billpalmer.net

I'm going to Lollapalooza this week...are you?

In thirty hours I'll be on a plane to Chicago, and all I can think of at the moment is that I wish I could get a bit more sleep between now and then than I probably will. In all these years of flying I've only once been able to fall asleep on an airplane, but I'm thinking that might change soon enough.

Why am I going? Seventy bands on nine stages over three days. In-person interview opportunities with several of the performing musicians. I've been to Lollapalooza before, and I've covered music festivals before, but never in quite this manner. In a sense, I suppose this will be the full-on test of just how much I want to push this whole "music journalism" thing after all.

So will five days of intense heat, public transportation, festival food, portable restrooms, tourist traps, early mornings preceded by late nights, and constant schedule-juggling do me in? In a way, it almost sounds like Macworld Expo. But outdoors. With just a little more music.

As always, you roll with the punches, take the good with the bad, make the most of whatever comes our way, and I think we'll have a blast. I'll have my co-host with me, so when the heatstroke finally kicks in and my brain is reduced to a steaming pile of mush...well, I guess that'll be nothing new for me. Happens every time I leave the house.

I'll have plenty to share once I'm there, and some of it might even be worth reading. If anyone has spent time in Chicago and has tips to share about....well, about anything, I'd love to hear about it.

iProng Radio #43 with Bill Palmer and Dana Sanders

Listen to iProng Radio #43 right now or subscribe for free!


On this week's show:

On episode #43, iProng Radio co-hosts Bill Palmer and Dana Sanders take a break from their Lollapalooza preparations to interview singer-songwriter (and iProng writer) Natalie Gelman, who is on her way to Austin, Texas to compete in the final round of the Famecast competition. Bill and Dana also discuss the variation in announced iPhone sales numbers from Apple and AT&T, the first idiotic iPhone class-action lawsuit, and more.



This week's news items:

- Apple sells 270,000 iPhones in first thirty hours...

- ...but AT&T only activates 146,000 of them in the same timeframe

- AppleCare announced for iPhone

- New uses for the iPhone in medical practice

- First class action suit filed over iPhone

- Reader feedback: radio@iprong.com

- Miss us during the week? Visit iProng.com, the Publication for iPod and iPhone usersª

Listen to iProng Radio #43 right now or subscribe for free!

iTunes Store pre-orders going to extremes



I love the iTunes Store. Not only has Apple's five-year foray into music sales saved the music industry from itself, it's created an entirely new type of music buying experience which has encouraged me to not only buy more music, but to branch into new artists and genres in a manner that the traditionally genre-segregated record shops never did. In fact I'm such a fan of the iTunes Store that I've purchased more than fifteen hundred songs through iTunes in the past five years, only opting for a physical CD in the rarest of circumstances.

And the reason is simple enough: browse it, listen to it, and if I like it, buy it...all with no more effort than, say, looking up the latest sports scores. The straightforward nature of iTunes is a big part of the reason I spend so much time meandering around the virtual store, grabbing music as I go. Like a song? Buy it for a dollar with a single click. Like the whole album? Buy it for a single click as well. Not only is the pricing more than fair, it's so simple that nearly everyone understands how it works. Any time you can fully explain a computer-related activity to a non-technical person in one sentence, you've got a winner. But I've noticed a trend within iTunes lately which has given me pause.

In my iTunes Store browsing over the past month I've noticed an increasing number of albums being made available for pre-order. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. If there's a new album coming out soon that I know I'll want, I can go ahead and pre-order it, ensuring that I'll end up having it on the day it's released, thanks to the friendly iTunes reminder via email. But Apple might want to be careful about just how frequent, lengthy, and vague these pre-orders become, for fear of overrunning the place.

Earlier this month I noticed that the new Smashing Pumpkins album was the fifth-best selling album in the iTunes Store, but when I clicked through to check it out, I found that it was still a week away from being released. If nothing else this served to demonstrate just how highly anticipated the album was. But what I found strange was that a week later, after the album was released, it still occupied the same number five ranking on the album sales charts. The very idea of an album selling as many copies before it's available as it does after it's gone on sale makes me a bit uncomfortable for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, but this alone is certainly no reason to condemn the idea of pre-orders.

