The day the Internet… sorry, Michael Jackson died.

It’s a sad, sad day after all. Michael Jackson hasn’t been dead for a whole day and the world is still mourning him. And I’m using his death as an excuse for being a chronic procrastinator. Nice of me. Oh, and Farrah Fawcett? You picked a lousy day for dying… sorry girl.

As it turns out, the web almost crashed yesterday due to MJ’s death. I know you wanted to take the Internet with you, MJ, but believe me that it’s not worth it… at least not yet. Anyway; Twitter, Google and other websites collapsed and just wouldn’t cut it for the information hungry public. That’s sad, considering how important the internet is for information retrieval (actually, wasn’t it called the “Information superhighway” a few years ago? So much for “super” or even “highway”… I’m prone to calling it a “microroad” after this…). So I was listening to CNET’s Buzz Out Loud today and Tom Merrit was talking about how this called for an Emergency Broadcast System for the internet. Yeah, well, I really do agree. News and all sorts of information is available on demand on the internet, so it should be a no brainer to consider it the first source of news for most people, not just the tech savvy. So fix it! Do something about it! Not for HUGE pop star deaths though. That’d be stupid.

Speaking of Twitter (not really, just pathetically trying to link one story to the other), Microsoft announced Windows 7s pricing. $199.99 for Home Premium, $299.99 for Professional and $319.99 for Ultimate. Congratulations, Microsoft! You keep overpricing your products, but on a much more smaller scale! That means in the near (or far) future we might see your OSs costing what they’re actually worth (probably a few cents, 10 bucks TOPS).

And Sony might finally be on to something this year! The guys over at Ars Technica report a rumor that Sony might actually be cutting the price of the PS3 by… an undisclosed ammount at… an undisclosed date. But it’s something! If I had to predict, I would say about a hundred bucks on october. But then again it might be 10 cents on January 2010. Oh, and they also say that they’ll be launching the PS3 slim in fall this year. Who cares about that thing, anyway? And who told Sony that was a good idea? I remember this neat story when I walked into a tech service here in Santiago to get my PS2 checked up because the lens was failing. The guy on the counter had like 2 old, bulky PS2s and right next to them there was a PILE of PS2 slims waiting to get checked. Funny part? A friend of mine told me the exact same story when we were commenting the possibility of the PS3 Slim. AND SHE LIVES IN MEXICO. So it’s not like it was a widespread problem with the PS2 slim at all. I know the PS3 is bulky and big, but it’s at least pretty and it WORKS. I’m not sure I’ll be able to say the same thing about the PS3 Slim once it comes out… but oh well, if you’re risky (or stupid) enough to get one when it’s released, please contact me once you do and let me know if it stops working at all after a few days. Thanks!

Now don’t laugh. Or kill me.

I’m sorry for taking so long in updating and whatnot, but the thing is at every single moment I decide to sit down and start writing, something happens that takes my attention off of it. And now it had to be Michael Jackson. Yeah, he’s dead and I’m sad.
I’ll get back tomorrow hopefully with nothing else on this.

iPhone OS 3.0: what iPhone OS 1.0 should’ve been.

I know I said later tonight, but then again I didn’t expect to wake up so late after the… well, ‘nap’. It’s all planned though, all planned.

So for today I have this really cool story about how bing is closing in on google in the web search business and how the future of mankind may change when Microsoft brings out a major robotic apocalypse and…

BUT WHO CARES!
The world could be burning up in this very moment and I wouldn’t care. Why? Because it’s iPhone OS 3.0 day, baby!

Okay, so the download was a pain: first of all, it wasn’t released on midnight and a whole bunch of people (myself included) were clicking the little “Check for Update” button in iTunes every five minutes expecting the god damned OS to come out. Well, it did. At 10 AM PST. That means it was 1 PM in Chile/EST. I know Apple never gave any specific time as to when the OS would be made available, but it was pretty much a safe bet that a whole bunch of people would stay up until midnight. Well, the OS never came and some of us went to bed with little time left to sleep (I for one slept only 3 hours. Not that you care or anything.)

