Speaker: Why the disaster in Japan made me want an iPhone
75 Responses
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
the Juice
Oh and snap. Love my Juice only problem is the pretty purple anodising has mostly worn off :(
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Islander, in reply to
Ooops, something seems to have eaten my response.
Trying again:
Mine is a "storm" -pretty grey colour. My nextdoor neighbour, a knifemaker (now, how do I manage to do this?) advises the plates can easily be replaced but recommends recolouring- cheers! -
Right, over birthday lunch for my wife, discovered my brothers-in-law both own HTCs.
One has a G1, the first smartphone they produced i think. He says they stopped supporting it two years ago but he’s managed to install Android and various other hacks and keep it running and as a voracious reader finds it OK for novels in bed.
The other has a brand new HTC Desire HD which has replaced his laptop.
Both are offering to show me through them and add all the good apps, so i guess it’ll be a Desire or similar.
Guess when i wrote “And I’m buying an iPhone” i meant a smart phone, which shows to go ya that it’s joined Band Aid and Red Bull as an example of a brand that’s come to define the category.
Definitely relies on a continuous data feed and on you biting the bullet and leaving it connected internationally – then overcoming the need to check cricket scores at however many $$s a meg while there. But i like @Ben’s point about how you’ll probably only be carrying your wallet, phone and keys if and when disaster strikes. -
Hey @Garth, I almost bought an HTC Desire but if it helps with research the main negative thing I've heard about them (including the HD I think) are problems some people have had with very low amounts of internal memory left-over for apps once Android's been installed. (It's been on the order of about 100MB, more or less, depending on the details of how it's been set up.) You can stuff in an SD card but it's significant with Android because most/all apps need to install at least partly on internal memory for whatever reason. It really mostly matters for people who like hacking their phones or running lots of apps, but I heard it from someone who does and he was finding it very frustrating. Another one to look at is a Samsung Galaxy S (or whatever's replaced it), which is similar but doesn't have the memory issues so much... probably pricier though.
I don't think it's so much smart-phones that have revolutionised things as smart-phones combined with social media (like Facebook and Twitter). Most people I've seen using smart-phones, and maybe 50%+ of people around Melbourne seem to have them if the sitting-on-the-train crowd are anything to go by, are frequently using them in combination with both of these, and other similar stuff on the side, and it's changed everything so that people are really never out of touch. Every time someone stops with nothing better to do (train, bus, whatever), they're pulling out the phone to catch up with anything important going on with the world and people they know.
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Garth Bray, in reply to
@izogi thanks for that. have been recommended three by brother-in-law#1: the Desire HD, the Galaxy S or the Google Nexus S. Will go and try to have a tutu with each of them. b-i-l#2 says go the HD for maximum screen size.
I completely agree with your comment about phones plus social media. It’s the combination that works and even then there are limitations. While all four of my travelling companions had chocolate-bar sized smart phones. only i had an actual chocolate bar. As yet there’s no app that turns your phone into something you can eat in an emergency :).
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The Galaxy S is what I have, the very same that slid 15 metres along a gravelly driveway and over a speed hump on its screen and suffered only minor scratching to the case. So far I've encountered not one single issue with stability. Was pretty stoked that I could buy marine maps for all of NZ for $20 for it - no more getting beached in the middle of the Waitemata Harbour for me (but that's another pratfall).
There are many apps to sleep with, although my favourite is e-books. Considering it's on my wifi network at home, I haven't even bothered to download any, I just read the html ones I find on Gutenberg usually.
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"marine maps for all of NZ* for $20"
please say you are kidding!
Else, very seriously, I'm going to invest in a Galaxy SA - which i can only use outside the Coast-*I have them in paper, bought for a considerably greater price...
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Islander, in reply to
You see, me and a grandnephew could spend wonderful, quite silent but deeply involved times reading the Southern coast lines (he actually likes other ones more, but is tolerant of my involvment in the far glorious upper & roundabout South-)
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Yes, the HTC Desire's internal memory is a slight hindrance, one that I like resolved by Android to allow more storage on the SD card. Most apps are able to be stored on such, just not all. I understand that if one is prepared to install Cyanogen or the like then there are other options not open to the basic Android 2.2
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Now of course having written all this and read the responses, i felt bound to throw this into the mix...
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/all/1 -
I wish it had a thingy for getting the stones out of horses hooves... just in case
When my wife mocks me for carrying my multitools (plural) around with me, I always tell her that you never know when you're going to run across some poor horse with a stone in it's hoof. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity to earn the undying gratitude of the equine world. A bit like Androcoles and his lion.
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BenWilson, in reply to
please say you are kidding!
