MattSnodBlog

I had my first real need to use Apple's "Find my iPhone" service, available through my MobileMe account (and now available as an app without the need for a MobileMe account).

After realizing that I had misplaced it, I roamed around the house with a cordless phone calling my cell phone. No luck. It was a busy morning, so I may have left the phone at either the gym, the bagel place, the dry cleaners, the Radio Shack, or the barber. I did not feel like retracing all of those steps, and then I realized I could just log onto my MobileMe account and have it find my phone for me.

When I activated it, I saw that it was still at my house but slightly off. Then I realized that I must have left in the car, which was parked two houses away. I told the service to send a tone to the phone for 2 minutes, along with a message that read, "Please give the phone to daddy." Sure enough, the phone was under the seat in my car. Must have slipped out of my shorts.

That service alone is worth the $99 a year I pay for MobileMe.

Remember when Apple and Adobe played nice while thousands of scruffy graphic designers happily used Photoshop to retouch images on their Macs ... and all was right with the world? Well, it all seemed to go downhill over the Great Flash War of 2010.

I saw inklings of trouble when Adobe continued to not fully optimize their CS suite of applications for Mac's Cocoa OS framework throughout most of this past decade. And when the iPhone was released without Flash support, you felt there was trouble brewing. But now, it's getting ugly.

Apple and Adobe have gone tit for tat on the subject. The latest have involved Steve Jobs's open letter regarding Flash, and now Adobe has published founders' Chuck Geschke and John Warnock's open letter in response.

My take ... Is Apple right for not allowing Flash to run on their devices? Yes, it's their device, and Flash is a resource (battery) hog. Is Apple right for restricting creation of iPad and iPhone apps to Apple development platforms? No, that's just plain selfish; Apple's not the only one who knows how to make apps. Is Adobe right for whining about others trashing Flash (which they didn't even make, by the way)? No, Flash is showing its age in an era where computing is becoming more and more portable, where the need for battery life exceeds the need to play Farmville.

And Adobe's argument that Apple should support Flash because it has a 99% install base holds no merit. I'm sure the manufacturers of asbestos had a 99% install base at one point. That didn't make it a good thing. (Okay, that example was harsh, but you get my point.)

So if you're like me and have an iPhone and live in either the New York or San Francisco metro areas, then you probably hate AT&T. In fact, if I have one more call dropped for no good reason, they're going to have to invent a new word for "hate." Perhaps "hateT&T"?

All of this bile is the undercurrent of life as an iPhone user in the U.S. Like an old sports injury, you just sorta learn to live with it. The ostensible light at the end of the tunnel for iPhone/AT&T users is the prospect of a Verizon iPhone. As customers who have used both services know, Verizon at least lets you talk on your phone ... with someone else ... for the duration of a conversation ... even in a train tunnel.

However, what everyone seems to be missing here is the capacity issue. In short, what hampered the iPhone experience was, well, the iPhone. They were victims of their own success. While Apple didn't quite sell the expected 10 million iPhones in year one, they have sold at least (estimated) 45,000,000 of them to date. With a good percentage of those being in the U.S., that results in a mobile carrier that is quickly and consistently overburdened.

AT&T just simply can't handle it, and it only seems to be getting worse, as new iPhone users continue to outpace AT&T's capacity. Five bars mean nothing when there are 5,000 people all trying to connect to one node. But I've heard that Verizon wouldn't have been able to handle the onslaught of new users either, if they had been given the iPhone. And if millions of dissatisfied iPhone users all make the switch when a Verizon iPhone is released, they'll face the same situation.

I'm inclined to stay with AT&T on that day, when their capacity skyrockets from a mass exodus of customers. Am I defending AT&T? Certainly not. Even after the onslaught of FAIL messages months ago, they have yet to make discernible improvements in their service. But I think we're kidding ourselves if we think Verizon will ride in on their white horse and save the day.

Okay, the title is a bit misleading, because the reason I'm sick of this certain iPhone game, FlightControl, is because it's so addicting.

I bought this game on a whim and then got into a friendly competition with a friend of mine who also got it. We went back and forth with high scores until we realized that there would be no end to it. We decided that when one of us reached 1,000 points (planed landed), we'd quit the game. Well, he got there first, but I kept at it until I reached that score. And then I reached 2,476 planes, and he felt compelled to try to beat it. (He has yet to.)

The game has a stats screen that shows you the total number of planes landed. When I saw that I've landed more than 71,000 planes since playing the game, I did some math and realized that I've been playing this stupid game for nearly 17 days!

So now I have to make a touch choice. Do I keep the game, trying for a higher score? Or do I delete it and get nearly three weeks of my life back ... as well as my iPhone battery?

In case you hadn't heard (he said with a fair amount of sarcasm), Apple announced its tablet PC, the iPad, the other day. Since we're drowning in post-announcement commentary, the likes of which we've not seen since we found out who shot J.R., I'll just stick to the top-line stuff here.

Overall, I like it. It's sleek, simple, and ... Apple. While some of the negative post-event buzz has been that it's an "oversized iPod Touch," I say, is that a bad thing? The iPod Touch (and iPhone) is awesome. Why not have a larger version of these mega-hit devices for bigger browsing, bigger e-mail-checking, and bigger content-consuming? The iPad seems like the perfect "schlep-around-with-you-everywhere" device.

PROS:

• Super thin and super light
• Touch keyboard that's like the iPhone/iPod Touch, only full-sized
• Expect some pretty cool iPad-sized apps coming down the pike
• Really good battery life
• Great new iTunes experience
• Cool print content experience, like the NY Times they showed
• Fingerprint-less screen

CONS:

• No SD card slot built-in
• No USB (not even USB micro)
• No built-in GPS
• No camera
• No drag-and-drop file management
• No file creation -- only viewing (I'd love to be able to edit documents and presentations with it.)
• No OLED screen (seemed an obvious choice at this stage of the game)
• No 16:9 aspect ratio for viewing wide-screen movies
• Touch keyboard (for those of you who won't give up your Blackberry-style keyboards)

Let's face it, at this point, Steve Jobs could have taken a dump on stage, and people would be ooh'ing and aah'ing, their stock would have gone up 5%, and David Pogue would be fawning all over it. In the end, Apple does do these product innovations pretty well. They haven't stumbled in a long time. Bottom line ... I want one, and so do you.