TwoThirtyAM

I have been using Google Voice for a couple days, and I think it is time to step it up! I have been looking into ways to more tightly integrate my new Google Voice service in with my phone. There are a couple of key areas to focus on when trying to seamlessly integrate Google Voice with your cell phone. Phone calls, Voicemails, and Text messages. As you of course know, I use an iPhone; more specifically an iPhone 3G (at time of writing), so I will be working to integrate with that. In time I suspect an Android phone will integrate with Google Voice seamlessly. Hell, they might even just give you a Google Voice phone number when you buy a Google Android Phone.

Stage I – Voicemail
I really like the voicemail in Google Voice, with its ease of use, ability to listen anywhere, and the transcribing features. Before today, if someone were to call my iPhone and I didn’t answer, they would get my AT&T Voicemail. Now don’t get me wrong, Visual Voicemail on the iPhone is great, but nowhere near as powerful as Google Voicemail. Now you may ask why not just give everyone my Google Voice number and problem solved right? Well, yes and no. It is going to take a while to get my new number circulated to everyone, and in the meantime it would be nice if I could start receiving all my voicemail in one place. There is also the problem of relaying text messages between my cell phone and Google Voice, but there will be more on that in blog posts to come. Anyway, back to the matter at hand: voicemail. I needed my iPhone number to go to my Google Voicemail when I don’t answer, and that is precisely what I have done. Here is how I did it.

Some of you iPhone users may know about things like Field Mode Testing which is a diagnostic tool that you can get to by typing *3001#12345#* on the dial pad in the phone app followed by pressing the call button. Nothing too special there, but a similar method to this is used to change where callers are sent when you do not answer your iPhone. Now, if you type *#61# followed by the call button, you will see a screen like the screenshot below, which shows you where your phone is currently forwarded to for voicemail. This is an AT&T central receiving center for AT&T voicemail from what I can tell. In case the regular number isn’t the same for everyone it would probably be a good idea to write this number down, just in case you need to revert back for some reason. The next step is for making the switch. Go ahead and fireup your dial pad again and enter the following:

*61*1<your google voice number>*11*<voicemail delay in seconds>#

If your Google Voice number was 555-555-1212 and you wanted your phone to ring for 20 seconds before going to voicemail it would look like the following:

*61*15555551212*11*20#

That’s it! Your iPhone will now fwd to your Google Voice number and subsequently your Google Voicemail when you don’t answer your iPhone.

Hope this helps you. Check back for additions to integrate the rest of the services more tightly.

As always leave comments, questions, and feedback in the comments below or send me an email twothirtyam@me.com

Time to get all conspiracy theory on you! This may be way out in left field, but I am just shooting from the hip here and telling you what it looks like to me on the surface.

It seemed to take forever but a couple weeks ago we finally got Skype for the iPhone! Sure it took longer than it should have but what on the iPhone doesn’t? Well, after the first install, we came up against the app crashing upon starting, consistently. Well long story short, it turned out to be some kind of incompatibility with Jailbroken iPhones and MobileSubstrate. So we were back up and running just fine after a MobileSubstrate update. So it was MobileSubstrate? Well no, take a look at the lengthly article by Saurik on the matter.

So fast forward to today, a new Skype app update, cool, so I install it. Upon launching the app, I get the following message “This version of Skype is only supported on unmodified iPhone OS 2.2″ which you can see in the screen shot.

Bottom line, what is this app doing that no other app is?
Why is this particular app so different in the way it works?
Do they not work with the same SDK that everyone else does?

I really hope this turns out to be no big deal and I have blown it way out of proportion to be honest.

With all the talk of actions being taken to make Jailbreaking “illegal” and so forth, I don’t want this app to turn into a fact finding mission for Apple/AT&T to begin shutting off service for iPhone users that are “breaking the rules”.

Comment below, tell me I am over reacting…please :)

(the app seems to work ok, but is this the beginning? Because obviously if you have Jailbroken your phone, you know that you are not going to get technical support on anything)

10 months. 6500 tweets. Addicted. Yes.

