iPhone at Readercon
Jul. 12th, 2009 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prusikOne of the reasons why I bought the iPhone when I did was so that I could use Readercon to test it. When I got the Newton, Readercon showed me that yes, I could write and edit text with the Newton. No, I'm not going to carry it around with me all the time because it's too cumbersome for that. No, it's too out of date to be truly handy. I wanted to subject any portable computing device I use to the same test. (Also, I'd been out of my cellphone contract for over a year and upgrading to a new cellphone wasn't an intrinsically bad idea.)
iPhone both succeeded wildly in ways that I didn't anticipate and failed in ways that I expected. I'd so over-thought this purchase that the ways it failed didn't surprise me. On the other hand, it's a given that any device I buy, if it was worth buying, will be useful in ways I didn't expect.
The good news is that I enjoy writing and editing text with it. No, it's not as fast as with a real keyboard, but it's faster than not having any device at all. Readercon offers its program and schedule grid as PDFs. I loaded them into the PDF reader and I had access to both without having to carry a large sheaf of paper around. I hadn't planned on making use of the 3G network, but it was nice having access to email, the web, and Twitter while I was there. (Yes, I was reading the #readercon tag while I was at Readercon.) It makes a serviceable field recorder, although I ended up not recording anything. All in all, it does everything I expected it to do and then some.
It failed in the ways I'd expected. Finding a text editor with decent syncing facilities was tough. I ended using the native Notes app (which syncs with Mail.app on the Mac) and simply cutting and pasting to and from the files I actually edit on my Mac. Also, after the workshop andstealthmuffin's comments, I really wanted to work on the workshopped story. However, I couldn't. I hadn't synced it over to my iPhone. The story actually sat on a USB thumb drive in my pocket, but I had no convenient way to get that into the iPhone. (This is one place where a handheld computer that has a USB port and admits to the existence of file systems would have been a real win.)
Also, the iPhone Mail app (unlike Mail.app on the Mac) does not do client side spam filtering. I could run everything through Gmail. However, as wonderful as Google's services are, I like the idea of not being dependent on Google for absolutely everything. I can move off the free tier of my primary (non-Gmail) mail service to get better server side spam filtering. At $5/yr, it's worth considering.
On the whole though, it's passed the Readercon trial with flying colors. I did everything I wanted to do with it. The compromises I made were all ones I'd expected and with one possible exception, ones I was willing to make. (The exception: I version control my fiction with darcs. Ideally, my pocketable mobile device holds a darcs repository for easy syncing of changes back and forth. In reality, this is so unlikely to happen with iPhone.)
I'd worried about battery life. However, not only did I not run out of battery, I don't think I ever got the battery under 70% capacity. (I kept it on airplane mode most of the time on Saturday and Sunday, but I don't think I needed to. e.g., I didn't on Friday because I hadn't thought of it.) This may just mean that I don't use it very much. e.g., I was not live tweeting Readercon. I don't normally take too many notes.
Actually, the one time I took notes, it was the panel on the state of the short story. In that case, the story recommendations came so quickly, that I scribbled everything into the Moleskine notebook that my iPhone is supposed to replace. (It was in the jacket I brought with me because the Burlington Marriott was freezing cold.) If I'd thought about it, I would have simply recorded the audio. That would have been easier and more accurate.
I'd been looking for a pocketable mobile device to replace my Moleskine notebook. My iPhone has really done a good job of doing that, so far. If it can survive the Readercon trial, it's likely to survive anything else I'm likely to throw at it.
(Having said that, I may still get another pocketable computing device. Syncing data back and forth really is an issue for me. Also, having given into the shiny to buy an iPhone, I may give in again...)
iPhone both succeeded wildly in ways that I didn't anticipate and failed in ways that I expected. I'd so over-thought this purchase that the ways it failed didn't surprise me. On the other hand, it's a given that any device I buy, if it was worth buying, will be useful in ways I didn't expect.
The good news is that I enjoy writing and editing text with it. No, it's not as fast as with a real keyboard, but it's faster than not having any device at all. Readercon offers its program and schedule grid as PDFs. I loaded them into the PDF reader and I had access to both without having to carry a large sheaf of paper around. I hadn't planned on making use of the 3G network, but it was nice having access to email, the web, and Twitter while I was there. (Yes, I was reading the #readercon tag while I was at Readercon.) It makes a serviceable field recorder, although I ended up not recording anything. All in all, it does everything I expected it to do and then some.
It failed in the ways I'd expected. Finding a text editor with decent syncing facilities was tough. I ended using the native Notes app (which syncs with Mail.app on the Mac) and simply cutting and pasting to and from the files I actually edit on my Mac. Also, after the workshop and
stealthmuffin's comments, I really wanted to work on the workshopped story. However, I couldn't. I hadn't synced it over to my iPhone. The story actually sat on a USB thumb drive in my pocket, but I had no convenient way to get that into the iPhone. (This is one place where a handheld computer that has a USB port and admits to the existence of file systems would have been a real win.)Also, the iPhone Mail app (unlike Mail.app on the Mac) does not do client side spam filtering. I could run everything through Gmail. However, as wonderful as Google's services are, I like the idea of not being dependent on Google for absolutely everything. I can move off the free tier of my primary (non-Gmail) mail service to get better server side spam filtering. At $5/yr, it's worth considering.
On the whole though, it's passed the Readercon trial with flying colors. I did everything I wanted to do with it. The compromises I made were all ones I'd expected and with one possible exception, ones I was willing to make. (The exception: I version control my fiction with darcs. Ideally, my pocketable mobile device holds a darcs repository for easy syncing of changes back and forth. In reality, this is so unlikely to happen with iPhone.)
I'd worried about battery life. However, not only did I not run out of battery, I don't think I ever got the battery under 70% capacity. (I kept it on airplane mode most of the time on Saturday and Sunday, but I don't think I needed to. e.g., I didn't on Friday because I hadn't thought of it.) This may just mean that I don't use it very much. e.g., I was not live tweeting Readercon. I don't normally take too many notes.
Actually, the one time I took notes, it was the panel on the state of the short story. In that case, the story recommendations came so quickly, that I scribbled everything into the Moleskine notebook that my iPhone is supposed to replace. (It was in the jacket I brought with me because the Burlington Marriott was freezing cold.) If I'd thought about it, I would have simply recorded the audio. That would have been easier and more accurate.
I'd been looking for a pocketable mobile device to replace my Moleskine notebook. My iPhone has really done a good job of doing that, so far. If it can survive the Readercon trial, it's likely to survive anything else I'm likely to throw at it.
(Having said that, I may still get another pocketable computing device. Syncing data back and forth really is an issue for me. Also, having given into the shiny to buy an iPhone, I may give in again...)