But then KT Tunstall went and released her new album for pre-order and got me all excited until I realized that if I ordered it on that particular day, July 16th, I wouldn't receive it until September 18th. Uh, no thanks. If I really want to order an album now and receive it two-plus months later, I'll just order it via Amazon's free super saver shipping (doing so rarely takes much longer than a month and a half). Sorry, but I just can't make myself plop down money for an album which two months of waiting might make me lose by desire to own it. It's not that I think I won't want to album by mid-September. It's just that I'm not sure I want to make that decision now. On the other hand, I routinely buy tickets for concerts months in advance, so I was thinking maybe my concern with pre-orders was more my problem than anyone else's.

Then it happened. I encountered an iTunes pre-order which confounded me to the point where I thought my head just might explode and I was finally forced to conclude that Apple has indeed taken the concept just a little too far. Take a look at this particular pre-order, which I also spotted on July 16th:



Let me see if I have this straight: I'm supposed to buy this album now, and aside from the fact that one of the thirteen songs is from John Mayer, not until I download it a month later do I get to find out which of Live Earth's "various artists" might be making an appearance? I'm all for the Live Earth cause, but even when it's for charity I think I have to draw the line at pre-ordering an album when iTunes can't even tell me which artists or songs might be on it.

My advice to Apple: keep it simple, guys. It's what's worked for the first five years. That straightforward simplicity is what has given the iTunes Store eighty percent-plus marketshare in the digital realm, and it's what has elevated iTunes to the point where it sells more music than all but two retail chains. It's bad enough that you can't accurately explain this iTunes Plus nonsense to the average user without making them more confused than when you started. Let's not add to the confusion by putting albums up "for sale" that won't really be for sale until months later. And for crying out loud, don't try to get me to pre-order a mystery album with no clues as to who or what it might contain.

The iTunes Store has grown into something awesome over the years. Let's keep it that way.

Is there anything more useless than a dollar coin?
...and did you know that Los Angeles has a subway?

Debit cards have their ups and downs, but there's one rather simple reason why I nearly always opt for using plastic instead of paying cash whenever possible: I don't want to get stuck walking around with a pocketful of loose change. You all know the drill by now. One front pocket is occupied by your iPhone or iPod while the other contains your car keys and whatever other items you feel compelled to carry to get you through the day. Stop and buy lunch for $5.26 and you'll end up with no less than eight coins of varying sizes rattling around in your pocket, either clanging annoyingly loudly against your car keys or floating dangerously closely to your iPhone's screen. No thanks if I can help it. For this reason alone, I try to do business with places which will allow me to use my debit card for bite-sized purchases with no hassle.

So as I was preparing to take my first-ever subway ride here in Los Angeles this evening (don't feel bad, I didn't know LA had a subway either), I came face to face with an automated machine which wanted $1.25 and for some reason wasn't in a mood to accept debit cards. Glancing in my wallet I found that I had nothing smaller than a ten dollar bill, and as I slipped it into the machine I dreaded what I knew was coming next: I hit the jackpot. Eleven large coins came flying out the bottom chute of the machine, no different of an experience than hitting the jackpot on a slot machine in Vegas, except that it came with none of the euphoria and instead merely invited frustration.

Unwilling to let me pay with my debit card, and unable to supply change in the form of dollar bills, the machine had spit out $8.75 in the form of three quarters and eight one-dollar coins. That's right, those annoyingly useless, rarely recognized, and virtually unspendable dollar coins are now being used to torture us by someone other than the stamp machines at the post office.

And it's not just that the machine threw eight dollar coins at me. As if to rub it in, the mixture of dollar coins it chucked out its chute represented more of a jalopy than the hardware inside a Windows PC. At present I'm looking at several golden Sacagawea dollar coins from the year 2000, a number of silver Susan B. Anthony dollar coins including one from the year 1999 (I had previously been under the impression that they were only produced in 1979 and briefly in 1980), and for good measure, a golden John Adams dollar coin which features no year at all, and I'm fairly well convinced isn't even legal tender. Seriously, the thing looks like a Chuck E. Cheese token. And as if these various dollar coins weren't confusing enough, I can't begin to imagine the artistry required to make Sacagawea and John Adams look virtually indistinguishable from each other when viewed from more than a foot and a half away. For good measure, a bit of research reveals that the face on the Sacagawea coin isn't even Sacagawea.



As if it to rub it in, one of the "quarters" the machine threw at me wasn't so much an actual quarter as whatever the @#!$& this thing is, featuring the tattered ghost of George Washington on the front and, somehow fittingly, Rhode Island on the back:



What's really odd is that after going through all these trials and tribulations to buy a subway ticket, no one, not man nor machine, ever so much as asked to take a look at the ticket I'd bought as I boarded, rode, or disembarked the train. Are they all on strike? I'll have to check the local newspaper I guess. And of course, after realizing that no one was even checking for tickets, like an idiot I stopped and bought another subway ticket for my ride home, and once again, no one ever asked to see it.

