In other news: iPhone 3G! FARK YEAH!

Oh, and for all you haters: Lowest price for a new Tom Tom GPS = $199.
Lowest price for a new iPhone with GPS (and phone, music, video, monkey ball, etc...) = $199. And yes, it will have turn by turn directions in the near future.

Gadget pr0n will follow once I get my invisible shield on it

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Riley--one of the fur kids--on my lap supervising

Now when you visit this site on the iPhone or iPod Touch, you'll see a layout optimized specifically for those devices! I hope you like it, I sure do.

Also: "Akismet has caught 34,650 spam for you since you first installed it." Best damned plugin ever conceived. Enough said.

I'll first tell you what I did so you don't have to repeat it, or at the least can save it for last, but if you're impatient just scroll to the end of this post.

The Issues.. Oh god the issues!

The problem started Saturday morning when I was lying in bed and decided to check my email. Our roommate had just moved out and took with him our wireless network (his hardware, but I was managing it), but seeing the little blue "E" icon that meant i have EDGE service, I decided to open the mail app. Instead of a nice tidy inbox, I was greeted with pop-up message saying "Could not activate EDGE: You are not subscribed to EDGE". Now, I don't have a $20/month data plan for nothing. I most certainly was subscribed to EDGE, so pardon my acronym but WTF was this?

I restarted my phone and still got the error message, then turned airplane mode off for 20 seconds and back on again (This is supposed to clear some settings like WiFi so I gave it a shot). Still nothing. Now, I had jailbroken my phone the day before with iLiberty+ (I STRONGLY recommend this program for installing 3rd party apps, unlocking, activating, or bootloader patching), and so was afraid I'd broken it somehow, but I had used EDGE fine after that for the better part of a day so I was on the fence on whether that was the problem. Like any good problem solver I had to rule it out regardless, so I decided to restore my iPhone.

The first thing I did was go into iTunes and hit Restore. Once that was done I tried to get on EDGE with the result of the same error message. Through iLiberty my bootloader had been changed, and more importantly my baseband may have been changed as well. Baseband is the firmware that runs your phone, modem, wireless, and bluetooth hardware, so I was definitely suspect of that. I re-ran iLiberty+ with the option of restoring the baseband and bootloader, and still had no success. Finally I re-re-ran iLiberty+ with a WiFi/EDGE fix I had come across, usually only broken through using ZiPhone (DON'T USE ZiPHONE!) but decided to try it anyway. Of course, no change. I still got that damn error message! This was getting frustrating in the extreme.

After this I called AT&T through 611, and after 30 minutes of work knew the lady, while being extremely nice, had no idea what the problem was. She thought it must be because I was picking up WiFi. Not only were there no hotspots in range, I had WiFi explicitly turned off. Rather than explain this to her I just said thank you and hung up.

Figuring I'd done all I could with hardware, I account was screwed up, I went to AT&T and checked my account. It showed that I had an EDGE data plan and should be working. Nothing on the support site, KB, FAQ, etc. was of any use, and live chat was closed for the day, not that I had high hopes for that... I had a lot of things to do this weekend so I decided I'd just call a different support number on Monday and try again.

The Solution!

I know I know BLAH BLAH BLAH Get to the fix! Okay okay! Flash forward to today. Before calling AT&T back I decided to do some goog-vestigating. Of course this was practically the first thing I did, but hadn't gotten any immediate success, the closest being an AT&T forum where go-phone customers were having a similar issue last December (they fixed this by renewing their monthly contracts a bit early). On this second round of searching I found a couple of potential hits, but the one that finally fixed me was here on Apple Discussions!

To summarize, people fixed this one of two ways. The way that fixed me makes me want to facepalm so hard that I replace Captain Picard as the de-facto image macro. Its an iPhone setting and goes thus:
Settings --> General --> Reset --> Resent Network Settings

I know! "IDIOT!" Why didn't I know that was there? Because there was no "TFM" for me to "R", thats why. I was so relieved when it worked that I cried out in a fit of unbridled joy, to the unease of my co-workers. Not only was my problem fixed, I didn't have to call AT&T back!!!

Now, for those of you who are not so lucky as to have you iPhone placated with this simple settings reset, most of the people on the above thread solved their problem thusly:

It's definitely not an Apple problem, it's a simple checkbox on AT&T's account configuration screen called EDGE Provisioning. Some account changes, like adding a Foundation Account number to your plan to take advantage of company discounts, over-ride the EDGE provisioning setting.

Unfortunately, some AT&T customer service reps think it's iPhone related and don't bother checking your account first before transferring you to Apple. So, do yourselves a favor and ask them to check "EDGE Provisioning" on your account (use their terminology) and they will be able to fix it for you in a second.

Several people on the forum echoed cries of joy as this solved their problem as well. Apparently the number to call is either 800-331-0500 or 877-419-4500 and be sure to ask them to check your "EDGE Provisioning".

So, with a fully functioning iPhone (again jailbroken and running some kick-ass apps!) I leave you this information in hopes that it helps someone out the same issue.

PS: A very special thanks to Joe Maloney1 at the Apple Discussions forum for providing the crucial fix for me!

I knew this was coming, especially in light of the iPhone and the steadily declining iPod shipments (thinning out their stocks), but to physically see it, in all it's glory, is another thing all together. It comes with Wi-Fi, web browser, and all the other goodies that the iPhone has (sans cellular). I, for one, don't mind keeping my phone as a phone and my iPod as an iPod, so the fact that the iPod Touch has all that stuff does better justify getting one rather than an iPhone.

