Current mood:	geeky
Current music:	Old Worn Out 78's. Weee!
Entry tags:	iphone apps gone bad

Yes, But Is It "Good" Or "Bad" Publicity?
Quoted from my local newspaper's Daily Geek section, interviewing Dale Daughtery, head cheeze of the do-it-yourself computer rag, Make Magazine:

Daily Geek: What's your favorite iPhone application?

Dougherty: I like the Major League Baseball application. It turns my iPhone into the modern equivalent of a transistor radio, like the one I used as a kid to listen to Vin Scully. It has about the same audio quality and Vin Scully is still calling Dodger games, although now I follow the A's.


Now, let's analyze this:

Good quality audio amplifiers run in "Class A" or "Class A-B" mode to faithfully amplify the full audio spectrum of 20-20,000HZ.

Back in the early days of transistor radios, there was mostly one size: Shirt Pocket. It had seriously less fidelity than a standard telephone (300-3,000HZ) due to it's mammoth 2 inch tweeter and class "B" audio output, designed to preserve battery life. To put it bluntly, a bird tweeting might be within the audio range of your radio, but a human voice was pushing it.

But the main problem was, it only operated at class "B" for a few minutes after installing a fresh battery. When the 9V battery got slightly low...or...into normal operating range, the bias drifted to class "B-1" or "B-2" which means most of the audio was then being clipped. Worse: It unfortunately ran with this ugly, distorted mess for many hours, until the battery finally zonked out.





And so, is this article is supposed to be promoting the audio quality of a modern iPhone?


Oh-oh! Time for damage control!