Is there an app for proving that you are not insane? And why should I have to prove that I’m not insane? Isn’t the customer always right? Apparently not when it comes to iPhones.

So, my brand new 3-week old iPhone kind of sucks. Well, not really, but it does something that not only really bothers me, it contributes to the appearance of my insanity (or at least senility). The darn thing tingles. No, it’s not the vibration mode of the ringer — god! if I had an iPhone for every time someone thinks it’s as simple as that. It gives of a kind of charged tingle, when I hold it in my hands. Most notably down my leg when I keep it in my pocket. It’s so bad that I eventually want to take it out of my pocket. And when I hold it in my hand, before long (i.e. 10 minutes) it tingles up my arm and after about 15 minutes my knuckles will even start to ache a bit, like I have the flu or something. The iPhone flu.

So, being so naive as I am, I bring it in to the store. Of course, there’s no one to help me. I have to make an appointment with the “genius” and come back in two days. Whatever. So I wait and come back at my assigned time. Of course, I have to wait 15 minutes for that assigned genius, and in that time, the phone has tingled my hand like crazy. Speaking of “crazy”, when I tell the guy, he can’t feel it! He looks at me like I’m crazy. I know how it sounds, but I’m not crazy. Why do I have to prove that? After I keep insisting, he hands it to some other genius who’s busy doing something on the computer. She tries to feel it, but she doesn’t. Of course not! It’s not exactly quiet in the store, and I don’t think they are really focused on the feeling (which is subtle at first). They’re busy thinking of how many customers they need to see or when they’re done for the day. Plus they are probably thinking it’s something like the vibrating ringer so they don’t think it’s anything softer than that — it’s not the vibrating ringer, OK? So he takes the phone back to check “inside”. He comes back and tells me that there’s no sound, nothing audible, and he put it on something to feel vibration and it didn’t register any. Of course not! It’s not frakkin’ vibrating. It’s tingling!!

So, he looks at me and says that he can’t replace it because he can’t find anything wrong with it. Why the hell not?! When you buy a shirt and you take it home to wear and it’s scratchy, you can return it or exchange it. When you buy a CD player and you don’t like the sound, you can bring it back to the store. What is so special about the iPhone that I can’t get it replaced? “What’s wrong with it?”! I paid mucho bucks for a phone that I’m stuck with for 3 long years and I don’t even want to touch it! That’s what’s wrong with it! If they suspect me of some phone exchanging scam, what on earth do I have to gain by coming in and exchanging my phone. It’s not like it’s damaged or anything, it’s good as new. I just want one that doesn’t give me the shivers. Is that too much to ask, Apple?!

It never ceases to amaze me how Apple can not only make products that I want to buy, they make me want to want to buy them. Such is the point I had reached with my potential new iPhone. After being denied last Sunday, I was still eager to get my iPhone as soon as possible. I was so eager that I even dragged my buddy (and his family), who I was showing around town as they were visiting, back to the Eaton Centre with me when I tried to revisit the Apple Store and get my iPhone again. Good thing he is as big an Apple fanboy as I am so it was exciting for him as well (in fact, he got me a silicone case for my iPhone before I even got one).

So this time, the iPhone gods were definitely smiling on me. I went in to explain my situation, how I was denied, and how the person who helped me before told me to try my luck again. Fortunately the person who helped me this time was able to find a guy who works on iPhones and didn’t have any appointments for another hour and a half. Yay! So, he helped me out, the system was working, and he got me all activated on my new, white, 32 GB iPhone 3GS. It was a sweet and simple ending to a minor minor ordeal.

Now, I’m still kind of feeling my way around the iPhone, discovering new fun things every day. I was so excited when I could restore all my apps (not all of them, mind you. I took the opportunity to trim down) and get going again.

So, there you have it. I now have joined the throngs of iPhone addicts. I have already benefited from the use of my iPhone when my buddy wanted to eat at Red Lobster when we were in Niagara Falls. I quickly looked up Red Lobster and Google Maps helped us get there. Hooray for instant gratification!

