August 2008 Archives

Yes, there were conflicts when the whole group of 18 was together and trying to decide things but overall the canoe trip to Rose Island in Rock Lake at Algonquin Park was wonderful. A big reason for it being successful was the Obus Forme sleeping mat I had purchased at Canadian Tire for the trip. It's one of those real thin self inflating numbers. But, this one was thick enough that I could sleep on my side and not feel like spikes were being driven into my hip. The sleeping mat and the inflatable pillow allowed me to get good night sleeps which made everything else much better.

The puffy clouds in the deep blue sky, the rippling water flowing past the scutting canoes, the view of the water and trees on the far side of lake, the chipmunks and loons and ducks, wonderful food and company. Very good memories.

I was just as googly when the iPhone / iPod Touch came out as any geekhead but now that I've had time to play with it I'm not as impressed. There is no doubt that the interface is a lot slicker and swoopier but as far as usability? Meh.

The Palm interface is rather tired looking ... but for a few shiny pixels they could have still been the one to beat but they dropped out of sight rather than keeping up. I have at least half a dozen 'must have' apps on my Palm that work wonderfully and synchronize nicely with my PC. There will likely be no updates for these as the developers have gone out of business or have switched to the iPhone platform.

Other than looks I don't see many benefits to the iPhone platform over the Palm. The iPhone Safari web browser is head and shoulders above the pokey Palm Blazer browser but there is likely no reason Palm couldn't have developed a much better browser if they had wanted to. As for stability, both devices crash or need to be reset periodically. The virtual keyboard on the iPhone is only barely more usable than the one on the TX (using mKbd).

I'm a big fan of reading ebooks using eReader and was thrilled that an eReader app was available for the iPhone. This was going to be the killer app that made me love the new platform. But, reading on the iPhone screen isn't as nice as reading on the Palm screen. The screens are almost exactly the same size but the Palm renders fonts much crisper and the backlight isn't as blazingly bright white which makes reading for long periods much more pleasurable than the iPhone.

I love new stuff; I love updated software: but I want stuff that's compatible. I want to make my computing life better not have to start all over again every few years.