Shirt Pocket Watch

A quick post: it's been a year since we lost Ketzl, and a day short of a year since Taiko joined our family. He's been a big help dealing with the loss, and has grown into a fine--though rather enthusiastic--young dog.

I consciously left Ketzl's name on our answering machine for this time, to remind us and our friends how important she was to Zabeth and me. Today's the day it gets changed, and the last "public" reference to Ketzl gets gently retired.

But even without that, we'll never forget you, girl. Here's hoping you're running through the tall grass.

And, Taiko, she'd have been proud of you. I know we are!

It's a few weeks later, but Zabeth and I are back from our two week vacation, and so things around here are returning to normal: the Shirt Pocket Support "autoresponder" is turned off (since I'm able to respond more quickly now), and Z's begun her internship in Bridgewater.

The motivation for the vacation: Z just graduated from Vet School, and she had two weeks to recharge before her internship started. So, we decided to make a strong memory to carry her through the next year of work-without-sleep. And so -- we had a great time bopping around Germany and Italy, from Munich down to Matera -- actually, even further, down in Ostuni -- staying in Siena, Rome, Positano, Santa Agata sui due Golfi and Lake Garda along the way, and stopping at too many other places to list.

It was a "working vacation", which means a full work day, every day, but broken into little pieces all day long. It's a bit haphazard and nerve-wracking as the support cases build up and questions need to be answered, but it works well enough that I can still deliver good service to my valued users. Or try to!

Germany

Munich

One of the things we did while in Munich was tour the factory where BMWs are built, quite literally in the middle of the city. The plant -- which is huge and cannot grow beyond its current boundaries -- is on multiple levels, and uses a lot of techniques to reduce noise, pollution, and make efficient use of space. It's an extremely worthwhile three hours if you're a fan of sophisticated manufacturing (check out the videos at the plant site), and completely free.

It's amazing how much car manufacturing has changed -- one (award winning!) assembly station had something like 13 robots all working together to weld a unibody... incredibly complicated programming and layout. Very cool.

After the plant tour, we had a great time in Munich thanks to our friend Mathey and his girlfriend Sonja, who were kind enough to show us around their beautiful city. In which you can surf. Who knew: video evidence pending!

Anyway, we spent far too little time in Germany, something I plan to rectify next time. Hopefully we'll be back in less than ten years!

Italy

Siena

Our first stop in Italy was Siena, at a beautiful Bed and Breakfast (Frances' Lodge) outside the city. Our hosts -- Franco and Frances -- couldn't have been more gracious, nor their property more beautiful.

Internet access was extremely problematic, though, so I ended up spending a few hours of each day at an Internet Café in Siena itself -- so, if you saw a guy frantically typing at a MacBook Pro, in between the people browsing Facebook/My Space/Flickr, without stopping to breathe, that was me. (Note the laptop bag strap in this picture, just across from Siena's Duomo...)

Both Frances and Franco (Frances from Florence, and Franco Torre through-and-through) helped us find good places to visit, eat and helped fill us in on the details of Siena and the Palio di Siena, which is much more involved than you might expect given the length of the race, with tons of fascinating political intrigue and behind the scenes machinations.

We enjoyed taking various side-trips to towns and hikes through the Tuscan countryside, although I wish we had Taiko along -- he would have loved romping through the hills and fields during our long walks! And the gelato! (For the curious - cinnamon and black cherry.)

Rome

After (again) too few days, we headed down to Rome to meet our old friends Mike (my college roommate and old business partner at UnderWare) and Robin and their kids Ian and Leah. We hadn't been able to share vacation time in a long while, and it was great to spend some quality, relaxing time with them.

We were only able to spend two days in Rome (sound like a theme?), so we hardly scratched the surface of the place, but enjoyed seeing things we'd only read about, with a tour guide who supplied many helpful details as we walked -- quickly -- through history.

Positano via Pompeii

A few days after we arrived in Rome we left our friends and were off to the Amalfi coast -- specifically Positano. On the way, we stopped in Herculaneum and Pompeii to take in a bit of their amazing history (and it's well worth seeing both - the contrasts between the two towns are fascinating).

And from there down to the coast and Positano for a relaxing few days at the beach, and some invigorating hiking in the extremely steep hills above.

