AT&T FAIL (Updated!)
Just a quickie today; from the Old Gray Lady:
More than 20 million other smartphone users are on the AT&T network, but other phones do not drain the network the way the nine million iPhones users do. Indeed, that is why the howls of protest are more numerous in the dense urban areas with higher concentrations of iPhone owners.
“It’s almost worthless to try and get on 3G during peak times in those cities,” Mr. Munster said, referring to the 3G network. “When too many users get in the area, the call drops.” The problems seem particularly pronounced in New York and San Francisco, where Mr. Munster estimates AT&T’s network shoulders as much as 20 percent of all the iPhone users in the United States.
image © New York Times
Honestly, since I got my 3GS a couple of months ago (upgrading from a 2G iPhone), I haven’t noticed any decline in data or call quality. If anything, it’s improved across the board, and it’s miles better than the service I had on the Sprint smartphone that predated my iPhone.
Then again, I live and work in the relatively sleepy metropolis of Portland, not the tech Sodom and Gomorrah of NY and San Fran. But since most tech media is centered in one of those two cities, that helps to explain the pervasive anti-AT&T vibe that I’ve never quite understood.
That being said, AT&T promised MMS functionality by “the end of summer” (and yes, it’s completely ridiculous that the world’s awesomest futurephone still doesn’t have native picture mail). By my reckoning, that gives AT&T about 19 more days to get their act together. If I’m not able to text pictures of my drunk friends to their spouses’ phones by then, I’m drinking the AT&T Haterade.
UPDATE: AT&T says that MMS will be enabled on iPhones via a software update on September 25th. That’s four days late, AT&T! Four days late!!
Um, Hooray?
As a follow-up to my RROD Xbox 360 post from last week (via Gizmodo):
Hey guys, have you heard? Xbox 360s die, horribly, almost without fail. In the wake of some devastatingly terrible survey results—54% failure rate terrible—a third-party warranty company is saying that RRoD troubles are on the wane.
image © Gizmodo, I think
Rock Band Bar Nights
I’ve heard rumblings about this for a while now, but it looks like it’s official: Harmonix is bringing Rock Band to pubs and bars. They’re calling it—wait for it—Rock Band Bar Nights. Maybe it’s not the most compelling branding, but it does have a sort of Soviet industrial efficiency to it. And come on, this is from a developer who called their rock band simulation game “Rock Band” (possibly because “Music Game” wasn’t able to be trademarked?).
image © HotHardware.com
No, no, no… I kid the Rock Band. I’m only miffed because I’d been thinking about buying a PA and a projector and trying to do something similar myself. I think it’s an amazing idea and long overdue. There are going to be over a thousand songs available for the game by the end of the year, so there’s no shortage of content. Gamers who have honed their skills in their living room can come on out and show off their mad rocking skills to an audience that will actually appreciate them. And it should help the DJ (RBJ?) run through the list of sign-ups four times faster than a traditional karaoke joint.
It also has the capacity to be four times as brutal to the listener if a band of drunks fumbles their way through the song… unless No Fail mode is turned off. Then, instead of listening to some dude slur his way through “Baby Got Back,” the entire band fails out thirty seconds into the song, to howls of delight from the crowd. Of course, this infringes on my jointly held patent for Gong Show Karaoke (© Leaf Standard and Bryan Stratton), but I’m willing to let that slide, because I’m lazy and would rather let someone else do all of the hard work.
Facebook v. 3.01 App
image © Bryan Stratton
Now that I’ve had a few days to play with version 3.0 of the Facebook iPhone app (which was recently upgraded to 3.01), I can say with confidence that it’s the update I’ve been hoping to see for a long time. In fact, my only criticism is that we didn’t get it months ago, when Facebook went through its last major redesign.
The addition of the menu screen is probably the biggest and best improvement to the app. Navigating the app with nine, Home Screen-like buttons drastically simplifies what was a needlessly overcomplicated UI in the previous version. And being able to add quick links to frequently visited friends’ pages streamlines the browsing experience even more. (In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing something like this on the actual site, especially if it was implemented discreetly, to avoid the MySpace “who’s in my top eight?” drama.) I also like that there’s a Notifications tab at the bottom of the menu screen, and that the number of unread notifications (not just unread emails) appears on the Facebook icon in the Home Screen.
image © Bryan Stratton
Other things I’m digging on include the ability to finally view and create Notes, see all of your upcoming Events (including friends’ birthdays) and enjoy the full filtered or unfiltered News Feed. The redesigned Chat interface is also quite slick and functional, and I’m glad they didn’t muck up the most useful feature in the original app, which was the ability to use your Friends list as a second Contacts list and call them without leaving the app.
Overall, I think that the app presents a very clean and efficient version of Facebook‘s core features, one that is almost preferable to the main site, especially if you’re the sort of person who can’t stand seeing a feed that’s choked with quizzes and app postings. I’ll be interested to see how long it takes Facebook app designers to start taking advantage of the iPhone app’s potential and whether or not it’s possible to do so without sacrificing the iPhone app’s streamlined design.
1 comment