BEAU COLBURN

Quick Thoughts On Droid

I had a chance to play with a Droid phone earlier today for a couple of minutes. A few random, quick thoughts:

• The onscreen keyboard actually seems over-sensitive. Every other letter I typed seemed to show up twice. The iPhone keyboard letters enlarge and pop-up when you move your finger over them, giving you a bit of visual feedback. The Droid keyboard seemed to duplicate inputs unexpectedly.

• The screen itself was great. Super clear and crisp. I was not, however, a fan of the overall look of the interface. Google gets knocks for their design, and I felt the same way here. The polish wasn’t there. The top menu bar was a disaster, filled with crammed icons that seemed unnecessary and unclear. It reminded me of the top menu bar on a 1999 Nokia candybar phone than a modern smartphone.

• The phone felt solid, yet clunky, both physically and design-wise. The slide out keyboard was usable, but the physical markings on the outside of the phone are made for portait use. When you slide the keyboard and rotate to landscape, the screen rotates, but the four physical home buttons on the bottom, of course, do not. That means that they’re sideways when you hit them. Obviously this is something you can get used to, but it’s also something that other companies would never allow.

I want the Droid to succeed. I want the Pre to succeed. The competition is good. Other than people that are having so many problems with AT&T that they need a new provider, I can’t see many people that are iPhone users going in that direction. You’re too used to how it works, and the little refinements.

Everyone’s heard countless stories of people going into an Apple Store, playing with an iPhone for a few minutes, and saying “I have to have this.” There’s a wow factor, and it’s immediate. I just don’t think that’s there with the Droid. It’s got a lot of great features that can match the iPhone point for point in many cases, but the overall impact wasn’t there for me. Like Lebowski’s rug, there’s something about the iPhone that ties all the pieces together—it’s greater than the sum of its parts. The Droid feels like just parts.

Flickr App & EXIF data

I was browsing through Flickr earlier and I noticed this photo from Gruber. The tags showed that it was processed with the Best Camera app, but the EXIF data was still there. Hmm. I also noticed that the photo was uploaded with the official Flickr app. I decided to test some things out (I did the same tests with Camera Bag as well, with the same results).

1. Uploading a photo from the desktop via the Safari does not maintain the EXIF.
2. Uploading a photo via email from within Best Camera does not maintain the EXIF.
3. Uploading a photo from the iPhone camera roll—that has been processed in Best Camera—via the Flickr app does maintain the EXIF.

What’s very interesting is that the EXIF data doesn’t appear when you check for it in Preview, yet the Flickr app keeps it. It does not appear to keep geolocation data, but the Flickr app allows you to “Tag Current Location” so if you’re uploading on the spot taken, it’s accurate (however, I tested it with a photo taken in NYC, and it tagged it as my home in Boston).

I’m not clear on exactly how this is happening, but until 3rd party apps are able to maintain the EXIF data, this is a great workaround.

I threw all my test photos into a Flickr set

iPhones and iPhoto and Aperture—Oh My!

I haven’t been happy with using Aperture and iPhoto simultaneously for a long time. I’ve wanted to get all my needed photos into one app to make everything (iPhone/Apple TV syncing) more simple, but never really got around to it. It was one of those “I’ll get to it at some point”-type projects.

Fast forward to iPhone 3.0 software. All of the sudden my backups were taking much longer than they used to. Not the eight-hour horror stories I’ve heard some people talk about, but probably 5x as long as they had previously. I poked around a bit to see what people were saying about this. Some pointed to specific apps that may be the problem; some recommended deleting and re-installing all 3rd party apps. Somewhere else I saw a reference to backups in 3.0 handling photos on the iPhone’s camera roll differently than it did before (I’m not even sure if this is actually true; actually the more I think about it it doesn’t seem true—but it got me thinking). It suggested syncing all photos from the camera roll to iPhoto or Aperture (or whatever), deleting all photos from the camera roll, and then re-syncing from the album in iPhoto or Aperture.

Up until then I had been doing all of my photo work in Aperture, but syncing the iPhone to iPhoto. I had a few old albums of wedding and family photos I would sync to the phone from iPhoto, and I would sync all the camera roll photos there as well. Since I started using Aperture full time a few years ago the only new photos that were ever added to iPhoto were from the iPhone.

I also chose to never delete the photos from the camera roll on the phone after import, so I had somewhere in the 1,300+ picture/screenshot range on the camera roll. (Side note: with most process related things in this area I usually have a general idea how people handle things, but I realize that I really don’t with this. Is it unusual to keep all your photos on the camera roll? Is it common? How do people sync them? I’m curious to hear).

