Living with the iPhone

Instead of trying to scrawl down lyrics, doing a search on Google (only to be lead to some bizarre lyric website repository that may or may not work, all the while offering me free ringtones and ceaseless pop-up ads), with Shazam's app, I've actually found songs by, well, listening to them. Shazam is slick. You hear a song, start the app, hold your iPhone's mic up to the sound source and viola! It's been 'tagged' and identified like a wild bird you caught on Animal Planet. Another app by Midomi even lets you hum a tune in, search by title, artist and even lets you listen to samples.

Sending the sample for off-site sonic analysis, querying the proper artist remotely, album art and sending a response back to your iPhone in less than 10 seconds is pretty dang slick. The sample time itself is only about 12 seconds! Once you get your result, you can bookmark it, and, if you're in a WiFi hotspot, launch iTunes to buy the song. Most popular songs are on these services. Shazam doesn't work in loud places like clubs, bars or restaurants, but works well in cars or at home.

What these services haven't been able to do, however, is to analyze classical music. I've tried a few times. Shazam says the Beethoven Fifth Symhony is "unrecognized." What would Ludwig say? After humming the piece into Midomi, I got the strangest country folk song in response. This isn't surprising. There are very long phrases in classical music and it makes even die-hard fans puzzle as to "what was that piece?" Having these services decipher classical music presents a lot of challenges. First, recordings of pieces are almost nearly indistinguishable especially if you only had a 12-second sample of them. Also, unlike pop music, where there is one artist performing one song (sure there are cover versions), with classical you have hundreds of ensembles, conductors and performers spanning 50 years of audio recording doing the same 'song' over and over again. For example, there are more than 200 recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony alone!

When (or if) classical music can be deciphered by these types of services it will probably be a great engineering feat. Progress, if this is ever attempted, would probably be incremental. First, identifying a particular symphony, concerto or quartet is, in itself, very difficult. Next, identifying the particular recording will be staggering. All those ensembles and conductors perform pieces many times over leading to various versions and editions that would be a morass of data to sort through. While there's probably not a market demand for this type of service or application, it may serve as Shazam or Midomi's Everest.

Was it worth the wait? The 5-hour phone service/text/data outage? Do you really have to get the new iPhone on the first day? The first weekend? From a rational point of view, the answer is probably not. But, from an admitted early-adopter Apple-phile, a resounding hot tamale train YES is the answer. But, this is not without caveats of course (battery life, hassle, and jittery/buggy application crashes). Overall, the new iPhone 3G is slick. The applications (which work 90 percent of the time) are even slicker (many worth special attention to come in the next few posts). Sound quality is much improved. The handset feels bigger, but is lighter. It's more than a refinement over 1.0, but I wonder if that has to do with the 2.0 firmware update that allows those long-awaited, legitimate third-party application bringing in outside innovation.

In any case, with the white 3G version that yours truly got, people stop and notice and ask questions like they did last year. Today, I've already had two people stop and ask about the iPhone when they noticed it wasn't the typical one that we all have grown accustom to seeing. Sure, they've seen iPhone before, but when they spotted this one, which is different (it's white for Pete's sake) they stopped and asked to see it and the new applications with a lot of attention paid to the GPS-maps feature (deservedly so).

The fact that people stop, look and ask, and that there are still long of people willing to spend part of their weekends in line is pretty fascinating - even given the tough economic that 2008 had over 2007. As the Field of Dreams quote goes: If you build it, people will come.

So yes, there are iPhone-related products at CES 2008 primarily focused covers and protective skins and audio speakers. Two products that really caught my eye in terms of form and function are B&W's Zepplin (yes, a Zeplin, like the Hindenpeter of Family Guy fame - hope this one doesn't burst into flames) and THX/Razer's Mako speakers. Both are definitely against the grain from a Bose or a Altec Lansing iPod docking audio system. I've never liked the Bose docks - the sound is too grainy or metallic, and the Altec Lansing product at the CES just looked boring.

