I am one of those people that choose Mac but have to work with Windows and this has (loosely) extended to my mobile life. I choose iPhone, but also carry a Raspberry.

Sometimes this causes some confusion, e.g. trying to take a picture with the Raspberry (it has no camera) or staring at my iPhone email and wondering where my work emails have gone.

Fortunately, this doesn’t happen too often as the Raspberry is fugly, heavy and oversized (although smaller than many, mine’s an 8800).

Having to carry both is a tad annoying though. Maybe one day my employer will let me use Exchange support on the iPhone so I can dispense with the Raspberry altogether.

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 …

We’re in Snowdonia (mostly) this week and whilst I thought I’d blog about the scenery, mountains, sheep etc when I get back, I would like mention the iPhone experience now.

It’s pants.

One out of five bars at best from O2. Never seen EDGE (I don’t have 3G but that’s probably rubbish too).

Worse though is wifi. At our hotel, MacBook gets near max signal strength at all times with no drop outs. iPhone drifts in and (mostly) out of minimal strength.

Bad aerial? Dodgy software? Don’t know but without MacBook here I’d have struggled with mapping and general research of trails, pubs, etc.

Yay, the iPhone 2 software upgrade has finally been release, under the guise of version 2.01.

Since upgrading this morning, I’ve noticied:

• Very cool game, Aurora Feint no longer crashes on startup. Hurrah!
• I’m down to half charge after just 90 mins since full charge. Boo! (and no, I haven’t been playing AF for 90 mins – hardly touched it)

I know good and evil has to be balanced in this world, but does it have to be on my phone?

Over the last few weeks I’ve found that I cannot send text messages from my iPhone (O2) to my wife’s Motorola RAZR (T-Mobile), and she cannot send messages back.

Of course, I assumed this is because the iPhone software is buggy and/or Mr Jobs doesn’t want us to use SMS or some other conspiracy theory.

Upgrading the software on the iPhone to 2.0 didn’t help.

Restarting the phone (having to do that a lot recently) didn’t help.

I even called O2 and asked if there was a long standing network problem between mine and my wife’s network/phone.

Texting to/from other people seemed fine.

Anyways, this morning I was astounded to find four text messages from my wife on the iPhone. Imagine my surprise!

Turns out, she turned her RAZR off and on, and now it all works fine.

Not sure what we can learn from this, but possibly one or more of:

• Never assume it’s your iPhone that’s broken.
• Never assume it’s the network.
• Never assume a v1 RAZR is incapable of blowing goats.

There’s a new iPhone app for publishing to WordPress and here’s a test post.

http://iphone.wordpress.org/

edit: it can do pics to.

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.

So I don’t have a new iPhone 3G, but I do (finally) have the 2.0 software, so the only difference between my iPhone and the new one is 3G and GPS.

Getting the 2.0 software was a little problematic. It wasn’t available until late on Friday evening, and the re-blast process was quite painful. Half way through, iSync kicked in and confused it, so I had to manually do the update again.

I already had a .Mac account and of course now it’s called mobileme. The branding is a bit confusing though as there was no corresponding OS X update, so everything is still called .Mac and addresses are mac.com instead of me.com. It all works though, but confusing nonetheless.

[Update: this finally got fixed with an OS X system update]

I suppose the two biggest changes in 2.0 are “push” calendars, contacts and email, and installable apps from the App Store.

Push works very well, although the Preview 4.0 version of Safari I’m using has trouble with the web apps. Mails, etc do get pushed to the iPhone in a timely manner so all is well there. No more docking/syncing to keep everything up to date.

There doesn’t appear to be any ‘push’ support with OS X desktop apps – maybe there’s isn’t supposed to be, I don’t know. Bit of a shame though.

The App Store in both iTunes and on the phone work very well. 

I started with NetNewsWire, Facebook, Bloomberg, Crash Bandicoot Nitro Racer (Mario Kart clone), AirMe (photo->flickr app) and a few random things.

Mostly good. Nitro Racer is a laugh, but not as good as Mario Kart on DS.

AirMe looks like it could be interesting as it posts snapped pics to Flickr, titling and tagging based on location and weather. Example here.

Emailing a photo from the iPhone still shrinks it down to 800×600 and seems to strip out the geo-tagging data, so AirMe is somewhat essential. This pic was emailed from the normal camera app (and shows the screenshot capability of iPhone).

Oh, the other app that is quite useful is the remote control. Lets me control the iTunes library on my Mac Mini without having to have its screen switched on. Very useful that.

In summary, it all seems very good. Not sure I want/need to 3G version yet. Certainly not for £149 (or whatever) for the 16GB version. I think I’ll be quite happy to stay with the 2.5G one for some time. 

OK, enough iPhone posts for a while

Today is the day the iPhone 3G is launched, although I won’t be getting one.

However, a few will. At least one person I know at work managed to get an online order in and is waiting for DHL at home this morning.

Others I know will be camping out outside O2 or Carphone Whorehouse shops at 08.02 (about 5 mins ago) to get theirs.

For me, I was going to be satisfied with the 2.0 software upgrade on my ‘old’ iPhone, but sadly, this was not available at 7am this morning when I had to leave for work.

All a bit of a downer really.

And I have a hangover.

Update: bloke at work waiting on DHL? O2 said he didn’t actually make an order at all, even though they told him on two occasions that he had.

Much has been reported about the debacle that is the iPhone 3G release, and I too have been a victim.

I received a text message from O2 at 08.09 on the 7th telling me the website to let me upgrade was open from 08.00. Of course by that time it was completely hosed, so I tried again at a quieter moment at work about an hour later.

Still hosed.

And quite possibly the worst website ever, with each step requiring a multi-minute round trip to the O2 server. Why did it need my phone number? or account number? It knows who I am.

Anyway, at around 10.30 when I did finally manage to get some kind of order in, the site completely went hat stand, offering me, variously, blank forms, semi-filled in forms, stupid messages, etc. I gave up in the end.

Of course, the 16GB version that I wanted was completely sold out by that time anyway, so why O2 couldn’t just say so is beyond me. There were probably only about three in the entire country anyway.

Anyways, come Friday 11th, I shall upgrade the software on my current iPhone and just get on with life.

I don’t need GPS nor 3G, so really, I don’t need an upgrade at all.

I will upgrade at some point, but probably in a few weeks after the first batch of phones is cleared, 3G reception issues identified and other faults resolved