Okay, first of all, I know that the name of this blog is, “The TJDraper Family Blog,” and I’ve been posting a lot of techie stuff lately. Maybe my blog is having an identity crisis, I don’t know. But it’s the only blog I have, and it’s where I write about anything that interests me, or that I’m currently involved in or miffed about. And right now, I’m a little miffed at AT&T. So allow me to beat this dead horse just a bit.

Unless you’ve been living under the Verizon rock you can’t have missed that AT&T today announced restructured data plans, and at long last, the official means of tethering for the iPhone.

But there’s a catch (isn’t there always with AT&T?). No more unlimited data.

I will be the first one to admit that unlimited mobile data is just a bad idea. Ask AT&T how it’s worked out for them. It’s not been a picnic I can assure you. But up to this point I really haven’t cared how much mobile data I use since my plan is “unlimited.” However, being the techie geeky kind, I happen to know that my data has never gone over 1.5 gigabytes in one month. And typically, my usage is in the 800 meg, to 1 gig range. But that is really beside the point. Tiered data pricing makes a lot of sense to me and I support tiered data pricing. And since AT&T’s “unlimited” data is actually really soft capped at 5 gigs a month anyway, I was thinking tiered data would save me a good bit of money. My thinking was that 500 megabyte incremented tiers would be fantastic. I’d fit in nicely at 2 gigs with plenty of head room.

So what’s my beef? Well, AT&T didn’t introduce very many tiers today. There’s the 200 meg per month plan for $15.00. Obviously that’s just garbage. Anyone with a smart phone is going to use more than that. And these are smartphone plans. And then there’s 2 gigs per month for $25.00.

And that’s it.

Those are the 2 tiers…

I’m serious.

It’s not a joke.

It’s utterly ridiculous. My unlimited plan is $30.00 and the new plans are capped at 2 gigs and only $5.00 cheaper. Okay fine, I can deal. I know a few folks who won’t be able to live with that, but I can. As I say, I’ve never gone over 1.5 gigs myself so I can deal, even if I was hoping for better pricing.

But here’s the real kicker. You would think, if I pay for 2 gigs a month I should be able to use that data in any way I please right?

WRONG!!!

In order to use that data on my computer via iPhone tethering, I must shell out an additional $20.00 per month. And that does not increase my bandwidth cap at all. I still only get 2 gigs. Let me rephrase, in order for my iPhone to act as a conduit for the data I’m already paying for it to have access to, I must pay an additional $20.00 a month. This reminds me of the days when ISPs wanted to charge additional fees for each computer in the house. It’s completely ludicrous!

I refuse. I’m already paying for data. I could understand this if it was an unlimited data plan. But if I’m paying for a specific amount of bandwidth then I better be able to use it in any way I please.

It’s such a joke!

Well, I’m out of rant. But this article is pretty good!

Let me start with the MacBook Pro. I love the look, feel, battery life, and power of the new MacBook Pros. The unibody design makes it more rugged than the MacBook Pro from the previous era on which I type now. It’s solid, it’s fast, it’s got 8 hours or so of battery life. That’s all great!

But, Apple did something when they went to the unibody design that REALLY ticked me off. They dropped the Express/34 slot off all models but the 17” and replaced it with an SD card slot.

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SAY WHAT?!?

As a professional in the field of film and video I have NEVER used an SD card. I have on occasion used an SD Card reader for my personal camera. But never in my professional field of work with my laptop have I even considered the need for an SD Card reader. I do however, use the Express/34 card slot every day to connect eSATA drives to my laptop. It is a professional laptop, being a MacBook Pro and all. The MacBook Pro does not have eSATA ports, as most laptops do not. But with that wonderful standard called the Express/34 slot, I can use any number of adapters to connect all manner of gadgets, hard drives etc (including by the way, SD Card reader adapters). I would not be able to use my laptop in this professional setting very well without the Express/34 card slot.

The real kicker here is that putting an SD Card reader on the consumer MacBooks makes sense. But to replace a real professional standard multi purpose slot with an SD Card reader that only serves the one purpose is just a low blow to Apple’s loyal professional users! The position from Apple seems to be, “if you need a Express/34 Card slot, get the 17” MacBook Pro. Well I happen to be a fan of the 15” considering the 17” just too big. One of my colleagues had a 17” for some time. It’s just too darn big. My 15” is perfect and has served me well. I don’t want to be forced to buy the big bulky 17” but that is exactly what I would have to do if I upgraded right now.

