iPhone Adventure

A few days ago my iPhone decided that it would rather be an iPod Touch – meaning that it wouldn’t connect to the cellular network enough for me to make of receive phone calls. Totally uncool, iPhone.

So I called up AT&T to get it working again and they transferred me to Apple. We tried a few things over the phone and in the end I had to go to AT&T to see if my SIM card was the problem.

Going into a cell phone store is like going to a used car dealer: even if you have a car that you love, and you bought it from them, and all you need is for them to give you the manual, they still try to sell you another car. And I knew it was coming as soon as the rep shook my hand. I told him exactly what the problem was and what I needed and he tried to tell me that I had scratched my phone all up and therefore needed to buy a cover, and that I had excess dust in my phone so I need a belt holster (yeah, that’s a good look), and why don’t I just buy a 3GS ’cause I qualify for upgrade pricing if I renew my contract. Ugh. And when he gave me a new SIM (finally) turned on my phone and it connected, I was said “Awesome, thanks.” and walked out. And then it lost signal again. So I went back in and he was in the middle of conning this old woman and trying to use my problem as justification for her to buy a warranty. I rudely interrupted and said “Didn’t work” and then he tried to sell me Applecare even though I knew I didn’t qualify.

He, and AT&T’s army of his ilk, is the reason that I am leaving AT&T as soon as possible.

So, phone still borked, I get back on the phone with Apple and they tell me to take it to any store and they will take care of it. And they were nice, and helpful, and friendly and fun to talk to. And the rep referred me to his old boss at the Fields Museum who will probably give me a background tour if I drop his name. And they let me buy Applecare 19 days after they should have. And then I went to the Apple store on Michigan Avenue and they fit me in as soon as possible and traded me for a brand new, working iPhone and the rep looked around to try to give me a screen protector – they were out, but it’s the thought that counts. And Less Than Jake played a show IN THE STORE the next day. Also, this store is incredible. Just amazing.

When I was talking to one of the reps he said, and I quote, “Wow. They let you buy Applecare 19 days late?! That has to be a record. Someone here really loves you.” And I couldn’t agree more.

Apple, keep this up and I just might ask you to marry me.

Progress on the Sync’ing Front

Since iPhone 3.0 includes support for CalDAV calendar sync’ing, I am finally able to separate my home calendar from my work calendar.
Setting it up was easy: Google Calendar speaks CalDAV to the iPhone

Now I gotta figure out how to have second and third calendars working.
I still really want to have my contacts’ birthdays auto-added to my iPhone Calendar. iCal does it, why doesn’t iPhone?

iPhone 3.0

I am fully aware of the fact that everyone and their dog has written about iPhone 3.0 in the last couple of weeks, but I’m doing it because some of you read my blog but not dozens of tech blogs on a daily basis.

A while back I wrote a post about Getting in Sync where I talked about trying to get my digital life in order and all of my data everywhere sync’ing without using a third party service. The conclusion of that process was that I was right back where I started because of one stupid, little problem: iPhone IMAP does not function correctly with an Exchange server. Instead of moving messages, it copies messages. So if you trash a message from your inbox, you have a copy of it in your inbox and a copy of it in your trash.

Last night I updated to iPhone 3.0 and that problem still exists. That is seriously uncool. I’m going to keep testing, ’cause it might have something to do with the fact that deleting messages doesn’t happen immediately. Why? I don’t know.

Other than that, I’m liking 3.0.

• Copy and paste is finally here and it’s already saving me a lot of trouble. Entering server names, UPS tracking numbers, and flight confirmation numbers is no longer awful.
• You can now select multiple photos and delete or e-mail them.
• Same with individual SMS messages.
• Search is pretty cool. Especially for email.
• You get another screen for all your apps. Because you clearly need more than 48 apps.

Still annoyed about a number of things:

• AT&T is the worst carrier ever. Expensive as hell, no MMS, no tether, etc. As soon as my two years are up…
• No video recording? WTF? (This can be achieved by jailbreaking)
• No voice control. Seriously? (Likewise, jailbreak)
• Still can’t remove Apple’s apps (Stocks, Notes, etc.)
• Still can’t customize homescreen notifications – like put my upcoming events, weather, etc.

This is definitely an improvement, but I am actually looking forward to my warranty expiring so I can hack my phone without consequence.

Getting in Sync (Update)

This is not going well, and the problems are Apple’s.

I’m not used to (or comfortable with) saying that.

