Shortly after taking that photo the Apple store closed to transform it into an iPhone 3G store. The first step was the erection of a large black velour curtain of mystery to shroud the store and prevent prying eyes from glimpsing the goodness being assembled inside. Other than the occasionally Apple employee emerging from the curtain to go home and sleep (lucky them) the velour curtain of mystery was the only thing to be seen until 8am graced the Pacific time zone.

Waiting in line
The 12 hours in line actually wasn’t so bad. Much to the horror of the Apple Store the Alderwood Mall Security and Administration announced that folding chairs, sleeping bags, tents, and in general having fun were forbidden on property. They seemed to think that even allowing us to be on the property after the malls 10pm closing time was a special treat and yes, could we ask for another cup of porridge sir?

Aside from having to choose between sitting on the cold outdoor concrete and standing all evening we had a blast. The Gear Live crew came out in force to film the event and do some product giveaways for some iPhone cases and accessories. The night passed relatively quickly bringing us to 8am with a line of 250+ excited people iWaiting for the iPhone 3G.

The curtain drops
The velour curtain of mystery dropped and the doors flung open to an Apple store filled with excited Apple employees clapping and cheering us on. Being first in line provided a larger thrill than I expected – leaving my heart racing as I walked through their gauntlet of proffered high-5′s, cheering iAcolytes, and my own sleep-starved imaginations addition of a glowing visage of his holiness Jobs floating in the middle of the store looking down upon his dedicated flock.

The thrill was unfortunately short lived – the internet had indicated prior to opening that system problems had been making the launch difficult for those in time zones ahead of PST. Those problems had far from been worked out by the time us on the west coast were blessed with the coming of 8am. Due to the glitches it was roughly 45 minutes from the time I entered the store until I had been able to successfully purchased my 16GB white iPhone 3G. Even after the purchase the in store activation failed completely leaving me with a sleek and sexy hunk of plastic, plaintively begging to be plugged into iTunes for activation.

Time passes, the 30 minute drive home ensues…

The first several hours home were bittersweet. On the up side I was home and able to shower and sit on comfortable furniture. On the down side I was iPhone-less. Due to a glitch (which has been dubbed the iPocalypse by our beloved main stream media) everyone transitioning from a 1st generation iPhone to an iPhone 3G had their 1st generation iPhone deactivated during the process, so due to the unavailability of the Apple activation server neither the old nor new iPhone would work as a phone leaving me (and 100′s of thousands of others) phone-less and unable to make or receive calls.

While catching back up on work mail remotely I was forced to repeatedly plug my pearly white new toy into my iMac to wait several minutes for the dreaded timeout dialog to inform me that no, I couldn’t use my new toy, and no I couldn’t have a pony either.

After begging use of a neighbors condo and phone line for a few conference calls my precious toy suddenly popped to life upon one of my connection attempts to iTunes. The server-gerbils must have finally gotten their second wind as my iPhone 3G activated, and the sync process begun to restore all of my settings, applications, and media.

Lunch with a friend ensues during the <1 hour sync…

Finally home, and with a working iPhone 3G in hand the process of playing with my precious new toy could begin. Although a little rough around the edges (more on that in a minute) the experience is overall very positive. The 3G antenna provides fast data – combining the stunning software functionality of the iPhone with WiFi like internet access anywhere in a major city makes for a highly functional and productive experience. The two big new software features – Microsoft Exchange support and the iTunes App Store – add significant functionality and usability for both business and consumer users of the iPhone alike.

Although highly subjective I would venture to say that the iPhone 3G feels faster than the first generation iPhone. I’m unaware of if the processor it utilizes is any faster, or if this is merely a psychosomatic effect, but many tasks seem to execute faster. On the flip side a few of the new features seem to have regressed performance – the contacts application now takes several seconds to load as opposed to the nearly instant launch on my old iPhone. Also in the subjective category the iPhone’s virtual keyboard seems improved, although I would be hard pressed to put my finger on exactly how. The keyboard just seems more accurate and easier to use with the new phone.

Another highly subjective trait of the iPhone 3G is it’s sleekness. While the iPhone 3G is actually a millimeter thicker than it’s 1st generation predecessor it feels significantly slimmer and more comfortable in the hand. Much like it’s big brother the Macbook Air the use of organically curving sides hides it’s true heft and girth from the users perception.

