Month: July 2009

This has been a big iPhone week for me personally.  The iPhone 3GS that I ordered last week arrived on Tuesday, and I have really loved the upgrade from my iPhone 3G.  The increased speed is wonderful; it makes the device feel so much more responsive.  I’ll post a full review after I have a chance to use it more.  There was also a huge spike in traffic to this website on Wednesday as lots of people came here to read about the new em dash feature in 3.0 and the missing en dash.  It’s interesting how many of us can get so interested in the little details, but perhaps not surprising when it comes to the iPhone; Apple is so good at producing polished products that we expect perfection even in the tiny details.  If you read the post when it first went up Wednesday morning, click here to read it again to see the update that I added later in the day about the cool Glyphboard web app and to read the very interesting comments. 

Anyhoo, here are some of the interesting iPhone-related items that I ran across this week.

• Which company has the best 3G service?  PC World conducted an extensive test of 3G speeds in various cities around the country, even down here in the Big Easy.  In short, PC World found that Verizon’s 3G service was the fastest and most reliable with an average download speed of 951 kbps across 13 cities, Sprint did well at maintaining a connection and had an average download speed of 808 kbps, and our beloved AT&T had an average download speed of 812 kbps, with individual tests in different cities ranging from 477 kbps in New York to 1259 kbps in Boston.  When you read the article, you may also want to check out this table showing different averages in different cities.
• I would have never thought of the iPhone as being something that you could service yourself, but Jeff Carlson writes in TidBITS about how he replaced the cracked screen on an iPhone for about $80 in parts and about 4 hours in time.  Even if you have zero desire to service your own iPhone, the pictures in Jeff’s articles that chronicle his iPhone dissection are interesting.  Jim Dalrymple also notes that Apple’s retail stores can now fix a broken screen in-house if your iPhone is still under warranty.  (Both links via Daring Fireball.)
• MacNN reports that the iPhone 3GS is #1 in the Consumer Reports smartphone ratings.
• Speaking of the fine folks at TidBITS, all of the titles in their excellent Take Control series of e-books are 50% off through July 7.  Click this coupon-loaded link to view the catalog.  Topics covered include the iPhone, Macs, iLife, AirPort networking, and more.
• Ars Technica reports that Apple has updated its MobileMe service.  Among other new features, you can now publish video taken with an iPhone 3GS directly to MobileMe.
• Macworld reports that Apple is already preparing iPhone Software 3.1 with new features such as (1) the ability to trim a video on the iPhone 3GS but save the original, longer version, (2) the ability to use Voice Control with Bluetooh earpieces, (3) fraud protection in Safari, (4) performance improvements and (5) a new AT&T profile that might mean that MMS is coming soon from AT&T.  As I noted earlier this year, iPhone Software 2.0 was released in July of 2008, followed by two minor bug fix updates the following month in August, the
  
  major 2.1 update in September, the major 2.2 update two months later in
  
  November, and then the 2.2.1 minor bug fix update in January of 2009.  If history is to serve as any guide, then we may see iPhone Software 3.1 released within the next few weeks.
• I reported earlier this week
  
  that Quickoffice was selling its Quickword app at a discount, $4.99
  
  instead of the normal $12.99.  Quickoffice was so happy with that sale
  
  that it discounted the rest of its apps.  You can now get the
  
  Quickoffice Suite for $12.99 instead of $19.99 (for the first 10,000
  
  buyers), Quicksheet, like Quickword, is also discounted to $4.99 (for
  
  the first 1,000 buyers), and Quickoffice Files is now just $o.99 (for
  
  the first 1,000 buyers).  By the way, a Quickoffice representative
  
  tells me that the next upgrade to Quickoffice will add the ability to
  
  open e-mail attachments (a feature that Documents to Go already has for
  
  Exchange), full support for iPhone 3.0 cut, copy and paste, and improved
  
  undo/redo. If you want both Word and Excel features on your iPhone, I
  
  recommend that you click here to get Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite
  
  ($12.99): 

  

• I wasn’t the only one to get an iPhone 3GS, and a whole bunch of you got it before I did.  AppleInsider reports on a leaked memo from AT&T that showed up first on MacDailyNews which reveals that Friday, June 19—the day that the iPhone 3GS launched—was the best ever sales day in AT&T’s retail store history and the largest order day in att.com’s history.  Considering the blockbuster sales of the iPhone 3G when it launched (not to mention its successful year since then), I’m amazed to see that even more people bought the 3GS at launch.
• And finally, David Dobin, an attorney in Massachusetts who is working as a judicial law clerk, has been teaching himself how to program iPhone apps.  He has a few apps on iTunes right now, but one that looks particularly useful is iDoClipboard.  When you launch the app, it automatically takes whatever you last copied and adds it to the app’s running clipboard.  You cap tap any item previously saved to the clipboard to view it or create an e-mail with that content.  The app is free, so if this sounds interesting to you, check it out.  Click here to get iDoClipboard (free): 

  

I recently traveled to Russia for a week, and while I was there I needed to call home quite often to keep in touch, participate in conference calls to keep up with my cases, etc.  I had an AT&T calling card with me, but to use it for international calls I would have had to use 10 minutes of calling card time for every one minute of talk time, and that is on top of the fees that my hotel was charging me to get an outside line.  I also could have used my iPhone to make an international cell phone call using a 3G service in Russia, but I suspect that would have cost me—and I am just guessing here—a million dollars a minute.  (I don’t know what the roaming fee would have been, but I presume expensive.  My iPhone stayed in “airplane mode” the entire time I was abroad, although I did keep Wi-Fi turned on.)  Instead, I decided to try out the Skype app for the iPhone.  It was released a while ago and I downloaded it as a curiosity just because it was free, but I hadn’t had a chance to use it yet.  I was very happy to discover that Skype on the iPhone is truly amazing.

