Dammit. I really like having a dock on my desk, and really hate leaving my phone flat on the bare wood1. I wonder if there’s a stability issue with the skinner connector.
I live in a very dry city, so there’s always a fine film of dust on my desk, despite dusting it multiple times every day. I think the dust in Calgary has an especially gritty quality because it seems to scratch every material I own. ↥︎
The embargo has lifted, and 9to5 Mac has collated all of the early reviews for your convenience. The reaction seems to be overwhelmingly positive, but that’s often the case with the earliest reviews. It’s worth waiting to see what it’s like to live with every day for, like, two weeks.
Brian Lam has written on The Wirecutter after doing a great job sifting through the reviews to find the criticisms and things you won’t see in Apple’s marketing material.
But if you read both of those collections, you’ll note a few names missing. It turns out that The Verge, Macworld, and Ars Technica all did not get embargoed iPhone 5 review units, at least according to Jason Snell and Jacqui Cheng. Very odd.
Update: And goddammit, MG Siegler stole my bit:
This is without question the phone Batman would use.
The rest of Siegler’s review is good, but goddammit.
Also, John Gruber just posted his review, and it assuages my biggest concern:
When first you hold it — where by you I am presuming you are well-accustomed to the feel and heft of an iPhone 4 or 4S — you will be struck by how lightweight it feels, yet in a premium, not chintzy way. Within a week, it will feel normal, and your old iPhone 4/4S will feel like a brick.
I’m not getting an iPhone 5 (waiting for next year’s model as my 4S is still going strong), but it’s good to know that the apparently lighter metal back doesn’t make it feel cheap.
Update 2: Nilay Patel of The Verge hints that they might have a review unit after all, and are going to post their story tomorrow.
Josh Carr of Rocky Mountain Mac Repair writes on their blog:
I went on to search “iPhone Repair” and “iPad Repair” since that’s obviously relevant to our business. The results broke my heart. All of the work I’ve put into our local recognition is completely gone because I focused so keenly on Google Places. By limiting search to Yelp businesses, there were only two places returned for “iPhone Repair.” They illegally use the trademarked term “iPhone” in the name of their company on their Yelp record. One of the companies used a false name just so they had iPhone in the title.
I also get no results for “iPad repair”. Shortening that to just “iPad” makes Maps go to Ivàd, Slovakia. You can’t make this shit up. This is the sort of stuff I complained about in my review.
Josh says that asking Siri about iPad repair will locate Apple Stores, which is more helpful than the no results present in Maps. Unfortunately, it leaves out independent repair shops. Also, when I tried this, it located stores near me with “apple” in their name. Of the seven results Siri presented me, six were not Apple Stores (though operating an iPad repair place in the back of Apple Hair Salon might be a profitable business).
Twitter profiles gained header images today, a la Facebook, Path, and App.net. This is super exciting for people who want to spend hours dicking around with the limited customization options before giving up and installing Feather.
The official Twitter clients for both iPhone and iPad were also updated today. Both clients include the new profile pages. Interestingly, the iPhone app apparently doesn’t have fullscreen support for the iPhone 5 (via DF). Also, Taylor Carrigan notes that Twitter sucks at measuring.
Meanwhile, the new iPad app apparently sucks a giant bag of man. According to everyone I follow on Twitter, there’s no way to interact with tweet content from the main stream of posts. Even opening a link requires the user to tap on the tweet to open it, then tap the link itself. Strange, and user-unfriendly.
But this is the least of the UI sins. The entire app has been redesigned to be essentially a larger iPhone app, and it’s made Marco Arment et. al. very unhappy:
The saddest part, though, is that they had a truly iPad-native app until today, and they killed it to make room for this. [Read that sentence as if it ends in the phrase “piece of shit” – N] It’s hard not to see this as a microcosm of Twitter’s entire product direction.
Well, at least I have Tweetbot and Twitterrific. For now.
Usually the quote of the day is an example of brilliance, smart observation, or wit. I’m going to deviate from that today. The linked article is stupid, but this takes the cake:
Given Steve Jobs’ recent passing, it isn’t hard to imagine that Apple developers might have intentionally designed this iPhone to honor his widow. — Rob Enderle