Two weeks after iPhone Party Hong Kong (which drained most of my energy) and using my first iPhone (16GB White, HK$498 unlimited data plan), I’ve finally got the time to write my little review here.

As a Mac fanatic, I bet you wouldn’t expect me to say a lot of bad things about it. To me, mobile phone is a very personal thing, much more personal than a “personal computer”, so this review is also a personal one. I judged the iPhone based on my own needs. What is a “pro” to me maybe a “con” to others.

Pros:

• Contrary to what most people think, I think it is reasonably priced. To me, HK$300 of the HK$498 is for the voice+unlimited data plan and the remaining HK$200 is for the iPhone cost, which works out to be HK$4,800 after 24 months - and I can’t find any decent smartphone of its level at that price (say, HTC Diamond is priced at HK$5,600).
• Surfing the web using Safari and getting constant access to all my email accounts via IMAP is a joy. I still miss the push email in Blackberry but it’d be hard to beat Gmail’s search and spam filtering. I’m glad that my company’s email switched to Gmail Apps (free) last month. iPhone + Gmail = Winner.
• Absolutely love the SMS conversation threads. I can’t recall how much time I wasted on browsing the “Sent” folder on my previous phones for previous messages. Would be perfect if I could backup those conversations by desktop sync. There’re some messages I’d love to keep. (Update: I found this free app called Syphone that backup SMS)
• iPhone’s touch-based keyboard is ideal for female or anyone with smaller fingers. I could type as fast as on a physical QWERT keyboard, and the auto-correction intelligence is quickly building up my own library of frequently-typed words. I do wish it can let me customize the keyboard and shortcuts in future, after all it’s virtual, why not?

Cons:

• Battery life. Given iPhone’s big, gorgeous screen and 3G speed, I don’t think anyone else than Apple has done a better job in optimizing the battery life. It’s not really a problem for casual users or people with a second charger at office. But if you’re constantly using it (who wouldn’t with a unlimited data plan?) for email/web and wandering in the streets without a charging spot like I do, you’d better make sure you get all your important phone calls before 4 p.m.
• Chinese input. The character recognition support looks cool at first, but it’s just too slow and unreliable for practical use. How hard it is to put common input methods like Cangjie (倉頡) and Jianyi (簡易) on it? Even better, put the 5-stroke input (T9 五筆輸入) we use on most Nokia/SE phones on it.
• To-do list. Where is my to-do list from iCal? Still can’t seem to find it on iPhone. This is a really basic feature.
• Copy-and-paste. A missing feature that has been pointed out by many before. Rumours said that Apple is working on it, I hope so!

These are just some of the things I like to highlight, as I believe there’re more than enough lengthy reviews for anyone to find online. Again, I don’t think iPhone is a phone for the mass. It’s a revolutionary phone for a niche market. If you are not the type of people who care about syncing your phone contacts to desktop, it’s probably not for you.

As with every type of design, one could only appreciates it after knowing the limits it has to be created within. iPhone 3G may have made some compromises, but I really think it’s the best in its class.

What has been keeping me busy in the past two weeks? Other than the usual stuffs at work, I’ve been spending a lot of time in organizing (possibly) the biggest Mac event in town - iPhone Party Hong Kong. As the host of HKU Mac User Group since 2002, I’ve not been very active in organizing any events for our members. After all, I’ve left HKU for 4 years and the growing market share of Mac also means that the University has significantly improved their support.

Exactly one month ago, I finally met up with Derek Ngai, the President of the biggest local Mac User Group - MACitizen. Aside from all the geek talk, we casually brought up the idea of organizing some user group gatherings together, and wondered if the arrival of iPhone 3G to Hong Kong would be a good excuse to make that happen.

This is how the idea of a co-organized Mac gathering was born. With our “niche” membership base, we never thought that this would turn into such a mass event.

Since the launch of the official website on July 5, we have received more than 650 sign-up (and growing)! The response has been overwhelming, without any media coverage or proper “PR” work done. Our facebook event has also attracted 110 sign-up, and many corporations have expressed huge interest in sponsorship - including the exclusive iPhone 3G carrier Three HK!

[Photo above] Today, we’ve done our first “publicity” task: recording a podcast for the “Apple Age” program at CMM.hk - the biggest Podcast Network in Hong Kong. We talked about the iPhone Party, the local Mac/iPhone development scene, the HKU Mac User Group and our personal history of using (and switch to) Mac.

It was a pleasure to finally meet Paul Lin, host of CMM.hk, a fellow Machead. I figure there would be more opportunities to work together in the future.

Thanks to Bill, Napoleon, Clement, and the folks at aNobii, 9gag, Zendesk and EditGrid for their tremendous support.

No matter how this turns out to be, I’m very grateful for all these people and in particular my team at BeansBox for making this possible.

You probably already knew that Hong Kong has the cheapest iPhone 3G Plan in the World, so am I getting one finally? Oh hell yes.

Last week Bill helped me upgrade the 120GB hard drive of my trusty 15“ MacBook Pro. Now I’m happily running a 250GB with plenty of space left even after installing VMWare and Windows XP! We found the most lengthy how-to online, and closely followed one step after another. It appeared to be an easy surgery, but it turned out that we both got some minor heart attack!

First, it’s not that easy to crack the case. Removing all the screws is dead simple, but when it comes to opening the last piece (the top panel with keyboard and touchpad), it’s not something you wanna see as an owner, no wonder I never saw any shop doing that in front of a customer!

