Without any intention of picking up the latest in consumer gadgetry, I found myself in the Apple Store in Palo Alto yesterday — hey, it’s across the street from where I get my hair cut.  I took a look at a display model; I saw the large, luminous display and the familiar multi-touch UI; and after that, everything became a big foggy.  While considering only the 64GB version, a shipment magically arrived (no inventory was available when I first walked in at 10:00 a.m.), my credit card slipped out of pocket quite of its own volition, and shortly thereafter I walked out with my 64GB WiFi iPad and a few accessories.

My first thoughts:

• The screen is gorgeous.  I look at my puny iPhone screen now with pity.
• It’s already replacing my laptop for checking email and surfing the Web while watching TV on the couch at home — this can’t be good for my health.
• Media, more than I expected, renders beautifully and is fun to use — music, photos, and videos.  I’m not a heavy media consumer, but this device may change my behavior.
• The manner in which the UI for primary apps like calendar and mail change from portrait to landscape orientation is interesting — I’m not sure it’s seamless enough or how much I like it yet.
• Absence of flash is glaring.
• Apps designed for the iPhone or iPod Touch just don’t work well.  The iPad renders them at what appears to be the same screen size as on the iPhone or iPod Touch.  An option to increase the size exists, but then the app resolution is too coarse.  It’s better to use Facebook through Safari, for example, than to use the acclaimed Facebook iPhone app.
• Lack of Korean language input support is disappointing.  I didn’t realize until after purchase that the iPad doesn’t support the full set of languages supported by the iPhone and iPod Touch.
• The ebook readers — iBook and Kindle — are designed great, but I still can’t see myself reading for long periods of time on the iPad.  Eye strain will be inevitable.
• Last, Plants v. Zombies is bigger and better.  I’m tempted to buy the HD version.

Overall, very happy with the purchase so far.  It’s a great show and tell piece when out and about, lots of fun.  I can see it replacing my laptop for short personal trips.  I hadn’t imagined I would have a use for it, and I was wrong and am pleasantly surprised.

Update:  Not missing 3G so far.  I’m only using the iPad where WiFi is present.  Any applications I need where WiFi isn’t I can get on my iPhone.  Plus, I happen to have a Verizon MiFi card to fill any gaps.

I’ve been very happy with my Amazon Kindle DX since I first received it in June 2009.  I love books and reading but was unhappy with the clutter of three double-stacked bookshelves and stacks of books everywhere in my apartment.  So space savings was the purchase trigger for an electronic reader for me.  And in 2009, Amazon had the best offering, with an attractive, easy-to-use/intuitive design and a seamlessly integrated ebook purchase process.  So far, I’ve loved it.

The one notable problem I experienced with it was last year, with the leather cover that Amazon markets hard with the Kindle DX.  The Kindle DX — and the Kindle 2 — has two slots on the left edge for purposes of attaching/fitting it onto two clasps on the leather cover.  It’s a little awkward at first, but doable.  The problem is that if you inadvertently open the Kindle from the rear, the top clasp acts a lever and pries wide the opening in the Kindle.  After doing this a few times, no matter how careful to avoid it, it results in unsightly cracks in the plastic right above the opening and can pry open the case, too.  I know from other Kindle owners that this can actually compromise the operation of the Kindle — it won’t work in some circumstances.

The cover clasp or latch will pry open the opening/slot on the Kindle if the cover is opened from the back.

Last year, a search quickly led to a number of discussion board threads in complaint.  In response to customer complaints and attempts to get exchanges or refunds, Amazon denied any product defect in the Kindle or the leather cover or the interaction between them, effectively asserting that any damage was customer fault.

Interestingly, they’ve now reversed this stance; I received this email today:

Now, Amazon is acknowledging that damage to either the cover or the Kindle are covered under warranty — a complete reversal of the prior stance.  I managed to keep the damage to mine minimal, so I’ll decide now whether to go through the hassle of getting a warranty exchange.

This doesn’t appear to be related to all the announcements these past few weeks — Kindle DX with global wireless, new royalty scheme for self-publishers, and Kindle developer program — but I do wonder if Amazon’s fearful anticipation of the impending Apple tablet announcement is driving the company to step up it’s game.

