Thoughts on iPhone 2.0

I’ve been thinking about whether it will be worth it to pick up an iPhone 2.0 on July 11th. I’ve had the original iPhone for a while now (I picked it up when they discontinued the 4GB version) and I have mixed feelings about it. iPhone 1.0 is certainly the best PDA type phone I’ve ever used. Everything is very well designed, the battery life is good, sound quality is at least as good as other phones I’ve had, the web browser is fantastic (unless you need to view Flash content), and it’s a great iPod.

So why am I not already getting in line for 2.0? Well, the first thing is that the 2.0 software will run on the 1.0 hardware. So any bug fixes, new core application updates (e.g. scientific calculator), and other improvements will work just fine on my original phone. The only real hardware features that matter for version 2.0 of the hardware are 3G network chip and the A-GPS hardware.

2G is certainly not setting any speed records – but for the most part, it gets the job done fine for me. I use the web more on the iPhone than I have on any other phone, but it’s still nothing at all compared to my web use on a real PC – so 3G would be nice, but it’s nothing I can’t live without. The main issue with the 3G support is that my phone bill will go up by $10 per month for 2 years – so $240 total increase on top of buying the $200/$300 iPhone 2.0. It’s not a horrible price increase, but in my particular situation, it’s harder to justify the benefit outweighing the cost there.

The A-GPS is a bit more appealing though. I have a handheld GPS unit from Garmin, but it’s meant for hiking/geocaching type activities and not for navigation. I do like the idea of buying a cheap dash mount and then my iPhone could be a very decent auto navigation system that moves around to different cars easily. Of course, this all depends on what GPS software is released for the phone, but I’m sure we’ll see great things in this area. The other thing is that we really haven’t had a small GPS device that had an always on broadband-link internet link – that could allow for all kinds of interesting situations that make the GPS ability of the iPhone unlike anything we’ve seen (for better or for worse).

At this point, my feeling is that I’m going to hold off for a bit and see what applications come out that make use of iPhone 2.0 hardware features. If they are compelling enough, then I may make the jump, but I’m starting to get to that point where I need to see real world benefits from new gadgets instead of just the conceptual greatness of them… Even on July 11th, the really amazing applications for iPhone may not even be ready because of the way Apple has chosen to limit the developer program – from the latest Apple keynote, it sounds like some developers (and some SDK functionality) won’t even be ready until September anyway. We’ll see how things play out, but for now, I think I’ll be keeping my $440.

Writing Takes Longer Than I Thought

Well, I’m still working on my new blogs based on personal finance and
technology. So far, I have about 20 posts planned out for the personal finance one, but I haven’t touched the technology one yet. I’ve been toying with writing my own blog engine for the technology one – not because there aren’t good blog engines out there, but more as a learning exercise (and it would use some of the newer .Net features that the other blog engines haven’t used yet). I’m not sure if I’m going to do that now or not…

I have maybe 3 personal finance posts written, but still need to proofread them before I make them public. My original plan was to not post anything on the personal finance site until I have about 14 posts ready to go so I can queue them up and start writing the next week or two worth of posts. That’s still my plan as of right now, but this is going to be harder than I imagined as far as keeping fresh content coming out. My target is to have one new article a day during the week. I just have to figure out a rhythm and then hopefully it’ll get easier, but I guess we’ll see.

I may go ahead and start the tech site as well with a series of posts about building a new blog engine. I’m not sure that I want to do that or not, but it may be useful and having feedback on the design as I go along would be helpful. Just have to find the time to do that too.

I’ve also been trying to get back into the habit of taking more photos and getting a little photoblog up and running, but I think that one is on the back burner for now. Just not enough time to do everything.

Countdown to Debt Free

At the end of last month, I paid off my student loans – it was quite hard to write a $14,000 check, but once it was written, I didn’t regret it at all. It feels great knowing they are out of the way. The only debt I have left at this point (other than my primary mortgage) is a second mortgage I got when I bought my house (my down payment didn’t go as far as I had hoped due to closing costs, new house expenses, etc). This one is higher than my student loans ($18,000), but it’s possible that I can knock it out by the end of the year assuming no major financial issues arise between now and then. I may end up having to sell some stuff to make this happen, but we’ll see how that goes…I’m willing to do what is needed to take care of business.

This morning I sent in my monthly payment with a nice little $500 additional principle attached and I’m already starting to feel better. 🙂 Debt free, here I come!