Between the hours of 8:30 and 8:45 this morning, I bought two things:

1) Breakfast, consisting of a wheat bagel and a Diet Coke. Purchase price: $1.74.

2) An iPad. Which cost me more than the breakfast.

People have been asking me “So which iPad are you planning on buying?” and I still don’t know how to answer, even though I’ve actually bought one now. I’m not anywhere near the average consumer.

So instead, I’ll tell you what I think about the two major variables in this sort of decision. You’re in on the ground floor at $499. Where should the rest of your money go? Is it even worth buying a better model?

I think the first thing you should spend money on is additional storage. The iPad is going to be one hell of a great content device and my experience with my iPhone tells me that although you can make any amount of storage work, a mobile device pays the greatest dividends when there’s a good chance that answer to the question “Gee, I wonder if I have that file or content with me?” is “Yes.”

This is an especially big deal on a device like the iPad, which comes with a big, gorgeous screen. 16 gigabytes is useful. It means that I can cautiously put a movie or two on it, and maybe a vodcast subscription, and sure, I can have a couple of photo albums on there so long as I don’t go nuts. But 64 gigs means I can throw media on there with the reckless exuberance of a dancing hippie who doesn’t know that the Rolling Stones have hired Hell’s Angels as event security.

It also means that when apps like AirSharing and Evernote come to the iPad, the device can truly be that one electronic file folder that contains every document or scrap of research you’ve touched in the past month or will ever want to lay your hands on.

Put it this way. I’m in a coffeeshop and writing this on Lilith, whose 500 gigabyte hard drive contains just about everything I’ve created and everything that’s ever caught my eye online. If it suddenly occurs to me that what this blog post needs is right here, right now, is a statue of George Washington regarding a lesser public sculpture, I don’t need to hit the Internet for just the right image or head home to my desktop:

So get as much storage as you can afford, I say.

Onward to the 3G question. I’m starting to wonder if 3G is going to be terribly important. “Internet everywhere” is impulsively attractive, but do you really need mobile broadband? New England is practically lousy with free WiFi. There’s so much radio traffic here that it interferes with the migration patterns of many local bird species. As I entered the coffeeshop this morning I passed by a whole family of wrens, shivering in little Bermuda shorts and wondering what the hell happened.

And if you already have some sort of device that can share its mobile broadband connection — a phone with an app that turns it into a mobile WiFi base station, or a MiFi — the question’s of moot.

Still, Apple and AT&T are offering a sweet deal on the data connection: $29 for a month of unlimited traffic, with no contract or ongoing commitment required. If you want mobile broadband this month, you buy 30 days of mobile broadband. Done.

As a MiFi owner, I’m more interested in the 3G model’s GPS features. Live navigation on a pocket device is lovely. But what can we do with it when the screen is THIS big? What happens when this live, interactive map is flat on a table where three people can peer at it and make suggestions? What kind of car app is possible, when there’s enough screen real estate to deliver a lot of information in a concise and uncluttered way?

If you’re truly seeking my advice, and your funds are limited, I say give the 3G model a miss and put that extra $129 into additional storage, or an important accessory.

If I were an ordinary consumer, I bet I’d be opting for the 32 gig WiFi model, with the wireless keyboard and the desktop dock as no-brainer addons. I think those two accessories will have a bigger impact on my use of the iPad than 3G and GPS. I’d want to own the 64 gig one, but we’re trying to economize in this scenario.

Of course, if I truly were an ordinary consumer, I’d be patient and wait to see what the reviews have to say about the iPad. It’s a rare person who can afford to pre-order a $499 thing sight-unseen. I think most of the folks who are rushing to pre-order the iPad are folks like me who have pre-existing plans for theirs.

What did I actually get? Oh, the top-of-the-line model: The iPad 3G with 64 gigs of storage, due to ship a few weeks after the WiFi-only iPad.

My decision was influenced by factors that would never apply to a regular consumer. iPad 3G, or the WiFi-only model? By one way of thinking, I needed to buy both. I need to have one in my hands on April 3 (meaning: the WiFi edition) but I’ll also need the 3G model because I’m writing a book about the iPad, and the 3G model has unique features.

Damn. I remind you that I am a freelance journalist in a rapidly-collapsing print market. I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll have an Apple loaner on April 3. I don’t know for sure, mind you. But you need to place your bet before the betting window closes and no matter what I bought, I definitely wanted my pre-order to be near the head of the pack in case models were in short supply.

So I went with the 3G. I did hesitate a bit over the “accessories” question before completing my order. Ultimately, I didn’t buy any.

I already have the Wireless Keyboard and that’s the only accessory that I consider to be a slam-dunk. I don’t wanna drop an extra hunnert bucks, only to discover a month later that the folding easel I keep my iPad in makes Apple’s $29 desktop stand irrelevant, and that I almost never see the benefits of an extra $29 charger.

Why might that be? Because apparently the iPad can charge from its USB sync cable. This is just conjecture, but I imagine that the only thing the 10-watt brick can do is charge it faster. My office is already lousy with USB wall chargers. If it takes twice as long to charge it via USB — I’m just making up a number, here — how likely is it that I’ll actually take advantage of that extra time?

[Edit to clarify: you do get a 10W charger with your iPad.]

There was another factor at play: for the love of God, I was already spending $829, before tax, on this thing. I’m being paid more than $829 for the book so please, shed no tears. Nonetheless, to a freelancer, that kind of an expenditure is like a deacon hearing people whistle in the church. It fills me with a secret sorrow.

All I can tell you is that when I arrived at the coffeeshop, something made me order the 75-cent can of Coke instead of the $1.69 bottle of juice…

Screen resolution is 1024×768 at 132 dpi.

Reading books on it: text sure isn’t as crisp as a Kindle. But it’s illuminated and anti-aliased so on the whole, the lower resolution is in many ways more readable than e-ink.

Feels very light in the hand. I’m not as worried about Arm Fatigue as I was.

This thing is FAST. I stretch-zoom a webpage and it keeps up with me now matter how fast I zoom and scroll. When you turn a page in iBook, it’s not “an animation of a page turning”…you are TURNING a freaking PAGE.

iBook will let you read free previews in some fashion. But nobody could give ne specifics. Read a special preview, online only? Download the first couple of chapters to the device, like Kindle?

Keyboard easel accessory is $69. It doesn’t fold for travel. Has special iPad buttons to go Home, etc.

Keyboard can keep up with my 100 WPM easy.

Virtual keyboard is more “tappable” thN “typeable.” you can easily type with all fingers, but you need to be slightly more deliberate than normal.

Same mechanical buttons on the iPad itself as on the iPhone.

Hold the lid of a small MacBook and you’ll get the general effect.

Steve is on the demo floor, being interviewed by Mossberg. I am trying to get a photo without compromising my “Steve doesn’t know my name” status.

