Jules Says

iPhone: iCal glitch & why it took me 22 hrs to set up my iPhone

Nearly 23 hours after I got my paws on an iPhone, I'm finally up and running, but it was far from painless.

The summary

• I was in the first group of 20 into the Apple store in Austin. I entered at 6pm to the applause of the staff (nice touch), bought 2 8Gig iPhones, and was on my way to my car by 6:04. Impressive!
• I came home and immediately tried to synch. Turns out I had to do some upgrading (yes, I should've known that). So, first I upgraded my system to 10.4.10 (I was one version behind) and iTunes.
• I went through the activation process, which went smoothly. I was porting my cell number from Verizon to AT&T.
• The last screen said it would be about 6 minutes to finish. I went to change, thinking I'd be leaving momentarily for a cocktail party, where I'd be able to show off my fabulous new toy.
• I came back to a screen that said roughly "it's going to take a while, we'll email you when we know how long. The neighbors may well have heard me yell at this point.
• Since I couldn't activate, I couldn't do anything - I couldn't use the iPod, the calendar, or even play with preferences.
• I went to the cocktail party, and rather pathetically showed off the Earth screen and emergency call pad.
• I was home an hour and a half later with an email saying it would be up to 24 hours before my phone was activated.
• I wrote my first bitchy blog post about it.
• I called the number in the email from AT&T to "make other arrangements". The first woman was nice, didn't know much about the iPhone, and gave me another number to call.
• I called that number. It was disconnected.
• I called the original number again, and a guy told me it'd be 6-24 hours - there was nothing he could do.
• This morning at 8am when I got up, my activation had gone through. I eagerly attempted a synch. No go. I got the error message shown in my last post. iTunes seemed to think the iPhone was disconnected. It wasn't.
• I restared my Mac. I restored the iPhone to factory settings. I tried a different USB port, and tried the synch with just the cable and again with the dock. Nada.
• I remembered that with my iPod, I've had trouble using the auto-synch feature of iTunes, so I tried synching manually. That seemed to work fine, and I thought I was set.
• But no. Everything synched except iCal. I tried manually synching just iCal, to no avail.
• Finally around 10:30 I called the iPhone help number. A recorded message said that due to heavy demand, my wait would be "5 minutes or greater." Understandable.
• 55 minutes later, I got a very nice guy who wasn't able to help. He said he'd connect me with someone for "more advanced" help.
• 1.5 hours later (!) I spoke with Nathan from Apple. Again, very nice. Finally I was going to get some help.

The iCal glitch
I have 6 calendars I use regularly. We experimented with trying to synch a single calendar at a time. At first it didn't work, and Nathan speculated that maybe you can't synch more than one calendar at a time. That would be a pretty glaring error if it was so.

My "home" calendar wouldn't synch. It would start, and I'd get the error message. If I synched any other single calendar on its own, however, it worked. Doing that, however, made each new calendar completely replace the previous one. Obviously, that wouldn't do. Then we discovered I was able to synch all calendars at once except for the "home" calendar. Something is apparently corrupted in that calendar.

So I've just spent the last hour going back and re-categorizing my calendars back to January. I deleted the Home calendar. It now synchs beautifully and completely.

My opinion, after a rocky start
The good

• It's lovely - feels good to hold, and I love the mutli-touch screen.
• It's fast, even on the EDGE network. I've played several iTunes videos with no cutting out.
• The browser is fantastic - surprisingly readable.
• I'm getting really good coverage with AT&T - better than with Verizon and miles better than with Sprint.
• The maps support is great - I easily get real-time traffic reports... sweet!
• The interface is elegant and mostly very intuitive. A few things will take a bit of getting used to, but that will happen quickly.
• Same goes for the keyboard. It'll take me a little while to get proficient, but I have no doubt that I will.
• I love the .com button on the keyboard.

The bad

• It felt hazardous to try to make a call while driving. The flow navigation doesn't work well with one hand. Once a bunch of people are on my "recents" list, this will be less of an issue, as I won't have to hunt for them.
• Making calls, even with "recents" takes too many touches. I want a favorites widget.
• 8Gigs will soon seem like not nearly enough. I'm already ready for an 80Gig iPhone :)

Overall, I love it, although my enthusiasm was seriously tempered because of my crappy initial experience. That'll wear off, though.

See also:
iPhone: still crippled, but getting there
iPhone: I'm officially pissed off

Best. iPod. Dock. EVER.

Could I be any more set for summer? Check out my new iMargarita. It makes 1, 2, or 3 fabulous margaritas at a time (with shaved ice, just like the pros) and takes care of DJing too!

I've always been leery of the promise of wired kitchen appliances. I don't need my fridge to tell me when I'm out of stuff. I'm usually out of everything except Diet Coke and coffee anyway. And my toaster is about 50 years old and working just perfectly, thank you very much. Plus, with more chargers and gadgets than I can easily count, I'm already using up all the outlets in my kitchen. But the iMargarita... well, I just couldn't resist :)

My first Woot-off

I let my inner gadget slut out to play yesterday.