Anyway, I’d been meaning to migrate everything to Aperture for a while like I said (for the Vault especially), so I decided to sync the phone with Aperture, create a new project just for iPhone photos and try to move to this new system.

Everything seemed good initially, but I quickly noticed a few problems. The first was that iPhoto seemed to sync all photos automatically by date, and maintain this structure when synced with the phone. When I sorted all the photos in Aperture, they would show up by date within the app, but when they synced with the phone they would be sorted by filename. Almost all of the photos are in sequential order, but there are a few batches that are not, and they would throw everything off when it synced. Not having the iPhone photos sorted by date on the phone was almost useless, as that’s really the only means you have of finding anything. Still, I figured I could fix this by doing some bulk re-names sorted by date and file name, and eventually be okay.

The second problem I noticed was a bigger concern: all the screenshots (.PNGs) I had taken were now blurry when I viewed them on the phone and in Aperture—which had never happened when syncing with iPhoto. iPhone screenshots are important to me (I used them for app reviews, and a bunch of other stuff), so this was an issue. I figured (and it was suggested to me via Twitter) that it likely had something to do with how Aperture was handling the image previews (as well as the fact that iTunes does its own optimization when it syncs to the phone). I forced Aperture to re-create the previews and they were much better (though still not great). I then deleted them all from the phone and re-synced to see if this fixed it. It did not. They were still just as blurry when viewed on the phone. Back I went to taking a closer look at preview settings (as some friends suggested on Twitter).

I have Aperture set to limit my previews to half size, and keep the quality at 8 of 12. Working primarily with large RAW files the library size can get out of hand quickly if the previews are set too high. So I started looking around for solutions. Permanently changing the preview settings was not an option. I realized that I could change the preview preferences, force new previews on just the iPhone photos and that would probably do it. But then I’d need to go and change the settings back. And then repeat the process the next time, etc., etc. This was quickly becoming a path I didn’t want to go down.

So what did I do? I re-organized all the imported photos and screenshots in iPhoto and synced them back to the phone. At least now I had a freshly cleared camera roll, and the photos would be organized and displayed properly.

And remember how I started this whole song and dance because I thought it might help my backup times? Yeah, it didn’t. Not at all.

However, there was a pretty big silver lining to this whole excercise. At one point when I was finally moving everything back to iPhoto I started thinking about the 3GS and video. I’m on a 3G now, so video is not a concern. Still, I know eventually I’ll make my way over to a 3GS and when I do, I’ll need to deal with video on the camera roll as well as photos. Since iPhoto can handle imported video alongside photos, and Aperture can’t, at the end of the day I’ll be better keeping everything that comes off of the iPhone in iPhoto moving forward.

Just like it was to in the first place.

iPhone Home Screen Organization

One of the little things about the iPhone that continues to annoy me is that there’s no easy way to organize your apps and bookmarks on the home screen. I had held out hope that something would be introduced in the 3.0 OS but, at least as far as I have seen and heard (without running 3.0 myself), this has not happened.

Apple has introduced Spotlight searching into 3.0. This will be really helpful, but still won’t do what I’m looking for. Spotlight on the iPhone looks to work much like it does on the desktop, and it should be a great way to quickly launch apps. I use Spotlight all the time to launch apps on the desktop. Still, I use the Dock for my primary apps and I like to keep it just how I like it. The same goes for the iPhone screens.

As I add more and more apps to the iPhone, I like to—in a general sense—keep them organized. The first two pages are dedicated to core apps and go-to bookmarks, page 3 may have all the photo apps, page 4 for games, etc. As anyone that’s tried to manage a bunch of apps knows, moving something from page 4 to page 1 is a pain. You have to drag it screen to screen, and the icons on the screens that you’re passing through get jumbled up as you move through them. Some people keep an empty row at the bottom of each page to avoid this, but I never liked this solution.

Recently I’ve been keeping the last screen open and using it as a sort-of holding area. Apps that I just downloaded and wanted to try out, things I may be testing, etc. all live on this page. If I like them and want to keep them around, they’ll get moved to a more organized page, and if not, they’ll be deleted. As a result, there’s usually not more than 4-5 apps on that last page.

Using The iPhone’s Dock As A Clipboard

It wasn’t until I started keeping this “test” page that I realized I could use the space here, in combination with the Dock slots, to allow the dock to act as a clipboard. This allows apps to be dropped down to the dock, and neatly moved from screen to screen without messing up the order of any of the other pages.

