So the first time I synced my iPhone using Vista it mostly worked.  The set-up worked fine.  It took calendar, contacts, and what not from Outlook.  But when I tried to sync photos it blew up.  (Music might have been involved in this too.)  I’ve gotten 5 blue screen of deaths (at least).  It’s really starting to irritate me.

The part I love is when you reboot, Vista says, “You’ve recovered from a serious error, would you like to check for a solution?”  I click yes…. Some bar glows for a bit.  Then disappears.  Thanks for the help!  At least tell me you haven’t encountered this problem before.

I don’t even know if it is really an iPhone related problem.  The only time the little “error helper” came back with anything it said it was a hard drive error.  I did a diskcheck and whatnot…. Still blue screening and the “error helper” has no useful info now.  I guess I will have to sync my iPhone with a different computer.

Has anyone else encountered this type of problem?

This is my first 100% iPhone written blog entry and so far typing this much is not bad. The predictive keyboard is pretty impressive.

I am in a restaurant on the basic free wifi they have. I will give it a shot on edge next. I think once I get fully used to this keyboard that it will rock. I can definitely see what they mean when they say trust it. I am already sewing improvement.

Ok.  I got an SMS from AT&T late last night telling me welcome.  I assumed that meant my service had transferred, but nope.  I still can’t call my iPhone.  I can get SMSes though – although possibly only from people on AT&Ts network. 

Anyway, I spent several hours playing Duels (yes, I know there is nothing there yet – still in restricted beta, post a comment with your e-mail and I’ll invite you [and, no, I won’t publish your e-mail]) on my iPhone and it is freaking cool.  The fact that I can do that is really impressive.  (We use a lot of Flash, so there are a few things that aren’t there, but it is still playable.)

I browsed around and set up my WSJ account and looked at a bunch of pages.  I still remain really impressed.

Typing in usernames, passwords, etc. doesn’t seem like a problem.  I’ve had it for less than 24 hours and I can already type with two thumbs.  The keyboard is as good as the one on my (now retired) Motorola Q….. If might even be better. 

The software interface design on the web browser and the keyboard is some of the best I have ever seen.

The SMS handling looks pretty cool – it keeps them as an ongoing conversation – but I haven’t really fully tested it out.

Hopefully my number will transfer soon and I can really use it as a phone.

More soon.

iphone

OK.  I now have my iPhone mostly working.  Still can’t receive calls… and it’s kind of late so I haven’t actually made any calls either.

But, the browser is amazing.  I would probably have bought this thing as mobile browser.  The ability to zoom in and out, etc. Multiple open pages.  It works great.  I’m super impressed.  

Of course I’ve been testing it on the wi-fi network in my house, so Edge might make it a little less impressive. 

I’ll write more tomorrow once I get to use it as a phone.

I knew this going into it.  I wish Apple had picked T-Mobile or someone who actually gives a shit about their customers. 

Great experience:

• Wait in line for six hours.
• Get iPhone.
• Woot.
• Go home.
• “Activate” on iTunes.  (Which presumably was done to take people out of the equation and make it faster.)
• Get through activation.
• Get e-mail – “it will take 24 hours to transfer your number”
• Get another e-mail cannot activate.
• Call AT&T – “WTF?”
• “It takes time to transfer a number.”
• “No it doesn’t, last time I did this it took less than 15 minutes.”
• “Oh, it’s the high volume of transfers.”
• (Thought bubble): Bullshit, it’s fucking computers.
• “Oh really?  Well why can’t I just activate my phone while I wait?”
• “You can’t activate it until the tranfer.”
• “Really? That’s not what the FAQ/website say.”
• “Oh, uhm, it can take up to 24 hours.”
• “What if I want a new number?”
• “That takes up to 6 hours.”
• (Thought bubble): WTF?  If I just went into any wireless store on the planet and bought a phone service would be on with a new number INSTANTLY.  Does iPhone somehow make provisioning harder?
• Click.

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!  If people are waiting in line to buy your product, you shouldn’t shaft them at the end. 

Really disappointing.

Oh and you can’t use the phone in this state so I can’t even start configuring it or doing anyhting.  VERY NICE.

I swore I would never use AT&T again.  iPhone came out.  Apple forces me to use AT&T.  I get the shaft I knew would come.

They seem very positive.

WSJ: Testing Out the iPhone (Mossberg)

NYT:  The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype  (Pogue)

So this article:

When You’ve Got To Go, Go To Mizpee.com

Is probably the weirdest thing I’ve seen in Web 2.0 land.  Techcrunch gives coverage to a lot of out there ideas, but I’m with the commentors on this one – it might mean the beginning of the end for web 2.0. 

Crazy.

Interesting iPhone news today.  They announced the plans.

• $59.95 for 450 minutes
• $79.95 for 900 minutes
• $99.95 for 1,350 minutes

They have unlimited data and mobile-to-mobiling calling.  They also have a $36 activation fee and are limited to 200 SMS messages.  (Unlimited data, but 200 SMS messages?  That seems dumb, but hey.)

Anyway, if they are like other AT&T Rate Plans they should also have free nights and weekends. 

Comparing these rate plans to the standard ones on the AT&T website seems to indicate that the unlimited data / web is basically $19.95/month.

Finally, it also looks like you can activate your iPhone from iTunes.  So you buying the phone and turning it on are separate.  So the lines should clear out fast.  I was expecting some crazy wait while they tried to turn my phone on.  This will also help the resellers who want to flip them.  Before this announcement that wasn’t really an option since I didn’ t know how activation would work.  Now it might be an option.

So from my little bit of research on EDGE, it seems like it tops out at about 384kbps and averages more like 150ish.  That’s not really all that slow.  I mean yeah a few mbps would be better.  But speed really isn’t that important for e-mail and well the web…

I have a Motorola Q on Verizon right now.  And my web experience has been consistently horrible.  Pages don’t load, it’s slow, etc.  It’s basically worthless.  E-mail works nice (Outlook is pretty good on Windows Mobile and it talks to my Exchange server pretty well).  But the web, not so much.  I tried to look up an NBA finals basketball score a few weeks ago.  Verizon’s little portal thing sucks.  ESPN won’t load.  Etc.

So I have a lot of confidence in Steve Jobs and Apple to get the experience right.  And frankly I’d rather have a browser that renders ESPN correctly running at 200kbps than one that’s running 10 times faster but can’t render the page.  One of those is useful, the other is not.

Apple just launched this new video about the iPhone.  Ironically it crashes on Vista and I have yet to get it to play on my XP machine.  WTF.  Actually, to be clear – when I say “crases on Vista” I mean I get a blue screen of death.  It’s happened everytime I’ve tried.  Pretty weird. 

I’m not surprised about Vista I’ve had to blow up Quicktime a few times because it keeps taking over everything.  It’s annoying.  I really want to see it.  I’m going to try downloading Quicktime… again.