Still, it's not official if the latest update is bricking the iPhone. Reports are mixed on the several Apple related sites. This might mean that even less people than you might think had converted their iPhone. One would think that if thousands of people had removed the simlock, that the reports are pooring in. But they don't (so far). Another possibility is that everyone is waiting to see what really happens.
Apple could have avoided this be making sure that everyone who buys an iPhone also gets a carrier subscription before they leave the store. But somehow this wasn't the case. It was possible to buy the iPhone, take it home, and choose the subscription when you activate it. This leaves lot's of room to find way around the AT&T carrier service. And this is what's happening.
Apple (and AT&T) wouldn't mind as much if every unlocked phone had an AT&T carrier subscription with it. Hell, they will get their (monthly) money anyway. No matter what SIM is inserted.
So, I can't blame the users for unlocking their phones. And I can understand the measures Apple is taking, cause they might be loosing money on those unlocked phones. But they somehow let it happen by releasing unactivated phones into the wild.
Knowing the nature of the average resident of the United
"I will see you in court" States this hasn't ended yet :-)
B.t.w., here in the Netherlands, it's quite normal to sign a contract before you get the 'sponsored' phone. After that they don't care what you do with the phone. The carrier gets his money for the next (couple of) years no matter what.
Apple had scheduled a special event in London this Tuesday (September 18th). Rumors are that the European
iPhone is being announced.
As you might have read, I started saving money for 'my' iPhone when it's arriving here in Holland. But I'm not so sure any more.
First, my cellphone provider (
KPN) isn't mentioned (yet) among those who MIGHT sell it.
Second, the phone must be simlock free (see the first reason), because I already have a SIM, with all the goodies enabled (GPRS, UMTS, HSDPA, etc.), and it's being 'paid' for by my employer.
Third, I kinda like my
Nokia E61i. It's got a keyboard. I can surf the web, and access my (private) e-mail. And ever since I got the Nokia, I haven't watched a single movie on it, or listened to a mp3 (on the phone).
Guess I'll be saving my money for a
iPod touch. Just in case my
iPod photo (20GB) goes up in smoke.
Yesterday, Apple Launch a complete new line of music players. Every player is renewed. The biggest changes are:
As I might have mentioned my 'old' iPod Photo 20GB is acting up, so I was kinda going to buy me a new one, but which one do I want? The
iPhone touch is just gorgeous, but the iPod Classic holds ton's of music and video's...... *sigh*.
Guess I have to let fate decide....
Well it sort of features in the new Bruce Willis action movie. The phone is visible for a couple of seconds [50 minutes into the movie].
This first picture shows the phone numbers on the businesscard. I guess he's gonna make a call to the other characters cellphone ((202)-555 1313), but why enter '12'? A slip-up or is this just a typo since he's under a lot of stress :-)
B.t.w. mister Willis doesn't have much to do (see calendar), and he obviously has some bluetooth device, otherwise one wouldn't put the Bluetooth menu in the standby menu on the phone.... Other observations show that there is no cell reception and that his battery is almost empty. This does match up with the events (to come) in the movie. So they did mind the (very) small details.
Apple released the iPhone last Friday in the US. I didn't report on this, because a) I can't get my hands on it atm, b) there was a lot of media coverage this weekend, c) I had better things to do.
They sold over half a million phones this weekend. That's great, BUT....
There are some elementary things missing on the phone. Things I couldn't live with. Most of them are mentioned
here.
As you might have noticed, I have a Nokia E61i at this moment. This phone was meant to be kinda temporary, since the iPhone won't be available in Europe just yet. But if Apple won't resolve most of those 'issues' there won't be an iPhone for me.
How lame is it that you can't use Bluetooth the way it's meant for transferring files, 'abusing' it for a modem, so you can hook it up to your laptop and surf the Internet. At this moment, every other (Windows Mobile or Symbian based) phone on the market with has more functionality than the current iPhone. The only drawback on the current phones is that they're not made by Apple.
So I'll stick to my Nokia until they fixed those elementary functions.