Having only been a pay-as-you-go customer up until now, I had never really sank my feet into the tar pits of frustration known as cellular providers up until now (actually, my brief glimpse into that was when they switched me onto a monthly plan without telling me all the charges that I would be incurring. I got them to switch me back, but stil…). Now, I am planning to replace both my iPod touch (which has been lost to some French vagrants) and my home phone with a brand spanking new iPhone 3GS (Yay!).

I’d pass by the Fido store (Fido is one of the Canadian iPhone carriers) numerous times in my consideration process and went in a few times, but they’re so dang busy that I ended up leaving with only a brochure. Finally, hearing about how Fido stores had no stock of 3GSes, I got tipped on going directly to the Apple store instead. So, that’s what I did. At the Apple store, I was greeted by a pleasant enough customer service person, but he told me that new activations would take a long long time and so I had to make a personal shopping appointment. He rebuffed my outrage at the delayed gratification by saying that they get a lot of people in the store looking for iPhones and if they spent all their time on activating iPhones, then they’d never have any time.. blah blah blah… so, I made the appointment for 5 days later — yes, that’s five whole days to wait for something that they actually already had in stock. I guess when you have customers coming out of your ears, trying to shove money at you for a new iPhone, you don’t need to be nice to someone like me.

So, like a good boy, I wait patiently until Sunday for my appointment and with their good customer service, Apple phones me and confirms that I’m coming for my appointment and they have the phone in stock. Easy peasy, right? See, I’ve learned that the paradox of Apple is that everything is coated in that easy-looking, clean, white, friendliness that is in their ads, in the attitudes of their service people. It’s a kind of mellow, “We’re sorry things aren’t working out, but smile anyway” kind of demeanor. I guess it’s better than the Windows/PC world, often fraught with a “too-bad-so-sad, figure it out yourself” demeanor, but still …

I go in for my appointment, all ready to leave with (as they promised) my iPhone working as I exit the store. Yeah right. After trying to sort out who talk to about my appointment (there’s no indication of what a person is supposed to do when the arrive for an appointment to announce themselves, but apparently the orange shirt guy is the concierge). Finally, when I sit down with the person who is helping me activate my new iPhone, the Fido system is down (@#$@!%!). The lady helping me is super friendly, trying to put me into the system at least 3 times, but still no go. So, she pleasantly turns to me and lays out my options of either leaving the store with the phone outright (i.e. pay $800 for the damned thing) or come back maybe tomorrow when the system is up again (possibly). I guess I’m supposed to be made of time. I guess I don’t have to go to work on Monday or anything like that. I guess I don’t deserve some special arrangement after having waited almost a week for my appointed waste-of-time.

As I leave the store, I am struck by the intricate web of ironies in my situation. If Apple had been willing to activate the phone for me when I came in on Tuesday, I would have already had my phone. Instead, they made me wait all week until the system was down to NOT give me the phone. Add to that the horribly elaborate way that cell companies need to make sure that they cannot let you get away without squeezing all your money out of you (that’s the part about the subsidies and how I couldn’t even leave with the phone at the normal, non-inflated price without an activation). I’m sure I’m not appreciating the nuances of the technology and business model that probably makes clear sense to someone, but after my annoyances of today, I have very little patience or compassion for Big Cellular.

So when will I finally get my iPhone? Your guess is as good as mine. I’ll keep you posted. Sucks to be me, eh? (I know there are so so many worse problems than these, but at this moment it sure doesn’t feel like it.)

Flight Control is a simple game for iPhones/iPod Touches that is addictive and a great time killer for the subway ride, the doctor’s office, or wherever you want to distract yourself for a few minutes. Using your finger, simply trace the path that leads the appropriate planes to the correct runways. Easy, right? Yup it’s all a breeze until the airspace starts to crowd with aircraft, and the big planes with their speedy engines start to fly in from all directions. One of the best features of this game is that it gives you the option to either use the game sounds or keep playing your own music in the background — too many games prefer to replace that Lady Gaga song that I had been enjoying … darn you Bejeweled 2! Anyway, as I said, this is a nice little game that you will enjoy anywhere you bring your iPod (except you might want to avoid playing it on your next flight… I’m just sayin’).

