My Quick(ish) iPhone 6-Plus Impression

(Insert stand-up routine here).

No, not that kind of impression.

What I'm holding up there is my newest phone, Apple's iPhone 6-Plus, which just came in the mail last Wednesday. Which is around 5 days after the phones first went on sale at stores nationwide. This was the usual upgrade after my 2-year contract commitment expired with AT&T, at which time I became eligible to replace my existing phone -- Apple's 2012 iteration, the iPhone 5.

The iPhone 5: Why I'm Not Underwhelmed

Well, my birthday came and went without much fanfare as usual. For those into details, it was a week and a half ago on Sep. 7th, and I turned 36. And while I didn't do anything on that day except complete one more revolution around the Sun, I did bake brownies in celebration. So that's something!

Anyway, seeing as how it is my birthday, and also seeing how I've had my current iPhone 4 for over two years now, I thought it was nice of Apple to schedule a major unveiling of their latest iteration of this popular product line around the same time. As a mild technophile I always suspected I would be getting the next iPhone anyway. Not just because I was due for an upgrade, but because I really do enjoy the form factor and GUI of Apple phones. So it was a no-brainer that the iPhone 5 would be this year's birthday present to myself. All I needed to see was a reasonable improvement over my current phone. That's it.

And that's not only what I got, but a bit more.

The iPhone 5 (left) vs. the iPhone 4 (right). Fight, fight, fight!

Random Thought Of . . . August

Yup, I said AUGUST. Because that's probably how long it will take before you hear from me again, judging by the absence of anything Batista on this blog lately.

Yes, yes, I know I've been a bad blogger. But while I'm not ready to come back to full-steam posting mode yet, I figured I'd let you in on the most recent question to pop into my mind a few minutes ago while I was working out:

Why don't all the major booksellers figure out a way to allow people who have purchased the print version of their products to scan the barcode on their receipt with their smart phones or tablet PCs and download the electronic copy for free?

Really, is that so hard to do for us loyal customers?

I only ask because I have a ton of hardcopy books sitting on my shelves in need of reading, but I no longer carry physical books with me when I leave the house. These days, all my on-the-run reading is done on either my iPhone or iPad. It's terribly useful, especially on my mobile since that's always with me when I leave the house. I only read physical books when I'm curled up in bed at night and have 30 - 45 minutes to spare before Mr. Sandman knocks me over the head and it's lights out.

So, being that I'm a loyal book purchaser from such places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, why can't I just download copies of those self same books on the Kindle and Nook apps, respectively, that are on my portable devices?

I mean, talk about being GREEDY! No wonder the industry's in the crapper.

Thoughts?

Apple iTunes Is Really Amazing!

Let me explain my problem with digital music. See, way back in 2002, my wife got me a Dell DJ 20GB HDD music player.

Back then, this was a big deal, as Apple's iPod had only just recently come onto the scene and had not yet revolutionized the way we listened to music. At the time, the majority of us were toting around Compact Disc walkmans and a portfolio of CDs in our obligatory backpacks -- which we'd have to manually exchange whenever we wanted to listen to another album.

Flash music players offered an alternative initially, but the real future of portable music storage would be the compact hard-drive player.

Flash forward to now, and the Apple machine has totally taken over. And its iTunes utility rules the roost. Dell has long since discontinued my version of their music player, but yet I have my entire library on it. It is the only way I have to listen to music. Problem is, after 8 years of continuous use, and at nearly 95% of its total capacity, my Dell DJ is finally ready to kick the bucket. It still works, but earlier this year I must have uploaded the wrong music file because now a good 30% of my .mp3s are either corrupted at the tag level -- or outright deleted. Of the remaining 70%, more than half the music files are copy-protected. Which means, if I were to buy another portable music player, I would need to find the original source for these albums and re-rip them. A major pain in the ass, to say the least.

But, alas, I have had to face reality. The writing was on the wall. Plus, with the fact that I now have a 32GB iPhone 4 mobile, realistically I knew I could port over my entire Dell DJ library and still have room to spare. And since I take my iPhone everywhere I go, I really had no excuse for not using the iPod music function built into it.

Problem is, I resisted having to use iTunes for the longest time. Lisa has had various iPods now over the years. And the few times I've had to deal with iTunes on her behalf was a big headache. iTunes really does take some patience and getting used to, though. A fact I did not realize until I recently made the decision to fully port over my Dell's .mp3 library to Apple's proprietary beast of an interface.

Still, I figured if I'm going to embrace this plan fully, I should do it right.

So over my 2-week Christmas break, I started by purchasing a Western Digital 1TB external hard drive for my home PC.

This thing's a beauty, and runs like a charm! It allows me to free up a ton of space on my existing hard drive, which in turn makes my PC run smoother.

