Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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iPhone 3G S happiness despite FedEx epic failage

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I’m beginning to think that I am somewhat cursed when it comes to getting an iPhone on launch day. Last year, I stood in line at an Apple store for hours and then was told to go to AT&T since I had a FAN discount on my account, which Apple could not work with. AT&T ran out of iPhones just before I made it into the store, but I asked them to cancel my FAN discount so I could at least go back to the Apple store to get one. I was able to get one at the Apple store and the whole adventure took from 7:00 am to 2:00 pm. I was not happy.
This year, FedEx became the bane of my existence. Everything looked good as I tracked the progress of my iPhone 3G S online, until 9:00 am passed and it still wasn’t on a truck for delivery. I called FedEx then, asking if it was going to make it on a truck and throwing out the idea of picking it up at the facility if not. The CSR I spoke to said that it probably would make it onto a truck for delivery, but it probably wouldn’t arrive by the 3:00 pm deadline. Great. She encouraged me to track it again in a couple of hours, and said that it if it was still at the sorting facility, I could just go and pick it up there. Lo and behold, it made it onto a truck at 11:01 am.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
Merely 49 minutes later, the following error showed in the tracking status:

I shall not repeat here the foul words that issued forth from my mouth upon seeing this loathsome error, though they were vile indeed. Suffice it to say that, had the FedEx driver heard me, I would surely have been challenged to a duel of some sort so that he could defend his own honor, as well as that of his mother and any farm animals with which he had crossed paths in the past.
Of course, this prompted another call to FedEx, in which I painstakingly provided directions to my house, as well as wondering aloud why FedEx could not find my house after several successful attempts to get packages to me in the past year. WTF, BBQ? The CSR confirmed that my house was in their database and promised to send the directions to the driver immediately.
A short while later, I saw a FedEx truck drive down the main street outside of our neighborhood. Alas, it did not turn and continued away from me. At 1:29 pm, FedEx tracking showed that my package was back at the local sorting facility. Bastards.
At this point, I called FedEx yet again and asked them to hold the package for me to pick it up. I ate a hasty lunch and then made my way to FedEx. I picked it up with no problems and opened it up in the car to ensure all was well. In the box, my new iPhone 3G S sat happily, unaware of the angst I had suffered all day in waiting to see it.
After I got home and immediately started the process to switch to the new iPhone, I called FedEx to file a complaint. How on earth could they have found me at least 20 times in the past year but failed to do so on the one day that I was anxiously awaiting an on-time delivery? The CSR I spoke to was nice and apologized, but the damage was done. FedEx, you have failed me. In the words of Jean-Baptiste Emmanual Zorg, “I am very disappointed.”
FedEx failure aside, I am quite enamored of my iPhone 3G S. It is indeed wicked fast compared to my iPhone 3G, and I am quite enjoying the video recording and voice command capability. I’ve already recorded videos of my dog doing nothing in particular and have used the voice command feature with great success to control playback during lawn mowing. And, I am thrilled that the volume controls on the Apple In-ear Headphones with Remote & Mic, which I had purchased to replace my broken V-Moda Vibe Duo headphones, work with the 3G S, as expected.
I’m working on my comparison review between the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, and first-generation iPhone now. One reader has already suggested covering the speed differences between the devices, and I welcome any other suggestions of things you’d like to see in the review – feel free to comment on this post, send an email to me at marianne at macgirl dot net, or use my contact page here.

My iPhone 3G S is in Pennsylvania

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I outlined my devious plan to get a factory-unlocked iPhone 3G S while still having one in hand to fawn over on release day in a previous blog post the other day, and the first part of that plan is slowly coming to fruition. The black 16GB iPhone 3G S that I pre-ordered from Apple was recently picked up in Middletown, PA according to FedEx and is scheduled to be delivered to my home before 3:00 pm tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not familiar enough with our local FedEx delivery habits to predict whether or not I’ll get it early in the day tomorrow or closer to the 3:00 pm delivery deadline. Of course, I’m hoping it’s earlier, and you can bet your sweet little bum that I am not leaving the house at all tomorrow so I’ll be home to sign for it when it arrives. In fact, I’m sure I’ll go as far as to re-arrange my desk to provide an unobstructed view of the street through the window in our office to monitor the situation closely, ergonomics be damned.
Oddly enough, I’m not feeling overly anxious, as I usually do when I’m expecting a new gadget. Perhaps it’s because I have my current, and still-lovely, iPhone 3G running the official 3.0 firmware now? Or the fact that I know that this iPhone 3G S will only be part of my amply-supplied cell phone stable for a short time? Or have I suffered from some mental illness that has somehow affected my internal geek monster’s natural tendencies? Who knows?
At this point, I’m planning on doing a comparison review (like the one I did comparing the first-generation iPhone and the iPhone 3G here) between the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3G S, and I’ll probably throw my first-generation iPhone into the mix as well. What would you like to know about the differences between these devices? Send me an email at marianne at macgirl dot net or use the contact form on my site to let me know…

Geeky girl strikes out at Genius Bar

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I wrote about my experience getting a Rev. B (the second update to the model, for those of you uninitiated in Apple geek speak) MacBook Air last November. I promptly declared it perfect, and frankly, overlooked an issue that has become more glaring the more I use it: gray lines on the display. MacNN wrote about this issue in December and there has been much discussion on the MacRumors.com forum dedicated to the MacBook Air about it. So, I finally decided to take it into an Apple store to see if anything could be done about it. I’ll be honest – the only viable solution in my head was a replacement, and if a screen replacement was going to be offered, I was going to decline. I have horrible luck with these sorts of things and I envisioned it coming back to me with multiple dings and scratches and even more prominent gray lines on the screen. No, thank you.