OS and UI experience: it IS an iPhone. The OS will probably have to be renamed. Every time the UI confused me, it was because I expected it to work unlike an iPhone in some way.

My firdt chance to breathe since the shows started. Very underwhelnmed by the lack of unexpected fresh new I. But then again, maybe a reinvention of the touch UI would have been gauche. This appears to be a statement that “We developed the iPhone to be a great touch OS that could scale to anything.”

So its all one universe. Yu learned to use the iPhone…goog so you now know how to use an iPad. You shop at the iTunes Store? Good, thats how you buy things for the iPad.

“We were right all along,” I think is their dstatement swith the iPad.

Pricing is KILLER. This thing will moip the floor with just about anything. Its so easy to talk yourself into spending anoter $100 to get an iPad inhstead of a netbooki or even $240 more for this instead of an ebook reader.

And the “pay as you go” is another key to this thing’s success’ I think Apple has worked hard to erase obstacles to purchasing this.

A nice little easel.

A dock easel…WITH A KEYBOARD?! Okay, Im an iudiot. I was certain that it wouldnt have any sort of keyboard option.

Also a little leather book cover.

Inspirational little video with Mr. Ive.

AKA “OK, journalists, we’ll let you rest your fingers for a little while.” Thank you, Apple,. yes I need a rest.

Very neat: caqn create onscreen forms (like a clipboard) for data entry.

Each app will be $9.99. Compatible with iWork on Mac. Can connect to projectors. Purchase on the App Store.

Steve is back.

Syncs to your mac or PC via iTunes, like an iPhone, via USB. Syncs all data.

Data is synced back to your desktop.

Can have it with or without data plan.

Two plans: 250 megs a month for $14.99. UNlimited plan is $29.99 a month.

VERY good pricing.

Says its a breakthrough pan with AT&T which includes hotspot access.

NO CONTRACT. Pay as you go. Pay and activate right on your iPad.

THIS IS INCREDIBLE. Okay, that solves so many of Apples problems.

Breakthrough deals in US, hope to have international deals by June.

All iPad 3G models are unlocked. Uses new GSM Micro cards.

(I might be imagining things, but I think there are people in front row seeded to start applause. I sense a little bit of fatigue among the prtess.)

Price?

When we set out to develop the iPad, we had ambutious tech goals and UI goals…but also a very aggressive price goal: we want to put this in the hands of lots of people. Just as we could jmeet or esxceed other goals…

IU am thrilled to announce that the orice starts at $499.

WHOOOO! Cheers and gebnuine applause.

$699 for 64 gigs, base orice is 16 also 32 valk.

3G adds $129 to the porice of each.

Yes, fuck you, Crunchoad.

Wuill ship WiFi models in 60 days.

Will probably ship 3G models in 90 days.

Accessories

Steve says that he gave team the task to see what they could do with iWork on the tablet a year ago. Habnds iut off to Schiller.

Keynote. New version of Pages. New version of Numbers. All of them look like documents, very sinple UI

Keynote.

Runs in landscape mode.

Uses multitouch gestures. How to drag multiple slides?> Tap first one to pick it up, then tap others to Pick Them Up so to speak. Uses multiutuoch very well.

Very tactile, obviously. You grab all of your art, and other content.

Much of this is modal…you go into Animation Mode to define how an item will animate or transition. (Tap the Done button when youre done, to return to the main part of the app)

Tap the Play button to presentl.

ASLso includes the Magic Move feature of desktop Keynote. Looks very very pretty, overall. Slick and smooth animation and transitions.

Pages

Uses the sajme gallery motif you see ebverywhere else…like the way you scroll through open webpages in iPhone safari.

Turn horizontal for a fullsize keyboard.

New Page nbavigator tool. Taqp and scroll, manifying glass will show you a preview of the page yu
re scrooling through.==

Demos autowrap around an image. Drag the giraffe and it just keeps dynhaicaly reflowing all of the text around it.

Numbers=

Most impressive. You see folder tabs across the top.

This could be the first Fun spreadsheet app. Its all tactile.

Brings up a custom soft keyboard for each task (numbers, dates, formulas)

You can watch live game videok, as with other app. But this makes me excited about TV on this device…MLB has done a great job with Enhanced Presentation, embroidering video with more stats and content.

Apple comes out to remind us that it also runs all iPhone apps as is.

Steve sounhds a little raspy,.

Apple has done a great job of pioneering dysfunctionality wuith the Kindle or thats what I thought he said.

Shows off a new app called iBooks.

New iBooki Store. Looks like it has the same parity with music and apps.

Five huge publishers aqre already on boardf and it goes live today!

(Okay, I was wrong. I thought Apple would be content to have multiple bookstore apps)

Library flips around like a bookcase in a murder mansion to reveal hidden passage to the store. Looks like a WAY richer experience than Kindle Store. Book downloads directly to the device.

UI is like aq book. Tap anywhere on left or rtight tur pages, or flip graphically.

UI controls fade away when youre reading. Caqn avbe any kinds of photos.

Yay, it uses the epub format.

What kind of DRM, I wonder?

EA came onsite, he says. Need For Speed demo looks GREAT. You steer by steerng this steering wheel sized item.

Tap the rearview mirror to look behind you.

Performance looks awesome.

Reminds me that we still dont know what the resoloution of this screen is. How many pixels in each dimension? But this racing game looks fantastic.

Last up is MLB.com. I love their app for the iPhone.

Live Game gameday dispolay is fantastic. Tap anything for details, tap players to gflip out their baseball card. Bideo highlights play while the game is playting live behind the video.

We gave some developers this SDK just TWO WEEKS ago to see what they could come up with.

Gameloft first up. Has added new controls and hestures…iPad game has thumbpaqds on either side of the screen. Also integrating controls that use twisting and turning the pad.

Killing enemies by dragging a selection rectangle hardly seems sporting, does it?

(game is Nova)

Next up: New York Times.

Martin Nisenholtz gives demo, aided by two people.

Looks a little like Tim Gunn’s brother, which I mean as a compliment.

Finite snapshot of time, superi0or reading experience.

Flip through sections, tap into sections, bruing down a menu to have a list of menus. Can tap to select articles to sunc to your iPhone.

Reading experience looks great…resize things with a pinch, open slideshows.

I dont know if theyve really licked this yet. It looks like theyve just regformatted their articvles for multiple columns to fit the orientation of the screen.

But certainbly not a simple Make It Into ASn Ebook approach. Looks very browsable and discoverable, as a newspaper should be. You know, where you just leaf through pages and encuonter articles.

Brushes

Popular iPhone app, by a one person shop done by Steve Sprang.

Slide through a pretty ghallery. Your paintings can be edited…tap to edit. Layers and brushes. Store your favorite brushes in a waterciolorlike palatte.

Oh, kinow maqny artists who will go NUTS for this.

Can zoom in for finer control. All done via fingers.

Can record the process and play it back. Says its a true portable paint studio.

Very neat demo.

