I didn’t buy an iPhone in 2007 for two reasons: AT&T and lack of apps. The power of the apps and my love of the second gen iPod touch forced me to capitulate and move to the iPhone 3GS. My love of the 3GS (plus work, admittedly) is what pushed me to the iPad.

I’m typing this on the on-screen keyboard in the serviceable (but not perfect) WordPress iPad app. Despite the imperfections that come along with touch typing on a touchscreen, I’m doing OK. Also, while I got a 32GB iPad at launch, it’ll be going to Grant as soon as my 64GB 3G iPad ships. Hey, I wanted to go big or go home. Plus, I can already see myself loading this thing with content.

I think that all of the pundits bitching about this or that aspect of the iPad are off-base. If I never did anything else but surf the web in bed or on my couch, read eBooks or watch Netflix, I’d feel I had my monies worth. Simply put, it’s just so nice to have such a low profile and usable media pad. This is something I’ve wanted for years and years. As nice as laptops are, they aren’t great for curling up in bed and they don’t have the battery life to go days without charging.

My mom is getting an iPad for Mother’s Day and for her, it will likely be her primary computer. No more slow bootups, crashes and battery issues. She can take it and the Bluetooth keyboard and case and just go crazy. I can’t wait to see her use it.

Doing links in this app is annoying so I’ll have to update later, but here are a few of my favorite apps so far:

* GoodReader — loved the iPhone app, equally love the iPad version. It can do so much and I can’t wait to see it get better (like open files from Mail). The way it connects to Google Docs is just awesome.

* Things — Cultured Code did a stellar job. If you have Things for Mac, it’s well worth getting for the iPad.

* Netflix/ABC — both apps are awesome for video.

* Evernote — I haven’t been an Evernote fan but the iPad app and its easy multi-device sync convinced me to do the premium upgrade.

Too many games to mention. I just want apps like WriteRoom, TextExpander and Pastebot to get iPad versions so that I can get a really solid productivity flow.

So this is just my iPad update. I’m off to continue to enjoy a rare day off!

Out!

However, at long last, I think I’ve managed to put all my thoughts about the iPad and the emerging device class of tablets and media pads into one 900 word post. You can read it in its entirety at Mashable.com. However, I’ll provide an excerpt to try to entice you to care:

What’s different about this new wave of tablet devices is that the intended use cases for the device have evolved into something completely different. These new tablets are not being presented as a replacement for the existing computer but for an ancillary type of platform. The new tablets are also not being primarily targeted at business users, but at home users instead. The usage cases are more tightly defined as well. The new tablet devices are about accessing and consuming web content.

If that sounds eerily familiar, that’s because I totally ripped-off my own writings from this blog back in November, when I both reviewed the 27″ i7 iMac and discussed Google’s Chrome OS. I articulated far more verbosely in that personal blog post the problem I see with netbooks (in terms of being a target for an alternative operating system like Google Chrome) and why I was convinced then, just as I am convinced now, that a new class of device is needed for the original purpose of netbooks to actually take hold.

This is what I wrote a little over two months ago, again, in relation to Chrome OS, but also applicable to the idea of the new wave of tablet computing and media pads as we will know them:

Here’s where netbooks end up causing their owners problems. The netbook has better hardware than the iPhone, but because it has a bigger screen a bigger keyboard (and the screens and keyboards are getting bigger and bigger all the time), people expect it to be faster than it is. Thus, you get people wanting more from the device than it can offer. That’s why netbooks, at least Atom-based netbooks are probably going to disappear sooner rather than later. On the low-end you’ll have ARM and on the higher-end, you’ll just have low-priced, lightweight actual laptops…

Anyway, I think the push for ARM in netbook style computers is going to be met with utter disappointment from consumers — especially if Flash isn’t hardware accelerated when they launch. Since this is Chrome’s target, I think that traditional laptop styled devices are not going to work.

This is what I see: Something like a tablet but with a more defined purpose: like call it a media pad. Something you could use as a remote control, for instance — an eBook reader (that isn’t as good as eInk) and a visual TV guide. Yeah, you can watch online content and surf the web, but it’s designed to sit on your sofa and be like what we use phones for now — but bigger and with the understanding that you need to be online at all times.

In any event, as Chrome OS stands now, it really isn’t useable in any test form, other than for shits and giggles, but the fact that it exists is pretty cool.

I will write one original thing here for my own blog, and that’s about Flash.

The Flash Problem is Overblown

I’m not going to totally get into the whole Flash debate — I think I made a very good case in the first episode of Dan Benjamin’s new show, The Conversation (subscribe now!) and Dan made his own solid case in episode 2.

But just to put it in a tiny bit of perspective, let me give my opinion, mostly as an observer and web-user of what has happened with Flash over the last decade and why what’s happening now shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all Adobe.

OK, so Macromedia introduces Flash in 1996, according to the Wikipedia, buying it from some guy who wrote the Flash precursor in college for the PenPoint OS and then ported it to Windows and Mac and then sold it to Macromedia, who renamed it Flash. It was used primarily for web animations and effects and navigation and whatnot.

