8BitKid: Living Bit by Bit

Next week is a big week for me.  Finally, after a year of waiting, I get the iPhone with the featureset I’ve been wanting since day one.  The GPS and high-speed data are reasons enough to upgrade, but Apple’s real treat is the new 2nd-gen software shipping with the unit.  The availability of the SDK opens up a world of opportunity to developers, and I am looking forward to hopefully getting some amazing 3rd-party applications.

With the floodgates set to open, I have musing about what I want to be able to do.  It occurred to me that their may be a whole class of applications that could make use of TV-out.  I am not sure if this is permitted with the SDK, so if anyone knows, please throw it in the comments.  However, imagine how great it would be to be able to use the iPhone as a gaming control that plugs into a TV, or being able to use a remote desktop application that showed your desktop on the television, or having the ability to show presentations and use the iPhone as a control.  There would be an avalanche of applications that could leverage this feature to help take the iPhone to the big screen.  Even if this isn’t in 2.0, there is always 2.1…

I recently came across this handy tip for the Mac OS I wanted to share.  This hint comes courtesy of my friend, Hans, who in turn discovered it through his mother.  So now I am passing it along to you…

On a Mac, you can use the “F4″ or “F5″ keys to change the volume.  However, these adjustments are always accompanied by a little chirp to help you gauge the levels.  While this might be useful in certain scenarios, there are also situations where you would rather not have to hear the quasi-quacking noise.  In these moments, hold down “shift” while raising or lowering the volume.  You will still be presented with the visual cues, but will get your alteration without having to listen to the accompanying sound.  Enjoy!

Today at Apple’s WWDC developer event they announced “MobileMe”, a replacement for the “.Mac” suite of services. “MobileMe” will enable a user to keep their contacts, calendars, e-mail, synchronized across all devices via push. It also offers enhanced photo sharing capabilities that will be integrated into the iPhone and new website, as well as better data synchronization courtesy of iDisk. All of these new web applications and services can leverage “MobileMe’s” new 20GB of storage space.

So, the question inevitably becomes, “is it worth $99?”. For me, the answer is a resounding, “no”. There are a couple of major snags in the offering. First of all, my e-mail is associated with this domain, and so I have no interest in getting a “me.com” e-mail address. I have scoured the new documentation, but it doesn’t mention allowing you to do an MX forward so that you could associate a personal domain with these services. Major bummer.

Second, the services don’t match the price. $99 is a hefty sum for synchronization services. I use a Zimbra mail host for my personal data management, and it provides roughly the same functionality (disclosure: I work for Yahoo, which owns Zimbra, but this has nothing to do with why I use it).  The Zimbra hosting allows me to keep my personal domain, and offers an iSync conduit that keeps my address book and calendar in sync across all of my devices and has a web interface for accessing my e-mail, calendar, and contact list.  iTunes also supports syncing iPhone contacts with Gmail and Yahoo!, and I imagine that both of these companies will offer native apps for the iPhone to help keep everything up-to-date.

If you combine one of these PIM solutions with a free file storage solution like the most excellent Dropbox you can replicate these services for a much cheaper cost.  I pay around $6 a month for Zimbra hosting from 01.com and Dropbox is currently free.  Sure, you may not get everything managed in a single place with the extreme elegance and simplicity of an Apple product, but you do get a more flexible solution.  Is “MobileMe” for me?  Certainly not.  Is it a great service that would be perfect for my mom?  Definitely.

Apple announced that on March 6th they will be holding an event to discuss their software roadmap. This will most likely mark the introduction of the long-awaited iPhone SDK. Let the countdown begin!

- news courtesy of “Reuters”