Jules Says

iPhone 3G — not worth it

You heard me right. I, renown Gadget Slut and Mac aficionado, am disappointed in the iPhone 3G.

It's prettier than my old iPhone. More streamlined, even. I know — hard to believe, right?

But the battery life is awful. I put it on my nightstand with a full charge, and it's half or more gone 7 hours later. I've dialed down the brightness, turned off location features, turned off push everything, and avoided playing games. Still, the charge dwindles rapidly.

After a few short days, I find myself hesitating to use it, questioning myself — wondering if whatever I wanted to do is important enough to justify the painful battery drain.

This has never been my experience of my iPhone in the past.

Now, with all the new features turned off (I might as well turn off 3G too, since coverage in Austin is spotty at best) I have a new iPhone that... is a little thinner, and has a white back.

I'm considering migrating back to my old iPhone. At least I could use it all day without worrying about running out of juice.

Clothes make the Mac

I don't need a new Mac laptop. Ok, I admit, that's never stopped me before. But really, the MacBook Air, stunning though it may be, is not for me. I do lust after the multitouch trackpad. I've been reaching to pinch my screen while viewing maps since a week after getting my iPhone. I'm ready for it. But there are too many limitations for it to be my primary computer, and I don't want to go back to messing with keeping multiple computers in sync.

Then I saw the fabulous AirMail. Now there's the hip yet understated MacBag. Cripes. I may have to get an Air just so I can carry it around in one of these.

Fanboy architects?

These aluminum structures are actually for sale in Canada. Think the architects have been spending too much time with their iPod chargers?

And you thought you got a lot of mail...

That's right — according to my mail reader (Apple Mail 3.1), I have 4 billion, 294 million, 966 thousand and 24 messages in my mailbox. Only 2 unread though, thankfully.

Weird. It's been this way since I upgraded to Leopard.

Should I take the money?

What's an ethical businessperson to do?

Following the announcement that the 8 Gig iPhone price would drop by $200, Apple announced in an open letter that they would give a $100 rebate per phone to early adopters. They bowed to pressure by a bunch of whiners (read the comments) who seem to think that, as loyal fans, we should have some kind of magic insulation from the economic realities rapidly-changing technology. I can certain understand someone buying an iPhone very recently and being miffed about the drop, but such is life. Would any of you very early buyers have passed on an iPhone if you knew for sure that if you waited 2 1/2 months, you could get it for $200 less? I doubt it.

The exact same DLP projector I bought a few years ago for $10K now retails for $2,500. I'm not expecting a refund. I bought bleeding edge technology. I paid a premium *knowing* if I were a little patient I'd save a bunch of money.

Why did Apple cave? I own Apple stock. I think this was a stupid, unnecessary move on their part. This online reaction is not comparable to a campaign by a bunch of rabid fans so save a quality TV show from the death grip of network execs. This was a bunch of rabid fans who mistook their voluntary participation in a media frenzy for some kind of entitlement to immunity from reality. And Apple bit. It's not a good precedent to set.

That said, I bought 2 iPhones on June 29. Do I have an ethical obligation not to take the rebate? It's not like forgoing the cash would have one iota of effect on the program, the stock, or anything else. I  think it's stupid, not wrong. Still, there's all that ranting I do about hypocrites and personal accountability... Randy Cohen, are you listening?

Free Knowledge: iTunes U

Somehow I managed to miss Apple's May 30 announcement about the launch of iTunes U. It's ok, though, because it was great fun to discover it on my own. The Center for Religion and Conflict at ASU; hundreds of courses on architecture, physics, linguistics and philosophy from MIT; Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders from the Standford Technology Ventures Program. There's a tremendous amount of content here - some audio, some video.

These are entire courses. And it's FREE. Seriously. Free. As in No Charge. How cool is this? I watched my first class in an "Introduction to Astronmy" course from Michigan Tech on my iPhone while traveling last weekend.

I find it so encouraging to see this kind of knowledge-sharing happening. No scarcity model here, that's for sure.

Make typing easier on your iPhone!

The always-engaging David Pogue kindly published a fantastic shortcut for typing on the iPhone before the publication of his iPhone Missing Manual book.

The short problem: many frequently-used keys, such as the comma and the period, are on an alternate keyboard, requiring several clicks to type in.

The short solution: touch the .123? key but don't lift your finger. The alternate keyboard will quickly appear. Don't lift your finger yet - instead, slide to the character you want and release. You'll get the character, and the keyboard will automatically switch back to the QWERTY keyboard.

Fantastic - thanks David! And thanks Tori for forwarding it to me :)

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

iPhone: still crippled, but getting there

I woke up this morning to a working phone. Yay! First thing I did was synch, of course, which didn't work. I got this dialog box, even though the iPhone was still connected. I've had trouble using iTunes auto-synch with my iPod, so I synched everything manually. This worked fine, except for the calendar, for which I still get this error message.

Any suggestions?

Otherwise, it's beautiful, but I can't love it yet. I want it to be 100% working, dammit!

Note: this is a followup post to iPhone: I'm officially pissed off
Update: Latest post is iPhone: iCal glitch and why it took me 22 hours to set up my iPhone

iPhone: I'm officially pissed off

I've had the iPhone for nearly 4 hours now, and can't do anything with it. I went to iTunes to activate it (had to do some updating, no big deal, but took a while) and everything seemed to be going fine. After the final activation OK I got a message saying it may take a while to activate - they'd be in touch.

What? Wasn't AT&T anticipating this?

I got an email an hour later saying:

Phone service is scheduled to be disconnected on your current phone at or after 8:29 PM EDT on June 30. Please check your email and be prepared to reconnect and activate your iPhone before that time. Please call 877-800-3701 if you'd like to make other arrangements.

I called, got a very nice woman who tried to be very helpful. She got my SSN, my driver's license number, all the usual personal info. Could she do anything? No. She did give me a new number to call, though. I called it, and was told to enter the number I'm trying to transfer to AT&T. It wasn't recognized. I tried again. Nada. So I had to call the original number again. Went through the same thing, gave all the info again, only to hear "yep, it's going to be 6-24 hours before you can activate."

I don't care about the number. Can I use the iPod? No. The Calendar? Datebook? Anything? No. No. No.

So here I sit. I got wrapped up in the hype, which was totally fun. I paid $200 to get a spot at the front of the line. And now I can't do a damn thing until sometime tomorrow. Maybe even tomorrow evening.

I am not happy. I've been forced to marry AT&T, and I already want out.

See followups:
iPhone: still crippled, but getting there
Update: Latest post is iPhone: iCal glitch and why it took me 22 hours to set up my iPhone

See also
Number 15 in line for the iPhone in Austin
I found my iPhone line-waiter :)