Posts from — July 2010

Antennagate, death grip, faulty proximity sensors, black labs, and free cases – boy this is an iPhone release for the history books. Last month I wrote my initial thoughts on the infamous iPhone 4. It has been nearly a month and I wanted to do a follow-up post and share my experience with the phone the world cannot stop talking about.

So are the rumors true? Does the prized iPhone 4 suffer from the death grip and proximity sensor issues – absolutely. “Death grip” can be easily replicated (but it’s effects often exaggerated) and if you hold your phone to your head while talking, the proximity sensor faux pas will surely hang up a phone call or two. At first I had thought these issues were being blown out of proportion. Maybe it was because I was still blinded by the reflection off that 960×640 pixel screen, but more realistically it was because I had had not ample time to test it out in the wild (similar to the Apple engineers?).

However, when all is said and done, these flaws are not tragic – or maybe they are – but they don’t push me into a corner of worry and frustration. First of all, 95 percent of the time I am talking on my phone, which isn’t all that often to begin with, I am using some sort of hands free device. And when I am, the signal is better than it ever was on my 3GS. I have yet to drop a call while driving, or with the phone shoved in my pocket. The rest of the time I am using the device (email, browsing, games, etc.), all is well. I don’t have any connectivity issues while using the data connection and up/down speeds are spectacular.

I read one reviewer who equated these flaws to a small scar on a beautiful woman – I would have to agree. The screen, the camera, the video calling, the processor, the drop dead gorgeous form factor – It is just too impressive a phone to call it a failure.

So I’ll get my free bumper, wait for the proximity sensor issue to be resolved in a software update, and deal with the minor “death grip” issue for the next year. Come on folks, June 2011 is only 11 months away. Kidding- well, not really.

I finally had the chance to install Seagate’s new Momentus XT hybrid hard drive, and let me tell you, this thing is cool. What is a hybrid hard drive you ask? Well, it is basically a 7200 RPM hard drive topped off with 4GB of solid state memory. Seagate says the memory is “intelligent,” meaning it knows to store the data you frequently access for enhanced read/write times. So how does this little guy perform in a MacBook Pro? Quite well.

Seagate designed the drive such that the computer thinks it is a normal drive. There are no special drivers needed to run it, which is a huge plus in my book. I installed this one in a 2010 i7 MacBook Pro. This laptop was purchased ‘off the shelf’ and therefore contained a 5400 RPM drive – why Apple doesn’t include the 7200 as the factory standard in a $2200 “pro” laptop is puzzling (wish I was still a shareholder). Coming from a 5400 RPM drive I knew the performance gains would be significant, but I never realized it would make this much of a difference.

Boot time has been cut down by about 1/2 and launching apps brings a smile to my face with each click. Some my biggest offenders: Tweetdeck, Lightroom, and Photoshop now open within 2 hops (that’s a Mac technical term, you know). It is really the icing on the cake with this machine. Now if I only had 8GB of RAM…

So should you run out to Amazon or Newegg and put this baby in your shopping cart? If your machine currently as a 5400 RPM drive installed – YES! If you already have a 7200 RPM drive, it will really depend on how thick your wallet is. For me, it was $130 well spent.