Dead Ink Vinyl

Somewhere in the last six months, the iPhone overtook the MacBook Pro as my primary computer. I don’t know when it happened—it was an imperceptible, gradual shift in the way I organized my life. I intended my iPhone to be used as a lifeline for those times I didn’t have WiFi for my laptop. I knew this included all of the time I spent at work, but I’d gotten along fine for the prior three years being disconnected from my personal communications during the business day. I thought would be using the iPhone’s email capabilities for “emergency” communications: last-minute Toastmasters meeting coordination and the like¹.

Now, I use the iPhone every day and it handles my the majority of personal computing needs. It’s convenient and (generally) a joy to use. I don’t appreciate being sent to my secondary computer for tasks I should be able to accomplish on my primary device. I don’t like opening my MacBookPro to surf the Web. Or to read email, record appointments, update contact information, or even to tweet. In fact, I only look forward to using my MBP for coding, blogging, writing documents, and image manipulation. For my everyday online activities, I far prefer using my iPhone. When I have to use my MBP for an “iPhone activity”, I get irritated.

The irritation has been increasing over the last couple of months. Mostly, my irritation is incited by Web sites that don’t lend themselves to ease of use on the iPhone (for example, my beloved Highrise)—or worse, completely disrespect the fact that I’m on a low-bandwidth EDGE connection (for example, Grub Hub, which I saw advertised on the CTA but had to dismiss because the home page took more than three minutes to load).

With the release of the SDK, the iPhone is graduating to become a full computing platform. It will move beyond email and Web sites². I anticipate that the coming year will see the release of all the applications I need to avoid cracking open my MBP for any of the mundane stuff. Finally, I’ll get to use my iPhone for instant messaging, enjoyable Twittering, Highrise, and WordPress.com administration.

Even if I have to build those applications myself.

¹ Of course, looking back on it, I note that my first mobile phone was purchased “for emergencies”, but very quickly became my primary phone service. Perhaps this is a general pattern for adoption of new technologies.

² To be honest, Web applications have really carried the iPhone farther than I expected. There are some very talented and dedicated people out there who pushed the Web on MobileSafari far beyond what I imagined possible.

I love feeds. I subscribe to the content in which I’m interested and my computer grabs and stores the latest updates for me to read whenever, where ever — online, offline, on my iPhone or desktop. Basically, feeds turn the Web into email. Great!

So I subscribed to everything. If I read a couple of articles from the same source that were interesting to me, I would subscribe to that source’s feed. Over the course of a year, this lead to me be the proud subscriber to over 400 feeds. Many of the feeds published content daily or even more frequently. I grouped the feeds into categories like “Must Read”, “Should Read”, and “Read If I Have Time”. I quickly fell behind and after two years, I had over 3000 unread articles.

Feeds were a fire hose and I couldn’t take it. I needed to reassess my relationship with feeds. Instead of subscribing to everything of interest, I cut back — way back. I unsubscribed from everything and waited to see what I would miss the most.

Turns out, the two feeds I missed the most were John Gruber’s Daring Fireball and 37signal’s Signal vs. Noise. Both of these feeds publish up to several times a day, but Gruber’s posts tend to be extremely short and I didn’t have any concerns about being able to keep up.

After a while, I found (or rediscovered) other feeds that were interesting. Should I subscribe? I needed a heuristic. Only subscribe to feeds that post less than once a day. Actually, about once a week is ideal. I found that feeds posting more frequently are trying to cover news in realtime. My Twitter community fills that need nicely, so I don’t need to overwhelm myself with feeds that repeat what I already know.

It’s been three months since I’ve adopted the heuristic and I’m up to 15 feeds. I’m always up-to-date and I feel in control of my experience. I look forward to reading my feeds again.

Dear AT&T Wireless,

You suck. I switched from you to TMobile six years ago because you didn’t provide reception in my condo. I was happy with TMobile. They had exceptional coverage in my condo—and everywhere else I went, too¹! They had good prices and excellent customer service every time I called them. (Their in-store service left something to be desired, but sadly that’s parity for the industry.)

I had to switch back to you, AT&T, because you are the exclusive carrier of the iPhone. I had hoped that your network coverage would have improved in the last six years, but as soon as I powered on my iPhone in my condo I saw that it hadn’t changed at all. I love my iPhone, but your disgraceful coverage limits it’s utility and hampers my ability to recommend it to non-enthusiasts.

I was reminded of this again on Sunday while attending a pre-event for Adobe MAX in the McCormick Center west building. As soon as I stepped inside, I was down to one bar, and a half dozen paces further I had no service at all. I saw other iPhone users struggling with the same problem. People with other carriers, however, had no problems at all.

So, I simply have this to tell you: I completely empathize with those who are unlocking their iPhones to use them on other networks. The moment I’m out from under my contract with you, I’m unlocking my phone and returning to TMobile.

Good luck,
David

¹ TMobile’s data services in Chicago are pathetic, but I use Sprint for mobile broadband and couldn’t be happier with their coverage and speed.