I finally upgraded my iPhone to an iPhone 3G this weekend.

Or more precisely, I bought my lovely wife an iPhone 3G and thought I might as well get one for myself at the same time

To keep things simple, hers is black, mine is white, although I have to say, the black one does look much nicer.

The purchasing side was somewhat elaborate. We were going to Bluewater anyway, so I thought I’d go to the Apple Store there.

Upon arrival, I explained I wanted to buy one and upgrade one, but the Apple girl said you have to go to O2 (or possible the Carphone Whorehouse) to upgrade, so perhaps do both there. Fair enough.

I wandered around the corner to the O2 shop, where it was empty except for a bunch of very bored looking people sitting around the outside. Apparently these were the shop assistants, and once I’d managed to wake one up, was told it’s not possible to upgrade my existing iPhone.

A classic “computer says no” moment. What’s more, the O2 drone denied that it was ever possible to upgrade an iPhone because of the remaining term on the 18 month contract; this despite the fact that just about everyone I know who had an original iPhone did upgrade some months back.

The O2 drone invited me to call O2 and ask them when I could upgrade (probably in 3 months)… I replied that it was somewhat ridiculous that I should call O2 when I’m in an O2 shop, but, and straight out of Little Britain, all I got was a shrug.

So giving up on the upgrade prospect, and secretly hoping that the O2 drone never procreate, I bade her farewell and went back to Apple Store and said: two spangly new iPhones please, upon which the Apple guy said: yessir! take a seat.

What followed next was somewhat time consuming and convoluted, but not really unpleasant.

In summary, to buy an iPhone you need to do a credit check on an O2 website, sort out contract (on a different O2 website) then do something funky on a wireless device wielded by the Apple Guy.

Twice (two iPhones).

The slightly embarrassing part for Apple is that the O2 websites are such a steaming pile of shite, you need to use Windows Internet Explorer to use them properly. So Apple guy fires up VM Fusion on the iMac to do so. 

This is all very different from when I bought my original iPhone, which went: I’d like to buy an iPhone please / Yes sir, here you are, that’s £lots please, have a good day.

Now, what to do with the old iPhone …

The other day I was thinking about being a long-time Apple customer and that around the very late 90s, early 00s, when Windows PCs were a bit of a joke, it was very easy to feel superior and evangelise a bit about Macs and OS 9 and generally lord over the great unfortunate.

So a lot of people felt the pressure and switched to Mac, or bought an iPod, or whatever and whenever there is a problem it’s somehow my fault - the gloating goes the other way.

Anyways, coincidentally this morning I see a much better piece written by Cult of Mac.

To keep myself sane (ish) and avoid becoming an Apple apologist, I’ve taken to using the ‘other side’ from time to time:

• I use an ordinary mobile phone and suddenly the iPhone’s problems seem insignificant.
• I use Outlook’s search facility and somehow Mail’s inability to sync accounts between Macs seems like a minor inconvenience.

See? Nothing to apologise for

Sorry, another iPhone related post

Anyways, I’ve spotted a bit of a flaw in the iPhone App Store.

The App Store is the only way you can legally develop and distribute apps for the iPhone and you have to publish them via Apple. This introduces a huge amount of convenience, but you also lose a lot of control.

Eg, suppose you (or your customers) spot a critical bug in your app? You may be able to fix it within a few hours, but how long before Apple get it out on to the App Store and subsequently out onto your customers’ devices?

A couple of examples. Cube Runner is a great game I’ve seen on other people’s iPhones, but I can’t get it – it’s been withdrawn from the App Store. I think the developer found an issue and wanted Apple to pull it rather than leave the buggy one hanging. And the slowness of Apple means we don’t have the update.

Another example is a diet tracking app that comes with a “do not install because it’s broken and Apple haven’t updated it in the store with my fix” message.

Both developers are exposed to excessive reputational risk – I’m not sure I’d want to do the same if I was a developer. But then, there’s no other (legal) way.