I shit you not. For $19.95, the entire coastline with soundings and all the markers, buoys, hazards, etc, and special zones (like no-fishing). Comes with the software that lets you do standard GPS stuff - see speed, heading, location, plot trips via waypoints, measure distances, estimate fuel usage, save favourites (secret fishing spots :-) I wish). It's still a bit crude, doesn't do 3D views, doesn't autorotate. But there's also some features you never get in a proper marine GPS - weather, wind and tide information. Does let you photo tag locations to share with the other Androids too, and autoupdates changes to the maps. Pretty amazing for the price, really. The brand is Navionics.
There's several dozen other coastlines for similar prices, covering most of the First World. They're surprisingly small files too - I think NZ was under 10MB.
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don’t dare inhale or swallow the tiniest speck.
Getting a little off the topic (strange, loves me a good iPhone) but while caesium-137 is nasty stuff the trace amounts of caesium in the air in Tokyo now are actually "OK" if that's what you're referring to as "tiniest specks". There was a bunch in Germany post Chernobyl and all over the weapons test sites, but it also has industrial uses in cancer treatment and the like. Stay away from it in anything remotely resembling concentration, sure, but the "tiniest specks" that are registering now in Tokyo and surrounds aren't going to be dangerous.
But God knows I'd have been doing the same thing as you and your mates in regards to getting the f*&k away from a nuclear plant in an unknown state of trouble...
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Garth Bray, in reply to
@gareth thanks that's reassuring - more so if i knew you had a background in nuclear sciences or medicine. Don't want to panic people who might be reading this. have yet to hear from work where if at all i can get some kind of comprehensive check-up, but the nuke and chem PhD i spoke to in the airport departure lounge at Narita seemed to think there would be no such thing. i note the bbc reporting US Homel;and Security is now scanning for radiation at airports with direct connections to Japanese airports.
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Gareth Ward, in reply to
more so if i knew you had a background in nuclear sciences or medicine
I did go to the doctor once, does that count?
Edit: a slightly more serious answer is that I got intrigued by the reports of radiation so looked a bunch of stuff up - started at good ol Wiki and read here and here at least as well as others:
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/cesium.html
http://www.hko.gov.hk/radiation/tidbit/200803/cs137_e.htmIt's nasty enough though that it's considered a leading contender for likely contents of a dirty bomb (but obviously in significant dose)
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Rob S, in reply to
no more getting beached in the middle of the Waitemata Harbour for me (but that's another pratfall).
Between Pt Chev & Te Atatu or the upper reaches?
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BenWilson, in reply to
Between Pt Chev & Te Atatu or the upper reaches?
Between, just coming out of the channel, whose existence I rapidly learned to appreciate.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I wander how many of those where activated after the Tsunami struck?
And how many would have been responded to? But the good thing about those - so long as you are alive, you've still got a chance, they can still find you.
I wonder how clogged low bandwidth channels like CB or VHF got during the disasters? 40 channels sounds like a lot until every single person who owns one starts simultaneously using it.
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Islander, in reply to
That is a very interesting point Steve : I am irritated to the max that I cant – any longer- transfer all my previous iMac contents to a new machine. Which is why I havent bought a new machine. And wont.
This is one of the many reasons I wont buy an iPad. Or any new iMac laptop (Air? Schmear.)
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That is a very interesting point Steve : I am irritated to the max that I cant – any longer- transfer all my previous iMac contents to a new machine. Which is why I havent bought a new machine. And wont.
Yes you can. If the machine is really ancient and doesn't have firewire you might have to do it manually, but the contents of your mac hard drive are just files and can transfer via network or external flash drive or hard drive. Firewire and use of the migration application is the best way however.
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As well as using the migration assistant with Firewire, you can also use it across ethernet or through a wireless connection (ethernet is slow, wireless is very very slow). If one is backing up the computer with Time Machine, you can also use the backup volume as a source for transferring files with Migration Assistant (I did this one last week).
Unless you are talking about having an iMac too old for Migration Assistant to understand (System 9? pre 2002?), which I would agree would need manual copying. -
Islander, in reply to
Thanks Kyle - all my machines have firewire, to date. I hadnt thought about the external hard drive. I might have a play around...
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My macs are the cute little one with the swivel arm that came out in about 2000?
It was a G4 I think, running OSX.
A macMini, 4 years later. And then the G5 iMac (20”) and it’s 21” successor. And a G4
laptop. So, everything with migration assistant et al…I was thinking about replacing the laptop until I discovered the newest models no longer support firewire-
just incidentally, I work on the 21”, and keep the laptop in the van; 2 whanau use the Mini & the 20”. I’m not a collector or anything!
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