Microsoft Exchange support
Exchange support is baked in to the iPhone 2.0 firmware. This feature is available to first generation iPhones and the iPhone 3G alike. After entering your email address, domain account, and password directly into your iPhone and accepting any domain policies (such as a PIN lock) from the Exchange Server you are set to go. Email, contacts, and calendar updates push to the iPhone from your Exchange Server as advertised keeping any business user in touch with their work. Full Microsoft Office support has also been added allowing the reading and review of all Microsoft Office formats including Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents.

The iTunes App store
The App Store provides the other killer feature – or is that features. While many have decried the iPhone previously for missing various functions those naysayers have been silenced through the ad-hoc addition of functionality. The App Store allows for the browsing, downloading, and updating of applications over WiFi or the cellular network and brings a host of more than 500 new applications to the iPhone. While many of these applications lack the polish of the Apple built applications a few do have that level of sophistication and as time goes on and the iPhone platform gains momentum the signal to noise ratio will surely get better and a plentitude of stunning and functional applications filling any hole left by the Cupertino designers.

Several of the highly polished apps that have impressed me are Twitterrific, Loopt, and Remote. I also downloaded a few games and was impressed by the general level of polish, however as a general rule I don’t engage in mobile gaming so I’m mostly ignoring them for now. I have a few loaded onto my iPhone should I ever find myself with a few spare moments to burn and no productive tasks I can accomplish (unlikely with an iPhone in hand).

Location based services
While the built in A-GPS service was far from my most anticipated feature of the iPhone 3G it’s instantly grown on me. I had thought of the GPS capabilities primarily in turns of mapping and turn by turn directions, however the iPhone 2.0 firmware and the iTunes App Store have proved me wrong: location based services can be so much more.

A rash of location based applications have sprung up, and to my surprise they are all amazingly useful. Loopt provides a service similar to Dodgeball or BrightKite allowing users to check in with their friends and see what’s up but it improves upon it’s predecessors by being entirely automatic. Users can set up contacts and determine what level of location awareness they want to grant to each of these contacts and then view the location of their friends on a Microsoft Virtual Earth powered map. By updating your location without having to search for a location or manually enter one in the use of Loopt can be quick and simple – open the app, check what’s up, and get on with your day.

Other less flashy uses of the location services on the iPhone 3G don’t fail to impress. Even something as simple as a weather location can be improved by automatically knowing where you are. After getting used to weather applications, restaurant review sites, and other miscellaneous applications starting up defaulted to showing me information contextually relevant to my current location I’m struck by how “dumb” the non-location aware web is. Somehow it now seems downright primitive to have to enter my zip code into a web form to view movie times.

The downside to the iPhone 3G
While the App Store, Exchange Support, and location based services are impressive the new iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 firmware still have their less rosy facets. The 2.0 firmware lacks the rock solid stability of the 1.1.4 firmware I had been using previously. My iPhone has randomly rebooted 4 times in the last two days – usually in association with one of the App store downloaded applications. Luckily this is likely just some growing pains with the new 2.0 firmware and hopefully a patch will be delivered soon which resolves the stability issues I’m seeing.

In addition to the crashes the iPhone 3G has a fraction of the battery life that the 1st generation iPhone had. This is undoubtedly the fault of the addition of 3G and GPS. I’ll have a more complete idea of how big the impact is after a few more days of usage, but I certainly have seen a reduction. Yesterday while out and about I was torturing my iPhone with 3G data and GPS usage tacking our groups progress through downtown and Greenlake using the Google Maps application. In less than 2 hours I had lost 60% of my battery life.

I’ll be the first to admit that using both the 3G and GPS radios simultaneously is likely the worst case scenario but it’s frustrating to see the battery drop so quickly given the stellar battery of the 1st generation iPhone. Luckily if it gets to be more of a problem than 3G is worth I can turn off the 3G radio and push mail to theoretically get the same or better battery life that I’m used to in exchange for losing out on the increased speed.