The Zepplin (it's just fun to say, isn't it?) and the Moko were fun. The B&W Zepplin weighs a ton and costs a ton too ($600) and was released late last year. It was the first time I'd ever seen it. The B&W rep invited me to plug my iPhone in and to ignore the error message. After this error, the devices eventually synched. The Zepplin is a complete one-unit speaker unit and, well, obviously looks like a Zepplin, supposedly to replicate a musical instrument's design. I tried the various music tracks on my iPhone - classical, to hip hop to the Counting Crows.

While the Convention Hall may not be the ideal place to test it, I was surprised as I pumped the volume and the Zepplin appeared to handle it well without bursting into flames and maintaining sound quality. I wonder how it'd do in an office or home setting.

In contrast to that, THX and the gaming company Razer are releasing a two satellite, one subwoofer Moko desktop system that looks somewhat like a Cylon (yes, I geeked out there).

The Mokos supposedly uses the desk surface it sits on to reflect sound up and is not as expensive as the Zepplin coming in at $399 (comparable to the Bose Companion 3 series). As would be expected the Moko's bass was strong and solid. Dance music a pumpin would be great on this system. The clarity, again in a sound hall, is hard to tell as I never plugged in my iPhone, but the THX rep spouted a bunch of numbers and hertzs to me to reassure me of its worth. The fact that I could hear what was being played over the din of the hall may speak volumes itself. (oh yes, what a pun!) Also, both the Zepplin and the Moko's come with remotes, one looking slender and sleek and the other like a contraceptive device.

Assessment on both:

Form factor/design: solid and sleek. Each are unique.

Function: Couldn't really tell the sound quality as the convention hall din was overpowering, but based on extrapolation - good. The Zepplin hooks up to TVs as well and you can watch videos on your iPod and iPhone.

Price: At $600 and $400 respectively, a bit pricey, but other entries by others like Altec Lansing just fell flat.

Overall: The Zepplin is more of a status symbol and the Moko is an edgier product for gamers. Picking between the two would be based on what image you want to convey.

Finally, the iPhone's first major update!

My optimism for this 1.1.1 update was muted as, after a couple of months of waiting, I was excited for the ringtone feature that has ultimately proven lackluster. If my iPhone is in my pocket, I honestly cannot hear the ringtone portions of songs I've picked - even the jarring ones! The only reason I know I'm getting a call is because of the vibrate feature. So, with yesterday's major update, I was cautious. It should follow, however, that the speaker adjustments in the 1.1.1 update may solve the ringtone-being-too-quiet issue. Verdict: eh, not really.

The 1.1.1 update, however, was still welcome. Apart from allowing the homekey to access the iPhone's iPod features, a redesign of the calculator, my favorite feature thus far is the WiFi iTunes store that was already available on the iPod Touch.

Ironically, I downloaded "Wrapped Around Your Finger" by The Police and, after hoping onto a WiFi network. After hearing it, taking note of it on the notebook, I found the song, downloaded it and started playing in about a minute's time. The iTunes WiFi interface in terms of search and purchasing features are slick, clean and fast. Transferring the purchased song to my main desktop was seamless too. A new category of playlist, "songs purchased from the iPhone" (or something close to that) also appeared in my iTunes.

You might think that having access to iTunes on the go is unnecessary - but to me, it's both brilliant and dangerous. Brilliant because if you're like me, you hear music and songs around all the time. For me, I tend to think: oooh, what is that song? I'd like to have it. And now, I can get it, provided that I'm near a WiFi hot spot. (Usually, someone around me will know what song is playing. Not being able to identify the song is an entirely different matter). And, iTunes WiFi is dangerous because I hear a lot of music during a day and I think I'll be buying songs left and right. So, in a surprising turn-around, I guess I'm glad that my purchasing capacity is limited by iTunes WiFi only being accessible via WiFi. (I wonder how quickly the EDGE network would implode if iTunes WiFi could be accessed over AT&T's EDGE Network).

