Oliver Thylmann

This is really what the New York Times has done. As a short disclosure, I do own Apple stock, and I do want an iPhone, and I do know that it makes no sense whatsoever (and hence will likely not buy one) because there are many key things that the thing is missing. Here are a few more things after having posted two previous items.
Here we go, and I only include those that I think are real problems, above and beyond my last point.

1. the iPhones 25 ring tones are your only choice. It’s a full MP3 player and you can’t use the MP3s as ring tone. Ehhh… oook.
2. You cannot use standard headphone as a small plastic modling prevents headphone plugs from seating correct. Thank god there will be adapters to spend your money on.
3. the bluetooth only works with hands-free devices like Bluetooth Headsets or freespeak stuff for your car. No keyboard, no computer. WHAT? Yes, the phone cannot act as wireless modem for your laptop. But we already know that EDGE is too slow anyway.
4. Songs, Files, Calendar, Contacts, Software Updates … all go through the USB charging cradle. Thank god your can use the phone while in the cradle, not as a modem it seems, not at your head (as the speaker is at the bottom) and not with your favorite headset as it doesn’t fit.
5. You cannot make a phone call when using the EDGE network … I hope it rings at least.
   
6. ToDo items do not show up on the iPhone, Notes from the Phone not on your PC.
7. They are still tapping with one index finger after 2 weeks and not with two thumbs. 

I admit, this might still be a success, but somehow, it’s not that great a product than the previous ones. I mean the iPod was not only designed very well but it was also a wonderful package better than anything else out there in terms of hard disk players. The iPhone is well designed, has a few good features, but some things that are just need good. Looking forward to seeing where this moves. The first adopters will buy it anyway, possibly even use it, and the real question comes how many they sell until end Q3 and Q4 and what the next update looks like. And Apple, sometimes you need to let the user decide. Yes 3G drains the battery some more but that’s my choice.

I have a problem and I have high hopes that this might solve it. A little background is in order. To manage our internal documents we are using Subversion. Not only for development stuff but also for all other documents. The nice thing is that everything is versioned, backed up, and available from every pc. A small svn update, and all documents are up to date, a small svn commit with a comment and your new version is in. All cool.

On Windows, we don’t have a problem but on OS X there is one. The thing is that Subversion was done for development stuff and the shell is not really done for the average joe. There is a tool for OS X called svnX but that is really nothing more than a wrapper for the shell commands. The OS X shell is not properly internalized. The problem is that the German letters like üäö do not propperly work, and for business documents, this is something you use a lot. E.g. Founding would be called Gründung.

As the internationalization is not perfect, svn checkout will get the documents on your hard disk. After that is done you have one document that is called Gründung.doc for example. But when you do a ls, you will not get Gründung.doc but something like GruSOMETHINGndung.doc. When Subversion then does a status check it will tell you that you do not have Gründung.doc in your directory and a GruSOMETHINGndung.doc that does not have a status in the Subversion directory. As there are lots of documents with äöü you will have e.g. 30 documents that are not subversioned and 30 document that are missing.

Now that is a PAIN! And all tries to internationalize the shell have been unsuccessful. .profile now includes:

export LCCTYPE=deDE.UTF-8
export LCALL=deDE.UTF-8
export LANG=deDE.UTF-8
export LANG=enUS.UTF-8

Nothing. I also built a new bash from MacPorts. Nothing either. I would be happy for any suggestions.