wizard's WAAAH-nts (iPhone / iPod touch)

Anudder useless thread made by wizard. Yay!

Some of you may know, I am a proud owner of an iPod touch. I have not bought one since the olden days of the Second gen touch-wheel iPod. Normally, I would wait for the second gen of something, but the iPod touch is what I have been wanting since the introduction of the iPod Color.

Since I have bought it, I've Jailbroken it -- upgraded -- Jailbroken it -- upgraded -- foiled by Apple which caused me to have a non-Jailbroken iPod touch, became a tool and paid $20 for file that activated apps that were already on my iPod touch (but I digress) -- upgraded -- and Jailbroken again. It's been a fun two months, I must say.

Even though it has exceeded anything that I could imagine since the days of dreaming, which seem long ago, by being spoiled I want to be spoiled more. As I start to use it more, I see some short comings. But amazingly, a lot can be fixed in the software. Though not all. Some are universal, some are iPod touch specific.

1. Weather Radar At first thought, a weather app is cool. But not really practical. You can look at the current weather, a general consensus of what the day will bring for today, and the upcoming six days (it's the friggen Dashboard Widget, quite literally). But it does really help much. What would be more useful is an active radar, to show what is happening in your area (city-wise). Look to see if a storm is heading your way, or how bad the storm would be. I find myself wanting to know this more than knowing if it is icing outside (*looks outside* oh, hey it is!). Besides maybe the Calculator and Stocks app, it may be the most useless app on the iPhone.

2. More Robust Calculator C'mon! Add, multiply, divide and subtract is all you can do? You have freaking accelerometers and luminous detection! Include some square rooting, squaring, cubing, matrices, converter, et cetera. This could be so much more useful.

3. Bluetooth/Wifi Printing A little trickier, I admit. But, with Notes, Mail, and other programs of the like, sometimes you want to print those things out. It would make life so much easier. Yeah, I know you can send an email to yourself, but what if I am too lazy for that?

4. Give Me Back My NAUGHTY WORDING Reflective Dock!! That's what made the iPod touch different from the more expensive cousin, and I happen to like it. Now you take it away with firmware 1.1.3. Give it back!

5. Wallpaper I know this can be done with SummerBoard once you Jailbreak your iPod touch, but I ask, why should you have to? It is completely counterintuitive to have a setting for "Wallpaper", and not change the background of the home screen. Only the Unlock screen? C'mon!

6. Flash Support in Safari There are good arguments for both sides to this debate. I am just barely slanted to the Pro-Flash. I can't see it doing any harm, really. Lots of sites use it to show videos, and really, that is what I want it for. You leave a lot of internet out when you leave Flash out, unfortunately.

7. Copy and Paste Who was the genius that let this product go into the stores without copy and paste. Try going a day with out it. It's hard.

8. When I got my second generation iPod, it came with a neat little gadget. It was a remote that plugged into a specially designed headphone jack. Especially with no physical buttons, save the power and home buttons, I can't help but feel that this would be even better for the iPod touch. No need to turn the screen on to skip a track, increase/decrease volume, or stop play. It may be selfish of me, but I would really like it because it takes a long time for me to fall asleep. But listening to music helps me relax. But after poking for the home button, having the display shining in my face while stumbling to hit the pause, or using the force of thumb and fingers to pry the headphones out of the jack (which pauses play, for those of you that didn't know), I am not really relaxed anymore, and it kinda defeated the purpose. Maybe something like this already exists, but I just don't know about it.

Don't get me wrong, I abso-freakin-lutely love this thing. I wouldn't trade it for, almost, anything. But nothing is ever completely perfect, those are somethings I wish they would improve upon.

#493578

Good read.

I've been thinking of getting an iTouch and every time I get close to purchasing one I read another bit of bad news about it.

I've played one and it looks and feels the mutts nutts, but these things you've mentioned here have made me think I'll wait and see what happens in the future.

The whole C&P thing kinda freaks me out, what in gods name was someone thinking. :confused:

I suppose looking back at the first iPods I'm sure they had some strange habits that Apple seem to have fixed over time, hopefully fingers crossed they will do the same with these two products.

