Four days with the Mophie Juice Pack Air

Mophie Juice Pack Air

Something of an impulse buy, I’d been considering the Mophie for a week or two, but decided to make the leap after a rather tumultuous morning which involved last-minute packing, an unplugged iPhone and a narrowly-made flight. I hobbled through the next twelve or fourteen hours on 20-30% battery power and even less sleep. At that point, the thought of spending $80 for a device that would double my battery life and protect my phone was much more palatable.

For those who do not know what the Mophie Juice Pack Air is all about, it’s a pretty slick piece of plastic that sheaths your iPhone in hard-case protection and has a built-in battery, so it doubles as a battery extender. For anyone who’s been without a charged iPhone for any length of time, the advantages are obvious. And thus, with my phone reduced to emergency use only, I hobbled into an Apple store approximately 3,000 miles from my home to grab one. Here’s the highlights, after four days of use…

Good Things

• Performance: Awesome. This case effectively doubles your battery life and if you do it right, you can get a little more than that. There’s no disappointment here.
• Shape/Bulk: Not as bad as I feared. It does add thickness, which makes it a little heavier in the pocket, but it doesn’t ruin the lines of the phone…again, as badly as I feared. The worst part is the extra couple centimeters at the bottom–that affects usage the most when in landscape mode, and is pretty aggravating. (Dear Mophie: Find a way to reduce that so I can almost forget the case is even on there.) Don’t get me wrong–you will notice the change–but it has not changed my usage of the phone. You have to decide if you love the phone for the design or the functionality. I’m in the second category (not that it’s bad to be in the first, you just wouldn’t put this under “Good Things”).
• Design/Accessibility: No problems here. The case is made to fit the phone tightly and it does the job well. Getting the phone in and out is a simple matter. Access to the important bits (volume control, lock switch, etc) is only minimally impacted. Gets a little tricky to turn the ringer back on when the switch in pointed to vibrate, but it’s a small issue.
• Ease of use: Impressive. There’s clearly extensive thought that has gone into figuring out how this thing works…and it bears some explanation. Turns out, you are actually carrying around a portable charging station, as it is not automatic and the charge is controlled by a switch on the bottom. Flip it on, and the iPhone shows as charging. Flip it off, and the iPhone acts as normal. You have full use of the phone while it is charging, as though it were plugged in. Plugging the phone/case into the wall produces the expected result…both the phone and case charge unless, it seems, the case is completely dead. Then, the case itself takes precedence until reaching some predetermined charge level and the phone starts to charge. When untethered, turning the phone off and the case on will net you a little more charge, as it uses more juice when on and being charged at the same time. Really, you don’t have to think about it but to turn the case on when the iPhone’s battery starts getting low.
• Other Good Stuff: This is a well-manufactured piece–it doesn’t feel cheap. The charging port has no give and the two pieces of the case fit tightly together. The charge lights on the back are a nice touch, providing valuable feedback with a solid button-click.

Not-so-good Things

• Heat: I guess this is to be expected, but the case does produce a decent bit of heat when charging the phone, and this of course doubles when plugged in. If you’re holding the phone and charging from the case, you’ll have a bad case of sweaty palms, but nothing like if you fell asleep with a MacBook Pro on your lap.
• Reception: Minor changes to signal reception. I have also spent the last couple days in a signal-challenged area, which has not helped. That said, both wi-fi and cell reception are impacted, if minimally so. (But you’re on AT&T’s network, so you probably won’t even notice.)
• Speaker: Well, the case completely covers the speaker. This is not a problem for regular notifications (you won’t miss a call or text message), but attempting to blast music through the phone’s rear will be an even less satisfying experience than it already is.

Bad Things

• Charger: This is the one place where I feel like I got stiffed–the charger is a mini-USB 2.0 cable of some variation, instead of the standard iPhone/iPod cable, which necessitates a cable changeover. This may be some sort of engineering requirement, but it is still incredibly aggravating. The one good thing is that the cable Mophie provides plugs directly into the iPhone’s wall charger. Yes, you can still sync through it.
• Design: Ok, I’m going to come back to it: that bottom piece could use some improvement. It is not a deal-breaker, but it is is pretty close and really annoying.

Any questions about the case/charger? Feel free to leave a comment!