Final thoughts
While Apple and AT&T faltered with a very rough launch with activation server failures the iPhone 3G hardware combined with the iPhone 2.0 software make for a very big change to the mobile market as a whole. Apples vision of the iPhone being the personal computer of tomorrow is starting to show through the smoke and mirrors. The iTunes App Store will allow developers freedom to create amazing new experiences, and the well implemented support for Microsoft Exchange will help the iPhone venture into the enterprise and tap the booming market for business-oriented smartphones.

A special thanks to Brian and Brien for indulging my geeky little psychosis and watching Skype for the night.

While their earbuds are amazingly comfortable and sound great they have severe build quality issues which results in frequent failure. After repairing the headphone sheath as described in the review and then replacing them entirely when they stopped working I have had to replace them two more times directly through the V-Moda warranty program for a total of three replacements in under 9 months.

The first time I replaced them through RMA I was a little irked that the process took almost two weeks. This time around V-Moda has gone silent once I shipped the defective earbuds back to them. UPS has proof that they were delivered and signed for, however V-Moda initially couldn’t find them (and wanted the tracking number again), and now refuses to even respond to emails regarding the warranty program.

It’s sad really – the Vibe Duo’s are the most comfortable, and among the best sounding headphones I’ve ever used. When they work I sing praises to my fellow man about the glory that is the Vibe Duo, but since in the last 9 months since I bought my first pair I’ve been through 3 pairs, and without their delicious sound for more than 6 weeks I can’t honestly recommend anyone purchase them if they in the slightest value reliability or customer service.

I’ve filed an official complaint with the Better Business Bureau to see if that might get me traction on getting my promised replacement pair. The full text of the complaint is below for public record.

Complainant Information
About 3 weeks ago my Vibe Duo earbuds stopped working and I contacted the company asking for a replacement pair. They sent a form letter with a ticket number (Ticket ID: ZWL-207849) and asked that I mail the broken earbuds to their mailing address. (V-Moda, 6464 sunset blvd. suite 500, hollywood ca 90028)

I sent the earbuds back via UPS (tracking number: -tracking number redacted-) and then didn’t hear anything back for 2 weeks. UPS confirms that the package was delivered 2 weeks prior, 2 days after shipment.

I re-contacted them asking for status and they took 3 days to respond and their response was that they needed the tracking number. I sent an email providing the tracking number and have not heard back from them. I have sent them two additional emails asking for status updates and to complete the RMA with no response. Each of my last 3 emails has included all of my contact information as well as the tracking number.

Resolution Sought: I would like the RMA to be completed and to receive the replacement earbuds for the ones sent their way (at their instruction).
Date Problem Started: 05/28/2008
Date of Transaction: 05/28/2008
Amount in Dispute: $110.00
Invoice Number: ZWL-207849
Complaint Type: Refund Promised
Product or Service: V-Moda offers “high end” earbuds.

Update: Mere hours after the posting of this article V-Moda got back to me with status on the warranty replacement and the happy news that they would be shipping the replacement Duos right away. The communication did not mention if the Better Business Bureau or this article had any influence on their response but the timing certainly is suspicious. The note included an apology stating that they had moved offices which had caused delays. While finally getting contact is nice V-Moda’s inability to properly set expectations was inexcusable.

Good customer service does not always mean instant resolution on an issue, but it always means rapidly responding to contact and setting expectations properly. After 9 days of sending mails to V-Moda with no response any customer is going to be frustrated – a frustration which could have simply been avoided with a quick email on day one stating that they had received the communication and would have an official response within two weeks.

In conclusion I can no longer heartily recommend the Vibe Duos to iPhone owners seeking headsets. Don’t get me wrong – I love my Vibe Duos, they sound great and are super comfortable but after 3 failures and such abysmal customer service I’m left with both a sour taste in my mouth and a sadness in my heart that if history is any indication my replacement Duos won’t last longer than 3-4 months .

Then go here to enter the latest Gear Live contest. It might only be a 1st gen iPhone on the eve of the 3G launch, but it’s at the right price: free! There are other prizes too, but who cares: orange creamsicle iPhone!

Right click and ‘Save link as’ to get the full size originals suitable for use on your iPhone.

