Tag: Technology

I’ve used the earbuds that came with the iPods, iPhone, etc. for a long time and have been generally pleased with them. However, they just aren’t very reliable. I got one pair replaced in June because one side failed. This was a pair that I just used for phone calls and occasionally listening to music. I didn’t mistreat them, they just stopped working.

Since I managed to accumulate a bunch of the earbuds, I used a pair for running. Sweat really kills them, so I bought knockoffs that fared just as well as the Apple branded ones. The microphone, volume controls, or the speakers stopped working which has become increasingly frustrating.

So now I’m searching for the right earbuds for me. Actually, I’ve broken up my use of earbuds into 3 categories, each with a different pair. The first category is for when I fly. This year, it looks like I will have gone on 9 trips, and I’ve found that noise canceling earbuds make the trip so much nicer. I’ve been using the Audio-Technica ANC23 earbuds for a few months now and find them to be holding up well. I don’t like using these for phone calls as the noise canceling makes me sound strange when I talk. Also, they wouldn’t hold up for running and these don’t have a microphone or 3 button remote.

A few weeks ago, the Apple earbuds I use for phone calls stopped working. I went on a search and ended up with the V-MODA Remix Remote Headset and they seem to be working well. I like the 3 button remote and the sound quality is pretty good. My wife is going to get a pair as they have interchangeable inserts for different size ears.

Next up are earbuds for running. The reviews I’ve read about sweat proof ones have not been good. I want the 3 button remote with microphone so that I can control Siri and talk on the phone, if need be (I’ve only taken 2 calls while running this year). I might just have to bite the bullet and buy one or more pair to try. They aren’t cheap, however.

Earlier this year, a friend of mine that I’ve known for over 15 years told me that he bought an iPad. Normally I’d think nothing of it, but this friend has been writing Windows code (Windows desktop, mobile, embedded) for a long time and never came close to a Mac or Apple products. Then in October, he told me he got an iPhone 4S after liking his iPad. Oh no, what was next?

A few weeks back, he started asking me how hard would it be to learn iOS development. I told him it would take a little bit of time and that I’d help him if needed. One of his clients was interested in having him do some iOS development.

Today, he let me know that the 13″ MacBook Air that his client sent had just arrived. In less than a year, he now has basically a complete line up of Apple products (save for the Apple TV and some lesser used items). Will he come over to the Mac and iOS? I just read an article this evening about a former Microsoft Evangelist quitting his day job to write iOS apps. Maybe this will happen to my friend as well; it will give me something to pester him about if he does. “Why did it take you so long to wake up?” 🙂

I’ve been playing a lot with Siri on my iPhone 4S and am finding it pretty neat. I add reminders when running and when in the car. I’m also asking it the weather, temperature, etc. My 4 1/2 year old son saw me asking it “What’s the weather?” and he tried to do the same. Unfortunately he doesn’t enunciate well, so Siri gets very, very confused. He’s managed to get Siri to respond to something this evening; he asked it “What’s the weather in San Jose?” and it responded correctly.

So, while Siri works pretty well for me, I wonder how well it works for people that don’t speak clearly, have speech impediments or have thick accents. I know that Apple is still working on it, but right now, don’t expect Siri to work for a 4 year old!

Now that my wife and I both have iPhones running iOS 5, the single most useful feature for us is Reminders. I’ve used to do lists on and off for years, but never found anything that was always accessible and easy to use. With iOS 5 and iCloud, I have access to my reminders on my desktop, iPhone and iPad. Furthermore, with Siri on my iPhone 4S, I can add reminders when I’m running or when I’m driving.

To top off my personal use of reminders, with iCloud, I can share reminder lists with my wife. I’ve setup a grocery list that we can both see. The other day I added an item to the list while I was in Portland and when I arrived home later that day, my wife had been to the store and purchased everything on the list, including what I had added!

There are lots of other useful iOS 5 features, but so far, this feature could be something that helps restore my sanity. Yes, I know that other apps can do this, but this is simple to use and just works.

Now that my wife has an iPhone 4, I decided to take her old iPod Touch and repurpose it. For the longest time, I wanted to be able to control the thermostat from upstairs, however I never found it economical solution to do so. That is until now.

At the beginning of the year I changed out my thermostat for a WiFi enabled thermostat. This allows me to control the temperature in the house from anywhere in the house or in fact anywhere in the world. Since I already had the big pieces in place, all I had to do was reconfigure the iPod touch to be a dedicated device for controlling the thermostat. In addition to controlling the thermostat I figured that I could put the Squeezebox software on it so that I can also control the music from upstairs without having to go downstairs or to bring my iPhone upstairs.

With the iPod Touch all configured now when I wake up I can just roll over and turn the heat on without getting out of bed. While it may sound funny to have to turn on heat in San Diego it does get a little chilly in our house so I like to turn the heat on in the morning just to knock off a little bit of the chill.

My iPhone 4S arrived today and I knew I had my work cut out to swap it with my iPhone 4, add a line for my wife and port her number from Sprint. The process was supposed to be:

1. Activate iPhone 4S and make sure it can make a call.
2. Swap SIMs and restore my iPhone 4 onto the iPhone 4S.
3. Restore my wife’s iPod onto the iPhone 4.
4. Call AT&T and combine the lines onto a FamilyTalk plan.
5. Call AT&T and have them port my wife’s number onto the new line.

