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So, I've been in San Francisco apartment-hunting for the past couple of days (I found a place!), and the only computers I brought with me are my iPad and my iPhone. It occurred to me that this might be a useful basis for a review, so enjoy. As a reminder, I have the 64GB model with 3G and WiFi.

In brief, I am extremely satisfied. I have been using the iPad to browse Craigslist, listen to music, keep up with my e-mail (including a community-l thread that made me long for the upcoming threaded mail view), and so on ...

The universe smiles on me today: on the day that I finish all of my work for my undergraduate degree, my new iPad 3G appears. It's currently doing its initial sync (photo "optimization" takes ruddy forever, and I'm only synchronizing 3000 photos). For the time being, here are my unboxing photos.

So, I've been mulling over this post for a couple of weeks, ever since I bought the new Decemberists album, “The Hazards of Love”. I suppose you could label it something of an "indie rock opera". But, after a couple of weeks with it, I personally would label it "The Best Album of 2009". The plot is a bit bizarre, about a woman Margaret, her forest-spirit lover William, the Queen of the forest, and a murderous rake, and it's a bit of a far-out story. The idea of having an album that isn't just a collection of ...

So, I picked up a copy of Andrew Bird's new album Noble Beast today. Yes, I know that today is January 18th and it's not released until January 20th. That's why this post isn't going to be published for two days.

Anyhow, the album is excellent. Everything you know and love from Bird's previous releases is here, but more polished. Some things that I thought particularly stood out:

• The instrumental beginning of Effigy. And the double-stopping soloing in the middle. Really, the whole song.
• Unfolding Fans. Makes me think of Brian Wilson, but in a ...

I've now had my iPhone 3G for four days, and I've had a chance to use it in some real-world scenarios.

Apps

The App Store is, unequivocally, the most important feature of iPhone OS 2.0. Exchange support is nice, yes, and there are lots of little tweaks. But the App Store is what makes the iPhone attractive to me, more of a computer instead of a silly smartphone. I've been using a few apps pretty solidly for the past few days: Twitterific (a Twitter client), Exposure (a Flickr client), and the official Facebook client. All of ...

I've posted a few pictures of the unboxing of my iPhone 3G. As usual for an Apple product, the packaging was excellently done. The box was surprisingly small, but contained everything necessary:

• Docking Connector -> USB cable
• Tiny, tiny power adapter
• Iconic white headphones (with microphone... somewhere...)
• SIM Card Removal Tool
• Cleaning cloth

Once I got done with my activation mess (see previous post), the iPhone was a dream. The first thing I noticed was call quality: it was excellent. I don't have 3G reception indoors (curse you, foot-thick concrete walls), but even over 2.5G, it was an ...