I primarily use Photoshop for my image editing work and this process will be easy if you have Photoshop and are comfortable using it. It’s a very simple process and could be completed with virtually any image editor, although ones that can read Photoshop (PSD) files will make it easier to import the template discussed below. If you don’t want to spend money on a photo editing application GIMP is a free option that offers a decent interface and lots of tools to experiment with.

The first step of the process lies ahead: selecting the image to use. Ideally images should fit into one of two categories. These images have either a uniform simplicity, or a design flow that works with the iPhones overlaid controls.

The first type of image that works well has a uniformity to it. Because of the user interface controls partially obscuring the locked iPhone wallpaper images that focus on color or texture will work very well for this as obscuring a part of this kind of image does not hide key aesthetic elements. This kind of image is great for capturing a favorite color or surface while not adding distraction to Apple’s clean and minimalistic design.

A simplistic background

The second type of image that works well are images with a central focal point that is well buffered by simplicity. As the top and bottom of the iPhone are obscured by the overlaid controls having an image which can appreciated from the lower than center portion of the viewport on the lock screen, and with a background or less important top and bottom that are not critical to the aesthetic appeal of the image.

When taking photos for use as an iPhone wallpaper consider using a very narrow depth of field to direct interest to the center area of a vertical shot. Alternatively for a bolder look consider incorporating strong design elements such as bright angular sections of color. Remember that although the top and bottom will be obscured the image will still bleed through the overlay and provide some visual impact.

A more visually complicated sweet spot

Once an image is selected I use the iPhone template pictured below to help me compose it for the iPhone. I found this template on the Mac Rumors forum in this thread. Full credit goes to TheSpaz who created the awesome resource and shared it with the world.

The template is free to download and comes in the form of a PSD template with each element set up in a separate layer with the correct opacity. This template makes it easy to drop an image into the background layer and compose it to look its best on the iPhone.

As your source image is likely much larger than 320×480 pixels you will have to transform the image down to size. By using Photoshop’s free transform option on the layer you can adjust both the scaling of the image, as well as drag it around to ensure that the portion of the image you want visible is perfectly framed by the overlays.

The shot being used in this particular tutorial was taken with a Lensbaby, a lens that adds a significant amount of blur and vignetting away from the center of the screen. This effect helps draw the eye into a subject and simplify the background making it ideal for use in creating iPhone wallpapers. If you have an image you really like, but that does not work well with the overlays due to visual distractions consider vignetting the image in photoshop by gently blurring or darkening the top and bottom edges to draw the eye to the center of the composition.

Because the iPhone displays bright colors so well I usually find that bumping up the saturation of an image 4-8% adds a bit of pop to the wallpaper. A slight bit of sharpening with the unsharp mask filter often helps more detailed images retain clarity on the iPhone’s densely packed pixels. Both of these steps also help make the image look it’s best once it is saved out of the Photoshop format and into either a JPEG or PNG image.

Once you are happy with how your image looks within the preview offered by the template you are ready to save the image and put it on your iPhone. For this process you don’t want the templates overlays added so hide all of the overlay layers leaving your resized and cropped photo and any adjustment layers as your final image. From the file menu select ‘Save for Web & Devices’ to compress your final wallpaper down. I usually save my wallpapers as 32bit PNG images, however JPEG format backgrounds will work just as well.

Save the wallpaper with a recognizable name into the location where you have iTunes set to sync photos from. The next time you sync your iPhone the image will be synced into the iPhone’s library. From there you can view the image with the Photos application and then click the export scarab at the bottom of the screen to select that image for use as your wallpaper.

If you are interested in the image above the version saved without the overlays suitable for immediate iPhone use is here. You can also get the original PSD file here including all the layers, adjustments, and overlays used to create this.

That is all.

The article also points out that the iPhone is far from dominant with only 2.2% of the total US cellphone market, although if you ask me that’s a pretty impressive feat having not been on the market a full year and costing $500. I find it interesting that the iPhone beats out all Windows Mobile phones (none of which even show up in the top 25), and is rapidly gaining on RIM’s Blackberry devices.

The launch event itself was an interesting experience. Apple really does know how to work a crowd, and the energy and passion it’s employees (retail and engineering alike) bring to work with them makes for a really positive experience for Apple’s customers.

