Cognitive Friction

I finally got my iPhone 3G. I picked it up two days ago and it’s a white 16 GB model. So after all of the agonising I did over the wait, was it worth it? I think so. Here are my first impressions.

More storage is better

Well the first thing I have to say is that I am glad I got the 16 GB model. I read one forum comment from a guy who wondered why anyone would want all of the space on the 16 GB iPhone, which reminded me of that spurious Bill Gates quote that 640K of memory ought to be enough for anybody. Give us the memory and see what people do with it.

I have about 5.5 GB of music and other audio files in iTunes, which took up too much space on my 8 GB iPod Touch. With the 16 GB iPhone, I have ample space for all of that audio, plus video, photos and other data. Currently I’m using about 9 GB of the available space. I can see why the 8 GB model is less popular. If there had been a 32 GB iPhone 3G I’d have bought that, and I’m sure this can’t be too far away on Apple’s iPhone roadmap.

Using the phone

I love the phone functions so far – making and receiving calls is a breeze and the sound quality is first rate. I have suffered a Sony Ericsson T630 for several years now, waiting to replace it with a device just like the iPhone 3G. That phone was one of the most unusable devices I have ever owned, so using the iPhone feels like liberation from an occupying power.

Contacts and Favourites on the iPhone are great to use and the SMS interface is excellent. I haven’t been able to use the visual voicemail, which O2 does not offer in Ireland, but I understand that’s on the way by the end of this year. I’d say that one day, all phones will be made this way, except that it seems redundant to say so. Anyone can see that Samsung, Nokia and the rest are busy getting iClones onto the market as fast as Korean factories can turn them out.

The iPhone as software platform

The iPhone 3G isn’t just a phone. If it was, I may not have bought it, Apple fanboy though I am. No, this is the mobile computing device that I have longed for ever since my Palm III died back in 2000. It wraps my phone into the much more important hand-held computer I want and it doesn’t come with a relentless focus on the Enterprise and Exchange server, which every other likely candidate phone in the past 7 years has been saddled with. The iPhone does that stuff, but isn’t married to it, which suits me just fine.

So far, I have downloaded the following apps from the App Store:

• Twitterific – the free version.
• Wordpress – which might induce me to post more often.
• Omnifocus – a nightmare to get WebDav sync working, and almost useless until Omni Group release a stable version of OmniFocus 1.1.
• Evernote – which will be great when the bugs get fixed.
• NetNewsWire – RSS feeds on the bus, Yay!
• Super Monkey Ball – why not?
• Comic Touch – gotta love the guys at Plasq.

And this doesn’t touch on the mail app, bookmarked iPhone enabled sites that I use a lot and all of that good stuff. I can see myself leaving my Laptop behind more, as I often bring it just for mail and other communication channels.

Battery life and other impressions

When using 3G, the battery does get drained in a manner that reminds me of my 4 year old polishing off his orange juice with a straw. But then, I have the phone plugged in to my computer most of the time in the office and at home, so it hasn’t been a problem as yet. I can see that it might be problematic when traveling.

There are also lots of little habits that I need to change now that my iPod and phone are one and the same device. I used to wrap the headphone cord around my iPod touch, but I can’t do that with the iPhone as it needs to be ready for immediate use if a call comes in. So yesterday, I left the headphones with the mic on my desk and went off site – no podcasts or music on the commute home as a result.

I’ve just been carrying the iPhone around in my pocket, and I’ve been thinking about getting a case. Most of the cases on the Apple store that have received good reviews are out of stock, with 2-4 weeks listed for delivery. I’m not sure whether to buy something I’m not sure of or to wait and see what gets released in the second wave of case designs. If anyone has a recommendation, I’d be happy to hear it.

The GPS is fun, and may prove useful to me yet. This morning, I enjoyed tracking the progress of my bus along the Chapelizod bypass on Google maps. Useless, but nerdy fun. I can see myself using it for directions – I used to print out google maps before I left the office for a meeting, now I can do that on the way and see where I am in relation to my destination. Sweet.

So my first impressions are very positive, and it seems well worth the wait. I’ll try to blog again after I’ve lived with the thing for a few more weeks and see how it’s going then. But right now, using the iPhone feels a lot like holding a piece of the future, and I can’t see how I could go back to a less capable, less beautifully designed device.