But I was smart though, this time paying for the ticket not with cash but instead with the coins littering my pocket. Faced with the prospect of offloading one dollar coin and one quarter, I instead plopped two dollar coins into the machine. When it comes down to it I'd rather go home with three extra quarters in my pocket than one extra dollar coin. At least quarters can be spent without eliciting strange looks, giggles, and some teenage cashier running off to the manager to ask if it's indeed real money.

If you manage your cash correctly, you should never have to end up with more than four one-dollar bills in your wallet at any given time, which effectively takes up no room at all. Why anyone would think it's a good a idea to try to replace the dollar bill with an oversized dollar coin is beyond me. And yet for some reason we keep trying. It didn't work in 1979, it didn't work in 2000, it didn't work whenever the John Adams experiment was floated (if indeed that was a real coin), and it won't work the next time we try it. I'll leave other readers to comment on whether dollar coins are as much of a practical hindrance to for someone who carries a purse as they are for someone who carries a back-pocket wallet. But here in a day and age where my pockets are so full of other essentials that I actively try to avoid getting stuck with spare change of any kind, the last thing I want to see flying out of the bottom of a government-issue vending machine is a dollar coin...no less eight of them in one sitting.

Don't get me wrong. There were any number of Susan B. Anthony dollars in my rare coin collection growing up, along with half-dollars, those giant silver dollar coins from before the Depression, silver pennies, and all the other coins which have outlived their relevance. So I don't mind seeing the occasional dollar coin now and then. I just don't want to get stuck with the embarrassment of having to try to spend them. And the sooner we can figure out how to eliminate coins of all kinds from our daily lives, the better.

Epilogue: more research reveals that not only is the John Adams dollar coin indeed real, it's one of a series of newly minted dollar coins which will apparently feature all U.S. Presidents who have been deceased for two years or more (hint: that's most of them). Because this wasn't confusing enough, we're now going to put thirty-something different dollar coins into circulation over the next decade, including one featuring a depiction of George Washington which can't possibly be the same person depicted on the quarter. In fact, this version of George Washington looks less like George Washington and more like one of the busts from the Haunted Mansion. I can just see the slogan now: "Ride the subway, collect them all!"

Does the iPhone's camera suck?

Last week I posted some photos on MyMac.com which had been taken with my iPhone. While my accompanying article had nothing to do with the iPhone, the photos served to demonstrate precisely what the iPhone's built-in camera is not capable of doing well. Want to use your iPhone to take a picture of someone standing across the street? Cross your fingers. Want to take a picture after dark with no external lighting? Don't bother. How about someone moving past you at walking speed? Not until you've had some practice at it.

However, none of that implies that the iPhone's camera is useless or even lousy. In fact, for someone like me who never carries a camera outside of situations where I know I'll want to take pictures, having a halfway-decent camera built into my omnipresent iPhone means I'm in a better situation photography-wise than I've ever been previously. But enough about my situation, you probably want to know to what extent (if any) the iPhone's camera might end up being to you. And that task if probably best accomplished by photographic evidence.

First, a disclaimer: the more I try to hold something still, the more my hands generally insist on shaking, and this applies most of all to holding a camera steady. For this reason I always ask other staff members to handle principal photography at conferences. And while I take my own product shots in my accessory reviews, what you see is rarely my first attempt. So, keeping in mind that most of the pictures below were taken by me, they're probably a little worse than what the average iPhone user would have ended up with in the same situation.

Alright, let's see what kind of (warning: pun) picture I can paint for you here...

This picture was taken outdoors in the middle of the night in very poor lighting. As you can tell, the iPhone (unlike the cameras built into Apple's laptops) can't provide a flash, so in the near-total absence of backlighting you end up with a photo like this, and that's after you clean it up a bit in iPhoto:



However, a few days later, in the early evening with a decent amount of sunlight, I used my iPhone to take a photo of the same exact thing (although by this time they had sunk it into the sidewalk) and it came out dramatically different:



Indoors with partial lighting, you'll get mixed results with the iPhone's camera depending on said lighting. Although I was standing in the pitched black when I took this photo at the Chris Cornell concert the other night, and I was about forty feet from the stage, it came out fairly decent:



On the other hand, when the stage lights were in a different position, Chris Cornell's white T-shirt was almost completely washed out (as was most of the rest of him):



One key drawback with the iPhone's camera is that its shutter speed isn't as fast as one might expect. One of the reasons why I had to settle for across-the-street pictures of the Harry Potter premiere is that when some of the stars did walk within a few feet of me, I tried to take a close-up picture of them only to find that they weren't anywhere in the picture! A bit of subsequent experimenting led me to realize that the iPhone doesn't really finish taking a picture until its on-screen virtual shutter re-opens. If you want a picture of someone who's in motion, you'll need to take a picture of the spot they'll be located when the iPhone's shutter re-opens, not where they're standing when you first press the button to take the picture.

