drewmcmanus's dashboard

Just got a photo from Thor. Same deal. Nice message with photo first and appropriate return address.

Interesting. That is kind of lame.

My RAZR received a photo message from Ted with return address and everything. That works nicely. The problem, of course, is that you would not have known my phone's email address without me telling you (unless you knew my carrier and their particular scheme for tuning my phone number into an email).

Seems like an opportunity here somewhere. Is there a way to build an elegant bridge?

Another idea. Try emailing a photo from the iPhone to 4082192872@mms.att.net

Sent!

Do you still have the same mobile number? I can send a photo and we'll see what happens.

Thanks, Scott. I'll check it out!

You're the second person to use the floppy drive analogy on this--interesting. I think it is a flawed analogy and here is why: the floppy disk was an aging technology whose utility was in serious decline. As application and files sizes grew, floppy capacity was just too small to be useful to customers anymore. I agree that Apple took the lead in killing the technology and that it was a smart and bold move.

In the case of picture messaging (the feature that enables customers to send a phone-to-phone photo message), usage is increasing 40%/year, especially with young people (my teenage sons send almost as many picture messages as text messages). The technology is in place, and the issues are relatively well-understood. Almost every phone out there supports it, and there is a standard in place. This is a relatively new and maturing technology. It is not without bugs, but they could be fixed. Most of all, it is a fun and compelling feature, in my opinion.

I can completely understand that the iPhone is a 1.0 product, and that it can't do everything. I'm deeply familiar with product management trade-offs, so I hope to see this feature added later. I was just surprised to find something that every other phone does was not on the 1.0 list.

It's also a very interesting phenomenon that everywhere I have asked this question (including a couple of blogs and on Apple's own support forums), that I have yet to get a suggested workaround or an indication of how anyone else feels about the feature. I've also asked what will happen when an iPhone customer is sent a picture message--no one seems to know. All I have seen so far is an almost religious defense of a product that no one has used for more than a few days, and suggestions that I am somehow a bad person for even asking. That Steve Jobs reality-distortion field seems to have enveloped the whole internet!

Hey Amy: The link in your reply was truncated and did not work (bug report! I am SO beta-worthy). I found the topic on my own and posted a reply.
-DMc

Hmm. I run Quickbooks on Parallels all the time without problem. I am using Parallels 3.0 (it also worked on 2.0), Win XP with all the latest patches, and Quickbooks Pro 2007.

Are you using a similar setup? Maybe we can triangulate on the problem...

I sort of like the spectrum. If you limit the choices to just a few then you are going to have lots of sad faces--just given the nature of a lot of the content. Could really change the tone of the site.

And I often find that I am looking for 'disappointed'--there isn't really one for that.

My $ 0.02

My trusty RAZR does a great job with this. There is no notion of protocol (SMS vs. MMS). You just snap a photo and "send a message." It handles everything else. Just seems to me that picture messaging is a basic requirement for a phone. I'm hoping a software update will address this.

drew@mcmanus-family.com

Thanks!

I find Parallels extremely useful for a couple of things: 1. I have a couple of Windows apps I just can't give up (Quicken and QuickBooks), and 2. Browser testing. I have not noticed a performance hit, but I close parallels when I am not using it.

I'd love to get invited.... anyone?