iPods and Smartphones

Last summer I took a plane trip to L.A., flying coach as usual.  I was fumbling in my seat with the CDs, swapping them in and out of the CD player.  And when it came time to use the CD player in the rental car, it was the same deal.  My music selection was limited to whatever CDs I happened to bring with me.  The rental car’s stereo had an AUX input.  And I’m thinking…”what if there were a small, convenient, portable device on which I could store several CDs at once, not merely 5-10, but more like 100?”  Of course, this device has existed for some time, idiot – it’s called an iPod!  D’oh! 

            I suppose what had kept me from being interested in the iPod earlier was its fairly small gigabyte capacity.  I had filled up an 80 gig external hard drive fairly easily, without coming close to representing my full music library of CDs.  But when I learned of the iPod Classic, with its 160 gig hard drive, I began to get seriously interested. 

            Long story short, I got an iPod Classic for Christmas, a gift from my girlfriend and her son, which they even had engraved.  I learned to sync it with my computer at home, and I was good to go.  I even got the cable to hook it up to my Neon’s stereo – the Formula stereo is not iPod compatible – and some excellent headphones as well.   I also got an RCA cable which hooks up to the iPod, meaning I can plug into line-in’s on boom boxes, Bose Wave Radios, or regular stereo receivers.  And to protect the thing, as it has a snazzy chrome finish, I’ve got a black rubberized plastic cover, almost like a wetsuit.

            Ultimately I should get a 160 gig external hard drive for iTunes at home, so I can take full advantage of the capacity of the iPod Classic.  It’s a fantastic invention, one I was fairly slow to adopt.

 Smartphone.  I can’t say iPhone, although that would make a snazzier title.  Back in 2005, I bought my prior cell phone, a Sharp TM-150, from T-Mobile.  I had just gotten back from Rio de Janeiro where I had found out that despite T-Mobile cell phone service being available there, my prior phone wouldn’t work because it was a two-band phone, and in Rio they use the third band which this phone didn’t support.  The TM-150 was a tri-band phone…except that I didn’t end up going to Rio again after buying the phone.  But it worked fine in Bucharest!

            Fast forward to 2011, and by now this TM-150, which was state of the art in 2005 – and the source of jealousy of my tech-savvy secretaries who insist on having the most advanced cell phones to satisfy their social lives, and text each other and their friends incessantly – was now a dinosaur…close to Gordon Gekko’s 1985 vintage phone.  Well, it did flip open like the Star Trek communicator!  I even got the Star Trek communicator ringtone.  It could take 8 second video clips and had a SD card which held dozens of pics; the resolution on the screen was a million megapixels.  As I said, very advanced for 2005.  But finally the battery started crapping out, which seemed to be the physical interface where the charger hooks up, not the battery itself, a structural problem which simply meant that physically, the cell phone was finally wearing out.

            So I got a T-Mobile MyTouch 4G.  I wanted to keep T-Mobile, and while tempted by the iPhone 4G, it seems that Android compatibility is fairly decent by now.  It has an 8GB SD card, but the card is buried inside the phone and not easily accessible the way the one on the Sharp was.  Ringtones are simple: instead of having to download specific ringtone files, or use some ringtone editor, the MyTouch allows you to simply select MP3s as ringtones.  I can listen to the mp3s too, but the 8GB capacity is far lower than the 160 GB capacity of the iPod, so it’s not really practical as a general music player.  Likewise, .jpg files uploaded to the phone’s SD card act as wallpapers, although this is more or less the same deal with the Sharp.

            For text messaging, I can now use a little full keyboard instead of punching the numeric keypad multiple times – 4 times for “S” – ad nauseam.  I’m beginning to get the hang of the Swype feature…slowly but surely.  The camera has a flash, and takes fairly decent pics, though not as good as my 14 megapixel Kodak digital camera.  On the other hand, it lets you modify the pics in various ways, some of which are pretty cool.  

            The net feature is pretty good, although it’s damn slow.  Although the apps availability isn’t as good for Androids as it is for iPhones, I have downloaded the apps for movies – so I can immediately check out showtimes for local theaters – and Netflix.  I’ve been using the Kindle feature to read a few books, mainly some Star Wars novels only available in that format.  And the Maps app is pretty much a GPS which works the same way.  Even the woman’s voice is the same (“recalculating!”).  I’ve yet to use the video chat feature; my GF doesn’t have a smartphone yet…her son has a Blackberry Torch and her niece has an iPhone 4G.

            If I have one major beef with the phone it’s the slide and drag type of interface instead of buttons.  But that seems more a matter of a superior interface which simply takes time to get used to, than buttons being inherently superior.  I’m still learning all the useful features the phone has; my secretary, who has had iPhones since they came out and is fairly familiar with Smartphone technology, has been useful at explaining many of the features to me. 

            In short, the “smartphone” really is much more useful and versatile than the old style phones, and I’m sure as time goes by the apps will multiply…to the point where we’ll begin to wonder, as we do with cell phones now, how we ever got along without them. 

Cell Phones

The other day I was in the elevator, switching background pics on my cell phone, when an older man – who can obviously remember rotary phones – remarked how we take them for granted these days.  In fact, we can’t live without them, yet they are fairly recent.

