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

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

Synch iPhone with multiple iTunes?

I haven't been able to find a solution to this anywhere... will I be able to synch my iPhone with 2 instances of iTunes? I have all my music on my iMac, but videos and podcasts on my MacBook Pro. I know with my iPod I'm not allowed to do this. I suppose there's no reason to think it'll be any different with the iPhone, but it sure would be nice. I have a large music library - it won't fit on my laptop hard drive. Anyone have any suggestions?

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 :)

Addressing the iPhone concerns

Update: Today Apple announced improved functionality:

Battery life rating is up to 8 hours talk time, a whopping 10+ days of standby, 6 hours of internet use, 7 hours of video playback and 24 hours of audio playback. In addition, the original 3.5” plastic surface has changed to “optical-quality” glass.

Pretty awesome :)

Original post:

A few days ago, Forbes ran an article entitled Why You May Not Want an iPhone. I'm not overly worried about most of these, but I thought I'd address their concerns.

I currently use a Treo 700, which I synch with 2 Intel Macs. I use Apple Mail and iCal. I pretty much use all the features of the treo except the video and the MP3 player. I also have an 80G video iPod.

My thoughts regarding the iPhone concerns:

1) Lousy battery life. From what I’ve read the iPhone is rated at 5 hrs talk/music/movie/internet time. My Treo is rated at only 4, and I rarely run out of juice. Plus, I expect I’ll be synching the iPhone even more frequently because of the better iCal integration, so that’ll help keep it charged. Yes, I wish I could buy a spare battery and keep it charged, but I’m willing to live with it. Other battery issues are the same ones you’ll find on any smartphone.

2) AT&T's use of the slower EDGE network. I have Verizon right now. My understanding is EDGE is faster than my current network for data downloads, and a little slower for uploads. But other than sending the occasional phone photo, I don’t really upload, and the slowdown for a single photo is negligible. Slow browsing… well, it’s first-generation full browsing on the phone. I’ll live with it. Plus, you can swap to wi-fi, which is even faster. They use the silly example of having to spend $10/month for wifi at Starbucks… well, then don’t get your wifi at starbucks :)

3) Lack of 3rd party apps. “But it’s not clear if Apple will let other people write software for the iPhone, at least right away, and that could be a reason to stay away.” As I understand it, they’re not releasing an SDK right away, that lightweight apps (like most widgets) can be built without one. In fact, here's a Cult of Mac article showing a couple of apps that are already ready to go. Heavy duty apps? Maybe not right away, but supposedly later in the year. In

4) Potential incompatibility with MS Exchange servers. Not an issue for me. I assume this is an issue if you need to use a VPN client to get at your mail. Also, it seems we don’t really know yet whether this will be an issue or not.

5) Lack of a keyboard. I'm not at all worried. I got used to Graffiti on the old Pilots, and I got used to thumb-typing on my old Blackberry (in its first incarnation as a clamshell) and then on the Treos. I’ll get used to this too :)

6) Cost. (Didn’t the author say there were 5 reasons?): Yes, it’s pricey. So were both of my Treos. $90/month for all the services? I pay more than that now.

The only thing I’m not sure about is how much I’ll use the music features. I plan to get the extra memory (I’m remembering long ago debating with myself about whether or not to spend the extra $100 to get a 20MB drive vs a 10MB drive :), but I love having my entire music collection on my iPod. I’ll probably give movies a try while traveling, though, and maybe some podcasts.

So... will I get an iPhone? Yes. The only real question is whether or not I'll stand in line to get one on day one.

My old iPod – I think I’ll keep her

They buy working iPods too. Man, my 2nd generation touch wheel 20G iPod in excellent condition with charger and USB cord (fully loaded, I might add...) grabs a measly $25.25 at BuyMyBrokeniPod.com. Broken it would fetch $3.64.

I'm thinking I'll just keep my old one for posterity.

What the hell are they going to do with a bunch of broken iPods?

Bullish on Apple

Leander Kahney writes in Wired News about the change in how people are thinking about Apple in the last few weeks. There certainly does seem to be a widespread shift an attitudes about Apple. He points out that Wilkes University in Pennsylvania is switching to Mac to save money, and experts are recommending Macs for the enterprise. There's no longer an argument that there's not enough software available for Macs, since Macs can run Windows software perfectly well. Even Wall Street thinks Apple is a good deal these days.

Kahney attributes this sea change to the iPhone and the fact that it already looks to be a massive hit. I disagree.

More and more people are having to make the decision about upgrading to Vista. If they're forced into upgrading to Vista when they buy a new computer, they also have to make the decision about any other computers they own for compatibility reasons. And then there's MS Word 2007, which will require a translator to play nice with previous versions of itself.

With a Mac running Parallels Windows apps run right alongside Mac apps, and the two OSs can share files with a simple drag and drop. You no longer have to worry about viruses. A Mac desktop doesn't cost much more than an equivalent PC laptop. And there's that whole "ease of use" thing, and the fact that for the most part things just work on a Mac. Why would anyone buy a PC any more if they didn't have to? No wonder Mac sales are up.

And I agree that in the case of Wall Street, buzz about the iPhone helps, but you really have to give the iPod a fair amount of the credit as well..

Have your views about Apple changed? How? Why?

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.