A bit tricky to see here, but the damn things are there! Grrr!
(Photo courtesy of Macrumors.com)
I traipse happily into my local Apple store Friday afternoon just in time for my appointment. Unfortunately, the Genius I get is absolutely unsympathetic to my plight, claiming to barely seen the lines, thinking that they could actually be part of the screen’s anti-glare coating, though he retracted this when I pointed out it has a glossy screen and they’re not visible when the screen is off. He was completely immune to my geek girl charm, even though I was wearing my Nerds 4 Ever shirt and my stylish-yet-serious glasses (they’re Versace, biotch!). I must be losing my touch.
He offered to replace the screen, which would take 3 to 5 days. I begged off since, a.) I can’t do with my Mac for that long at this time (or for any amount of time, as sad as that sounds), and b.) as I mentioned, I’m not letting anyone manhandle my beloved MacBook Air. So, I’ll live with the lines. They don’t bother me too much unless I’m thinking about it and they’re not an issue at all when I have it connected to my 20″ Cinema Display, which I use as my main display, of course.
At any rate, it does appear to be a widespread issue – it’s noted in a couple of discussion threads at the Apple Support forums here and here, on a ZDNet review of the MacBook Air here, and in the aforementioned MacRumors forums here. Now, I’m not the kind of girl who goes to start petitions and picket lines when I’m riled up about something, but I have half a mind to add my support to others experiencing this issue to get Apple to address it. I’ve never seen these lines on any of the previous Mac portables I’ve used (multiple MacBooks and PowerBooks over the years) and I don’t think they’re normal. What bothers me most is that I paid $2,500 for this computer, and while I don’t expect perfection in every unit that comes off of a production line, I don’t expect to see a widespread issue like this manifest itself. I’ve read of some folks who open up their new Macs while they’re still at the store to check it over before they leave with it. I think I’m going to start doing that the next time I get a new Mac…

Must. Get. iPhone. 3G S.

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I’ve already said that I definitely plan on getting the new iPhone 3G S. However, how I do it this time around is going to be a bit different. See, I waited in line at an Apple or an AT&T store to get my first-generation iPhone and my first iPhone 3G. This time around, I’m not eligible for upgrade pricing from AT&T to get the 32GB iPhone 3G S for $299 (which doesn’t surprise me and does not cause me to complain since they subsidized my first iPhone 3G less than a year ago), so I’m going to try to get it through a kind friend with family in New Zealand where they will hopefully be sold in a factory-unlocked state again. However, I still may get one from AT&T on launch date and then just return it before the 30-day return period is up. I’m not sure I can bear not having the latest iPhone for at least a little while after it’s released.

Also, I’m pursuing this sneaky method of getting an iPhone 3G S because I don’t want to sign up for another 2 years with AT&T. While I have no plans to switch providers, I’m tired enough of them that I don’t want to be stuck with them. I still remember the change in text messaging from the first-generation iPhone to the iPhone 3G. With the first-generation iPhone, 200 text messages were included for free with the data plan, and this changed with the iPhone 3G, requiring $5/month to get 200 text messages. So, in addition to the $10/month bump in the cost of the data plan, you had to pay $5/month more to get the same number of text messages, adding up to an additional $180 per year in plan costs to go from the first-generation iPhone to the iPhone 3G. Bastards.

Now that you know about my devious iPhone 3G S obtainment plan, I must say that I am in iPhone heaven right about now what with the final 3.0 version coming out soon and the TomTom and Navigon navigation apps due out soon. I’ve used TomTom devices and software for years now, but I think I’ll also check out Navigon’s to see if I like it more. I know TomTom is putting out a cradle to go with theirs, but suction-cup window mounts inevitably drive me batty by falling off no matter what I do and I already have a ProClip mount in my car that I’d rather keep using. However, the TomTom window mount accessory will have one major thing in its favor – its own GPS receiver to supplement the iPhone’s. I imagine this will result in better GPS reception and tracking while you’re on the move, providing an advantage over the Navigon app. Hmmm, I don’t know. What if I buy the Navigon app but find that the iPhone’s GPS chip isn’t really robust enough to provide solid navigation? Then I’d have to buy the TomTom app to go with the GPS-boosted cradle. I suppose I should wait for reviews, or get impatient and just do my own review to see. 😉
TomTom has put their iPhone app and cradle video up on YouTube:
On the Mac front, I’m not entirely thrilled about the substantially-lowered price of the MacBook Air considering what I paid for mine in November, but I am happy about the $29 upgrade price for Snow Leopard. As I type this, my husband’s MacBook appears to have gone tits up, and I’m trying to duplicate his hard drive before I need to do anything drastic to fix it. He’s running Tiger and did not have Time Machine to automatically back up his data, and I think it’s high time to get him to Leopard, or Snow Leopard at this point, to remedy this situation since he’s apparently bound and determined to not back up on his own. Which I’ve told him he should do. Several times. How bad would it be if I made up an “I told you so” song and sing it to him repeatedly when he gets home from work today? Are we talking wife-strangling bad? Or just I-won’t-speak-to-you-for-a-few-days bad? It would be really helpful to know this in advance. 

Check out the new iPhone 3G S Guided Tour

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I’ve got a good bit of bandwidth available for the month, so I thought I’d host this iPhone 3G S guided tour video since Apple’s site is getting a bit slammed at the moment. Nelson is your friendly and too-perky host for this video but it gives a nice overview of the new features.
This will stay up until my hosting company sends a large man named Vito to my house to break my kneecaps.
Oh, and I’m definitely going to buy an iPhone 3G S (as if that was ever in doubt). And I totally called the VoiceOver feature in the new iPhone, for the record. 😉 
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