Ok, now that I have admitted it and it’s out in the open, lets move on. :)

My girlfriend and I went on a vacation to Mexico for 8 days. It was a fantastic trip!! I had been gathering up gear that I was going to need, during which I realized, I would be without the normal means of communication I have now. Internet everywhere I go, iPhone in my pocket, and so on. To normal people, this would be ok, but my addiction to bandwidth wouldn’t allow it! So instead I formulated ideas on how to twitter while being disconnected in mexico (for a reasonable amount of money). Now in all seriousness, I wouldn’t die if I couldn’t twitter (hopefully), but I took this as a challenge / project of sorts, just to see what could be done. Lets get into the details a little, here are the ideas I had..

Options:
- Peek e-mail device (possibly hacked to work outside USA).
- Unlocked / Jailbroken iPhone 3G w/ Mexico SIM card.
- Laptop with rented 3G Card.
- Rent a mexico cell phone.
- Laptop with WiFi (if available).
- No twittering at all. not an option ;)

Right away, let me kill of some of these options. Obviously no twittering at all was not an option, or why would I be writing this! Secondly, WiFi was non existent to say the least!

Ideally, the Peek device would have been perfect. It is cheap, simple, and used cell data instead of WiFi. If you setup an email gateway to sent tweets through email, you are set. The problem is that the unit is locked down to only work with the T-mobile SIM that it came with, and since the SIM is blocked from roaming it made the device completely useless.

Next we have my iPhone 3G. My iPhone is unlocked so all I had to do was get a local Mexico SIM. I got said SIM from a company called Movistar. The problem I found with getting SIMs in Mexico is that they are all pay-as-you-go, so they didn’t seem to have any that included cell data. This knocked out any hopes of using iPhone apps to twitter. Instead I was left with only SMS as an option. Great huh? well yes and no. Twitter uses a US short code which doesn’t work from mexico, so I had to setup a SMS gateway to pass the tweets through. This was the only method I tried that actually worked for me reliably.

On a last note, there was 1 single ethernet cable in the place we were staying that worked most of the time, although it seemed to have the slowest DHCP server on the face of the planet, so that was an option as well, sort of, although it didn’t allow for mobile twittering

Long story short, if you can’t get international data, SMS is totally the way to go!

It is 2009, and time to fix the problem of cell phone companies. It most likely needs no explanation, since everyone, and I mean everyone has been screwed by their cell phone company at least once, but more than likely multiple times. I’m not just talking about them doing something unfavorable directly, but indirectly as well. I will be more focused on indirectly here, but feel free to vent your direct instances in the comments below. :) What do I mean by indirectly? How is that possible? Well, look at your bill, pretty high isn’t it? Doesn’t really seem to be a fair price does it, for what you are getting. I am kind of getting off on a tangent from what the overall point of this post is, but it ties into what I am going to expressing soon, I swear!

So as far as the “fairness” of bills go, I want to pick on a couple of sections in particular. Minutes, Data, ETF, and Text messages.

Ok, now lets get into it. It is now 2009, and cell phones are now the defacto standard for communication for a lot of people. More and more people are dropping land lines in favor of cell phones, for many reasons: cost, ease of use, and convenience. This is great except when you look at what you are getting for the price you are paying. It seems to me that every part of the cell phone market is advancing except the business model of the “providers”. (Well battery technology isn’t keeping up either, but we can talk about that another time.) I don’t think that you can argue that cell phone providers aren’t working together to keep profits at a maximum, with little care given to the consumer. Arguments can be made that the minutes are “fair” but when it comes to data (which as a user group has exploded in recent years) we are getting ripped off big time! Generally as much as $60 a month. Along with this $60/month, we used to get truly unlimited data, not bad right? Well now that we as consumers are actually using the data, there is now a cap of 5GB in most if not all cases, so they can tack on some of their outrageous overage fees on us, just like with minutes.