Next: electronic arts. Steady on, pull up your astronaut diapers, this could be great.

Awesome: runs all iPhone apps. Either in a small TV like window, or tap a 2x button and itll d0ouble the size. And the resolution, I wonder?

Runs these games and things without any modigfication. On the bigscreen here it looks great in fullscreen. Smooth, highly detailed.

Hey, he also has that great Piano Pro qapp

Demo

If the developer spends time modifying it, though…?

Says We modei9fied all of our existing iPhone apps to look great on tyhe iPad. To that end, theyve modded the iPhone SDK and are releasing it TODAY.

9.7 inch ips display

1.5 pounds, .5 inches thick–
-

1 ghz Apple A4 processor

16-64 gigs of storage

WiFi 802.11n BT2.1 + efdr

30pin connectore, speaker, microphone.

Battery – 10 hours of battery.

Month of stabndby time.

How do they solve onewindow UI? By populating dropdown menus as if theyre windows, almost (dropdown list of ihnbox messages, or can open it as a pane in the message w9indow.

Looks like a very unclottered interface.

Onscreen keyboard. He
s typing at what appears to be less than blazing speed but fast enough. It autocorrects like an iPhone.

Photos

(Everything works in portrait or landscape, incidentally)

FLick through photos. Looks like a lightable sort of interface. With albums and stcks.

If your photos are on Mac, itll recognize faces and everything. Locations?

Mostly flicks thro0ugh ijmages.

Yes, places. Big map with phots pinned to it.

Once again we see that tapping a buttobn in the “menubar” drops down a little media-rich window full of content UI.

Music.

Builtin iPod. Looks like iTunes.

BIG album qart is possible. Lots of us are going to have to upgrade our imagery! Mine are all 320p

iTunes Store

Looks hgreat…much better than the desktop edition. I hope this is what well see when we can do this via qany web browser. Very touchable.

Calendar.

Drag your finger over dates to look at content.

Contacts. Looks like an address book.

MAPS

Page curl in cornerk, peel it up to switch views. Looks to be Google Maps (Bing usuqally waterjarks its content)

Works like the iPhone app. Doesnt lok like theyve added much. Aplause for google street view (which oes look good).

Video

YouTube. “Wet And Woofy” is the name of the video hs selects. Its in hi def. I bet some google searches will turn up smutty videos with that name. If not right now, then definitely tonight. :)

Very uncluttered. I might even call it TOO uncluttered, almost stark. Video player also looks exactly like the iPhone video player.

It’s looking as if “A big iPod Touch” is looking like its distressingly spot on as a description.

Unblock scrteen like an iPhone.

Demos NYT website. Tqaps for stories. Very pretty screen. Lots of nice scrolling.

Aha: missing pplugin slug for flash content, I think.

Menu titles are little icons; tap to drop down the menu.

TIME website.

Fandango website.

Looks exactly like Safari, with aqdaptati0ons for touch (maqke big targets for touch).

National geographic.

Steve appears to be just ignoring the audience and enjoying browing the web with the iPad. Lots of silence and tappinh.

Looiks very, very fast.

SO much typing…sounds like qa house being consumed by termites in here.

We see an onscreen keybvoard 9in qa screenshot of the mil app.

Calendar looks pretty. All of these apps tke full advantage of the screen.

The Engaqdget shot of the mqap app was spot on.

iTunes looks like desktop itunes.

I
m a little disappointed; this does look like a big iPhone, UI and everything.

“Awesome to watch TV and movies on.”

Now he shows the demo.

Steve starts with a tease. Apple inbvented the laptop, he says, at least in the form we know it.

Then Apple reinvented the phone.

We all use laptops and smartphones now. The question: Is there room fort a third category of device in the middle?

Device must be far better at key things. Like:

Browsing

Email

Enjoying and sharing phots
Watching videos
Music
Games
eBooks.

Must be better at these sorts of tasks than a laptop of smartphone.

Netbook? No, thy arebnt better at anyth9ing (laughter applause). Smaller and slower, poorer displays; theyre just cheap laptops.

We thu

Yes, its calloed the iPad.

Looks a lot like a big iphone with a macstyle dock.

Steve takes stage without intro. Embarrassing when press and analysts iissue a standing ovation. I think it’s just the front section of Special Guests.

Kicks off. He has something special to show, but first, some updates: sold a stupid number of ipods.

3 billionth app doqanloaded. Gee, theyre not telling us what it was. A little embarrassing? :)

15.6 billion dollqrs in q1 revenue this year. An army of gold robots to execute the unwilling can only be a year off.

Most Macs sold are MacBooks.
By revenue, Apple is the largest mobile tech company in the world.

Settled into my seat. The room is about the size of a medium movie theater. I’ve chosen a seat on the aisle about halfway up, selecting a good view of the stage. Sharing a row with the Macworld folks, Gruber, and Jaqui of Ars.

It’s a sea of screens. Everybody is liveblogging or taking notes. It’s almost as if we’re watching a live livestream or something.

I am struggling not to hum a quiet Dylan impression as “Like A Rolling Stone” pumps through speakers.

Lights are dimming slightly.

Wait, I’ve just figured out who we’re going to blame for all this: people in the room playing Warcraft on the cell network and killing all of the bandwidth.

Good. Picking a scapegoat is the most important part of event preparation, you know.

Greetings!

Okay. So here’s how I hope this is going to work: I’ll have my MiFi, my Hackintosh, and my Nikon pocket camera with an EyeFi card in its SD slot. In a perfect world, this would mean that instead of flooding Twitter with an endless series of observations, thoughts, and bitchy comments, I can do a real liveblog — complete with photos as-we-go — just like I’m some sort of modern tech journalist or something.

Keep refreshing this page for updates. And if it doesn’t work…

…

Damn.

No, we mustn’t think that way. It will work. It will work.

(Shut up!!!!)

I’m off to San Francisco. On Wednesday, I will enter an auditorium at Yerba Buena Gardens and sit down. Apple will then say things to me and a few hundred of my closest friends.

This ends the factual portion of my pre-event coverage. Everything else (I must remind myself) is mere Speculation. Though if Apple doesn’t plan to announce their rumored Tablet at the event, our first tipoff will be the protective floor-to-ceiling wall of chicken wire that’s been erected between the stage and the audience.

But I’m sure that Apple is well aware that we’re hauling our butts alllll the way out there for just one reason: to hear Steve Jobs sing the theme from “Rawhide.” If it turns out that the biggest news to come from the whole Event is a new blackish-purplish color for the iPod Nano…?

No, that’s not going to happen. I felt pretty safe when booking my flight well a few weeks ago because of the nature of the January 27 Event rumors. They certainly had all of the ineffable earmarks of a managed leak rather than random speculation.