Let me now move to the Pro Apps. Apple’s Pro Apps still don’t run in 64 bit. We Pro Apps users are still living in the 32 bit, access to only 4 gigs of RAM past. And the key application, Final Cut Pro, is STILL a mostly carbon app, not Cocoa (the OS X API of choice).

And now today I am seeing disturbing reports from Apple Insider, and Mac Rumors that Apple is planning to scale it’s Pro Apps to fit into a more prosumer model.

Hello? Final Cut PRO!

Does the use of the word “Pro” in these names Apple has bestowed on these products now mean nothing? There is no doubt that I have lots of things I would like to see happen to Final Cut Pro, and it’s bundled apps. I believe there is a number of ways they could be improved and would love to consult with Apple (I’m only slightly kidding, I have lots of ideas I wish Apple would ask me about), but the words “scaling Final Cut Studio apps to fit prosumers” frightens me. If that means what I think it means, then I’ll be needing to learn to use other editing software soon.

So Apple, I’m pleading with you, remember your Pro users and don’t spit in their collective faces please! Your Pro Apps and Pro computers have been a wonderful thing in my life, but now I’m very worried!

I know I’m just one person, but I have a lot of Professional Apple using friends that feel the same way. Don’t drive us out of the camp!

It can’t have escaped the notice of very many people that Steve Jobs posted an open letter concerning his ”Thoughts on Flash.”

I agree with it for the most part. I despise flash! I have a plugin installed to block flash unless I specially tell it to load. And I CERTAINLY don’t want it draining my mobile phone’s battery. But I digress.

Toward’s the end of his letter, Mr. Jobs notes his beef with Adobe over the fact that Adobe has only just come to fully support OS X’s native programing language of Cocoa even though OS X has been shipping for 10 years now. And I agree, it has been quite irritating that Adobe stuck with the Carbon API for so long when it was obviously an intermediary step in the transition from OS 9 to OS X. And of course the Carbon API in OS X is now no longer being maintained, and will never have support for 64 bit, thus finally forcing Adobe to move to Cocoa with the release of CS5 recently. So yeah, I completely agree with Jobs that Adobe is VERY LATE to this party. And frankly the apps have suffered from having been programed in Carbon. This is a layperson’s perspective, but there is always a difference in feel and responsiveness between an app written in Carbon, and an app written in Cocoa. It’s noticeable to the user. And it was noticeable in apps like Photoshop.

Now I come to my beef. Steve states in that latter portion of the letter that, “Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.” And he is correct. The last major third party dev to fully adopt the platform. But here’s a dirty little secret. Apple released an update, not too long ago, to one of it’s major applications that is still written in Carbon, and is still 32 bit. It’s Final Cut Pro! You would think, given that Final Cut really is a major player these days, that Apple would put a little more effort into it’s development. I remember thinking at one time that surely Final Cut 6 would be a native Cocoa app. And here we are at Final Cut 7. No 64 bit, no Cocoa! I mean, speaking of being late to the party…

So uhh, yeah… as much as I hate flash myself, this makes Steve seem rather silly to me! I’m thinking he should get his own house in order before he starts trying to clean Adobe’s!

Apple is holding a special event tomorrow to show the world what iPhone OS 4 holds, let’s see what they need to do to keep me happy.

It’s no secret that the iPhone has changed the landscape of smart-phones forever. In 2007, most of the smart phones on the market were not very good. Palm was a stagnating platform, and yes Blackberry seemed to be taking over the space, but even they seemed to have a problem tapping the potential of mobile devices. Then Apple waltzed right in and changed everything.