Lets also not forget the, what should be illegal, act of charging you a fee to stop doing business with their company!? Sure sounds like extortion to me! Ever heard of a protection racket? Exactly. You have to pay off a lot of people (lobby much?) to have the ability to charge customers a fee for wanting to leave your terrible company. The worst part about it, is that they all do it, and they are all for the most part, equally terrible. What makes it worse is that they seem to all be in communication with each other and appear to be price fixing, simply because they can. One company charges X for a service, the next week, the other company changes the same. Where is the competition? What happened to earning customers’ loyalty through great service, instead of an extortion fee?

Finally, and the reason behind this writing, we as people are becoming more international, we are finding the need to have our phone work wherever we are at any given moment in time. Between the grossly expensive “international plans” and poor interoperability between carriers, this is no easy task. I am proposing we change from the old model of minutes to a newer model that is more aligned with our global society: units. For this example I will say that my Home Zone is the United States. The system works like this:

You will have a designated “Home Zone” which is the country where you will be primarily using your phone. You will purchase a plan from your carrier, but instead of getting lets say 1000 minutes per month, you receive 1000 units. Now with that said, when you make a call in your Home Zone, you will be assessed 1 Unit for every minute of talk time. Fairly straight forward so far right? Here is where the magic happens. Keep in mind your Home Zone is the United States, now you want to go to London. Normally you would have to either pay outrageously expensive roaming charges OR with this new way of doing business you simply pay (in units) the rate (in units) for that country, or Zone. So for instance lets say there is an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom that when users come from the US to the UK, they will be assessed 1.5 Units/Min. Now, without any pain to the customer, all the customer has to do is travel to their destination, turn their phone on and make a call. Units will be deducted from their balance.

Worldwide, carriers already have agreements in place for roaming, so why not simplify the process for everyone? Now I know this would mean the poor phone companies, who are living in the past, would not be raping the profits that they are now, which is why this idea will never come to fruition. But just think of the possibilities of a truly worldwide cell phone network, the possibilities are endless.

I would love to hear any additions or comments you have about this idea. Throw them down below in the comments section.

Thanks everyone, enjoy your txt messages that are $1000’s/MB. :)

The other day I had one of those moments where I realized why I switched to Mac and why I love the platform so much. It is simply put, the nearly perfect apps that are developed for the platform. There are a lot of apps out there for all platforms that do one thing or another “pretty good”. It is however rare, to find an app that is simply perfect. Although after looking through my Applications folder, I find a number of apps that are just that, perfect. This is my chance to take a little time and share some of my favorites. I would also like to give you a little background as to why they are so perfect. I realize that nothing is perfect, and there will be plenty of forum / comment trolls to flame me, calling me a “fan boy” or ready to point out all the “flaws” and bugs these apps have. Well without wasting too much time, let me address those folks, screw off and go back to living your sad and pathetic little life behind your 1337 screen name. Anyhow, for the rest of you, lets get onto the apps shall we? :)

1Password by: Agile Web Solutions. If you are looking for a state of the art password manager, this is your app. 1Password is not only a password vault, but has plugins for all your favorite browsers, and with the simple click of a button, it will recall your logon info and sign you into all your favorite sites. All of this is done safely and securely. A really nice app!

Adium by: Adium X. With all the IM services out there and all your friends and family all on different ones, you don’t want to have 3 or 4 different IM clients running. Not to mention, none of the “official” clients are very nice anyway. Well Adium solves all of that. Adium is a multi client IM app. You can add all your IM accounts into this one app and Adium does the rest. Not to mention Adium is very customizable and has many plug-ins. The absolute best in class app on the mac!

Coda by: Panic Software. Whether you are just learning to code web pages or are a seasoned pro, Coda is the app for you. Dubbed “one window web development”, Coda is laid out brilliantly to ensure you are as productive as possible. They really looked at how the workflow should be, and molded this beautiful app around that. Worth every penny!

HandBrake by: HandBrake. Want to take your DVDs with you on the road but don’t want to lug them around? Want to have all your movies in MP4 format on your media server in your house? This is your app! Handbrake will take your DVDs and rip them into many different file formats and types of compression to fit your needs. I personally rip everything into H.264 MP4s for the Mac mini media center we have. Works like a charm every time and it is beyond simple. Oh and I almost forgot to mention it is open source and FREE!!