So, this leads to the next question: What about 3G transfers? In the long run, it looks as if the trend appears to be moving a time where storing music on a desktop or iPod may well become pretty obsolete. This is all the more so especially with larger online servers and storage dumps becoming more widely available. Like Google Apps and Documents, one day, it seems more than likely that I'll be able to access all my music along lines like iTunes WiFi. Perhaps a constant streaming, or perhaps I'll access an entire playlist in chunks at a time, thus eliminating the need for an obscenely massive HDD-based iPod/mp3 players. The only limit now seems to be speeds of over-air data networks. Even if you were on a plane, or in a subway, you may be able to beam yourself enough music to carry you to the next WiFi rich area you get to.

While that may be a while away, iTunes WiFi is definitely a starting point.

A while back I wrote about the iPhone's limited ringtone selection and the phone's inability to relegate an unwanted call to a silent ringtone. In other words, when that pesky boss or ex calls you don't want to know they ever called. The silent ringtone becomes an exercise in call avoidance, a technique for diverting them to voicemail without them ever knowing what you're up to. Now that iPhone problem is, well, no longer a problem.

Hand in hand with the ability to have no ringtone for a specific caller would be the desire to assign specific ringtones to specific friends. So, when Steve Jobs announced that ringtones with iTunes for the iPhone were coming, I was again stoked. While the last update of iTunes enabled you to see a little bell icon for ringtones in the iTunes store and desktop interface, it wasn't until this morning that I could purchase ringtones on iTunes and try them out. (This is why I ended up being late to work this morning--doh!)

The iPhone's ringtone feature is pretty straightforward: if a song can be used as a ringtone, it'll have a little bell icon lit up next to the track. I looked at my purchased music and sorted by the bell. Not that many songs appeared, but a good number did. In the iTunes store the little bell icon will be lit up too if the track can be used as a ringtone. Sadly, some of my favorites, like "Glamorous" by Fergie or "Because of You" by Ne Yo, are not available. (I suppose I can use a third-party fix that other bloggers have talked about to record and convert a song into a ringtone to be fed into iTunes, but hell, I'm too lazy sometimes.) Strangely, however, songs like "The Chairman's Waltz," from Memoirs of a Geisha, were available. How did these license deals get worked out?

Anyway, once you highlight a song you want to use as a ringtone, a new window appears--the complete song appears in that seismic-graph way. You then drag the 15-second highlight blue box to the portion of the song you want to use as your ringtone. I mistakenly thought that you could manipulate this selection after you buy it. Nope. So choose wisely or you have to drop another $.99 to get another 15 seconds of the song.

So as a start, I picked four ringtones for songs that I already had: "Sexyback" by Justin Timberlake (as picked for my friend Gideon, who truly is bringing sexy back); "Vogue" by Madonna (for my fabulous friend Max); "Seven Days in Sunny June" by Jamiroquai (for sunny, happy calls); and "Love on the Run" by the dance group Chicane (to be assigned).

After you select the portion of the song you want, you are prompted to make your final selection, and then all you have to do is double-click to purchase. The ringtone downloads and will now appear in the iTunes sync window (right under podcasts for me). So once your iPhone is plugged into iTunes, a new tab--"ringtones"--appears as well. Like any other podcast, TV show, or music list, you can pick and choose which ones get synced. Once the ringtones reside on the iPhone you can then assign them to a particular contact by editing the person's details. (A note: I had to reauthorize my computer after downloading the ringtones--not sure why, but nevertheless it only worked after this. This, of course, drove me crazy and made me later for work by yet another 10 minutes.)

Now, these ringtones will definitely test the iPhone's speakers. Before, I had observed that some standard ringtones were barely audible if, for example, you have your iPhone in a pocket or bag. I selected the beginning of "Vogue" (the finger-snapping part) for Max's ringtone. Works like a charm. Loud enough, but not too intrusive, and subtle--just like my friend Max. However, the portion of "Sexyback" I picked was jarring, shocking and would scare the hell out of me if it rang, especially given the iPhone's less-than-stellar speakers. It's almost akin to the standard iPhone "ALARM" ringtone. This is not at all like the person who is bringing sexy back. Oops. I still have a lot to play with. but the iPhone/iTunes ringtone feature does meet my expectations.