Imagine you are a powerful Polynesian deity, able to wield your infinite might over a tiny island nation of palm-frond-wearing natives. You control the sun and the moon; you manipulate the clouds and storms; they worship you and fear the wrath of your mighty lightning. Omnipotence sure feels good, don’t it? Well, with Pocket God, a really cute pseudo-game from the iTunes app store, you get a taste of what that’s like.

It’s a very simple concept: there’s an island on the touch screen, complete with coconuts and idols, and a shark waiting in the water for the little cartoon natives. If you tap on the coconut, it drops out of the tree. With your finger you can lift the natives high into the air, or drop them into the sea (if you dangle them over the shark, it might just jump out of the water for a snack). You can even manipulate gravity by turning your iPod upside-down. If you’re feeling vengeful, you might toss a few islanders into the nearby volcano — try three of them. (Don’t worry, you can easily create more — you’re God,)

It doesn’t take long to do all the things that you can do, but the animations are extremely cute. The best part is that the updates are frequent, and each update brings new features and new activities that you can do. The latest update added the feature where tapping on the moon brings a vampire bat to your island to bite one of your little friends — you can guess what that’s going to lead to. Just wait until the sun rises in the morning — ouch!

This is one of those fun little apps that are great to show your friends, plus you may become addicted to trying out all the activities. I hope they keep adding on the updates. Til then I think I’ll chuck a few more thunderbolts their way. Hey, not actual islanders were harmed in the making of this game. We’re cool.

When you get to the point of having many screens of iPod/iPhone apps (I’ve got eight pages going right now), you really know the important ones because they’re the ones on your homepage. They’re the ones that you use on a regular basis, maybe even day-to-day. Surprisingly for me, most of these are actually free on the App store. They’re not all new or recent, but they are definitely my go-to apps. Here are a few of my favorites:

Writing Pad a.k.a. ShapeWriter

Surprisingly I think my favorite free app is one that does something that the iPod already does out of the box — type notes and e-mails. The twist with ShapeWriter is that you move your finger around the keypad to spell out your word. For me this is much better and more efficient than the tapping of the virtual keypad on the native iPod mail or note app. It’s actually even kind of fun. Sometimes there is a possibility of multiple words so ShapeWriter gives you a few choices to select from. When you’re done typing, or rather sliding, words you can either save the note or you can export it as an e-mail to the Mail application (which is a weird kind of loophole in the “No cut and paste” problem with iPhone/iPods, anyway). I find this very handy and I use it for all my typing on the iPod where possible.

Weather Eye

This one is just a replacement for your standard Weather app that comes with the iPod. It comes from the Canadian Weather Network and I think it looks better and has more information than the standard Weather app. I don’t know if it covers all of the US cities or other cities around the world, but does a good job with Canada. It’s free, so you can compare it for yourself.

Check Please

People make fun of tip calculator programs as if they were the losers of the App store. While I wouldn’t pay serious money for them, since this one is free I find it actually very useful. Sure, you could just use your Calculator app to figure out the amount of tip and how much each person at your table owes, but this one does it all for you in a nice-looking, easy-to-use package. I’ve tried a couple of other free tip calculators, but I think this one is the best. There’s a banner ad loaded (actually a few of these free apps have banner ads) but you can still use it if you don’t have an Internet connection, and I don’t think it too distracting.

Flixster Movies

I’ve tried a number of different movie apps (the kind that give you listings and showtimes), even some that I’ve paid for, and I’ll probably do a comparison post of all of them at some point. The one on my homepage comes from Flixster (the movie-rating social networking site), and you have to actually be connected to the Internet to look at your information (which is a negative) but otherwise I find this one to be the best of them all. Not only is the information very accurate, you can set your favorite theaters, you have Rotten Tomatoes of Flixster ratings, and you can see recent or upcoming DVD releases as well. I think it’s the best designed movie app by far, what it really needs for its next update is an off-line mode for us iPod users.