MarsEdit by: Red Sweater Software. This app is for anyone and everyone that has a blog. It is a great app that allows you to compose all your posts offline, save drafts, edit and then post them with the click of a button. I used this app to write this post in fact. It works with a multitude of blog engines; I am using it with WordPress. Clean layout, a must have if you want to blog from anywhere.

OmniFocus by: Omni Group. It’s all about GTD (getting things done) these days, and as far as I am concerned, this is the way to do it! If you are familiar with the GTD ideology or just want to stay organized, GET OMNIFOCUS! Get your tasks out of your head, organize them, and do them. Simple as that. This is truly brilliant software.

Quicksilver by: Blacktree. “Act without doing.” Quicksilver is a launcher that allows you to be more productive in launching apps than anyone really should be. To be fair, launching apps is about 1% of what Quicksilver is capable of. All I can say is, get this app and let the addiction begin. Once you start using Quicksilver, you will wonder how you ever managed without it!

Transmission by: Transmission Project. Transmission is by far my favorite BitTorrent client. It has a super clean UI, and is very easy to use. It has a good amount of preferences for setting up your BitTorrent workflow as well. One other feature it has that I love is that is has a webserver in it that will allow you to control your active torrents from any web browser. I find this to be very useful, and use it from my iPhone quite often; really slick.

Transmit by: Panic Software. Transmit is what you need if you do a lot of FTP transfers. Transmit is made by the same folks that make Coda, so right there you know it’s awesome. Transmit is a 2 pane style FTP client. It has “your stuff” on the left and “their stuff” on the right. It has a very simple and intuitive layout, making it easy to use. The layout also makes your FTP jobs much faster and more productive.

Twitterrific by: The Icon Factory. If you use Twitter then check out this little app. There are a ton of Twitter apps out there, but so far on the mac desktop this is the one I like the best. It is very un-intrusive and sits up in your menu bar. It has a ton of ways to customize alerts. The free version works exactly the same as the paid version with the exception of an ad every once in a while, which isn’t bad at all. They also have an iPhone version which works equally well! Oh, and don’t forget to follow me ;) http://twitter.com/heartagram

Aperture by: Apple. If you are an avid photographer or a new amateur photographer (like me), this is the app you need for photo manipulation and management, everything from color management to rating images. It also adds the ability to add rich detailed meta data to your images. There is a tethered shooting option as well, to shoot and add pictures to your projects automatically. It is a little pricey for the amateur at $199, but once you use it and see its power, you will find it to be totally worth it. Free Aperture Trial.

AppZapper by: AppZapper. Need to un-install apps that you don’t need anymore? This is what you want. AppZapper does one thing and it does it very well. Open AppZapper, drag your unwanted apps onto it, and it will find all associated files with that app. At this point you ZAP it, and the app and all associated files will be gone!

Cha-Ching by: Midnight Apps. Managing your finances is not always the easiest thing. But it can become a little more friendly with the help of Cha-Ching. This little financial app is the easy to use alternative to Quicken and the likes. It’s very easy to use and intuitive. If you want something simple to use or want to replace your current software that has too many “features,” check out this little piggy.

Evernote by: Evernote Corporation. This is by far the best application for note taking and storing. It is the most cross platform app I use by far. It works with Mac, Windows, iPhone, Web browser, and Windows Mobile! With this app you can take your notes on anyone of those clients and all your notes are stored in the cloud and synced everywhere, making your notes accessible anywhere, anytime. You can tag your notes, and even add voice and pictures. One of the coolest features is the ability to OCR text from pictures! You have to check this app out for your note taking needs.

Growl by: Growl Team. Growl is a notification system for OS X. Quite simply, Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen. It is a must have for everyone using OS X. It is free and beyond useful!

Overflow by: Stunt Software. If you are like me then you hate when you have too many things in your dock! Although it would be handy to be able to have more apps in reach like they are in the dock. Enter Overflow: with overflow you have a single icon in your dock, that when clicked, will present you with a fully customizable grid of all your apps. You can set them up in categories or how ever you like. It is a fantastic companion to Quicksilver, when you know what you want but the name isn’t coming to mind to type it. Click the Overflow icon and you are launching your app in 2 clicks!

