Peter Fisher's – Phyn3t

First thing first I see Android as the second best if not close to first best mobile platform. It’s open, it’s easy to develop on and it allows for inovation with little to no governing.

I think two of the biggest problems with Android are:

1. To many new and better devices coming out.
2. All devices have different base versions.

Devices coming out quickly might at first seem like a good thing. We should never stop inovation! But if I was an Android user that purchased a Driod and a month or so later the “amazing” nexus one comes out I’d be pretty pissed. And this happens constantly (HTC). I think for consumers this gets very confusing on what Android phone they should get. And for all the nerds out there this would just piss you off if you don’t want to constantly buy a new phone.

For the second issue of different base version; it seems every Android device is on its own little special version of Android. And there is always a better version then what’s on your phone. It also seems the major milestone releases don’t even work on hardware that’s a YEAR old. Most contracts here in the US are two years. I wouldn’t want the latest build of Android to not work on my phone that’s < 2 years old…

Today I picked up the magic mouse at the local Apple store.

I walked into the store and headed over to where they’re located on the shelfs and I was amazed with the box design if you haven’t already seen it check it out here: http://bit.ly/3YwNXz . It’s so elegant and simple.

The mouse itself works great. The scrolling works like the iphone; it’s smooth, fluid and feels right. It feels great in your hand and the weight is just right.

This mouse is 100% better than the mighty mouse which was just horrible. I would also not recommend it for gaming, the Logitech G9 is far superior for gaming. I will be using this mouse with my Macbook Pro which is used for only work these days. The best part of the mouse being bluetooth is that there are no cords and you can put it and get it out of your bag fast when your moving around! =)

Overall great mouse, just no gaming =)

Well I just purchased a kindle 2 and I mus say it’s pretty amazing but ill do a full review later. What I want to talk about now quickly (need to get to bed have a flight in the AM) is how well the wall street journal look and feels on the kindle 2. Before I purchased one this was a big concern for me since I love the wsj and wanted a nice thing to read it on. And I can’t get it delivered anymore since I live in an apartment =(

So my first impressions were “this sucks” how do I navigate the thing?! When you first take a look at it you think you have to go from article to article as you can see in this screen shot here.

But actually that isn’t true, you can select “sections” and navigate via the different sections they have in the journal as you can see here. Once you select one of the sections you can then browse all the articles for that section here. And finally one of the coolest things I noticed playing with i for about ten minutes was that you can SEARCH the whole paper as you can see here.

Well that’s i for me now, ill report in later with more information on the kindle 2 and what I think about it over all.

Also a side note check me out on tumblr if you are using it: peterfisher.tumblr.com or pwf.me

Cheers

So I purchased an iPhone 3G S on Monday via the online pre order and I was very anxious to see if it would actually be here like Apple claimed on the 19th. I first though tried to order it via the apple retail store but after everything was done it just said to come on in and I actually didn’t purchase anything and I didn’t want to really rely on this email saying, “come on in we will have an iPhone for you!” I wanted to pay to secure myself a phone and I was able to do that by purchasing one online (not through the retail store).

So on the 19th sure enough the phone was here at noon via FedEx overnight shipping! I was very happy, I drove home from work and picked it and ripped open the packaging to find an even !!smaller!! box than the previous one (which was to my impression already super small compared to the first iPhone). I don’t know how Apple fit everything in such a small box but they sure did it, and it looks nice! ( Even smaller than the Palm Pre box). It took about an hour for the phone to activate, it came with sim already inside it so it was a very easy process (minus the long activation; took my father six hours). I guess ATT network was swamped due to all the new iPhones so it took a bit. My mate that got his today said it didn’t take any time what so ever. EDIT: I guess it was Apple’s fault for the slow activation…

I was simply amazed with the phone idk if I was so amazed because I had been stuck on the Pre which has NO applications and all the applications are really NOT feature rich but I was just amazed with the iPhone 3G s. It’s super fast and everything is just so smooth on it. Compared to the Pre which is VERY sticky when it scrolls and just not an overall good experience like the iPhone when it comes to UI physics. And its not because the device has just a different feel, it blatantly lags when scrolling (palm pre).  One thing I did miss about the pre was how easy its to 1. switch between applications and 2. close applications and move to another one or back to the previous application. That and the amazing touch area at the bottom of the screen.

iPhone 3G S

So back to the iPhone, the new features are also very very fun, the compass is very cool I know it will be super helpful in maps when I’m trying to figure out which way I’m heading when walking about. I had  a lot of problems like that when I was trying to walk around San Francisco and then later attempt to find my hotel after wandering the streets for hours. Also the voice recorder I thought I would never open or even look at but WOW I had so much fun with my family tonight just recording silly things or just recording my family and playing it back to them, we had  a lot of fun with this. Another cool physical feature with the phone that I think little people know / low coverage is the anti oil screen. I’ts amazing finger prints dont stick to the phone at all, well yes some but its very rare now compared to the pre or the old iphones. Also I think (my friends say otherwise) the screen and the whole phone have a different feel, the feel is nice but it does feel different then the old iphones (because of this oleophobic  layer).

Lastly to note is the cool new locate my iPhone feature. I have mobile me (which i never use and only have because of my father’s family account) and this feature is simply amazing. I didn’t think it would actually work since 99% of the time I loose my phone its in a house and doesn’t have GPS signal but boy was I wrong. Inside of my work it was able to track my phone down to not only the building I was in but the SIDE of the building I was in. It was simply amazing. Also the ability to send the phone remote messages works very well, but the “play sound for 2 minutes” option is kinda lame since the noise the phone makes isn’t very loud.

