My iPhone 3G Story

I was one of the 50 or-so fans in the line in front of an Apple store the 2nd day it was debuted. I had to dig up my family from the bed and drove 2 hours to arrive at 10 AM. My family went shopping and I was left in line for 3 and half hours chatting with people. They only had several in stock and no definite answer was given for the next shipment. Therefore we left after my wife finished her shopping and kids started to get hungry...

I wasn't too disappointed that day because later we were able to strike a deal for our new car, so at least I wasn't home empty handed...

The next morning I went directly to AT&T to order my iPhone. 5 days later they informed me that my phone is awaiting me. I stopped by twice after work but the store was packed. I was lucky enough to return to store before my name was called. And some customers were not happy that I was called before them (I signed up the sheet and went back later while they arrived later than I did but sit and waited). The rep went with the sheet and 10 minutes later I left happily. Do not waste your time waiting in line in front of Apple store. Go to AT&T and order one. They reserve it for you to pick up within 10 days after arrival.

The white color does stand out from the crowd. I still like the aluminum look and feel better. 3G is fast and GPS locates in no time. However when I am indoor with 3G and try to locate my position, it took forever and never went through. When I am indoor with EDGE it was normal again. My last visit to Apple store I bought the Belkin leather hard case for the phone. It is handsome, sturdy, and functional. The whole front side is exposed so it's easy to tap. The leather do not rub the phone with debris because it is not soft like silicon.

The camera is pityful as I mentioned earlier. I just pre-ordered Panasonic LX3K from Amazon so my kids' pictures won't be blurred by iPhone.

Formula One - Go Kimi

Today let's talk about F-1 racing.

I started watching F-1 in 2002. The eye-catching McLaren artwork immediately caught my eyes. They put their drivers' first name on the side of the race car, so big that you know who's in it. And they got a youngster named Kimi.

I was never a Ferrari fan. The main reason is that Michael Schumacher just does not act sincere enough as an established multiple time World Champion. Therefore I quickly rooted for someone that was capable of beating Ferrari, and that was McLaren.

A little bit of research gave me an idea about their glorious past with Senna and Prost. And Kimi was definitely given the permission to win without noticeable obstruction from DC. He quickly outpaced his teammates and started to win races in 2003. Through his years with McLaren, his championship hope was always plagued by the performance of the race car, or persistant bad luck.

Everyone knows he is the quickest, most talented driver in F-1, but his bad fortune gave him twice as runner-up in driver's championship, one lost to MS and the other to FA. His signature drive so far is the 2005 Japanese GP at Suzaka, in which he started at 17th on grid but fought his way up and eventually passed Fisichella at the first corner of the final lap, and went on to win the race!

In 2007 he switched to Ferrari to take the open seat left by MS. Before the last race in Brazil, he was 7 points behind LH, and 3 points behind FA, credited to McLaren's long traditioned driver equality. Thanks to his marvelous drive with some help from his teammate Massa taking 2nd place, FA taking 3rd place, and LH's mistake which giving him 7th, Kimi finally won his first championship by only 1 point advantage against both LH and FA. A championship long overdued, but thankfully he managed to join the elites.

Kimi does not speak much, not to mention excuse. He lets his driving do the talking, and everyone else shuts up and listens. That is the way I like about him.

iPhone 3G - What Disappoints Me

iPhone 3G is set for July 11. I am probably buying one, for the reason that the Nokia N95 I have right now just cannot do the internet and email right. However, there are still things about iPhone that I think Apple trys to play dumb on us.

First, camera. No upgrade on camera pixel. No flash. No video recording. What a bummer! This is an obvious update that no one wouldn't neglect. Still, Apple knows we are going to buy it even without these camera upgrade. So they underplay the camera and instead taunt their 2.0 software platform as the focus. And for sure they will update the camera this time next year and somebody will need to pay for this easy upgrade that should have been done by now.

Second, plastic back cover?! What's wrong with Apple's aesthetic taste?! Do they not know the poor polycarbonate plastic cover is prone to scratch? My MacBook has already suffered from these terrible scratches and yet I have to let my next iPhone go through the same kind of pain? This is just way too much for the "cost down" process. Carriers are paying subsidy so how much less Apple would make with a decent iondized aluminum back cover for the customers?

Third, memory size. It's just a matter of time before the 16 GB gets filled with songs, videos, and the apps they sell.

And I know Apple knows all these shortcomings. They just sacrifice these features for future upgrades and we customers will again have to fund these overdued upgrades next year.

Mac Pro 8 Cores 2.8 GHz

I could not overcome the temptation of an entry level octa-core Mac Pro. Therefore I forked in almost $3K for one with 6 GB RAM and an additional 500 GB drive for time machine backup.

All in all it is impressive as a workstation. I haven't had a chance to compile a program for parallel computing on it though. Anyways this one should last much longer than the fragile MacBook. Desktop units are really built for expansion and durability purposes, suitable for a performance oriented user like me. However for in-bed use MacBook is still in service.

My MacBook is getting crappy

It's been 2 years since my first generation of MacBook debuted. And it revealed several problems already due to its age.

First, the white polycarbonate exterior is prone to scratch and crack. Mine has its base under LCD joint cracked and ready to chip off.

The more annoying part is the sleep function. It'll wake up spontaneously even with lid closed. This causes overheated motherboard and drains the battery all the time, which has cost me a new battery. No firmware update so far seems to help.

Now the MacBook only serves as bedtime internet surfing tool. Luckily I am not a frequent traveler and will just cope with it until it gives up on itself.

How I became an Apple fan - Part 2

Finally in May 2006, MacBook arrived.

I was impressed by the brilliant design of magnet power cord and latch, as well as the simplicity to upgrade RAM and hard drive, and the touch of the keyboard. I wasn't so sure about the black color but the matte finish was definitely my taste.

Well, I still went for a white super-drive model instead of black. Yap money, money, money.

This Yonah based core duo processor does it job adequately and I "only" had three issues need to use warranty. Considering a first generation model it is quite impressive.

The first problem I had is the random shutdown due to the short circuit caused by expanding heatsink. It was quite an issue for the early model after running CPU intensive applications continuously for a while. It was fixed right pretty quick and I also asked them to swap in a new handrest plate. However, they bent the CD drive insert and had to do another turn-around. Another problem I encountered is a dead battery after only 190 times of recharge. They sent me a replacement for that.

Now I've owned it for 20 months and it's working fine despite all the scratches and crazy battery reading. For medium graphic demand it handles perfectly. I did need to max out the 2 GB RAM and swap a 160 GB Momentus 7200.2 to keep it flying.

I've tried BootCamp but figured it's too much hassle to switch in between. I used Parallels for a while and now use Fusion to keep my work and my life on the same desktop. My next step of upgrade will mostly likely be getting an 8-core MacPro so that both OS's can get multi-core juice at the same time.