Mike Cohen

iPhone FAIL

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Since yesterday I’ve been unable to make calls with my iPhone. As soon as I dial any number, I get CALL ENDED followed immediately by CALL FAILED. I’m able to receive calls and send SMS, though.

I completely restored my iPhone, made sure the time zone & caller ID are correct as suggested in Apple’s support forums, and even reset network settings and the problem still persists. If nothing else works, I’ll probably be taking a trip to the Apple store.

Macworld Wrapup

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I got home from Macworld late yesterday and spent most of today just catching up.

I posted a two part Macworld wrapup at MacMegasite and I still have several reviews to write.

This year I stayed at the Hotel Milano, which is by far the nicest under $200/night hotel I’ve stayed at in San Francisco. The room was very large and the wireless internet was reliable. It’s just around the corner from Moscone West, which makes it very convenient.

Netter's Dinner

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Last night was the annual Netter’s dinner, the traditional old fart’s Macworld event. As always we meet at the stairs in Moscone South, where Jon Pugh wears his traditional Hawaiian shirt and herds the crowd for the walk to Henry’s Hunan. This year I chickened out and rode, since my FastPack 250 with the D90 and Macbook was killing my back.

The crowd was smaller than usual this year, only 30 people, so we were packed into a smaller room down stairs instead of the usual upstairs hall.

After dinner we had the usual survey and free swag. When the Netter’s dinner started in 1985, the survey asked things like “how many people have an email address”. This year the questions were more like “how many have only one email address” and “how many have a personal email address”.

Free Swag included a complete set of Take Control books on a CD and Christopher Allen’s iPhone Development book (which I got and will review when I get home).

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I Can Has an Update

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I Can Has Cheezburger 1.1 has been approved and is now available for sale in the app store. I’m now working on the submission API (which is still preliminary) for version 1.2.

My Macworld predictions

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Here are my predictions for Macworld 2009:

  • Snow Leopard If it isn’t released, Apple will at least announce a release date. Apple *may* add some user features to make it an attractive update.
  • iLife and/or iWork updates I don’t believe that iMovie will be moved online, although it may be able to take advantage of other computers on the network for rendering using XGrid. I think there will be an online version of iWork similar to Google Docs. Applications like iMovie & iDVD will most likely take advantage of Snow Leopard features such as using the GPU to speed up rendering.
  • Mac Mini There will most likely be a new Mac Mini, with a lot of the technology introduced in the new MacBook line. It will almost certainly use DisplayPort instead of DVI. It might provide easy access for hard drive & RAM upgrades like the new MacBook & MacBook Pro, although that may be just my wishful thinking.
  • iMac Minor update, probably a speed bump or quad-core processor and adding DisplayPort instead of mini DVI. No design change.
  • Mac Pro May also receive a speed bump, new processor (16-core maybe), DisplayPort.
  • MacBook Line A Unibody 17″ MacBook Pro?
  • AppleTV Possibly new software with official support for Hulu and/or Netflix streaming.
  • iPhone New software. If there is an iPhone Nano, it will be a stripped down model which probably won’t allow you to install additional applications from the app store at a much lower price ($99?).

Going to Macworld

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I’m getting ready to leave for San Francisco in a few hours. I’ll be spending much of the day traveling. I’m bringing my MacBook and my D90 with an 18-105mm VR and a 50mm f/1.8 lens. I decided not to bring the 55-200mm and my SB-600.

I’ll be covering Macworld Expo at MacMegasite and I will attempt to post live keynote updates at http://macmegasite.com/macworld, provided I can get internet access during the keynote. If that isn’t possible, I’ll attempt to post updates from my iPhone.