metaViper

There’s a lot of hype on the inter-web about the iPhone and like many I’m tempted to buy one. That prompted me to do a little research on the pros and cons of the iPhone, like with any other new gadget. Most of these points are obvious and my only goal here is to create some clarity about whether or not it makes sense to hand out $500 plus $60/month for a service contract to buy a new iPhone.

A couple of features that I’m finding anecdotal evidence for on both sides include: image quality of the iPhone’s camera, and whether or not using the on-screen keyboard is quick and intuitive.

What other iPhone pros or cons can you think of?

Apple are you listening? Pulling out popular songs by number of times played on the iPod is good. Giving me a list of my own top rated songs is great too. But I want even more.

First, I’d like you to equalize the volume of all the tracks I add to my iPod on the fly so I’m not wildly adjusting volume from track to track. That’s hard to do when I’m in the middle of a pull-up!

Second, after you do that I’d like you to keep track of which songs I turn up regularly because there’s probably a good chance I like the song if I’m pumping up the volume.

One of the many ways I prowl for good content on the web is by listening to podcasts. Often though, good information is dispersed across several brief broadcasts from a variety of authors. Sometimes I’m in the gym running, sliding around the iPod’s clickwheel to select the next podcast; all while dodging other runners. An accident-prone endeavor to say the least.

Then I ran across smart playlists on Apple’s web site and realized that they could easily solved my problem. I set up two playlists named PodShort and PodLong.

In iTunes 7, smart playlists appear under File>>New Smart Playlist … For my PodShort smart playlist I configured it to pull up only podcasts with time less than ten minutes and a play count of zero, ordered randomly. For each additional rule click on the plus sign at the right-hand side. That playlist enabled me to hear commentary from six different podcasts (each around five minutes long) rapid fire without the need to pick and choose during my workout. And you guessed it, I use my PodLong list when I have a larger chunk of time available for research, it pulls up podcasts over ten minutes long.

My only gripe at this point is with volumes. Each podcast has a different loudness which means I had to pull out my iPod, turn off the lock, and adjust volume a couple of times. That should be something iTunes takes care of programmatically or through a set of enforced volume standards.

Apple has a reputation of commanding attention from the media when they want it and ignoring questions when they’re inconvenient. So I’m sure you can relate to Garfield’s excitement about his new iPhod made by Grapple.

Click on the comic to enlarge it. Image is copyright 2007 Paws, Inc. All rights reserved.