Clued in by Daring Fireball about a recent NYTimes article on the Game changing nature of the iPhone App Store. There are a number of good quotes in the article, but the one Gruber pulled was the one that made me think:

“Our goal is very simple: We want to have the best platform for applications that there has ever been on any product,” notes Mr. Schiller, the marketing executive. “We know we’re not perfect, but we know we’re better than anything else that has been and we want to keep improving it.”

He’s right too. Of course the app store has issues—often of the highly annoying and stupid kind. However, it has succeeded to do something remarkable. In the article, Craig Moffett says “The iPhone will be remembered as the first true handheld computer.” However, he’s missing half the story:

The iPhone app store is amazing not because of all the things it allows a phone to do—just ask any iPhone hater and they’ll name a number of features that it’s missing. What is truly remarkable about the app store is how it’s normalized the process of searching for, finding, purchasing, installing, and even upgrading applications.

In the world of computers, it’s only the geek and the early adopter who even thinks about new software. Whereas, the average user seldom installs any new software. Your normal user will often use what’s already installed or what IT (or their son/daughter) installs for them, and they are also often terrified of upgrading anything. The iPhone app store has changed the all this. This is why the app store is a game changer. Suddenly the audience for shiny new applications isn’t just the computer know-it-all, it’s anyone.

First post from my iPhone. Had to upgrade my wordpress install and convert my old UTW tags to wordpress tags. The UTW was causing a communication error. Well here goes — hitting post — hopefully this doesn’t throw up a new error.

With the latest iphone update (1.1.4) offering nothing more than bug fixes, I thought I’d get around to posting my list of iphone most wanted. Many of these have been stated before, but a few I haven’t heard anyone mention.

Been said before, gonna say it again

• Copy & Paste
• Airtunes support – I wanna play my iphone tunes directly to my Airport Express
• Video capture support via the camera
• iChat – Though I don’t know how much I’d use it as I’m not as much of an AIM junkie as I used to be, but it’d be nice to have. Bonjour ichat with other local network iphones would be kinda cool too.
• Horizontal keyboard anywhere – would be great to have this for Notes, SMS, email, etc. And while your at it squish this keyboard vertically a bit more to give one more line of text visible.
• Search functionality – for email and a global spotlight which searches sms, email, notes, etc.
• vcard sending – I should be able to send my contact info as a vcard via email or even maybe bluetooth.
• wifi sync – at least for contacts and calendar
• Taking a photo for assigning to a contact should also place that picture in your photo roll.
• Email map routes to others. This should include the text list and a link to a google map.
• Save photo you get via email into your photos

Few new ideas that I haven’t heard elsewhere

• Network Printing – I’d love to print the occasional email or map directions via my networked printer.
• Clicking on the upper-left edge/wifi icon should bring you to the wifi settings screen – there are several times I’d like to easily turn off wifi so that it doesn’t ask me to join a network.
• Safari should have a larger (adjustable) cache – I hate when I load a new tab and then find out that all my other tabs are now blank. Also it should remember the previous pages info better. Come on I have over a gig free still use it!
• When zoomed all the way out on a web page a horizontal swipe should move to the next/prev tab – Since photos does this I keep expecting safari to do this.
• One The Go favorites photoset – make this work just like a music on the go playlist (which by the way I love the iphone’s on the go playlist functionality!)
• iCal event subscriptions should update directly from your iphone via the web – as it is I have to sync to my computer to get new subscribed events, which is dumb.

Things I don’t really need

• MMS – Don’t care. Sending my photos via email is more useful.

Third party apps I can’t wait for (come on release the SDK!)

• Twitter client
• Real Notes/Word-like app – ideally it would allow use of MarkDown formatting and have post to blog functionality
• To do app
• better calculator with “paper tape”
• better weather app – I want an hourly (or at least morn/afternoon/evening) forecast and the ability to see what the weather was like yesterday (great for comparison)
• RSS reader which downloads feeds so I can read offline
• a game. Hell almost any game will do. Though I am particularly interested in an iphone version of DopeWars. I can remember the stupid amount I played that on my Palm back in the day.

Travel Hatinerary
Originally uploaded by catcubed

I’m heading to PA/OH to see the fabulous Morley and my Grandparents.

Step one: public transit — my least favorite part. The MUNI bus was late by 15min (hence the sour look on my face in the photo). I’m now
on BART on my way to OAK which is going ok so far.

I’m packed light. Only a simple backpack and no laptop. Burning Man has taught me how to pack with the minimum of gear, but it took a bit of digital prep work to not bring the laptop.

I had slideshows I wanted to bring, music, and videos. I kicked together a couple slideshows to show the grandfolks and put them both on my iphone and on a flash drive. Music housed several places: shuffle for simple tunes and long battery life, iPhone for all my current favs, and my old iPod 3G 40gig for hauling the rest and storage. I rearranged a bunch of my music on it, adding a bunch of new stuff I’ve gotten recently but have yet to fully listen to. Unfortunately, the battery in my 3G dies faster than an anorexic on a desert isle, but it’s good for when I can plug in. I powered it up last night, and I’m curious how long it’ll last.
I also converted my DVD of The Decent to iPhone format and loaded it on, so I have something to watch on the plane. Wish I had time to convert another movie — oh well.

K time to get off BART!

Looks like Google has finally added IMAP support to gmail. Found out today via Gruber’s twitter and then noticed that Slashdot just noted it today.

This sorta makes my whole gmail/IMAP/iPhone instructions obsolete except for the whole using gmail as an archive thing. If you use gmail’s IMAP directly (rather then a routed approach like mine) you still have the problem of it downloading all your messages.

As such, I’m not currently planning on switching over to this from my own system. Another issue is that I wouldn’t be able just read/respond/delete as I have been doing, since I’d be deleting off of what is now my main archive. Actually reading this it looks like delete just acts like archive unless a mail is spam or in trash. Also you’d still need to send out through your other account if you wanted to use a different header email, since Exchange doesn’t like emails sent through gmai with a different header.

However, this does open up the possibility of using a different gmail account as the iphone IMAP pool for people who were hunting for an IMAP account but still like my system.

In light of the recent Greanpeace health report on the iPhone (view the PDF of Full Report), I’ve taken the proactive stance and created a health warning for use as my iPhone wallpaper.

I am releasing this wallpaper to the world in order to do my part in saving us all from the iPhone health menace! By downloading and installing this image as the wallpaper of your iPhone, you’ll be proactively protecting the health of babies and lab rats everywhere!