Living with the iPhone

I usually get up in the mornings and go to my office and turn on my desktop CPU to check the day's news, my email, etc. But before I even turn on my desktop on a given morning, the iPhone, which sits atop my office desk, will now tell me if I have new email that has come in overnight. (Note: I have to leave my iPhone outside of my room because the GSM signal interferes with my iPod/JBL music dock's speakers, making that noise--you know that noise). Being aware that I got email overnight is nice, sure, but it sort of takes the surprise getting a new email on my main computer.

Sure, on the other hand, it could be the universe telling me NOT to turn on my main CPU in the morning. The iPhone is a shortcut, it's a timesaver for sure. I could do my emailing and browsing on the iPhone. Turning on the CPU will invariably lead me to lollygaggle in the morning as I will ended up checking this site or that, clicking on an interesting article, or buying a song from iTunes. (Question: Will Apple ever allow iTunes purchases from the iPhone?) This all causes me to leave the house later for work that I had hoped. The iPhone's gentle ping to let me know that I have email is nice and would arguably save me from having to turn on my CPU in the mornings, but I think there's still something to be said about checking email on a bigger screen (not to mention a bigger keyboard).

Speaking of screens, I've noticed lately, that the iPhone's screen doesn't quite clean as easily as before. While it remains relatively unscratched (unlike the rest of the iPhone's casing) it is harder to get my grimy fingerprints off, even with the iPhone's iRag.

On another random note: While my iPhone friends and I still await for a major update, the security update released a couple of weeks ago added a feature that I was awaiting: Namely the ability to forward an email. This basic function was previously unavailable and, like most things in life, you don't realize how important it was to you until you don't have it.

Apart from that update, the bugs in the Camera Roll I noticed earlier are still there. Other random freezes leaded to the dreaded Black Screen of Death also remain, including a bug that freaked me out this morning while commuting on San Francisco's MUNI.

Namely, I was creating a long text message only when the train stopped (I get car sick from staring at the text screen for too long, sad, I know) but, invariably, the screen will automatically shut off for powersave. If it's more than a minute, I also have to enter my passcode. Anyway, in the middle of the message, after the screen had gone dark, I tried to finish off my message and nothing worked. No touching, no fiddling with the home key, no clicks with the top switch, nothing worked. The iPhone stared at me blankly, dead and unresponsive. Of course, there was a brief moment of panic. What if the iPhone itself was completely dead. I was expecting important calls, access to music, etc. Well, as with this month I had to do a hard, 8-second reset. Much to my relief (and after 10 seconds by my count) the Apple symbol reappeared and a reboot had commenced.

But, of course, the text message was gone. D-oh!

I'd like to think of myself as a patient type. The iPhone's numerous crashes, bugs and quirks have been noted here and there. Applehound does a good job of compiling them, some of which I've yet to experience. What I have experienced, though, is an increasing amount of lag and, well, my iPhone is "cracking out" a lot more recently than it did a couple of weeks ago. Performance is down.

This begs the question, is it time to drop the "r-bomb"? That is, to restore or not to restore? My friend Zach said his friends at the Apple Store in San Francisco said simply to "restore" the iPhone and reinstall and re-sync the dang thing. This is all well and good, but with a PC machine I'm not too sure that all my wonked out Windows settings will again translate to the iPhone. Plus, having to reconfigure the e-mail settings, making sure all my contact information is preserved, and saving all those SMS messages.... Not to mention the time it will take to transfer all my music, movie and other files over to the iPhone again. (OK, I'm sounding Pollyanna-ish, but still, it's a hassle.)

What to do? Argh!

Being a PC person, I've encountered the dreaded "blue screen of death."

I've never seen a comparable thing on Apple products. (I have heard of the sad Mac face, or the sick iPod face.) So, much to my surprise, starting a couple days ago I noticed what appeared to be a "black screen of death." Everything stops working. The time bar at top is there, but the rest of the screen is black. No touching. No prodding of the home key. No pressing of the upper right key will get the thing working again.

Maybe it was the jinx of the upcoming Friday the 13th, I thought. But then after a Google search I see that others have noted the same thing happening to them. Various attempts to reset the iPhone work, but I've had to "hard" reset it a couple of times in the past few days and that doesn't necessarily "reset" the iPhone as much as unlock it.

Weird. Anyone else see this?

This leads me to ask: Apple, where art thou version 1.1?

The Web is filled with folks coming up with makeshift solutions from paper clips to cutting plastic away from headphones for some of the issues I've written about here.

For example, my friend Patrick, otherwise known as "he who waited hours in the iPhone line with me," agreed with my observations about previous generation iPod accessories that, on first glance, don't work with the iPhone. (He also had to wait three days in limbo for his iPhone to activate after being ported from Nextel while his wife's phone worked instantly, but that's another story he can tell you, complete with colorful metaphors.)

Me and Pat at the end of our iPhone wait in San Francisco

Pat, being the persevering type noted:

"I've noticed and been trying out some of the old iPod accessories that I have in the house/car and I've come to some conclusions. For example, I was so psyched to think that the [factory-installed] BMW (glove compartment) adapter would be a two-in-one-charger for my car and an iPod connector. Not sure if you've seen the 'not compatible' notification on the iPhone, but some of the old iPod accessories actually work in the 30-pin dock connector if you opt to switch to Airplane mode. Pretty cool. So, at first I was let down that I couldn't use some old accessories, but actually, you'll just have to send all of your callers to voice mail if you want to listen to your music in the Beemer and/or the bathroom on your Bose SoundDock."

Airplane mode, intriguing. This may well serve as a legitimate excuse to avoid those calls you don't want to take. Hrmm. Thank you Apple for a new reason why I missed that call from the good ol' boss.

As for the headphone "pop, pop, pop" issue I noted yesterday, while our iPhones were searching for a Wi-Fi fix, my friend Zach noted that the issue is most likely caused by the extradeep, recessed headphone port that iPhones have that iPods don't. So, most headphone connectors are too short to really connect with the iPhone's sound outputs (The sexual innuendo with this observation is boundless I swear). This is pretty annoying to me, but eh, market paths can be changed, right?

But Kevin Fox has noted the same issue on his blog, Fury.com, although with a different take:

"As those of you who have already bought iPhones know, most headphones don't fit the iPhone due to how far the plug is recessed into the case, meaning that unless a headphone plug has a very narrow flange behind the plug, it won't fit. A lot of people have commented that this was short-sighted or uncaring of Apple, but I think it's a calculated move toward world domination."

As Kevin notes, a paradigm shift may well be in the works, (he should know a little something about paradigm shifts) but with stop-gap solutions like this from third-party vendors, I'm weary. I'm not sure I want the paradigm to shift if it's not Apple or Google driven. What I do like, however, is the community-based approach at problem solving these bugs we can all do for now.