Even before Apple announced the iPhone I knew my next phone was going to be a smartphone. I had quite outgrown dumb phones, I needed to be able to get my email, and access my calendar, notes, todos and internet on the fly. So when Apple held their special iPhone announcement event I watched with rapt attention. I saw so much potential in this new platform that I ignored any shortcomings I saw. And towards the end of the event, when Apple announced that the only U.S. carrier for the iPhone would be Cingular (now AT&T), I thought, “well how bad can Cingular be, really? I mean, they are the number 2 carrier in the nation, and I have known people who really like Cingular, so I’ll bet I can live with them for the iPhone.” And of course, 3G coverage was a non-issue since the first iPhone was stupidly, 2G GSM (EDGE/GPRS) only (and yes I even thought it was stupid at the time but chose to overlook that as well).

So my first week with the iPhone was both a dismal nightmare, and a happy joyous time. Happy, because the phone was wonderful on many fronts, not the least of which was the seamless syncing with my Mac. But dismal nightmare in that AT&T’s network was so overloaded that first week that over half of the calls I tried to place would fail to go through, or would drop after a couple minutes if they did go through. And I discovered that AT&T’s in building coverage was abysmal compared to Verizon. I never really thought about it much with Verizon, I only remember a handful of times where a structure affected my ability to get signal with Verizon. AT&T on the other hand was (and is) quite different. It seemed that a good 80% of the buildings I walked into would not get good signal at all, and quite often would cause me to loose signal altogether (Yes, I am aware there are areas where AT&T does not hold a license in the 850 MHz spectrum and Verizon does, but that is not the issue in my home area so it’s not that at all). The worst part was, that I would constantly miss calls in the office where I work in downtown Franklin, TN. because the building in question was one of the places where AT&T in-building coverage was quite abysmal (I did finally learn where the sweet spot was that would at least allow my phone to ring so I could pick it up and run out of the office toward the edge of the building and talk).

Eventually AT&T did clear up the network congestion problem on their 2G network so that at least I stopped experiencing dropped calls and calls failing to go through after a couple weeks. But I discovered when I got my 3GS that the 3G network drops calls all the time, and still does. Oh yeah, and AT&T 3G footprint is garbage!

But these aren’t the end of my disappointments with the iPhone. I waited software release after software release for that untapped potential of the platform I spoke of earlier to be tapped. And yes, Apple finally did give us 3rd party applications, which opened the door for IM clients (I was sorely wanting a mobile IM client), but I was in for a nasty shock! 3rd party apps were, and are not allowed to continue running in the background. This effectively shot the whole idea of an IM client in the foot, and listening to my favorite Pandora station while reading my email, that’s out too. Yes, Apple finally gave us push notifications, which works okay for IM clients, but what about full on multi-tasking? Still no go!

And while I’m talking about notifications, the iPhone’s notification system is also abysmal! No worse, it’s beyond abysmal… I don’t have a word bad enough to describe the current state of iPhone notifications. Get a second notification before having a chance to look at the first? Too bad, the new notification pushed the old one into oblivion! GONE! No chance to see what it was. Now you have to go hunting for badged apps on the home screen.

Oh, and speaking of the home screen, I’m reminded of the lock screen. Talk about a wasted opportunity. Why can’t I get a glimpse of my email on the lock screen? Maybe a glance would tell me if it’s important or not. Know what the lock screen is good for? Telling the time, and seeing the last notification. Oh, and I suppose you can see how good your cellular signal is That’s IT!

To cap this all off, my brother-in-law was here last week with his Android device. It galloped circles around my iPhone in terms of features and abilities. Yes, it was a tad clunkier, a tad rougher around the edges but so what? And yes, his particular model was a “bit” under powered in the processor department but there are Android phones out there with bigger processors. I was impressed with Android. I suddenly realized this was not at all like Apple against Microsoft because Google has a fine mobile OS in Android while Windows just stinks!

So that is a VERY brief overview of how I am feeling about the platform. There’s more, but you are probably already wondering what Apple is going to have to do to get me excited about the platform again. So let’s get started on that list. In order of importance.

1. VERIZON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the love of smart phones let me have the stupid phone on a REAL carrier with a REAL 3G footprint and a reliable network. Need I say more?

2. Multi-Tasking!!!!!!!!!!

Give me the option of running apps in the background! I can’t stand the fact that I can’t listen to Pandora in the background while I do other things, or keep Google Latitude updated, or whatever. Android can do it! And Android devices don’t seem to have worse battery life than iPhone, possibly even better.