The Amalfi Drive and Matera

From there, we drove down the Amalfi Drive (which is a blast and would make a terrific video game)

to the Basilicata region and Matera to meet back up with our friends. Matera's old section, where we stayed, is quite ancient and built into the rock hills above a deep ravine. Squint a little and it's the 3rd century BC, and you're heading home after tending the flock all day.

Il Frantoio

One afternoon we drove from Matera to Ostuni to have a delightful homestyle meal at Masseria Il Frantoio, where our hosts Armando and Rosalba Balestrazzi stuffed us silly with all manner of delicious treats, all grown organically on their farm.

Don Alfonso 1890

And, finally, a long drive back from Matera to Sant'Agata sui due Golfi (near Naples), for a blowout last meal at Don Alfonso, celebrating Ian's 16th birthday and Zabeth's graduation and upcoming trial-by-fire Internship. Everybody's pretty comatose here, as we'd been eating for something like 5 hours...

A lovely location and spectacular dinner... which no doubt would have been followed by an amazing breakfast had we not been forced to check out so early due to inconvenient flights.

Lake Garda

Since Zabeth had to start her Internship on Monday, I dropped her off at the Naples Airport early, and started the long solo drive back to Munich, stopping at Lake Garda for a quick overnight, and continuing to Munich -- on the Autostrada/Autobahn through Austria, stopping every so often for a shot or two of Espresso -- much too early the next morning.

A long few flights, and I'm back!

Thanks

It'd been quite a while since we'd been in Europe, and it was really great to get away (even while still needing to work every day -- it's very cool that I have a job that I can do anywhere), to see things we'd never had a chance to see before, and to revisit where Zabeth and I got engaged ten years ago.

Big thanks to Mike -- our resident Italy/travel/food expert -- for doing much of the planning; Mike, Robin, Ian and Leah for sharing part of their vacation with us; Mathey and Sonja for their time in Munich; my parents and brother Paul for taking great care of Taiko; and to Jonas Salling of Salling Software for helping out in the forums.

Very special thanks to all of you for your patience during the trip, your understanding when support responses didn't get turned around in minutes, and the chance to recharge our batteries before her internship starts, which will be 14 months with less than a week's break.

Wish us luck!

It's not easy to look at the iPhone, let alone touch the thing, and not be enchanted. It's all planes and subtle, refined curves with a radius (and texture) that feels great in the hand. It's not light, but not heavy either: just about right, given the size of it, and the weight helps to stabilize it during use. Someone spent a lot of time with mock-ups holding, twirling, pocketing and came up with something pretty much ideal.

As you'd expect, the color scheme and material choice is minimal and elegant: matte stainless on the back, chrome Apple logo and highlights, matte black buttons and RF area, and on the front, a black "contrast screen" (like a Bang & Olufsen TV) that hides the LCD underneath until it lights up.

And what an LCD it is: bigger than expected given the size of the device much bigger and very high-res and contrasty. It almost doesn't matter what's being displayed on it: everything looks pretty great in its antialiased, Helvetica glory. Unlike every other touchscreen you've ever used, the iPhone's is a capacitance unit with a glass cover that's completely visible outdoors, even in direct sunlight. No more squinting, indoors or out. I can't think of a thing about the screen I'd change.

But there's no point having a beautiful LCD if there's nothing worthwhile to put on it. And in this, Apple didn't disappoint either. The iPhone actually looks and works just like the ads you've seen. It's rare that something works exactly like the demos (which are usually canned, faked, magically perfect) but in this case it's true. Fast animated transitions between sections, quick response and redraws. It's rare that you feel that you're waiting for something, and if the animations are designed to look good and disguise load delays and offscreen redraws, they serve their purpose admirably.

There are a lot of reviews out there that do one of those "feature lists" of the iPhone vs. your typical Nokia, Sony/Ericsson, RIM, Treo, Windows Mobile device or whatever... and, often, the iPhone comes up "short", even when you take into account that software updates are promised down the road. (Of course, I'd expect firmware updates for any smartphone, and all of the above get firmware updates. It's pretty standard practice... what's rare is the addition of features. For example, my Nokia E61i doesn't have "feature pack 1" of S60, which fixes a bunch of important stuff, and it never will, even though FP1 came out before the E61i).)