Then in 2002, Flash 6 came with flash video support, which made it easy to do web-video without having to rely on shit like Realplayer or Windows Media or even QuickTime (though as we’ll see, QuickTime’s day would come again). The real power of this type of video really wasn’t exploited until YouTube launched in early 2005. Suddenly, Flash, which had been a dying component, came back and it came back big time.

In essence, video was Flash’s saving grace. When the iPhone debuted without Flash support in June 2007, YouTube worked to convert its videos to H.264, so that they could play on the iPhone. In December of 2007, Adobe added H.264 support to Flash 9. This was a very, very prudent move and it was done because Adobe could see the writing on the wall: Web video was all going to go H.264. Not only is it the best compression standard that’s available in terms of size/performance now, but there is tons of hardware acceleration support and the new crop of consumer cameras records in it natively. If Flash can act as a container for that format, Flash can stave off its extinction in the video space.

Well, HTML5 and continued smartphone adoption patterns is going to finally make content providers question why they are suing a Flash container when they can just display the same video natively, without the container. Forgetting about Mozilla’s refusal to get on the ball here (and really, I’m just going to say this right now — I have no desire to get into any meaningless arguments over “freedom” or the “potential” of Theora with anyone. Do that on your own time. I don’t fucking care and neither does the rest of the rational world. I like the Xiph project, I don’t think Theora, which is based on old-ass technology should become the standard just because toe-jam eaters like Richard Stallman hate anything that doesn’t conform their insane standards. Want something truly “free” to take over — develop something new.), HTML5 has tons of promise because it makes sense to serve the content directly rather to put in a wrapper.

As for sites like Hulu that require Flash now — if they have any brains at all, they will have an iPad application available at launch.

And let’s not forget that the problems of Flash are not limited to the iPad. Fennec, the Firefox Mobile browser that currently runs only on the Nokia N900 — yeah, they had to drop Flash support because it degraded performance too much. The HTC Hero supports Flash, it fucking sucks and is a terrible experience. Flash 10.2, which will FINALLY bring some hardware side optimizations to the platform, making it viable on netbooks, is only for x86 processors. ARM is out. ARM derivatives like the A4 are out. If Flash isn’t optimized to work on the next crop of mobile devices, why are we all shrieking over the fact that rather than offer shitty support, Apple (and other smartphone makers) aren’t supporting Flash?

This is where, if Microsoft were smart, they would start compiling Silverlgiht to run and run well on EVERYTHING. That way if you want a framework (and not just a container for a video player) that can work on multiple devices, you have an option.

But now I’ve written far more than I intended to write. No one said I wasn’t opinionated.

Out.

Given that I’m actually able to call writing my career — which is amazing — I’m pretty OK with the fact that my personal blog gets neglected. But that’s why updates are few and far between — because I’m getting to write about technology and movies every day as part of my job.

OK, so since I last posted, a few things have happened in the world of technology, let’s go down the list:

• Apple announced its new product line, including what I have been waiting for: a Quad-Core iMac, and at 27″ wiht an LED IPS screen no less!
• I ordered said 27″ iMac i7, waited 18 days of delivery, was in love and beside myself with excitement — until I tried to hook it up to a second monitor and found out the miniDisplayPort was broken. So my beloved beauty must go back to Apple and they are sending me a replacement. I won’t get the replacement until around the 4th of December because the demand is high (and as I said, they didn’t even ship the machines until a good three and a half weeks after they were announced, for the i5/i7s anyway). Apple is letting me keep the defective one until then, but I won’t be able to be fully comfortable with my new toy for almost two more weeks.
• Google finally unveiled it’s much hyped Chrome OS and the whole technology world has gotten itself into a tizzy over what it is and what it isn’t and what it could be and all kinds of other shit.

So before I talk about Chrome, let me talk about the iMac.

27″ iMac i7 Review, Take One

As I said, I couldn’t help but be like totally, totally disappointed that I have to send my beautiful machine back, especially after waiting for it for so long. I bought the 27″ i7 as a 27th birthday gift to myself and got it just one day after my birthday.

Aside from the miniDisplayPort issue, the machine is amazing. The screen is beyond compare — and the thing is fast. How fast? Let’s just say that coming off of my two-year old BlackBook, I’m simply amazed at how much faster certain tasks are. If a program has been optimized for multi-cores AT ALL, it really shines. For instance, doing screencasts of live web video used to be a laborious process. Like, it would take hours to export the result from either Camtasia or Screenflow. On the i7 it literally flies. It’s amazing. I can’t wait for Adobe to come out with Photoshop CS5 that actually takes advantage of this stuff. Likewise, I can’t wait for more and more apps, especially multimedia apps, to really take advantage of multi-cores, hyperthreading and other awesome stuff.

I opted to install an extra 4 GB of RAM myself in the machine (I paid $60 shipped to get the RAM from Newegg, whereas it would have been another $200 or so if I got Apple to do it) and I have to say, the installation process couldn’t have been simpler. Before I even turned my Mac on for the first time, I put the new RAM, giving me 8 GB of DDR3-1066 RAM. I’m in heaven.

