Cell Phones for a Unix-head, part 2

*** Warning: I rip quite a few companies a new one in this blog post, due to this post’s content, I recommend that no one reads it ****

So I went to the AT&T dealership after leaving work early, hoping that at 2:30pm, I’d be able to beat a lot of the traffic there.  Well I get to the dealership and I notice there are a lot of people in there, every sales person is occupied with a line waiting for the next available.  I stood around the iPhone equipment, looking at accessories, looking salesmen in the eyes with a look of “I’m willing to shower you with money if you’ll give me 5 minutes of your time”.  Did I get attention?  Not for 15 minutes, when someone FINALLY took my name and put it in the queue….wonderful.

After about 10 more minutes of waiting, I finally got a salesman, not exactly Johnny Enthusiasm, but whatever.  Whole transaction took 10 minutes.  Registering the SIM was probably the longest part.  Salesman didn’t even have to migrate my contacts for me (phone was FUBAR’d anyways, hence my need for a new one).  But, I have the dang thing, finally.  I miss the days where you could just walk up and pay someone for something.  Now there’s a whole process to it. So I have the piece of crap and I’m taking it home, kinda itchy to play with it, but no one in this state can freaking drive so I had to keep all attention on the road (and don’t start in on me about “no texting” laws, I REALLY don’t want to hear your communist banter).

And when I finally get it home, I start going app-happy. Then I notice.  There aren’t any free SSH clients.  WTF?!?  Seriously, no free SSH applications?  The majority of the logic code is already done and F/OSS, the only thing left to do is integrate it with Apple’s GUI and you Mac lovers brag about how easy that is anyways.  So I fork out the cash for a premium SSH client (might as well go big while I’m going to have to pay anyways), and download a few other pay apps (equation reference for math/physics/etc, XMPP client, IRC client, etc), and then go a little crazy with the free apps.

Yes I did download a fart app thank you.  I’ve earned my man points for the year, and now I don’t have to watch pro football on Thanksgiving, thankfully. Also got a few music apps (Pandora and Slacker).  Please note however, that I am an audiophile.  I’m one of those guys that spends the absurd amounts of money on high end audio gear and even makes my own stuff all in the pretense that a high-hat will sound a little less like someone blowing their nose into a crunched up aluminum can. And ON that note, I will note that the audio connector on the iPhone sounds like crap.

More crappy writing after the break.

I know they use the high end Wolfson DACs but I got some serious distortion from audio on this thing.  However its really only noticeable on my non-portable over-ear cans, on my IEMs, its negligible.  And my over-ear cans in particular have a reputation in the audiophile community for leading to the demise of equipment because they reveal EVERYTHING wrong with the source.  Plus the SMD caps they’re using in the amplifier in the unit are puny compared to proper capacitors that should be used.

And when is someone going to make a phone that does multiple Exchange servers?  Yes I know it can be hacked into being done, but I don’t want a hack to deal with this.  Is this a licensing issue or what?  You’d think it’d be a relatively simple thing to do with UNIX to do multiple Exchange servers (if it does envelop the system, used chroots or even friggin FreeBSD jails, if you want to be 1337).

I also want to address the worst piece of sh** I’ve ever bought.  And that’s the Otterbox Defender for the iPhone.  Sure the box itself works GREAT, I’ve had INFINITE amounts of fun throwing my iPhone around only to giggle with glee as my coworkers and anyone in the immediate vicinity turns a new ghastly shade of white, only to pick it up and it continues working, but the problem is the belt clip that comes with it.

I was walking to work today, which I have to walk over two blocks from the parking garage to my office, thank you my wonderful corporate overlords, and when I get in the building, I reach down. OH SH** my iPhone is gone!  So in a panicked frenzy, I run out of the building so fast that the hair on the rent-a-cop at the door flies the OPPOSITE direction that I’m running, and find my iPhone IN THE STREET where I had crossed.

I’m still rather unclear of whether it was hit or not by a car, but either way, the Otterbox itself protected the thing.  I still have my doubts as to how well the Otterbox would succeed against a semi, but raincheck on that particular test.  So ran upstairs with it and cleaned it off with a Clorox wipe, and kept it in my pocket the rest of the day, defeating one of the big things I liked about the case in the first place (yes, I’m a nerd, I keep my phone in reach because I use the push feature of Exchange to respond to giddy salesmen that like to call my phone, only to realize I’m actually a WORKING server admin and am down in the datacenter doing stuff).

But, a few weeks in, the device is still in one piece, I haven’t trashed it yet.  We’ll have to see how it fairs in the weeks to come as I travel, work, and recreate (recreate, not procreate, get your mind out of the gutter).