Newton Poetry

The worst possible thing happened to me last Friday: I dropped my iPhone 3G and shattered the glass screen.

I say “worst possible” only because of the way I felt at the time. When I picked it up after dropping it on the tile floor at work, I nearly sobbed. It felt like my dog just died.

Friday’s incident wasn’t the first time I dropped my iPhone. Thankfully, each time before, I dropped it on its protective white case.

Last week, however, it landed like a piece of toast and jelly, business-side down.

I couldn’t tell whether the awful screeching sound was from the phone or from me, but I knew right away that something terrible just happened. Picking it up from the floor, turning it over to see the damage, I felt my face grow pale. Everyone has to experience post-traumatic stress disorder, I reasoned, even in non-combat situations.

This was it. My phone was doomed. It turned on, luckily. The touchscreen still worked. But now there was a horrible spider-web crack across the top half of the screen. It was more than damaged – it was shattered. I took it back to my work desk and just stared at it.

Then I did some research. I didn’t opt for the Apple Care plan, so I was on my own financially. The best I could do is take it to my nearest Apple Store and see what they could do. From everything I read online, the best option was to pay $200 and have the Apple Store mechanic replace the glass screen. iPhone 3GSs are nice, but my phone was fine, and I don’t qualify for an upgrade. Not yet.

The glass replacement is exactly what happened, but that’s only half the story.

I took it to the Ann Arbor Apple Store, at the Briarwood Mall, and explained my situation to the Geniuses. My option was exactly as I had figured: $200 for a new glass screen ($100 of that is just for labor). And it was a quick fix. I had my iPhone back in about 10 minutes. When the Genius gave it back, I clicked on the wake button, saw that the iPhone was alive and kicking, and headed out the door.

When I got home, however, I found that the home button on the phone wasn’t working. I would open an app, get done with it, and click the home button to return to the iPhone screen. But when I hit the home button, nothing happened.

Whatever happened between the Genius taking my old glass screen and replacing it with the new one was enough to make my iPhone malfunction. The home button wasn’t taking me home.

I placed a quick call back to the Apple Store. A representative, Mike, answered. When I started to explain my problem, he kept saying, “Hello? Is anyone there?” Then he hung up. Weird.

A second call yielded the same results. A rep named Cat answered, asked “Hello?” a few times, and hung up.

My mic, it seems, was busted too. In fact, everything from the the home button down was malfunctioning. I called the Apple Store on the home phone and set up an appointment for the next day – Saturday at 1 p.m.

I came back into the store, and the Genius that helped me the night before recognized me.

“Weren’t you just in here last night?” she asked.

“I was, now I’m back,” I said. “However you guys replaced the screen, it busted the home button and the microphone.”

The Genius tried connecting my iPhone with the USB cable, but it wouldn’t sync with iTunes. Even the USB port, it seems, was broken. The technician took my phone to the back, disappearing for a few minutes, and came back with good news:

“We’re going to give you a new phone.”

Hoo-ha. He switched my SIM card out of my old phone, popped it into the new phone, and kapow – I had a brand new iPhone 3G.

I took it back home and, after a few connection issues involving resetting the phone several times and a lot of cussing, synced all my apps and data back to my phone.

The whole process, from me shattering my iPhone’s screen to getting a new phone from Apple, was a lesson. Now I grip my phone a little tighter and treat it like a new parent treats their bundle of joy.

But I have to give credit to Apple. Sure, I paid $200 for a new glass screen, but they made the whole process as easy as possible – right down to recognizing that their technicians did something to break my first iPhone. They remedied that with a brand new phone, and it was the right thing to do.

I love this post from John Hatchett over at Low End Mac:

I was in the middle of recording my vinyl Steely Dan albums to iTunes when it hit me: Why not turn the iMac into a digital jukebox? I could hook it up to my home stereo with a stereo mini-jack-to-RCA cable and have any song in my collection available to listen to. I could even use the iTunes database to customize song selection. And, of course, there is always shuffle.

How fantastic is that? I can imagine a visitor coming over: “Hey, what’s that iMac doing hooked up to your stereo?”

“Oh, that? That’s my jukebox.”

Totally geeky, and totally fitting with his theme of using old-school Macs in these weird times.

