I'm in Plouescat, France this week on leave. The weather is defying
the forecasts, being much sunnier than expected, and I have sunburn.
That, along with a smaller and stranger bed, shared with an
increasingly mobile 18 month old daughter, and my usual trouble
sleeping, all contributed to my usual response of listening to my
iPod. However this time, being in France, I decided to just bring the
iPhone, loaded up with podcasts. NOTE data roaming turned OFF but with
an eye out for free wifi hotspots; more on that later.
So, last night I flick through podcasts I've heard before on the
unsync'ed iPod to find something new. And I get to J.C. Hutchin's 7th
Son Obsidion, which is a hybrid audio/video cast. And lying in bed,
next to a child, who is slowly pushing me off the edge, because I am
constantly having to move to keep from waking her up, the feed turns
out to be a video cast. Now here is where the 'iPhone problem' bit
comes in!
I'm on my side, but the iPhone sensor tells itself that it is in
landscape and rotates the video 90 degrees, which is full screen but
skewed. So I rotate the thing and it understandably goes onto portrait
mode. Argh! So, please PLEASE Apple, can we have an override or a
video rotate button, so that I can lie sleepless in bed and view the
video the way I want to?
Can we also have cut and paste? Having to switch between apps in a
System Six/Multi-Finder way is really frustrating. And while we are at
it, can we have an obvious option to save a draft of an email and move
emails back to drafts from the outbox? I have several times
accidentally clicked send and had to jack my way back into an
unfinished email by moving it to the inbox, choosing reply all and
then doing a lot of extra editing to get rid of the highlighting -
done by deleting the start of the blue text onto some prior black
letters - which would be unnecessary if there were better editing
functions.
Oh, and can I have a UK dictionary for word suggestions; I'm a bit
sick of US variants appearing, and no way of configuring this or
adding my own words to the dictionary. Also, I don't think that the
predictive text learns or adapts, which should be a no-brainer nowadays!
And now a section on iPhonophilia, namely the positives of having an
iPhone that a grumble blog would not cover! There have been many, some
of which have served to highlight the few flaws or areas for
inprovement, but here are a few notable ones:
1) I'm driving home and get an urgent voicemail - due to patchy
reception in South Wales valleys - asking me to check and reply to an
email to rearrange a whole week's schedule. I park the car and can do
mail in a couple of minutes.
2) On my way to the ferry terminal late on Friday, I realize that I
have not complete a 400 word article I am supposed to have written for
UUK on why US Honour (honor?) codes won't work in UK universities to
prevent plagiarism. As my wife is driving, I pull up mail and a web
browser and get it written on the way to Plymouth.
3) Some friends, who relocated to Plouescat years ago, send me a text
telling us that they have emailed directions to their remote
farmhouse, but this happened after we had already left. I text back
saying we didn't get it, so hasty arrangements are made to meet up as
the instructions are too complex to send by SMS; only 160 characters
on text messages, remember.
However, the overnight B&B hotel in Morlais we stay in after arriving
on a late night ferry has free wifi. So, we get the email even without
data roaming, saving the need for a second mortgage! We get to see old
friends without having to be met somewhere.
Scent from my iPhone 8-P
