Welcome to my iPhone blog.
This blog is a running journal about my iPhone. I have had my iPhone for a week. I have been through some pain. Hope my pain can result in easy transition to other iPhone newbies.
1. Purchasing the iPhone
- Bought it at an Apple store in Oakbrook, IL. The apple store representatives seem to be getting a chip on their shoulder, esp. when selling the iPhone. Why ? Guess, its because there isn't a better phone in the market today.
- Don't let the price tag bite. It "may" be worth it after all.
2. Activation and Porting the Phone number with AT&T
- Well, I think my account is the most complicated of all the AT&T accounts.
- My wife already has a AT&T wireless phone, but the account is in my name to get the corporate (IBM) discount on the plan.
- My wife's phone number is in the area code 585, and my phone number at the current CDMA provider is 734. AT&T looks at them as 2 different market segments, and have trouble merging two different area code phone numbers in to a single account
- I wanted to make sure, we both had a single account, and the iPhone was added a second phone to the primary. So my line would be added for just $ 9.99 (+$20 for the iphone)/month and wife's phone would get the discount. Yes, it already sounds complicated.
- Now to be able to merge the accounts, the AT&T business accounts department had to first convert the consumer account to a business account, and then allow it to add multiple market segments, and then change it back to a consumer account.
- Now I tried to activate my iPhone using iTunes. It failed. So called up iPhone activation unit of AT&T
- After multiple attempts, they decided to create a new account with the iPhone, and then later merge it with my primary account
- Activation and Porting took about 2 hours. Got a few emails, and the phone was buzzing
- Another hour later had my accounts merged
- Then spent 10 mins more on the phone for the AT&T CSR to merge my wireless account with my land line account. Its sounds sweet to have one bill for all communications. Unfortunately I had to go with WOW Cable for my internet access. Not a big fan of DSL.
Be nice and patient with the CSRs. Its not their fault, its AT&Ts flawed business processes. At the end of it, I sweet talked the CSR to waive my activation charges ($36 -- well worth it).
I was excited about being a ble to my iPhone. First thing I wanted was my Contacts. Yes, had some growing pains there too. Here is how would get my contacts in the future.
Managing Contacts for the iPhone
When creating contacts for the first time, ensure your iPhones contacts are completely empty before starting this. Else it will merge all the contacts you have on the iPhone with the contacts in your addressbook.
Strongly recommend creating a Yahoo! account just to manage and maintain your contacts. Unfortunately, iTunes contacts only merges with either your Yahoo! Address book or your Outlook Address book only. I exported all the contacts information from my existing Yahoo! address book in to a Yahoo CSV file. Opened it in an Excel spreadsheet. Deleted all the contacts I really didn't call. Entered any new contact information into this Excel spreadsheet.
Created a brand new Yahoo! account. Created new addressbook, and imported the Excel spreadsheet in. Now I had the right contacts I wanted.
Connected my iPhone to the iTunes, went to the "Info" tab. Selected "Configure", entered my Yahoo! addressbook login credentials. Then hit the Sync button. All the Yahoo! addresses showed up in my iPhone contacts in a few seconds.
Now, on a weekly basis I plan to just sync up my iPhone contacts with that in my Yahoo! address book.
The Restore functioanality for your iPhone
I tried this hoping it would clear my entire Contacts and settings. Apparently not. iTunes makes a backup of all the information on the iPhone. Downloads the firmware, and uploads it to the iPhone. Then restores the iPhone with all the backed up data. So this is good. At least you will not loose all the music and pictures stored only in the iPhone.
Things that I love about the iPhone
- The user interface is extremely friendly
- Clarity of the voice call is crisp
- Able to visually view all my voice mails
- Able to view the sequence of all my text messages
- Music and phone in one device
- WiFi
- The list is growing :)
Things that I don't like about the iPhone
- Can't connect to get my corporate mail. Yes, corporate mail is on Lotus Notes. Some companies have promised to have it by the end of the year 2007. Looking forward to it
- Lack of client side kewl applications
- Wish there was a GPS receiver built in too. Yes, I understand the challenges, but I am sure both micro technology and nano technology will help out soon
- 8Gb. Way too little for the amount of music I carry around
- This list is growing too :(
Next Experiments
1. How to make iPhone fit in to my life style - Work, play and keep in contact with my family and friends.
2. Best way to watch movies, tv and videos at the least cost possible
3. I am buying a TiVo soon. Yes, watch TV shows while on the plane. Esp. those awesome PBS shows that comes at the same time when my wife wants to watch her favorite shows. Or will my iPhone and the other iPods at home force me to Apple TV. I certainly hate to make my house an Apple dependent house. Although Steve Jobs would love this, but then how would his system be different from that Bill Gates has built. I don't deny that both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are amongst the greatest technologists and entrepreneurs of our generation, but I still would like to control my life.
Hope you find the information provided here useful. Please feel free to add comments, suggestions and questions, and I will post articles when I can.
Pramodh Narayan
Nov 3, 2007 . About 11:00 AM CT.
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