Following on from my earlier admission.

I’m now the owner of a shiny new iPhone 4.

Happy to report no Grip Of Death issues for me. That I have yet noticed, anyway.

I have been caught by the suspect proximity sensor issue, though. The somewhat serendipitous and slightly suspect fix seems to have worked for me…so far…lucky me.

The reality distortion field generator embedded into (or embodied by, perhaps) the device seems to be going strong…

I’ll admit that I’m still absolutely amazed by the device, faults or no faults. Seems to me that it is bringing us all one step closer to the sort of sci-fi future that I read about as a youngling. I really can imagine Captain Kirk picking up his iPhone and telling Scotty to “beam me up.”

[...edit...]
Spoke rather too soon there. That purported ‘fix’ for the proximity sensor issue didn’t actually work: every time I participate in a phone call the flaming device mutes, holds, loudspeaks, dials and generally p*%$&s me off! If the version of IOS due Real Soon Now doesn’t fix this behaviour, I may well take the device (I hesitate to call it a phone at this point in time) back to Apple for a “please explain” and a refund. The reality distortion field is weakening fairly rapidly…shame, that. I still adore my iPad.

Ok. Time to come clean. I am a long-time Apple fanboi.

Way back in the early ’90′s I was a big-time Apple Macintosh fan.

I was an eager (and even somewhat evangelistic) Mac developer.

I was quite active in the Hong-Kong Mac User group and at one point I ended up ‘singing’ on stage at Hong Kong MacWorld in a vain and ultimately futile attempt to keep an audience entertained while trying to buy a recalcitrant Mac time to connect to the new-fangled and still cantankerous ‘Internet’-thingy. I hereby apologise to any members of that audience that may come across this post for what I put you through…it all worked beautifully a few minutes earlier, honest!

I even wrote a few articles for the local MacChooser magazine (at the time, the largest such publication in Asia).

The following might give you a chuckle…

I must be “moving back to my ‘roots’” because I am now the proud owner of a spanking new Apple iPad.

Got to say that so far I am quite enjoying the experience!

The first draft of this post was written on the aforesaid iPad. Took me a while to get the hang of the on-screen keyboard, but I am getting up to a fairly good typing speed. The key, it seems, is to keep one’s fingers away from the screen and not rest them as one normally would…once I got that idea into my “muscle memory”, it all went swimmingly.

I have already boosted the bank balances of a few developers, small and large. That’s the nature of the platform: I am walking into a most-definitely-for-profit zone with my eyes wide open in this regard and I don’t begrudge the developers their dollars.

There are a couple of game-changers, notably Pocket Universe. I found it amazing to pick up the iPad, point it at the sky and see what is “out there” right now.

I am having fun imagining various other situations where this sort of application could be very useful: think of a car mechanic or a plant maintenance engineer picking up an iPad and getting a ‘virtual’ overview of the equipment that they are working on.

There is a glimpse of the future here, I think.

Bring it on!