Here’s how I do it: Say I want to swap an app from the main screen with one on the 3rd page. What I will do is scroll to the very last page that has tons of space and then press and hold an icon until it’s ready to be moved. I’ll then move 2+ icons out of the dock and drop them on the last page. I know I can easily go back and get them afterwards.

I then go to the front page and select the app that I want to move. In this case, it’s November 2009 (the Red Sox won the World Series) and I want to move the MLB At-Bat app to the 3rd page for the off-season. I drag the MLB App to dock, and then swipe to page 3. I’ll need to move something from here to make room for MLB, so I decide to put my Flickr bookmark on page 1. I drag the Flickr bookmark to the dock, and then drag MLB At-Bat up to take it’s spot.

From there, I simply hit the home button to get back to the home screen, click and hold the Flckr bookmark until it’s ready to be moved, and then drag it up to the slot that’s been left open by MLB At-Bat.

At this point all the apps are on the screens that I want them to be on, and nothing has gotten out of order. All that’s left to do is go back to the last page and drag my primary dock apps back to where they belong. I hit the home button to lock them all in, and everything is set.

This isn’t the cleanest solution in the world, but until Apple creates a way to manually manage the app organization (via iTunes would be nice), this is pretty simple and saves a lot of headaches.

Take a look at the video below for a basic rundown of what I’m talking about. There’s a chance this is the most obvious tip in the world, but I haven’t seen anyone else mention it, so maybe it’ll be a help to some.

_________ On Wire

Reading this review of iPhone headphones today reminded me of something that I’ve been wondering about for a while: what’s up with the different lengths of cord on the iPhone headphones? I was slow to adopt at first, but I eventually became a big user of the headphones that come with the iPhone. While they never really fit my ears right, they were cheap, and easy to throw in my pocket when I needed to make a call on the run, or listen to a podcast when I was waiting somewhere unexpectedly.

When the iPhone 3G came out, it seemed like the headphones that came with it were sightly longer. The only reason I noticed is that when I would have them in my ears, with the phone in my pocket, they didn’t seem to pull taut like the first gen ones did. It was a subtle difference, but was noticeable enough that I paid attention. Sure enough, when I finally compared them side by side, the 3G headphones were maybe an inch longer. I chalked it up to one of those little changes that Apple makes that are never really highlighted—or probably even noticed by most—but that continues to improve the product.

This post from a while back on Daring Fireball always sticks out in my head, especially when thinking about included accessories like headphones. There’s almost certainly a reason why changes, no matter how minor, are made, but the public may never hear it. It’s easy to see how shortening the length of something could add up to a savings when you’re talking about the bulk in which Apple products are produced, but going in the other direction seemed like a silent treat.

By the time the new and improved (and sold-separately) Apple in-ear headphones were announced, I was pretty hooked on the functionality, and excited to give them a spin. The fact that they were the most comfortable in-head headphones I’ve ever worn, and that the sound was greatly improved over the included headphones, was enough to sell me.

The first time I put them on and put the iPhone in my pocket however, I realized that they were shorter. I measured them side by side with the original and 3G iPhones headphones and, disappointingly, they were the shortest of the bunch. They’re almost three inches shorter than the 3G ones.

I’ll likely never find out why these minute decisions were made, but the fact that somewhere, someone is making decisions like that is fascinating to me.

QuadCamera for iPhone

I’ve been having fun playing around with the QuadCamera iPhone app recently. Beyond simply lining up four (or eight) consecutive images, it also adds a nice Lomo-style feel to the images as they are combined.  Apps like QuadCamera and CameraBag are really helping make the most of the iPhone camera’s limitations.  I’ve noticed more and more photos on Flickr, etc. that are the result of apps like this, and it’s a cool trend.  Some of the images that come out of Polaroids, Holgas and the like show that you don’t always need high-technology and lots of megapixels to create an image that elicits a meaningful response. It’s nice to have a similar ability with the iPhone, which is basically within reach 24 hours a day.

note: all that being said, they photo above isn’t a great example, but it works; and it was handy.

The Ballad of Mobile, and Me

Note: if you want the fix, skip right on down to the bottom.
 