The first 3 steps were tedious, but I didn’t run into any problems. Step 4 is where the problems arose. I called AT&T and told the rep what I wanted to do; the rep was thoroughly confused about what I wanted to do. Once she understood it, she didn’t think it could be done and I finally offered to goto an AT&T store to get it done. The rep said that might be the best idea; of course, I wasn’t about to leave the house because I got a rep that was clueless. Finally she got a supervisor to help her do what I wanted.

So after almost an hour, the rep managed to get most of it worked out, but had to pull my A-List feature off the account. The in-store rep who sold me the phone said that it is likely that I’d be able to keep the feature (no longer offered) if I was on a qualifying rate plan. It was good enough for now, so I asked the rep to transfer me to number porting and she almost couldn’t figure out how to do that.

The last step I got a very knowledgable rep on the phone who was able to take care of the port without fumbling. I then asked her if there was a difference between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S data plans; they were the same price and same amount of data. She didn’t know, but understood that I swapped the phones and offered to transfer the IMEIs in the system so that the iPhone 4S was associated with my number. As she did this, the system rejected it, so she swapped the data plans. I’m not sure it made a difference, but if there is a different plan to get the top data speed the 4S can achieve, I wanted it. This call lasted a bit, but it took time to wait for the port to complete.

After something like 1.5 hours, I had a working iPhone 4S and my wife had an iPhone 4.

It is amazing how poorly trained some of the customer service reps are in the wireless industry. While it sounds simple to do customer care for a carrier, the number of combinations of plans, features, etc. make it very hard for a poorly trained rep to get anything done. Combine that with old features that the current system won’t accept. Just about any time I’ve had to talk to customer care rep from Sprint or AT&T (the only 2 carriers I’ve had service with), it was a nightmare. My issues with Sprint were so bad that the only way I could get them resolved was to go through back channels and get a higher level service rep. Hopefully I won’t have to call AT&T back any time soon.

To top this off, I spoke with an enterprise customer care representative since I have a corporate discount on my account. I can’t imagine what the non-enterprise reps would have done.

(I did send email to the sales rep who sold me the phone to see if she could help me get the A-List feature back; she seemed far more knowledgable than the rep on the phone. For those that don’t know, A-List lets you call certain numbers without racking up minutes; I use this for conference calls all the time.)

I listen to the MacBreak Weekly podcast and they keep mentioning Ford Sync. As I’m not a fan of American cars (old biases die hard), I never thought I’d get a chance to try out Ford Sync. On our recent vacation, we rented a car which happened to be a brand new Ford Focus (it had 8 miles on it when we got it). Since I’ve never had good luck getting radio stations when renting cars, I made sure I brought cables to plug in my phone. I had a USB cable as well as a 3.5 mm patch cord. I was about to plug in the patch cord when I realized there was a USB plug in the center console. I plugged in my iPhone and the system immediately recognized it.

Pretty cool, I thought. My wife started playing with it and was able to browse all the music on my iPhone and we enjoyed music throughout the trip. In addition, all of the prompts for Navigon were played through the car stereo. I tried to use the voice recognition, but didn’t spend much time with it. It seemed to work OK, but without knowing the vocabulary, navigating it was difficult.

I didn’t try out making a phone call through it, nor did I try the navigation as I already had Navigon on my iPhone. I was pretty impressed with the technology and would love to see something like it in my next car; however, the chances of me buying a Ford are pretty slim. I do like a larger screen for navigating audio, like my wife has in her Honda CR-V and the navigation on the LCD is easy to use.

When I signed up for AT&T last June to get the iPhone 4, the only options I had for data were 200 MB or 2 GB; unlimited data was discontinued before I signed up. I opted for 2 GB to give me some room, in case I needed it. Up until now, I’ve used at most 250 MB per month. Since I work at home and mostly use Wi-Fi, I use most data on Wi-Fi. Furthermore, when I’m out, I don’t stream video or do anything that is high bandwidth. This month, I went on vacation (first real vacation in 5.5 years) and had no Wi-Fi coverage for the entire 5 day trip. My wife and I used the phone to find stuff to do, as well as for some Twitter checking, RSS feed reading, and email. It looks like I’ll use maybe 800 MB of my 2 GB allocation. So even with my high (for me) usage, I didn’t even use half of my allocation.

For many people, 2 GB of data is more than enough. If someone commuted on a bus or train and streamed music or video, they might use more data. So for social networking, web browsing and email 2 GB works and unlimited is just a marketing gimmick (at least it is for Sprint now). Of course, everyone’s usage varies, but for me, unlimited doesn’t mean anything to me. I suspect that when I add my wife to my account, 2 GB will be enough for her, as well.

When the iPhone 4S was announced, it seemed like a minor upgrade, I immediately wanted to get one. I like shiny toys and needed justification to get one. Luckily my wife has been bugging me about getting an iPhone and she said that she’d be more than happy with an iPhone 4. So, I’ll get the shiny new gadget and pass down my iPhone 4 to my wife.

We ordered the iPhone 4S last week and in 3-4 weeks, it will arrive. Then the fun begins. I have to swap the SIM so that I get the iPhone 4S working on my number, port my wife’s number over to the new line, and then combine the lines into a FamilyTalk plan. This is almost a recipe for disaster; knowing that this wasn’t going to be straight forward, we ordered the phone at an AT&T corporate store (turns out our flight home from vacation was delayed, so we stopped in at the large mall on Maui and went to the only AT&T store on the island). I just hope this doesn’t get screwed up; crossing my fingers.