Mac.LTL

I just want to rant a bit about my iPhone 3G. I bought it the day it came out. It’s been quite a headache. I’ve already returned it for a new one, hoping that would solve my problems. I’ve been updating the firmware and iTunes as soon as they’re available. I’m experiencing dropped calls. My iPhone’s screen will turn black as I’m using it. It had a problem with frequently restarting, but that doesn’t seem to be happening anymore. I’ve experienced a problem where none of the apps I’ve installed will open, even after turning the phone on and off. I’ll just have to do a restore. I think this has happened three times. On the note of restores, I’ve done that about a half dozen times so far. For me, backing up the iPhone takes hours and I have no idea why. I’ve done the restore, I’ve removed apps, I’ve deleted and reinstalled iTunes. Much of the troubleshooting I’ve done was from the instruction of Apple’s tech support.

And of course, there’s the recent discovery that you can get by the locked phone screen by making an emergency call and double pressing the home button.

I’ve been showing the iPhone to people and suggesting they also get one because it’s such a great phone. The hardware is great. Perfect size. Lots of features. Great applications. But at this point, it’s just not stable enough for me to recommend to people. In fact, I realized that when I’ve been showing the phone to people, I’ve been trying to avoid indicating to them that it has problems. It will shut down as I’m showing it to them and I’ll just keep talking and describing the features as I turn it back on. At this point, I’m just not recommending people get it. I tell them it’s not very stable right now and there’s been a lot of problems and they may wish to wait for future updates and revisions.

In all honesty, I feel like I’m back working on the Windows platform. I have a Windows laptop from work and I hate it. Although I’m venting about my iPhone experience, while I’m at it, I might as well also note that 10.5 hasn’t been the most stable experience for me, either. And I understand Mobile Me has been a problem for people.

Oh, and on top of all that, when I returned my iPhone at the Apple Store, they had me scheduled for 6:00, but I ended up having to wait 45 minutes longer because they were backed up.

I was much happier with my Mac experience two years ago.

I sometimes like to try and support the underdog in businesses if it’s not too much out of my way. I worry about monopolies and want to promote competition. But I think this search on Ask.com really exemplifies why other Search Engines aren’t always quite as good as Google and even Yahoo! and Live.

Awhile ago, I wanted to go to the Ubuntu website. Silly me, I forgot what the Ubuntu website address was. Did it end in .com or .org? Was it just “ubuntu” or “ubuntulinux”? So, like any other web surfer, I went to the search engine to type in Ubuntu, figuring it would be the first search result and I could just give it a click and go straight to the site. I figure, Ask.com could probably handle this; no need to expand the Google monopoly. Well, Ubuntu.com was not one of the search results for the first page and there was even an adult-oriented picture that was being displayed as one of the image search results. (Though, that image is still related to Ubuntu.) I took a screenshot, actually.

This was awhile ago when I did that search, so of course I thought I’d give it another try.  TheWikipedia entry aside, Ubuntu.com has managed to climb to the number two search result at Ask.com.  Not sure if I should be congratulating Ask or Ubuntu.  However, it does seem that the Ask.com search does still yield two particularly adult-oriented images.  Ask.com shows the results of the image search in the sidebar.

I should note that Google’s filter does also display those same two images in a search, but apparently Google favors breasts over butts.

I recently had a terrible experience with AT&T getting internet at my new apartment. I was interested in getting internet as quickly as possible and they just happened to be the first people I was able to get in contact with. I called AT&T. I ended up getting their most expensive internet service and a cheap land line. I was told my phone line would be active by Thursday and my DSL modem would arrive by Friday. I purchase a phone and plug it in on Thursday and I get no dial tone. I call AT&T on Friday at 5:00PM and they tell me my line is active and I should try it again and that my DSL modem could still arrive in the next three hours. They tell me their call center is open for another hour after that. (Experience getting transfered around on the phone and giving the same information several times was frustrating. I was told their was a 24 hour tech support I could have called, but apparently when I called back at 8:05 they weren’t open.) So anyway, I check my phone again and I don’t have a dial tone. Not receiving my DSL modem, I called back and couldn’t get in touch with anyone.

This is when I got a little frustrated. When I don’t have internet, I can’t get work done and I don’t have any entertainment. I spent the evenings playing single player video games and staying afloat with my iPhone.

So that very night I ended up getting in touch with Astound. They were incredibly responsive. They told me they could have a tech out by Monday to install everything for me. Considering there was a weekend and they were getting me this in shorter time than AT&T, I was quite pleased with that. Moreover, they had much better options for getting a cable modem. They came out and set everything up that Monday perfect. I came home from work and had internet. Ran a speed test and everything was just as it should be.

But back to AT&T. Now that I had found a solution with Astound, I had to call and cancel service with AT&T. They put me through to some “customer retention department” or something. I explained I wanted to cancel my service. They asked why and I explained it was because I wasn’t getting any service. (It’s not my intention to hassle these poor phone operators, so please don’t misunderstand my tone. It was very calm and constructive.) The young lady offered me a month of free service or something like that. I explained that the cost wasn’t the issue and I would gladly pay $100 a month of I could be certain I would receive reliable service. I told her I would like to cancel everything unless she could somehow guarantee that my future experiences with customer service would be responsive and ultimately satisfactory. She agreed to continue with canceling my order. She then proceeded to tell me I would be charged $40 for AT&T activating the line. I had to explain to her several times my unwillingness to pay because I never got a dial tone and did not want to pay for service that I never received. She told me there was some sort of FCC thing that said they had to. I’m certain she didn’t know what she was talking about.

