Once you think Apple can’t do any worse with the iPhone they pull the curtains aside and unleash another angry dragon. I swear they have been reading the Microsoft playbook lately because I can not even put into words how astonished I am with their level of incompetence with the 2.x releases of the iPhone firmware (and any service related: me.com).

So my fun filled adventure started last night around 10pm… I have a first gen iPhone running the joke of a firmware 2.0.1. I plug my iPhone into my computer (which I have avoided like the plague because it takes hours, yes you read that right, HOURS to sync the damned thing).

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Tags: iphone

It really feels like Apple rushed the 2.0.0 and 2.0.1 firmware updates out the door ahead of their time. Hello doesn’t this sound familiar me.com? I won’t even go into that catastrophe of a launch. All Apple did there is prove they can’t run an online service and you are better off shopping elsewhere for your needs. People were without email for more than 2 weeks HAHAHAHAHAHAH OMG I wouldn’t know where to start ripping them a new ass over that one. If 1 hour downtime in email is on the verge of unacceptable by today’s standards, what do you call 2 weeks? Service no longer reliable, pull the rip cord and leave them behind!

Back to the iPhone… there are so many more bugs and crashes than the rock stable 1.1.4. Let’s see if I can run down the list that I can remember off the top of my head.

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Tags: bugs, iphone

Well it’s been some time since the iPhone 2.0 was released but I just got almost everything working the way I wanted - without having to upgrade to the 3G and without having to upgrade my data plan.

The new 3G iPhone just isn’t worth the increase in monthy cost. At a minimum it is $10/month more and I wouldn’t have any SMS. Another $5 for SMS then possibly another $15/month for enterprise data plan. Sorry Apple and AT&T in this economy I can’t justify the increase in cost for another 2 years for a contract. I’m currently without contract because I’m an old customer and only paying $20/month for unlimited data and 200 SMS is a great deal. 3G won’t be near my home for years and I’ve got a nav in my car, so I’m not really missing anything by not upgrading.

The thing that took the longest to get to work was VPN and exchange with my work. It finally works, only downside is no push since I have to login to the VPN before I can check my exchange email, I think I can live with that.

And the app store is great lots of great free apps, in fact I’m typing this in the wordpress app now

Tags: iphone

+1 to Google for delivering what the public asked, IMAP support for Gmail. This is especially awesome for us iPhone users, trying to use pop3 for gmail was just not an option on the iphone.

Head into your settings and see if you have an option to enable IMAP, if not just be patient and try again later.

Google has put up a FAQ for IMAP that should answer all your questions.

They did miss a few settings to properly setup the MobileMail.app on the iPhone, instead of typing it all out I’ll redirect you to someone who has already taken the time to right up a good set of instructions.

Well I finally got the nerve to upgrade and jailbreak my iPhone last night. I held off this long to let the ripples in the water settle encase there were any problems with the new 1.1.1 jailbreak. I had also hoped for a simpler method to be cooked up, but alas 1.1.1 jailbreaking is not for the faint of heart.

If you are planning on jailbreaking your 1.1.1 iPhone my first words of wisdom are read, read, and re-read all the instructions. Go over every step of the process and make sure you 100% understand what you are suppose to do. Here are the instructions I used.

My trials and tribulations after the jump…

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Another awesome bit of news from the mouth of Mr. Jobs.

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users.

A ‘preliminary‘ jailbrake for v1.1.1 - only a matter of time for the rest of the pieces to fall into place, awesome job guys!

So by now you’ve probably heard that there is an update available for the iPhone (v1.1.1)

I don’t have an unlocked iPhone, but I do have a jailbroken iPhone so I can install 3rd party apps and sftp any damned ringtone I want without having to pay $2 for something I already own.

Apple threw us a curve ball and encrypted the firmware so at the moment the community is back to square one trying to jailbreak v1.1.1

Until then I have no desire to get the new WifiTunes store at the cost of loosing all my customizations, ringtones, and ApolloIM!! Sorry Apple, not worth it for us to update quite yet.

The native instant messenger application for the iphone made huge progress in the latest release, including additional network support (DotMac, ICQ, MSN in addition to AIM).

Keep up the great work guys, by far the best iPhone app out there!

I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally have this working. I have tried everything under the sun that claimed to be able to sync my google calendar with my iphone. Some were web based, others windows based apps even a handful that were addons to outlook. My worst experience was with plaxo, it deleted all my google calendars! Thank god a few days later I got an email from google saying that they were going to restore all my calendars (thank you google!).

Back to the plot of this post, CompanionLink for Google Calendar has finally closed the gap between the native iPhone calendar and google calendar featuring a full two way multi calendar synchronization. It might not be the most elegant solution, but it is the most robust logic engine I have tried so far. Every corner case I threw at it was handled exactly as I would have expected. No surprises = greatly satisfied customer.

It isn’t free, but after trying all the garbage that is out there I was more than happy to lay down $30 to help support this application. For the first time since June 29th I am now tapping the calendar button and using it rather than staring at a blank calendar

Ok to be fair I have to list possible Cons -

• Requires Outlook as an intermediator, not a problem for me, I already use Outlook.
• The sync process involves 3 passes (and 2 itunes/outlook <-> iphone syncs to occur).
• There doesn’t appear to be a way to specify which outlook or google calendar to plop iphone created events on, looks to create them on the ‘Main’ calendar. This might not be easily solvable until the iPhone calendar supports multiple calendars so I’m not surprised or disappointed that this support isn’t there yet.

All in all I recommend this sync app to anyone who is sick of waiting for apple and google and want to use that darn calendar app to its full potential!