First, iPhone does not do IMAP well when connecting to Exchange. Here’s the problem: moving a message (including trashing a message) creates a copy of that message in its destination, but doesn’t delete it from its origin. So if I move or delete a message on my iPhone, it doesn’t get moved or deleted on the server, it gets copied.

Second, you can only have one ActiveSync account. Meaning that because I’m using ActiveSync to sync my calendars with my Gmail account, I can’t use ActiveSync to sync my email with my work account.

I don’t know if these are  totally Apple’s fault, but I know that Apple could make this work correctly.

Because of these problems, I have to totally undo all the work I did and try to figure this out again.

I am really unwilling to use a third party service for this because a major point of doing this was to reduce exposure.

Getting in Sync

I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of information in a lot of places – personal email, personal computer, work email, work computer, iPhone, etc. Today I decided to spend some time figuring out how to connect them all together to keep my information in sync and accurate. Mostly anyway.

While the primary goal was to get all of my data in sync, the secondary goal was to protect my data from loss or exposure.

Here’s what I’ve done:

• Work PC (Outlook) syncs email & work calendar with Work Server (Exchange 2007)
• Work PC (Outlook) syncs work calendar with Google Acct using Google Calendar Sync
• Google Acct syncs all calendars (work, home, holidays) with iPhone using Google Sync for Mobile, (which, stupidly, only does calendars and contacts)
  
• iPhone pulls work email via IMAP and sends work email via work SMTP
• iPhone pulls Gmail via IMAP and sends personal email via Google SMTP
• iPhone syncs with Address Book via iTunes (the only cabled connection)
• Address Book updates iCal’s “Birthdays” calendar
• iCal syncs work, home, and holdiay calendars with Google via CalDAV

The final result is this:

• My personal and work data are visible from home or work and on my iPhone.
• My personal data are on my personal equipment and not my work equipment.
• I can lose my phone without losing any data.
• I can lose my job without losing (or exposing) any personal data or having my data wiped by my employer.
• I can lose my personal computer without losing any data (Time Machine, FTW).
• I can lose my work computer without losing any data (Iron Mountain).

What is lacking

• iPhone does not have my birthdays calendar (so no reminders, sorry everyone).
• Outlook on my work computer has to be running in order for Google to get my work calendar.
• Google contacts does not match Address Book or iPhone.
• I still have to use a cable to sync my iPhone with my Mac when my phone and my computer both have Bluetooth. WTF, Apple!? Fix that.

Google’s contact management still needs some work. I tried sync’ing that at one point and it screwed everything up -  lots of duplicated contacts: Google had their email, iPhone had their phone number, so now I had two contacts. Google has finally given us the ability to merge contacts (and it works well), so I’m going to work on getting that cleaned up. What really needs to happen is that Google updates my contacts automatically when they update their own contact info – like Exchange.

If anyone wants more details about how I accomplished any part of this, post and I’ll fill in the details.

WordPress for iPhone

WordPress is now available as a client from the App Store. Enjoy typing on a tiny keyboard with no tactile or haptic feedback? Done!
I’d give you the link, but I can’t copy and paste, so just go here for more info:
http://iphone.wordpress.org
If you see how to add photos, let me know.

iPhone 3G Ringtones from your MP3s

Here’s how to convert any MP3 in iTunes to a ringtone that works on your sparklin’ new iPhone 3G:

1. Open iTunes and go to iTunes > Preferences, then choose Advanced at the top, and Importing right below that. In the drop-down for “Import Using:” make sure you have selected “AAC Encoder”. Now choose General at the top and make sure Ringtones are enabled.
2. Control+Click the song you want to use and choose Get Info.
3. Under Options you can specify a start time and a stop time. Ringtones are limited to 30 seconds, so specify the 30 seconds you want to capture. If it’s the first 30 seconds of the song, just specify an end time of “0:30″. Choose OK.
4. Control+Click that song again and choose Convert Selection to AAC. This will convert the song from whatever format you have it in to an AAC (“Apple Audio Codec”) file with an .m4a extension.
5. Control+Click the NEW one you just created – If you forgot which one it is, it’s the one that’s only 30 seconds long – and choose Show in Finder.
6. Quit iTunes.
7. Back in the finder window that you just opened, the .m4a file should be highlighted. Change the extension from m4a to m4r.
8. Re-open iTunes and drag that file into iTunes. It should now show up under Ringtones. Make sure your iPhone is set to sync ringtones and the one you want is enabled.
9. On your iPhone, open Settings, then select Sounds. Specify your ringtone there. You can also assign ringtones to specific contacts by going into Contacts.