Competition is good, and consumers are the winners.

I’m tempted by the notion of assembling a silk-screening kit (make my own designer t-shirts instead of paying a fortune for Ed Hardy and a skull & crossbones design) and the Stanley thermos (I might want a hot water thermos to fill the mate gourd I picked up in Argentina).  And I already have the newly-released Kor One Personal Hydration Vessel and have been singing its praises around the office for the past several weeks.

For those following my iPhone trials and tribulations, you know that 2.1 broke my Microsoft Exchange integration of calendar and contacts — neither would sync with 2.1, and 2-3 trips to Genius Bars and multiple calls to Apple support didn’t help.  I still plan to describe the workaround I devised (Plaxo as the hub among applications with MobileMe for wireless sync) in a subsequent post.

Well, it seems to be fixed somehow.  The download and installation took about 30 minutes and was straightforward and without complications.  My iPhone and Exchange calendar and contacts are now synced again.  I would love to understand why, but I suppose I’ll be content that it’s working.  Obviously, for an enterprise application, it is inexcusable and completely unacceptable that it wasn’t working for the past several months.

Recall my most recent complaints:  (1) abysmal battery life and (2) broken Microsoft Exchange integration.

I was sometimes getting less than 5 hours of battery life, even after Apple replaced my unit with a new one.  Firmware 2.1 plus some more prudent battery conservation practices have all but solved #1.  I’ve read too many articles, blog posts and discussion board threads on this to recount.  Plus, I’ve finally succumbed to logical suggestions — most of which I daresay I had heard already — from BW and ES.  Here’s what’s worked for me:

First, I’m only fetching data now, and only hourly.  Such is the disappointment of and lowered expectations in performance of the iPhone 3G that the very reason for buying it — push — is what must be disabled to provide more reasonable battery life.  I’m not even upset that I don’t get push, because it was working so poorly — that battery-killing wheel seemed to be spinning constantly — and I’m so grateful for longer battery life.

Second, I’ve slightly reduced the number of accounts from which I’m fetching data.  I have work Exchange, Yahoo, Gmail and MobileMe accounts.  Instead of fetching data from all of them, I’m forwarding Gmail to Yahoo and fetching from Yahoo.  I use MobileMe only for calendar and contacts syncing, so I have it set up but never check that email.  And I’m even fetching from my work email account.  I came to terms with the fact that I don’t need push email to distract me in meetings, and I already get push when sitting in front of my destop with Outlook open.

Third, I’ve turned brightness down fairly low.  Even with a protective film on the glass, it’s still bright enough for me.

Fourth, I’ve left Bluetooth and Location Services on.  I use my Bluetooth headset to and from work every day, it’s too much of a pain to go into Settings to deactivate and activate it repeatedly, and I’m not convinced it’s a drain on the battery.  For Location Services, much of the time I have this off, but I just end up switching it on when prompted when using Google Maps or some other geo-aware application that calls for it.

Finally, I’ve left both 3G and Data Roaming turned on.  As eBay alumnus Ryan Spoon notes, push has a much greater effect on battery life than 3G.  I know at least one other iPhone 3G owner — ES –  who switches off 3G not because of the perceived battery life drain but because he believes the network is unreliable and results in dropped calls.  I’m accessing the Internet often enough that I want the speed from its being on all the time.

The net effect?  I can go over a day without recharging.  And I don’t live in constant fear of a sudden drained-battery-induced shutdown.  Frackin’ fantastic.  Reasonable battery life?  Check!

Next, I’ll bemoan the complete failure of Exchange integration, my data sync requirements and then the awkward but functioning solutions I’ve devised.

What are your requirements? Are you thinking of a wireless Bluetooth headset?

J.I. just got the original Jawbone, which has come down in price quite a bit, particularly since a new model has been released. I wrote three blog posts on the original Jawbone, with mixed reviews: http://blog.joonsookim.com/?s=jawbone.

In general, I think you should be considering (1) sound quality, both receiving and transmitting, (2) ease of use, (3) physical comfort/fit and (4) durability.

