One of the cool features of the iPod is it's ability to play audiobooks either speeded up, or slowed down, without affecting the pitch. There are ways to convert podcasts into official audiobooks so they can take advantage of this feature as well.

I listen to a ton of podcasts, so being able to listen a little faster is invaluable to me. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to listen to everything that I want to, so every little bit helps.

When the iPhone came out I noticed that the books played even faster. There is no fine control over the playback speed. Your choices are Normal, Slow or Fast. But on the iPhone the fast setting is significantly faster than on the iPod. I didn't realize it until I went back to the iPod after using the iPhone. Even speeded up audio seemed almost painfully slow. So, I am a junkie for speeded up audio books and podcasts.

Now, I wanted to get an iPod Nano with h2audio.com waterproof case so my morning swim wouldn't be so boring, but I was curious if the Nano would play at the faster iPhone speed, or the slower iPod speed (which is still faster than normal). I looked, but could not find an answer to that question. So finally I decided to just get the Nano. Even if the speed wasn't what I hoped, it would still be less boring than swimming laps with nothing to listen to. And, it helped that my wife gave it to me for my birthday.

So, here are my results.

The iPod and the Nano play at the same speed as each other. Playing the exact same podcast, in 10 minutes of real time, the Nano and the iPod played 12:30 of content (25% speed increase), while the iPhone played 15:00 of content (50% speed increase).

So, in an hour I can listen to 75 minutes of content on an iPod or 90 minutes of content on the iPhone. Kinda cool.

Anyway, since I couldn't find this information anywhere, I decided to post it here, in case it helps someone else.

I was watching the TV Show, "Chuck" this week and Chuck received a photo on his iPhone.

It came in like a MMS photo, and he got the message:
"Incoming Photo from Morgan.  View - Ignore"

It looked just like when text messages come in, and it looked really good.  Does the TV studio have access to a beta of a future iPhone feature, or is it a really nice job of video fakery?

One of the issues that I mentioned earlier was that the iPhone didn't access the subfolders of my inbox on my IMAP mail server. It turns out that there is a way to fix this.

In the mail settings, after clicking (tapping?) on the account in question, there is an advanced option where I needed to put in "INBOX" as my IMAP prefix.

Works perfectly. Thanks to superg on MacOSXHints.com for this tip.

From the New York Times.

Recognize anyone?

Last night was Paper Moon at Bryant Park. It was a great time. Here are a few pics taken from the iPhone. More pics here...

Incidentally, under heavy usage in the park, the iPhone went from full charge to 20% battery warning in about 5 hours.

It seems like the iPhone implementation is better than I thought. I just had a bad audio file that was distorting the sound. It's still a little faster than the original iPod's speeded up setting, enough that you can tell it's speeded up, but it's not distorted.

Also, the iPhone doesn't like smartplaylists as much as the iPod did. On my iPod, I had a playlist of "unheard audiobooks" that items would disappear from as I listened to them. On the iPhone, they don't disappear until after a sync.

These are minor points. Don't get me wrong. The iPhone is the greatest piece of technology I have ever owned, and i love it. But I still like to comment on the issues that I find.

Some other things I have noticed.

1. There is no search feature. If you want to find a contact, you have to scroll to them. If you want to call your friend, JJ, for example, you better remember that his real name is actually Sam (JJ) Smith before you try, cause there is no way to find JJ. Even if you put JJ into the Nickname field, the autofill addresses of SMS don't find it.

2. While the iPhone does support speeded up playback of Audiobooks, the implementation is flawed. On the iPod, the speeded up playback sounded perfect. If you didn't know it was speeded up, you would just think the speakers were speaking quickly. The iPhone's faster setting plays back the sound a little faster than the iPod's on the same setting, but the sound is very distorted. Still understandable, but not very pleasant. I'll try to sample some sounds in the next few days, to illustrate.

The iPhone is terrific. Over the next few days there will be tons of posts talking about the good and the bad. I don't want to repeat all the common comments. My impressions that the screen is great and the typing takes getting used to are just a few that match the general opinion. Here are some comments I have that I haven't seen posted yet.

1. I am disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a manual way to add iPod content to the iPhone. You MUST use the sync features. That is fine for people with one computer, but I have a computer at home, and a computer at work, and I like to add content from both locations. Now I can't. Fortunately, that's a software issue that will hopefully be fixed in an update.

2. On syncing, it recognizes playlists of TV shows, and Playlists of Music, but you have to select movies manually. You can't sync a specific playlist of movies unless they are labeled as TV Shows of Music Videos.

3. When you watch a TV Show on it, at the end of the show the iPhone asks if you want to delete the show to save space. Then when you sync, it doesn't re-add the show to the iPhone, but it does increment the playcount on the computer.

