Day 3 of my new iPhone 3g

I still love the new phone, there was some glitches with MobileMe on Friday and Saturday (first my calendar, contacts, and bookmarks would get wiped but I was getting mail, then it reversed) but as of this afternoon everything seems to be chugging along.

New impressions about the phone.

I love the new display, it's definitely brighter and I like it much better than my old one.
MobileMe is going to be awesome, once I figure out how to get my work calendar items onto it!
The speakers are MUCH better, I can play things and you can hear it without having to hold up to your ear.
Haven't had any comments about call quality, I always thought it was pretty good already.
The 3G speed is AWESOME, I'm consistently getting 1mb download speeds, lowest I've seen it was 600kb using DSLReports speed test for iPhone.
Battery life seems the same so far, I've been playing extensively with the games and safari and it seems to last just as long.

Negative things
It seems like since I've enabled push the first time the keyboard comes up on any app there's a long delay before I can type, and in some cases it's almost like it locks up for about 10-30 seconds when first launching. If I remember correctly, the first iPhone had a similiar issue.

All in all I think this experience was better than the first iPhone purchase, and I'm looking forward to a lot of use out of it, just like my first iPhone!!

iPhone 3G first impressions

Well, I got my new iPhone 3G, after waiting in line at the Apple Store at Southpoint Mall in Durham. I have to say I'm very glad I did it, it was a lot of fun and thanks to Jamar (the door guard) and Shavar for making something that could've been depressing a lot of fun. Even though there were lots of issues, they were very upbeat and kept on plugging away. Also all the employees there were really positive and helpful, I was very impressed.

The phone is AWESOME, I'm getting average about 900kb download speeds and the GPS is amazing how fast it connects and refreshes. For a GPS built into a phone I'm very impressed on how accurate it is.

The app store is EVIL I tell you, I've bought about $30 worth of apps already, and tons of free ones and for the most part the quality is excellent. The games will knock your socks off.

I also got my confirmation for the iPhone developer program, so I'll need to start my studying in ernest because there's an application I want to write for the iPhone ASAP.

Getting Things Done

I had gotten my brother the book by David Allen called 'Getting Things Done' about how to be productive while being stress free at the same time.

I had been running across this before, but had never really looked into it in detail until a few weeks ago. I had read an article on Lifehacker about how to have a Zero Inbox and after implementing that I was so impressed I decided to do some more research on the whole GTD process.

I purchased the book and in the course of 3 weeks read it. It makes a lot of sense when you read it, and I'm going to be giving it a solid try to see if I can do it. It basically requires some discipline around how you manage your tasks. This coming weekend will be my 'Purge and Clean' to get everything started, so we'll see how it goes.

The really ironic thing is my brother hasn't had time to read it yet.......

What makes a well designed product or project?

I was listening to a podcast this morning, and they were interviewing Woz and he said something that really got me thinking. He made the statement that 'All well designed products have a single person behind them, they control the project from start to finish and provide a consistent view of the product and what it should do'.

On first glance this makes a lot of sense, but when you start thinking about it I started coming to some interesting conclusions. If what he states is true then all large projects are not going to be well designed.

I think the issue is not so much that a single person is driving the design and building of something. I think it has more to do with keeping your 'eye on the ball'.

So many times I've seen projects start and then during their development and building they get changed in mid stream. At this point one of several things can happen:
The team takes the changes and quickly incorporates them into the project without really considering it's impact. This invariably ends up to cause issues in other areas since it was simply 'pushed in' without consideration on the impacts to the project.
The change is given a review, and while the areas it will impact are accounted for the original goal is never taken into account and how it fits with that goal. You end up with a working project, but it's slightly off because of this addition midway through the process because the change was never integrated completely with the original design.
The team steps back and adds this change to the original goals of the project, then looks at the current design to see if it fits the goals still. The design is modified while considering the whole scope of the goals and you end up with a well designed result.
The change is pushed off to be incorporated in a later release.
While number 3 is the ideal (which aligns with what Woz said about a single person driving a design) most of the time solution number 1 is taken.

I think that this really highlights an issue with how we approach what we do. So many times we are schedule driven at the cost of good design and meeting the original goals of a project.