Here’s what I think the options are:

I’ve looked at reviews of other Bluetooth headsets. Some folks like various Motorola versions. My sense is that these four above are among the best if not the best. Certainly, the BlueAnt and the Jawbone receive the highest acclaim.

Lemme know if you have more questions!

With this said, I continue to get some feedback that the Plantronics Discovery 925 transmitting sound quality can be spotty. I’ll likely check out the Jawbone NinjaAssassin at some point and will let you know how that goes.

Must Have:

• Improve the battery life. The battery life is so bad that I find myself now becoming accustomed to charging my iPhone throughout the day. Granted, my usage is high. I ran the unit several times until it shut down to maximize battery life as an Apple Genius recommended. But any handheld communications-organization device needs to be able to run from the time I wake until the time I sleep. End of story.
• To-Do List/Notes Sync. I used Notes and the To-Do List (the “NextAction” add-on) extensively on my BlackBerry, and they integrated beautifully with Outlook, including Outlook Exchange Web mail. Now, I remain in a quandary as to what to do with the iPhone. I’m looking at Evernote, EasyTask Manager and OmniFocus as replacements (I’m a partial GTD adherent), but none solve all of the problems I have. (More on GTD applications to come).
• Copy/Cut-Paste. It’s beyond my understanding why this is not available.
• More Robust Email. The litany of issues is too long to enumerate. BlackBerry is way better, period. This is essential if Apple wants to steal share in the enterprise market.
• Voice Dialing. Especially in California, where headsets are now required by law when driving, easy dialing while in the car is essential. Favorites, Recents, Contacts — all of these are too difficult to use when driving. I’ve tried the SpeechCloud Voice Dialer application and it (1) isn’t a dialer – it’s a voice recognition lookup tool and (2) it doesn’t work well. In 4-5 tries, it never found the name I was seeking, and I then uninstalled it. In general, contact and phone number lookup on the iPhone require too many keystrokes, and the ease of use of the basic phone function is less than ideal.
• Overall Stability. My iPhone crashes. Not infrequently. Usually when flipping among applications. An open platform is great. It’s got to be more stable that this.

Nice to Have:

• IR Beam. Remember the Palm V? I do. I’d love better capability to transmit data from phone-to-phone.
• Video Recording. This isn’t that important to me, but I look forward to the day.

I’m still a satisifed promoter of the iPhone and look forward to future improvements. It’s been a week, and I’m still having fun.

• Evernote — This is a pre-existing capture-organize-search application new to me. Take notes, photos, voice notes. Among the many potential uses, I’m taking photos of random scraps of paper I’ve had lying around, tagging them for Evernote and then tossing ‘em. Love it.
• WritingPad — You’ve got to try this to understand it. It’s faster than the keyboard but lacks the magnifying glass cursor placement. Getting to numbers and symbols is a bit of a pain, but for sheer input speed, it’s cool.
• Twitteriffic — Who knew I had so much nonsense to say? (Yes, yes, everyone).
• Pandora — I was using this Web-based before. The iPhone application is great. It’s already changing how people regard radio.

Check these out!

I switched from my BlackBerry Pearl once Apple removed my primary barrier to adoption — lack of push email and calendar — and I am overlooking the challenging keyboard and lack of notes/to-do list sync.

I’ll miss the dedicated convenience of my Pearl, but “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”* between me and my iPhone.

The good:

• It’s cool and gorgeously, super sexy.
• The usability, both setup and ongoing use, is extremely good.
• The open platform and applications significantly increase the utility.
• 3G is pretty darn quick.
• The GPS is sweet. I could drive around all day just watching my car on the map. (Dork, I know)
• I do love it and am having a ton of fun.

