Apple: June 2010 Archives

MotionX GPS Drive features spoken turn by turn directions, but you must pay a fee to access them. The $3 per month or $25 per year access charge from FullPower is quite reasonable, considering the $10 per month from AT&T (discounted to $6.99 recently). The cost of the app is also quite reasonable, at $2.99 for iPad and $.99 for iPhone.

My Garmin requires periodic map updates, and I had purchased the NüMaps Lifetime Maps package over a year ago. I strongly recommend that to anyone who has a Garmin device. I had updated my device a few weeks ago, so I am confident that its maps are as current as they can be.

MotionX GPS Drive pulls its maps from the air via 3G or WiFi (if it has a connection), so if you have a 2GB data plan, you might want to watch your data usage come the end of the month if you rely on MotionX GPS Drive. Relying on cloud-based maps, though, make its maps theoretically more accurate than the Garmin's, especially as you near the end of the quarterly update cycle for the Garmin.

Operationally, Drive's interface is reasonable if a bit crowded. It has more options than the Garmin, and it features walking as well as driving directions. Other Garmin devices feature walking directions, but the C340 is intended as a driving only device. Drive can operate in Portrait or Landscape mode, and I recommend a window mount for anyone who will use Drive as a daily GPS device. I propped the iPhone on the dashboard near the Garmin, which has a dedicated charging stand.

The two systems began chatting at me almost simultaneously once I got moving, and provided similar instructions. While Drive gave me "get ready to turn" followed by "Turn now" instructions, the Garmin lets me know long in advance what's coming up, and then reminds me to "Turn right onto xxx Street" when it's time to turn. Since I was doing some in-town driving first, the "prepare to turn" messages from Drive got to be a little annoying, but they would be welcome in unfamiliar surroundings.

I intentionally left the programmed route to see how the devices would respond, and they both gave the same instructions to return to the desired route.

On the highway, I noticed that my iPhone battery was getting low. I had the iPhone plugged into my charger, and when I turned off Drive, the iPhone charged as expected. Hmm. This morning, I fired up Drive, set a route, and plugged the iPhone into my computer. Although I wasn't going anywhere, Drive gave me periodic reminders to get moving. While attached to the computer, however, the battery charged as expected. I will need to investigate this further, or get another charger. It could also be that the car 12V port can't push as much current as the computer can while charging, resulting in a net loss of charge in the battery in the car.

The position of the iPhone matters when driving. I put it in different positions on the dashboard and on the passenger's seat, and found that not all locations were favorable to GPS reception. While pulled over to take a call, for instance, the iPhone lost signal, but the Garmin kept right on tracking.

Background operation in iOS 4 is also nice. Rather than using the built-in iPod interface, you can use iPod to control your music. I am an audiobook listener, so I like having access to the chapter list in the built-in interface. Also, since Mail runs in the background, I was able to know when emails arrived that were pertinent to my trip.

Assuming that I can resolve the charging issue with the car, I believe that I could use Drive while traveling. The Garmin is certainly more battery-efficient, but toting two devices while traveling is a drag. I can't forget that I got the iPhone so I could combine my Palm T5 and my Motorola flip phone into one unit. I don't believe, however, that I'll toss the Garmin just yet. 

Today, we went out for a 40 minute hike with about 42% of battery life remaining.

I was able to switch to email (which pinged every 15 minutes with new emails on the hike) and other apps while hiking, and the Track Recorder never missed a beat. I was able to hit the power button with no loss of tracking as well. We took some photos and uploaded to Facebook, surfed the web, and sent some email as well. When we returned to the house, I had about 22% of battery life left. Looking in the app tray, I discovered that I had 16(!) apps in there, which could be a contributing factor to the giant power suck. Based on this rate of consumption, though, we should be able to go gout for several hours and get decent tracking data before having to recharge the phone.

Well done, MotionX. I finally feel like I can use the GPS the way it was intended.

Photos in iOS 4 adds a new tab called places. While the iPhone has been quietly adding location tags to my photos all along, it now can display a map that shows me where my photos were taken. See the three screen shots below to see how the number of pins grows as you zoom in on the map.

When you start the camera for the first time, it asks whether to enable location tagging for new images. I turned it on, and started snapping new photos.