Next, I transferred over as much of my non-protected, but occasionally tag-corrupted, music files from the Dell DJ. Because there is so much tagging confusion going on, it's been a slow process. Sometimes I have to manually open up each file and listen to the music to figure out which song it is. Then I have to research online the exact title, album, artist, year, track number, etc. Sometimes iTunes parses all this information for me from the embedded registry file. Most of the time, it cannot due to the degree of corruption. So I have to enter this information myself.

In the meantime, I've been taking every single CD album Lisa and I own and burning them on our home desktop PC. Now that I have a whopping 1 terabyte of hard drive space to play around with, I no longer have to worry about choking my PC with a blitz of new files. All the music goes immediately to the hard drive, and I've configured iTunes to redirect from there going forward. No longer will it access my PC's pitiful 120GB internal hard drive to play these files.

Burning all these CDs and rebuilding my playlists have been a time-consuming chore. But when all is said and done, I shall have a brand new and non-corrupted music library that totally KICKS ASS! And because it's all on iTunes, it's safe to say I won't be losing company support of my hardware like what Dell did to me. So my music should be totally secure for the next 10 years at least.

That is, until some other new fangled music technology comes about. Maybe everything will exist in the Cloud in a decade's time, and we will no longer need physical drives to store all our media. Who knows?

What I do know is that having all my music on iTunes now has given me a broader appreciation for how nuanced the interface really is.

It seems restrictive and cumbersome to the uninitiated, but actually it offers far more flexibility and moderation than any other music library manager I've dealt with in the past. Better than Dell's standard manager by a long shot. Much better than Musicmatch. And, surprisingly, even superior to Red Chair's "Deubox" utility, which I used to think was, like, GOD for all my file editing needs.

Honestly, iTunes is the SHIT! If you don't think so, you're not using it correctly. Seriously.

My latest squee-worthy discovery? Creating artwork for each of my ripped albums and playlists that iTunes does not already have available.

It's so cool seeing the full-color covers of all my favorite music splash across my iPhone's gorgeous liquid LCD display. It opens up a whole new world to someone who's been dealing with a green, monochromed, text-only display ala the Dell DJ for the past decade. *shudders*

These past few days I've been focusing mostly on rebuilding my gaming soundtracks. And, honestly, I have a LOT of those! All the Final Fantasy games, Actraiser, Altered Beast, Castlevania series, God of War series, Gears of War, F-Zero, Golden Axe, Metal Gear series, etc. It's been a lot of fun porting all those over and getting all the artwork.

So, as you can see, I've fully embraced my new Apple overlord. Sure, I could have gotten a Zune or Archos player or something similar. But, I'm tired of worrying about where my product support will be coming from years down the line. With Apple and its millions upon MILLIONS or rabid, adoring fans who never leave its side -- I at least know I'm dealing with a company that cares about its image and, more importantly, its customers.

I feel like I'm in good hands. And this makes me a very, very happy tech consumer!

My Lovefest With Technology Continues . . .

I swear, is there really anything my iPhone can't do? I've been a Netflix member now for 3 years, and only recently have I started watching titles through the company's instant streaming interface, which allows one to rent their movies and watch them all online. And now in addition to my PC and HDTV, I can watch stuff that's on my Netflix "queue" over my iPhone as well, from anywhere that has 3G or WiFi coverage.

At first, streaming was a bit laggy when this technology first debuted. But now, thanks to added infrastructure, I have to say I've become highly addicted to this facet of the overall Netflix membership. It's quite smooth and serviceable, to the point that I now get impatient whenever a movie or show is NOT available for instant streaming and I have to wait for snail mail to get my titles. Yuck!

What being able to access my account and watch content on my iPhone does now is allow me to catch up on old episodes of Stargate: SG1 from work. Or any other great tv show I somehow missed during its first run for various reasons.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: oh, bad employee! Watching tv on the company's dime instead of doing his work. But, you see, it's not what you think. We're allowed to listen to music via headphones all day long and until the cows come home here. What I do with the iPhone is similar. I perch the phone up at eye level off to the side. Then I set Netflix to play and go about doing my work at my desk like normal. My eyes are on my work, with only occasional sight breaks to see the important stuff on the small screen before quickly returning. I'm not using company resources, and the screen is not interfering with my PC monitor. In fact, I find I'm able to pay full attention to what's going on in the show I'm watching while barely looking at the phone. In this way, it's really no different than how I sometimes watch tv at home: which is to say, playing in the background while I get other things done.

But it's amazing how much I can get done this way. I guess having my mind occupied on more than one level while I work is a good thing. Not to mention how fast the time seems to fly. And, as an added bonus I get to fly through seasons of tv shows I really don't have much time to watch at home (what with writing and working out and all the other things that demand of my time).

I've said it before here, and I'll say it again: I *heart* technology!

Trying Out A New iPhone App . . .