I got a Magic Mouse a week before I got my new iMac, so I was familiar with that — but I have to say, the combination of the screen and the mouse is really nice. I can’t wait for more gestures to get written into the Magic Mouse. I know that a lot of people I respect have panned the mouse, and the Logitech MX probably is a better pointing device, but the Magic Mouse is sexy, easy to use and feels good in the hand. Plus, I have my Wacom tablet if I need to do any precise, precise stuff anyway.

The alumnium keyboard is the same as what I’ve been using for a year with my MacBook hooked up to an external monitor and it remains a joy to type on.

Sound from the speakers is excellent, though I’m looking at getting a separate set anyway. The machine is amazingly quiet for all of its horsepower. I mean, according to the GeekBench results, this thing is very closer if not better than a base level Mac Pro. So I’ve got a Mac Pro (minus the expandability, yes, but I don’t care about that more than for RAM) inside one of the nicest displays available on the market.

I really can’t say enough about the screen. I know that once I get my working unit I’m going to really be able to see the difference between my $220 HP w2338h and this beauty — which is why that display will be relegated to holding my e-mail, Adium and maybe Campfire. I’ll leave the big screen for everything else.

As for why I need two screens when 27″ is so big? It’s not so much for size, but because I like to segment and separate some of my tools. I like having my mail up at all times, but I don’t want to have to battle with it and other windows. On my old setup, my MacBook screen simply served as a place for Mail.app to live. Because the smaller display will now be 23.5″ and 1920x1080, I can put a lot more on it and thus leave my beauty for TextMate, Photoshop and web browsers, which are the three programs I have open at almost all times (well that and LittleSnapper).

A lot has been written about the Apple Tax and the value proposition and whatnot, but I think that with the new iMac lineup, even at the 21.5″ level, but especially when you look at the i5 and i7 machines — it’s hard to argue that you aren’t getting your money’s worth.

Yes, I paid $2600 for my computer ($2660 with RAM), but I’m getting something that I couldn’t get anywhere else, and at Dell, two separate pieces, with a monitor that isn’t as good, would cost me MORE money.

I’m in front of a computer for at least 8 hours a day (10 is more accurate), having something fast, reliable and with a great, great screen really makes the difference, I just wish there was a Blu-ray option already. I hate that I can’t use this to watch my growing Blu-ray collection. But that’s OK, I have the amazing LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray Disc Player for that! Seriously, if you are looking for a Blu-ray player this Christmas and you don’t have a PS3 (or don’t want one), this is the one to get. It has Wireless-N, Netflix, VUDU and YouTube support (I think Pandora is coming soon), can connect to your PC or Mac or NAS setup to stream media and has great, great quality. $260 for what is almost a complete home entertainment hub.

I’ll do something more in-depth after I get the final iMac in and I transfer everything over officially (I’m in this weird limbo space now where about 90% of my files and docs are transferred, as well as my most-used apps, but most of my media files are still on other drives and I haven’t installed all my programs. When I figured out the first day I actually was going to use this thing for work that the DisplayPort didn’t work, I kind of stopped doing the big transfer. I mean, I have to do this again anyway so why bother?

And here’s my unboxing gallery. Forgive the quality, I couldn’t find my digital camera and so I had to use my iPhone which is just not good with my office’s lighting.

Chrome OS Thoughts

This should probably just be a separate blog post, but I really just wanted to discuss in a non-Mashable setting some of my thoughts on Chrome OS. The day it was announced, I quickly got my geek on and compiled the source image (which first required having to download and install the latest Ubuntu and run that in VMWare Fusion 3), which wasn’t difficult, but was long and laborious.

Then I had to create the VMWare image — figure out how to get the file from my VM to my desktop (not as simple as you’d think — I ended up just DropBoxing it which was faster) and then created a new VM from that image.

After playing with it a bit, I did like 5 screencasts, and sadly, this was the best take — despite my umming, uhs and actual technical problems. Whatever, I was on a deadline. I will say my ass-busting paid off because we had a hands-on first look at least 6 hours before any other major site (or minor site that I could find). I also got to flex my geek muscles (hey, compiling the kernel and building the image wasn’t difficult, but come on, that’s still totally geeky!), which is always nice.

So my first thoughts, which I shared on Twitter, was how disappointed I was that what we saw in Google’s demo wasn’t what the source was. It’s not that that isn’t completely and totally typical, but it just makes even contemplating developing anything for Chrome OS hard if you can’t even get a true baseline of how stuff works.

But the bottom line is this, everyone calls this a big threat to the desktop as we know it and representative of a big paradigm shift and blah blah blah, and you know, in another 10 years, that might be true — hell in 5 we might be closer to fruition, but as it stands right now, I can see Chrome OS succeeding, but where it will succeed will be in a completely separate and new class of device.

