This article got me a little closer to being sold on the G1.

How I did it:

I was playing around with the browser detect featured here in an attempt to load a separate index and stylesheet for iPhones. But I couldn’t figure out a way to get WordPress to fully ignore index.php and use iphone.php as the index.

So I went with a separate theme. I downloaded Content Robot’s plugin for an iPhone theme which has two parts: a plugin to detect the iPhone browser (which looks almost exactly like Pump Interactive’s detect) and a new theme optimized for the iPhone.

Since I don’t want to use their theme, I created my own and uploaded it to my themes folder. Then I opened their plugin and changed the two lines in bold below to point to my theme rather than the iWPhone theme included with the plugin download.


function get_stylesheet($stylesheet) {
if($this->iphone){
return 'iphone-theme';
}else{
return $stylesheet;
}
}

function get_template($template) {
if($this->iphone){
return 'iphone-theme';
}else{
return $template;
}


All that’s left was to style my site for the iPhone. Works like a charm.

Apple has apparently included a blacklisting mechanism in iPhone OS 2.x through which the device can phone home, check for unauthorized applications, and disable them. The OS includes a URL that points to a page containing a list of unauthorized applications, specifically those listed here.

According to Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book iPhone Open Application Development and an iPhone forensics manual:

This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.

I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation.

If true, this really goes beyond being simple anti-choice and into some weird authoritarian realm. Why shouldn’t a consumer be allowed to modify a product he paid for?

Apple = Microsoft with better UI

COOLER HEADS PREVAIL: CNET follows up with some legitimate reasons for a kill-switch.

2) some graphic issues

Once I added a blog, I returned to this screen where you can see one of the buttons has a black background.

When I click Add Another Blog, I get this screen with the same problem.

I had no errors with a test post.

Other apps I’m using right now:

Twitterific — I still haven’t found the value of Twitter for myself so this is really underused.

Twinkle — last week a friend of mine said “there oughta be an app that’s like a social network for iPhone users; it could find anyone else on their iPhone in the area.” There is. It’s called Twinkle and it integrates with Twitter presumably because you’re constantly answering the Twitter question “what are you doing right now?” but in reality Twinkle works like a big local chatroom. You open it and see other users talking to one another. Often, you’re stuck introducing yourself with a version of the old line “hello room.”

Twittervision — since it allows me to watch tweets as they’re posted across the world, this is a really interesting but mostly useless app to me. At least until I become a regular Twitter user. Still cool.

NewsLocal — great app that finds your location and downloads local headlines. This was great when I was stuck on the freeway last Thursday near San Clemente and wondered what was going on. One click and I saw the headline that a truck had overturned and caused a fire.

Google App — well, of course. I don’t use the search so much but I like the quick links to Reader and GTalk. GTalk on the iPhone — also cool.

For local restaurants, movies and events and such, I’m still using YPMobile, BoxOffice, Vicinity, Yelp and Munch. I use YPMobile and BoxOffice the most.

I downloaded Instapaper but I haven’t used it at all. I don’t know how it would help me since I read blogs through Google Reader (which is sweetly optimized for the iPhone at google.com/reader/i).

I have used Recorder only once. But I like having an app that lets me use my iPhone as a micro-recorder.

Games — I grabbed Tap Tap Revenge, a Guitar Hero / DDR-esque rhythm game but I only launch it to show people how cool it is. I haven’t even played a whole song. Othello and Texas Hold ‘Em, on the other hand, I play all the time. I also grabbed Mahjong but haven’t given it a great test run yet.

What I’ve found is that I mostly use those apps that are tools for me — ways to stay in touch, get information. I don’t think the iPhone has changed so much about the ways I stay in touch (Facebook, blogging) but simply freed me from my laptop and allowed me to exercise those methods more.

Do you have any favorites?