Last week, I recieved my new Nokia E61i. As soon as I tried to connect to my own IMAP server (over SSL/TLS) is started nagging about the (selfsigned) SSL certificate.
The E61 has a certificate store, so I should be able to add other Root CA's to this store, but this is where the trouble began.
The manual has a chapter on certificates, but it lacks a working explanation on "how to import third party root CA's". On my old iPaq, it was simply upload a DER encoded certificate, click on it, and it would install. Well this doesn't work on the E61 (and many other Symbian-based) phones. Just 'google', and you'll find lot's of people with similar problems...
The working solution I found uses a website from which you download the certificate with the phone, but there is a catch; you need to add a MIME-type to the website containing the certificate (hence the admin rights).
For the last two years I've been using a HP iPaq HX2790 for my agenda, and contacts. At the time I was quite pleased, until I started
adding functionality to the device. So the time was right to start looking for something else.
Something else meant a device without any Windows Mobile Crap. Furthermore, it should combine a phone and an organizer, AND a small QWERTY keyboard. These criteria didn't leave that many options, so I went for the
Nokia E61i. A nice all-in-one device with;
- Wireless (802.11b/g)
- Bluetooth
- InfraRed
- Multiple e-mail accounts via POP3 / IMAP (as well over SSL/TLS)
- Nokia PC-Soute for Synching the device with Outlook etc.
- And lot's more
So I'll be trying to figure this thing out the next couple of weeks. I just hope that this device is a little more user friendly than the Windows Mobile devices.
AppleInsider found a filed
patent by Apple that reveiles a possible future new iPod design.
And again, I can't wait
My new home cinema set arrived today. Earlier I mentioned that I'd probably get me the
Philips 42 inch TFT, but after seeing lot's of those screens work, I decided to get a
Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 (1080p). With a new screen, I also needed a new Home Cinema Receiver. This became the
Pioneer VSX-2016AV-S. Together with a nice
KEF iQ7 speakerset, and an active Klipsch subwoofer.
Oh my god, this setup rocks....
Last year, I bought a
HP iPaq hx2790. Partly because I'd been without a PDA for a couple of years, but mostly because I don't want to boot up my laptop to see my mail or calendar.
The hx2790 comes with Windows Mobile 5 (WM5), wireless, bluetooth, fingerprint scanner, and built-in encryption. All very very nice.... Well, there is a downside to this nirvana;
- Wireless broke down after a couple of weeks (also see an old post on my old blog). The first time they fixed it... they didn't fix it at all. So it had to go back for repairs again.
- On the weirdest occasions all my synced e-mail bodies were complete gibberish or they were just empty. The only way to solve this was break the pairing with ActiveSync remove everything from the PDA, and sync it again.
[SOLUTION: disable the HP Encryption Tools crap]
- 9 out of 10 times I had to reset the device when I powered it on. So most of the times it would be more time efficient to boot up my laptop.
[SOLUTION: don't use the HP Encryption tools for securing your device. Just use the simple standard PIN code for logging on to the PDA]
- Applications would crash easily. Result: more resets.
[SOLUTIONS: do not install third-party software]
As long as I stick to this everything works just fine.
This makes me wonder why would I buy an PDA with a gazillion megabytes of free space, and lot's of SD/MMC/CF slots for adding even more bytes. Every program I add makes the device more unstable.
During these periods of complete misery I also tried a PDA encryption suite of Utimaco. I just wanted some sort of encryption to protect the data on the device. Their latest software version includes support for the hx2790 fingerprint scanner, but after installing the software everything went berserk (again). Uninstalling didn't work, so the only solution to get back in control again was to reset the damn thing to factory defaults.....
One more thing; why is it that EVERY older Windows Mobile version has an iPaq backup program for backing up SETTINGS, and the WM5 OS doesn't have this. Every time when I needed to reset the thing to factory defaults (about 8 to 10 times so far), I had to setup my mail accounts, etc manually. This feature isn't even available on ActiveSync for WM5.
No more Windows Mobile devices for me in the future. I just hope that this crappy piece of software holds on till the end of the year when the iPhone is being released.