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire is already one of the more popular RSS reader applications on the Mac, and it was one of the first to come out on the iPod as well. You need to set up an online account, where you register all your RSS feeds, but after that it does a very good job of updating and downloading all the latest headlines and even caches parts or all of the articles for off-line reading. It’s easy to use and I find it great for taking my RSS reading onto the subway.

Instapaper

It may not look like much, but this app is very useful if you browse the web and find a lot of things that you want to read but just don’t have time. Coupled with a web bookmarklet for your browser, you just click on the Read Later link in your toolbar and Instapaper saves the page for off-line reading later. You don’t get any of the graphics or other bells and whistles, so if it’s a lot of fancy pages that you tend to go to, this might not work for you. But if it’s just posts and other kinds of text information, then this is great for saving articles. Just sync-and-go to take those pages with you anywhere. It’s the perfect companion to NetNewsWire.

Have any of you noticed the huge gap in the dates of my blog posts? Before my previous post, I had not posted anything since last May. So why am I suddenly posting two articles in a row? Well, the answer is simple: I don’t have to type them anymore. Thanks to the magic of MacSpeech Dictate, all I have to do is say my posts and they appear. (While it’s not that easy, it might as well be.)

It all started with the review on GeekBrief.tv. I didn’t really think that I needed dictation software. I wasn’t physically challenged, nor was I a two-finger typist. However, when I saw the really good review, I began to think about how I might actually use dictation software to write more. I realized that I was getting tired of typing and that made me post less on my blogs.

Like many others, I have not had much success with the speech recognition that came with the Mac OS. Repeating something five times each word did not seem to help improve the efficiency. However, I took a chance on MacSpeech Dictate because it seems to be much more accurate. I read about how MacSpeech licensed the Dragon Naturally Speaking engine that was very popular in the Windows environment and brought it over to the Mac OS. Now I’m a believer.

For those of you who are interested, I’ll include an unedited transcript produced solely by MacSpeech Dictate, so you can compare the accuracy for yourself.

One of the other great things about MacSpeech Dictate is that it works with existing programs that you run. I use Textmate to type my blog posts and Thunderbird for my e-mail. I have used MacSpeech Dictate to type, or rather dictate, in both of those programs so far. (Did I mention that I’ve only had this program for one day?)

Some have complained about the lack of spelling feature. In the latest update they have added that feature as well. In only one day, I’ve definitely not exercised all the features of the application. There are many reviews out there with more detail. However, I want to get out my opinion and my feedback about how wonderful this program is and how much it’s already changed my computing experience.

It’s not the cheapest thing on the market, but it works. Also, it comes with (i.e. you have to buy) a headset mic in order for it to work. It doesn’t seem to work with the built-in mic on my iMac (not that I’ve tried).

If you are at all into writing and don’t like the labor of typing, I definitely encourage you to look into MacSpeech Dictate. It has made things so much better for me and I’m sure it will help you as well.

First of all, I know there are lots of simulation and action games for the iPhone. However, this review will not cover those games. I’m generally more a fan of the puzzle-type or quiz type games. I liked to think outside-the-box and exercise my brain rather than my coordination. So if you’re into that type of thing too, here are a few suggestions but you should check out from the App store.

Frenzic

Frenzic is kind of an action puzzle game. The objective is to make pies of six wedge pieces. The pieces come out of the middle and you have to decide which pie to put them in. It’s better if you can create pies of a single color but as the pieces come at you fast and quick, sometimes you just have to put them wherever you can. If you do well, you get power ups such as slowing down the clock, double your score, or nuke all the pies. This is a well-designed fast-paced game that I got really addicted to. I was playing this in the bathroom! (TMI, sorry!)

Parking Lot

Parking Lot is a port of a real-world toy game similar to the classic sliding tile game where you have to move pieces around to form a picture, but the objective here is to slide cars out of the way so that you can move the yellow Volkswagen out the exit. The levels go from easy to very difficult, where you might have to move many cars around several times before you can get the yellow car out. I think this is a great one for thinking outside-the-box.