Perian by: Perian Project. Perian, dubbed “the swiss-army knife for quicktime” is a Quicktime component that adds support for many video file formats. If you have a video file that won’t play because you don’t have the correct codec, install Perian, and chances are you will be good to go.

Simplify Media by: Simplify Media. This app lets you listen to your music from practically anywhere! Simplify Media lets you listen to your home music collection in iTunes over the internet from almost anywhere. I use it to listen to my home iTunes collection while I am at work. It all streams seamlessly through iTunes, it’s like the music is on that computer. There is also an iPhone client that lets you listen on the go. One other really cool feature is the ability to add up to 30 friends’ libraries, so you can listen to their music in the same way. This gives you practically an infinite song library! Breakthrough app.

Visual Hub by: Techspansion. I was a little hesitant to put this one on the list because the developer has stopped work on it and the app is effectively dead :( But because this app is SO great, I am putting it on the list anyway. This app, plain and simple, is THE video transcoder for the mac. It can transcode practically anything into anything else. If there is any way for you to still get a copy of this app, do it, you won’t be disappointed!

Connect360 by: Nullriver. Ok, since you can’t actually get that last pick anymore, here is a bonus pick! This one is for all the Xbox360 owners out there. This little app allows you to use your mac as a media center extension so you can stream music, videos, and photos to your Xbox360 from your mac. It does exactly what it says and does it well.

There you have it, I hope you enjoyed the list and got some good info on what software to get for your mac. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Also, if you have picks that you like better than any of the ones I have listed here, send those along as well!

I have had an iPhone since version 1.0, and although the iPhone is great, it has been a rough road. The first generation iPhone was absolutely amazing, considering what its competitors were at launch. I was in line for 6 hours on launch day to get mine, and it was completely worth it. After a few months, much of the wow began to wear off after I started noticing what it didn’t have. It didn’t have MMS, video recording, or the ability to install extra applications. Along came Jailbroken applications, which did alleviate much of this. The problem with that is that jailbreaking wasn’t really an option for the “everyman”.

Throughout the 1.x releases Apple added a FEW extra features and fixed bugs, but that was pretty much the extent. It wasn’t really until the 2.0 release that we began to really have the “New Platform” that we had been promised. Problem though, 2.0 had a TON of bugs and flakey apps. Apple hit us with a couple incremental updates: 2.0.1, then 2.0.2.

Some of the biggest issues with the initial 2.x releases were:
- Horrible battery life.
- Insanely long backup times. (hours)
- Very crashy apps

Flash forward, and we have iPhone Firmware Version 2.1

Version 2.1 finally feels like a finished product. It fixed a lot of the battery life issues, reception issues, and overall crashiness.

Along with iPhone 2.1 came iTunes 8. With these 2 updates combined, we are definitely seeing a product that feels finished. I am in no way saying that as customers, we are getting everything we deserve, but it’s getting closer. We still are missing major features that are available in just about every other phone on the market.

I would love to end this article by saying that Apple is heading in the right direction and steering the ship toward the island of happy customers, but this is very much not the case! Apple has been making moves lately concerning the iPhone that frankly scare the hell out of me. This once dream phone is starting to turn into a locked down nightmare. With Apple seeming to block whatever they want for any reason and letting through apps that have little more value than a gimmick, it leads me to wonder, do they want this phone to be what it could be, what it should be, and what we deserve it to be? Or rather have they been in first place in this market just long enough to lose sight of the real goal?

Being a loyal user, I am hoping much of this is going to blow over fairly soon and they will realize the error of their ways. If they don’t, they are going to have a very serious problem of users switching to other options. More importantly perhaps, if they keep screwing their developers, they aren’t going to have enough content to keep the few users that do stick around.