We also now have a new nano (that reminds me of the Zen V), and now plays video and has cover flow?! As if that wasn't enough, the newly dubbed 'iPod Classic' is now all metal and comes in up to 160GB! Now that's what I'm talkin' about.
Crazy times we live in my friends, crazy times...

I can't wait to see what kind of success the iPhone will have, and you can be sure I'll keep you up to date with all the latest developments.

(image Copyright © 2007 Apple Computer)

Yes, the iPhone is here! No, not that one, you sneaky Cisco devils. This is the true iPhone, the one that has been discussed and dreamed about for what seems like years. Catch the full scoop after the jump:

As expected, its a perfect blend of an iPod and a phone, with loads of other features tossed in for good measure.

The nitty, as well as the gritty

So whats this hot little number packing? Oh, just a 3.5-inch multi-touch wide -screen! That means you can touch two places at once, and it recognizes them. That's something completely new in the mobile device arena. But don't worry, the proximity sensor will shut off the key bad when you have the phone close to your ear, so your cheek doesn't decide to get click-happy while you're on a call. Touchiness aside, you can now also watch wide-screen videos on an actual wide-screen... Wide, thats a funny word. Say it out loud with me, "WIDE". Funny, huh? Anyway...
It still plays music and audio books as well, but there is oh so much more.

First off, lets get some specs out of the way:

• 11.6 mm's thin (damn!)
• 3.5-inch multi-touch wide-screen
• 480 x 320 resolution, 160 ppi
• Quad-band GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900)
• 135 grams
• 5 hrs battery life for talking/video, 16 hrs for music
• Cingular exclusive prices of $499 for 4GB (ouch! but MANY will fork out for it) for a 2 year contract, and $599 for 8GB
• Ships this June in the US, Europe this Fall

For the Talkers and Texters

Just like the name would lead all English speaking humanoids to conclude, its a phone. As such, its got a dialpad(via touch-display), call logs, and an address book (that syncs with your computer), but it also has easy to use conference calling (my Razr isn't exactly intuitive in this department), and stores your voicemails so you can listen to them whenever and visually navigate through them like email. No more listening to your first 6 messages Bob sent you to get to the 7th one from your wife. On the negative, there is no built in VoIp support, which I suppose is to be expected since Cingular would rather you use their minutes on this phone, but it would be nice to have the VoIp option when in a wireless hotspot. Perhaps Gizmo Project will run on it, but that remains to be seen.

For SMS the iPhone has a soft-keyboard with predictive entry and auto-correct, with an iChat style interface that always makes me drool. With this style of display you can easily see which conversation you were in, just like what gmail did for multi-reply email.

Ahem... Camera?

Of course, being a modern cellular phone, it must have a camera... probably one of those dinky 640X480 ones that everyone loves to use, right? Nopers. You know Apple never does anything half-assed, and as such the iPhone has a big-ole 2 Megapixel camera. One oversight is that its a fixed-focus camera, which somewhat reduces the grandure of it all. I would think Apple would see this as a big downside. Also, the camera is on the back, which makes sense for taking photos with the viewfinder, but cuts out any hope of video chat/calling, something that could have really be a deal-maker for this device.

The photo management system that kicks the crap out your regular cell phone's list-o-pictures. On the iPhone you get a thumbnail grid of photos. Select a photo to view it full-screen, and drag your finger horizontally to go to the next or previous photo. Grab a place on the photo with your thumbs and drag toward the edges of the screen to get a Minority-report-like zoom on that portion of the photo. You have to watch the QuickTour to see just how rad that looks (select the "Photos" tour on the right of that page).

You call that a smart phone?

Like your Daddy's 4lb brick of a "smart phone", the iPhone has web and email. Apple does it up proper with a rich HTML email client and a portable version of Safari, accessing the web with either Wi-Fi or EDGE (Its got Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR as well, of course, though I don't know how integrated it is with things like iTunes and the photo app). It automatically syncs your email as well as bookmarks from your computer, and it's fast enough to surf the net while downloading your email in the background. You can view websites either portrait or landscape, and can zoom as well. So i guess its more like an iPod blended with a phone and a Nokia 770 (though my 770 blows it away in resolution :p ) As for the email client, it is both intuitive and much easier on the eyes than a regular cell phone. It has a large enough screen to read text and view inline photos without strain.

The iPhone also comes with its own map viewing software that downloads maps, satellite photos, and points of interest from Google Maps. Its not GPS, so you have to know where you are, but it'll definitely help you get to any destination.

Did I forget to mention it runs OS X? Oh, well it does... somehow. This gives it the ability to, among other things, run widgets. To you non Mac/Konfabulator... er Yahoo Widget Engine users, widgets are little applications that provide useful tasks like the stock widget that tracks your favorite stocks, or the weather widget that, well, tells you the weather of course! Calculators, notes, clocks, timers, RSS readers, and nearly anything else you could ask for are available in the form of widgets. No word yet on how whether all OS X widgets will run on this or not, and more importantly, we don't yet know what 3rd party application support there is. It may not be open to anything but widgets, or it may run ported versions of OS X apps, or it may have a full SDK waiting to be unveiled. Nobody knows at this point.

And so faithful readers, thats all we know for now about the new Apple iPhone. I'm super excited about this thing, though I won't be getting one any time soon, nor do I need one at the moment. Its got some really innovative new features, and a few downsides as well as a dash of question marks. However, as this slick gadget has been the subject of endless speculation, you can bet your copy of The Economics of Industry that many will pay any price asked by Jobs for this little gem. Oh, and be sure to go to the iPhone Website for QuickTours of all the features packed into the iPhone.

Update: Gizmodo has a ton of photos of the iPhone on display, and more at apple insider
and this is interesting...