Camping with Apple… The Good and the Bad.
I spent this past weekend camping on Lake Erie (and by camping I mean borrowing someone’s cottage) and decided not to take my PC and instead attempt to stay connected via my iPhone 4 / iPad combination. This may sound like an unfair test as it was the weekend but in our business we have support resources working all 3 shifts and are right in the middle of a Datacenter move. So, as far as potential need for me to work…there was plenty. Here is a summary of my experience.
The Good:
For entertainment purposes the iPad was fantastic. We quickly and easily accessed YouTube for comedy clips, videos, funny movie clips, etc. Every time someone brought up a song I was able to quickly purchase and download from iTunes and the speakers on the iPad were good enough for everyone to hear. The opportunity to integrate the web into having a good time with friends was fantastic and a much richer experience than using a PC. Passing the iPad around a “campground” circle was much more natural, like sharing a magazine, than I expected it to be.
For the moments that I had to work, the iPad was equally good. The combination of 3GS connectivity, the Drop Box app for in the cloud document access and Quick Office for document reading and editing never left me wanting my PC. I was able to keep up with email, respond to a co-workers request to make a minor edit on an Excel sheet and even RDP into our production Exchange server to make sure our new Sales Person’s account was setup correctly.
The Bad:
The iPhone 4 is a great device. Now, if it only made phone calls….
I’m appalled at the antenna situation and Apple’s subsequent response. I had an iPhone 3GS for many months and always defended the phone qualities of the device. Everything from reception to call control always seemed above average to me. I’ve had the iPhone 4 for 1 week and I can’t believe how bad the dropped call issue is. How did Apple’s QA people miss this?
During my weekend camping trip I dropped, without exaggeration, EVERY CALL. By Sunday, my phone reception issue had turned into the running joke of the trip and I had to borrow other people’s phones to make quick calls. I wish I could say it was an AT&T issue but 3 other people had AT&T devices and the 3GS coverage on my iPad was just fine.
As CTO my job is to stay current with technology so I would eventually be switching to a Droid for a while anyway, but if my free bumper (should be arriving this week) doesn’t drastically change my experiences with the iPhone, that switch will happen sooner or later.
Gerald Hetrick
Chief Technology Officer
Vox Mobile
