Yann Kerhervé's blog

My own iPhone 4 dropped calls statistics

Now, that it seems pretty much granted that the shinny new iPhone 4 has big antennas problems. I've decided to look into the details and real data.

I logged in on my AT&T and pulled the data from my wife calls log and extrapolated about the one that have potentially dropped. It was easy... I looked for communications with the same number around the same time. Then I went through the data with her to confirm. Here is the raw data:

 

So it looks like roughly 2/3 of the calls dropped. It's waaaay more than before we switched to the iPhone 4.

Now, I, and she, needs to decide if we're going to return the phones or not. The lack of clear acknowledgment for the problems from Apple is not really encouraging. I know, it's a tough issue, and I'm sure it's hell on earth at Cupertino. But we only have 30 days to return the phone, why should we take the risk to be stuck with a semi-working phone? My wife rely on that phone for business, she hates dropped calls. Why should we have faith on Apple to be fair and honest about resolving that problem, eventually (Remember Airport Express issues)?

What is your experience with this? Is 2/3 a wide spread number or is it high just because we were unlucky?

Just testing my new iPhone

...and the TypePad App, Of course!

Apple iMac TouchScreen

I paid a visit to The California Academy of Science yesterday, and I was mesmerized by the fact that they got Touch Sensitive iMacs.

The irony is that even though it's Apple hardware, which sure looks nice in the building, it appears to run Windows. At least some of them do: I was looking at their photo store booth, which was running DarkRoom software, maybe it is virtualized -- I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have missed this hardware announcement from Apple if it was truly an Apple product, I surely did notice the rumor saying that such product was coming out this year. My best guess so far is that it is in fact a Troll Touch addon maybe a slipcover?

How To enable perl5.10 by default with MacPorts

$ port uninstall perl5.8
--->  Unable to uninstall perl5.8 5.8.9_3, the following ports depend on it:
--->    perl5

So, you should type:

$ port -f uninstall perl5.8 
--->  Unable to uninstall perl5.8 5.8.9_3, the following ports depend on it:
--->    perl5
Warning: Uninstall forced.  Proceeding despite dependencies.
--->  Deactivating perl5.8 @5.8.9_3
--->  Uninstalling perl5.8 @5.8.9_3

and finally:

$ port install perl5 +perl5_10
...

which gives:

$ perl -v | grep built
This is perl, v5.10.1 (*) built for darwin-multi-2level

Triggering ScreenSaver (and lock) with a shortcut on Snow Leopard

I've been using this for a long time, but lately I've found that it wasn't working so well (The screen saver would launch and then stop right away).

Initially, I was using quicksilver and the guts of the ScreenSaverEngine to run something like that:

 open '/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app'

There is a better way to launch the ScreeSaver, it's to use the following applescript

tell application "System Events"
start current screen saver
end tell

Finally, the main problem was that I was previously using this trigger with the key combination ⇧⌘L 'on press', but it's much better to use 'on release', solving a race issue making the screensaver exit almost immediately.

So to sum up:

1. install Quicksilver (of course)
2. enable triggers (maybe it's only in Beta?)
3. make sure you have the "Run as Applescript" action (might be in a plugin?)
4. add a trigger
5. in the item section, hit '=' (to type a text, instead of triggering a search)
6. paste the apple script above
7. select the "Run as Applescript"  action
8. select a 'on hold' hotkey

IRC push notifications to your iPhone

I played a bit with my friend Fabien's iPhone app, that let you push notifications to your device, simply using a REST API.

I've come up with a simple IRC bot that connects to the specified channel, and from there send you any message that matches a specific regexp.

The AnyEvent framework is pretty cool for this kind of things. This is what I used to build the Perl5 AppNotifications API wrapper (in the process of being uploaded to CPAN now).

Improvements to really make it useful:

• implement blackout hours where the notifications is silent
• simple IRC command to switch from silent/noisy

If you want the app, search for 'notifications' in the app store, the app is sold by CONOVAE. Then, you'll have access to the API as well.

Terminal.app vs iTerm

update: so far I'm satisfied. I'm slowly putting some of my dotfiles on github. I declare xterm-256color as my term.

I'm giving another shot at iTerm:

pros:

• 256 colors, yeah
• quite fast
• less weird screen wrapping (to be confirmed)
• I guess I could fix and hack on it if I really wanted

cons:

• no way to have confirmations before closing mortal sessions (vim), and NO confirmation for resistant ones (screen)
• what's the shortcut to create a new *window* out of this bookmark/profile whatever?
• 0 or 10% transparency ? I want 5%!
• The whole window profile thing is a lot easier on Apple's Terminal

Mistake

apple--

apple, os x

Apple Store in Paris: champs elysees !

I've insider news about the location of the apple store supposed to open in Paris soon (End of 2006, or more probably 2007). Looks like it will be located on “Champs Elysées”. Anyone with a good idea of a spot for it ?

I can't stand waiting.

apple, paris, apple store

Libraries sharing on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) between multiple users

This tip rocks : You can use ACLs (Access control lists) to specify shared permissions amongst different users

apple, itunes, hint, iPhoto, iTunes