I know that there are many of you who use Skype on your computer all the time, either to video chat or audio chat with people or as an instant messaging client.  I have used Skype for video chats once or twice before, but most of my family and friends have Macs at home so we instead use iChat to video chat.  So essentially, before my trip, I was a Skype newbie.  Before I left town, I had gone to the Skype website and purchased $10.00 worth of Skype credit.  I wasn’t even sure if it would work, but I figured $10.00 was a small price to pay to find out.  I also set up an option so that if my $10.00 was used up, Skype would automatically charge my credit card for another $10.00.

I was happy to learn that my hotel in Russia had free Wi-Fi, making it very easy to use my iPhone to keep up with e-mail etc.  When I needed to call home, I just fired up my Skype app on my iPhone.  There are five buttons at the bottom of the screen:  Contacts, Chats, Call, History and My Info.  The My Info button tells you how much Skype Credit you have remaining, and to make a call I just tapped the Call button to see a familiar number pad:

To call a number in the U.S., I just dialed the area code and the number and tapped Call.  After just a few seconds, I was talking just the same as if I was using the iPhone’s normal phone function.  The call quality was excellent, and people had no idea that I wasn’t calling from a regular land line in the U.S. until I told them that I was out of the country.  For short calls, I just held my iPhone up to my face (which causes the screen to go black, just like the regular phone app) but for longer calls, I used my Apple In-Ear Headphones (which I really love) and slipped my iPhone into my front shirt pocket.  With this arrangement, I could even walk around while I was talking on the phone.

There were two times during long conference calls that I lost my Wi-Fi connection for a moment (after being on a call for about 30 minutes) and, of course, also lost my Skype connection.  I was able to immediately call back as soon as I re-established my Wi-Fi connection and get back on the call.  And once, the other parties said that they heard a lot of static from my line, so I tapped the “mute” button in Skype for a few minutes to solve the problem.  But aside from those minor, isolated issues, I was able to call home without any trouble dozens of times.

Most importantly, the calls were incredibly cheap.  Calls to U.S. landlines and cellphones from Russia (and I believe from anyplace in the world) cost just 2.1 cents a minute.  Calls to 1-800 and other toll free numbers were free.  If you want to use Skype to call numbers in other countries, the costs are a little higher, and you can click here for a chart with international rates.  All told, after several dozen calls over a week, many of which lasted a long time, I barely used $4.00 of my Skype credit.  As any of you who try to call the U.S. from other countries know, you can easily spend over $4.00 for a single call.  Thus, as far as I was concerned, Skype allowed me to call home for essentially free.  Indeed, if I had called people who were using Skype, my calls would have been completely free, but I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone at home by making them use a computer or an iPhone to talk to me.

There is also a History button to see who you called and how long you were on the phone.  You can also get that same information on the Skype webpage by looking at your account.

Using Skype to make phone calls is so much like using the normal iPhone Phone app that there was even one time while I was talking to someone that I exited the Skype app to check something in an e-mail, only to quickly remember that while I can do this on a normal phone call, the iPhone doesn’t allow third party apps to run in the background, so exiting the Skype app caused my call to end.  Oops.  I quickly called back and apologized for dropping the call.

Note that I only used my iPhone to make calls on Skype, not to receive them.  The app does allow you to receive calls, but I would have had to run the Skype app when they called me, and especially with the time difference that was just not convenient.  Instead, I found myself checking my voice mail frequently, and after someone left me a message I would call them back.  Other times, I scheduled phone calls with people via e-mail, and then I was always the one to initiate the call.  Also, note that Skype on the iPhone cannot initiate or receive video; this is audio-only, just like using the normal iPhone Phone app.

If you plan to travel internationally and want to avoid expensive fees to call home, I strongly encourage you to download the free Skype app and purchase some Skype credits.  You will have to find Wi-Fi to use it, but you can usually find Wi-Fi somewhere when you are traveling.  Of course, you can also use Skype on a computer, but carrying a laptop with you while you travel is a pain, plus talking on a laptop is not natural.  Talking on an iPhone is very natural because it is, after all, a phone.

Click here to get Skype (free): 

Apple tells us that there are over 100 new features in iPhone Software 3.0.  One of them is the addition of the em dash.  I haven’t seen much discussion of the em dash feature on other websites—which doesn’t really surprise me—but because many lawyers appreciate precise legal writing, I thought I would discuss it here today.  And yes, I did just effortlessly use em dashes in my last sentence.  That’s just the kind of guy I am.