4. Mail accessed my IMAP server without a problem, but only accessed the main inbox and not any subfolders.

5. Speakerphone is so quiet that it's almost unusable.

That's it for now. More as I play...

All week people were asking me, "Are you in the line yet?" Of course, they were referring to the line at the Apple Store that formed on Monday, for Friday's release of the iPhone at 6pm. Well, finally, after visiting with friends in the line Thursday night, I showed up at about 8am on Friday for the day. I was number 70 in line and I had an absolute blast.

The friends I was with were Lesa Snider King and Shawn King. They both have blogs...
Lesa's Blog
Shawn's Blog

Everyone on the line was nice and we had a good time, just hanging out all day. Also, Shawn was there working for Macworld.com and we shot a lot of video for the site.

There were tons of press there and I got interviewed on my way out of the store by a few news outlets. I haven't seen it yet, but a few people said they saw me on NBC. I'll keep an eye out. The most common question by the press was "Was it worth waiting on the line?" It was a sort of silly question, because I hadn't been able to turn the iPhone yet, but I have to say, the experience at the Apple Store was definitely worth the wait. Walking in the store they had all the store employees applauding the customers. Screaming, hooting, hollering and making us feel like Rock Stars. It seems a little hokey for the first second and then I got swept up in it and was on top of the world. It was great fun. Bravo Apple for taking the best shopping experience and improving it even more.

Of course, maybe I didn't need to wait on the line. My mom showed up at about 7:30, waited in the line for about 1 minute and got the same treatment. Still, the line was fun too. iPhone impressions coming next...

As many of you know, I am a big fan of the internet radio show Your Mac Life, hosted by Shawn King. Well, they recently moved to a new domain. The new domain is yourmaclifeshow.com

If you have any interest in Macintosh's or Apple products, I highly recommend the show. Each week they talk about all the current news, interview interesting people from all across the tech spectrum and give great tips.

Had a great time. Saw lots of friends. Made some new ones. Saw the iPhone. Lost my camera.

That pretty much sums it up. I'll have to make due enjoying everyone else's pics. Thanks to the Your Mac Life community for a great time and for the surrogate photography.

Today, Apple announced the iPod Hi-Fi speaker system for your iPod.

Essentially, it is an iPod dock with speakers for $350. Big whoop. There are already docks with speakers. Where they went wrong (in my opinion) is that they didn't build Airport Express functionality into it. Not full Airport functionality, but wireless connectivity and AirTunes. Airtunes allows you to send music from your computer to the device over your home network

Sure, you can plug an Airport Express into it, but one of the "selling points" that Apple has on their web site is

"No need to find a place to hide an unsightly power brick, as iPod Hi-Fi houses all power components internally."

That is defeated by needing to plug it into an Airport Express.

My suggestion would be (Apple, are you listening?), if you aren't going to include Airport connectivity and Airtunes by default, offer a second unit with it built in.

I don't mind the extra cost. The Airport Express is $129. Apple could probably build in the functionality and only charge an extra $100 for it. The $29 discount would make sense because you wouldn't need to include the ethernet port, printer sharing or base station functionality. But even if they charged the full $129 extra, it would be better to have the whole thing as 1 unit.

Yes, the new MacBook Pro actually arrived a day ahead of schedule. I was a bit busy this weekend, so I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time on it, but my initial impression is "Damn this is nice!"

Universal Binary applications run really fast. Older PowerPC binaries running under Rosetta don't suck. For the most part they are the same speed that they were on my old Powerbook, and I look forward to the updates that will bring them up to "Zippy" status.

I posted some more specific observations in this thread on the Your Mac Life forums.

I hadn't reported it, but Apple changed their minds, and moved my shipping date to March 18.

However, today I got notification that it's already shipped, and is due to arrive 2/24. Already an indicator of the speed I can expect from the new computer.

Well, good news and bad news... E-mail from Apple...

We have upgraded your MacBook Pro from a 1.83GHz processor to a 2.0GHz processor at no additional cost! We anticipate shipping your upgraded order by February 28, 2006.

So I have a bit longer to wait. I am happy about the speed bump, though and would take that deal any day.

I ordered a new MacBook Pro when they were announced at the Macworld Expo last month. Thanks to this handy little widget, I can see that it is scheduled to ship tomorrow. Woo hoo!!!

And, hubba hubba! They've decided to ship it with a faster processor than was originally promised. Happy Valentines day!!!

I spent the past week in San Francisco, at the Macworld Expo. I always have a great time at the Expo, but this one was particularly special, because I got to attend the wedding of my friends Shawn King & Lesa Snider. It was a wonderful event and I couldn't be happier for them.

Oh yeah. Also, Apple announced some cool new stuff.