The Plateau

This is a really polished version of the game that I had already played on the Macintosh before. You start with a bunch of balls connected by lasers/strings that overlap. You move the balls around until the strings no longer overlap any others. That’s how you clear the screen. It sounds very easy, but there’s a lot of strings and you need to move them in ways that you may not consider at first. This is another one of those brain-stretching ones.

Movie Challenge

I’ve tried a few quiz games, but this is the best one so far. The questions are all about movies, which I like. You need to make your way across the screen by answering questions correctly. You pick from categories such as comedy, sci-fi, actors, directors, etc. and there are different types of questions such as true or false, scrambled words, what’s the date?, trivia, quotes, etc. There are even some power ups to help you get the answers. One of the best things is that the questions are very up-to-date (I’m expecting some Slumdog Millionaire questions in the next update!). There are not as many of the graphical gimmicks as some of the other quiz games (no cartoon hosts or contestants) but I think this one has better questions and is more fun for a true movie buff.

Trism

Trism is a matching block game similar to Bejeweled or Tetris. You slide triangles across the board to match up rows of three of the same color. When you do they go away and make room for more to slide in. One of the differences is that with the iPod’s accelerometer you can control the direction in which the pieces slide. I know this is supposed to be a big feature, but I don’t see how it makes a very big difference. Nevertheless, this is a new variation on an essentially fun style of game. As you progress, there are both power-up pieces, as well as obstacle pieces. Locked pieces cannot be slid, and bomb pieces must be removed within a certain number of rounds. So if you’re tired of Bejeweled, or Tetris, you might give Trism a try.

That’s just a small selection from the vast number of games that are showing up for the iPhone/iPod in the App store every day. Many of them are free, or have light versions, but even the ones that cost money don’t cost much. They are a great way to pass the time on the subway or in a doctor’s office. Trust me.

Have you been frustrated at getting so many Windows-oriented results when trawling for tech help on Google? Well, Google is doing a little bit more to help us Apple-ites out. Not only have they consolidated all their Mac software products on one page (including Google Desktop, Google Earth, Sketchup and Gmail Notifier), at the top they’ve added a new Search button that targets Mac sites. Vive la revolution!
(Check out the page here.)

This blog is normally about switching to Mac, but I needed a place to talk about my experience switching to Tivo, so I figure this is as good a place as I can find (there will be Mac stuff mentioned as well). If you’re reading this thinking, “Switching to Tivo? Does your Tivo have a time-travel feature to take me back to when that was actually something worth reading about?” Well, cut me some slack (you must be living in the U.S., the Land of Media Plenty). In Canada, we’ve only had Tivo officially available for a couple of months. (Many have been using Tivos purchased independently for years.) Now we have official Tivo service in Canada along with the Tivo Series 2 boxes on sale. I hadn’t found much feedback on the web from Canadians who had actually purchased one of these boxes and were using it with one of the local TV services (I use Rogers Cable) so I wanted to put my experiences out there.

As most of you probably know, Tivo is a popular brand of digital video recorder, used for pausing and recording TV programs. Tivo is known for its user-friendly interface and super-handy recording features. I’ve been using the Rogers Personal Video Recorder (made by Scientific Atlanta) since they first started offering it more than 5 years ago. At best, the Rogers box does an acceptable job, but I’ve always longed for the fabled ease-of-use that a Tivo brings. Before I continue, I need to make the obvious caveat that the Series 2 box which is now selling in Canada does not support high definition recordings. From what I’ve read, there are incompatibilities between the Tivo Series 3 box and the delivery devices for HD programming here in Canada. Boo-hoo for all you HD fans out there.

First Impressions

There are very clear setup instructions (in the form of a poster with connection diagrams) and two bags of cables clearly labelled A and B. I’m pretty experienced with home audio/video equipment, but the instructions made it very simple (even including connecting the ethernet cable to allow my Tivo to access to my home computer network). In a snap I was ready to go and there was an on-screen guide to take me the rest of the way. (Oh, I forgot to mention, that before I got going with the on-screen setup, I followed the instructions to activate my Tivo service — which you need to pay for — at tivo.com/canada first. That part was a little odd. Be sure to click the link for Canadian subscribers because a pop-up window shows you how to fill out the form if you have a non-U.S. address.)

