Add disk mode, but be quick about it
Depending on your point of view, there are quite a few things missing from the iPhone. One of these is direct disk access – the ability to use your iPhone as a standard mountable hard drive.
Classic and nano iPods has this ability (known as Disk Mode), but iPod Touches and iPhones do not.
There’s no USB access to iPhones yet, apart from Ecamm’s PhoneView.
Far more prevalent are over-the-air solutions. Jailbroken iPhones have had this for a while, using either SSH or Netatalk. There are also numerous paid-for options at the App Store, such as File Magnet and DataCase. But for the next two weeks, there’s a free option – Air Sharing.
This app’s going to sell for US$6.99, but for the moment it’s free, and offers both the ability to use your iPhone as a disk, plus viewing of documents, photos, video and music on the device itself.
Since I’ve installed it, it has pretty much done what it said on the tin. Bonjour support has been a little flaky for me, but I guess that’s because I had Netatalk running when I first installed Air Sharing. So, I’ve had to manually connect the iPhone. Other than that, it works like a treat. Get it while you can.
Joined-up applications and The Way Ahead
An article I’d been planning for a while involved comparing the third party application scenes of the Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Apple iPhone worlds. While this will still happen in the fullness of time, the flavour of each ‘scene’ is becoming very obvious and I was struck by one specific point from the iPhone world.
Some of the early stars of the iPhone AppStore are simply very ‘joined up’, mashing iPhone and Web services together seamlessly. Well, almost seamlessly. Apologies for another link over to AAS, but hey, that’s where the article is hosted. I review Movies and Vicinity, two of the very top iPhone applications, explain why they’re so great and also address whether competing (Symbian) smartphones and their apps can rise to the same level.
‘Let’s Rock’!
On the 9th September at 10am Pacific Time Apple are to host the ‘Let’s Rock’ event. It’s seems that new iPods are a certainty, but it looks increasingly likely that iPhone users may get something new too.
Firmware update 2.1 would be nice, especially if it put an end to the almost endless application crashing woes that I and many others have been experiencing (more on that later). But what if there was more? Could there be more to the ‘Let’s Rock’ theme than first meets the eye? I’m not usually given to wild speculation, but I’ll have a go this time.
How about Guitar Hero, or Rock Band for iPhone?
Just a thought. Any other guesses?
The lure of the iPhone explained
Apologies for not posting this at the time (two weeks ago) but I’ve been a little distracted, as has Matt, with family matters! In this feature, hosted at All About Symbian, I’ve written about my experiences showing off the iPhone/iPod Touch platform to some ‘normobs’. What did they make of Apple’s interface and hardware and, perhaps more importantly, why did they react as they did? Find out in the full article (written from the point of view of an experienced, hard-nosed Nokia/Symbian viewpoint, note!)
Battery life tip for iPhone gamers
It’s certainly encouraging to see Apple providing ‘Bug Fix’ firmware updates every few weeks. For me at least 2.0.2 does indeed seem to iron out a few of the strange crashes and laggy keyboard issues. However, one huge ‘bug’ is the rather depressing battery life. There are numerous ways to squeeze every minute of life from the iPhone battery, but by far the best that I have discovered is Airplane Mode.
If you are about to dive in for an hour’s worth of gaming on Galcon, or looking to channel water droplet during train ride home in Enigmo, then Airplane Mode will greatly increase your chances of coming out of the experience having only lost 15-25% of your battery life.
Sure you’ll be out of contact for duration, but your extra focus might just help you on your way to that ever elusive score of 6,000,000 on Pinball RC!
Well that’s my top tip for gamers, what’s yours?
Apple Store after sales service
A couple of years ago my Nokia N93 took some damage to one of the microphones, after a visit to my local Nokia Service Center I patiently waited for my beloved N93 to return to all shiny and new. I waited, I waited some more, phoned the service centre and was told to wait a bit longer. Eventually, after a mere 3 months, my phone was returned to me. Imagine my anger to discover that there was no improvement, the microphone was still obviously broken. After a 20 minute chat with a manager and another 4 days wait the phone was replaced.
After such a bad experience I was not looking forward to my trip to the Apple Store yesterday. With 2 broken iPhones in hand I approached the Genius Bar of the Southampton store.
BBC iPlayer goes one better
A while ago I wrote about the BBC launching iPlayer for the iPhone. Well, they’ve now gone one better. The whole iPlayer site has been redesigned, as detailed in this BBC Internet Blog post. But when you log onto it from an iPhone, you now get an iPhone-optimised site.
As with many other successful iPhone-optimised sites (such as Facebook), it uses a tabbed interface and really focuses on the essentials.
It’s much more navigable – no more pinching and zooming – and a great improvement, as you can see from the screenshots.
Carnival of the Mobilists #136
A warm welcome all, to this week’s Carnival. Make a mug of tea, get your comfy slippers on, and settle in, because we have some treats for you.
Schmap makes existing sites iPhone-friendly
Schmap are releasing a public beta of a new service today to enable your website for the iPhone. Add Schmap’s javascript snippet to your website, and it will additionally display contact and address information formatted in a very iPhone-friendly way. Here’s how it looks on their featured site, Pure Food And Wine.
Touching any of the fields will launch the relevant iPhone application e.g. touch the phone number to call the number. Turning the phone on its side will keep the contact details visible and also show a map.
MMS sending coming to your O2 iPhone
I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this before. A little while ago, Ross McKillop developed O2 MMS, which enabled you to read multimedia messages on your iPhone, without going through O2’s torturous non-iPhone friendly website. It’s a donation-supported service with no jailbreak required, and is listed on Apple’s Web Apps directory.