Leopard itself is a neat little upgrade. The upgrade itself actually works really well – I didn’t lose any of my documents, settings, or preferences. Aside from Quicksilver being stuck in my dock (not the menubar where it really belongs) everything works flawlessly on Lanshark – Photoshop even stayed fully activated. Leopard is nothing revolutionary, but it really does add a lot of polish to OS X and makes for a worthwhile upgrade.

For the first time ever I actually kind of like the Finder. Quicklook (the ability to preview just about any document without the overhead of opening it’s parent application) is handy and makes confirmation that you have the document you are looking for brain dead simple. Spotlight is vastly improved featuring much faster searches, operators, and network search abilities.

Aside from the Leopard launch I was also thrilled to find out my Gmail account finally got IMAP enabled. The IMAP implementation is well done, and it makes Gmail’s iPhone experience as slick as their browser experience. Being able to have Mail.app cache my gmail account is handy as well for having my webmail searchable via the OS just like the rest of my personal knowledge store.

The final great thing to enter my life yesterday was Puzzle Quest for the DS. Puzzle Quest is a fun little RPG/Puzzler game that a couple of friends had suggested and it’s quite fun. It offers quick-in, quick-out gameplay – a fun addition to my go bag.

Strangely enough I think NetNewsWire has just left my life as suddenly as it came to it. More and more I found myself using Newsgator as a reader rather than NetNewsWire. I really like the slick interface NetNewsWire offers, but the overhead of opening and syncing it with Newsgator combined with the fact that I don’t always have a Mac handy combined to limit it’s use to a single big post reading session in the evening to drive my unread count down to zero for the next day. I mainly read RSS in tiny chunks I squeeze in here and there throughout my day as I can spare the time, so entirely web based solutions make it easier to do from whatever computer I happen to be sitting at without having to worry about clients, syncing, or application state.

I just discovered my new reader of choice Google Reader (yeah – I know, I’m really behind the times) and I have to say I’m 100% impressed. Just like Google revolutionized the concept of web-mail using a fresh new Ajax approach Google Reader has done the same for RSS. Reader dynamically loads your stories in the background and provides a configurable view including my all time favorite – the never ending scroll of articles that I can slide through as I get the time.

Google Reader performs a great little trick by automatically marking posts as read when they scroll up the screen leaving me with fewer actions than with Newsgator where you see 50 articles at a shot (not configurable) and have to click a link to mark them as read and to pull up the next batch. Another nail in the coffin of Newsgator was that some of the Javascript they used had issues and would occasionally fail to respond to clicks and have to be reloaded.

To seal the deal Google Reader has amazing keyboard shortcuts. While in the application simply hit the ? key to bring up a semi-opaque cheat sheet. The keyboard shortcuts are intuitive and make navigation, triage, bookmarking, and reading very efficient. After less than 20 minutes of use Google Reader became an entirely keyboard based application for me, and one rivaling the functionality of most thick-client RSS readers.

At this point my only gripe with Google Reader is it’s iPhone experience. Newsgators was worse, but the iPhone version of Google Reader is very static and really fails to capitalize on the rich Javascript capabilities the iPhone bestows to offer a experience that matches the desktop browser experience in functionality while being tailored to the user interface limitations of the iPhone.

Sorry Brent – I still love NetNewsWire and have a special place for it in my heart, but the cloud is calling!

I just got done blogging the rollout out their new Starbucks WiFi Music Store here in Seattle and I’m aquiver with coffee as a result. This morning I happened to stop into the Starbucks for a latte when I remembered that the new partnership for free iTunes access at Starbucks retail locations was lighting up in Seattle this morning so I whipped out my iPhone to check it out. The new Starbucks review is a good sister article to they soon to be posted in-depth review I did of the new iTunes WiFi Music Store.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me in the morning so I had to come back to review it over lunch about 90 minutes later. Between the quad shot earlier, and a triple over lunch I’m completely wired. *Bzzzt* *Bzzzt* *Bzzzt* *Bzzzzzzt*

Luckily I don’t have anything left on my to-do list for today so I’m pretty much free to lay on my couch watching movies with Skype. Finally getting a long weekend is really helping me feel a lot more relaxed from all the activity at work recently. Now for the rest of The Matrix Revolutions and then perhaps a little Lord of the Rings to continue on with the epic feel.