Yesterday I made the long drive up to my Aunt's and Uncle's house, which is way out in the middle of the woods in upstate New York. They had their last outdoor cookout of the year there, and I had a good time. I also thought it would be the perfect opportunity to test out this new iPhone application called "Pano," which allows you to take panoramic pics with your iPhone -- in effect "cheating" a much wider angle than you would normally be able to achieve on any phone's camera. You take around 4 or 5 pics, moving your viewer to the right with each photo taken, and line up your next shot with the previous one to get as close to a seamless stitch as possible. Once you've taken the required number of photos, the software goes to work and blends each one together so that you have one super wide-angle shot. I was impressed!

I ended up taking several panos around the property, which you can see below. Click on each one and to see a larger image:

As you can see, the leaves have already changed and have even begun to fall this far North. By contrast, down in my neck of the woods in NYC -- we've barely begun the changeover process even though it's already October. I provided a pano I took just this morning outside my bedroom window in the Bronx for comparison:

Pretty neat, huh? I'll take another one in a few weeks to show just how long it takes for it to really start looking like Fall around here. Usually, we don't start looking like upstate NY until the end of the month and into the start of November. Although we've had a problem with drought conditions this summer, so I expect the leaves will start turning sooner and more severely than in years past. We'll see.

The cookout ended with roasting S'mores around a bonfire -- although, to be accurate, they were roasted before the fire got as big as it is in the pic below:

All in all, I had a great time and got to meet a lot my Aunt's and Uncle's friends. I left their place around 8 for the 3 hour drive back to the city alone (Lisa was at work). It was a long, boring drive in mostly pitch black conditions along lonely and curvy roads. But I had an audio book to keep me company the whole way, so I was fine. At one point, a fox ran across the road lightning-quick in front of me. Luckily he was far enough away--and didn't look directly into my high beams--that I didn't even have to swerve or slow down. I had my fingers crossed that no deer would attempt to jump in front of my car, though -- and none did. Phew!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Uh Oh . . . Now They Done Did It!

I shouldn't have seen this, I really shouldn't. Because now I'm hooked!

Now mind you, I knew all about Apple's iBooks app--the eReader program for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch to rival Kindle--long before now, but I never could believe in the promise of reading books on such a small device as my iPhone 4. That is until today!

After reading on John Scalzi's blog that his latest novella, "The God Engines" was out for purchase on the app, I finally relented and downloaded it for free (the app, not the book). And, wow, what a great program this is! It comes with Winnie the Pooh already pre-loaded, and even that alone was enough to convince me that, despite the small screen, the resolution on the new iPhone 4 makes the words really pop out at you.

So, I've been reading "The God Engines" and I have to say, I think this may just be the answer to my prayers. See, I'm a man who loves to read, but absolutely HATES carrying books around everywhere I go. Especially when I commute on the crowded NYC subways every day. But having this palm-sized handy device--which I carry with me all the time anyway--able to take over the task of being my portable library is like a godsend on the 4 train during rush hour. The iPhone 4 is so easy to hold up, and the words so easy to read, that now I'm afraid I might have to stop buying hardcopy books. Not completely, mind you, because I still love collecting my favorite titles. But this may just cut my physical book purchasing down by 60% in the future. Yes, by that much!

In fact, the only thing stopping me from adopting this new book-buying philosophy right this minute is the still lacking selection being offered by Apple. But, of course, this will change in time. They keep expanding every week it seems. Pretty soon, they're going to eclipse the Kindle. Mark my words!

The Future's So Bright . . .

Yesterday on his blog, "Whatever", SF writer John Scalzi expressed amazement over his new Droid X phone, and asked us all to consider the moment a particular piece of technology or advancement made us realize that we were now in TEH FUTURES!!! The comments from folks writing in their moment is quite the cross-section of different experiences, but little did I know that my own would come this very day. Like Scalzi, the discovery came with regards to my mobile phone; except that my phone is the phone everyone loves to hate -- the Apple iPhone 4.

See, I was watching a Chase bank commercial today. Chase is the bank that I'm with, for those keeping score at home. The commercial was for the Chase banking app on the iPhone that lets you manage your account, pay bills, and transfer money between accounts all remotely. I've had this app on my phone for almost 2 years now. It works great. But apparently it was recently upgraded to include a new exciting feature that has now convinced me that I am truly and surely in TEH FUTURES!!!

Let me presage this discovery by admitting that, in this day and age, I still find the occasion where I have to deposit paper checks. It doesn't happen every day, or even every week. But enough times throughout the year to make it an annoyance for me, particularly during tax season. So what has Chase done now to make my life all the better? Why, they've given me the ability to simply take a photo of my check with the iPhone's camera and use the Chase app to send the pic remotely. When the send is complete, the amount is magically deposited to my account sans the need for an ATM visit or face-to-face time with a teller.

In other words: I can deposit checks into my account FROM MY BED, people! Holy hells!