And I should (gratefully) point out that this will be the cheapest trip to San Francisco in Team Ihnatko’s league franchise history. I had two different offers of guest rooms to sleep in, so I decided to play “chicken” with the various travel sites to see how desperate hotels get as the clock ticks down. I was hoping to get a four-star hotel next to the convention center for $8 a night. Instead, on the day before my flight I got a 3.5-star hotel a 15-minute walk away for $75. I learned that the “butter zone” — at least for this trip — seemed to be about a week before check-in reservation. That’s when the best hotels released their rooms to the deep-discounters.

(I’m exceptionally skeptical when I read people’s Tweets about fantastic room rates for Macworld Expo and the like. $149 is no bargain in San Francisco. I’ll pay $100 a night if I’m desperate; otherwise, I know I can find something very good for under $90 by performing a little due diligence.)

I’ll soitenly have much more to say about the event and my time in San Francisco as the week progresses. For now, I’m wrestling with a self-imposed challenge:

I am determined to make this my very first Carryon Luggage-Only trip to San Francisco.

Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to calculate the exact dollar amount that will suddenly cause consumers to revolt and decide that their product, service, or pill-popping lead singer just isn’t worth it. Apple’s certainly wrestling with that question as they choose the right price for their (rumored!) Tablet.

It’s unpredictable. We’re a fickle marketplace. I can only say that when airlines instituted new fees for checked bags, I sighed and accepted that airlines define success as “we lost way less money than our closest competitor last year.” I didn’t think they were totally out of line to ask for a small fee for each checked bag. When the fees started to creep up, I didn’t really flinch.

Okay. But with the latest round of increases, those fees are now $25 a bag. Each way. One suitcase adds fifty dollars to the price of a ticket!

No. No, no…NO. I’ve reached my limit. I’ve finally had that moment when I feel like a sucker for disassociating those fees from the cost of my airfare. And I feel like a lazy spendthrift for not getting myself in the habit of being thrifty about the things I take with me on trips.

American Airline’s luggage increase doesn’t take effect until February. But there’s no time like the present. This relatively short trip — which includes only one real “business” day — will be a good initial test of discipline.

I’ve instituted a new mission rule:

The two key words being “cheapest” and “indispensable.” If I’m flying somewhere for a formal event, checking a full-size garment bag for my tuxedo is a permissible option. But only if “rent a tux when I get there,” “ship the tux ahead of me via UPS” or “stuff the tux in a carryon and have it cleaned and pressed before the event” are all more expensive than checking the bag.

I have just the thing to help me in this campaign: Pelican’s 1510 Laptop Overnight Case. It meets the maximum FAA definition of overhead-stowable luggage, which is very good. What makes it very great is the fact that it’s made with the same materials and engineering that Pelican uses when designing a case that can protect a 24″ CRT from baggage handlers.

That was a big concern for me. I’m usually assigned to the boarding group that’s technically numbered “4 or higher” but which a more forthright industry would simply announce with “Okay, all the riff-raff we barely give two ****s about can grab now grab their live chickens or whatever and board the plane. Whoops! Sorry, I think you people refer to it as the ’sky trailer’, don’t you?” By the time I board, the overheads might be full. That’s a bad time to realize that you packed that thin nylon rollerbag with the expectation that you’d be carrying it personally to its destination.

Mind you, I’ll still be packing anything valuable or fragile in my laptop bag. But that hardsider will give me a little piece of mind. It utter intolerance of your desire to overstuff it will also enforce the aforementioned new self-discipline.

(Another bonus of its built-like-a-tank-ness: during my trip this weekend, I used the Pelican as an laptop table while I waited for the train to New York and then as a seat when I waited for my train back home. This thing is bloody sturdy.)

It’s nicely fitted-out inside, with a big zippered compartment for clothes and accessories and custom-fitted bags for your laptop and cables that Velcro in place, right inside the lid.

Choosing a bag was easy. Deciding what to pack will be a challenge. The “one pair of undies per day” rule is a sensible one and will remain. Everything else is open for discussion. Tonight I found myself going through my socks and wondering if I shouldn’t favor the thin ones over the thick, comfortable hiking kind I normally wear.

I want to pack my black blazer. Can I afford it? Or should I take the unstructured “hybrid” shirt/jacket that fills many of the same duties but takes up less space?

It’s the selection of tech gear that’s causing me the most angst. I travel with an SLR. That’s usually not a question. But can I absolutely count on being able to wear it on board like a big black medallion? Or should I take the pocket Nikon instead, just for safety?

At least I have an “free” carryon option for the SLR. What about my netbook? I have the nagging feeling that I’ll have to leave it behind.

Which would be a damned, damned shame. A netbook is a godsend during a conference or an event I need to cover. All I need is something with a keyboard and system resources that’ll let me take some notes, do a little research, and post a few things. The MacBook Pro is Captain Overkill; it’s a hell of a lot to be carrying around a convention hall. I can’t count on the battery lasting through a 90-minute keynote with furious typing and WiFi action, and a 15″ laptop is a pretty big thing to take into a keynote hall where you’re all going to be packed in, kneecap to kneecap.

So. Hmm. Under this new self-imposed restriction, can I afford the luxury of bringing two computers?

Or can I do something as daft as leave the MacBook at home? It’s not the processing power I’d miss…it’s the fact that it’s my entire creative universe, with every tool, project, and scrap of research I work with every single day back at the office.

Damn. A side-goal is to avoid relying on my laptop bag as an Equalizer, packing it to the gills. Otherwise, there’d be plenty of room for both.

Well, I’m sure it’ll work out. It’s an experiment. Initial failures can be expected.

New York was a very minor test-run, to re-familiarize myself with the bag. It was just an overnight, so the packing was simple and even my laptop bag was very light on my shoulder. It was a bit of a thrill, I must confess. I felt like…well, like a normal traveler. You know, those people who seem to have taken just the essentials and who can glide onto a train or an airplane effortlessly, instead of looking like a stevedore trying to manhandle four casks of molasses onto a clipper ship in one go.

So overall, I think this new Mission Rule will be good for the soul. Limitations and restrictions build muscles: after all, the only way to succeed with greater restrictions is through greater thinking.

All I know is that I’ll probably have fewer incidents where I’m unpacking my bag in a hotel and discover that I’ve just taken the 13.5 volt charger for a portable hard drive I haven’t used in a year on a little 3,000-mile vacation away from the office. I’m looking forward to that.

You’ll have to excuse me now. I’ve just remembered that I need to find an 8″ plastic baggie for my toiletries, none of which may contain more than 3 ounces of liquid.

Oh, good heavens. It looks as though Garry Trudeau is doing a whole week’s worth of strips about the Apple Tablet event this week in San Francisco.

To clarify: one of the most popular strips in the world is doing an entire week’s worth of comic strips about an event in which a rumored (rumored) consumer product might (might) be shown off for the first time.

I think we now need to create a new word for “hype” that only refers to the sort of buzz that an Apple product can generate. At this stage, the only way for the Apple tablet to get more press would be if it got into a car crash after its wife beat it with a golf club.