The real joy of owning a Mac is having access to some of the best-designed software on the planet. I’m thinking principally of the products of small software vendors, such as The Omni Group, or even the work of micro-ISVs. These developers bring real passion to their work, turning out elegant designs that can be sheer bliss to use. Yesterday, I found another of these Mac software gems in the shape of Scrivener, which I can best describe as an IDE for writers.

What is Scrivener?

Scrivener is the product of one man, Keith Blount, a teacher, writer and Mac software developer. Keith, if you are reading this, thank you; Scrivener is just what I was looking for. What’s so good about it? Well, I have always wanted an application that does a number of things for me when I’m researching or writing, Scrivener is the first application that I have found that offers all of these things in a form I feel I can work with. Here's my wish list:

• A writing environment that allows me to focus on just the words when I am trying to write.
• An outliner, that enables me to sketch in the parts of a text, move them around at will, and get a useful overview of the whole thing.
• A way to collect and organise research materials, annotations and references from all kinds of sources in all kinds of formats, and associate them closely with the document.
• A way to create a document as separate chapters, sections or whatever, assembling them all into a complete document when I need to. Back in my tech writing days, Adobe FrameMaker gave me this capability and I miss it when writing long documents.

These are the main things, although I’ve seen many more features in various applications over the years that are also on my wish list. I’ve tried to find these features in other applications, in fact I have a collection of partly satisfactory solutions in my Applications folder.

My long search for the right writing environment

I have been looking for something like Scrivener for a long time. As a result, I have a collection of Mac software that at one time or other served as my mainstay for fact collecting, note making and writing. For example:

• OmniOutliner Professional: Great for taking notes and outlining text, but I find I use it for little else, despite its great potential. I'm not sure why.
• DEVONThink: which promised to be my paperless office, but never won my heart.
• NoteBook: I use this a lot as a project notebook and scrap book, but I don’t like it so well for writing, especially writing long documents.

This is to say nothing of the many other applications that I have coveted, but managed to resist buying so far, such as Yojimbo or Curio.

How Scrivener meets my needs

When I stumbled across Scrivener yesterday, therefore, I was intrigued but a little skeptical. It promised much, but I wasn’t sure what it would be like to use. So I downloaded the demo and gave it a go. Scrivener made immediate sense to me as I worked through the included tutorial. Within an hour of installing the thirty-day demo, I had purchased a license. Here’s how the key features tick all of the boxes in my wish list:

• Scrivener’s full-screen mode is not unique, but is very nicely implemented. When all you want to do is write, this strips away all distractions.
• Not only does Scrivener include a useful outliner, it also provides a view of your document as index cards pinned to a virtual cork board. I have read of people outlining documents with index cards, I’m not sure how much I will use this, but it is a very interesting approach.
• Scrivener organises your project in a virtual binder, which includes the various documents in your draft as well as a research folder. This enables you to store almost any research document, image or web clipping as part of the project. Add to this an annotation feature and a way to link to referenced documents in your draft and you have a very well integrated writing environment.
• Your draft folder contains as many text documents as you require for your draft, one per chapter, section, scene or whatever division you use. These can be combined and viewed dynamically while editing, and when it comes time to output a draft, you have fine control over what’s included and what format is produced.

There are many more excellent features in Scrivener, but best of all the whole thing comes wrapped in a very well designed user experience. Keith Blount created Scrivener principally because he wanted to use it himself, and the consequent attention to detail shines through.

Scrivener isn’t meant to replace all of your other writing tools. For instance, you wouldn’t use it to create a blog post or knock out a couple of pages of text. But when writing long documents, were project management, research and writing all come into play, Scrivener seems ideal.

Don’t take my word for it

If you write on the Mac, you owe it to yourself to check out Scrivener. There is an excellent overview of the features of Scrivener on Keith's website, Literature & Latte. Even better, Keith has created a very good screencast demonstration of Scrivener, which provides a clear impression of the application in use. As I said, there's a thirty-day demo of Scrivener available for download too, so you can give it a whirl, gratis. Best of all, if you decide to buy, Scrivener is only thirty forty dollars. At that price, what’s not to like?