Gruber made a comment about how Chrome might be considered as a bicycle that replaces that second, rarely used car — and you know, that would be a very Larry Ellison way of looking at stuff — and maybe someday that will be true. However, right now, I don’t see it as a bicycle replacing a car — I don’t think it’s robust enough to be a bike. I think it’s a VESPA you get to tool around in but that you don’t ever seriously consider using for more than just certain things. It isn’t going to give you the flexibility of a bike, in terms of where you can take it (subways, winding trails, various terrains) or give you the exercise benefits, but it is a fun excursion and can often get you someplace faster than a car or a bike could depending on where you are and what you are trying to get to.

For the foreseeable future, I don’t think I see Chrome OS as something — that at least as it exists now and as it will exist according to Google’s demo — as something that even netbook owners — and netbook owners are used to making lots of compromises for perceived price/weight/convenience advantages — would be willing to compromise and use with any frequency.

This is why:

First, while Chrome OS and Android are often compared and conflated (and maybe eventually they will even morph into the same product), they are very different. Android, while deeply flawed (and I say that as someone who was a strong advocate and wants it to succeed if only to offer Apple real competition in the mobile space) in many of the ways it is executed, is still a fully robust platform. I may not like the default UI decisions, I may think the decision to basically take JIT, do something in the compiler so that it isn’t JIT by the legal definition, is stupid because I think Java is what is really limiting a lot of the development ideas and innovations and I might question the already splintering market of sub-Android brands, but Android is a platform.

Right now, Chrome is not a platform, it’s a thin client built into a Linux kernel. It has the potential to do web multimedia extremely well — especially with Flash and Silverlight both getting more into utilizing GPU and hardware acceleration — and the web in general very well, but despite our reliance on the web, the web still isn’t everything we do with computing. Don’t get me wrong, I could not survive without some sort of Internet access. I mean, I could literally, but I couldn’t work and most of my communication methods would be severely limited.

That said, I’m writing this entry in Mars Edit, not in WordPress’s window, because I both don’t like and don’t trust WordPress not to crash on me. I write my Mashable and AMC posts in TextMate (and Mashable uses WordPress, but the different linking and other stuff I like to do works better in TextMate, whereas I prefer Mars Edit for my personal writing) for the same reasons — and because I get added functionality that just isn’t available in a web-based text editor yet. Maybe someday, but not today. I do all of my graphics work, even light stuff, in Photoshop. I edit my photos in Aperture or LightRoom. Granted, I’m not the average user, but I would still rather my mother use iPhoto than Picasa or Picnik.

Google actually talked about stability and security as a perk when it comes to Chrome, but as I said on Twitter, in the more than two years that I have used Mac OS X full-time, I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually LOST data when it wasn’t my own fault (like when I’ve deleted my iTunes library not once, but twice — or when I’ve incorrectly closed a window without saving). However, I can’t even count how many times I’ve had web browsers, be it Firefox, Safari, Camino, Opera, Internet Explorer or even Google Chrome crash on me and take everything I was working on with it.

Firefox is often the nastiest culprit for that one — though that’s on the Mac, on the PC Firefox is much more stable — but even Safari pre 10.6.2 was pretty crash-happy too. Even Chrome, which is designed to like kill one window not the whole browser, often doesn’t do that — at least in my tests. So if I’m going to rely on anything to keep my data for me after a crash, it’s not going to be a web browser. Sorry.

Then there’s the issue of speed. Chrome is going to be fast because a) there’s almost nothing to it and b) they are going to require it to use SSD drives in the beginning. Now that’s smart, but that’s only part of what defines speed for users.

It’s pretty much accepted that the iPhone 3GS is one of the fastest smartphones on the market. The N900 may or may not be faster, the Droid is about the same speed, though the iPhone loads web pages faster when the network isn’t a defining factor. The iPhone 3GS is no slouch in the speed department, but even on WiFi, loading web pages can sometimes take a bit of time. This doesn’t bother me because I understand that my phone is not going to be as fast as my computer. The smaller size of the screen and the compact nature make it totally easy to rationalize and justify differences in speed.

Here’s where netbooks end up causing their owners problems. The netbook has better hardware than the iPhone, but because it has a bigger screen a bigger keyboard (and the screens and keyboards are getting bigger and bigger all the time), people expect it to be faster than it is. Thus, you get people wanting more from the device than it can offer. That’s why netbooks, at least Atom-based netbooks are probably going to disappear sooner rather than later. On the low-end you’ll have ARM and on the higher-end, you’ll just have low-priced, lightweight actual laptops. Grant has an Acer that has a Core Solo and can take up to 4 GB of RAM, that thing is great — and was only a little bit more (we’re talking under $100) more than a netbook. And it came with Windows 7 Home Premium!

Anyway, I think the push for ARM in netbook style computers is going to be met with utter disappointment from consumers — especially if Flash isn’t hardware accelerated when they launch. Since this is Chrome’s target, I think that traditional laptop styled devices are not going to work.

This is what I see: Something like a tablet but with a more defined purpose: like call it a media pad. Something you could use as a remote control, for instance — an eBook reader (that isn’t as good as eInk) and a visual TV guide. Yeah, you can watch online content and surf the web, but it’s designed to sit on your sofa and be like what we use phones for now — but bigger and with the understanding that you need to be online at all times.