And again, bright white can wash things out something fierce in the wrong lighting. You might have to stare at this photo for awhile before you figure out that that there are actually two people wearing white while walking next to each other; you might initially only see one person person wearing white, or think that both of them are sharing the same oversized white wardrobe. And good luck figuring out that the shorter of the two is in fact Harry Potter star Emma Watson. For what it's worth, the photo was taken from about twenty feet away and I was standing in terrible lighting at the time:



All of that having been said, if you're simply looking to take a picture of a stationary object in good lighting, either of something that's not too small or not too far away, the iPhone can crank out some rather nice-looking photos. For instance, I'm plenty happy with this slightly cropped but otherwise unedited photo of Grauman's Chinese from across the street:



The bottom line is that if you're on vacation or otherwise think you'll want to end up with high-quality pictures, having your iPhone with you probably won't save you from carrying a separate camera. For instance, I know for sure that I'll be taking my digital camera with me to Chicago next month (more on that later). But if you've always been of the opinion (like me) that camera-phones were someone's idea of a sick joke, then the functionality of the iPhone's camera just might come as a pleasant surprise.

As a final method of making my point, I'll share a photo taken not with my iPhone but with my previous cell phone, a fairly expensive Motorola SLVR with a truly horrible built-in camera. Roughly the same lighting as the very first photo in this article, taken by someone with steadier hands than mine, and from a much closer distance to boot...and this was after a substantial amount of adjustment work in iPhoto.



If you're wondering, that's a picture of me with Colbie Caillat, whose debut album was coincidentally released today and is currently featured on the front page of the iTunes Store...but I digress.

Now that I've got my iPhone, I have solace in knowing that as long as I'm carrying it with me, I'll never come home with a photo as bad as the one above. Your mileage is likely to vary for a variety of reasons. Let's hope that Apple includes a higher-quality camera in the next iPhone generation (zoom and flash would likely help more than megapixels), but in the mean time don't be afraid to rely on your iPhone's built-in camera if you find you've left your real camera at home and you encounter a photo opportunity that you really want to home with.

Harry Potter premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood

Although this piece is centered around the latest Harry Potter flick which opened today, this isn't a movie review. I'll continue to leave such things to others who have more grace in that particular area than I do. This is about how my experiences surrounding the latest Harry Potter movie here in Los Angeles were far different than anything I might have encountered back in Florida, both in terms of the premiere and opening night.

The Premiere

For starters, there was the "premiere" of the movie, which took place on Sunday afternoon at Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, a full three days before the movie opened to the public. This is the place where the movie stars have left their handprints and footprints in the cement over the years, the place where so many red carpet premieres have taken place. If you see a movie star being interviewed on television while standing in front of a red carpet during the week their latest movie is opening, odds are they're standing in front of this theater at the time.

Here's what I learned about going to a premiere: yes, they screen the movie, but unless you know someone who knows someone, you don't get to see it. In fact, unless you know someone who knows someone, you don't even get to stand on the same side of the street as the Theater. And I'm still not sure what the criteria might be for securing a seat in the bleachers they erect on the wrong side of the streeet; I absent-mindedly arrived a mere three hours before the premiere and was treated to a spot underneath the bleachers.

So did I have fun standing under the bleachers and trying to peer out at the midget-size teen stars of the movie as they walked down a red carpet across the street while dodging the empty water bottles that were falling from the bleachers above with disturbing regularity? Not really. And was my iPhone's built-in camera strong enough to take nice pictures of said stars from under a bleacher across the street? Not really. Did said stars pay much attention to the crowds in the bleachers across the street? Not really. They were too busy being mobbed by credentialed media as they walked down the red carpet, leaving their backs turned to the crowd most of the time.

As you can (sort of) see in the photo below, at one point all three of the Harry Potter stars were near a poster depicting the three of them, although my vantage point didn't allow me to capture them all in one shot. The red arrows connect the faces on the poster with the actual actors in attendance, and while it was clear to me while I was standing there that it was really them, I suppose you'll just have to take my word for it.