If the problem does continue, or heaven forbid gets worse, it will make getting the word out that much more important. I hope I won’t have to, but just in case, I am starting a project called Apptimism. This project will be for developers to get the word out about their dealings with Apple. It will also be a place for developers to have a pool of beta testers to choose from. Additionally, it will lend itself to promotion of apps. The main reason for this project is to help the end user, the customer, get what they deserve. This in turn will give everyone a better overall iPhone experience.

Best of luck to everyone and here’s to Apple doing the right thing!

UPDATE 10/1/08: Apple has removed the NDA! Looks like things are starting to turn around.

Today we look at an iPhone app called Dynolicious. A Dyno in my phone? what? how does that work?

The idea of an in car dyno is nothing new, G-Tech is a popular product in this arena, but at $200 – $300 it’s kind of pricey for the average person with curiosity. The iPhone is the same price, but hell you already have that. This is only an additional $13. The iPhone has a great set of accelerometers in it, which is what this app uses to measure HP.

This app measures the following and does it pretty damn accurately I must say:
* 0-60 MPH
* Other Speed Tests (0-10 MPH through 0-100 MPH in 10MPH increments)
* Quarter Mile Elapsed Time
* Quarter Mile Trap Speed
* Elapsed Time and Trap Speed for standard intervals (60′, 330′, 1/8 Mi, 1000′)
* Lateral G’s (current and peak)
* Braking G’s (current and peak)
* Wheel Horsepower
* Estimated Engine Horsepower

Below are some screenshots of the app. For 13 bucks it’s a cool little gadget to mess around with if you are a car enthusiast, or just curious about your cars performance.

Also check out Garage419’s video: Dynolicious vs. G-Tech

click images to enlarge.

Rating:

Well I finally broke down and did it.. My iPhone 3G is hacked, well Jailbroken to be more specific. I couldn’t take the BORING, stock, Apple mandated layout of the iPhone anymore! I had my first generation iPhone jailbroken as well and it was fantastic with all the themes and little interface tweaks, it was almost limitless. I then left the dream world when I got my 3G and I was back to Apple lockdown. The newness of the 3G kept me distracted for a little while, but it finally was time to do something about it. I waited a while to jailbreak the 3G because the 2.0 firmware has been so damn buggy; I wanted to wait until it got a little more stable before I started messing around with it and potentially making it crash more than it already did (if that is even possible). Apple did a good enough job on their own making everything crash. So I guess you could say it was a “it can’t get much worse” kind of situation. Pwnage Tool 2.0.3 was finally released which now supported iPhone firmware 2.0.2, so off I went to build the jailbroken 2.0.2 custom restore firmware IPSW file. I then did one last backup before loading the firmware, just in case. I have to say this was the smoothest jailbreak yet. I installed the hacked firmware, restored my backup, and presto I was back up and running as if nothing had changed! With the exception of course that I now was able to load jailbroken apps on my phone. I immediately installed SSH of course so I could transfer files to and from the phone. Then winterboard for theming. Qik for live video streaming. And a few other tweaks. After this process you have the wonderful screenshot below of what my iPhone looks like now. So much better!! The phone really feels like it is mine now. Oh and one last thing, if you have been thinking about jailbreaking your phone or didn’t even know you could, do it! If you don’t know how, find someone to help you or even email me. It makes iPhone life so much more enjoyable.

Extra: weird side effect, as you may know I have had the LONGEST backup times previously (like hours). After the jailbreak my backups take minutes! Quite possibly completely unrelated, but none the less, I’ll take it!

Jailbreaking = loving your iPhone again.

[I did this whole post using the Wordpress iPhone app, it's pretty rad!]