In any event, as Chrome OS stands now, it really isn’t useable in any test form, other than for shits and giggles, but the fact that it exists is pretty cool.

And yes — at long last, the mammoth blog entry comes to a close.

I’m out!

I’ve written so much about the iPhone and its platform over the last two years that it is pretty laughable that I haven’t had one as my primary device until now. I mean, I’ve had an iPod touch 2G 32GB and played with more apps than I care to recall (like, it makes managing the shit in iTunes difficult — even with the new features of iTunes 9), but now I FINALLY, FINALLY have one as my primary device.

Bye, Bye BlackBerry

After a nice honeymoon period, all was not love and sunshine with my BlackBerry Curve. See, the phone either had some sort of major malfunction or I just expected too much out of it. While I was at TUAW and DownloadSquad, my e-mail count was pretty high, like, I’d often get over 100 messages a day. If I wasn’t constantly deleting them from my phone, the damn thing would run out of memory reading a newsfeed or loading a webpage and I’d have to do the whole three-finger BlackBerry salute (where you restart the phone by pressing three buttons) and wait 5-minutes for the phone to restart.

Then there was the whole issue of fucking crashing while a call was trying to come through. This started to get more and more frequent and because I often do interview or calls with PR people, that’s embarrassing. And inconvenient.

The abysmal amount of on-phone memory allocated for the OS and the data really is to the device’s detriment. I’m sure that newer BlackBerry devices have addressed that issue, but from where I’m standing, the fact that I have to make sure my cache, e-mail, and other little areas are all clear just so I can install an application from the shitty BlackBerry App World is just unacceptable.

Even when I had almost NO third-party apps on the phone, the crashing and freezing and lockup issues didn’t go away. Again, I could have dealt with this if it didn’t have this great tendency to do it while trying to receive calls.

Now, I might have still considered getting a new BlackBerry, except at this point it’s not longer really financially advantageous to do so. When I got my Curve 8320, I paid a lot for the phone, even with the two-year contract, but I got what I still consider one of the BEST data/minute plans out there. 1000 minutes, unlimited BlackBerry data, unlimited text messages — $60 a month.

It was a great, great plan. Unfortunately, T-Mobile in its infinite wisdom decided to get rid of it. Now, the replacement plan is not a bad deal still — it’s 1000 minutes, plus unlimited night and weekend, plus the unlimited data and texting for $85 a month. That’s not a bad deal, however, if you don’t consider that the voice minutes (which I rarely use that many of) are the only difference, that’s $25 more a month — or $300 a year — so $600 over two years. Why do I mention this?

Well, had I gone with a new phone, I wouldn’t have been able to keep the old plan. I would have been forced to move to one of the new plans. When I first started seriously doing the calculations back in June, the current offering with unlimited night/weekend/mobile-to-mobile in addition to the base 1000 minutes wasn’t even an option.

Plus, even if I waited for my upgrade date, I would still end up paying as much for a new BlackBerry as I would for a new 16GB iPhone.

So here was my thought process, part of my rationale for not getting the iPhone 2G was that I couldn’t see paying nearly $1000 more over two years. As I said then, “that’s a new MacBook.”

However, if I’m going to have to pay that money anyway, I’d rather get the phone I really want: the iPhone.

Hello, iPhone 3GS

It’s interesting to look back at how much the mobile landscape has changed in the last two years. I would challenge even the most ardent-iPhone hater to seriously argue that the bulk of that innovation hasn’t been because of or in direct-response to the iPhone. As I said on the TUAW Talkcast at the end of the year in both 2007 and 2008, the iPhone continues to be the biggest story not just in the Apple-sphere, but in technology in general.

The first iPhone, though revolutionary for its interface and industrial design, was not an overly innovative phone. Sure, the web browsing was really, really nice — but that was just about the only feature that wasn’t already out there. Again, the interface and industrial design are revolutionary in their own right, but if you are a gadget freak and a reformed smartphone junkie like myself, the actual featureset wasn’t really any better than the competition.

That all changed in July of 2008. The App Store, has quite frankly, changed everything. It has taken the iPhone from the sexy device that you want, but maybe can’t justify the expense of — especially with the shittier carrier and the options available elsewhere — to the phone that nothing else comes close to touching. The apps are just amazing. They changed everything.

I got my iPod touch 2G 32GB last year and have loved it. As a gaming device, as a pocket computer, as a reference list, as a just general fun machine — the device is just the tops.

So even before I’d reached the end of the first year with my Berry, I was having some misgivings about continuing on the BB course. Because Grant had a G1 (and now a MyTouch 3G), I’ve been in the unique position of using the iPhone OS, the BlackBerry OS and Android all at the same time. Having compared them all back to back, it just isn’t a question, the iPhone wins. It’s not just the number of apps (though that is impressive), the quality of the apps is just unbelievable. Look at the Facebook App for iPhone. Now look at the newly-released Facebook for Android. No comparison. None. I’ll give you that Android is capable of much more, but almost nothing compelling has been done with the platform.