And that, my friends, was the Sunday premiere. Note to self: figure out what you have to do, or who you have to know, to get on the correct side of the street for the next premiere you show up for. And next time, pick a movie that doesn't have quite so many heavily obsessed fans as the Harry Potter franchise does.

Opening Night

But the salvation came when I found out that the same Grauman's Chinese Theater which serves as a "you can't even get on the right side of the street" kind of place during premieres also happens to serve as a regular movie theater the rest of the time. Anyone who knows how to buy a movie ticket before they sell out can attend regular showings of whichever one movie the Theater happens to be showing at the time (there are six adjacent theaters next door which still use the now-retired "Mann's Chinese" name, but they're as generic as any plain old movie theater; Grauman's is the one you want to be in).

So I bought myself a ticket for the "midnight movie" showing of the Harry Potter flick, which starts at 12:01 am on the day the movie is released, meaning that while you're technically not watching it until release day, you're really seeing it the night before it goes public.

I've been to midnight movie openings before, but nothing quite like this. I get there an hour before the movie starts, and I find that the auditorium is already mostly full with Potter fanatics. I say "auditorium" because I can't bring myself to lump it in with traditional movie theaters; think of watching a movie in the kind of theater where you'd see a Broadway play. And I say "fanatics" because seemingly half of the audience members were wearing Hogwarts robes, some of them complete with magic wands.



Then the movie threatened to begin. You know what I mean. First the lights go down, then something appears on screen which appears to be a preview but ends up being a soda commercial. Then another commercial. Then another. The audience wasn't having it, and mercilessly booed every ad that appeared (except for some reason, the one with William Shatner, which was cheered). Then the actual previews started, and unbelievably loud screaming and cheering was awarded to first a phone booth, then Steve Carell, in that order. One corny preview for a movie called 10000 BC was widely laughed at, which was probably disappointing since the movie definitely wasn't a comedy.

Then the screen went blank and the crowd went berserk. Then approximately four seconds later the spooky version of the Warner Brothers logo appeared on screen. The one which clearly signifies that a Harry Potter movie is about to start, and the crowd went berserk again. This was as good a sign as any as to how the rest of the night would go.

I don't want to spoil anything, but Harry Potter's face is just about the first thing you see when the movie starts, and I think the crowd was taken aback a bit by this, as no one made a sound and you could suddenly hear a pin drop. Oh but don't worry. From then on, anytime a meaningful character made his or her first appearance in the film, the crowd went absolutely nuts. This includes characters who didn't make their appearance until fairly late in the film.

But it wasn't just cheers all night. I suppose because nearly everyone in the audience had already read the book and knew the main plotlines, a couple of characters got roundly booed upon their initial appearance, even before the film had made it clear that they were worthy of being booed. But not Snape, though. Despite his endlessly ambiguous status when it comes to the good guy / bad guy categories, Snape's initial appearance received the loudest cheers of all.

And of course any time a character did something heroic, made a timely reappearance, or did something humorous, the audience responded with the same enthusiasm. Eventually, the movie ended. And almost no one left. Curious as to why, I didn't either. Everyone, it seems, wanted to stay through the latter part of the credits to cheer the names of certain actors, particularly the ones who don't appear in the next Harry Potter film (keep in mind that nearly everyone in the audience has also already read the next Harry Potter book), and finally, the name of author J.K. Rowling herself.



By the time the audience finally began to trickle out of the theater, it was close to three in the morning. But that didn't stop the crowd from gathering around the roped-off and security guarded cement block containing the footprints, handprints, and autographs of the movie's three young stars. So that's what they had been doing across the street on Sunday. Not that I could really tell from under the bleachers.



As you can clearly tell from the photo, the iPhone's camera isn't meant to be used in low-light situations, either. It's ten times the camera I had in my crappy Motorola RAZR and SLVR phones, but it's not necessarily a full replacement for a real digital camera. If I happen to walk past the Theater in daylight (yeah, it's within walking distance), I'll try to snap another photo.

The late hour also didn't stop vendors from hawking Harry Potter posters for five bucks each in front of the theater, or a few film crews (none from major networks) from asking audience members what they thought of the movie. It was nothing like the hoopla surrounding the Sunday premiere, the one that the public couldn't get into or get near. But it was still the most riveting movie theater experience I've ever had.