Another online guide said the front edge is ”a little tricky“, guess how long that tricky edge took us? Well, two brilliant brains together for almost 30 min! Understandably, Bill didn’t dare to pull the last trigger - so we were just stuck there. Notoriously known as a rude and impatient lady, after 25 min of frustration, I used FORCE and cracked the last piece behind him. ”BAAAK!“, a big cracking sound came and we just freeze. Luckily, ”force“ worked this time. Nothing was broken.

And that’s not the end of it. In fact putting the top panel back was the second challenge! No matter how hard we tried, the case near the SuperDrive was still separating (like this kind of gap). Damn, just one last fxxking plastic latch! This time, not even FORCE can help.

Long story short, I realized that we couldn’t put pressure on the latch because the SuperDrive was right beneath it - it’s an empty space and any pressure added would be fruitless. So I somehow came up with this stupid idea - ”Shall we put something into the SuperDrive?“. Here’s the photo of that glorious moment - a piece of folded paper placed inside the SuperDrive, and BINGO! The last latch was in place.

Now I could confidently say that I’m able to do this again, would any one dare to let me do it for his Mac?

用了部 W850i 八個月有多，今日忍不住換了新機：Sony Ericsson P1i

多謝老友阿Bill咁夜都肯陪我行先達睇電話，不負眾望，先達當然有現貨。仲有好多選擇：零售行貨機、上台機、中文水貨機、英文水貨機。我驚無原廠保養，所以最後買左最貴的“零售行貨版”。之前做左好多功課，知道晒部機的優點缺點，部機比我想像中輕，不過剛剛開始用，未好慣用 stylus 篤篤下，同埋Symbian個介面有Ｄ複雜，要 study 下。

返到屋企第一件事就係用 bluetooth 同我部 MacBook Pro pair up 再 iSync, 幾分鐘就將我所有 calendar 日程和 address book sync 晒去部新電話度。點解一直都係咁捧 Sony Ericsson 場就係因為佢同 Mac 最夾，不過最新的 Apple iSync 2.4 未 support 呢部機，要去 download 官方出的 iSync plugin。

Yes! 終於忍唔住要買新機。Apple 四日前剛出了新的MacBook Pro, 雖然規格上無乜大驚喜，我覺得都係時候了。我用緊的13″ MacBook都仲好新，但係以前兩部都係PowerBook, 用落真係覺得都係 “Pro” 機正好多，即係「一分錢一分貨」。除左部機快，個mon大，keyboard易打，部機tough好多，MacBook 感覺還是很「膠」（不是粗口，plastic 那個膠！）。上我Flickr睇下神聖的「開盒儀式」。部MacBook點算？梗係唔賣啦（因為都唔方好價），諗住擺公司俾其他同事用算了。

另外，今日office正式開始裝修，要搞成個幾星期。呢幾日執開野先發現搬來短短兩年巳經積埋咁多雜物，為達到live a simple life的目標，一定要狠下決心。我諗我差不多扔了四大蘿，包括所有以前讀大學時的法律書和筆記（呢次真係無得返轉頭）、舊的電腦書、軟件和電玩的盒、舊project資料的hard copies … 仲記得初初搬來時只得幾樣野，所以有時間屋（或office)幾大都無用，如果無節制（即係我咁），好快又會滿！

BusinessWeek裡的這部號稱「世界最薄的手提電腦」好型下喎! 其實電腦硬件真係好難再有驚天動地的改變，不外乎係：更快、更薄、更慳電 … 每樣都要克服好多物理上的限制。我成日都恨Apple出部超薄的手提電腦，但就算薄到盡，都要三幾磅，除非唔要Optical Drive,個display又超細。我以前都用過一部只有 10.5 吋 display 的 Sony VAIO，睇到我眼盲，而家年紀大咪攪啦！以 business user 角度看，最緊要都係電池夠耐用，重少少真係無太大分別。

Getting tired of searching for the perfect accounting app, I finally settled for MYOB for Windows, which cost me HK$3,900. Why Windows version? Because it is much more stable and feature-rich than their Mac counterpart! How ridiculous is this. I know. So I forced my brother learn how to use it and do all the book keeping for me.

Though I still haven’t given up the idea of writing one for my own use. Seems this new app is quite interesting, and this one is closest to what I want, but this one never got released. Would Panic consider making a simple accounting app? I know it is 100 times less cool than Coda (which I’m going to buy!), but accounting app is as indispensible as our development app!

Wow!!! My buddy Bill just released his first Mac app!

Introducing Clip it!, a free Mac OS X app that allows any one to capture any web page into a single image, regardless of the size of your screen or browser window. It’s very handy for web designers like me who from time to time needs to present the whole site’s design in a proposal or presentation.

Bill, well done! Keep it up and all of us are supporting you to follow your dream!

What a long wait … but finally it’s here. Up for grab? Not really, at least not until June (USA) or 2008 (Asia). Everything is right, including the pricing, just not the shipping dates. Hurry up Apple Inc.!

Most of the mailing list programs only allow importing of email addresses in certain formats, e.g. plain text or Excel csv, the one I am using - PHPList - is no exception. Unfortunately, Apple’s OS X Address Book doesn’t come with any feature like that. The only format it can export data to is vCard.

Thanks to Address Book Exporter, a free and super user-friendly utility created by David Martin at Gwenhiver.net, I am able to export my address book data to a tab-delimited plain text file that can be imported to PHPList painlessly. I can choose which field(s) I want and it works with Chinese too.

Combine the Edit template feature in OS X Address Book (shown in left) with the User Attributes feature in PHPList, then you get a powerful mailing list database tool!