3. BETTER NOTIFICATIONS!!!

I want a unified notification system 2 years ago. Enough said.

4. Release the App Store Shackles

I’m sick of apps I want getting denied by Apple. Apple decided they didn’t like google and so denied their Latitude app. In fact, while I’m fine with Apple running the App store, I shouldn’t be limited to the apps that Apple decides I can and can’t have. I should be able to download and install any app I want on MY device.

5. Better Lock Screen

I’ve already talked about this, just make it useful instead of stupid waste of space. And let me CUSTOMIZE it.

6. Customization in general!

This is another area where Apple gets and F minus on the iPhone. There is almost nothing I can customize about it. I don’t want my icons to be limited to Apple’s grid system of left to right icons. I want to decide the info I see on my lock screen, and my home screen for that matter.

7. WIDGETS

Android home screen widgets really are awesome and Apple had better get on that train!

8. Notes and to-dos

You know, I really like that fact that my contacts, calendars, and mail all sync wirelessly over the internet. Now make my notes sync over the air as well! It’s a no brainer. Oh, and get rid of that STUPID, non customizable Marker Felt font in the notes app!

And to-dos don’t even exist natively on the iPhone even though the calendar apps that iPhone syncs with (such as Apple’s own iCal) have to-dos. It’s embarrassing that iPhone doesn’t have to-dos!

9. Unified Inbox view

I love Mail on the iPhone, don’t get me wrong, but not being able to view email from all my accounts in one view like in the full grown version of Mail on OS X drives me crazy.

10. Better home screen icon management.

It’s currently horrendous trying to organize icons on the home screens.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but I consider all of these fairly important. Frankly, Android has passed the iPhone OS as if it was sitting still. And I’m tired of defending Apple for their lagging behind. I will still defend their computers, and Mac OS X. I think Apple still has the best computer platform in the world, but they better impress me tomorrow on their mobile platform front or they are going to loose me!

This is a Mac post so it may bore you… but I just have to post it. Besides, I need to take a break from posting about our country going down the tubes!

I don’t know if I have many Mac readers that read this blog but just in case they do.

I get tired of people whining about OS X. You know who you are. I read it everywhere all over the Mac and Apple blogs and forums. Apple needs to fix this, Apple needs to fix that. Blah blah. I was pushed over the edge today when I was reading someone complaining about the Finder in OS X. Here’s a good one for you, maybe you’d like to go back to the Finder in OS 9? Yeah, that would be a good idea… Or not! Have you forgotten how wretched it really was (yes a “few” people actually still think it was better, but I don’t know how that’s possible). For anyone who actually does think that the OS 9 Finder might have been better, I have an old iMac running OS 9 I’d love for you to use. The Finder is HORRIBLE! Unfit for use! OS 9’s Finder might have been better than the Finder in OS x 10.0, 10.1 or 10.2, but for the last 3 versions of OS X the Finder has been far superior to any other file manager out there.

Yes, I am aware of Pathfinder, and even used it for the 30 day trial period and the fact of the matter is, Finder is superior! And please don’t even try to bring Windows Explorer into this (it’s utterly unusable after using the Finder! Trust me, I know. I have Windows still)

Some people love to say that Apple should re-write the Finder because very little has changed since the OS X Finder first came out and it is extremely outdated.

Let me explain why this is utterly ridiculous in pictures:

Finder in OS X, 10.1 (Puma)

(image from GuidebookGallery.com)

Finder is OS X, 10.5 (Leopard)

So you Apple using whiners, we have the best file manager on the planet so please get over yourselves.

You may now go on about your business.

YES! My MacBook Pro is maxed out on RAM, and currently has the biggest hard drive one can put in a laptop! It really is amazing. I bought 4 gigs of RAM for $88.00. That’s like dirt cheap… does anyone remember so many moons ago (say like 4 years) when 4 gigs of RAM was something akin to $400.00? Yeah… it’s amazing. And it’s not like my computer was slow or anything, but going from 2 gigs to 4 gigs is just an amazing difference.

I was also running out of hard drive space, so I order the Western Digital 320 Scorpio. $129.00. Amazing… I moved a bunch of stuff of my external drives and back onto my laptop hard drive (like all my photos) and still have 85 gigs free! I’m elated!