I don't know how much of it had to do with the fact that this was opening night at Grauman's Chinese, and how much was due to the fact that this was opening night of a Harry Potter film. A little of both, I suppose. But after seeing a movie under these circumstances, at the best-known theater on Hollywood Boulevard, in the heart of the movie industry, literally one minute after the movie was released to the public, with all the audience enthusiasm that came along with all of that, going to see a movie on a Thursday afternoon at a generic movie theater will never be the same.

It's not what I came to Los Angeles for, that's for sure. I don't think I even know anyone in the film industry. Come to think of it, I take that back. But in any case, it's not one of the industries I came out here to be closer to. If movies on an iPod/iPhone ever become a big enough deal that covering the film industry on iProng is justified, I'll look into finding out what I have to do to be on the correct side of the street and all. In the mean time, I think I'll just file it under "fringe benefits" for now.

Anyway I've got to run; Chris Cornell's solo tour is coming to the Wiltern tonight. Maybe this time I should take a real camera.

Screw journalism, I'm in the wrong profession

After the Ry Cuming concert Sunday night...

Me, to attractive girl standing nearby: "Can you take a picture of Ry and me?"

Attractive girl, to me: "Sure, let me have your camera."



Attractive girl, to me: "Whoops, I took a picture of just Ry's face and I cut you out completely."

Me, to attractive girl: "I get it, all you care about is the rock star. Screw journalism, I'm in the wrong profession."

Me, to Ry: "Do you need a drummer or something?"

...and this was before the iPhone went on sale.

Mark my words, landlines are next. I don't know anyone under the age of thirty who still has one. Do you?

The iPhone as a platform: one million strong...and growing

Forget those measly estimates of 500,000 to 700,000 iPhones sold on the first weekend. They're just analyst guesses, and we're five days removed from the iPhone's opening weekend by now anyway. Instead, allow me to redirect your attention to a number which (unless AT&T has forgotten how to count that high) represents a hard and fast representation of the current size of the iPhone user base: as of mid-week, more than one million people have activated an iPhone through AT&T.

The number is a couple days old by now but we'll take it. Even setting aside the additional iPhone sales that have taken place in the past day or two that aren't in that tally, figure there have been significantly more than a million iPhones sold. Despite the enthusiasm typically displayed by early adopters of a new class of product, it's a virtual certainly that a good portion of purchased iPhones haven't been activated yet. There are the users who are still trying to decide just how to go about breaking their current contract or how to get their cell numbers transferred, those users who have received iPhones as gifts and haven't been in as much of a hurry to activate them as someone would be who actually waited in line for one, and those iPhones purchased as upcoming birthday gifts which haven't even been given to the recipient yet.

But let's not waste time trying to calculate the overage. Instead let's focus on the fact that as the iPhone's first week on the market comes to a close, there are already more than one million active iPhone users. I say "active" because anyone who's activated their iPhone not only has a phone number for it, they're also paying monthly service charges, which means that the thing likely isn't sitting in a drawer collecting dust. So we have more than a million people who are actually using their iPhones as you read this. Okay, there's a chance they might instead be sleeping or taking a shower at this very moment (two of the relatively few tasks during which you can't very well use your iPhone Ð come on waterproof cases!), but you all know what I'm getting at here...

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a platform.

Let's take a look back at the iPod's relatively low-key launch in 2001. It's too late in the week to go digging for the actual statistic, but let's just say that it look Apple a long time to sell their first million iPods. As such, you could walk into an electronics store back in early 2002 and ask if they sold iPod accessories and often times the salesperson would just stare at you wondering what an iPod was. It's not just that the iPod didn't have any hype surrounding its initial rollout; it's that there weren't enough of us going around asking for support of our new platform Ð and that's simply because in the early days, there weren't enough of us using iPods.

So while the one million active iPhones are dwarfed by the fact that there have been well over a hundred million iPods sold over the years, fear not. The rise of the iPhone as a mainstream platform will be graced by a much steeper trajectory than the iPod initially saw, as the iPhone platform is already too large to simply ignore. One week into it, and one out of every three hundred Americans already has an iPhone. Even though the ubiquity of the iPod and the cell phone have opened the to door for the mainstreaming of handheld consumer electronics devices here in 2007, building a platform of a million handheld users is still no small feat. For all the money that Microsoft has sunk into marketing the Zune, the company has just this week sold its one millionth unit, and that's after more than seven months of trying. Compare that to seven days for the iPhone to reach the same mark.

