I recently switched from AT&T (nee Bellsouth) DSL to Comcast Cable. Thus far, I'm happy with the switch. In doing so, I'm effectively losing my Bellsouth.net email address. In my mind I did not consider this to be any sort of show stopper, or even a hiccup, or even the tiniest monkey wrench in the work: I rarely, if ever, used that email account for anything. Except my Apple ID.
"Hey, that's no problem, right? I'll just log in to the Apple website and change my account information, easy peasy, nice and easy, " I thought. Don't ask why I used a mangled catch-phrase from a 1970s British commercial for lemony dish soap. So that's what I did: I logged into Apple's website, changed my account ID, and *poof* it was done. A simple sign-out/sign-in from iTunes Store via the iTunes application and I'm all done.
Except...
Well, once you do that, things get a little wonky. Not wonky in the way that, say, a link doesn't work unless you click it twice. Not wonky in the way that that one cute girl's eyes seem to be looking ever so slightly at two different points. No, I'm talking about wonky in the way that if you attempt to login to iTunes via your iPhone and attempt to download an application -- even a free one -- you get the "You cannot buy a download at this time. Your account is disabled." It's even wonkier, but more helpful, in the iTunes app on your PC. You are at least directed to contact iTunes support, which is the rest of the error message that is unhelpfully missing from the iPhone error display.
After a trip to the Apple.com Support site, I got a case number, located the phone number (the scheduled "call me back" bit didn't appear to work), and dialed up some genius at Apple. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by a guy who sounded like he was in college in southern California. Wait, that can't be right, it's 7am out on the west coast... Maybe it was a guy in college in Illinois. Anyway, that's not important. It's just a guy, and he wasn't Indian. Or if he was, he certainly did well in his ESL or American Dialects course. Not that I have a problem with that, in fact, during my quest to shed my life of AT&T DSL, which is part of a greater scheme to divest myself of anything to do with the former Bellsouth, I have spent a few moments on the phone with Vonage and their number transfer department, which seems to be situated in Mumbai or Chennai. I'm not sure. And by the way, on that front, the number transfer is in process, and as soon as it's complete, my phone number formerly held by Bellsouth will be hosted by Vonage. Thank you, technology! Perhaps once Apple decides to get out of bed with AT&T I can move my iPhone somewhere's else too, but I'm not holding my breath for that.
So after about 10 minutes of chatting and intermittent holds while my guy talked to iTunes support, he said, "Why don't you go ahead and give it a try." And... Success! I inquired as to the source of the problem, expecting to get some trite explanation watered down for the masses, but instead was treated to an explanation of the root error, an "S error during authentication, so I routed it to Tier 2 iTunes support and they are frantically working to resolve this as it seems to be popping up quite a bit, so you'll likely see a new version of iTunes out very shortly."
Color me impressed, at least with Apple Support. Not so much with iTunes and iPhone, at the moment, but at least I was finally able to download that fart generator.
Ok, so Brian has to be contrarian. My, what a surprise. I'll spare you the point-counterpoint-countercounterpoint debate, but just allow this one item:
"As for the video iPod suggestion, I’m gonna have to suggest backing the
truck up. This is not being positioned as a video playback device. At
all."
Might I suggest you check out apple.com/iphone, click the first iPod icon there so you can see the iPod features of the iPhone. What's that? The iPhone playing an episode of The Office? Yeah, I guess Apple isn't trying to position it as a video playback device. At all.
Look, I don't need to defend my position, and I don't need you to argue it. It's my opinion. I personally didn't read any reviews of the iPhone. I based all my opinions strictly on what Apple had to say on their website. So, that's that. My opinion, take it or leave it.
Oh, and one final thing: my expectations are mine, so really, how can they be misguided? That's like saying I shouldn't like tofu, because you don't. But I still do.
EDIT:
I did some more reading today, so I don't appear to be so knee-jerk in my dislike of the iPhone. Realistically, the only innovative thing that I do like about the iPhone is the gestural interface. I don't necessarily like it for a phone, but I like that it is making it's way into consumer devices. But it seems that there are more than a few people who have slightly negative comments about the iPhone. Read and decide for yourself if anything of these drawbacks mean something to you.
So I saw in the news today that Jobs did his usual song and dance and flitted about with this iPhone. I'm sure all the Apple fanboys will be right up his crack as usual, and all the iPod afficianados will be drooling to get their hands on an iPhone... but seriously. Let's think about this shall we?
Other than the interesting user interface, what is of real substance here? A conflux of devices that brings together a web browser, a widget based operating system (they are calling it OS X, but really, what is under the hood there?), a phone, an iPod Video and a touchscreen. Well, minus the iPod Video, it sounds an awful lot like a Treo or a Blackberry.
Say you want a revolution? If you read all the hype on Apple's iPhone website, you'd think that the rest of us knuckledraggers are running around with Motorola StarTACs or
Nah. I don't. And I don't need to be able to pick my tunes based on cover art (who really remembers cover art anyway? Judge any books by their covers today?). Honestly, I would've rather seen more standards innovation here. Give me a method to display a web page without all the crap on it. One of the great things about simple WAP browsers is that their simplicity breeds KISS'd design (you know: Keep It Simple, Stupid). I navigate to a news page, and I get headlines and content. No adverts or popups or flashy reminders of how great your HD newscast is, or various viral videos of the latest despot hanging or whatever. Perhaps I'm just being stodgy, but I guess what I'm getting to is that I don't see a lot of revolution in the iPhone. Sure, Apple's UI group went nuts and you can press an icon and "flip" the CD cover to see the list of songs on the back. Wow, that's great guys.
How about instead you give me a voice controlled phone where I don't have to finger it like a, uh, almost-empty jar of peanut butter (whew) to get to the good stuff? How about instead of the same old meme for finding music you give me a voice controlled player where I can say, "play all the live tracks from Led Zeppelin" or "shuffle my reggae tunes" - and you just do it. Or perhaps instead of presenting the TV guide, you let me tell you to "play last week's episode of The Office". Maybe instead of a widget for weather, you use the cell phone part of the phone to figure out where I am and display the weather.
Better yet - instead of hobbling your iPhone with 4-8GB of storage (a video iPod with 8GB? C'mon! That's like 4 movies and 2 albums!), why not have just a phone. That's the boat I'm sailing on at the moment. Just a phone. I have a Treo. I have an iPod. I have a Blackberry. I don't want a iBerryo or a TrePoddy, or a Blackpodeo. Now technically I wouldn't normally have a Blackberry AND a Treo, but the Treo is mine and the Blackberry belongs to work, and it's just for email.
So I guess I'm saying all of this to say that I will definitely not be looking to acquire an iPhone. In fact, I'm probably going to slim down my nerd belt accessories. Instead of having several gadgets each of which does several functions moderately well, I'll have several gadgets each of which does one function very well. Call it best of breed or whatever. I have a video/audio player, and while it's the top of the heap in marketshare, it's certainly limiting what I can put it on. I have a phone that's the top of the heap for business, but it's big and duplicating a lot of functions. I have a wireless office device that's the top of the heap for business, but it cannot be enabled for phone usage. So I get a small phone that has what I need: phone, sync, SMS and perhaps a camera. I keep the Blackberry. For now I'll keep my iPod, but when that goes - I'm saying good bye to Apple and the iTunes monopoly. I've about had it with DRM, so I think I'll go back to buying good ol' CDs.
