Well, what a surprise, AT&T is now behind on MMS messages for the iPhone again. This time the delay is said to be keeping the service out of our hands until September. Not to mention rumors of a $55 upgrade fee for tethering ability with your iPhone.

The delays are frustrating, yes, but compared to the bullshit I deal with daily on AT&T’s network a two month delay for MMS is laughable. In fact, I’d go as far as to say I would sacrifice MMS altogether just to get some decent service from the company.

Let me recap briefly some of the issues I have daily while using AT&T as my wireless provider:

• Appalling 3g coverage – AT&T’s 3g network is horribly inconstant. It frequently drops in and out of reach, even in heavily populated areas. And, when it does work, the speeds are mediocre at best. I’ve used it on three different iPhones and a Sony Ericsson w600i. In comparison to Verizon or Sprint the 3g AT&T offers feels childish.
• Weird network restrictions – AT&T has a ton of network restrictions, some applications on iTunes can’t be used unless on wifi, iTunes store downloads over 10megs are disallowed, yet we as users pay a fee for 5gigs of data per month. Why should I be limited to 10megs per download if I pay $30+ dollars a month for 5gigs of bandwidth?
• Regular plain old cellphone coverage – It’s one thing not to get wicked fast 3g speed all over the city, but it’s another to simply not get cell coverage at all. I live in the middle of Downtown Denver, yet, I at this moment I have no service on my phone. In fact, if I want service I would need to walk over to my window in the other room and sit within a 10 foot radius. This isn’t just limited to my apartment though, it happened at my previous house, and still happens to this day at the Imulus workplace in Boulder.
• Dro…
• Dropped c…
• D…
• Dropped calls!!! – I’m not kidding, everyone I know on AT&T has calls dropped so frequently it’s literally become a joke. I recognize this would most likely be tied to cell service area, but I get dropped calls even at full bars. I swear if AT&T offered a land line it would still drop my call. I get at least 7 dropped calls daily. Daily!

The point is that AT&T is terrible when it comes to wireless cell service. It’s a travesty that the iPhone, which is an amazing piece of technology, is limited to such a terrible network. It’s like having a Formula-1 racer and only being able to use it on dirt roads.

The truth is if Apple doesn’t bring the iPhone to another network in the next year, I’ll honestly consider switching phones. Simply to get away from AT&T.

Today Apple announced the new iPod Shuffle and the big “new” feature on it is the absence of buttons. Apparently the solution for those using the shuffle is to navigate music via the headphones, which is great if you like wearing sub-par plastic pieces of trash in your ears.

Now, I realize that some people actually enjoy the feel of the standard Apple earbuds, and I realize they are very popular. However, I have seen a LOT of people that use 3rd party headphones with their iPod/iPhone (a brief office poll here at Imulus came up with over half of us using non-Apple headphones). So let’s just be honest, what this really feels like is a ploy to make you purchase the high-end Apple earbuds. And if you’re like me and hate earbuds in general because they hurt your ears, you’re basically out of luck.

Even if Apple decides to release their headphone control technology to 3rd parties I still have to purchase a new set of headphones to use while running, or at minimum a new control cord add-on for my current phones, which is sure to be a minimum of $20. Now suddenly to get a lightweight mp3 player for running I am dropping $79 plus $20.

This is a great example of how Apple’s want to simplify can be taken too far. In theory it sounds great, but in practice it ends up creating a mess for everyone but the most default basic customers. And worse, it makes Apple look greedy and out of touch.

Go ahead and use the image tag to insert your homepage right into the comments. For those unfamiliar with HTML, here is a short how-to.

On a daily basis I spend anywhere from five minutes to three hours cursing and wishing ill will upon Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. Sometimes I do this silently under my breath and sometimes, to the dismay of my coworkers, I do it quite vocally. The reason? Internet Explorer 6 is an: insecure, slow, outdated, and non-standards compliant browser.

Let me illustrate this a bit further. If browsers were cars — IE6 would be an El Camino truck that’s been sitting outside in the rain for 20 years. Underpowered, ugly, basically useless in every scenario, and ready to explode and kill you at any moment.

Development of a website that supports IE6 adds about 15 to 20% of additional time to a project. And further, IE6 doesn’t support the everyday commonplace technologies of all other modern browsers. Meaning websites simply don’t function or look as good as they do in today’s browsers.

So here’s the question.

If today’s modern browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, IE7) are easy to get, run faster and safer than IE6, and are free. Why are some company IT departments still forcing users to browse on IE6? In general it seems to boil down to three big reasons.

1. The company has internal software that was built specifically to run on Internet Explorer.
2. The company manages a ton of machines and the workload/headache of upgrading them all to a newer version is too much.
3. The company and users feel comfortable on IE6 because they “know it”.

Here’s the problem. When we as an industry don’t embrace new enhancements in development it’s the client’s viewers and the client’s brand that suffers. We’re still building phenomenal web sites. But the straight truth of the matter is they’re not as good as they should be. The web has soooo much potential but it’s not being utilized. Why? Because we’re still supporting a legacy browser* that was released in 2001.

As I’ve said before. In order for things to get better sometimes you just have to make the jump. Other companies are already doing this. Apple, 37Signals, and Comedy Central just to name a few. Notice anything about those first two? They dramatically care about their user’s experience. So much so that they’re willing to sacrifice incompatibility for some users to benefit the rest of them**. Cheers to that, I hope we see it more.

^{* As long as companies ask us to support IE6 we will. We’re not afraid to share our thoughts on the browser landscape but we also recognize the need to compromise.
** I understand that some users don’t have control over what browser they use. For these poor souls I cry (really, I’m tearing up as write this).}

During my bus commute to work every day I spend a large amount of time listening to podcasts on my iPhone. And while video podcasts can be great, sometimes I just don’t have the stomach to hold my iPhone to my face for 40 minutes on the bus.

The thing is that a lot of my video podcasts (diggnation, TED Talks, Wine Library TV) are great to listen to with just audio. And in fact I find the extra battery life saved can be a welcome benefit. Well, about two weeks ago I figured out how to listen to audio from video’s on the iPhone with the phone locked. Here’s how:

1. Start your video from the iPhone iPod app
2. Lock the phone. At this point your video and audio will stop
3. Double tap your home button to bring up iPod controls in locked mode
4. Select play and the audio from your video will start playing while the phone is locked

I’m not sure if this tip is published but it’s been super useful for me. Hope it helps you all out too.

Update: Just realized these steps also work if you want to listen to audio only with the phone unlocked. Simply do the above and then unlock your phone, wala!