Tangential Thinking

One of the nicest features of my iPhone remains the mail sync capabilities. I’m a heavy email user and sync several accounts which include MobileMe and Exchange. This unfortunately means I also have first-hand experience of just how hard that hits the puny 3G battery roll on the iPhone released next summer!

Anyhow, Apple aren’t known for their openness when it comes to disclosing the finer points of their updates, so it’s no suprise there are some undocumented changes in iPhone 3.1 which are causing a range of pains for iPhone/3G/3GS users.

It turns out that until 3.1, the implementation of Exchange ActiveSync in 3.1 was fairly weak from a security perspective. Organisations which are using Exchange 2007 and have device policies set couldn’t properly block handsets which didn’t have a pin code set or encryption enabled.

So for users of the original iPhone and 3G as of 3.1 if your firm uses such policies you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place – unless they relax the Exchange ActiveSync policy associated with your exchange account (preferrably creating a new policy which is applied specifically to those with affected devices) your syncing days are over.

Users with the 3GS will either be prompted to use a PIN (or error out if one isn’t used, I don’t recall which) and find that encryption is enforced (if policy dictates).

Of course this is really an internal IS problem, after all nobody would connect their personal telephone to the corporate messaging infrastructure, right?

Tower defense games are all the rage at the moment and for good reason, the idea of having the bad guys line up to be passed ‘through the grinder’, wandering aimlessly though weapons you’ve lined up to chew them into itty bitty pieces turns is quite a lot of fun.

With the touchscreen interface the iPhone has several great tower defense games, the most popular probably being FieldRunners although personally being a sucker for the old neon/vector graphic style I’m personally partial to geoDefense.

At WWDC yesterday ngmoco, creators of Rolando showed off a new game, a 3d Tower Defense iPhone title called Star Defense.

I’ve been fairly skeptical of many 3D games and their claims but ngmoco did such a great job with Rolando I’ve given Star Defense a shot and to say I’m impressed is an understatement. Star Defense literally adds a new dimention to Tower Defense only problem now is all the hours it’s going to eat up trying to beat it!

I had certain fears regarding yesterdays WWDC keynote. Specifically that Apple would compromise on the greatest of the iPhones strengths with a cut-price handset which lacked some of the key hardware features.

I’ve always maintained that one of the big advantages Apple have over the competition is the ‘known quantity’ the handset represents. One screen resolution, multi touch, the accelerometer, etc. When developers are faced with that kind of standard platform versus the variety of devices running Android, WinMo or Symbian it’s a bit of a no-brainer…

Sure, handsets have to evolve, the 3G for example added GPS and high speed data, which for me were must-haves at upgrade, but the really important stuff remained unchanged.

I expected the 3GS, the improved camera, video capability and magnetometer are all decent additions and they don’t mess with the core of the platform which make it so appealing. The new features aren’t enough to make me want the upgrade but knowing they’ll be there when I upgrade to a 4th gen device is also nice.

What I didn’t expect was the shift in iPhone 3G models, rather than producing an iPhone lite, Apple have simply made the 8Gb 3G a $99 offering. Really reassuring for a developer I can tell you

So, you broke Safari 4 but kept the mobile device platform consistent, guess I’ll let you off the hook for now Apple!

… and I’m an App Store addict.

It’s true, since 2.0 landed last year I’ve probably faffed* with my iPhone more than when I first got it.

Sure, like most other geeks I dabbled with Jailbreaking but I always concluded the trade-offs just weren’t worth it. Additional functionality came at the price of speed and performance. If I was ok with that I’d have stuck with WinMo.

We’re not talking total fanatacism here, but I recently realised I had to address my “problem” when I was unable to download any more apps due to insufficient space on the springboard.

That’s nine screens worth of apps, games and other assorted timesinks.

Aside from gnawing more than a gigabyte of the 16gb total capacity having so many screens of icons is just plain unwieldy. I’m sure apple were worried about negative reactions if springboard capacity were the limiting factor in downloading new apps (and lets not forget the cut they take of every sale there) but I can’t help but think that had it been only 5 or 6 pages I’d have identified my “problem” a little sooner.

Just to be clear, 9 screens is 100 icons (96 plus bottom row) I don’t think I use that many apps across all of my macs. I don’t know if I could name that many mac apps.

So, today I’ve done the unthinkable and wiped my phone. I have no apps, no games and until I get home no music. I’m going to ration myself to five apps today and to add one a day at most for the next week.

Which should be a nice way to determine my top 10. Something for a future post

*not to be confused with fapped. I’ve never been that excited by technology…

Skype for iPhone was released today and is now on the app store. I’m going to faff with it today and post some thoughts later.