With the advent of OS 3.0 being released imminently, I thought it’s time I highlighted a particular bugbear of mine on the iPhone - well not on the phone itself, but on websites designed for it.

As I spend a fair amount of personal time on the train, I spend it surfing the internet -often following useful links from this site, digg and slashdot.   However around once/twice a week I find that the link doesn’t take me to the linked article where I want to go - but to an iPhone specfic website “thats more optimised for a mobile handset”.

A lot of these sites don’t even have a mode to offer to “take me back to the regular browsing experience” - although some thankfully do.      Annoyingly those that do have the option don’t you generally to the original article - but it does at least present a way for the normal website to be viewed.

The only way around this appears to be to install an alternate browser sending another user-agent to the website in question - but should we really have to resort to the appstore to fix this?

So I am asking all website designers nicely.   Yes you can create an iphone version of the site…  but please don’t force it upon us…     Some of have iphones for the “real web experience” but on the move, not a “for handset” experience.

Please comment with your thoughts and a list of sites that appear to force this on you if you feel like naming/shaming these annoying sites…

My personal bugbear being a science fiction fan is scifi.com - which on my last visit forced a version of the site that you couldn’t get out of on the handset.

Intego has found that a trojan’ed version of iWork 2009 is doing its rounds on the usual Bittorrent places as Pirate software.    Link here to advisory

Installing the software installs the software in question - but also installs a Trojan horse - to quote Intego below:

“The malicious software connects to a remote server over the Internet; this means that a malicious user will be alerted that this Trojan horse is installed on different Macs, and will have the ability to connect to them and perform various actions remotely. The Trojan horse may also download additional components to an infected Mac.”

I admit it, when I wrote my “Security predictions for 2009“, I didn’t expect the 1st prediction to be potentially met by end of January…    I believe his could well become a botnet.

Trojans have been a common risk if you download pirate software for years - so anyone doing this should already be aware of the risks of doing so…. although admittedly Apple users have had it light compared to PC users, with not many being targeted at them.

Is this, as I predicted last year, the first in a wave of attacks aimed at Apple users?

My personal opinion:

Beautiful - solid Alumininum manufacturing showing the industry the way to go forward.

With the advent of 7Digital now providing DRM free music in 320kbit/sec mp3’s (See this article for full details) from all 4 major labels, I’m confused about the iTunes offering in AAC.

You see, I like iTunes plus music, ie the no-usage limits, no DRM music in iTunes, and prefer this to buying a CD….however its not always available.

Over the weekend (on Friday night) I upgraded firmware to 2.1…

I’ve posted about this before in comments to this post, but I think it deserves a seperate update post:

1 month and a few weeks in, I’m finding the iPhone 3G battery life to still be sufficient for what I use my phone for. There is, however, noticible difference in battery left at end of day if I don’t micromanage (ie turn off/on) the relevant chipsets on the phone. My major gripe is there is no Office/Work/etc profiles to control what is turned on… Doing it manually can be a pain. Right now I have the below setup:

At home: Need Bluetooth, Wifi on, and 3g off (non 3g area)

At office/travelling on train: Need Wifi off, BT off, 3g on

In car: BT on, 3g off, wifi off

Providing I change settings as above, in my usage - yesterday I got (starting coming off charge at 6:30am):

1. 1.5-2 hours of mp3 playback (during half of this was also surfing web on train (mix of 2g/3g)
2. 1 hour of websurfing and email (I have 2 email accounts, one push, one checking hourly) via 3g
3. One 2 hour phone call (2g)

At end of day (midnight), I still had ~ 40% of the battery free and

I’ve had my iPhone since day 2 integrated with both me.com for bookmarks, contacts, email and calender, as well as to my work caldender via a test ActiveSync server @ work.

I must admit the fact that the iPhone can connect to two “push” services at once is mighty handy - and the fact that in calender’s combined view you can clearly see what appointments are work, which are personal… etc.

I just want to say from my experience the linked register article has it spot on one day 1 iPhone launch here in Ipswich via the O2 store.

I’ve decided, I’m getting one (as mentioned in last blog post).

What swung the decision for me is the fact you can get 16Gb storage on a phone for mp3’s - with the size of my collection this will allow a decent amount of music for all occasions. + room for some movies and applications.

Note that in the past I was critical of the iphone (even I believe on this blog 18 months ago), but the 3 crucial things lacking then have been fixed

1. GPS
2. 3g/HSDPA!
3. 3rd party Applications

With these fixed I can’t resist getting one. Super monkey ball looks great - and excited about possibilty of GPS. Only thing I can fault really is the camera and lack of user replaceable battery. The touch interface I had tried on the old iPhone and although I think it’ll take some getting used to, I think I’ll grow to like. Also the excellent Cloud/Btopenzone roaming deal should be commented on as it should greatly increase data speeds in a lot of places I visit (liverpool street/city area for one). This doesn’t change my perception overall that Wifi will be surplanted by 3g cards where it is overpriced - coffee shops being a prime example.

I think the critical thing for Apple in terms of revenue generation on the iPhone will be MobileMe as this will allow full sync from PC to Mac, to iPhone for a very reasonable sum (in fact for less than I pay now for less email storage on another host…). If Apple get this right then it certainally will make me switch email hosts… cant’ wait for the upcoming trial. I have 2 PC’s, 2 laptops at home now - one is a work laptop admittedly so lets exclude that - however email sync is always painful between the 3 - I use imap currently… but I have no caldender/contacts sync, which this will fix at long last. This is a longstanding gripe of mine - exchange for the masses is finally here I hope!

Now I just need to prepare for the small queue (I do live in a small part of suffolk so not expecting a huge queue). I just hope they do have a 16Gb in store if I join the queue at 7:45am… if not I’ll just wait a few days/weeks until they do have stock. I’m not queuing at the crack of dawn - this isn’t that important to me!

Are you queuing?

According to the link below - Apple have reset a users password on the basis of a one line email (with quite poor english) which is recorded in the chaps own email file!

To quote the email in full “am forget my password of mac,did you give me password on new email marko.[redacted]@yahoo.com”

This really is quite awful because as the chap points out the mail address of the guy in question is nothing like his own.