 My brother and my secretary both have iPhones, while I still have the Sharp TM150 I bought in 2005 shortly after returning from Rio, where my POS Nokia didn’t work – it was a two-band phone, not a three band phone, and of course in Rio they use the one band this phone couldn’t use.  Anyhow.  At the time it was fancy and snazzy, the most advanced phone T-Mobile sold.  Now?  I have to admit the iPhone is much nicer, but I’d have to actually own one to get used to its unique touch-screen format.  Recall Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) shrugging off somone’s iPhone when trying to reach the alarmingly absent-for-his-own-wedding Mr. Big (Chris Noth) in the “Sex & The City” movie (thanks to Miranda’s ever-so-helpful advice to him at the rehearsal dinner the night before).  For the time being I mess around with my secretary’s phone – much to her annoyance. 

 I can remember rotary phones and black and white TVs.  I first got a cell phone in 1998, some rather large Motorola thing scarcely smaller than the typical cordless phone.  At the time I still had a landline – which I’ve now gotten rid of.  I really think cell phones have made home phones obsolete, assuming you have reliable coverage with your cell; land lines are 99% reliable, so it takes an impressive cell network to beat them.

 History.  0G, 1G, 2G, 3G.  0G starts from the 1940s, with car phones using vacuum tube technology developing in the 1950s.  The 1G era began in Japan in 1981, with Motorola selling the first handheld cell phones in the US in 1983 (above second from left).  These phones were large and bulky – and certainly a novelty at that time.  2G technology dates from 1991, about which time cell phones seemed to appear with any meaningful frequency.  The 90s is when I started seeing them around in any numbers, but far from the frequency you see today.  3G dates from 1999.  

 Nowadays it seems everyone has one.  My mom has one, but she rarely brings it with her or uses it, and still relies on her landline.  My friends Dave and Ken have yet to get them.  In Ken’s case it seems to be anti-Yuppie deal, like his aversion to BMWs - in this respect he’s back in the Reagan ‘80s.

 T-Mobile.  This is my carrier.  I can’t remember why I chose them, most likely because, at the time, they had the nicest phone.  Their coverage in Europe was stunning: I had better reception in Bucharest than at Dulles Airport.  Likewise, equipped with a tri-band phone in Rio, I had no trouble.  Here the coverage stinks around Dulles Airport, in Centreville (where my brother lives), and all but the 5^th floor of the Fairfax County Courthouse.  In a small town in Minas Gerais, Brazil, the only good cell phone reception is at the cemetery, of all places (!!!).  Not quite that bad, but similar issues.

 Sharp TM150.  See above, next to the Motorola dinosaur. T-Mobile no longer supports this phone.  They have their own version of the iPhone, but my impression is that it lacks many of the features of the iPhone.  Mine has a small disc drive that fits a 32 MB minidisk, a camera which takes mediocre pictures and 8 second video clips, and a very high resolution screen (something in the mexapixel range).  The ringtones are fantastic: at a time at which most cell phones had a polyphone tone, this one had real tones: actual words and lyrics (e.g. “Office Space” Bill Lumbergh: “That would be great, m’kay?”).  It’s a flip-open design very similar to the Star Trek communicators – hell, I even downloaded the appropriate ringtone for that, so I can reply, “Kirk here.  Beam me up.”

 Text Messaging.  My Romanian woman-from-hell taught me this.  I’d text her when the cab arrived in her neighborhood, and she’d get in.  So date my TM days from April 2006.  Text messaging is best for small, short, simple messages, especially when you’re in a noisy environment (e.g. a rock concert) where a normal phone call would be impractical.  It’s difficult to text while driving – not recommended! – and not well suited for elaborate discussions or phone sex.  The key is to recognize its strengths and avoid its weaknesses.

 Etiquette.  We’ve all seen idiots, assholes, and bitches yakking on their cell phones:  driving their SUVs into someone’s poor car, interrupting movies, taking calls at inappropriate moments (e.g. in the middle of a date), arguing in public, etc.  At the courthouse, assuming your phone isn’t taken from you at security, you will be warned to turn it off before court, as the judges hate them going off in court and the bailiffs are happy to oblige. The other deal is the earpiece phone, when your viewpoint is the ear WITHOUT the earpiece, so it looks as though the person is an unusually articulate schizophrenic having a conversation with an imaginary friend. 

            Aside from cell phones going off in court, the most egregious breach was when we had the Buddhist monks from Tibet (dark red robes, shaved heads, etc.) blessing our humble office.  This involved ringing bells and chanting in Tibetan for about 30 minutes.  An unidentified Vietnamese male, probably a former client, was sitting in on this, obviously hoping the blessing would include him.  And in the middle, his cell phone kept going off.  Not once.  Not twice.  But at least three times.  Instead of putting it on mute or turning it off, he simply acknowledged that it was from his (apparently difficult and jealous) wife, and let it ring.  And let it ring again when he didn’t pick up the first and second times.  I’m neither Buddhist nor Tibetan, but I at least turned my own cell phone off and respected the ceremony.   When I go to mass at the Cathedral, I leave my cell phone in the car, and to the credit of the Catholics at my church, I have NEVER heard a cell phone go off in mass.  They might sit tight and not get Communion (God knows why…literally) but they won’t take a cell phone call in church.  I have to wonder what a ceremony at a Buddhist temple must be like.