Well, I waited a while to do this post because I really don’t feel you can write a good review after only using something for 3 days. So I have had an iPhone since they were first released June 29th, 2007. The phone was amazing then, and is still amazing now. It did of course have its shortcomings. It had little functionality in the beginning, with no third party apps and a dismal selection of included apps. It had no MMS, no cut and paste, slow EDGE data speeds, and so on. They slowly added to the phone making it better and better. Skip ahead 6 months or so and all of the sudden it is no longer a phone but a “platform.” Things were beginning to get interesting, all of the sudden it wasn’t just a $600 phone, but a $600 pocket computer. It still wasn’t quite there, but we held on and hoped for Apple to do the right thing with our new platform. Right around the 1 year anniversary of the iPhone there was talk of third party applications finally coming to the iPhone, as well as a new model. This model dubbed “iPhone 3G” because of it’s new 3G capabilities, also had one other interesting feature to add to the mix, real GPS. Gone were the days of the somewhat inadequate cell tower based location. At first, to be quite honest, this seemed a little gimmicky, and I really didn’t see any use for it. To go one step further, I wasn’t even going to get an iPhone 3G. This was because the new 2.0 Firmware on the 3G was also available on the first generation phone at no cost, so it was 90% the same phone, so why upgrade? The new phone had a different design, plastic back instead of metal, 3G data speeds and GPS. Is that really enough of an upgrade? At first I was glad I didn’t decide to upgrade after seeing the launch day come and go and see that the lines for the 3G were even more insane that the lines for the first iPhone.

My girlfriend did not have a first generation iPhone, but always wanted one after watching me day after day fondling my iPhone. With the launch of the 3G and the price drop, she decided it was her time to have some iPhone action. We attempted to get her one 4-5 times, every time failing. Finally we woke up really early one saturday to go sit in line. Mind you this was about 3 weeks AFTER the launch, and still with the waiting in lines. Anyway, we waited and got a ticket to get a phone, in fact 2 tickets, because why not, we were both there. I won’t bore you with the waiting in line details, but it went fairly smoothly. After completing her transaction, she was the proud owner of a 16GB White iPhone 3G!!

But wait…I though you got an iPhone 3G also? Well, I did. I really didn’t want to upgrade and spend the money on the 3G, but my girlfriend convinced me. How did she convince me? Well, she bought me an iPhone 3G! I know, she is the BEST G/F ever!! :)

So out we walked from the apple store with 2 new shiny White iPhone 3G’s!

Ok, now for the “1 month of solid use” portion of the review. Beware, it might get grim. :(

I will preface this by saying, that yes I am a hardcore Apple user, and not even that will skew this portion.

After first receiving the 2.0 firmware a couple days earlier than launch, all seemed to be well in the land of iPhone. But that was truly just the beginning. I have had more than my fair share of problems with the new software. Let me start with the syncing. This should be an easy task. Plug phone in, clock sync, unplug phone, done. Well that has not been the case. Throughout my use of the phone, the sync times have gotten progressively longer and longer, with the longest sync time to date being almost 4 hours!! Let me clarify, this is not the sync portion, just the backup portion of the sync that takes place before EVERY sync.

Next we have application crashing. Applications seems to crash A LOT on the phone. This has been alleviated somewhat with the 2 firmware updates that have been released. 2.0.1 and 2.0.2, but it is still pretty relevant. I understand that a lot of this could be due to bad coding practices on behalf of the developers, but since apple keeps talking how they are going to fix this “issue” in future updates, I imagine Apple is somewhat to blame.

To date I have done 5 full restores on the phone, and re-insalled iTunes 6 times attempting to fix issues I have had with the phone. To be honest I think it may have had something to do with the number of apps you have installed. I had as many as 62 third party applications installed on my iPhone, and since deleting a good number of them, the phone does seem to run a little smoother. I have to say though, 2-3 days ago I was so fed up with the phone I wanted to chuck it and get something else, because I had had enough! Alas, I still have my iPhone 3G though. why? Because despite the things that piss me off about it, THERE IS NO PHONE THAT EVEN COMES CLOSE TO THE IPHONE! PERIOD! Don’t even try to throw your crappy Nokia N95, or any of that other nonsense at me, because face it, it’s not as good. If it was, I would be using it! The only phone right now (that isn’t even out yet) that might come close is one of the Android iterations, but I will believe those when I actually see them.

So there you have it, the iPhone 3G has some problems, but it still the best phone on the market. That statement alone should really open up the eyes of other handset makers, because they are doing a piss poor job of competition (if you can even call it that).