Incidentally, that thump…thump…thump you’re hearing is the sound of Microsoft’s CEO pounding his head against his desk over and over again. You did a heckofajob with that CES keynote, Ballmie…

Late yesterday, Nuance released an iPhone edition of their Dragon NaturallySpeaking software. What wonderful news! Dragon is the gold standard in text-to-speech. You say it, Dragon turns it into text.

Having it on the iPhone seems like a strong win. I’ve no complaints about the iPhone’s virtual keyboard. I can type faster on my iPhone than I can with any physical mobile keyboard. All the same, the fantasy of dictating a lengthy email to a speech-to-text utility instead of tapping the whole thing out sent me rocketing over to the App Store to download my free copy.

Minutes later, after I’d installed the app and given it a few quick sentences, I was impressed. The software only seems to have a few drawbacks:

1) It only works in short bursts of text. You can get in about two sentences before the app has to stop listening and start transmogrifying what you’ve said. But you can then go ahead and speak the next bit, and then the next bit, and so on until your entire thought has been converted from synpatic traffic to readable text.

2) Its user interface and feature set are a bit spartan. You can edit what’s been transcribed and then you can dump the text to an email, SMS, or the clipboard. But that’s about it.

3) Dragon Dictation For iPhone is not a Keebler cookie: the elfin magic is not baked right in. Instead, what you say is transmitted to Nuance’s server, converted via remote software, and then sent back down to the app. So you’ll need a WiFi or mobile internet connection.

It was a good start. But then I tried it out with something a little more ambitious. When I read it the first page of one of my favorite books I uncovered a fourth, and truly dealbreaking, drawback:

4) It censors what you’ve said.

Oops.

The harmless page in question was from “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.” Dragon calmly and nimbly transmogrified the bits about the drugs and the huge bats and the “Holy Jesus.” But the final two words of the opening graf had become “g*ddamn animals.”

Well.

Of course you know what famous piece of literature I had to try next:

Friends, this screenshot represents my g*ddamned best effort to get the Dragon app to properly parse the spotlight lines from George Carlin’s “Seven Words” routine. The seven naughty words appear twice in this passage. In the final sentence, I simply read them naturally. But when I spoke them in the second sentence, I spoke with the measured tones and eloquent baritone of Frasier Crane, enunciating carefully and confidently, over and over again, one word at a time, coaxing the Dragon to do the right thing and giving the software the best chance possible. What you see there in the second sentence is the very best I could do to get Dragon Dictation to correctly transcribe some extremely naughty dictation.

I was relentless and determined. I was filthy and repetitive. It was if I had wanted to make sure that I’d never be asked to take care of a friend’s expensive pet parrot ever again.

“P***, comma.” I soothed.

“Test,” the Dragon replied.

“Puh-ISSsssss, comma.” I said.

“Test,” agreed the Dragon.

I angled my iPhone so that my “P”s and “S”s woudn’t overwhelm the microphone.

“Test,” said the Dragon, who seemed to be getting a little bit bored with all of this.

My triumph with “C*********” was entirely accidental. I had over-Frasiered the word, pronouncing it as though it was the name of a new model of Mercedes sedan and I was recording a voice-over for an ad that was going to air during the Masters tournament. Apparently, Dragon is perfectly fine with the concept of sucking (the Mets do it all the time, and most of those guys are millionaires). It’s also willing to give me the benefit of the doubt regarding a word that often describes roosters and what you must do with a revolver before you keep the little feathery bastard from ever waking you up before dawn ever again. But when you put those two words together, the Dragon collapses into the nearest fainting couch.

As for the word that refers to a lady’s…ladyparts, I repeated that one so many times that I am now confident that my home has not been bugged by any federal agency. I hope that if any member of law enforcement should ever hear a single man say that word so frequently or attentively in a single 90-second period, they won’t bother coming in through the door. Standard procedure should be to send teams crashing in straight through windows and walls.

And what the hell is the matter with those people at Dragon? They’ll censor the f-word when it appears all by itself. But when this popular verb is maternally compounded…it’s “Mother” that they have a problem with? Really? Oh, dear. Freud has just manifested himself physically. After I get done explaining to him what an iPhone is, and explained why he’s going to have to put out the cigar before he steps onto a public sidewalk, he’s going to want to have a lonnng talk with the good folks at Nuance.

I haven’t spoken to Nuance so I don’t know for a fact why Dragon Dictation is censoring the output of this app. I can take an educated guess that they did it to get the app through Apple’s iTunes Store approval process. Apple presents an image of themselves as John Lithgow in “Third Rock From The Sun,” brilliant and eccentric and fun and free. When it comes to moving apps through the approval process, they’re more like the John Lithgow who banned dancing in his community and tried to get Kevin Bacon run out of town for immoral use of a Foreigner album.

“Hypocrite!” you might shout. “You’ve censored all of these same naughty words from your own blog post!!!”

Indeed I did. I was raised in a humble Puritan fishing colony on the Massachusetts Bay and there are many words that I simply don’t like to use if I can avoid them. I’m also aware that if I use certain words here, I could seriously foxtrot uniform charlie kilo my site’s standing with various “net nanny” services.

Maybe I’m wrong to censor my stuff. But it’s my censorship of my blog post, and my decision to make. I’m perfectly entitled. But an app — even a free one — hasn’t earned that right. Less than an hour after I installed Dragon Dictation, I ship candidate.

Damn, I had the TV on while I dictated that. Let me try again:

I shipped can do it.

Damn. Okay, well, it’s no longer on my iPhone, anyway.

I’ll tell you one thing, though. Motorola is a fool if they don’t use this in an upcoming Droid ad. On the iPhone, you can’t even use the word. But a phone that runs the Android OS approves so strongly of the concept that it’ll even help you find it in the nearby vicinity.

Occasionally, Apple throws a special media event to announce Cool New Things. Unfortunately, they generally don’t hold them in the Boston area and in general, I can’t spend the $500-$1000 to head out to Cupertino for them unless I can manufacture another excuse or two to be in the area.

So I’ll be liveblogging the event just like the rest of my brothers and sisters in the press corps. Only I’ll be doing it from here in my living room, with a freshly-made lunch on a TV tray (turkey and swiss on wheat, with a handful of Doritos and a soda) and last night’s TV shows on the PVR. I’ll be following Macworld’s reliably-excellent liveblog, posted by my Close Personal Friend Jason Snell.

I stress that this is the reason why you bought a copy of the Web. Where would you have been twenty years ago, unable to read about how I was reacting to reading the news online via someone else’s liveblog?

Actually, twenty years ago there wouldn’t have been a liveblog for me to post from.

Nor an iPhone for this event to have been about.

My head hurts.

Liveblog starts. Hit command-R on the Macworld page. Jason Snell identifies the file-in song as “27 Jennifers.” Cool song. Go to iTunes store.