Yes, yes . . . I'm pragmatic enough to know that this singular feat is probably not as impressive to some of you as it is to me. And I'm also aware that the basic technology behind this function has been around in some form or another on mobile devices for quite some time. But I'd be willing to bet that *your* bank doesn't have this feature, not if your bank isn't Chase. And I'm also willing to bet that you receive the occasional check what needs depositing from time to time, too.

And, I'm sorry, but to me this is just friggin AWESOME!

Isn't it? Well -- ISN'T IT?!!!

Okay, okay. I'm calm now. Let's all return to our more important matters.

Look What Came In The Post While I Was Away . . .

My latest electronic toy, and after a much maligned delay of 2 weeks! Sure, I could have used this phone while I was abroad. In fact, it was something I was looking forward to bringing with me due to its improved speed and the compass factor and what-not. I'm not bitter, though. The iPhone 4 got to me in the end, and that's all that matters.

So far it seems to be a significant upgrade to my 2-yr old iPhone 3G. I have to play around with it some more to unlock all its secrets, but so far I'm loving the super gorgeous screen resolution and the advanced camera with video function. Nifty!

Yes, such things make me happy.

Have I Mentioned How Much I LUVS My iPhone?

There's simply no limit to what Apple's phone can do, as evidenced by yet another "must have" app now available through its iTunes store. Case in point, the "Story Tracker" app.

Aspiring speculative fiction writer and part-time apps creator, Andrew Nicolle, designed this program to keep track of his short story submissions. As someone who's in the same bind as Andrew, I know all too well how confusing and time-consuming the process can become. All I have to say is: God bless you, Mr. Nicolle! :)

Story Tracker allows the budding writer to input the titles of completed works, the markets they're being submitted to, the date of submission, whether or not the MS was rejected, and a ton of other useful tracking info. When you have more than one story out to different magazine publishers, this is a vital tool for making sure you don't get your wires crossed, so to speak.

I already have a rudimentary Word doc which I use to keep track of my submissions, but this is light-years better! And anything that gives me another excuse to whip out my iPhone and make good use of the exorbitant service bill I willingly pay each month is a bonus point in my book.

I've only just purchased the full app, so I haven't had a chance yet to put it through its paces. But from the little I did try out, this is going to be a lifesaver I can tell.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, and you're finding it troublesome keeping track of all your story submissions, I'd wager to say you'll find Andrew's program a godsend as well. Click on the link to his website above, or go to the iTunes Apps store and check out the app for yourself. If you don't want to plunk down the full $9.99, Andrew has a "lite" version available for free that you can pitter around with and judge on your own terms.

When I get home from work tonight, I think I'll be devoting an hour or so to imputing all my relevant info. As I'm just on the verge of sending out 4 or 5 brand new and polished stories of my own, I can't wait to try this out "in the field." :)

I'll let you know how it goes.

I Have Turned To The Dark Side!

Yes, folks. It was bound to happen someday. I've fallen into the evil clutches of the Apple empire! I resisted its nefarious pull for as long as I could, but no longer can I ignore the sweet seductress song of progress.

Yup, I'm the proud owner of a new iPhone 3G!


It was a gift from Lisa. At first I wasn't sure that I really needed this shiny gadget in my life. After all, I'm not a big cell phone person. I use my old Motorola Razr only for emergencies and quick hellos. Nothing more. And I almost never text. However, after just a few hours playing around with the iPhone, I'm now IN LOVE!!!

Wow, the number of different things you can do with this phone is amazing! Within minutes of unlocking my SIM card, I had already synced all of my Favorites over from my home PC's Internet Explorer and was visiting my websites through Apple's proprietary web browser, Safari, with the quickness. And the ease with which I was able to add to and update my contacts list was simply mind-boggling! At first I was unsure about the touch-screen keypad, but DAYUM--this is way faster than my Razr's clunky number key texting. I'm so impressed.

Anyway, I'm not going to bore you with all the many other functions this phone can perform. Suffice to say I already feel like I can't operate without it. And while I truly hate iTunes' pushiness factor, I must admit it is a far superior music download and management service to anything else I've seen. In fact, it is too easy to use! I'm beginning to see why Apple has so many devoted legions of followers. While I still prefer my old trusty Dell DJ when it comes to listening to music (mostly due to the numerous personal playlists I've constructed over the years), I'm looking forward to downloading podcasts and audio books to the phone so that I can listen to interesting non-music items while riding the subway to work.

I plan to make full use of Audible.com's offerings once I get the chance to sync my phone with their software. Some of you may remember me pimping their service here and here. I advise you to check them out if you haven't done so already, as they have been steadily amassing a huge inventory of well-produced and voiced readings of the biggest and best novels out there. I'm specifically impressed by their genre coverage, which has grown substantial recently.

Anyway, I'm off now to play some more with the phone. :)