Overall, it's pretty neat to have customizable ringtones. But this is not a new idea. Other carriers and other phones have had similar features too. (I'm not sure if those other ringtone services are as customizable as the iTunes platform.) The difference here is that the interface is slick and easily integrated with the iPhone. Other phones and services I've had in the past did not make the process of downloading ringtones simple or fast. The iPhone/iTunes ringtone feature is both of those things. Sure, I wish there were more songs available, but at at least now there are some tracks that have 15 seconds of silence that can be used as a ringtone...excellent.

Steve Jobs certainly knows how to surprise and saturate. Along with other Applephiles, I was following the live coverage of the latest Apple/iPod/iPhone news via Gizmodo, which couldn't refresh fast enough!

So much to digest, but the main points:

(1) iPhone price drop!? The 8GB iPhone's price fell markedly with this announcement to $399. (Say buh-bye to the 4GB model). Boy, I sure could have used that $200 for the past two months, but it's an inherent risk of being an early adopter. So there is a $100 premium for the phone part of the iPhone as the iPod Touch 8GB model is $299 and the 16GB is $399. With this new and improved price point, you will see a lot more people (and their sisters) with an iPhone! Hopefully, this means more support, connectively and market saturation. Less likelihood of it getting stolen. Ah, delicious.

(2) iPhone update--this month! Our long national nightmare without a major update ends, or does it? To be included, the iTunes Wi-Fi store--music on the go. What's more, it'll sync back to my main desktop iTunes unlike other types of phone-based purchase stores. Finally, when I hear that "it" song, oh say in Starbucks (in NY, Seattle or SF this year), I'll be able to buy it then and there (provided there is a decent Wi-Fi connection). By 2009, all Starbucks with Wi-Fi are supposed to have this service. Talk about locking in a captive market and creating market path dependence! I do have to admit the Starbucks thing is cool, but it seems a bit creepy. Think about it: now you can get a caffeine-fix and a music fix at the same time--what a brilliant business model: the quest for caffeine is likely to lead to an impulse buy.

(3) iPhone-lite--ermm, the iPod Touch. An iPhone without the phone part. 16GB for $399? Is that it? There's no reason for iPhone owners to get one in my mind (apart from being ticked about the price drop). Size and capacity have always been a sticking point for me with the iPhone as an iPod. Now, the iPod Classic at 160GB for $349 will finally alleviate these concerns handily. (My personal iTunes library itself is at 105GB.) So the "leap" to 16GB without the phone features isn't quite worth it to me--especially since I already have an iPhone. (Early morning confusion as to which one to grab would surely ensue.) But, as flash memory drops in price and increases in availability and capacity I'm sure I'll be migrating to the third or fourth generation iPod Touch, or iPhone, or whatever they'll call it at that point.

What a day! I know I'm headed down to the Apple store over lunch!

I'd like to think of myself as a patient type. The iPhone's numerous crashes, bugs and quirks have been noted here and there. Applehound does a good job of compiling them, some of which I've yet to experience. What I have experienced, though, is an increasing amount of lag and, well, my iPhone is "cracking out" a lot more recently than it did a couple of weeks ago. Performance is down.

This begs the question, is it time to drop the "r-bomb"? That is, to restore or not to restore? My friend Zach said his friends at the Apple Store in San Francisco said simply to "restore" the iPhone and reinstall and re-sync the dang thing. This is all well and good, but with a PC machine I'm not too sure that all my wonked out Windows settings will again translate to the iPhone. Plus, having to reconfigure the e-mail settings, making sure all my contact information is preserved, and saving all those SMS messages.... Not to mention the time it will take to transfer all my music, movie and other files over to the iPhone again. (OK, I'm sounding Pollyanna-ish, but still, it's a hassle.)

What to do? Argh!

Being brave, I finally took my iPhone to the gym to listen to it while I worked out. No fear of dropping it could stop me now. Usually, I have an 8-gig iPod Nano with me. For a workout, I don't usually use the headphones that come with the iPod, since they: (1) fall out of my ears; (2) don't have enough bass to motivate me to run/erg/push that extra mile out; and, (3) let's face it: the standard-issue iPod earphone sound quality, well, just sucks.

