I have it on very good authority that Google will soon launch full synchronization services for the iPhone. This means, essentially, a full Google replacement for MobileMe’s contact and calendar sync services.

The word is “before the end of the year”.

I personally can’t wait to go full-Google on my iPhone. MobileMe gives me the feeling of a high-school programming project coded by a gifted artist. I simply can’t stand the way Apple “does” system administration. Every time I log on I am pleasantly surprised, right up until I realize that I shouldn’t have to be.

So yeah–can’t wait.:

Image from duke.edu

There is a bug in the iPhone 2.1 software that only lets you have around 19 or 20 audiobooks at a time. If you have more than that the iPod application will die when you click the audiobooks icon on your phone.

This sucks a lot.

There is a workaround, however, which is to create a playlist and drag all your audiobooks into it. Go into your music sync settings and sync that playlist to your phone, and you’re set. It’s lame, but it works.

Hopefully they’ll fix this in the next minor release—along with the dropped call issue people are still having (which I find absolutely unacceptable, by the way).

1. Instapaper

Instapaper is a brilliant application that allows you to synchronize between your iPhone and your browser(s), via bookmarklet, content you find online. So imagine you’re at work and you find a really cool article like this one.

Now imagine that you may want to read this while in the car, or on a plane. You can use the Instapaper bookmarklet to send the story to your iPhone’s native Instapaper App, which will keep an offline copy of the story for you to read. And the story isn’t just text; it’s text-optimized for reading on the iPhone.

Very clean.

Image from instapaper.com

2. Stanza

Introducing Stanza — read eBooks on your Mac or PC and share with your iPhone, iPod Touch, & Kindle. — Stanza’s Website

Simple stuff here: download tons of classics, for free, and read them on your iPhone. Here are a few that I have on my device right now:

• 1984
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Animal Farm
• Anthem
• Beyond Good and Evil
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
• The Brothers Karamazov
• The Idiot
• The Art of War

On the iPhone. All the time. Whenever you want to read them. Landscape mode, text-size control. It’s über nice.

Here’s the link to the iPhone app.

In short, more of the same suckage.

1. I still drop way more calls than I ever have—even going back to 1998
2. The contact search is still laggy as hell
3. Typing still hangs/lags constantly
4. The phone still doesn’t work well on the AT&T network—especially when it comes to 3G

I’m at this point amazed that the iPhone is this screwed up after all this time. I would have bet solid money that they would not be in this bad of shape, this long after the 3G release. It’s simply unacceptable, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

A week? Sure. Two weeks? Sure. But not a month, and definitely not two months.

If the 2.1 update doesn’t come soon, and it doesn’t address pretty much all of these issues, Apple is going to be in a serious situation. Apple users are fiercely loyal when things are going reasonably well, but when they get screwed they’re a hateful, evil lot.

That’s the direction I’m heading. Hateful and evil.

So Are You Getting Rid of Your iPhone?

Hell no. That’s the messed up part. As angry as I am with Apple right now, a broken iPhone is still better to me than a working $any-other-phone. Basically, I’d rather have a rickety apartment in the Bay Area than a penthouse in Haiti.

But there are limits.

Apple. Fix your shit. 2.1 better shine.:

Can’t wait. Here’s my wish list:

1. Better network performance—especially handovers between 2G and 3G
2. UI performance improvement. Typing and contact search lag are worst
3. Copy and paste
4. Faster backups
5. Faster application installations
6. Background application notifications (sociolocation services need it)

What are you guys looking forward to most?

Links

[ iPhone 2.1 Beta 4 Seeded | macrumors.com ]

With this release of VMware Fusion we’re now approaching what virtualization should be. Check out these features:

• Improved Unity functionality so that you can run your Windows apps right on your Mac. Now includes Linux Unity support
• Mapping and mirroring folders between Windows and OS X, e.g. Pictures, Documents, etc.
• Vastly improved performance and less resource usage
• Full support for all major guest operating systems
• Keyboard and mouse keyboard mapping
• Automated snapshots for a “Time Machine”-like backup experience for virutal systems
• View Windows content with Leopard’s QuickView
• Dock and Status bar notifications for guest applications

Links

[ VMware Fusion | vmware.com ]

So, nmap 4.60 is accurately identifying the iPhone 2.0 software as an “Apple iPhone mobile phone or iPod Touch audio player”. And that’s by using its single open TCP port — 62078.

Other Interesting Information

First, it’s reporting my last reboot as being Fri Oct 27 22:04:38 2006, which is highly incorrect. Even more interestingly, nmap is claiming that the sequence number prediction on the open port is weak (a trivial joke, as it were). That’s kind of 80’sish, so I didn’t believe it until I confirmed this via multiple connections to the port.

Listen

sudo tcpdump -nX -i en0 host 192.168.26.19

Push

nc 192.168.26.19 62078 < /dev/random

(snipped)

192.168.26.19.62078 > 192.168.26.25.61195: S 1615:1615(0) 
192.168.26.19.62078 > 192.168.26.25.61401: S 1649:1649(0)
192.168.26.19.62078 > 192.168.26.25.61411: S 1656:1656(0)
192.168.26.19.62078 > 192.168.26.25.61412: S 1659:1659(0)
192.168.26.19.62078 > 192.168.26.25.61413: S 1660:1660(0)

Yep, definitely some weak ISN sauce. I’ll have to research what that service is later. Anyway, here’s the scan result.

Links

[ Previous iPhone Nmap Results | dmiessler.com ]
[ An Nmap Primer | dmiessler.com ]
[ Nmap | insecure.org ]
[ The Apple iPhone | apple.com ]

Test post from the iPhone Wordpress application.

Windows evangelists are having a tough year.

[ Windows 95 and 98 Architect Converts to Mac | cultofmac.com ]

A good primer on Geocaching using your iPhone 3G.

Links

[ Geocaching With Your iPhone 3G | tauw.com ]