I first heard about Woot! from Tori. Seemed intriguing enough – a single possibly almost too-good-to-be-true gadgety deal per day, with the occasional Woot-off, deals in rapid succession, sold one at a time until there are none left. Yes, it’s Home Shopping Network for geeks.

I checked it out. I even installed a Woot menu bar that alerted me to current deals. Nothing interested me, though, and I began to resent the real estate the menu bar occupied, so I got rid of it.

Then today on Gizmodo (I think. Might’ve been somewhere else. That’s the problem with reading blogs via a feedreader – they all look the same) I saw an announcement that there was a Woot-off going on right at this moment.

Off I went. Up I signed.

The first item I saw was one of those round vacuum cleaners that run themselves. I have no idea if it was a name brand or not – I’m not up on this technology. I went to check the product site, though, just to compare the price. Manufacturer’s direct price was ~280. The Woot price was $150. Not bad.

The site is fun – the product descriptions are very clever. Apparently there’s a daily podcast – today it’s the Woot-off theme, which is hilarious. They show some useless but interesting stats (as usual, click to enlarge), and have a sense of humor about each product. These folks are having a lot of fun doing this. Here’s the product description for that land line phone decked out in camoflage you see above:

Yes, We Know What You Mean. Yeah. Yeah, Vern, I know it. I know it, I told them “Hey, I got cats to label with unreasonable grammar, I ain’t got time for that.” Hey, hey, hold up, guess what I’m callin’ you on. No, go on guess. You ain’t gonna guess? Go on, just guess once, one guess. You ain’t got it, you big dummy. It’s a Uniden DCT746M 2.4 GHz Cordless Camo Phone. A camo phone! Yeah, just like Snake Eyes. Wait, was he the guy with the beret? The ninja? Hell, I don’t know. But I do know that I got me a sweet phone. It works on the 2.4 GHz band, handles Caller ID and Call Waiting, Three Way Conferencing… YEAH BUDDY THREE WAY WOOOOO You sure right about that, Vern.

It does a lot more crazy stuff too, like connect to other Uniden phones and accept other handsets, but I got no idea where I set that manual so I ain’t never gonna figure that crap out. But hey, I got it so I can take this baby out to my yard. Yeah, that’s where we are right now. I’m out back in the woods, right by the air conditioner. Yeah, the tall grass I ain’t never been mowin’. Hey, we gotta… AW HELL I DROPPED MY PHONE! I DROPPED MY PHONE!! VERN!! VERN!! I CAN’T FIND MY PHONE, VERN!! GOD DANG IT IF THIS DON’T WANT TO MAKE ME JUST KICK TESLA IN THE NUTS! SAY SOMETHING REAL LOUD, VERN!! AW, CRAP IN A BAG, WHY DOES THIS STUFF ONLY HAPPEN TO ME?

I checked back in a while later. There was an RCA Dual Format DVD Recorder w/DivX, HDMI, and UD upconversion for $69.99. I wrestled with myself for a bit, pretending I needed a reason to buy this. Haven’t people asked me tech questions about DVR recorders at some point? Shouldn’t I know this technology? Ultimately, of course, I bought it. Later I bought a US Modular 12GB Monster USB Drive for $50 (that’s basically a little jump drive – like the one on my keychain but maybe 2x the width, and it holds 12GB.)

This was yesterday. At this writing, the Woot-off continues. It’s a good day to be a geek :P)

Love this? You can't have it. Yet.

Those clever folks at the MIT Media Lab have done it again. This I/O brush looks like what I think of as the kind of brush men used to use for shaving, but it picks up color, texture, and movement of any brushed surface. Sound amazing? It is. According to the Media Lab I/O brush web site, they're looking into a consumer version.

What do you think a system like this would cost? I'm thinking it wouldn't actually be that expensive. Existing monitors could be adapted for touch screen. There's a camera, a couple of LEDs, and two touch sensors. None of that's particularly expensive, I don't think.

I'll be in line for this, that's for sure :)

The left lane is for passing!

OK, I so want one of these for my car. I'd probably leave it on "the left lane is for passing" by default, but "turn on your lights" and "your blinker is still on" would be pretty hand as well. You can get one at Roadmaster for a measly $60.

Will my gadget lust survive the iPhone?

(Originally posted Feb. 3)

Bruce Tognazzini has an excellent review of the iphone here. It's a good article, although it's a little odd that he wrote the whole thing having never touched an iPhone...

The thing that's lacking in every article about the iPhone that I've read is any information about the calendar. I see a little calendar icon on the pics, but never any mention of how it compares to the Palm/Treo one. I use my calendar a lot - it seems like it's an important enough feature of a smartphone that it would get some mention.

I'm totally with this guy re: Cingular. At first I thought Apple was going to roll out different networks gradually, like the way it went with the Treos, but it appears that this will be an exclusive partnership. I switched to Verizon for their network. I wouldn't want to have to switch to Cingular.

Plus, for me, a 4G iPod is not very appealing. I love having my whole library on my 80G model :)

I don't know... my gadget lust may get the best of me when this thing comes out. Then again, I may wait for the 80G model with voice recognition and a decent eReader.