This right here: This is why I hate business

iPhone Sales Flop: “Sales of the iPhone hit 2.3 million, in line with most Wall Street estimates.” Selling 2.3 million units and being “in line” with the estimates means the headline is “Sales Flop”. (o_O)

Visual voice-mail

Seriously, why wasn’t visual voice-mail widespread long before the iPhone? Apple may be the best company when it comes to bringing decent human-machine interaction to market. (They’ve got plenty of room for improvement, but they’re still the best.) But this “innovation” isn’t so out-of-the-box and innovative that it needed Apple to make it happen. Anyone can probably make a long list off the top of their heads of simple devices and ways they are a pain to use. Many of these things don’t take creativity or innovation to fix. They don’t require studying human-machine interaction. (Though there’d be additional value in that.) They require simply the willingness to make your product less painful for the user.

Adventures with Gmail

I’ve decided to switch from my own e-mail server to Gmail. Ideally, the switch will be invisible. I think I’ve finally got it working. That means...

• Getting mail sent to my fisher.cx address into my Gmail account.
• Getting mail sent from my Gmail account to be marked as from my fisher.cx address.

The following may seem overly complex, but it’s really just solving those two issues. (The second one in three contexts.) I’m trying to capture enough detail here, however, to help me do it again if I need to. Step one was easy: Configure my account at e-rice to forward mail sent to my fisher.cx address to my gmail.com address instead of my dyndns.org address. The next part is harder, because there are (at least) three ways I may send mail...

• The Gmail web interface
• Apple Mail
• My iPhone

Telling the Gmail web interface to use the fisher.cx address for outgoing mail was easily done in Settings -> Accounts. It sends a confirmation e-mail to any address you add, but once the confirmation was done, it worked fine. (By the way, you can access the Gmail web interface securely by using “https” in the address instead of “http”. This will encrypt the contents of your e-mail as it travels over the Internet between your computer and Google’s servers.) Also, this is important because it will allow your other e-mail clients to use the address with the Gmail outgoing mail (SMTP) server. Also, I needed to use Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP to enable IMAP for use with Apple Mail and my iPhone. Setting up Gmail with Apple Mail (2.1.2) was pretty straightforward. On the “Account Information” panel for the account in Mail’s Preferences, the “Email Address” field between “Description” and “Full Name” is the outgoing e-mail address. So, putting my fisher.cx address there means that mail sent through Apple Mail will have the fisher.cx address. The tricky bit with Apple Mail was telling it which Gmail folders to use for Drafts, Sent, Trash, and Junk. You have to select the subfolders below the “[Gmail]” folder and the go to the Mailbox menu -> Use this mailbox for. Setting up Gmail on the iPhone with the Gmail option worked fine, but it wouldn’t put my fisher.cx address on outgoing e-mails. Syncing the Gmail account from Apple Mail to the iPhone seemed to still set it up as a Gmail account on the iPhone. Turning syncing back off and setting up the Gmail account on the iPhone as Other/IMAP worked fine. Helpful links:

• To set up your Apple Mail client to work with Gmail
• To configure IMAP for your iPhone
• How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail

Earbud heaven

The hands-free headsets for my last two phones were worthless. It’s so nice—with the iPhone earbuds—to finally have decent hands-free again. The silly bit is that, walking around with those white earbuds and 800-some songs in my pocket, I really do feel like one of those people from an iPod commercial. (O_O) an iPod commercial featuring the Jet song “Are you gonna be my girl” Seriously, though, for someone who plays guitar for worship, sings in the choir, and attempts to write and record music; I don’t spend near enough time listening to music. And when I do, it always gives me a real emotional boost.

iSkin revo

My beautiful and brilliant Apple Store Mac Specialist (soon to be Tier 1 AppleCare) wife, Andrea, helped me pick out an iPhone case, and I’m convinced I ended up with the best one for me: the iSkin revo. The silicone revo wraps around the whole iPhone except for the screen. There are holes for the ear piece and the light sensor above it, the dock connector and loudspeakers on the bottom, and the silence switch on the side. What I thought was a hole for the camera is actually covered by a protective bit of transparent plastic. A flap covers the ear-bud jack. The home, wake/sleep, and volume buttons are used simply by pressing on the revo itself. It has a clear plastic cover that snaps over the screen. When not covering the screen, you can store it by snapping it on the back. There’s also a separate silicone piece to push into the dock connector. I’m convinced I’m going to lose this, assuming I remember to put it on at all. The iPhone can’t fit in the dock with the revo on, but you can just plug the dock cable in directly. The revo makes me feel secure that my iPhone is fully protected in my pocket. It makes it feel secure in hand as well. (Without a case, it always feels like the iPhone is going to slip out of my hand.) The cover isn’t annoying and doesn’t get in the way. The revo comes with a stick-on, anti-glare, screen protector. I choose to go with a separate product (whose name escapes me at the moment) that Andrea recommended, and I’m very happy with it as well. (She also installed it for me and managed to get it perfectly aligned and bubble-free on the first try!) It might not be the perfect case for someone else, but I think it’s the perfect case for me.

Unfamiliar Beatles

It’s kind of odd to hear an unfamiliar Beatles song. The two that have come up on my iPhone’s shuffle recently were “I Me Mine” from Let It Be...Naked. and “Honey Pie” from The Beatles (the white album). I still clearly remember when, in the third grade, my friend Kreg Steppe brought a Beatles album to show-and-tell. I had no clue who they were, but he informed me that no-one could be his friend unless they were a fan of the Beatles. (^_^)

Call XOR Edge

Urg! The iPhone can’t access the Edge network while on a call. So, say you are on a phone call away from a Wi-Fi network, and you want to add a task to Toodledo. You can’t.