The night before last, a friend who wants an iPhone was bemoaning the apparent lack of support for a third party scheduling utility which he relies upon heavily, and wondering if the company will eventually make it iPhone-compatible. I pointed out that with a million iPhones already in the wild, the company would have to be crazy not to add support for the iPhone; in fact, if they have their wits about them, they won't rest until they've finished writing it. You see, we iPhone users are a million-strong platform already. And while that doesn't make any of us special or superior or cool or any of that nonsense, it does give us the kind of collective leverage that early adopters of a brand new platform don't usually get to enjoy until much further down the road.

Now let's be responsible about this. As Spiderman taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. So don't go writing to a company asking for iPhone support if you don't plan on using their products or anything silly like that. But if you do find yourself wishing that your favorite electronics store would start selling iPhone accessories, or that your favorite third-party app would build in support for the iPhone, don't be afraid to ask them to do so. And don't be afraid to paraphrase the old Flintstones Vitamins slogan when it comes to the iPhone user base: one million strong...and growing.

iPhone availability improves substantially, supply not yet exhausted

On the evening of July 4th, this site and others reported that all but two of Apple's hundred-plus retail stores nationwide were sold out of iPhones, according to Apple's own online reporting system. This led to widespread speculation that perhaps Apple's seemingly endless supply of iPhones had finally been overtaken by unprecedented demand. However, as of the evening of July 5th, Apple is reporting that more than half of all Apple Stores in the United States currently have iPhones in stock.

iPhone supply is still clearly constrained, however, as Apple is reporting that none of its thirty-six California stores or twelve Texas stores have iPhones available. Still not clear from Apple's self-reporting is whether these stores were sold out all day, or received new iPhone inventory during the course of the day and sold all of it.

With sources claiming that AT&T has activated more than one million iPhones to date, and Apple still delivering new iPhone stock to many if not all of its retail stores, one is led to wonder: just how many millions of iPhones did Apple mass-produce prior to the June 29th launch?

Complain and ye shall receive

Want an iPhone? Move to Pittsburgh

According to information provided on Apple's website, all but two of Apple's one hundred-plus retail stores in the United States were sold out of iPhones by the end of the business day on the Fourth of July. Apple Stores in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Tigard, Oregon are reporting that they closed out the day with iPhones still in stock, but the rest of the nation will apparently have to do without Ð at least until Apple's next iPhone shipments arrive at the stores.

Fear not, however, as various iProng readers have reported witnessing iPhone shipments arriving at Apple Stores as often as multiple times per day, meaning that by the morning of July fifth, some of all of the nation's Apple Stores may once again have iPhones for sale. But overwhelming demand may finally be catching up with Apple's apparently voluminous initial supply, as earlier this week more than half of Apple's Stores were still showing iPhones in stock at the end of each day.

iPhone fans may not have much more luck by seeking the object of their desire elsewhere. Apple's online store shows a two to four week wait for both the four and eight gigabyte iPhone models, while AT&T has informed Bloomberg that as of July third, "just a handful" of AT&T Stores still have the iPhone in stock.

While some pundits may be tempted to lump the apparent iPhone shortage in with recent product shortages in the video gaming market, analysts are estimating that between 500,000 and 700,000 iPhones were sold in the first weekend alone, suggesting that the current shortages are simply a result of unprecedented customer demand.

iPhone fans lucky enough to get their hands on one can find hands-on reviews of iPhone cases and other accessories in iProng's searchable sortable Reviews Database.

I just wrote this as part of a reply to an article on another site which was trying to downplay the importance of the iPhone:

"We've just entered another age of personal computing, and for once, the general public is already aware of it by the end of the first weekend."

Even Macy Gray and Silent Bob had to wait in line for an iPhone

Leading up to the iPhone launch, Apple made it clear that unless you were one of the four nationally respected journalists who received advance test units, you'd have to wait in line on June 29th to get one just like everyone else Ð no matter who you might be.

I was on a list of credentialed journalists who had been invited to come into the store when it opened at 6:00 pm and report on the iPhone hoopla but if I wanted to actually buy one, I was told I would have to get in line. Because I felt compelled to provide editorial coverage of the iPhone lineup at the Apple Store at The Grove in Los Angeles (including photos and interviews with people in line) before joining the line myself, I ended up with more than two hundred people standing between me and the store's front door.

No worries. Trusting that Apple had prepared enough for the event that they would be able to process sales quickly, I wasn't concerned about having so many people in front of me; if I received my iPhone at 6:30 pm instead of 6:00 pm, it wouldn't significantly impact my ability to get back to iPhone headquarters and begin publishing my initial iPhone experiences. Sure enough, by 6:15 I was inside the store and by 6:20 I was a proud new iPhone owner.