Well that’s all I can think of now I’m very tired I’m going to save this post and hopefully spell check it tomorrow and fix any errors I see, but to conclude the iPhone 3G S is a simply amazing phone , Apple really knows how to create a good epic device. Also I’m actually happy Apple didn’t change the physical dimensions of the iPhone because now all my old accessories work on my new iPhone. So to end, I would hands down choose the ipHone over any other current smart phone out there. Both the core applications of the iPhone the physical appearance and all of the third party applications simply make the iPhone the best smart phone device out there.

Last night I arrived at a Sprint store at around 3am to wait for the Palm Pre. By 8am when they opened the line went from 4 of us to about 7. They only had 7 phones but some people had pre-oredered theirs… (How idk)… Anyway I got my device it was a very smooth proccess the employees were quick and it didn’t take to long. Not like the trouble I had trying to get an iPhone 3G(which was ATT fault not apples).

So I got home and playe with the device for a bit befoer I went to bed and something extremly annoying I found was that there were atleast TEN dead pixels around the screen mostly in groups AND at the bottom right there are two large imprints were the screen it seems got hit hard and now there is a discoloration which totally sucks because I’m going to have to hopefully get an exchange but I have to wait till they get more devices… I will report back later on how that goes, hopefully it goes smooth but we will see.

So on to the review of the phone. The phone itself is very nice, a lot smaller though than the iPhone which can be a good thing and a bad thing. It was said that it feels kinda plasky and cheap but I have to say otherwise compared to the G1 it feels very nice and hard. The G1 felt very  crappy and the worst thing of all with the G1 is that it creecked… Also the power button on the pre is extermly annoying its very small and hard to press at times. Also there is a side charging bay that’s extermly annoying each time you want to charge your phone you have to open it. Also it makes using the phone while charging very annoying since it comes out of the side unlike the iPhone where the charging port is at the bottom. But this leads to the TOUCHSTONE!

The touch stone is very nice, I didn’t think it would work as well as it does. First the “stone” itself sticks very well to what ever surface you stick it to. There is no adhesive it just has some type of suction at the bottom. Secondly the Pre itself sticks VERY well. It doesn’t move around at all. It feels very firm on the touch stone and you can type on it without any trouble. One thing that was very annoying with it is that it doens’t come with a actual cable to plug into the wall… You are supose to use the one you got with the Pre. Also if you work and want your touch stone at both work and home you can purchase a double kit from Palm: http://store.palm.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3584154 Also if you want a good deal you can purchase JUST the touchstone from PreCentral: http://store.precentral.net/palm-touchstone-charging-dock/6A39A5015.htm .

WebOS itself is very good, I was able to do a lot of work on it since you can have cards running in the background. And I switch a lot between my email and the browser so it was VERY nice to not have to wait for the browser to load each time I checked an email and vic verca. But WebOS is slow at loading an application for the first time. Currently there is no application out, but hopefully this will change soon with the release of the SDK. But one thing I hope that we see is the creativity we see in the applications for the iPhone that’s one reason why I didn’t want to leave the iPhone and still don’t really want to is the great creative application out for it!

One last thing to note is that the Pre can have more than ONE exchange account! Woot! But the mail application really sucks =( its slow and lags a lot. Hopefully this is improved with the next update.

The other day when Windows 7 was released to the public I went ahead and download it and thought I would give it a try on my new Macbook Pro since it had a extra partition with nothing on it waiting for installation. You can find the Offical Windows 7 beta download here hurry though it’s only for a limited time they are having it up for download to the masses. Also if you are to late for the offical download you can find it on bittorrent. It’s build 7000. Windows 7 Torrent

The installation went very smooth no real problems. Once installed though you need to grab all the windows drivers from Apple. You can find them on the Mac OS X installation DvD. Or online on Apple’s site.

Once Windows 7 is installed, if you are using one of the new Macbook Pro’s you should definatally grab the new trackpad drivers otherwise your trackpad is going to be a real pain, you won’t be able to click anything.  You can find that driver here

The first few things I notice was the new taskbar at the button which they now call a “super bar” which I think is the ugliest looking thing I’ve ever set my eyes on. For some reason they think everything being a huge box is sexy. Rather I enjoy curves… I do enjoy the ability to view all windows of one application by just clicking the icon as you can see in this screen shot: <–Screen cap here —> you can also close windows this way by hitting the red X on the top corner.

Anther really funny thing I notice was that no one ever used the sidebar. And I thought they were getting rid of it but I guess not. Now the WHOLE screen is the side bar <–Screen cap here—>

Some little side notes the networking is just god awful. Windows 7 doesn’t seem to want to be able to connect to anything that isn’t Windows 7. There might be something I didn’t setup correctly, I mean that’s reasonable with Windows OSes. It’s not click n play ^^. Also in the control panel they seem to have added about 9001 and one diffrent little icons for random shit. You no longer can actually find anything by looking you HAVE  to search for it.  The “Search for Programs and Files” seems to be a lot faster than in Vista. This just might be because there is nothing really installed on this system. This is by no means a production system currently.

All and all there seems to be some improvments over Vista. I would really like to have put W7 on my desktop to see if there was a stabablity boost I can’t tell with my MBP since it never crashed with vista or XP. Apple really takes the time to release good drivers. But I don’t think Windows 7 is going to be worth the 300-400$. This should have just been Vista SP2 tbh…

Wow I made this weeks ago just now posting it… I wanted to upload some photos I’ve yet to upload. Hopefully I get around to it later.