Yesterday I upgraded my iPhone to version 3.0 of the operating system software. So far, a pretty big yawn. Typing is plausibly easier, though still not easy. Cut and paste were not on my list of must-haves. Zillow upgraded its app to allow push notification, so your phone can tell you if one of your saved searches has popped up a new candidate. Okay…
I wasn’t unhappy with the iPhone before — quite the contrary! — but I don’t think I have any new reasons to be happier from this upgrade. Safari 4, by contrast, is totally killer, and I could not be more pleased with suddenly-faster-everything on my iMac.
One thing I played with right away on the iPhone was the new voice recording app. Not that impressive. It records losslessly at 44khz, which means the saved files are huge. They can be transferred only by email or hard-wired sync — no BlueTooth, no WiFi — and almost everything is too big to move by email. This is the kind of dumb, useless software I expect from Microsoft, not Apple, so one may hope it will get better in future versions.
Anyway, as a test, this morning I made a short little audio greeting card for Rian Lussier, who is about to undergo surgery. The file is a monstrous 25 megabytes, and it took over an hour to sync to my iMac (no hope of emailing a file that large).
Even so, the recording quality is not awful (there’s a buzz in places from me speaking too loudly), and the sentiments are what they are.
Godspeed you well, Rian.
David G from Zillow.com says:
For me, search (email and phone) was the killer addition. In general, this OS upgrade is foundational; I think the new Apps and the new hardware it fascilitates are where it really shines.
June 18, 2009 — 10:40 am
Benjamin Ficker says:
Greg, I’ve heard that the video quality is good enough to replace the Flip. True? I think I would still like the easy upload stuff from flip, seeing as I am not a mac user (yet).
June 18, 2009 — 8:12 pm
Greg Swann says:
Newer Flip cameras are true HD video — 720×480 pixels. Video on the iPhone 3G S is 640×480 pixels, I believe. But compression on YouTube is so extreme that difference is probably academic. I’m interested to hear how quickly a video can be uploaded to YouTube from the 3G S.
I vote for airlifting a few thousand into Iran just now. The death of tyranny could come about from YouTube, Twitter and proxy servers. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
June 18, 2009 — 8:20 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>Even so, the recording quality is not awful (there’s a buzz in places from me speaking too loudly), and the sentiments are what they are
The recording quality is fine, and the sentiments are beautiful. Thank you.
Bust a gut- the most obvious joke and the one joke we didn’t come up with! 🙂
June 19, 2009 — 5:45 am
Benjamin Ficker says:
@ Greg,
Here’s a bit of info I read today about the recording capabilities of the new Iphone:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/19/iphone-3g-s-gets-the-quick-and-dirty-tear-apart-treatment-alrea/
June 19, 2009 — 5:01 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Here’s a bit of info I read today about the recording capabilities of the new Iphone:
Cool. I saw the underclocking stuff on another blog. Perhaps those features will be enabled with the 4.0 upgrade, throwing a bone to the 3G S users if there’s new hardware.
June 20, 2009 — 6:07 am