Eager to try the multitasking, I turned on Skype and was greeted with an unexpected warning that Skype wasn't supported in modified iPhone OS 3. OK, I thought, and continued.

Skype, while seeming to run in the background, only logs in when it's the foreground app. As a result, although I was logged in, I was unable to take a call while using another app. I am sure this is a minor delay, but am eager to see what they do with iOS 4.

I am a long-time MotionX GPS customer, and was excited to see an update after installing iOS 4. The update to version 12. In addition to background operation, it allows you to shut off the screen while recording tracks, background voice coaching, and a Wifi/Triangulation mode to estimate position when GPS signals are unavailable. I'm looking forward to my next outing.

My first task was to stack some apps. Stacking allows us to group apps into a single icon that you can organize any way you like. I made some stacks in iTunes, and found myself frustrated by how hard it is to actually get apps to stack. Dragging an app on top of another one is supposed to highlight the target app (or stack), and when I release the app, it joins the other apps in the stack or creates a new stack. I found that dragging the app near a stack or another app caused the target to move out of the way. Some apps always accepted another app, while others just wouldn't join, no matter what I did. This drag and drop works better on the iPhone itself, but it is easier to select multiple apps and move them around in iTunes. I hope this improves.

Apps don't quit when you hit the home button anymore. Now, they drop into a tray that you can see when you double-tap the home button. The tray only shows four apps at a time, so you may need to slide it to the left or right to see the hidden apps. Unfortunately, apps now don't close. They collapse into the tray, and in order to quit them, you must open the tray and then press and hold one of the apps, then click the minus sign that will appear when they all start to shake. This makes me a little nervous, as it feels like force-quitting rather than an orderly shutdown.

I enabled notifications for email, and told email to run every 15 minutes. gMail doesn't push (or, perhaps it needs to be configured to push), so I have turned off push notifications for email. I like getting the email notice like my colleagues get on their Blackberries. Other apps are receiving push notifications just fine.

It is unclear to me what the impact of multitasking will be on my battery life. I will ramp my email notifications back to 30 minutes or an hour most likely once I understand the battery life situation.

I do appreciate the unified email boxes. I have two email accounts, and used to spend a lot of time switching between the two in Mail. Now, I can choose to look at each account separately or together. In addition, when replying to a message, I can select from which account I want to reply. This is super useful for me, since I often get mail on one account that I want to respond to from the other account.

I'll report more impressions as I use the phone over the next couple of days. So far, so good...

Facebook Mobile 3.1.3 now supports playing video, as well as allowing larger photos and other bug fixes. The notes report that photos now upload at 720 pixels wide, which allows for more detailed images portrait mode.

I am now more likely to use the mobile app than before because of the improved video support.

While closing a recently revealed security hole in Flash Player, this release also paves the way for easier application development for multiple devices. Prior to 10.1, multiple screen development required multiple versions of applications to target different versions of Flash players. Flash Player 10.1 unifies the player across desktop and mobile platforms, making it possible to create one application that will work on desktop and mobile platforms.

This version of Flash Player will be the last version that will play on a PowerPC G3 with MacOSX 10.4. 

Wow. 

It amazes me that while Apple abandoned the G3 years ago, Adobe has continued to keep it in mind for its Flash Player. While it is amazing that the G3 remains on Adobe's radar, it is more amazing to me that there must be enough of them still operating in the world that Adobe has maintained support for it in the Flash Player. 

It's been 1999 since a G3 PowerMac was made by Apple, but it continued to use the G3 in the iMac and iBook line until 2003. Flash Player 10.1 requires a 500 MHz G3, so that excludes all of the PowerMac towers and desktops. Knowing that in my kids' schools, they were using G3 iBooks until a couple of years ago and also that the schools sell them at rock bottom prices, it's not surprising that there's still enough users out there for one more go at Flash Player.

The story for AIR2 isn't so far reaching, though. It requires at least an Intel Mac and MacOSX 10.5. Along the develop once, deploy anywhere model, there is also an AIR prerelease program for Android. With Android in the mix, developers can create AIR applications that will run on both desktop and mobile devices.

Flash Player and AIR represent a tremendous opportunity for companies to reduce development time and costs by removing complexity in the development process.