Anyway, on a side note, some douchebag linked Apple’s Singapore website in Twitter, and every single twitterer went NUTS over that. Why? Because it listed the iPhone update being available on the EIGHTEENTH. Well, at least that’s what gave us a clue as to when the OS would be released.

Now onto what really matters! iPhone OS 3.0! Yay! Some hardcore cut, copy and paste action! Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “This is what iPhone OS 1.0 should’ve been, it’s not an upgrade, it’s just letting the phone do what it’s supposed to” and blah, blah, blah. And you know what? Yeah, it’s true, this is what iPhone OS 1.0 should’ve been, but Apple delivered so greatly that it doesn’t really matter.

The cut, copy and paste interface is nice and intuitive and pretty precise to be honest, and the new precision search for the iPod app (if you leave your finger on the screen, the dot will move slower allowing for better precision in searching that precise instant in a song or video you were looking for) is pretty hot. MMS (which I get to try because Claro delivered, unlike a certain Ma Bell… and I get unlimited MMS to boot) is pretty… well, straightforward. Once you access the new “messages” app (ex-SMS app), you get a snapshot icon right next to the text input bubble, and once you tap it you get to either take a photo or attach one from your photo album. I would add some screenshots, but I can’t take any right now so I’ll probably do that later.

Another wide expected feature was the spotlight search: phone-wide searching. Swipe your finger to the left or press the Home button on the first page of the Home screen and you’re taken to the spotlight interface. It’s pretty good and works pretty seamlessly, and searches in mail, contacts, iPod, notes… well, pretty much everywhere.

The voice memo app is pretty straight forward and the quality is pretty good. It also integrates directly with the Messages App, letting you MMS your voice note, and with the Mail app too.

Another thing that caught my attention was that photos taken with the camera look better. It’s quite amusing how much software upgrades can do so much. Not only the camera, but the whole device seems a lot faster and more responsive.

There’re also a whole bunch of minor fixes (some of them might be extremely important, but they’re still minor) that make the whole OS work pretty much GREAT, like sending up to five photos from the photo album via e-mail, better Safari browser (I know this isn’t exactly MINOR, but I’m running out of time here, so please bear with me…) that now can autocomplete and doesn’t crash every two minutes, stereo bluetooth support, landscape keyboard in mail and notes. Pretty much everything the iPhone OS needed changing.

So there you have it, my take on the iPhone OS 3.0. Does it make the iPhone the best phone in the market? Hardly. Does it make it better? Not really a better PHONE but a better device. The iPhone still has the same problems that it has always had with 3G reception and network coverage, but if you can get past that, it does work great. The thing is, it just lets the iPhone do what every single other smartphone in the planet can do.

Now, I won’t be back until next week since I’m going out of town for a few days, but I know you’ll live without me. All three of you that follow my blog. Just don’t miss me that much.

Until then!

Remember Beatlemania…? This is worse.

So iPhone OS 3.0 is out and boy are people downloading it; the servers are slow as all HELL!. The fun though is in checking Twitter every two seconds, to read all the “downloading”s “installing”s “HAH! I’M BETTER THAN YOU! I HAVE THE GM VERSION!”s and whatnot. It’s like a cult out there. Now, I have to admit that I was sheepish enough to wait up until 12 PST, but no iPhone came to my rescue. Thus I slept (not much) and rested (not really) and now I’m downloading.

I’ll set up a dedicated iPhone OS 3.0 post later.

For now, happy iHolidays! (Well, it did feel like christms at some point)

Twitter, o twitter

Okay, this has got to be the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. A bunch of people at Twitter are hitting “Check for Update” on their iTunes like madmen waiting for the oh so needed iPhone OS 3.0 update…

And I’m one of them. You may remember how I considered myself a sheep just for sticking with Claro for the iPhone 3Gs? Okay, here’s the demonstration of how sheepish I can be.