Back in July when the iPhone 3G launched, one of the services that I was most excited about was the new and improved MobileMe, specifically the Push email. I use a Blackberry for work, and appreciated the speed and immediacy that Push email provided (and it was also a highly touted new feature) 

The problems that MobileMe encountered on launch were fairly severe (and dissected ad nauseam around the web).  Personally, I had two issues, both related to email, that I wanted working smoothly as quickly as possible.

First, I wanted to continue using my Gmail address, but route it through MobileMe to get the Push capability.  I thought this would be fairly simple, but as it turned out, it wasn’t.  The MobileMe service doesn’t have the ability to “send mail as” as a lot of other services do.  Eventually, by playing around with the incoming and outgoing mail servers, and sending a heck of a lot of test emails to myself, I was able to get it to work (hit me up if you’re looking for specifics of what I did).

Second was getting reliable Push email on both my desktop machine (using Mail) and the iPhone.  The Push email on the phone worked well and consistently soon after the initial launch complications were corrected.  Getting it to work in Mail on the desktop was another story.

I knew that Mail, and my desktop machine, were capable of receiving Push email because I tested it numerous times.  I have a work PC that sits on the other side of my desk, and I would send myself a test message, turn and look at Mail and watch it show up almost instantly in the inbox and see the unread message counter change in the Dock.  Here’s the kicker though—this only worked when Mail was the active application.

When Mail was hidden, which was almost all the time, I wouldn’t be notified of new mail until I switched to the Mail app.  It would then pause a few seconds and I would see the messages download and show up.  This was enormously frustrating for a couple of reasons.  

One is that I have another email account that runs in Mail as well.  This is just an old POP account that I use for mailing lists, etc.  It’s set to check for mail every five minutes.  This account continued to work properly in the background all the time.  It would check the account, and change the Dock unread count as needed. However, this count would be inaccurate as it didn’t reflect all accounts. For a while I thought that maybe this account’s scheduled check would trigger the MobileMe mail to download as well, but no go there.  The second reason is that my iPhone sits next to me on my desk 99% of the time. The Push works fine there, and I would get the audible new mail tone when something came in.  This meant that I would be sitting working, and I’d hear a new mail alert from the phone, but a quick glance at the count in the Dock would be totally inaccurate.  Sometimes I’d open Mail and one message would come in, sometimes it would be five, etc.  This may not be a big deal to most people, but it annoyed the shit out of me.

This went on for months.  I poked around the internet trying to find an answer, talked to some folks that have seen the same issue, but I’d never been able to fix it.  It just became one of those little nagging things that I filed away and hoped would just fix itself with an update eventually.

Enter 10.5.6

When 10.5.6 got arrived, I updated immediately, and was very pleased to see that all of the sudden I was now getting almost simultaneous Push email on both the desktop and iPhone.  Oh happy day.  (I remembered that I posted on Twitter about it working, and now when I go to check, I see that it’s a nice little abbreviated version of these ongoing issues).

Everything worked well for a few days, and then all of the sudden the other bane of my OS X existence, Time Machine, locked my machine up and required a hard restart.  When I got started back up—poof—no more Push in Mail.  It was right back to only working when Mail was the active app.  Oh unhappy day.

It turns out that this somehow corrupted my Bookmarks file as well, and I started getting MobileMe sync errors.  I decided to try MobileMe chat support.  While I was chatting with the support rep there, I asked about the Mail problem, and he said he’d transfer me to a Mail specialist when the Bookmarks issue was fixed (side note—this was my first time dealing with MobileMe chat support, and they couldn’t have been more friendly or patient.  Very impressive.)

After getting transferred to a Mail specialist, I recapped the issue I was having. After a few minutes he asked:

Have you tried to reset the account in the Mail app by deleting it and adding it back?

Nope.  Hadn’t tried this.  I’d asked around, read support forums, and thrown my hands up in the air, but I’d never tried this simple fix.  Guess what, it worked. Mail quickly re-built all my IMAP folders, and as soon as I tested it out I was back in business.  Full of Pushy goodness.  I asked the support rep if he’d seen this a lot, and he said no, but that it was likely just a small corruption that was fixed by deleting and re-doing the account.

At this point, I’ll never know for sure, but I suspect that this fix would have worked months ago if I had thought to ask the right question or try the simple fix. I know 10.5.6 made some improvements to Mail, so something may have changed (I’m not technically savvy enough under the hood to really know), but this 90 second solution could have been sitting here for the taking the whole time.

THE BOTTOM LINE

If you’re having issues with MobileMe mail not pushing properly into the Mail app, delete the account from Mail, and re-add it.  Should fix the problem!