intermorphic.com Blog

Overall Summary: In my view, well worth the £5.99 ($9.99) upgrade price.

Well, I just managed to upgrade my iPod touch 2g to iPhone OS 3.0. It all went smoothly, although there were some niggles in the purchase process (I had to go through a loop 3 times for some reason). Here are some initial observations:

Bluetooth stereo: The first thing I checked was how it worked with Bluetooth stereo, as I wanted to use it in my (old) car and a newish Sony MEX-BT 3600 radio. The good news is that it paired fine, and the results were good! I initially forgot to turn off my WiFi connection and was finding that the stereo signal broke up or glitched every 15 – 20 seconds or so. Then I turned off the WiFi, and all was fine. The only thing to report is that it is LOUD. I have to turn the car radio down very low, and have not yet figure out how to adjust the volume on the device. If it is not possible to adjust the volume on the iPod touch or iPhone, and you are using a Bluetooth headset, then watch your ears!

Onscreen keyboard: With the car stopped/stationary and engine off (!), I tried typing whilst playing music over the bluetooth connection. I figure this would be a good stress test. Although the audio clicks for key presses were all over the place, typing speed was very very good – much much better than before – even with bluetooth going. And, the landscape keyboard is great!

Just these 2 features make it worth the £5.99 upgrade for me, so good one Apple!

Calendar woes: However, I do admit to being very disappointed that Calendar STILL does not show To Do items from iCal, at least as far as I can see. I just cannot understand why Apple have not fixed that, as there have been plenty of posts I have seen about it. The only thing I can think of is that it is not included for business reasons. I am really surprised by its glaring omission because it makes paying good money for the MobileMe offering seem a lot less interesting – and all the more so seeing as Apple are pushing MobileMe hard these days. If anyone from Apple reads this, please get out a point release fast that fixes that, thanks! My guess is you will sell more MobileMe subscriptions if you do that, so there is a real financial reason for doing it.

TeckNet iPhone composite AV and USB cable: This used to work fine under 2.2.1 but has stopped working under iPhone OS 3.0. I just get a message that this hardware is not supported. That is a bummer, too!

Apple bluetooth keyboard: I did try seeing if the iPod touch would discover a Wireless Apple keyboard (in a vain hope!), but it does not. I seems to keep trying to discover devices, but it never shows up. However, now the onscreen keyboard is so much more responsive, it lessens the desire for that. However, it would still be handy, as you can still type faster on a real keyboard.

Other bluetooth device: I dunno why , but I also tried to see if it would Bluetooth connect to my old N95. Well, it did, but as soon as it got connected the connection was terminated. Happened every time I tried to pair it. This does tend to indicate, though, that it should be possible to pair with other Bluetooth devices and developers could have a lot of fun there!

Voice Memos app and external mic: Just to confirm, this works fine with my external mic and cable system as noted earlier. You still don’t hear what you are saying in the headphones (no input monitoring – what was I hoping for ), and the volume level seems a bit low with the mic.

In-app purchasing: I am looking forward to seeing how in-app purchasing pans out, as this is something Intermorphic really wants to get into, as it would be ideal for getting add-on content for Mixtikl.

That’s it folks, hope it was of interest!

Thanks to the helpful people at HTC support I have now found out how to play the MP4 video files I recorded on my HTC Touch HD – simply rename them to .3gp files and they will play fine in Quicktime.

I had been trying everything, including searching the net, for a solution as to why they would not play in anything I had in Mac or Windows. I could not find any suggestion anywhere, hence this post in the hope it might help someone. Every media player I tried just said something like the following (unhelpful Mac finder message) “The movie could not be opened. An invalid sample description was found in the movie.”

I was told by HTC that the 3gp format was derived from the mp4 format, which itself is itself derived from mov (quicktime). Well, why they do not save to a .3gp file instead of .mp4 file, which won’t play anywhere, goodness only knows! Go figure. But, at least the problem is now solved and I can play my video files.

