OK, so that was hard. Thanks not only to the expected supply issues but also O2's almost totally opaque business upgrade policy and computer systems, it seemed like I was never going to battle through!. However, big kudos to the nice folks at the O2 shop in Stroud, Glos, who texted me when they had stock come in (unlike Cheltenham, who took my details several times and threw then directly into the pit of despair). Not only did they still have phones when I arrived at the store they diligently upnpicked all of O2's best efforts to roadblock my upgrade and I left the store with two 8 gig phones (one for me and one for Mrs Dr Happy Mac).
One quick session with iTunes later and both phones were up and running. So, do we join the ranks of the converted? Of course we do. It is quite simply the phone I have alwaysw wanted. It does the basics better than my old (!) Nolia n95, I can call, be called, look up contacts text etc, all more easily than before. I love the visual voice mail and once it's done with being a phone I can listen to my music and podcasts. It's also fantastic to hold with great hand feel and weight.
Family DHM have just returned from a field in Oxfordshire, having road tested our new tent and the iPhone was a real boon, pulling my mail from out of the air, allowing us to book cinema tickets for a rainy afternoon and even plotting my route to an emergency on hols call out via the google maps app. Battery life is a bit short though, but then my n95 was shocking like that too.
I could go on, but I guess the internet is full enough of glowing iPhone reviews. The main thing is, I got one. As could be guessed the low points of the experience were all about the O2 service (not you Stroud guys). Lets hope now the rush has died down that people are getting a better first impression of Apple and its products. It's worth the hassle.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
Sunday, 13 July 2008
iPhone...what iPhone
Dateline Friday July 11th. The day that rabid PR executives worldwide had decreed to be known as I-day, or iPhone-day, or perhaps frI-day. Who knows. Whatever, big business had successfully managed to smuggle enough mind altering chemicals into my coffee to ensure that I would decide to join the day one gang and become one of the iPhoned.
So how did I do. Initial efforts had gone poorly, very poorly. As a result of registering my interest with )2 I was the luck recipient of an e-mail instructing me to click on a link. Checking my content filter were set to "stun" I clicked. A mere hour had elapsed since receipt of the mail, but this proved to be too long. The phone that makes Jesus look like an amateur magician was sold out online. Already. It looked like it was going to be a store vist. Me in an actual Apple line. Would there be mimes to entertain us. Would we bond with fellow line travellers, making friends for ever, peopl ewho when we mailed each other with our phones would look at the little signature "sent from my iPhone" and smile with warm rememberance?
A totally fake excuse of collecting some t-shirsts meant that I had a reason to head from Cirencester to Cheltenham, via the girls school. Luckily for me the girls are great gymnasts so I didn't actually have to stop the car, simply eject them on the move in the general direction of school. The road to Cheltenham is narrow and twisty, and had my car been fitted with TOW rockets or machine guns would have been littered with the burning shells of cars that were driving just. too. slowly. Still 9.30 was a good time to getr in line.
The quick walk from car to O2 shop took me past the Carphone Warehouse outlet, where a mini queue was already in place, should I divert. No. there it was the holy grail. Some red police tape, a few cones and... the queue. A nice lady even came out, counted us and pronounced all of us in the line as blessed, well as blessed as people who are denied 16Gb phones because they only had 8Gb models in stock could be.
But, what cruel fate was this. Another, not nearly so nice lady asking if any of us were business customers. Me!! I'm an importnat business customer, in line for two handsets!! Me!! No! No!! NO!!! "I'm sorry sir, we can't process business customers today. We've made this totally arbitary decision, sorry!"
And that was that. The scant solace of my t0shirt collection failed to remake my morning. O2 are now out of stock for weeks, but the Cirencester Carphone Warehouse is gettng more in on Tuesday so it looks like a plan B is scheduled for then.
Updates on Tuesday.