The bad:

• On balance, I still believe Apple botched the launch weekend. Even aside from the long queues and the likely artificially suppressed inventory at AT&T stores, Apple made two critical mistakes: (1) Apple should have been better prepared for the server traffic from the iPhone 2.0 software upgrades and new 3G purchases. Apple now has placed itself in a position where it is offering mission-critical services to individuals and businesses. Effective outages (from bricked phones) and activation slownesses of the lengths experienced Friday are inexcusable and unforgivable. (2) Requiring that users with corporate accounts or discounts activate only at AT&T stores resulted in horrible customer experiences and undermines Apple’s entire strategy of acquiring business users. Business users require convenience, and the need to go to an AT&T store was decidedly inconvenient.
• Battery life on 3G is atrociously bad. I had a full overnight charge, started using the iPhone at 7:00 a.m., and my battery already is 30% drained. Granted, I’m using the thing a ton and haven’t optimized power consumption yet, but still . . . it needs to make it easily on one charge from the time I wake until the time I sleep.
• As with all things Apple, when things go wrong, you have few options and much frustration. Ringtones purchased on iTunes wouldn’t play at first. I’m frequently prompted to re-enter my iTunes password. A song spontaneously started playing this morning. Once I synced with my Outlook calendar through Exchange, I found that I have two calendars, including one that contains events from four years ago. The device has rebooted spontaneously a few times. It’s frozen a couple times inexplicably. In all these cases, your options and explanations and guidance from Apple are few.
• The touchscreen is great, but I have a hard time believing a touchscreen keyboard will ever be as good as a keyboard with tactile buttons.

Tips:

• The solution for freezing in some cases is to soft reset the device by simultaneously pressing and holding the power/sleep and home buttons for 30 seconds.
• I’ve found that the MacRumors Forums contain a wealth of information on troubleshooting. Just about every problem I’ve encountered, someone else encountered first.
• Apple’s site has a helpful page on battery optimization, although many of the suggestions are to disable the core functions that make the 3G worth getting.

On balance, I’m loving my new toy. Just remember: The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

* Humphrey Bogart’s “Jack” in “Casablanca”

I’m thinking about it. Thinking about it hard. And I don’t know that I’ll have the strength to resist my consumer impulse.

I’ve loved my BlackBerry Pearl and its predecessors over the past few years. I love the synchronization with my work Outlook; I use email and text messaging constantly, the phone, notes, the to-do list, the camera, Google maps, a stopwatch/timer application, the alarm, the calculator, even the slow browser. The usability is great. I love the SureType input system. I love the size and the weight. It’s wonderfully functional.

Last year, I switched from PC to Mac for the first time in my life. I was already an iPod user and an iTunes Store buyer. With PCs, I was becoming fatigued with degrading performance over time and mysterious program crashes. Apple’s advertising campaigns slowly and surely were winning me over — a case where TV advertising worked. While I’ve always appreciated the apparent relative simplicity Apple offers, truly, it’s the coolness factor that tipped me towards Apple.

After a year with my iMac, I’m still puzzled by its inexplicable slowness in Web browsing at times, frustrated with how iPhoto handles file organization and at a loss whenever a program hangs. But, on balance, I’m happy with the switch.

Should I adopt the iPhone, too? What’s been holding me back and might continue to give me pause:

• The keyboard sucks! I’ve talked to numerous iPhone users who all assure me that I’ll “get used to it,” that “it learns” and that they love it. But I’ve used it half a dozen times now, and I miss letters more than I hit them. For me, a BlackBerry user, the keyboard falls far, far short of my expectations. With Palm’s handwritten entry system, I recall becoming very proficient in it in less than a day. I’m skeptical about my ability to adapt to the iPhone keyboard, and I do enough inputting on my handhelds to need an efficient mechanism.
• Equivalently slow Web access. With the first generation iPhone, I didn’t think the Web access would be appreciably faster than on my BlackBerry over the EDGE network. With 3G, this new iPhone promises much more speed.
• I use Outlook notes and an add-on to-do list extensively and rely on the synchronization between my BlackBerry and my desktop. My understanding is that even with the new iPhone, the real-time synchronization will be lacking. If I switch, I’ll be banking on the development of applications with better synchronization with the new Microsoft Exhange integration.
• That Exchange integration is key. I depend on email getting pushed to my handheld and wouldn’t consider adopting the iPhone if it were still pulling email. I also rely on my calendar being manageable from either handheld or desktop. With the Exchange integration, however, these, my most significant concerns, are eliminated.

The new iPhone is now the shinier, newer object, and I hear it calling to me. We’re counting down to the release date on July 11, and I’m betting I’ll have a new iPhone soon after that!