iPhone 3G wasn’t worth the update

Jul 28, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

It wasn’t that long ago when I bought an iPhone. A year and a month ago today. I was one of the fools to stand in line. I waited for an hour… which wasn’t so bad if I didn’t have my 2 year old daughter with me at the time (she’s three now) and did not get an iPhone! It was at the AT&T store near my house. After that frustration, I took my daughter home to go potty. It was 9pm at the time. So, not feeling fulfilled for the night, I had the urge to call the Apple Store Woodfield just to see if they had any iPhones left. Luckily for me, they did. Plenty of them! So I hopped into my car and went and got one!

A year passed. New iPhone is out. Yay!!! as most people would think (me for one). I went to same Apple Store to go wait in line with a friend of mine and saw a HUGE line. There was no way I’m going to wait in THAT line. I met up with another friend of mine who had been in line for three hours! and he wasn’t even that close to the door. So, I decided not to wait and went to grab dinner with my friend at Stir Crazy. I waited a week instead at my own leisure for the darn thing. I was going to purchase one for my wife anyways, because she needed to update her five year old motorola. I went to the Woodfield store again on July 19th and still, iPhone 3Gs were out of stock. The Apple Store employee told me that the Deer Park store just had a shipment in. Deer Park was only 20 minutes away so, I hopped on my car and went. Waited for an hour to get two iPhone 3Gs. Decided to get one for myself and see what all the hype is about.

I ended up activating the phones at home, because I did not feel like taking up the other people’s time. Once activated, I did not feel the warmth that the first iPhone gave me. With the first iPhone, I felt like I was one of the elite. The first to get into the modern age of phone technology. The proud few who, two months later overpaid for the iPhone nonetheless, loved the phone. The metal casing was nice; it felt expensive and well worth what I paid for. The iPhone 3G on the other hand, had a plastic casing, felt light, and hate to say this but “cheap” even though, it was 300 dollars. The commodity was not there. Everyone was getting one which is excellent! but, now the elitist feeling is gone and I no longer feel special. LOL

Three days later, I took the phone on a trip with me to San Diego, for a friend’s wedding. I was going to test this sucker out to the max. I used it just as much as the first iPhone and was very disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, the new technology is great; 3G speed and GPS. But, they are such battery hogs. We found ourselves many times without a phone and had to do an emergency recharge at restaurants or where ever we can get an outlet. I highly recommend getting a phone charger for the car if you will be traveling a lot with the phone. Other than those two technology enhancement, I don’t see anything else improved. The software is the same on both the first and 3G. So at this point, I don’t see any real reason for me to upgrade to the iPhone 3G so, I will be returning this bad boy to Apple tomorrow.

iPhone 2.0 Beta 8 is out now

Jun 26, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Late Thursday, Apple released beta 8 (build 9m2199) of its iPhone/iPod touch software developer kit while beta certificates issued before June 9th also expired. The beta, a 1.25 gigabyte download, includes iPhone firmware version 5a345 and according to sources, improves stability as well as mentions a developer-only version of iTunes 7.7, which developers can use to “install iPhone OS Beta 8 on your Apple devices.”—from www.tuaw.com

iTunes 7.7 makes my iPhone more “remote”. I can’t go into much more detail than that as I do not want to lose my privilege as a developer. For those waiting for iPHone 2.0 release, i’ll be one of the first to say that it will be quite worth it. Who else is ditching their old iPhone for the iPhone 3G on July 11th?

ChordC.com (Chord Connection) is now live

Jun 14, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 1 Comments

ChordC - Connecting People With Chords, formerly a Flash Desktop Application, Chord Conquering, is now a live interactive website. This initial release brings with it a slew of exciting features not found on the CD. For one, members can interact with other members and share songs or tips on guitar playing. If you have a band and looking for members, this would be a great place to start. Or if you are the greatest guitar player and want to join a band, sign up for a free ChordC profile. This site is definitely not for people who know absolutely nothing about a guitar.  The basic knowledge of chords and tabs are required.

Future release of the site will include all of the features found on the CD. The people who’ve bought the CD will find that this free web based upgrade is a wonderful addition to their guitar playing reference library. There will be sound attached to each chord, so that you will know what the chords sound like when you’re strumming along with it. Another nice feature of ChordC is the ability to find chords that you don’t know the name of. For instance, lets say you are strumming freely and found a sound that you like; you can go to the site and put in the fingering and find the matching chord. Widgets run the web, that is why we are working on a few of our own. Expect to see an iPhone version as well as a facebook application for ChordC.

If you would like to find out more about the site, come on in, we’re now open. Sign up for a free profile and rock on. So what are you waiting for… go conquer those chords!