So after realizing I needed to get a new phone — to stop the freezing insanity if nothing else — and after realizing that I’m going to be paying between $70 and $90 a month for my cell phone anyway, I put my AT&T hate aside and got an iPhone 3GS.

First Impressions

Well, as I said, I have an iPod touch. So the device isn’t anything new to get used to — other than the larger size (the 32GB iPhone 3GS is way thicker than the absolutely svelte iPod touch — but I’m actually totally OK with that — it feels more secure that way). Still, the whole thing is class.

And I have to give both AT&T and my beloved T-Mobile some credit — my number was ported super, super fast. As in, I finished checking out at the Apple Store — he went an activated my phone in iTunes. I went to the car with Grant. I picked up my phone while we were driving home and got instantly got a text message saying my number had been ported over. Like 5 minutes. Or less. Not bad.

I got the new Marware SportShell Convertible for iPhone 3G, 3G S (Black) as a case and I highly recommend it for 3G/3GS users looking for versatility.

I’ve had several Marware cases over the years (the SportSuit Convertible for the iPod — for several iPods actually) and quite like them, but I really like the SportShell. It’s a really solid quality plastic casing, with the option of either a belt clip or just a smooth back — and it can also connect to an armband (which I’ll never use — that’s why I also got a new iPod nano at the same time as my iPhone — for a new workout iPod). Plus it came with screen protectors, which saved me having to get some cut to fit the iPod 3GS. You can also just get the case without the armband for less cash (Marware SportShell for iPhone 3G, 3G S (Black) ) and Amazon has them for way less than the Apple Store (though overpaying for accessories is just part of the Apple Store experience and I wanted to leave with a case).

Call quality is great, I haven’t had any crashes (knock on wood) like with the Berry and obviously, it does without saying that the Mac compatibility is in another league.

Yes, yes, BlackBerry Desktop for Mac is very, very spiffy — and it is much needed — but it was still too little, too late for my needs. Because I couldn’t export a straight CSV or log of VCF files from the Mac version (thanks for the leak CrackBerry!), I still had to result to Windows Vista VM hell, as my Twitter followers are all too familiar.

We All Knew This Would Happen.…

I’m not surprised that I caved to AT&T, and indeed, the fact that I waited until I could get out of my contract by having to pay as little money as possible is a credit to my own resolve (a resolve I often don’t have), but it always seemed like a foregone conclusion that I would get an iPhone. Come on, I’m completely Apple’s bitch. This is fact.

Hey T-Mobile — thanks for almost 9-years of pretty decent phone service and great customer support!

Now I’m off to do some work and play with my toy!

The single user Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade is only $29 and the Mac OS X Snow Leopard Family Pack (5-User) is only $49.

There now. Feel free to click if you love me. Or don’t. Regardless, $30 is a great deal. We bought a Mac mini at the beginning of July, so we can get the Snow Leopard upgrade for that machine for $10, it still makes more sense just to get the Family Pack for $50.

Although you don’t get the Apple Store experience buying from Amazon.com, you do get free shipping. And no tax.

w00t.

I’m psyched.

I’ll be in San Francisco from today (Sunday, January 4, 2009) until Friday (January 9, 2009). If you are in SF or you’ll be at Macworld, please give me a shout.

You can send me a message on Twitter (either direct or @ messages), e-mail me at blog at planetchristina dot com (or use the contact form on this site) or call my Grand Central number:

If you aren’t going to be in San Fran, but want to keep up on any Macworld goodness:

• TUAW’s Macworld coverage
• TUAW’s Macworld specific Twitter feed
• My Twitter account — natch

Alright, I’m out!

For instance, as cool as it is to have the ability to “ping” Twitter or Friendfeed or Facebook or whatever as soon as I post (negating using a WordPress plugin — and I have to use two, since Twitter Tools stopped tweeting my blog updates like, 6 months ago), I found out the hard way that it tweeted (or it triggered the tweet-function of one of the plugins) just by instituting a post preview. Ultimate fail.

The pros:

• The interface is slick — though I don’t absolutely love it, it is nice for stuff like dragging and dropping pictures (instant crop and whatnot)
  
• The blog-preview mechanism, though quirky with Twitter, automatically gets my template stuff intact. It isn’t a big deal to have to manually edit MarsEdit, but doing it instantly is certainly nicer.
  
• The support for ExpressionEngine is pretty hawt. I know MarsEdit does it, but it does it in kind of a kludgy way (and that’s the fault of multiple fields rather than ME itself, IMHO).
  
• Works as a Twitter or Microblog client too.
  
• Bookmarklet works with Vimeo, Flickr, YouTube, etc. for Tumblr like support.
  
• Built-in ping support for lots of other services.
  

Now the cons:

• The interface, while clean, is way more kludgy than it should be.
  
• Copied links aren’t auto-filled and changing a link is more difficult than it should be.
  
• The list mode, while attractive to look at, is annoying to use as you have to double return to get a new bullet and press the button to toggle between ordered, unordered and off.
  
