Kickass Customers and the iPhone

Today was an interesting day at work. This lady I know who always comes through the checkout (She always wants two packs of Winston regulars) showed up today. The checker I was helping out said “Oh, the lady with the iPhone? The one who uses Macs?”

I looked at him, like “Whaaaa?”

I found out what he was talking about when this lady came through the line. She pulled out her iPhone and started to mess with it. I took notice of it and said “Well, hey. That’s two of us.” And pulled out my iPhone.

She then told me “Get a load of this.” She fired up Mocha VNC on her iPhone. I’m no stranger to VNC. I’ve used it many times on my home network. But this was different. She was able to VNC into her home Mac (Which was running Tiger. Points for that), and control it. Over the cell network. (This was EDGE, so it was slower than molasses. But it still worked.)

My jaw must have hit the floor no less than three times.

I simply replied: “I DID NOT know you could do that over the cell network.”

As such, I confirmed it when I got home today. I flipped on the DMZ mode for my computer, set my VNC server to my IP address (On the iPhone) pressed the big yellow button and crossed my fingers.

After one false start (My computer didn’t pick up it’s new IP, I had to renew it’s DHCP lease), it worked!

I’m definitely going to be using this. A lot. I think I’ve found a compelling reason to keep 3G on now.

The Myspace Mobile App, and why it needs some polish

Hell, a lot of people know I use myspace. I use it to keep in touch with friends.

As such, I’ve been using the Myspace mobile application quite frequently. And I’m continuing to notice that it reeks of crap, directly opposite to the Facebook app.

I’ll look over a few cases here.

Design of the iPhone

Seeing a recent article on Gizmodo made me think of this.

Many people harsh on the iPhone for whatever reason. Because it lacks features, because it lacks capabilities. It lacks the ability to use MMS. Yeah, whatever.

Extreme? Unfortunately, we are. (UPDATED)

So I saw by way of John Gruber’s Daring Fireball that there was an article from the Free Software Foundation going on about how the iPhone 3G is a prison, and pushing the OpenMoko FreeRunner phone as a phone that isn’t so…prison-like.

Let it be said I normally support what the FSF stands for. But this article…sort of sucks.

Be thankful for the iPhone

Okay. It’s time for all of us to sit the hell down and have a little talk about the iPhone.

While many people seem to be saying the iPhone is an overpriced piece of garbage phone, and that it sucks compared to the new Samsung Instinct, I think we all need to sit down and think about it.