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Not Another iPhone Review
As the last EchoDitto holdout, I now finally find myself the proud owner of Apple's new tiny PC.
Yes, that's right, I call it a PC. Let's face it, it's a computer, not a phone. (How did Macs stop being PCs anyway? They're still personal computers. Perhaps Apple vanity prevents us from comparing their products to anything existing. After all, when was the last time you heard someone refer to an iPod as an MP3 player? Its usually the other way around. But I digress.)
The iPhone is still a pretty nifty device -- even when you don't consider the enormous and sophisticated 'underground' software movement. The browser is great, the email works fine, although lacks some obvious features. Junk mail or cut & paste, anyone?
And the iPod features -- well, I have an iPod Nano for that.
But what really got me to switch over to AT&T was the geolocation. I've been on the GPS bandwagon for awhile now, having recently purchased a TomTom GO, and the idea of having geolocation and directions in my pocket is almost too much to bear.
But the real story isn't the famed cell-tower geolocation, its the the WiFi geolocation. While (ahem) exploring some of the 3rd party options out there for the iPhone, I found myself temporarily without cell service. Much to my surprise, geolocation was still working marvelously.
Later that day, I disabled my WiFi to save some battery (it didn't--the iPhone turns off the WiFi when 'sleeping' anyway) and I tried geolocation again. It was much, much inferior. (Go ahead, try it!)
Turn the WiFi on, and -- bam! -- back within 100 feet.
Now, I don't know about you, but I'm floored. How did Apple find a way to find me within 100 feet using WiFi alone? Granted, I'm in the DC area, so your mileage may vary, but either my Comcast IP address pinpoints me as 20 feet in front of my door or Apple is something awesome.
But we all knew that.
Comments
no, a company called skyhook wireless is something awesome.
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/
12 April 2007
9 weeks 3 days
Our sysadmin Ben was telling me about Skyhook this morning - apparently they drove around mapping fixed SSIDs to known locations? I'm still amazed this works better than cell tower triangulation, given the number of SSIDs available in some places (like outside my apartment building.)
Still, I guess its just volume -- I suppose you need far fewer cell towers to cover a given area:
http://www.cellreception.com/
I'm in DC as well and recently got an iPhone myself. I've been very happy with it. I absolutely REFUSE under any circumstances to switch to AT&T, though, even though it'd mean free phone calls to my boyfriend. AT&T was one of the companies that gave in to Bush's illegal wiretap requests without so much as a pause, and for that they are eternally on my shit list (they really should get the crap sued out of them). T-Mobile did not and I was already a member, so I just got a refurbished iPhone from Apple and hacked it with ZiPhone.