Having posted about JoikuSpot yesterday, I now reckon that JoikuSpot is probably the best app I have ever come across , as it has set me free in a (mobile) way I have always wanted, but never been able to figure out how to do.

I am doing this update from a cafe, and connecting my MacBook Pro to my S60 Nokia N95 wirelessly; no cable required. This morning I even had a googlechat session on my iPod touch (via N95) whilst on a walk and listening to music. JoikuSpot lets you see how much data you are using up, which is handy as I can see that doing chat etc uses very little, whilst normal browsing via the iPod touch uses quite bit as there is no way of turning images off.

Anyhow, with this kind of set up, all you need is a (suitable for your needs) data plan from your operator, and a suitable S60 device and a computer/laptop (or iPod touch) with WiFi. Provided you are not wanting to do too much, you don’t ever need to consider a mobile hotspot plan like with BT Openzone or The Cloud etc (well, I don’t now, anyhow).

Sorted, and big thanks Joiku!

PS: I would expect that operators without an iPhone offering would be jumping at the chance to partner with Joikusoft Oy. The reason being that instead of losing customers who wanted an iPhone, they could suggest instead maybe getting an iPod touch with an S60 device and it would be nearly the same (well, customers could use the iPod touch instead ). Maybe the operator would even want to offer customers a bundle of S60 phone, iPod touch and JoikuSpot, and bring their purchasing power to bear. Now that could make sense!

A while back we decided we needed a Windows Mobile phone on which to do testing of our mobile music mixing system Mixtikl, and that we needed a touch only version. We were not sure at that time on our iPhone plans otherwise we would have gone for an iPhone instead. We got a good deal on an HTC Touch HD from Orange, and so that was that. However, I have at long last retired the HTC Touch HD as my working phone, and none too soon as it drove me potty.

Why I got fed up with the HTC Touch HD is a long story, but I had a devil of a job accepting calls with the front slider, making calls by mistake, it being so very slow to do anything on and a host of other reasons. Besides which, having now got an iPhone Touch for testing out Mixtikl, I realised just how poorly the touch screen UI on the HTC Touch HD was implemented. Everything to do with it seems to happen in slow motion compared to the iPod touch.

Anyhow, enough said on that. I was always a big fan of my Nokia N95, as it just worked and always gave good service, so I decided to go back to using that (bliss!). There was one big but, though. Although I liked it as a phone, I was not so keen on going back to keyboard only control, especially for browsing, having experienced the iPhone Touch. What I wanted to do was to find a way to connect my iPod touch to the N95 so I could use that for browsing on, but then use the N95 as my phone.

As luck would have it, I came across a fabulous little app for S60 / N95 called JoikuSpot Premium. For around 15 euros this allows my N95 to become a WiFi hot spot that my iPod touch can connect to wirelessly (and with WEP encryption)! This means that when I am out and about I can browse on the iPod touch, connecting wirelessly to my N95 which in turn is connected to my network. I can also use chat etc on the iPod touch. I had being tempted to consider getting a monthly subscription to a hotspot network like The Cloud etc, but it always seemed so expensive when I was on a contract with a data plan sufficient for when I was not at home. So, all in all, a result!

NB: I did have a little problem running the app, once installed, but I took my heart in my hands and upgraded my N95 Firmware to the latest version, and that seemed to fix that.

What I am waiting for next is for iPhone OS 3.0 to be released, because I _hope_ the there will be drivers in it to allow me to connect my Apple Wireless (bluetooth) keyboard to the iPod touch. Great for making notes on the go etc. I also just hope Safari in iPhone OS 3.0 can be configured to turn off images so as to save bandwidth – goodness knows why that option was never included in the first place.

Finally, I figure I will be really sorted once I can also figure out how to connect up iTM Keys so that I can use MIDI to control (and input to) Sonar in Parallels. But I am a bit stuck on that right now…