So once I got up and running it was very nice to use. The interface was as slick as promised. Lots of soft little chimes and fun graphics. This was a far cry from my Rogers experience with its clunky and primitive interface. The show listings were very easy to navigate and since Tivo uses a semi-transparent overlay on top of the TV image, I could see a lot more information at once. Scrolling was quick and smooth (Rogers is slow and very stilted. Often if you hold down the arrow button you end up going past where you want to get to and then you have to navigate back — whaddapain!) The one oddity I have found with the Tivo listings so far is that it’s not very easy to switch from one day to another. It’s a few clicks down some not-quite-logical submenus to change the date on the listings. There’s got to be a quicker way.

Recording stuff

The one big drawback that I was anticipating from what I’d read was that Tivo was not going to be able to decode the digital cable signal directly. I have standard definition digital cable with Rogers, which means that I have a box which changes digital channels for me. When I used to use a VCR, I had to keep it on channel 3 and make sure that when I set a timer to record a show, the VCR would record channel 3 and the digital cable box would change itself to whatever channel the actual show was on. The same kind of thing happens with Tivo. The machine comes with a set of little sticks that you put around the digital cable box and these IR blasters send infrared signals to the digital box as if it were your remote control, changing the channel for you when it’s time to record a show. This was not a problem that I had with the Rogers box. The digital cable tuner was integrated with the recorder, so I could record any channel at any time and the machine would change the channel itself.

Thankfully, Tivo is able to take care of the channel changing for the analog (i.e. non-digital) channels which appear in the lower numbers (up to 72) but the quality is not digital, so the picture is definitely inferior. Because the Tivo Series 2 is a dual-tuner machine, it can record two shows at the same time. However, you can only record one digital signal because your digital cable box can only be showing one channel at a time. Also, if you’re watching TV on a high-numbered channel, Tivo warns you that it needs to change the channel for a recording (if that recording is on a digital channel). All that being said, Tivo does a really good job of making things as painless as possible. You don’t have to worry about which channels are digital and which ones aren’t. You can just let Tivo do its thing for the most part.

Tivo meets Mac

One of the most exciting aspects of the Tivo experience for me was going to be TivoToGo. That’s the feature that allows you to transfer your recorded shows to your computer and from there to your portable media (i.e. DVDs) or devices (i.e. iPods). The catch, however, was that it wasn’t going to be as simple as just copying a file off of the Tivo. Tivo offers some free software, but for the Mac, the TivoDesktop software only allows your Tivo to show photos from your computer on the TV and play your music (from iTunes). While that in itself is a pretty cool set of features, it’s still missing that major video piece. The Tivo downloading feature is (for some reason) packaged within another company’s CD/DVD burning software called Roxio Toast, which costs about $100 (or their smaller program Popcorn, which is about $50). Tivo offers a more complete TivoDesktop application for Windows users (which I tried to run within Parallels on my Mac, but couldn’t quite get it to work). Along comes the open-source community to the rescue: a free program called Galleon (after a few trials at getting the settings right) allows me to download the shows off of my Tivo and allows my Tivo to see the videos on my iMac (make sure you convert video files to mpeg2 if you want to transfer them back to the Tivo). Another little program called Tivo File Decoder allows me to strip away the stuff around the Tivo video files (.tivo) so that other video conversion programs can convert them to a normal format for me to use. Yay! I am now able to truly take Tivo To Go.

I’m really enjoying the Tivo (I’ve only had it for 4 days), and I don’t mind the sacrifice in video quality or the whole IR blaster inconvenience (though I’d still love it if they could integrate digital cable decoding in the Tivo box). I especially love the great interface and the back and forth communication between my computer and the Tivo. Also, compared to my Rogers PVR, it is the difference between something you have to use to something you actually enjoy using. If you’re thinking of getting into the world of Tivo, you’re in for some fun.