Mac News
News from El Pais regarding Apple's iPhone (European View)Here is my experience. On Friday, I showed up at the Apple Store located in The Falls in Southern Miami-Dade county at about 11 a.m. and the line was already VERY long. I stood in line for about 3 hours and the line just wasn't moving, so I left. I went to a local AT&T Store and it was a similar situation.
Saturday morning, I arrived at 4:30 a.m. and I was second in line. Unfortunately the store didn't open until 9:30 a.m. I had brought a book and a chair, so I just settled down. 9:30 comes around and first they let in the people who were there to not to purchase the iPhone, next they let in the people who had tickets from Friday. Soon, it was my turn and I bought a 16 gig and an 8 gig. The entire process took just a few minutes as I was only upgrading and I already had AT&T accounts.
Got home, was able to restore all of the data from my previous iPhones. It did take me a little time to figure out how to get the Push thing set up but I finally did it. The following morning, I found my iPhone with a nearly dead battery as it was receiving Push email all night (I get a lot of email). Then I found out you can use 'Fetch' instead and set the intervals at which the phone accesses data, it definitely extended battery life.
Because of my experience on Friday, when I did get home, I updated my original iPhone to version 2.0 software. The update went smoothly and I didn't end up with a "brick". I was even able to find a company that was willing to purchase my original iPhone for $199.00. I sent our original iPhones off the following day (after resetting them--erases everything), and they've already paid me--great experience.
Maybe I'm the exception to the rule that Leo et. al. are talking about, but I didn't expeience any problems at all.
08/08/08 I've been using Mobileme, now, for some time. I find it very useful. At first, I was using Push on my iPhone, but I found it drained the battery, so I switched over to Fetch and set it to every hour. That has made a tremendous difference in battery life and I still get the syncing I want.
I had been seeing on Apple's web site all about Mobileme which was set to replace .Mac. From what I read, it sounded really cool. Also the fact that my .Mac email addresses would continue to work sounded good too.
The first day that I upgraded my original iPhone to 2.0, Mobileme was not working. It wasn't until a few days later when I lauched system preferences on one of my desktop Macs that Mobileme actually replaced .Mac in the prefs panel.
Upon accessing Mobileme from my main user account, it reported to me that I only had an individual account (I have a family plan). I called up Apple but that was useless as they don't provide phone support for that and the information on the web page was useless. If you've already looked around my web site, you've probably seen all the pictures from our vacation in Europe that we took in late May. I had already uploaded all of the pictures to my .Mac account using iWeb. I tried launching iWeb and it was unable to find the pictures.
I opened my iDisk and was able to find them and they did continue to work on my web site but I didn't have the ability to actually access them to edit or add content. I looked at the Mobileme web site and again, no anwsers.
I did, out of curiousity, open iPhoto and found out that I could re-publish the pictures from there. iPhoto also gave me the ability to edit content as I desired. Another advantage was that I was able to publish the pictures in their actual size. iWeb was always putting up a smaller version--to save room?
So, with the new pictures uploaded and a bit of editing of code in my Fireworks menu bar, all was right again. I deleted the files created with iWeb and I'm happy (more or less). It would have been nice if they'd left my ability to access my original files from iWeb. I haven't checked yet, but I'm wondering about how/if iWeb still works with Mobileme as far as content creation. I use Dreamweaver CS3 to create this content on 'timcolliermiami'.
I've figured out Push and I'm now able to sync content to all of my Macs. So, all in all, I'm pleased with Mobileme.
I was very pleased with the App Store for the 2.0 software release. I had been waiting for Epocrates for the iPhone. I had been using the Web based one on the iPhone, it was OK but with the Edge Network, it was slow. The Epocrates application works perfectly! It's also free! I also downloaded 2 other applications, the App for eBay and the one for Paypal (both also free). Some people have been reporting that some of these apps make the iPhone crash. Thankfully, I have not had this experience.
There are several other applications that I'm interested in, but I have yet to download and PAY for any app for the iPhone when so many of them are really cool and free.
As well as being able to purchase and download applications on the iPhone, which download very fast on the 3G network, you can also purchase them on iTunes and they'll install next time you sync with your phone.
So call me happy.
Before purchasing my iPhone 3G, I went to AT&T's web site which had coverage maps for various areas. I checked the one for Miami-Dade county and South Florida in general. Coverage was mostly available in Martin County (Stewart), Palm Beach County (West Palm Beach), Broward County (Fort Lauderdale), Miami-Dade (Miami and unincorporated areas) and Monroe County (the Keys).
There are some areas in the western parts of all of these counties where there is no coverage at all even with Edge, but if you understand how the population is distributed along the SouthEast coast of Florida, nobody lives out there except alligators as it's all part of the Everglades. Of course there are a few exceptions to this also. Along the I-75 corridor which runs from Fort Lauderdale to Naples, there is coverage with the Edge Network. There is also a road called the Tamiami Trail which runs from Miami to Naples and then on to Tampa. There is 3G coverage to the Miami-Dade/Collier County border and then Edge coverage until you get to Fort Myers, then you get 3G again.
If you haven't figured it out already, these roads run from the East coast of Florida to the West coast of Florida, out in the middle of the state, you can drive for miles and miles and not see anything--not a good place for a breakdown--thus the cell phone support.
Simon Royal: http://www.simonroyal.co.uk
Lowendmac: http://www.lowendmac.com/