Articles by Chad Garrett
MobileCrunch is reporting that:
The iPhone is twice as reliable as the Blackberry after one year of ownership, a new study by SquareTrade finds.Wow. I was a Treo user for years (WinMo and Palm OS) so I know the issues these devices can have in terms of reliability– first hand. Having used the iPhone since its launch in 2007, I can confidently say I agree with this study. I have not used a BlackBerry for an extended period of time, so I don’t have first hand experience with what can happen to one, however, I have discussed this topic with the support team at my place of employment and they concur that even the fabled BlackBerry runs into issues over time.
This is big news for users that are looking for a reliable device that don’t have the patience for the potential troubles other devices can have in the Enterprise (well, even non-Enterprise environment for that matter). The study is broken into a few different subgroups including:
- Malfunction rate after 12 months
- Malfunction rates since purchase
- Probability of problems based on type (battery, call quality, etc)
- Distribution of malfunction per 100 incidents
All in all, this is excellent news for the iPhone and Apple, congratulations! Read the full report after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »
Every week I will be bringing you what I think are the week’s biggest stories and articles. Let’s get started, after the break!
This is a huge coincidence since we just had our App vs App: Shazam vs Midomi on TiPB. I love these commercials since they are so simple and really show what the iPhone can do. Well, since I think most carbon-based life forms know what the iPhone is, it is time for Apple to show how the App Store’s apps can make a difference in your life.
Apple has had a recent sting of new ads from baseball to finding a place to eat. This ad deals with [iTunes link] Shazam, a free app that allows you to hold your iPhone up to a music source, and Shazam will tell you what the song is and give you links to videos and even a link to the song on iTunes.
How cool is that?
While we wait for an “official” iDisk app from Apple, the folks over at Quickoffice have released a free app for the iPhone called MobileFiles. This app is different from our recent post about Box.net. This app is used strictly to access your MobileFiles on the go. There is lots to talk about this app, but what I like the most is that when you access a file from your MobileMe account, it saves it locally for you to access later; without being online. You can even go in and manage what files you want to keep locally or not. Here is a high-level list of things you can do with Mobilefiles:
- Add multiple MobileMe accounts
- Add multiple MobileMe public folders
- View almost any type of supported file
- Built-in file manager
- FREE!!!
Quickoffice is also working on an office client for the iPhone as well. Others that have jumped in the document editing area are Documents to Go and Microsoft. Who will be victorious? I can’t wait to find out. Do yourself and favor, and if you have a MobileMe account, don’t wait, download this awesome app now!
Gallery after the jump…
Before you get excited, I realize that not all of you know what Sonos is. Sonos is a way to control all of the music in your home (including Internet radio such as Pandora and Last FM), room by room.
Needless to say, the announcement from Sonos that you can now control all of this via your iPhone is really exciting! I personally don’t use Sonos, but I have a friend that does, and he filled me on on the scoop…
So, I am sitting at my local Starbucks and decided to give the new AT&T free Wi-Fi a spin on my iPhone 3G. The process was painless. After turning on Wi-Fi, you are presented with a screen to enter you phone number. Afterwards, it tells you that you are receiving a link via text (for free) with a link to access AT&T’s free Wi-Fi.
I have to admit, at first I was thinking that this seems a little complicated and a lot of steps to just connect via Wi-Fi… but wait, it is all-goooooood.
So, I get my text message and it tells me that I now have access and that it is renewable every 24 hours. Cool. Now, why is this exciting and post-worthy? Well, If you have tried to connect to an AT&T Wi-Fi access point before, say, via Starbucks, you connect, but as soon as your iPhone goes into sleep mode, you loose the Wi-Fi connection and you have to reconfigure it all over again!
With this process, this does not happen! I can only assume it adds your MAC address to AT&T’s service. So everytime your iPhone goes into sleep mode, you don’t have to worry about turning it back on! It automatically connects (well, for 24 hours anyway). How great is that! I say kudos to AT&T in taking the extra time to ensure that the free Wi-Fi experience on your iPhone is flawless. Good job.
Check out the gallery below!
Every week I will be bringing you what I think are the week’s biggest stories and articles. Let’s get started, after the break!
Are you wishing you had iDisk on your iPhone? Bummed you don’t? Looking for an alternative? Then look no further! Arstechnica informs us thatBox.net has just released an app for the iPhone! For those of you that don’t know, Box.net is a free service that gives you online access to 1GB of storage. Now, you can access this information directly from your iPhone!
After logging in you have access to your folders and documents; if the iPhone can render it, you can view it! You can even share folders with the handy “Share” button. You can also upload photos as well, but regretfully, only one at a time.
One neat feature is that if you share a file, you will be notified of an update via the updates section located in the bottom left of the app!
This is a 1.0 release, and we are looking forward to what new features Box.net might bring us! I took some pictures from my iPhone below, enjoy!
Right after we complete our contest for TiPB AT WORK: VNC, out comes a preview of LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone. LogMeIn is a free tool for remoting into your Mac or PC. Now, this functionality is coming to iPhone.
This application has me rather excited since I already use this service; and it works well. I am currently hooked on Jaadu and Win Admin, but this could be a very viable option for replacement of these apps. The preview page discusses little about actual functionality, but based on the third image in the above graphic, you will be able to use multi-touch to zoom in and out of the screen.
Also, by looking at the toolbar, it looks like you can search (a shortcut to Spotlight?) left/right-click, keyboard and even a globe (perhaps a shortcut to Safari?)
All in all, very exciting indeed! We will update you as we learn more!
Sometimes just having the default sync cable is not enough. If you use an iPhone 3G, that sucker’s battery dies very fast and waiting till you get home/work to charge it just doesn’t cut it in certain situations. So, I have been on a quest, a quest to find a great car charger that can double as a general charging/syncing cable. Well, I think I have found it, the Griffin PowerDuo [available now in TiPb Store!]
Read on for the full review!
