Supermassive iPhone Black Hole (Ordeal Part 4)

All your songs and videos in your pocket? No, more like in your black hole, known as the "Other" files - gone and inaccessible since there isn't a file finder - in your pocket.

This is what exactly happened after a series of self-triggered connecting and disconnecting of the iPhone. The audio and video files self-destroy into a pile of rumble. The hours I spent closing monitoring and synchronizing these files are wasted.

Don't even think about the iTunes Music Store on my phone. The DRM-ed songs I buy would be erased in a sync error, or a wipe-out.

All I can hear is the constantly beeping two-tone 'connected' sound of the iPhone, orchestrating with the two-tone 'device detected' sound of Windows Vista. The podcasts and videos I prepared for this morning's commute is no more: the last chance of me forgiving this device is gone. Very very sad.

I checked all points of potential error:

• USB port: Unlikely. It is the second USB port on the motherboard, and it is a USB 2.0 connection.
• The USB cable: Unlikely. It is the original cable that came with the box.
• Port connection: Possible. Is the Apple hardware that badly made? But it's possible. I unplugged and plugged it a few times yesterday already for the AT&T activation.
• iPhone firmware: Possible. It is not the most updated. But then, the firmware update download never completes for me.
• iTunes and the iPhone hardware driver for Windows Vista: Most likely. After all, iTunes never really got fixed for Windows Vista. Numerous reports can be found around the Internet even in the latest version.
• Windows Vista: Unlikely. If it is the problem, my previous Windows Mobile phone would have never worked properly.

So kudos to the Apple software development for PC. You guys have created the worst software experience, and spoiled all the goodness of a good piece of hardware your company had made.

I'm returning the phone tomorrow, so that the total loss will be kept minimal, i.e. $30.

Spot the Error! (Ordeal Part 3)

iTunes never fails to amaze me:

Besides the infinite amount of error 3259, this "8.2MB of 7.3MB" progress bar shoots through the roof of my patience.

Nevertheless, I was able to play around Safari browser and Youtube during dinner. Those were fun and great pastime, I must say (I was watching "Hipster Olympics" showing the corner of Bedford Ave and North 6th Street, exactly when I was passing there, and that was quite a wonderful feeling). But then, I'd rather look for Windows Mobile alternatives of those softwares before I explode due to the incompetence of iTunes. Windows Media Player, in contrary, had never given me sync errors like those, and it would show me exactly which files are synced.

There are more detrimental flaws than nice details in the iPhone + iTunes combo that leaves me less and less love for it. My fantasy of showing off the phone to friends in Hong Kong is not worth the headaches of sync failures every day.

Four days left with this phone.

The iTunes + iPhone Ordeal (Episode 2)

Nothing seems to motivate me better than rage, apparently. Have you ever seen me writing two blogs in a row? No, except the current issue that I would refer to as "iPhone ordeal".

Either the iPhone is destined not to be my kind of phone, or I am in a really odd situation, the frustration is real.

Despite the promise from an AT&T representative that their billing system was being updated in the early morning until 7AM, iTunes still does not work in the afternoon. I called again, and it turns out that I am still using the old (pre-Cingular) AT&T account, and they had to manually switch over.

The activation went on smoothly afterwards, but then here comes the iTunes ordeal:

1. The first screen you can see in iTunes is a black window, as if the software has crashed.
2. While Windows Vista is brilliant enough to be able to detect the photo storage of the iPhone in Windows Explorer each time I reconnect the phone, iTunes sometimes would be dumbfounded, sat still and could not detect the device.
3. The iTunes browser is the slowest browser I had ever used. Pages had a barber shop progress bar that only indicates pages are loading does not indicate any progress.
4. The skinned buttons have not tactile responses. Sometimes you cannot really tell if you had clicked a button, or if iTunes is just hanging.
5. Podcasts and iPhone update downloads constantly failed half-way, as it does not fare well in 'slow' Internet connections. (P.S. I'm using a EVDO connection.)
6. My photos were never synchronized properly. Every time I tried to disconnect and reconnect, it will halt in the middle, giving me this dialog:
   
   
   
7. The calendar took three syncs to get it right. In fact, I can never tell if iTunes had ever attempted copying anything to my phone.