I’ve allowed my obsession with Smart Playlists in iTunes to get a little out of hand. After spending the last month combing through my media collection, tweaking ID3 tags, and rating as I go I’m learning how to create personalized radio experiences from my library that are easy to manage and sync/update automatically with my iPhone. By making a series of smart playlists with size limits limited by least recently played I can keep both my iPhone and my Apple TV stocked to the brim with a great music selection that gradually changes as I listen to it.

While the Smart Playlists feature is amazingly powerful I have unfortunately discovered a few pieces of highly useful metadata that are not exposed as options for the creation of iTunes Smart Playlists. These all seem like simple things to add, and would enable some really cool Smart Playlist scenarios. Here are the things I think iTunes is missing on this one:

• A purchased flag – a simple true/false bit to indicate if the track was purchased from the iTunes store or imported from media (CD or HDD).
• An iTunes Plus flag – again a true/false bit to indicate if the track is an iTunes Plus track or not. This flag could easily be combined with the purchased flag as a dropdown.
• A kind field – a field to select the kind of media from video; audio booklet, music, podcast, etc. Adding this field would make it much easier to keep iTunes TV shows and podcasts from leaking into music-only playlists.
• Ringtone flag – another true/false bit to indicate if the track is eligible for creating ringtones from.

If anyone at Apple is listening please, PLEASE get these added to the next version of iTunes! They all look reasonably simple to implement and would make me one happy iTunes geek!

The WiFi music store lets users purchase songs on-the-go using any WiFi hotspot which essentially puts the entire multi-million track library of iTunes in your pocket – perfect for a quick impulse buy from time to time. It would be perfect for the impulse-heavy consumer like me – if it worked on my iPhone!

I’m having store authorization problems so I can’t actually buy anything right now. It’s rejecting my credentials to the point of locking my account, when I know I’m entering them correctly. I even verified my credentials on a desktop just to make sure I wasn’t having a senior moment.

I wrote up up a more detailed report of my WiFi Music Store experience for Gear Live if you want to know more. For now I’ll have to sulk about with my existing library while on-the-go and be content with the other features released today.

I just posted a couple of great articles to Gear Live on the Apple iPhone. First up is a bit of commentary and a link to the usability study performed by Computerworld which pits Apple’s iPhone, the HTC Touch, and the Nokia N95 against each other in a usability battle royale. Obviously the iPhone scores high marks, but there are some other interesting insights to be garnered from the review relating to how it differs from it’s main competitors in the touch-based phone world.

Next up I posted my in-depth review of the Vaja iVolution Top SP Holster case (featured in the image above) which is my current favorite iPhone accessory. It’s both stylish and protective – a great combination for a sexy device like the iPhone. You can check out the full review here.

“Vaja iVolution Top SP Holster for the iPhone” by sparktography

We’re surveying them in large numbers week in and week out. They’re telling us their EDGE experience is great.

I’m sorry, but I have to call plain and simple bullshit. The newly improved EDGE network is faster than the old one, and makes browsing the web possible on an iPhone, but certainly not “great”. The fantastic iPhone WiFi experience makes up for it, but whenever a hotspot is not handy life on the EDGE network is barely faster than dial-up internet access in a day when modern web content is designed with broadband network connections in mind.

Apple needs to hurry up and drop with the 3G iPhone – the modern capabilities of the device paired with a more modern network connection would make for the true killer phone.

The re-launch of my Gear Live writing career starts with an in-depth review of the V-Moda Vibe Duos. There are a lot more exciting things coming to the site (including a fantastic new site design launching soon) so bookmark Gear Live and stay tuned for more announcements! If you just want to see the posts I’ve written you can always look at the filtered view of my posts on Gear Live.

I did a little work on some old photos tonight to work them up as Apple iPhone wallpapers. I ended up selecting two of them as my favorites, and am posting them here as a triptych with sunlit frond which I posted about two weeks ago. They were all selected for their central composition, and color pallets to go with the frosted grey and blue popups that appear on the homescreen. All three of them have been resized to 320×480 pixels from the original version and I adjusted the colors to look their best on the iPhone screen.