Thoughts on Portland, Day 3

• Portland certainly deserves its reputation as one of the most walkable cities in the world. From getting off the Max train after the airport to when we were ready to leave, we only walked places.
• This is also a testament to Portland’s diversity. We never felt the need to leave the downtown (and its immediate) area, as there was plenty to do. Unfortunately, that means we didn’t make it back to the neighborhood we visited before. Should I return anytime soon, the goal will be to make a couple short trips to these areas.
• The Saturday Market is an impressive array of food, crafts and art that’s worth a walk-through. (And we got interviewed by Marketplace while we there.) Turns out the market is where everyone brings their dogs.
• A walking tour is great way to see a city. Portland Walking Tours and our enthusiastic guide, Amanda, made for an excellent two-hour tour.
• The history of the city is pretty exciting. From many cultures that have passed through to the possibility of being “shanghaied,” there’s some fascinating stuff here.
• Should you ever find yourself in the are for more than a couple days, spending some time at the McMenanmin’s Kennedy School is an absolute must. This 1914(?) schoolhouse has been reclaimed and features a hotel, three or four bars, a full-service restaurant, a movie theater featuring table service and lounge seating, and many other random amenities worth exploring. This is one of the most unique experiences I’ve had, and I hope to visit some of their other properties at some point.

Greetings from Portland, Day 1

• My one experience on the transit system so far has been as expected: clean, quick and safe. Odd that there was no one/no machine checking to make sure I had bought a ticket (I had), but I suspect we’ll find out how that works at some point.
• People here are…wait for it…friendly! Someone chatted us up on the light rail today, at lunch and at the wine bar we went to at night.
• Turns out, things are different here than in DC. While the guy at the wine bar was friendly and somewhat chatty, the place itself was dead. Where do twenty-somethings hang out in Portland? Much like the transit fare question, we’re not yet sure.
• Hipsters–wow. Seriously? I know, I know, it’s Portland and I shouldn’t be surprised by the throngs of hipsters, vagrants and others of questionable character that populate street corners around here. But, last time we were here, we spent most of that one day in Pioneer Square and that evening in the neighborhood called (I think) the “Upper 23rd.” That area is somewhat affluent (again, I think), and doesn’t lend itself well to the hipster community. Apparently downtown does.
• It’s also worth noting here that the homeless and vagrant here are way younger than I expected. This is a stark contrast to DC, and I’m curious as to why there’s so clearly a demographic difference between the homeless in Portland and DC.
• Traveling across country is hard. This is doubly true when you nearly miss your 6:30 a.m. flight and rush through your morning. It’s nearing lunch here now, which boggles my mind, since I could swear it’s no later than 8 a.m.
• In DC, everyone has a dog…of reasonable size. I’ve noticed very few here, and the ones that are around all seem to be miniature breeds.
• Map’s not updated yet. Running into an issue where I can’t get it to find the blue markers, so I’m going to look at that later.

Portland Mashup

Portland mashup

The Portland mashup I’ve been working on is now ready. Check it out. Spent some time researching how to do this and getting my hands a little dirty with Javascript (follow my progress, as I have time to write about it). Watch this page during the upcoming vacation for updates on travels and such.

Soft Launch!

Right, so there’s still so much to do on the site, but it’s finally at a point where it’s at least presentable and the basics are there. Some notes:

• I struggled with the Interact page for awhile, only to realize Friendfeed is the perfect solution for what I need. You need a Friendfeed account to comment, but it’s well worth it.
• Resume page is done.
• Projects are there, but need more content. My main focus the last few days has been this site, so most everything else has been at a standstill.
• Before too long, I’ll be adding some samples of work and such, but the best place to look for major milestones in both professional and personal arenas is on the side bar under “recently launched.” Any other deliverable I develop that is appropriate for this site will appear in a new category called Case Studies and Samples.
• I need to really learn more about CSS.
• I may need to learn more about PHP…but maybe can get by on what I know now.
• Check out the site on your mobile device.

That’s it folks. Enjoy.

The value of to do’s

One of the things I’m learning while building this site is the value of to do’s and a solid systems for managing one’s own work (as opposed to organization systems imposed by one’s workplace). Tonight is a great example–I sat down with the computer and wanted to tackle something, but realized that there’s thirty different directions I could go, and I simply got distracted with all the options.

I’m a great believer in the GTD system; I’m just still working to find the right degree of implementation. But, the busier I get, the more I realize that more time needs to be given to serious organization.

Of course, now that I’m writing this, I realize that I wanted to to:

• Find the PHP code for inline posts on a page
• Understand how dropdowns work on WP
• Research a simple forms plugin
• Map out a new idea on a sitemap for this site

Instead, I wrote this post about how I couldn’t remember anything…more to come on organization, obviously.