She ended up sending me to a supervisor, but as that was going on, she told me her supervisor had noticed that charge was waved for me when I first ordered the service. So this wasn’t even an issue. I did end up speaking with the supervisor, but she was incredibly rude and self-righteous. In speaking with her, all I wanted to do was to confirm the situation and ensure I would be receiving no charge. Even when I tried to repeat what she had just told me to make sure I understood, she would interrupt.

And here’s the other thing, the DSL modem ended up arriving late. They told me to just refuse to accept it when it arrived so it would be returned to them. It did not arrive on Saturday as they had told me it should, since it didn’t arrive on Friday.

I really am annoyed enough with AT&T to want to ditch them on my cell phone. If I weren’t locked into AT&T with my iPhone… ugh…

But much thanks to Astound. I can’t speak for all customers and I don’t know them very well as a company. But I had a very positive experience with them thus far and wanted to note that.

My iPhone broke again and I had to do a restore. It was the most peculiar experience. I plug my iPhone in to sync and charge it and I notice that my videos and music are being listed as other. (As you can see from the pics.) I immediately check and I can’t find any music or videos on my iPhone. So I unplug it and plug it back in and I get the same thing. Frustrating. Still looking forward to the 2.0 update, though.

I installed the latest version of ZiPhone to jail break my iPhone. I installed several apps and everything was working pretty well. I was enjoying Tap Tap Revolution. After installing a terminal application, my iPhone ran into a slight problem…

(Sorry the video stalls a bit.)

Alright, here’s something kind of nice about Windows XP. I’m sure it’s happened to every Mac user at least once. You mistakenly open several documents launching twenty different applications. Although Vista is plagued with annoying alerts and irrelevant messages, this is one of the few that should be in Mac OS X.

I wouldn’t typically say I talk much about other companies taking or building off of Apple design ideas.  But I was in a Best Buy yesterday and found two computers side-by-side.  One was the current iMac and the other was a desktop computer from HP with a monitor that looked a little too much like the iMac.  It was black around the screen with a metal color around the edge.  Like the iMac, the keyboard fits very well under the computer laying on the base.

Although, I have not too much against this kind of thing.  I was actually a big fan of the eOne from eMachine.

Hairline cracks are still an issue with the MacBooks it seems. I purchased a MacBook about when they first came out. I posted previously about the problem I had with that first MacBook and hairline cracks. I actually ended up with a rather poor experience with AppleCare having my MacBook returned with several cracks still present, despite explicitly noting them on the phone. The MacBook was also returned with a new problem that wasn’t there before; the mouse button stuck and had to be pressed much harder and directly in the center to work.

Later, I upgraded to a MacBook with a Core 2 Duo and a bigger hard drive and more RAM. I’ve had it less than a year and I’m having a problem with hairline cracks again. It’s in about the same place where my wrist rests while typing. It’s a bit frustrating knowing that if I want this fixed, I will have to send it to Apple and go without it for seven to ten days.

Browsing through some of my archived data, I found this old project I had worked on in high school. This actually made for a great server at LAN parties for its time. It was also very durable and could take a kick.

Specs…

• K6-2 500MHz
• 192MB PC-100 RAM
• 1.2GB HD
• 4x CD-ROM
• 2 floppy disk drives
• AGP Rage 128 video card
• 2 PCI Trident video cards
• Sound Blaster Pro
• 3 NICs

So what do I find underneath a power strip behind a desk all dusty and forgotten… a Palm Vx from 3com. I wanted one of these so badly when I was in high school. Having an amazing mobile device just seemed so cool. I ended up getting a far less expensive and less feature rich DaVinci. (Copying a certain older brother. You know who you are! Not the best tech investment.)

Now of course, I’m keen on my iPhone and even my slim and sleek Nintendo DS to compliment it. But nonetheless, this was an incredibly nostalgic moment. I immediately looked up all the old specs for the device. I recall there is still a big following for the Apple Newton. In fact, I know of at least one T-shirt you can buy supporting it. This has got me thinking about how tempting it would be to look into some old mobile devices that I can pick up for cheap that are incredibly hackable. I’m too scared to do anything to my iPhone. $400 is an expensive phone to break. And even if I can restore it fine, this is my main line of communication to the world. As soon as I start tinkering with it, I lose that connection while I’m hacking it.

I’ve got my Nintendo DS setup to play ROMs and games like Doom. It’s also setup to be an MP3 player. Which isn’t of much use with the iPhone.

I’m actually pretty amazed with how thin the Palm Vx was. I hadn’t held one since my hands weren’t fully grown. Soon as I get a chance I’m going to see about getting one and tinkering with it. Although, I’ll have to make sure it will work with my computer as best I can.

I remember considering my TI-86 graphing calculator as one of my awesome mobile devices. I use to program games for it with the scripting language they had for it. I could only view five lines of code at a time. That was pretty hardcore. Paradoxically, spending all my time programming using pretty advanced math for my age is the reason I received a D grade in my algebra class. “Hmm… as Adam’s teacher, I really need to get him to return to doing materiel that he finds remedial and not encourage his gift. Who cares if he’s acing all the tests? He needs to be doing his homework! Programming video games is no different than playing them.” Okay, I never actually heard my teacher say that, but I’m sure that’s what she was thinking.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my nostalgia.