So how did I do. Initial efforts had gone poorly, very poorly. As a result of registering my interest with )2 I was the luck recipient of an e-mail instructing me to click on a link. Checking my content filter were set to "stun" I clicked. A mere hour had elapsed since receipt of the mail, but this proved to be too long. The phone that makes Jesus look like an amateur magician was sold out online. Already. It looked like it was going to be a store vist. Me in an actual Apple line. Would there be mimes to entertain us. Would we bond with fellow line travellers, making friends for ever, peopl ewho when we mailed each other with our phones would look at the little signature "sent from my iPhone" and smile with warm rememberance?
A totally fake excuse of collecting some t-shirsts meant that I had a reason to head from Cirencester to Cheltenham, via the girls school. Luckily for me the girls are great gymnasts so I didn't actually have to stop the car, simply eject them on the move in the general direction of school. The road to Cheltenham is narrow and twisty, and had my car been fitted with TOW rockets or machine guns would have been littered with the burning shells of cars that were driving just. too. slowly. Still 9.30 was a good time to getr in line.
The quick walk from car to O2 shop took me past the Carphone Warehouse outlet, where a mini queue was already in place, should I divert. No. there it was the holy grail. Some red police tape, a few cones and... the queue. A nice lady even came out, counted us and pronounced all of us in the line as blessed, well as blessed as people who are denied 16Gb phones because they only had 8Gb models in stock could be.
But, what cruel fate was this. Another, not nearly so nice lady asking if any of us were business customers. Me!! I'm an importnat business customer, in line for two handsets!! Me!! No! No!! NO!!! "I'm sorry sir, we can't process business customers today. We've made this totally arbitary decision, sorry!"
And that was that. The scant solace of my t0shirt collection failed to remake my morning. O2 are now out of stock for weeks, but the Cirencester Carphone Warehouse is gettng more in on Tuesday so it looks like a plan B is scheduled for then.
Updates on Tuesday.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Make the most of mail
Web apps such as Firefox and Safari seem to have inspired people to both create and use a wide range of plug ins that are designed to customise the users experience to help specific browsing styles, but maybe because it's such a workaday program most people seem to use Apple Mail as it comes, straight out of the box. While basic mail (and particularly Leopard Mail (mail3) makes a pretty good job of your e-mail there are a few ways to make the mail experience more useful. So here are a few additions to mail that you might find useful.
First off, Letterbox. This plug in changes the standard mail view to three side by side columns ratehr than stacking the preview window under the mail list window. On wide screen monitors (and Mac Book Pros) this makes much better use of your screen real estate and can save lots of time, particularly when scanning long lists of mail.
Growlmail is part of the hugely useful Growl suit of plug ins and add ons that allow a range of notifications of events happening on and to your Mac. Growl mail will notify you via a pop up window of new incoming mail, and give you a heads up on who it's from.
Similarly, MailAppertiser is another flexible mail notification plug in. A dark smoked effect pop up window displays new incoming maeesages plus their content for a specified amount of time allowing you to decide wether to ignore or deal with any new messages. Mail Appetiser is available for both Tiger and Leopard mail.
With many more plug ins available to fulfill specific tasks, it should be worthwhile investigating how you could improve your mail experience.
First off, Letterbox. This plug in changes the standard mail view to three side by side columns ratehr than stacking the preview window under the mail list window. On wide screen monitors (and Mac Book Pros) this makes much better use of your screen real estate and can save lots of time, particularly when scanning long lists of mail.
Growlmail is part of the hugely useful Growl suit of plug ins and add ons that allow a range of notifications of events happening on and to your Mac. Growl mail will notify you via a pop up window of new incoming mail, and give you a heads up on who it's from.
Similarly, MailAppertiser is another flexible mail notification plug in. A dark smoked effect pop up window displays new incoming maeesages plus their content for a specified amount of time allowing you to decide wether to ignore or deal with any new messages. Mail Appetiser is available for both Tiger and Leopard mail.
With many more plug ins available to fulfill specific tasks, it should be worthwhile investigating how you could improve your mail experience.
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