Geeking out!

July has been a good month for me.  I got my new iPhone, the iPhone 4 (which has been rocking my socks off), Audible finally released an iPhone app, and Valve released a free game, which is an almost identical remake of a game I really enjoyed about 5 years ago, Alien Swarm.

To start, I’m very happy with my recent iPhone 4 upgrade.  The iPhone 4 is so much faster than my old 3G, and the battery life is much improved.  Facetime is a really cool feature, but until it stops being WiFi only, it will not be something that get’s a ton of use.  The biggest difference is the screen quality.  The new high density display is really something else and I notice it every time I use it.  All-in-all a worthwhile upgrade.

I was very happy to discover that Audible has released an iPhone application.  This made me happy because I was quite jealous of their android app which as been in beta for a while now.  I downloaded it yesterday and started playing around with it when I ran into some issues.  First off Audible appears to be having a problem with their download service, so I cannot currently download any of my books.  This is something of a bummer as quite a few people are having their first experience with audible through this app (coming from the App Store).  I’m sure Audible will resolve the issue, but they’ve probably lost a bunch of business because of it.  So I can’t use it yet to download books, oh well, we’ll get around to that when it’s fixed.  The other annoyance that I have is that I cannot access Audible’s website/store from the app.  This is the same issue the Kindle has, and it’s not their fault, it’s Apples.   Apple takes a cut of everything sold through apps on the iPhone, so Amazon can’t sell books (audio or text) from their iPhone apps.  Bah.  I would like to be able to browse their selection and purchase audio books without having to go to their website.

And last, but most definitely not least, Valve software release an updated port of a game called Alien Swarm this week.  I think it was around 2005 when a company called Black Cat games put out a UT2k4 mod called Alien Swarm.  We played a bunch of Unreal Tournament back then, and I don’t recall where I found this, but it was pretty intriguing so I picked it up.  It was an absolute blast.  I remember playing an awful lot of it and I’m not really sure why we stopped, although I remember getting to some absolutely death dealing areas and having trouble getting past.  So it may have been that we hit a wall.  The game has 4 classes, so you get to pick your play style.  The original game was top down, the new version is also top down, but at a slight angle so the view is nicer.  It’s 4 player co-op and it’s a total blast to shoot through.  Valve went ahead and set the price point at zero, ensuring that anyone who has ever played a Valve game would pick this up and get addicted.  I can only assume that this is the the first taste and that we’re going to have to pay for the second one.  That’s fine by me, I would have paid for this one.  I got to kick around with Matt last night for a while, and I’m really looking forward to having 4 players to stomp on these maps with.

iOS 4 appears to be eating the battery of my 3G for breakfast. Someone said that the wifi no longer goes to sleep when you put the iPhone into sleep mode. This seems plausible to me, because the new OS supports a number of multitasking operations (not on the 3G mind you). I have turned off wifi and I will see how quickly the battery dies from here. It doesn’t make a huge difference to me as I will probably own a iPhone 4 in a couple of days.

Side note: the updated wordpress app means that I can once again post from my iPad!

Actually I got my new credits late Aug. but I just haven’t gotten around to picking up my new books for the month yet.  It’s times like this when I really wish that my iPhone had the ability to download my audible.com purchases directly, but no, I have to go to my computer and sync.  It would be nice if Apple would open up the ability to download files directly, or at least enter into limited partnerships to enable downloads for certain 3rd parties.  I suppose when I finally get my new laptop (next year probably), I won’t have this issue becuase the system I sync with with generally be with me.  Still, eliminating reasons to have to sync would be very nice.

While I’m griping I’ll add that the iPhone should also:

• Support syncing over wifi (e.g. I come home, get on my wireless network and sync up to my mac mini
• Support subscribing to podcasts within the iTunes app on the iPhone
• background support for audio applications (or the ability to queue files up withing the ipod application even if the file is stored in an exteral app like spotify or audiobooks or dropbox
• Approve the dropbox application goddamnit (does it really take 4 weeks of dead silence to approve and app?)

I just want to say that Apple’s handling of Google Voice apps is terrible and I hope that Google makes them squirm.