I just hope they don't expect people to pay extra for all these addons they have forgot to add the first time round.

#493579

Good read. I believe Brad Wardell (of all people) summed up some of the lacking of features quite nicely in a recent blog post. I can't find it right now, but it was something along the lines of execution matters. He argued that Apple could have included some of the features you mentioned above (because some people were thinking the same thing), but if they weren't implemented properly, he said that they shouldn't be implemented at all, and that's what Apple did. I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong. To be honest, I don't yearn for copy and paste much at all.

#493586

I dig my iPhone... copy and paste would be nice, but I've gotten used to not having it.

Flash support is a good idea, but rendering Flash pages is very CPU intensive.

Battery drain/life is a major concern for any cell phone maker and I think Apple chose to leave it out for the sake of battery life.

I would still prefer to have the choice though.

My biggest gripe is the piss poor Blue tooth implementation and the lack of full 802.x wireless protocol support. I had to reduce the security on my WiFi router so I could connect to it with my iPhone.

But Jailbreaking is my friend and lots of cool tweaks are out there if you're brave enough to try them.

I've only bricked my phone once... thank god for DFU mode.

#493589

How much security did you have to change? The only thing I've had to change with the iPod Touch is to stop hiding the SSID. MAC filtering still works... I haven't tried WEP or WPA (or RADIUS for that matter) considering I don't use it on my network.

#493591

Only WEP and WPA-PSK [TKIP] is supported.

No RADIUS support and no WPA2-PSK [AES] support either.

Makes it a real ***** because I HAVE to use WPA2-PSK [AES] when connecting my work laptop to my home network.

Just a real PITA to change the router settings every time I switch devices.

No "N" router support either.

#493624

Videos rotate according to the position of the iPod when you are in Safari, why not when using the Video menu ?

I more than agree on #3 I don't want this cheesesomething

And iTunes should STOP asking me for the dmaned $20 app pack everytime I plug it in ! The "No, Thanks" button is uneffective.

#493627

Gee Wiz, that was an absolutely sensible read... You're losing your touch.

#493632

Only WEP and WPA-PSK [TKIP] is supported.
No RADIUS support and no WPA2-PSK [AES] support either...

just yesterday at work, one of my users asked me to configure his iphone to our wireless. well, we're on radius and i took a quick look at his iphone and was like, 'hmmm...i don't think so, sorry.' (incidentally, all our access points are airport extremes).

#493650

but these things you've mentioned here have made me think I'll wait and see what happens in the future.

Like I said in my post, I absolutely love it. But, yes, normally, I would wait until the second gen. We were the guinea pigs with software updates, and hardware that they may dump down the line. I knew going into it I was, but I couldn't wait.

I just hope they don't expect people to pay extra for all these addons they have forgot to add the first time round.

Or, at the very least, don't charge so much for it. I read somewhere that Apple was forced to charge legally for it. I admit that I don't understand the specifics behind it, but there is no excuse for whatever reason they come up with that they charge $20. I would not be nearly upset if it was $9.99, the cost of a standard album in the iTunes Music Store.

I believe Brad Wardell (of all people) summed up some of the lacking of features quite nicely in a recent blog post.

I'll see if I can find it and give it a read-through.

but rendering Flash pages is very CPU intensive.

And I completely understand this. Sometimes I do have to remember that I am not on a powerful computer with it. It's very easy to forget when you are going through what you want. But the fact that it does everything on it so well to begin with makes the piece of hardware such an astonishment.

Videos rotate according to the position of the iPod when you are in Safari, why not when using the Video menu ?

That is a good point. That clearly had to be an oversight. iTunes can detect which way to orientate Coverflow when you rotate it. And even the Photos app. However, YouTube doesn't either. Color me perplexed.

Gee Wiz, that was an absolutely sensible read... You're losing your touch.

I... Don't... Know!!! Ahhhhhhhh!!!

Though, I did see a UFO the other night. But we just passed each other giving the head nod (nodding up, not down).

Thanks for the compliments .

#493691