Tag Archives: iPhone

Reclaiming Privacy with a Tether?

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Random Opinion:

A friend of mine commented that her iPhone Internet is faster than her work computer’s Internet.

It’s bothered me for some time that the assumption is that companies can spy into your business as much as they want because “they provide” the equipment. Are you going to listen to my phone call to my doctor as well? Unfortunately, too often, the answer (given seriously) is “yes”.

“We have no respect for you. You are meat. Here’s your minimum + $x.” It seems odd on the surface, but obvious once introspected. The more people pay you, the more they don’t intrude on you. This has always been the case for me, and I’ve worked a wide variety of jobs.

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Palm Pre(mature)

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Do you remember when Apple announced its iPhone?  It had to file with the FCC, so it was going to become public 6-months in advance.  They pre-announced to keep control of their message.  They held a lot of cards to their vest, and it wasn’t really clear what functionality was actually available until the summer release.

Do you remember when Palm announced their upcoming Pre?  It was like a hullaballooed product release at CES.  It was so patently obvious (to anyone familiar with the technologies) that their wasn’t a lot of there there.

There was so much overreaching of claims by one major investor (trying to stoke more investment?) that it required an official SEC filing of facts. (source: AppleInsider – in sore need of copy editing, but an excellent article).  They now even claim it won’t be a direct competitor to the iPhone.  So, not good for Internet or games?

Indeed, AppleInsider contends that Palm is precariously positioned, and I wholeheartedly agree.  I think they will need a drastic influx of capital to finish and maintain development of the vapor platform they presented the world.  And this isn’t the most ideal economic environment for that to happen.

SQLitePersistentObjects

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I was on another iPhone project that had several thousand simple data objects that I would need to keep and search through. SQLite again. I’ve seen Jeff Lamarche mention his open source project, SQLitePersistenObjects a few times, so I decided to give it a whirl.

You can get the code at it’s google source site. There’s not too much documentation available, but it seems simple enough (as any SQLite wrapper should aim to be). There is a ReadMe.txt with a brief introduction, and some sample code (which I haven’t yet looked at).

I went about including it a different way than the “drop the zip file in” method it suggests. My project is in SVN and I’m using Versions, so I just added an svn:extern statement and now have a subdirectory with the source in it.

In Xcode I created a new group, then edited it’s information to point to the subdirectory naturally, then added all the files in there to the group. Then right-click on frameworks, add existing framework, and dig through the /Developer/Platforms et al. until you get to the sqlite dynamic library to link against.

It built and compiled fine for me. Now off to put it through its paces.

Bad Analysts at Ars Technica

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Ars Technica has an Apple-specific blog. Recently one of the authors provided some analysis of iPhones and netbook rumors. But it’s weak. I don’t really expect more from Ars Technica; I think they promote themselves as more professional than their actual comportment reveals.

The article’s lede includes self promotion, and questionable attribution.

Last month, I posted regarding netbook rumors that were swirling in anticipation of the Macworld Expo. In my write-up, I suggested that in many ways, the iPhone and iPod touch already were Apple’s netbooks. –Ars Technica

The concept of the iPhone being a netbook offering from apple was first suggested half-jokingly on an Apple financial teleconference last fall. For Erica to suggest she has come up with some new analysis of the market by suggesting exactly what someone else has already said is either humorous or sad, I’m not sure which.