• No excerpt field. That sucks
  
• Tags and keywords are on the same line and can be hard to differentiate.
  
• Said Twitter issues/conflict with other plugin.
  
• Doesn’t feel complete.
  

So ultimately, I think I’m going to give this a pass. I’ll try it again in the coming days, but right now, it isn’t as good as MarsEdit, even if some aspects have a little more exterior polish.

First things first: Happy almost 2009! The last few months of my life have been CRAZY and the next 12 days look to be even more insane! I wish everyone a joyous and exciting 2009, with a special finger-crossed wish that the US housing industry gets back on-track (or at least, more on-track). My dad is a builder/developer, so I clearly have a personal connection to this whole crisis, but truly, the economy as a whole won’t be able to bounce back until housing gets out of the weeds.

But on to more pleasant topics:

The last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind. Chritmas (Merry Christmas everyone!), working, packing and just yesterday — moving into a gorgeous, huge, awesome apartment with my one and only. We were originally scheduled to move on January 2 — thankfully we were able to take possession of our new unit early and move earlier.

I leave for Macworld 2009 on Sunday January 4, 2009. Wow, that’s like 5 says away. Freaky. I’m going on behalf of TUAW and I’m ecstatic that I’ll finally get to meet a bunch of my fellow bloggers in person for the first time!

The new apartment is awesome. It’s more than twice the size of our old place (where I lived for 5 and a half years — my entire early twenties were in that apartment!) but in the same complex and it has an amazing, amazing floorplan. I have photos that I’ll upload to Flickr as soon as I can find my camera adaptor. Still unpacking.

Anyhoo, New Years Eve is tomorrow night and I’ll be a mix of unpacking, packing and other such stuff until then. So I won’t be able to do my usual yearly New Year post (well, probably not), so I’ll just say it now:

Happy New Year!

http://waltmossbergsays.com

Inspired by the brilliant Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle and the even more hilarious Hillary is Mom Jeans, Walt Mossberg Says is our addition to the WWDC 2008 hypefest.

OK, it isn’t as cool as BINGO, but we don’t have Wired money and we came up with the whole concept while getting tipsy.

Update:

We made Gizmodo! Tech blog rivalry aside (Engadget is still #1 with us), that kicks so much ass! w00t!

So now that I have had the phone for a little over a week, I figured I might as well write up my thoughts, particularly from a Mac-user standpoint.

The Phone

The Size

The device itself is simply awesome. Although I had played around with Grant’s Curve a bit, I was still sort of hesitant in the whole Curve/Pearl debate. Since early 2001, I’ve always had small form factor phones. The best cell phone I have ever owned, the Nokia 8290 (oh, how I loved that phone. LOVED. The Samsung flip/color phone that I replaced it with was junk, the Sony Ericson look alike was awful, and the Magenta Razr captured my heart, but not in the same way) was incredibly tiny and I like being able to have a phone I can stick in my pocket. Keep in mind, I’m a size 0, so my pockets are a bit smaller than most. So it wasn’t ever really a debate over features, Curve won that battle easily, it was about size. Ultimately, Wi-Fi canceled everything else out and I stopped considering the Pearl.

I can honestly say that I’m really, really happy with the size of the phone. It’s the same thickness as m Razr is when closed, only slightly longer and actually, only slightly wider. I can’t quite put it in my pocket, but I can slip it into a small handbag. Plus the belt clip case I bought (again, that’s an Amazon.com affiliate link — but seriously, I wish I had searched Amazon before buying from Crackberry, it was $20 there and $30 directly from BlackBerry. I overpaid for the silicon cover too.) is still small and compact.

The Feel

The screen and text is very readable, especially after I tweaked the default font. It’s bright, but still works well under direct sunlight. When using the default browser or Opera Mini (can I just comment on how bizarre it is to actually have a reason to use Opera? Freaky.), everything looks nice and graphics are clean and clear. Opera does a great job (!) with re-creating that “real” web experience. It isn’t the iPhone, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the Razr.

The keyboard, is unsurprisingly, the absolute best in the business. I’ve already mastered thumbing with one hand. Yes, I’m officially that annoying BB user. Le sigh. I have always hated T9 typing. Hated it. I hated it so much, I almost never sent SMS messages because it would mean either plodding through with T9’s sucktastickness or resorting to typing like AIM a la middle school (i.e.. “r u there? wh8 r u doing 2day?”), and to be honest, I rejected the impulse to type like a moron in 8th grade, I really didn’t like the idea of doing it as an adult. The downside? Now that I can send e-mail, SMS and MMS messages (and do IM) so quickly, people are going to think I’ve lost my mind. OK, so it’ll be nothing new for my Twitterati, but everyone else might be disturbed/alarmed/surprised.

The Phone

Everything else aside, this is still primary a phone for me. I don’t have a landline anymore and my cell phone IS my lifeline. The main reason I had to get a new phone was because my old phone had this annoying little quirk of, I don’t know, not letting me answer calls, randomly shutting off, randomly shutting its LCD screen off while still working, fun stuff like that. My mom thinks I just wanted a new phone — and I won’t lie, I did, but if this was just about buying a new toy, I would have made this purchase back in October, when I was first allowed to according to my contract — not at the end of February.