Try to buy “27 Jennifers” but this is a loaner MacBook Air and I’ve already authorized my 5 computers for iTunes purchases.

Oh, right, the event. Refresh page. Apparently this “Steve Jobs” (of the Cupertino Steve Jobses) is heading this thing.

Whoops, no he isn’t: he hands it off to Phil Schiller. Who always makes me think of the guy who made those awesome short films for the original seasons of “Saturday Night Live.”

He leads off by talking enterprise. Check off the first item on the expected announcements.

Tab over to Google Reader. 5 new articles in ModBlog. Do I dare? Hell yeah. Fingers crossed…

…the score: one “holy CATS is that an extreme mod (extensive facial tattoos + piercings + horn implants” one “okay, kind of an interesting tat” (cute cartoon of a giraffe and an elephant on someone’s chesticological ladyparts), one flat-out “Ewwwww…” (gross, in-your-face pornographic cartoon on someone’s calf), one fairly interesting tribal backpiece (though as always, those tribal designs make me wonder if in the future, people will point to that and say “2004, right?”).

Back to the event…

Cool, Apple’s giving the enterprise IT managers nearly everything they’ve asked for. Microsoft Exchange compatability…they’re licensing MS ActiveSync, push services for calendar, contacts, etc., support for more VPNs, tools that allow remote admin of phones….meaning, the ability to set up hundreds of phones at once, and wipe phones remotely if they get lost or stolen.

Let’s see how my man in the office Iditarod pool is doing…

Awesome! Martin Buser has passed Ed Iten and Hugh Neff and is now at the Cripple checkpoint in 4th place. Still with 15 dogs, nearly his full original team. This means he can start choosing his team for the “real” race to come. Wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped two dogs before taking off for Ruby.

From Ophir we swing our Camera of Truth back to Cupertino, where the local residents would bravely throw their bodies in front of those 15 dogs to prevent them from being exploited thusly. (And then the dogs would immediately pounce and eat them).

Demo of Exchange contact syncing (if Bob adds a new contact to his iPhone at the trade show hospitality suite, it immediately appears in Alan’s iPhone at the strip club champagne room five blocks away from the convention center). Demo of push email (you don’t have to “check” email…there’s just a wide-open pipe from the company mailserver to your iPhone).

What’s going on at Twitter? Tab.

….nothing much. Hokay.

Second of two cans of Diet Pepsi With Cherry is poured into an insulated travel mug. Hmm, ice has melted. Back into kitchen.

Did I mention how awesome it is to own an icepick? I used to have to toss the bag of ice in the air and let it smash to the floor to break it into cubes. Having the right bar tool for the job makes me feel, y’know, sophisticated and junk. I bet Hef owned an ice pick back in the golden days.

I unmute “Dirty Jobs” on the PVR. It’s the one where he’s working at a tannery. Good god, I think there are visible, cartoon-like stink lines radiating off of the screen.

Back to Cupertino. The thrilling — seriously, the aisles at Town Hall are littered with convulsing bodies of industry analysts, like at a revival meeting with a good cover charge — demo of enterprise push email and contacts is over with and now Scott Forstall is talking SDK.

…After showing off web apps.

No, that’s good. I’ve said before that Apple has made a huge hit with their custom web hooks in iPhone Safari. There’s now actually three versions of the Web: the “real” web, the stripped-down no-fun version that exists for mobile browsers…and a version that only appears to people visiting with an iPhone. What an achievement.

On to the actual SDK (Mike Rowe is now shoveling huge, wobbly wads of deer flesh, fat, and hair from a rotating tanning drum). Sounds like a really cool talk; they’re finally saying “Here’s what we meant in January 2007 when we said ‘the iPhone runs OS X, with additions and deletions that make it relevant for a touch-based handheld phone instead of a keyboard-and-mouse computer.”

There’s a real sense of “pulling the tarp off of something you’ve been using for months” aspect to this. Truly, it is OS X, with all the familiar frameworks.

I’m seeing a lot of familiar terms and tech here. As a geek with some basic Cocoa programming skills — not “mad” by any means, but perhaps I could claim to have “irked skilz” — this is actually getting me keen to write iPhone software.

(Which of course is the whole point of this presentation.)

Now explaining “Cocoa Touch.”

The skins have been cleaned and tanned. Now Mike has taken them to the second floor, where they must be scraped and made supple once again.

Is there a name for those three or four sad little broken Dorito corners that are left over on the napkin, from the original handful you plated from the bag? Part of me says “they’re still tasty” and eats them. Part of me wonders if this isn’t like an alcoholic sucking on the ice cubes left over from a glass of scotch.

Onward to a demo of XCode. Oh, awesome: developing iPhone apps uses Interface Builder just like any other apps. I wonder if it works with AppleScript Studio?

(I am drooling at the thought of being able to simply port all of my script-based XCode apps onto the iPhone. Hell, man, I could have six useful things on my iPhone a day after I get the SDK.)

Sounds like a very slick development system. You get an iPhone simulator for “live fire” exercises. When it’s done, you build the app as usual, select an option, and bango, it lands on the iPhone you’ve got tethered to the build machine.

Cool demos of sample apps, demonstrating full access to the touchscreen and the onboard accelerometers (demo app that “distorts” a photo by letting you mush things around with your finger, like mashing up a Polaroid; shake the iPhone like an Etch-A-Sketch and it restores the original photo.

Equally neat is the fact that this is just OpenGL. So no need to learn anything new…just as in the Mac, games and graphic apps written to use that library are a (relatively) straightforward port.

Oh, good Lord: Mike is using a scraping machine that looks like it’s designed to grab your wrist, skin all the skin and muscle from your arm, and then rip the skeletonized limb from your shoulder. Wisely, Mike is having little success with operating it.

Put th PVr back on pause, back to the liveblog.

Oh, man: Apple is getting serious about the iPhone as a gaming platform. This takes me a bit by surprise as (frankly) so long as Macs and iPods can run both Solitaire and a Tetris clone, they seem to think that this side of the software business is more than covered.

Nice point they’re making: they invited a bunch of developers (under double-secret-probation NDA) to come to Cupertino and see what they could build in two weeks. First to demo: Electronic Arts, demoing some work on porting Spore to the iPhone.

(Sounds like a good demo, but…Spore? IMHO this is the most “You can’t have your dessert until you’ve eaten all of your vegetables” game that’s selling well enough to be well-known. Give me stuff to blow up, fer crissakes, and don’t make me think about Darwin!)

I feel sorry for the next guy to demo: showing off a vertical-market app for (I gather) organizing sales leads. This is like that day in school when the kids’ parents come to talk about their careers, and the nice Mom with a consultancy firm specializing in process control in light-industrial manufacturing has to follow the firefighter.

AOL is up next, showing off AIM for the iPhone. Good. And I’m absolutely confident that now, all of the bloggers and messageboard posters who bitchily insisted that Apple would never support chat on the iPhone because they didn’t want to give users a free alternative to AT&T’s text messaging are dislocating their wrists in their rush to post their apologies.