Let’s start by talking about the three kinds of dashes.  First, there is a hyphen, which purists will correctly note isn’t a dash at all, even though most of us think of it that way.  The hyphen is the key on your computer keyboard right next to the zero key. 
Hyphens are used to create some compound words (such as merry-go-round)
or to indicate subtraction.

Slightly longer than the hyphen is the en
dash, which is used to indicate a range of values, such as an
indication that a meeting is scheduled for 10:00–11:00 a.m.  The en dash is also used when indicating the vote of a court, such as: the Supreme Court affirmed in a 5–4 decision.  It sometimes helps to think of the en dash as a substitute for the word to.  The en dash
is roughly the width of the letter n. 

Finally, and slightly longer
than the en dash, there is the em dash.  An em dash is roughly the
width of the letter m and is used to set off an abrupt break or
interruption, such as this example from Strunk and White:  His first
thought on getting out of bed—if he had any thought at all—was to get
back in again.  An em dash is also used to indicate that a sentence has been interrupted and did not end.  For example, what if I said—

There is some disagreement on whether you should place spaces on both sides of an em dash.  You’ll find seemingly authoritative sources on both sides of the debate.  The Wikipedia entry on “dash” sums it up as follows:

According to most American sources (e.g., The Chicago Manual of Style) and to some British sources (e.g., The Oxford Guide to Style),
an em dash should always be set closed (not surrounded by spaces). But
the practice in many parts of the English-speaking world, also the
style recommended by The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, sets it open (separates it from its surrounding words by using spaces or hair spaces
(U+200A)) when it is being used parenthetically. Some writers, finding
the em dash unappealingly long, prefer to use an open-set en dash. This
“space, en dash, space” sequence is also the predominant style in German and French typography. 

If you want to read more on hyphens, en dashes and em dashes, click here for a short but good discussion in the Chicago Manual of Style Online.

I can’t say that I am religious about the hyphen, en dash and em dash, either on this website or in my legal writing.  Sometimes instead of the em dash I just use a double hyphen like this — which seems to get the point across just fine.  (Indeed, Microsoft Word will automatically convert two dashes to an em dash when you type the two dashes between words without using spaces.)  Sometimes I use the space, en dash, space sequence.  Nevertheless, it is nice to have the power to use a hyphen or a dash when you want to do so.  The iPhone has always included a hyphen, and in
iPhone Software 3.0, you can also now make the em dash.  To do so, just
hold down the normal hyphen key for a second or two and a pop-up menu will
appear that allows you to choose the em dash.

So now we can make the hyphen and the em dash.  What about the en dash?  The iPhone can certainly make the en dash
character, and if you want proof, just load up this webpage on your
iPhone and look at this:

• – hyphen
• – en dash
• — em dash

The iPhone can render the en dash correctly, but it is impossible to
type it on the keyboard.  There may be a way to type it from one of the many international keyboards on the iPhone, but if so I haven’t found it yet.  There is one workaround with the new copy and paste
function of 3.0: if you are desperate to use an en dash, you
can copy it from someplace else and paste it where you want it such as in an
e-mail.  For example, you could copy the en dash above from this web page, and I am happy to provide this service free of charge. 

[UPDATE: As pointed out by Jon and Fuzzy in the comments, Glyphboard is a free workaround for the missing en dash and many other missing characters on the iPhone keyboard.  [UPDATE#2: Glyphboard’s author Neven Mrgan tells me that he added the en dash to his app this morning after he saw the initial post here on iPhone J.D.  Thanks, Neven!]  There is a nice review of Glyphboard here on MacGeek Pro, and Steve Rubel has a quick video demonstration of it here.  To get it working, go to this address on your iPhone:  http://mrgan.com/gb/  Then follow the on-screen directions and press the plus sign at the bottom of your Safari screen to Add to Home Screen.  Then click on the icon that you just added to your home screen to start the web app, and you can copy a special character from Glyphboard and then paste it someplace else, such as in an e-mail.  Glyphboard includes 48 special characters, including the en dash, as shown here:

You even get the Daring Fireball star-in-a-circle logo, and indeed John Gruber even linked to Glyphboard earlier this month when I was out of the country.  Note that if you paste these symbols in an e-mail, not all of them will display on all computers.  For example, I did a quick test and the en dash, the happy face, the heart, the music notes, the paragraph sign, the copyright sign and the spade displayed fine using Outlook on my PC running Windows XP, but the star-in-a-circle, the yin-yang, the umbrella, the check mark, the skull-and-crossbones, the snowman, the envelope and the Apple (it’s a conspiracy!) did not display on my PC.  Thanks again to Neven Mrgan for writing this very cool little app.]

Will Apple ever give us the en dash on the iPhone?  Maybe not.  I don’t own a copy of the AP Stylebook for journalists, but from what I have read (and confirmed here) the AP doesn’t even recognize the en dash and tells journalists to instead use the hyphen.  But I’d like to think that smart Apple engineers are hard at work on this feature right now, and at some point, perhaps in iPhone Software 4.0 next year, we’ll have an en dash option right next to the em dash when you hold down the hyphen key.  A boy can dream.