To set one of these as your iPhone’s wallpaper click the thumbnail above, then save the origional version from the pop-up to your hard drive. Save it to the location your iPhone syncs photos from (the folder of your choice on Windows or a Mac, or into iPhoto on Macs) and sync it to your iPhone. Once it’s there you can select it by clicking on Settings then Wallpaper to get to your photo library then selecting the photo of your choice.

“Chain link iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
“Sunlit frond iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
“Contrail to God iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography

After buying my Vibe Duos on Friday I enjoyed them through the weekend until they broke Monday morning while at work. The faulty glue (or perhaps a faulty glue job in the factory) caused the the sheath protecting the connection between the headphone jack and the cable leading to the earbuds to come undone and travel freely up the cable.

I immediately took them back to the Apple store who apologized for the problem and promptly replaced them without even asking to see my receipt. I was willing to chalk it up to a single faulty pair of earbuds until the replacement pair suffered the same fate the very next day. Either the Apple store in the University Village had a bad batch, or the Vibe Duos suffer a design or manufacturing flaw leading to this unfortunate condition. If the Vibe Duos were a bit cheaper I wouldn’t mind having to DIY repair them myself, but at $100 a pop and considering how high the build quality is otherwise I’m a little disappointed with V-Moda.

Luckily there is an easy fix for this problem. This evening at home after quickly whittling away some of the old adhesive with an exacto knife I re-glued it myself with seemly better results. A few drops of super-glue spread evenly over the plug with a synthetic Q-tip (the cotton ones would have left fibers) and quickly dropping the sheath back into place have locked it into place quite tightly.

Any other Vibe Duo owners out there suffering from this problem?

As I mentioned in my last post I just picked up a pair of V-Moda Vibe Duos at the Apple Store with my $100 iPhone store credit. The Vibe Duo’s sound great (almost as good as my Etymotic ER-6′s), are the most comfortable earbuds I’ve ever used, and feature a microphone for making hands-free calls on the iPhone. The Vibe Duos come with three pairs eargels (small, medium, and large) in both white and black for a perfect fit for almost any ear and your choice in colors to accessorize with your outfit should you be so inclined.

The cloth-wrapped cords, metal construction, and extended plug (for easy use with the iPhone’s recessed headphone jack) all add up to a stunning package. The build quality on the Vibe Duos is great and unlike some previous earbuds I’ve owned I’m not in the slightest concerned about breaking them or tearing the cord if they get caught on something.

Sadly they lack the microphone button on the official iPhone earbuds for answering calls and pausing the music, but that’s a small sacrifice for the vastly increased comfort and sound quality. Now that I’ve tried them out I realize it’s well worth the $99 price tag and wish I had bought them earlier!

After clicking through an obnoxiously long EULA I was able to click “Create Ringtone” to begin the process.Once clicked the main ringtone authoring pops up. The ringtone authoring interface allows you to select how long you want your ringtone to be (up to a maximum of 30 seconds), and position where you want the start and stop of the ringtone to be within the track. There are also fade-in and fade-out options to help the ringtone sound smoother as it comes to life on your precious, shiny iPhone.

After previewing my ringtone to my hearts content I clicked the “Buy” button and was charged the ass-raping $0.99 for a track I “already owned”. It’s a pity that Apple decided to cash in on the multi-billion dollar a year ringtone market – offering them for free on any track you own would have been a great differentiating feature for the iPhone.

It’s as easy as Steve made it sound in his keynote address – making my ringtone took less than 4 minutes including a fair amount of fussing around with the preview to get it just the way I wanted it. A quick sync later and now my phone erupts into a glorious chorus that’s far more unique and “me” than any of the included by default iPhone ringtone. Hazaa!

Today I woke up early for brunch at the B&O with Brien (mmm Beni Thai Crabcake Benedict!) and then to go for a photo walk. I had to pick up some food for Skype so I decided to start out in my car and after picking up the food went back to my perennial favorite location to shoot: the conservatory.

My favorite shot of the day – a backlit palm frond in the conservatory. I actually shot it specifically with an iPhone wallpaper in mind (and tried to frame it correctly for the overlays at the top and bottom) and am quite pleased with the results. You can check out the iPhone specific version here, and the rest of the shots I liked from todays walk can be found here in my Flickr archives.