“I have besmirched not just Apple, but my own reputation as a technology observer” they will post. “If I do not retract these wild and unfounded claims, I cannot live with honor.”

I am so totally sure that this is what will happen. I imagine that you won’t be able to get your email for at least another twenty minutes, because of everyone posting at the same time.

Next is Epocrates. My folks have been having a batch of medical experiences of late, and so I’ve been spending a certain amount of time explaining to doctors and nurses the situation on iPhone software development. “If it doesn’t run Epocrates, I can’t use it,” they moan. Many just carry two phones and use their Treo almost exclusively for the doctor stuff.

Note how carefully this event is being orchestrated. Apple has carefully lined up a series of white porcelain plates at the far and of a shooting gallery. Each one is labeled with a known percentage of the marketplace that “can’t” buy an iPhone for specific technical reasons. Annnd…plink! plink! plink!…they’re knocking them all down.

Final demo goes to Sega, bringing monkey-based gaming to the iPhone.

Monkeys are like bacon. They improve just about anything.

Interesting that all the game companies are keen on using the iPhone’s acceleromoter. Call this the “Wii Effect.” I wonder if this will translate to truly effective game interfaces or if this will be a flavor-of-the-month sort of feature that soon gives way to a more practical static virtual gamepad.

(I predict that the first “iPhone as pedometer” app will arrive about 48 minutes after the SDK goes live).

Mr. Steve Jobs (of the Cupertino Steve Jobses) returns to the stage to talk deployment. Looks like the iPhone firmware will now include a built-in app browser and loader, like the iTunes Store widget. Slick and simple (but I wonder how folks will get a “try before you buy” sort of experience?)

Sounds like a fairly neat deal for small developers. Developer sets the price and there’s a simple 70-30 split between the developer and Apple. No service charges, it costs nothing other than that 30%.

Naturally, if you want to give things away for free, Apple will take 30% of $0. IE, it costs nothing to distribute freeware or open source apps.

But I’ll be interested to know how developers feel about this. This is the only way to deploy iPhone software. You cannot sell an iPhone app without paying a 30% tribute to Caesar. I suppose their happiness will be tied to how good this Apple store is at steering people to their products and converting casual interest into an actual buy.

Mention that some apps won’t be accepted into the Store. Porno, malware, apps that slam bandwidth…sounds reasonable, but this is the overture to a whole new discussion: “What right does Apple have to dictate what apps I can and cannot use on my iPhone?”

I don’t think it’ll be a big argument when it comes to porn. But what happens when an online poker site wants to create an iPhone app? Apple’s already kiboshed one department of the Vice Store…is gambling also an affront to God (meaning: Jobs)?

Hmm.

Surprise, the SDK beta is available today for free (but only to developers) (like me, hee hee hee).

Interesting note: joining the dev program costs $99. I wonder if this means “the iPhone developer program” or “the Apple developer program”?

Either way, a $99 buy-in to become a fully-supported developer isn’t a lot of money. Folks who bought the first Palm Pilot and found that the box contained a developer CD, a small assortment of quality chocolates, and a nice handwritten note reading “Please please oh pretty please write apps that make our hardware more awesome” might arch a Spock-like eyebrow, but again…$99 isn’t an exclusionary buy-in by any means.

(Remember: becoming a Newton developer cost about $800. This meant that you didn’t write apps for the Newton unless you had a business plan of some sort. Or if your company needed the SDK and you were able to cook your own apps with it on the side.)

Final announcement: the iFund. I have no clue what’s this about but I see “fund” and “$100,000,000″ and I think “How can I get my hand in the till?”

Event is over and ends with a good, strong comment: the iPhone and iTouch are now real, red-blooded platforms, not just a phone and an iPhone. Remote shared computers > desktops > portable computers > palmtops > touch computers?

Steve dismisses everyone but the press. Red Five, standing by…

…Time for Q&A.

Voice over IP? Yes for WiFi, no for cellular net.

Security? Obviously a big concern, but that’s part of the reason for the $99 fee. They collect lots of information about the developer so that people can be held responsible for Bad Apps.

“SIM unlock software”? Thank you, we’ve all enjoyed a good laugh.

Mmmm…okay, I’m ready to push the button, Frank.

Wowwww. I’ve been using iTunes since it was called SoundJam and yet I’ve never seen an error message like this before:

I’m not saying that this error got me all upset or anything. But c’mon, Apple: is this a rational, reasonable, and most importantly a proportionate response? Let’s consider the actual problem here: when Joe Jackson’s “Happy Loving Couples” comes up on Shuffle Play, iTunes will be unable to show me a black and white photo of pointy shoes.

Honestly. You see this kind of stark, in-your-face error mode and you’re steeling your courage for the next sentence coming after it. Surely it’s something on the level of

“Mr. Jobs hates you and your work so much that he not only doesn’t want you to write about his products any more…he also doesn’t think you deserve to use them, either.

or

“iTunes will show you your album covers again after you finally admit that your interest in Star Trek/Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman slashfic goes beyond simple irony.”

or even

“…and now the zombified remains of the wicked shall rise from their unmarked graves, and feast upon the hearts of the righteous.”

If I were in charge of iTunes, I would have had the app simply drop a subtle red “X” over the Cover Flow area. I’m just not sure I understand why Apple would want to use an error display that clearly and definitively announces to all those present that This Piece Of Apple Software Has ****ed Something Up Mightily.

Do they think that this is, like totally the most awesome problem ever?

An edited version of this column was first published in The Chicago Sun-Times on October 4, 2007.

How tragic. What was once thought of as America’s sweetheart of the cellphone industry, a fresh, charming piece of technology with a bright and exciting future, is starting to become more famous for making headline-grabbing stumbles and sprawls.

Horrifuingly, iPhone has become the Lindsay Lohan of technology.

I blame the iPhone’s management, of course.

And the latest flap has been the worst one of them all. Apple released a major update to the iPhone’s firmware last week. Firmware 1.1.1 adds an iTunes Store application as well as some security fixes and minor user-interface tweaks. And if you’ve used a tool to unlock your iPhone so you could use it on T-Mobile and other outside phone networks, it will probably render the phone inoperable and maybe even unrecoverable.

Yes, it’s that last thing that’s grabbing the headlines. And not just in the nerd press, either. “Apple disables users’ iPhones,” I heard on the local nightly newscast. “and the company says they won’t fix them!”

As for the nerd press…they’re reacting the way a cat does when it’s taken a nap in your clean laundry and suddenly finds itself tumbling around in the dryer. Suffice to say that they are not calm and measured. Even folks on highly-partisan Mac sites are accusing Apple of intentionally breaking those unlocked phones out of pure spite.