Personally I think the extra effort of stepping back and doing a good design review when changes come in are the way to go. Even though it may take a little more time up front, in the long run it makes for a smoother project development process.

Of course the real trick is to actually stick to #3 and not let yourself become schedule driven and end up with a derailed design.

A few thoughts about MacWorld

Ok, for those who are tired of hearing about Macs, you might not want to continue.

Although these are some thoughts stimulated by MacWorld, it's an interesting observation I heard on a Podcast. It seems like this year there's not really a single 'gee whiz' product (although the MacBook Air and Apple TV updates are wicked sweet), but more an evolutionary set of updates and upgrades.

Personally the most exciting announcement was the Apple TV, but looking closer at the fine print there's some things that were not touted in the Keynote that I think are worth mentioning.

The first one is the fact that you no longer have to choose a 'Source' when viewing your content on the Apple TV. Although you can pick a single computer that content will sync back and forth to, all your other iTunes libraries and photos will be available directly on the Apple TV without having to find which computer it's on. This addresses one of the most common complaints I've heard about the Apple TV, of having to switch around the different computers to view all your content. Now it's just 'all there'.

Another thing that didn't seem to get mentioned, and I haven't found more details on is that apparently the HD content is not available on iTunes directly, only on the Apple TV. I've heard this and read this on the various blog posts, but haven't found something confirming this from Apple. It may just be that because rentals are now available on iTunes, and not the HD versions assumptions are being made. I think it's more likely that the HD content is going to be rolled out with the updates for the Apple TV.

The remote drive for the Air is also exciting, from what I understand this will not be something that's limited to only being available for the Air, but can be used by all Leopard Macs, or actually any computer that has the remote drive software installed.

The Time Capsule is VERY exciting, and I'm really hoping that there will be an update for existing Airport Extreme's to enable them to be used the same way with there external drives.

It seems like it's going to be another great year, and I'm really looking forward to what's coming with Leopard as it get's enhanced and tweaked. I already love it tons more than Tiger, and it's only been out for a few months.

AWESOME site

I found this site yesterday, (actually my friend John sent me the link) and it's AMAZING (based on the tips on the first page).

The one that hit me the hardest was the one about organizing and cleaning up your Inbox. The tip is basically e-mail is one of three things, and that's the way you should group them in folders. That's it.... three folders.... if you need to find e-mails they say you should use a search instead of trying to group them. The one exception is GMail because it allows you to simply 'Tag' them delicious style, so it can be in multiple 'folders' at once.

What are these three folders? Check it out

I did this on my GMail account and my email account at work and already I'm loving it.

Now I'm going back through all the old posts and seeing what other tidbits of knowledge are buried here.

Great quote

Here's a great quote:

"Why run OS X? Well, when you are just used to Windows, it is like living inside a house and not experimenting the whole world out there. Once you get out of it, it is just amazing. Mac is just that: You just feel like glued to the computer. Everything is just beautiful, the interface, the stability. Once you experiment it, you don't want to go back to windows. Trust me."

And the best part, this is from a Windows user who got Leopard to run on his PC hardware.......

About Productivity.....

Well, I'm really excited about making this post. Why you ask? I am finally getting vindicated for my umm *cough* habit of keeping my e-mail inbox devoid of well, e-mail.

I've always kind of looked at my Inbox as a place for things to temporarily remain until I've handled them. Once they've been dealt with, whether it's a response, doing another task, or even just ignoring it, they are quickly banished to a folder for storage in case I ever get 'Hey, did you ever get that e-mail...'

For the longest time, I've been mocked about keeping my Inbox clean, and when I've tried to get other people to understand my *cough* habit, I'm usually given the traditional 'Deer in headlights' look.

Last night on one of our road trips, my brother told me about a new concept he heard about at 43 Folders called 'Inbox Zero'.

*chorus of angels*

Here is someone who is unreproachable (well, he's at least popular) advocating what I've been doing for quite some time.

The 'someone' is Merlin Mann, and he's created this site about personal productivity, and how we should be using the tools to make us more productive, not changing what we do to fit the tools we have (at least that's my take) and to do this in the easiest way possible (lazy people REJOICE!!).

I highly recommend the site, and KEEP THOSE INBOXES CLEAN!!!!