Yay! It finally arrived!

The Fedex man came to the office yesterday with my shiney new iPhone 4, direct from the Apple factory in China.

Believe it or not, I’ve never even seen one before in person – I’d ordered it completely sight-unseen and in the 3 weeks since then, I haven’t seen anyone else with one yet.

Immediate first impressions – it feels solid. The iPhone 3 and 3Gs both feel ok, but the curvy sides and plastic back does make it feel… well curvy and plastic. The iPhone 4 however, feels positively solid. Steel alloy all around, and some kind of magic glass on the front and back, make it feel heavy without feeling, well, heavy.

Like in a pinch you could slip it into a sock and make it into a weapon… though I wouldn’t really recommend that.

Some people have said they don’t like the squarish sides, prefering the form factor of the previous models. I’m in the opposite camp – having held this in my hand, I find it much more aesthetically pleasing than the earlier iPhones.

The screen is pretty, the ‘Retina display’ that they were hyping… It is bright and sharp and vibrant.

And of course, the blinky light! The blinky light is impressively bright. I tried using it as a flashlight last night and I was like woah, is there a way to dim it a bit? It’d probably ruin the whole function as a camera flash, but I’d like to slip a wee bit of blue gel in there so it was a blue blinky light. I’ll resist, for now.

Anyhow, to summarize: It’s cool, I like the form factor better than the earlier models, it feels solid and well-built, but pictures cannot do it justice – you really have to see and feel it in person.

I’ve been quiet for some time on this subject and I owe an explanation as to the status of my iPhone application development.

My two iPhone apps, Liber Umbrarum et Lux and PassGenR have both been available on the iTunes App Store for a few months. Both are free. Over the few months I’ve received a couple suggestions on how to improve them, and a lot of requests to make them available to a wider range of hardware.

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Recently I folded my Artwork website into my blog/CMS/site here. After some contemplation and thinking it over, I’ve decided to also fold my iPhone Software site into here as well.

There are a few reasons for doing this.

Primarily, it is to get everything into one place with regards to administration and site management. Certainly it’s easier to manage when all the related pages are under one roof so to speak.

Second, is the fact that having everything running under the same CMS / site provides a consistant look / feel / style to all the related content. In other words, instead of each separate site / sub-site having a different style and set-up, they all now share a common appearance, common menu navigation, and common search setup.

Finally, it makes things easier in the sense of not having to remember / maintain a bunch of different domains or sub-directories. The various domains can continue to exist but redirect to the new location under the primary domain, which makes overall navigation and cross-promotion within my various interests much easier, for readers and for myself.

Well I don’t know when it happened because I never received a notice from Apple, but Liber Umbrarum et Lux was released and is available for download – in time for Bealtine too!

It might have been yesterday or today, but whenever it was, here’s the link where you can grab it: Liber Umbrarum et Lux at the App Store

It is, of course, free – so enjoy!

Cheers!

I heard back from Apple today, that Liber Umbrarum is delayed. I was inconsistent with the naming, and appearantly that’s a no-no. The full name of course is Liber Umbrarum et Lux, but frequently I just say Liber Umbrarum, and then of course on the iPhone there’s only enough space on the home screens to show “Liber…et Lux” so I had changed it to read “Wiccan Bible” which was about the only thing I could think of that would fit on their screen – literally you only have about 12 characters which is a PITA. How many tens of thousands of apps are there, and you can only used 12 characters to name each one?

Anyhow, they said I have to make all the various name references match. So I’ve done that and hopefully it’ll get through the approval process this time. I’m still hoping for an April 30th release date.

Cheers!

PassGenR version 1.01 is now available at the iTunes App Store. This update fixes a crash bug that manifested on the iPhone (but not the iPod Touch).

The update, like the app itself, is free of course.

Cheers!