Of course, part of the "standard practice" for phone design comes the "No" from carriers for some of the more advanced features -- remember that even "unlocked" phones have to be designed with customers in mind, and carriers are the big player in this game. And they often say "no" to WiFi, "no" to bluetooth, "no" to cameras, chat, whatever the carrier has determined its customers want, or it wants to put in to maximize revenue. It can be pretty frustrating as you discover you're in a walled garden, and the landscape architect has absolutely no taste whatsoever.

What's different about the iPhone, though, is the big "Yes" that came from the carrier to Apple to do what they wanted and with no previous history of phones, that's a "yes" to a totally new platform that isn't tied to previous usage patters, menu layouts, "but our customers are used to this", "our phone's identity depends on", etc. A "yes" to a new way of doing things a "yes" to Thinking Different, and a yes to "taste". While there are some "no"s there -- some frustrating ones that'll hopefully be fixed with the aforementioned updates, as has been promised -- they still sweated this experience. It shows.

But, again, that doesn't mean that the iPhone has a huge list of "features". It doesn't, and I'm guessing it won't. Ever, because that's not the point. You're not going to see things -- at least from Apple -- like remote desktop clients, or satellite box control, or buried SyncML clients... or the various nooks and crannies where those things hide. There's no huge list of applications, memory checkers, task managers, file managers, USB mode setters, picture editors.

The iPhone is full to the brim of pretty cool technology, but at the user level the experience is one of understatement. You have but a few "features":

1. The phone itself
2. SMS text messaging
3. A basic camera
4. A photo viewer
5. A contact manager
6. A calendar application
7. An email application
8. A web browser
9. Google Maps
10. A stock tracker
11. A weather application
12. YouTube
13. A calculator
14. A note-taking application
15. Totally new, and pretty great iPod functionality
16. A way to adjust settings

And that's it. Really - 16 "features": there's nothing else there.

Except there is. Because, with a few notable exceptions, this stuff was designed to be all of a piece: to work well, the way you'd expect. Apple started pretty much with a clean slate: there's no PSION "cruft", no six-versions-of-Windows-mobile, no S60/UIQ divergence, no crackberry usage patterns to retain, and no backend to monetize. A blank piece of paper, with appropriate constraints, and the ability to go nuts, which they did not, much to their credit. And when they were done (after what had to be a lot-lot-lot of revisions) well, sure, there's a User's Guide somewhere up on the web, but it's not something you'll generally need, even if you're not a phone nerd. It just basically works.

For most of the "general public", it does what they want and need.

And part of what it's missing is The Suck. You're not going through the typical Smartphone Wait when you pick something. It appears, it works, it's responsive and, frankly, given the "touch" nature of the UI, it had to be. If you tap something, it has to react and it does. If you're used to other phones, you're going to be amazed by this.

All that is great stuff.

Which isn't to say it's all perfect. It's kind of like Super Mario 64: an amazing game, truly revolutionary, but it's not everything to everyone. And even to most, it's just missing stuff. So, quickly, my biggest issues, apart from bugs, are:

• Mail should be unified. Lots of people say this, and they're all right, mostly because the experience of going to a different mailbox is so painful you see that there's unread mail on the Home screen, but to get to it you have to tap around so many times by the time you find it you just don't care any more.
• There's no way to flag mail, so if there's mail you need to deal with when you get back to your desktop, best of luck finding it!
• Mobile Safari keeps opening new "tabs", even when you're tapping on an email link to the same general site, which eats memory and is quite inconvenient.
• No A2DP support for wireless Bluetooth headphones.
• Notes is pointless, sadly, because nothing syncs.
• No OTA sync of calendars/contacts, which I really miss.
• When apps quit in the background, they don't always save state.
  This is especially annoying with the iPod app, which loses your playlist, music location, etc.
• No IMAP Push support is, well, annoying.
• Javascript support is slow and a bit buggy.

But, all things considered, that's a tiny list. Apple's done an amazing job, and this is without question the finest 1st generation product I've ever seen. Kudos to all!

Update: I originally wrote and sent this on the iPhone with a moblog module. Some wrapping awkwardness ensued, various characters (emdashes, seemingly) were stripped, and some bad formatting/editing got through. I've tried to fix everything I've noticed -- sorry about that.