Umbral Echoes Blog

• 19:05 Edguy, bad news. You try to be a bad 80s hairband, but you fail. It’s like taking 2nd at a failure competition. YOU CAN’T EVEN WIN AT THAT. #
• 21:16 If I end up at The Highlander any more I think they’re going to start charging me rent. #

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• 21:25 Laundry night. Damn is my life exciting! Go chores! #

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• 00:46 Bartender underpoured, but undercharged as well. As always, the balance is maintained. #
• 13:29 @kinkhawk I like options 1 and 2. 1 for artistic coolness, 2 for… well, tits. #
• 13:31 Heading out to The Highlander to meet with my fellow deviants. #

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• 02:30 @ozgolith I got to see some belly dancing tonight too. Except it was at Cafe Istanbul. #
• 15:38 Heading to Alabama for an IMX concert. #
• 18:12 Going to an IAMX concert, rather. Not at all the same as IMX. #

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• 13:52 On iPhone 2.1 firmware now. It promises less crashes and better performance. And Genius playlists. Here’s to hoping. #

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• 18:06 Felt like crud today, stayed home from work. Starting to feel a little better though. #

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• 10:30 I somehow manage to forget to put my wallet in my pants at least one day a week. Which will make getting lunch difficult. #
• 17:27 @lordofthefries Hmm. I think in your case, you’d be a little less screwed when getting pulled over. #
• 18:38 Meeting at The Highlander at 8. If you’re in Atlanta, be there. If you’re not… then move to Atlanta. #

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This review will be uncharacteristically short and sweet.

The best thing about the iPhone is: it’s almost like a computer in your pocket.  You can surf the web, you can send/receive email, you can download and listen to music, you can install some applications, you can look up directions to some nearby adult novelty stores (more useful than you might think!).  You can hack it to make it do things it wasn’t meant to do.

The worst thing about the iPhone is: it’s almost like a computer in your pocket.  So it doesn’t do a lot of things that I would intuitively expect it to be able to, or otherwise acts differently than I would expect a computer to act.  You can’t open most types of files (PDFs, that sort of thing).  It crashes, much more than one would expect a phone to crash (which would be “never”).  There is no copy/paste functionality.  The touchscreen typing can be annoying sometimes, and the autocorrect feature is a mixed blessing — 90% of the time it helps you out, 10% of the time it “corrects” something you didn’t want corrected.  The web browser is very neat, but can still be a pain to use on most websites, and there’s no option to remember passwords in the iPhone version of Safari.  You can’t actually get turn-by-turn directions with voice prompts, so it’s not quite like a real GPS unit either.

Overall, I do love my iPhone.  Though it is, admittedly, the first smart phone I’ve ever had, so I don’t have a huge basis for comparison.  Until recently, I’ve always wanted my phone to be a phone, and not try to be a Swiss army knife.  But over the past year, there have been so many instances where I’ve been like, “Damn, if I only had an Internet connection right now.”  And really, from what I’ve seen, the iPhone does have the best web browsing experience of any mobile phone, hands-down.  I consider it $200 well-spent, though like everything involving computers… the more functions something has, the more complication (and aggravation) it tends to bring.  Apple has historically made products that break this rule, but the iPhone firmware could definitely use a lot of improvement.

• 20:27 Why must my Internet connection cut out at the worst times? Must investigate using iPhone as tether. #

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• 18:53 Jailbreak successful, minus a minor hiccup. And now my battery meter always reads full. #

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