“Sunlit frond” by sparktography

Unfortunately a lot of early adopters were a little peeved to have paid a $200 ‘early adopter tax’, but again Steve managed to turn this around and make it into another business gem: in an open letter to iPhone customers he has promised a $100 store credit to all early adopter iPhone purchasers. This move not only appeases the early adopters, but will help capitalize on the iPod/iPhone halo effect (many Mac switchers introduction to the world of Apple has been an iPod) by encouraging more new-to-Apple consumers to spend a little more money. Yes it’s $100 that Apple won’t make in profits, but how much do you want to bet that a majority of these new customers are so impressed with their iPhones that they go the extra mile and put the $100 credit towards a new iMac, Mac Mini, or Macbook and give OS X a spin as well. Given the margins Apple makes on their computers a $100 hit cuts into profits in the short term, but will likely increase profits in the long terms as more and more consumers “join the Mac club” and help grow the Apple user base.

Bravo Steve, bravo!

I just sat down to watch another episode of the Planet Earth on HD-DVD, and reached for my Macbook only to discover its battery was entirely dead. In thinking back I suddenly realized that whereas once I used both my iMac in the bedroom, and the Macbook in the living room on a day to day basis I haven’t actually touched my Macbook in well over a week. Strangely my iPhone is to blame!

Back in my Windows Mobile days I treasured the mobility offered by my cellphone – being able to check my email and do basic web browsing is a modern marvel indeed, but the experience was clearly that of a cell phone – second rate at best when compared to a full blown computer with a big screen and full-blown keyboard. While checking a movie time on the go was possible (and useful) with Windows Mobile and Symbian devices it simple wasn’t the fun, easy experience one looks for in a portable computing experience.

The iPhone makes it easy to browse the full blown web and communicate quickly without getting in my way that it’s overcome the arms reach barrier and become my device of choice for quick internet tasks even with my perfectly serviceable laptop sitting next to me. Since both devices can accomplish the task with similar ease why reach over and open the laptop when the iPhone is already in hand, just begging to be used. The overcoming of the arms reach barrier has reached further than my living room – I now find myself doing almost 50% of my personal communications via my iPhone.

One might say that not reaching for the laptop is the heights (or depths) of laziness, but I’d much rather point the finger at the wonders of engineering that Apple managed to cram into their diminutive ultra-portable computer, the iPhone.

Is the iPhone honeymoon over? It’s more than two months later and I’m still writing blathering blog posts about how great it is, so I guess not!

Content gamut aside one of the things that has struck me as odd over my past week of using my iPhone is how differently implemented the YouTube application is on my iPhone versus my AppleTV. They both allow for the browsing of a partial selection of the YouTube library streamed directly from the internet, but they both have some features the other lacks. Here is a breakdown of client-specific features that have puzzled me:

AppleTV:

• On my AppleTV I can sign into my standard YouTube account using my Google credentials.
• Because I can sign into my YouTube account I can rate videos.
• I can save videos to my accounts ‘favorites’ list for later viewing on either the AppleTV or in a web browser.
• Unlink the iPhone there is no way to share videos with friends. Although I understand that there is no built in web browser one would think you could at least sync the recommendation to iTunes and have iTunes send a mail using your default mail client on the desktop PC.

iPhone:

• I can’t sign into my web-based YouTube account.
• There is no way to rate videos, however I can view what others average rating for a video is.
• Because I am not signed in I cannot mark a video as a favorite. There is a bookmarking feature which serves a similar need, however bookmarked videos do not show up in my favorites list on the YouTube website or on my AppleTV.
• I can send links to YouTube videos from the mail client on the iPhone via the ‘Share’ button in the YouTube UI. Sharing is fun and creates a very social experience out of it.

All in all I think YouTube was a great addition to both product offerings, but I’m puzzled as to the disparity in the feature lists. I will be interested to see if future software updates for both platforms bring their feature sets closer together. Google’s “cloud of data” and Apple’s experience in creating engaging and intuitive user interfaces making for a market juggernaut that will be hard to beat.