To alleviate this unfortunate state of affairs, instead of the standard-issue headphones, I use the Koss Porta Pro headphones. They're light, and the fidelity, bass and overall sound quality is pretty good and true--this includes pop, rock and hip-hop as well as classical and jazz. Likewise, on an airplane, I use the Bose Quiet Comfort 2 headphones. I'm a stickler for sound and/or serenity (no, not the "serenity now" deal from Seinfeld, but those headphones save my ears as well as my iPod's battery).

Anyway, back to the gym. I was getting all ready to do a long bike machine set. I adjusted the seat and the pedals, put my Koss headphones and got ready to work out. I had already synced and queued up my workout mix. The mix started with an up-tempo Jamiroquai song ("Don't Give Hate a Chance"). I started my pedaling--only 30 minutes ahead of me, I thought--but then I noticed that every few seconds, there was a popping noise in my headphones. Well, it was three pops in a row, to be absolutely precise. "Pop, pop, pop," it went. I unplugged the headphone cord and the music started to play over the iPhone's speakers. No popping to be heard.

I was perturbed. Did I short out my headphones? It wasn't the track itself. I thought to myself: What gives?

So, being prepared, I got out my Nano (a just-in-case measure in the event of drop-the-iPhone paranoia some can get) and pulled up the same song and plugged in the same Koss headphones into my Nano: no problem, no pops. I did the reverse experiment and plugged in the standard-issue iPhone earphones and, of course, no popping noises.

Later, I tried a similar experiment with my JBL On Time sound dock and got the same result: "Pop, pop, pop."

On closer inspection and through further guesswork I looked at the iPhone's headphone plug and noticed that it was three lines. One for the left channel, one for the right and ah, the microphone! So, that must be it, right? I still have no idea.

But as for the JBL sound dock, which connects with the iPod/iPhone at the bottom? This I'm not so sure about.

Well, at least I have other iPods that I can use my good headphones with, but that seems like a less-than-ideal solution.

That said, I do note that it's kind of cool to have conversations on the iPhone with its earphones because you feel completely enveloped by the other person's voice. Which, depending on who you're talking with, can be a very good thing (imagine your sweetie), or a very bad thing (imagine your boss).

So in our excitement with the iPhone my friends and I all picked the "strum" ringtone on the iPhone. It's sunny, happy and seems to sound the best on the iPhone speakers. I think it's appealing to us since it sounds like the ads. With that, it's pretty confusing when our iPhones ring. A typical conversation: "Is it yours?" "No, it's my phone," followed by, "Oh, wait, no it really is my phone!" We're such geeks.

You can see where confusion lies. But this highlights the limited choice of the ringtones currently available on the iPhone.

Apple has said that customizable ringtones are coming "very soon." You would think that with, oh say 4 gigs or even 8 gigs of music that maybe just one of those music files could be devoted to a ringtone, or that some of those gigabytes could be devoted to a wider variety of ringtones.

From a lawyer's perspective I'm sure there are copyright issues with using a regular old music file as a ringtone as it would likely constitute a "performance" under the Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act, but still, we can dream and Apple can license.

Apart from that, another feature that I'd like to see an update is assigning ringtones to a particular contact. Sure, you can set your phone so that when "Johnny Appleseed" calls the "harp" ringtone sounds while John Q. Public's calls sound the "strum." But what if you don't want to answer Johnny's call because he's an ex? (Or Joanna Appleseed) What if you wanted to silent him (or her) both in terms of ringtone and otherwise. Unlike my old Motorola Razr, you can't do this on the iPhone - yet. The capability of NOT hearing from someone when they call (but hearing others) should be an option because I think we've all wished that when an ex (or a boss other undesirable) calls that we don't want to call divert them to voicemail as they'll be able to tell. Somehow the "strum" with all its sunny and happy appeal wouldn't be so fitting for these folks and I think we'd rather not know that they called. Perhaps the "alarm" ringtone would be, but then you'd still know it was them.