when I need emergency access. Then again, the $20 unlimited data plan for iPhones is half the price of my previous $39.99 unlimited data plan.
• Not supporting Java or Flash is a feature, not a bug.
• The camera, as could be expected, is mediocre. We all know the only purpose is to snap facsimiles of notes, billboards, flyers. whiteboards and the like.
• The calculator is minimal. It does not support RPN and does not have either scientific or financial capabilities.
• You can specify 24-hour time format, but there is no way to specify ISO date format.
• The iPhone seems incompatible with my SendStation PocketDock Line Out USB, and thus I cannot connect it to my Ray Samuels Hornet pocket headphone amplifier and full-size Sennheiser and AKG headphones. It is also incompatible with Apple’s own universal AV dock, and displays a warning message telling you so. Then again, since it is a GSM phone, the annoying pulsating buzz induced by GSM would make such an arrangement impractical.

Update (2007-07-13):

It must be the Friday 13th effect at work… My iPhone seems to have developed a defective proximity sensor. The phone works as a speakerphone, but no longer turns the headset speaker on when I bring it to my ear. Resetting and even restoring the phone does not help, it’s probably a hardware issue.

Fortunately, the SF Apple Store Genius Bar let me in this evening without an appointment, and swapped it for a new one. This was the first time they had seen this particular problem, and they told me Apple’s policy for the first month is to do full replacements and collect field failures for analysis. The repair process afterwards seems to be still up in the air. I would recommend they have swap or loaner units on hand, as people are less likely to tolerate not having a phone than not being able to listen to music for a week.

I upgraded my MacBook Pro to the third-generation model so I can bump up my RAM to 4GB. Aperture and CS3 are very resource-intensive, and the 2GB upper limit of my first-generation MBP was somewhat constraining.

I just transferred my files over using Apple’s migration utility and target firewire mode. The process, while not 100% automated (it did not transfer X11, for instance, or some of the preferences), is far smoother than any Windows equivalent. Here are my first impressions on the new model:

• The new, environmentally friendly mercury-free LED backlight is definitely more blue in tone than the pinkish cold-cathode fluorescent backlight on the old model. The default ColorSync monitor profile does a good job of compensating for this, however. There is some vignetting on the 15″ screen (darkening in the corners). I wonder how the 17″ model fares, and whether they had to add additional LEDs for a more even backlight illumination.
• This machine is fast. It blows my dual-2GHz G5 PowerMac out of the water in all benchmarks other than disk I/O. Unsurprisingly, it is also much faster than the first-generation machine, specially on graphics but also on disk I/O.
• It does not heat up quite as much as the older Core Duo model, the heat level, while high, never reaches a potentially dangerous temperature. This is probably due to improved power management, as running two Parallels virtual machine will bring it up to the same pant-scorching levels as the Core Duo.

I installed Adobe Creative Suite 3 on my home PowerMac and my MacBook (the license allows you to install it on two computers as long as they are not in simultaneous use). The only real reason I upgraded is to get a native Intel version. I have barely started using it already and I already have peeves:

• Bridge looks butt-ugly, is even slower than before and with a more amateurish interface than ever
• The install procedure is incredibly annoying and Windows-like. There is no justification for an install procedure that chokes if the beta was not uninstalled officially (although I have to give some brownie points due to the fact the cleanup script is written in Python).
• The icons are aesthetically bankrupt. What kind of credibility does Adobe think it has with creative people with such an astoundingly lackluster effort?
• Barely installed and already in need of software updates. The widespread availability of fast Internet connections is no excuse for shoddy release management or a “we’ll patch it post-release” mentality. Speaking of which, the only proper time to interrupt users with a software update dialog is as they are quitting the application, not by getting in the way of whatever task they are trying to get done by starting up the app.
• Don’t clutter my hard drive with legal drivel in twenty different languages. It’s called “Creative Suite”, not “Boilerplate Suite”.
• All the tie-ins to paid add-on services like Adobe Stock Photos or Acrobat Conferencing are incredibly obnoxious, just like those for MSN or .Mac.
• JavaScript in Acrobat is a big security and privacy risk, and should be disabled by default.
• On the plus side, thanks for making a “Design Basic” edition without all the despicable Flash garbage in it. I would actually pay more for the Basic version than for the supposedly premium one infected with Flash and Dreamweaver.

Update (2008-01-01):

It seems Adobe has also crossed a serious ethical line by building in spyware to track on whenever a user starts a CS3 application.

As far as I am concerned, this is the last straw and I will actively start looking for substitutes for Adobe products as soon as I return from my vacation.

Update (2008-01-02):

It seems Adobe does not collect the serial number after all. The apps should nonetheless never call on the Internet except possibly to check for updates. For people like myself who have static IPs, the IP address itself could be used to correlate the analytics with personal information.

Legendary cellist and all-around good guy Mstislav “Slava” Rostropovich passed away in Moscow today. He was a friend and supporter of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Britten and many others like Dutilleux, and many of the greatest works for cello of the 20th century, indeed of all time, were dedicated to him.

I had the opportunity to hear him conduct Shostakovich’s “Babi Yar” a year ago (when I took this photo) and a few years earlier as a cellist the Dvořák Cello Concerto (sadly in replacement of the far superior Shostakovich First Cello Concerto that was dedicated to him).

The world of music has suffered a grievous loss. None of the current generation of cellists (Ma, Gastinel) is of the same caliber. As a conductor, his legacy is more mixed, as his Shostakovich interpretations often lack fire, but his Prokofiev cycle with Erato is marvelous, specially the Fourth in its original version.

Is it just me or is the Finale of Sibelius’ Second Symphony, Op. 43 (1902) eerily reminiscent of the first movement of Saint-Saëns’ Third Piano Concerto, Op. 29 (1869)?