Well, that’s just rubbish. I’m almost willing to dismiss that idea purely on a humanist level but in addition to my basic faith in humanity there’s the fact that unlike other phones, SIM-unlocking an iPhone is a very messy trick. They’re hacks, not consumer solutions, and the risks are severe and unavoidable. It’s not like riding in an airplane…it’s like jumping out of one.

Apple couldn’t have protected these phones without a great deal of time and effort that was better spent improving the iPhone itself. And they did warn the iPhone community about the dangers of SIM-unlocking. They did it when these tools first became available and they even inserted a big warning — in capital letters, no less — in the firmware installer itself. What we have here isn’t a case of Apple being evil: It’s a demonstration of what can happen when hacker tools are sold as consumer solutions.

Folks still have a right to be very upset at Apple, though. The update trashed some phones that hadn’t been modified at all, its users claim. Worse…it removes all unauthorized third-party applications and makes it impossible for them to ever run again.

And this hits me right where it hurts. I count on my iPhone eBook reader to keep info and documents from my desktop at hand. Plus, I’ve finally gotten to the point in “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” text adventure where I need to get the Babel Fish.

It’s amazing that the iPhone developer community has come so far without any help whatsoever from Apple. The company released no sample code, no tech docs, no software development kit. But the iPhone is based on a popular OS, and Unix programmers took the ball and ran with it. By September, there was a friendly, consumer-level app that downloaded, installed and ran commercial-quality software.

It was such a rich system that the iPhone was gaining new and wonderful features every week. Sure, these apps technically broke the rules of Apple’s user agreement, but unlike the SIM hack, it broke nothing on the device itself.

With the new firmware installed, it appears that all software must be “signed” by Apple or else it’s a no-go. So if I upgrade my iPhone’s firmware from 1.02 to 1.1.1, I’ll gain an app that lets me buy music directly from the iTunes store, but I’ll lose all the other apps I’ve installed over the past month.

It’s a bad trade. I ain’t updating.

But back to poor Lindsay iPhone. The iPhone — and’s Apple’s — reputations have taken a real hit, even though these issues don’t really affect the average iPhone consumer. As with the real Lindsay, it can all be fixed if Apple just learns how to communicate better.

There are reasons why the firmware update created so much havoc for so many phones, and it mostly isn’t the company’s fault. Why aren’t they explaining this clearly? And while ideally, I want to have full control of my hardware, all I truly need are beautiful, reliable tools that help me get through the day. If the best apps are only available signed, sealed, and delivered from the iTunes Store, fine. But when, kind sirs, will that be happening?

So here’s the public impression that Apple has created via its silence: the iPhone is a $399 phone that can be crippled via a software update and in some cases, if you take it in for warranty service, they won’t fix it. This expensive device can’t run any “real” apps that didn’t come pre-installed, and Apple has announced no plans to give the iPhone the same ability found in every Treo, Blackberry, and Nokia that costs half as much.

Please, Apple. Fix this before the court orders the iPhone to be fitted with an ankle bracelet or something.

After The Show…

I felt sort of an obligation to write this column. My iPhone review was pretty damned enthusiastic and the effects of the firmware update really influenced my thoughts on the device. I didn’t really care so much about what happens to phones that had been SIM-unlocked — like I said in the column, it’s inherently an unsafe hack and you’re foolish to try it if you don’t appreciate the risks — but zorching third-party apps with the new firmware update limits the potential of the iPhone.

The iPhone needs real, third-party apps. That’s really the distinction that separates a plain-Jane contract phone from a true smartphone.

And yes, Apple has opened the iPhone wide for developers of web-based iPhone apps. Seriously, if you can only associate the phrase “web-based app” with images of a JavaScript-based currency converter, then you desperately need to take a look at EditGrid. It’s the most impressive iPhone app I’ve seen. It might even be the most impressive handheld spreadsheet I’ve ever seen on any device:

Yup, that’s technically a website you’re looking at. And yet it’s a full-featured spreadsheet app with tables, layers, charts, and everything. I use it all the time, both as a simply way to carry arbitrary desktop data around with me and as something of an outliner and list manager on my iPhone.

Cool. But when I board a plane, that spreadsheet goes bye-bye. Ditto for parking garages, the Amtrak station where I board the train to New York, and most of the state of Vermont, in my experience.

I insist that this is not a good thing.

Compare and contrast this state of affairs with the world that a Treo or Nokia or Blackberry owner knows. They can simply copy files directly onto their handsets. Hell, many models even have a card slot. Just copy files onto a memory card and then stick it in your phone, just like a thumb drive. And a cheap third-party spreadsheet app, word processor, list manager, et cetera ad infinitum will let you read and work with the file no matter where you go.

Yes, you can use it on a train. You can use it on a plane. You can use it here or there…you can use it anywhere.

I really shouldn’t complain. Much of my new book (“iPhone: Fully Loaded”; bless youfor asking) deals with ways of getting around the “thou shalt not put your own damned files on this device” commandment imposed by Apple and iTunes. But statistically-speaking, a serious percentage of iPhone owners aren’t benefiting from book royalties so they’d probably prefer these sort of tasks to be so simple that you don’t need to buy a book at all.

(No matter how pornographically-low the price of said book might be.)

No, I still haven’t updated my iPhone to 1.11. This is what my iPhone’s home screen looks like:

…I think you can appreciate that at this time, a firmware update would be a bit of a downgrade. Visit the homepage of AppTapp Installer for instructions on how to do this to your iPhone.

(Or, better yet…buy my book. Please. There’s a hole in the roof and the children need shoes and winter’s coming but screw all of that because I’m sick and tired of not owning an HDTV.)

As I suspected, the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Apple and third party developers is indeed ongoing. The latest round has gone to the mice, with new tools for jailbreaking iPhones and even iPod Touches.

I’ll update my firmware after I’ve had a chance to digest these new techniques and understand how they work. All’s I can say is that one of the most important apps on my iPhone — following only the Big Four at the bottom of the Springboard screen — is indeed a simple book reader app that allows me to view documents I’ve copied into my iPhone’s storage. The phrase “cold dead hand” leaps to mind when asked to comment on my commitment to retaining this app.

But the real point of the column is that Apple has been doing a terrible job of addressing people’s concerns. Apple should have put Greg Joswiak or some other high-ranking, avuncular, and camera-ready employee in front of a sympathetic interviewer, and made the company’s side of the story plain.

And it’s unquestionably time for Apple to make its application strategy plain. Folks like me will be mollified by the knowledge that an SDK is definitely coming. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, and then for the rest of our lives we can play Joust on our $400 phones (or hell, even have a to-do list).

For now, the question “Should I buy an iPhone?” has become a bit more complicated. I remain an enthusiastic user, but Apple needs to decide whether they’re building a mobile computing platform or an iPod. If it’s a platform, then the users should be able to count on a certain amount of control over the device.

If it’s an iPod, then the users should be warned that it is what it is and if it isn’t already what they want it to be, then they should buy something else.

There we go. I knew my new iPhone was missing something…