Andrew Machado

Well you are probably not alone. ATT has officially announced that they have begn reducing coverage for Edge/2G customers and increasing the reach of 3G. ATT’s reasoning is obvious they want people to upgrade to a newer phone so they can also pay the extra $10 a month in data fees.

I was wondering how much this will effect people so I asked my friend Dan Twombly about how his reception has been. He replied “That explains why my phone has been sucking lately
I’ve been losing signal all over the place and the net has slowed even further it’s almost unusable.”

ATT I thought you were supposed to be more bars…everywhere.

There has been lot of dicussion today about the possibility of Apple building its own media server software and hardware. I think people need to slow down a little bit with thoughts that this is close to launching. First off at this point Apple has the software pieces in place with Front Row coming on every mac and Time Machine allowing users to back up their valuable music, media and other files. However in terms of allowing users to remotely access this content they are not there except when it comes to media streaming and right now that is limited to you being on the same network.

Some initial technical issues I see. The XML file on my iTunes library currently is over 15 megabytes in size. This file keeps track of all my songs and movies, their preferences and meta data information. How in the heck is Apple going to make that file small enough to be able to be transferred over wireless devices like a 3G iPhone?

My prediction here is that Front Row will continue to expand into more of a media hub adding the ability to be controlled from your iPhone, supporting more formats, etc. Apple likes to be able to control what goes on the iPhone and by having it link only to iTunes they are doing that. Opening up wireless streaming of files to the iPhone puts a real hit on the 3G network as well as presents a whole wealth of new problems.

Joel Comm maker of the iPhone App iFart has been blogging about the progress of his application hitting #1 on iTunes.
Detailed below are the sales figures he’s seeing and the position on the store’s best selling apps section. There really is some money to be made on applications built for the iPhone…just ask Joel.

12/19 - 3117 units - #9 overall, #2 entertainment
12/20 - 5497 units, - #4 overall, #2 entertainment
12/21 - 9760 units - #2 overall, #1 entertainment
12/22 - 13274 units - #1 overall

In the last four days alone Joel has seen his application iFart generate $33,331.52 in revenue. Subtracting Apple’s cut of 30% still leaves Joel with $21,932.06 in his pocket. Congrats Joel…now pull my finger.

It looks like Apple is not resting on its laurels after iPhone Software Update 2.1.  iPhone Software Update 2.2 is just around the corner and has a few welcome tweaks for the user.

Safari Changes

Safari is getting a few slight tweaks.  For one the Title of the page you are on is much more legible.  The big change though is in the relocation of the google search box to be inline with the URL of the page you are on.  This resolves the issue of a user having to click on the address bar to run a google search.

App Store Updates

The app store is going to get bigger icons when browsing pages.  I think this is a much needed visual tweak that could result in a lot less wrong clicks on menu items.  One thing Apple really has to grasp is that people want to be able to quickly browse around their phones and with 10 menu items on a screen it becomes very difficult.

Today as Apple promised earlier this week they would release iPhone 3g Firmware 2.1.  I am excited to say that initial results are very promising.  That really annoying lag when typing out a text message to someone between keystrokes is gone.  I remember previously having to hit the home button then go back into the SMS application to get the lag to go away. 

In addition to the removal of the SMS lag there have been dramatic improvements to the mail client.  I can attest that sending and receiving mail is much faster especially when downloading 20+ emails at once.  The UI has received a small tweak to the Edge and 3G logos.  They now no longer have borders around the E or the 3G.  

So what is missing?  Genius.  Come on Apple let everyone enjoy Genius besides iPod nano, iPod Touch and iPod Classic Owners.

UPDATE:

It looks like you must have more than one artist on your iPhone to have Genius activate.  Thank you to Apple for letting everyone enjoy Genius.

Over the last 2 years or so we’ve seen a real change in the electronics industry. Even the most basic consumer has shifted from a standard cell phone like a Motorola RAZR to a smartphone. Most of these people have made the jump to an Apple iPhone because Apple has bridge the gap of taking tons of features and dumbing down the interface enough so people can grasp mobile email and mobile web browsing. But what has happened to the living room?

We have finally seen the proliferation of flat panel LCD and Plasma TVs into the living room. These displays have resolutions that are either 720p or the current buzz word 1080p. Now I am all for people buying a 1080p TV, it displays 1080 vertical pixel lines of resolution resulting in the most detailed picture a consumer can buy. However, you must really have source material in 1080p to truly enjoy the TV at full potential. So what material gets brodcasted in 1080p currently? Nothing on Cable or on Direct TV (Direct TV claims they will be broadcasting movies in 1080p some time this fall, but I wouldn’t hold your breath). So the only other option you have as a user is Blu-ray. Blu-ray players range in price from $399 to well over $1000, but you spent over $2000 on the 1080p so why not pick up a Blu-ray player as well?

So what are the advantage of Blu-ray in your living room besides 1080p? Well Blu-ray players also play DVDs and will upscale them to a higher resolution then they were originally made making them look much better on your TV. The real kicker with Blu-ray in my eyes is the fact that the discs hold 50 gigabytes of data. Compare that that to a single layer DVD at 4.7 gigs or a dual layer at a little over 9 gigs and you see that they will be able to fit a lot more stuff on a disc.

Currently that extra space is being used not only on extras scenes but on new functionality Sony has dubbed BD-Live which allows the Blu-ray movie to leverage a user’s internet connection and deliver online websites and additional content for films. I am not a big fan of these things because I am strictly a movie watcher and care more for sound rather than extras. So what about sound?

Well I am happy to say Blu-ray has really nailed the sound aspect of what a movie is all about. Back in the days of DVD people were really happy to just get Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. That was a center, right, left, rear left, rear right and a subwoofer speaker, now movies can go as high as 7.1 adding two additional speakers for additional sound. What is really neat though is with the extra space Blu-ray offers we are seeing movie soundtracks that are uncompressed audio which means there is 0 compression in the audio to get it to fit on the disk. Uncompressed audio sounds amazing, but you have to have the proper equipment to use it. I highly recommend if you are a user upgrading from a 5.1 DVD setup to replace your DVD player with a PlayStation 3 and replacing your receiver with a Onkyo - 606. That receiver will put out a decent amount of power to all your speakers and give you the flexibility to plug your cable box into it.