Oliver Siodmak's Rants & Raves

That’s right .. after being together for 17 years, I finally provided my wife with a piece of technology that she not only uses, but loves. Don’t get me wrong. She’s enjoyed a number of the gadgets I’ve brought home over the years (e.g., digital camera, ipod, Apple TV, toaster) but this is the first time I have ever gotten her a device that she picked up and was able to immediately start using.

The display is bright and crisp, the user interface is simple and easy to understand and the hand gesture recognition is very intuitive and natural feeling. Besides the issues I experienced activating the phone, Apple has made syncing the iPhone to your Mac or PC a breeze. In minutes I had all of Sharon’s Outlook data (including Contacts, Calendar and eMail) as well as her music, videos and bookmarks on the device ready for use. For years I have been syncing my Blackberry with my Mac and I can tell you that as easy as the Pocket Sync for Mac software is, it ain’t got nothing on what Apple has been able to accomplish with the iPhone and iTunes.

The only issues I have encountered thus far are:

• iTunes does not allow you to control what Contact fields get sync’d on the phone. It’s all or nothing
• To get to the contact app, you need to go through the phone or email app. There is no contact app icon that allows you to quickly look up a number for a friend.
• There doesn’t appear to be a way to “beam” a contact to a friend like you could with Palm (not that I used it that often). You can however easily email a contract to someone.
• You can only edit contact information from within the Phone app. You can access Contact information from the email app and view the contact information. But you cannot edit that person’s contact information from there. You need to jump to the Contact app from within the Phone app to edit a record.
• The iPhone does provide support for “groups” but they are not viewable within the Contact app. You need to define your groups (e.g., distribution list for emailing) within your email application and then they are sync’d to the iPhone. Once on the iPhone you can reference them but you can not view or edit them on the device.

Those things aside. She is very happy that she can view and respond to emails, listen to music, watch videos and find her way (via Google Maps) all from one device. A device .. that she can use without my constant help and assistance.  Thanks Apple!

So Jake and I headed off the the Fifth Avenue Apple Store at 8:30am on Sunday morning and got Sharon a new iPhone. There were no lines and no hassles … in and out in 10 minutes!

Little did Jake and I know that owning an iPhone didn’t mean we’d be able to enjoy using the iPhone. There was a a slight matter of “activation” that needed to be addressed. You would have figured a geek like me would have been fully prepared for what was to come. After all I had already downloaded iTunes 7.3 on Sharon’s PC, organized her music and cleaned up her Outlook Contact database. Unfortunately, that was not the problem.

I connected the device, iTunes started up, and immediately started walking me through the activation process. Within minutes I completed all the online forms and iTunes informed me that I needed to wait for an email from AT&T confirming that they have completed the activation process.

That was 6 hours ago! 6 hours .. I can’t believe it. I decided to call the AT&T number to confirm that they received my information and that there wasn’t a problem. The operator told me that they are experiencing a “backlog” processing the iPhone activation requests. They are still processing the orders they received on FRIDAY! He indicated that it will be at least 24 hours before my order is processed. He ended the call saying, “Thank you for using the new AT&T”.

What really ties my boxers up into a bunch is that you can’t do anything on the phone until the activation process is complete. I can’t configure email, wireless networking, nothing .. until AT&T does there thing. I guess I had expected Apple to be riding AT&T a bit harder about being prepared for the launch then they were. At the rate things are going the new AT&T has inherited the same lousy customer service that I grew to expect from the old AT&T.

I’ll let you know what day I finally get things working.

<< July 2nd, 2007 — Update >>

Well 24 hours have officially passed and we are still waiting for AT&T to finish activating the iPhone. It appears that they have a unique set of internal process challenges when converting an existing “business discount plan user” over to an iPhone vs a new user. According to the CSR I just spoke to, everything is “provisioned” within their system. They are just waiting for the system to finish processing the order and send out the necessary system messages. Personally .. I think their system is breaking down and they have individual CSRs processing the changes by hand. They are reluctant however to disclose any of this information to the public.

All I can do now is sit and wait, and wait and wait.

Grrrrrrrr!

<< July 2nd, 2007 — Later that day Update >>

After spending over 2 hours on the phone with a special division of AT&T’s activation support Sharon’s new iPhone is active.  What was the problem you ask?  Well … it appears that AT&T users converting over from a corporate discount plan to the iPhone plan can’t simply go through the activation process because their systems don’t automatically accept the plan change request.  For an individual converting over from a corporate discount plan, you need this 3rd level support person to ram your plan change down the AT&T system’s throat .. literally.  They guy had to forcibly make the change 3 times before the phone worked.   So after 29 hours Sharon has a working iPhone.  Yahoo!