So far, voice quality has been great. I haven’t used the speaker phone that much, but it’s nice — and everything else is very, very clear.

I’ve asked people who call me how I sound and have received absolutely no complaints. I’ll also give the thumbs up to T-Mobile’s whole UMA thing — basically it allows the phone to switch from the EDGE signal to wi-fi depending on what signal is stronger, and it makes the transition seamlessly. I’m not paying the separate UMA fee for unlimited calls from wi-fi, but I would certainly consider it if I found I needed more minutes.

The interface

All in all, I’m impressed. It’s an easy to use and intuitive phone, obviously there is some learning curve — though I’m pretty learning curve immune for most products. The average user would probably have to take a few days to get used to the whole thing. Really, I just needed to learn the shortcuts for stuff.

The default web browser leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, it is a huge improvement over my last phone, but it’s not a great experience. Furthermore, I’d like to be able to make Opera Mini my default browser. Opera is actually kind of kickass. Who’da thought, right?

As for the other built-in apps, like BB Messenger and the e-mail and whatnot, no complaints. I do wish RTF e-mail was available — apparently that is coming with the next software update. As it stands, you can pay $30 for HTML mail now, but I’m not going to do that.

Im still trying to figure out the best Twitter option. I don’t know the Twitter shortcuts for SMS sending very well, so I haven’t used it that much. SXSWi is in like five days, so I better learn. I wish that there was a Twitterrific for the BB that would let you directly reply and send DMs to tweets. Twitterberry is a great interface, but without that feature, I almost wonder if I should just subscribe to SMS updates of people I frequently tweet with or what.

I haven’t used too many BlackBerry apps, and I don’t want to judge third-party software in this review, but as I use it more and more, I’m sure I’ll come to have my favorites/least favorites.

Conclusion

For a phone, I couldn’t be happier. I’m finding more and more things that I like every day. I still need to test voice notes to see if there is a delay, as some other users have experienced — but as a phone, I love it.

Synching with the Mac

And now the second part of the review, how well does the BB integrate with the Mac? For reference, I’m on a BlackBook 2.16 C2D with 2 GB of RAM running the latest version of Leopard (OS X 10.5.2 as of this writing).

Going into this, I knew that the BlackBerry was not natively supported on the Mac. Like Windows Mobile, third-party syncing solutions do exist. Plus, I have VMWare Fusion (again, affiliate link but if you are interested in running Windows or another OS on your Intel Mac, Fusion is hands-down, the BEST. And it’s $42 after rebate from Amazon, which is awesome), so I know that if I absolutely need to use BlackBerry Connect, I can.

Although there are Mac synching solutions available, for users who are not on a BES (the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, meaning, users like me who are not using it primarily through their employer), those options are far from robust. The two big options are PocketMac for BlackBerry, which is now a free download and MissingSync for BlackBerry.

Let me save everyone $40 right now — MissingSync is total crap. It outright sucks. I had originally installed PocketMac, because it was free and I wanted to give it a spin. To use MissingSync, I had to uninstall PocketMac. OK, well that makes testing side by side kind of hard, but whatever.

I used it for about five minutes, it promptly fucked up my address book synching system (I had just gotten my computer address book the way I wanted it too, and I specifically said for it to overwrite the address book on the phone) only to have the old address book on my phone’s SIM card come back to me. Joy.

It was also slow as hell, didn’t look like it offered a way to install programs (which PocketMac can at least sort of do) and the interface was pretty terrible. Fail. Total, total fail.

PocketMac isn’t a complete win — I quickly learned to NEVER under any circumstances sync my e-mail on my Berry with my Inbox (meaning that the Berry mail would be downloaded) because it doesn’t either account for duplicates or the fact that it went to a different inbox messed things up, I don’t know — it took forever and made my fans come on at full blast. I’ve got to investigate IMAP support for the Berry to see if I want to try doing that. That might be the best thing.

So synching mail is something you don’t want to try, but synching address books was easy — you know, as long as Missing Sync doesn’t come along and reimport all the shit from your SIM card and overwrite everything. It says it can install programs, but I haven’t gone through lots of testing in that regard. I can charge my BB from the USB PC connection, so that’s nice. I still have to play around in terms of ring tones and wallpaper transfers. Something tells me I’ll need VMWare for that to really happen.

I hate that Bluetooth doesn’t work on my BlackBerry with my Mac. PocketMac only works with USB — not with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Rumor has it RIM is developing a Mac version of BlackBerry connect — I really, really hope they do — as it would help me out a lot.

Final Verdict

After like 9 days with this thing, I’m in love. I can totally see myself becoming even more addicted. And although Mac integration isn’t great, it’s not awful. PocketMac, which is free, gets the job done — the $40 MissingSync is total crap, but at least I don’t have to pay for something just so it will work.

As for the phone — it rules.