But back up a few minutes. Jjust as I was about to enter the store, someone emerged from the front door to the flashbulbs of cameras everywhere. Sure enough, none other than Macy Gray had just walked out with her new iPhone in hand. Judging by what time it was, she'd been waiting in line as well (or more likely, she'd had a friend waiting in line in her behalf Ð why wasn't I that smart?). The irony is that I was just close enough to the front window of the store that I could make out the iPhone advertisement on the interior wall, which included a rather large photograph of Ð you guessed it Ð Macy Gray.

Here's the thing: if your face is pictured on the wall of the Apple Store and you still have to wait your turn in line to buy an iPhone at that store? Wow, talk about not showing any favoritism.

Shortly after I entered the store I noticed another familiar face a few spots in front of me, or I should say a familiar trenchcoat and beard. Back in January, movie director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Jersey Girl, Silent Bob, etc.) gave the Feature Presentation at Macworld Expo, the biggest annual Apple-related event in the world, so he's not exactly an outside when it comes to the Apple universe. And now he too was being made to wait in line for his iPhone.



I caught up with Kevin briefly, but in all the hubbub there wasn't time for anything more than a quick hello. But here's what I really wanted to ask him: "Does Silent Bob, who never actually speaks, even need a phone?"

Pity I didn't think of that one until after I'd gotten home. And for the record, I have no legitimate explanation for why the look on my face is even stupider than the look on Kevin's.

But the way I figure, if the musician whose face is displayed on the wall of every Apple Store in the country and the movie director who gave the Feature Presentation at the last big Apple event both had to wait in line for an iPhone just like everyone else, I was happy to wait my turn as well. Congrats to Apple for managing to keep the line moving so swiftly once the doors opened, and for having the chutzpah not to play favorites.

Is UPS retarded?

In the three weeks that I've been living at my new address here in Los Angeles I've received somewhere right around twenty-five packages from UPS with no trouble at all. Which is why I was surprised this past Saturday when I received a postcard in the mail from UPS which, for all intents and purposes, informed me that I don't live here. Someone tried to send me a package to this address, and despite the fact that UPS has delivered more than two dozen packages to me at this address, someone at the UPS depot decided that I don't really live here after all and pulled my package off the truck before the driver even got a chance to try delivering it.

Nevermind that some company had paid UPS good money to send me an overnight package sent cross-country, UPS saw fit to mail me a postcard (which I didn't receive until four days later) telling me that I'm not really at the address at which they were sending me the postcard. If they suddenly think I don't live here, why are they sending me a postcard here? Oops. Worse, since I received the postcard on a Saturday, I had to wait until Monday morning to call them and ask what was going on.

When got ahold of them this morning, they told me that the company who sent the package had failed to include my suite number so UPS didn't bother to send it out for delivery. This seemed fishy to me; if UPS was able to send me a postcard addressed to my suite number, and the suite number wasn't on the package, where did they get my suite number from? And if they already had my suite number somewhere in their database, couldn't they have just added the suite number to the package instead of sending me a postcard with the suite number on it?

They had no answer but offered to send the package out for delivery tomorrow. I figured I'd waited long enough (nearly a week) to receive this "overnight" package so I asked if I could just come over and pick it up. They said as long as I got there by 7pm there would be no problem.

So I head across Los Angeles to the UPS depot today and they tell me they're not going to be able to hand me the package because the person I had spoken to earlier had gone ahead and tagged it for redelivery. I asked if the package was still on the premises, which I had naively assumed was a yes or no question, but their answer seemed to imply that the package was there somewhere but that it wouldn't be particularly easy for them to find it and so they didn't want to admit that it was really there. After I pointed out that I had just driven across LA in rush hour to get the package and that the only reason I did so was because one of their people told me I would have no trouble picking it up today, they agreed to go hunting for it.

After one hour and twenty minutes of looking, they finally emerge from the back room with my package. If they'd told me on the phone that they would have that much difficulty finding the darn thing, I would have saved everyone the trouble by just staying home and waiting for it to be delivered tomorrow. But I guess being up-front with me would have been too much to ask for.

Oh, and by the way... one quick glance at the label confirms that the original package label did in fact have the correct name, correct address, and yes, the correct suite number. Would someone like to explain to me why this correctly addressed package was pulled off the truck in the first place? And no, a shrug doesn't count as an answer.

Is UPS just retarded?