Why call a music player an “iPod?”

Because, in time, that “Pod” will be much more than a music player. It will be a device to browse the web, play games, check e-mail, get things done, keep track of your contacts, and help you get fit with the right pair of shoes.

Is that what Apple was thinking when it first released the iPod in 2001?

Because that’s what an iPod is today. While the base model, the iPod Classic, is still mainly a music player, even it can play a few games and watch videos. The rest of them have become “pods” in the true sense of the word.

Back when the fruits of the iPhone/iTouch SDK were on display, it dawned on me that “iPod” is now the perfect name for what Apple’s media device does. It’s not an “iWalkman” anymore.

Essentially, the Newton MessagePad was a mini-computer: something to help you write documents and make up spreadsheets and track your contacts and do some database work. Yes, there were games, and yes, you could even listen to music – but it was primarly a work machine, even if the work it did was in your home.

The iPod, and it’s iPhone offshoot, is a consumer of media. You put stuff on it, or search stuff out, to keep entertained. That could be reading or music or TV shows or whatever. And you can get work done on the iPod/iPhone (e-mail, calendar, third-party apps), but it wasn’t made exclusively for work like the Newton was.

As months go by, we see more and more why “iPod” is a perfect name. Even if Apple didn’t intend it, it’s money-making media device’s name fits like a glove. You hold this thing in your hands, and it has access to the whole world. No wires! Like magic! It’s your pod – your iPod.

Anymore, the iPod Shuffle is the sole music-only device left in the iPod lineup. It does what it does, and nothing else, just like the original iPod did (in fact, Gizmodo argues change is bad).

The only true evolution of the Newton platform was the eMate, which included a built-in keyboard. Every other MessagePad kept the simple idea: scribble stuff on a screen with a stylus. The MessagePad got faster and bigger and could include more apps, but it essentially kept the original idea intact.

Not so with the iPod. Apple has driven it from a music player to a music player/video watcher to a music player/video watcher/Internet browser/App runner/Save the World device.

Part of me wonders whether some of this stuff – the shake to shuffle, the Cover Flow – is needed, when some basic issues of the iPod Touch/iPhone platform remain unresolved. Maybe because it’s easier?

Either way, the focus doesn’t shift totally away from music from here on out. People buy iPod mainly to carry their music around. But how much more can the iPod lineup evolve in terms of music? Most of the revolutionary stuff we’ve seen has come from apps and games and cloud computing stuff. Music is there, but it’s only a fraction of the “pod-ness” of the iPod now.

So the name fits even better – more so than iTunes, which controls far more than your tunes these days (“iDock” is more like it).

Is anyone worried about the dreaded “feature creep,” like Gizmodo is? Does today’s “Let’s Rock” event show the iPod’s attempt to cover too much?

Remember last week when I found that collection of “Free Tibet” songs on iTunes? Turns out the Chinese found it, too.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the communist government of China is blocking iTunes and the Songs for Tibet collection. All after finding out some Olympic athletes were downloading the music.

Maybe they just don’t like Moby?

Anyway, those cryptic Chinese messages I found in the reviews section of the collection? Ars Technica found the translations, and they’re not very nice. Is this anyway to treat Apple after they decided to build a store in Beijing?

How sad. Here we were worried about the Olympic athletes choking on all the smog; in reality, they’re chocking on the authoritarian bullshit.

Just in time for the Summer Olympics, iTunes is offering a “Songs for Tibet – The Art of Peace” collection from big-name artists like John Mayer, Jackson Browne, and Imogen Heap.

A lot of the music features acoustic or remixed versions of already-released songs (Moby’s “We Are All Made of Stars (2008)” for instance), with a few originals, and when you purchase the collection as a whole, you get a 15 minute spoken word piece from the Dalai Lama.

You hear a lot about Tibet’s struggle from the artistic community, but if you want to learn more yourself, I suggest reading “Seven Years in Tibet” by Heinrich Harrer (I haven’t seen the movie yet). Harrer was a World War II German refuge who traveled Tibet and tutored the Dalai Lama, and was part of the escape crew that lead Tibet’s government out of the country when China took over.