Meanwhile, the iPhone experience has been not too bad so far. I was able to browse web pages, set up my contacts and wallpapers, and so on. The novelty factor does wear off pretty quickly though, however. There are a few annoyances so far:

1. It takes quite a while to find the contact I want to dial to. Since it does not have a dialpad-based contact search like Windows Mobile does, I have to remember everyone's last names in other to find them. I have 100+ contacts, and even though I have a good memory of last names, it is much slower to find a contact here than in my WinMo.
2. Besides, it takes too many steps to get into the dialpad, since there is no hardware dialpad anywhere.
3. The squeezing and un-squeezing finger actions is not very accurate. While it works fine for casual browsing of photos, the finger flicking makes it too easy to jump around Google Maps accidentally, and wastes bandwidth and loading time as a result.
4. The mail application marks everything from my mailboxes as unread. Worse still, there is no way to mark all mail as unread.
5. Gmail is treated as a POP3 mailbox. And I don't understand why mails that I wrote would end up in my Inbox.
6. There is no easy way to sync Notes.
7. There are no voice recorder software available.

So my iPhone refund countdown has officially begun... It will properly be due this Thursday. It is going to be a lot of hassles, dealing with the Apple store refund and the AT&T switching back process, but it probably will worth all the headaches I will get by using iTunes.

The iPhone Activation Ordeal

Since my phone, which could play videos, songs, browse Internet and look up Google Maps, and which had been working like a horse for 3 years, was broken, in the wrath of the deserts sands from Burning Man, I had to buy a new phone today. I miss the convenience of having all my contacts and files sync-ed.

So I bought an iPhone. You know, my company is developing a software for it. And I led that project, in fact.

But if there is anything wrong with the design of the iPhone, it is the activation process. It is an absolute failure.

First of all, I have to close iTunes now because it keeps stealing focus of my windows every minute. I can't type at all.

So here is the story.

Once I opened your pristine box of the iPhone, I took out the phone, the dock, and everything, and I am greeted with no instructions. Ah, yes, it's a touch phone, so the instructions must be on the first page of a pamphlet called "Finger Tips".

And I read the first instruction: Download iTunes. Of course, if you cant wait to turn on your phone (which you need to hold a button somewhere at the top right), you will be greeted with the same instructions as well.

Why iTunes? I have no idea. I thought this is a phone, not a music player. But anyhow, I am forced to download a nearly 50MB file, via my slow broadband connection. That alone took half an hour of waiting.

iTunes itself required the installation of two of the most annoying components: Apple QuickTime and Apple Software Update.

And iTunes itself is a horrible software. Enter Key does not work. After you entered all your details in the iPhone wizard, enter key will not bring you to the next page. The software is very unresponsive as well, compared to Windows Media Player. There is no hierarchy to speak of when browsing your media. The giant list of all my 7000 songs in the Music Library is illogical. It is impossible to scroll through the whole thing. Want Podcasts? Want album artwork? Oops, you need an iTunes Store account. Everything points to an iTunes Store account, actually.

It had been more than an hour since I called AT&T. I checked my AT&T account on their web site, and verified that the rate plan had already been updated, as they wished. However, Apple iTunes still told me that my voice plan is not compatible with their phone, and passed the blame on AT&T. Way to go, Apple. It's totally your fault now and I'm waiting. Worse, you don't even have a proper technical support phone line that I can find easily.

(As of 2:20AM, i.e. 8 hours later, it is still not working. Clearly, the AT&T web site had been updated with the new plan.)

Comparing a Windows Mobile, the setup process of the iPhone is a disaster. For a Windows Mobile, you install Outlook and Windows Mobile Device Center. Outlook, comparing iTunes, is a full-featured PIM. Besides, you don't even need to install all these things if you just want to make a call. The phone will just work when you turn it on. No locks and activation.

I know, Microsoft introduced the concept 'activation' to the mass. Adobe soon followed. And Apple made it ugly.

I am returning the phone next week, if the experience continues to degenerate.