I think the timing of this music collection is perfect, but not everyone agrees with me. In the reviews, you’ll see a one-star review given by a commenter that types in Chinese characters (maybe? I’m not familiar with the language) who might be towing the Communist Party line: Tibet is a China, always has been. I’ve seen this type of thing even as recent as last weekend in Chicago. While browsing through the Tibet exhibit at the Field Museum, a display showed sticky notes where people could write their opinion about the Tibet situation:

See the note in the bottom-right corner? That’s what the iTunes review is probably like.

But enough speculation. iTunes offers a great music collection and a chance to raise awareness about Tibet’s plight, and it’s a heckuva chance to put on some tunes and read up on the history of this mysterious land.

I couldn’t help but scour the iPhone’s new App Store for applications that mimicked what the Newton MessagePad offered at its height. Here’s what I came up with so far.

Good ol’ PocketMoney. This is a Newton classic, and they even brag about it on the description page. The Newton version is still available, and the new one will set you back $10. I was actually going to review the old school PocketMoney. Instead, it may call for a comparison.

Starmap here is a take on the Newton’s StarChart: basically a star-finder and map that helps you look for planets and such when you’re in your backyard with a telescope. Darned handy if you are an astronomy fan.

Squiggles is pure fun. You can take iPhone photos and doodle all over them in different colors. Your finger becomes the brush. I picked this one because it’s the first one I saw that, in whatever way, translates the MessagePad’s handwriting recognition into a creative app.

Sketches looks like it has the most potential to be Newton-ish. Basically you draw notes, diagrams, or whatever with your finger, and save the file for later. Notepad, anyone?

Have you tried out any of these, or another iPhone app that copies the Newton’s capabilities? Let me know in the comments. I’m going to try some of these myself, and offer a review later.

That’s probably the best news I’ve received all day: my iPhone is synced and ready to go.

At 10 p.m., I finally got up the nerve to plug the sucker in and give it a whirl. And everything went great.

MobileMe is offering a free 60 day trial for us suckers, so I thought, why not? My System Prefs are still showing .Mac syncing, however, and I imagine it’s because I’m still a OS X 10.4 user. MobileMe is giving me error messages, so I’m not going to get my hopes up. But a free trial is a free trial. What’s the harm.

Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at see, I hope you’re having the same luck I’m having right now – which is good luck. Now I’ve got all weekend to play with the beast.

• Apple statement on MobileMe delay (Macworld UK)
• TUAW’s liveblogging
• Bad weather in Chicago (Ars Technica – and it’s headed my way!)
• iPocalypse (Gizmodo)
• Failures halt, delay iPhone sales (iLounge)
• My report on Macenstein (the Doctor never did show up)
• iPhone launch-o-mess-o-rama (Macalope)
• AAPL stocks down a bit as of 3 p.m.
• Even Facebook is affected?, and Six million iBricks…and counting (BuzzYA!)

UPDATE: Gizmodo just posted a possible fix to the iBrich problem. Engadget posted a video unboxing, for those who want more iPhone porn along with all this bad news.

At times, Steven Levy’s tone in The Perfect Thing: How the iPod shuffles commerce, culture, and coolness winks and nods at the reader as many Apple-inspired blogs do: he’s one of us, and he’s intimate with the subject.

Levy’s voice makes The Perfect Thing a breeze to read, and not just because of the book’s modest lenght. In revealing the software, hardware, and philosophical origins of the most popular MP3 player on the planet, he easily makes the case for the iPod’s overwhelming popularity.

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I started running last summer after seeing a set of podcasts that made the whole thing really easy. I even ran my first 5k (not a sponsored one, just me out running one night), the longest distance I had run since track season in high school.

Near the end of the season last year, I hurt my knee because of the way I run. It turns out that I roll my feet on the inside, which wears away the soles of my shoes and is rough on my knee. This season, now that the weather is breaking, I decided to grab some supporting Nikes. While I was at the shoe store, the salesman offered me the Nike+ sports set – which fit my style of shoe – and I decided to give it a try.

It seems like for $30 you’d get more, but the whole set only involves a little red and white sensor and a white plug-in receiver for your iPod Nano. Setup is super easy: simply put the sensor into the little hole in your shoe (you don’t need a Nike shoe, either), and plug the other part into your iPod. That’s it.
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