Well, there finally is an app for the iPhone to write blog entries. As with all bleeding edge technologies, I decided to give it a try. The app seems decent for reading blog entries and writing posts. I would of liked to see some admin functionality to it though. I do not see a place to manage comments. This would be helpful and hppefully will be included in an upgrade. Also, spell checking (besides what the iPhone does) is also lacking.

All in all, if you needed to do a quick entry, this app is your man! Anything else, stick with the computer. I will follow the progress of wordpress for iPhone and wait for more functionality to emerge…..

Well, it seems that you learn something new every day. A user requested to have this program Xcode installed on her computer. After a little bit of research, it appears that Xcode allows you to develop applications on the mac and iPhone. I found the location to download the application and sent it to the user.

http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html - Just in case anyone was interested.

The download includes Xcode IDE, Dashcode, Instruments, interface builder, and the “rest” of the developer tools. If I knew how to develop code, this would interest me greatly! Oh well, at least I got to research something I never heard of before!

Well, I updated my iphone to 2.0 only to brick the device. During the update, it got an error and said it needed to rollback. During the rollback, I also got an error.

Now since everyone else is updating their phone at the same time, I am getting the following error:

“We could not complete your iTunes Store request. The network connection timed out.

Make sure your network settings are correct and your network connection is active, then try again”

I am unable to do anything with the iPhone but I will attempt to find a resolve.

UPDATE:
According to google, the way to “fix” this is to keep go back and forth between itunes store and the iphone. I have the 1.1.4 firmware downloaded so all I need to do is install it. I need the store to come up just so allow me to do this. This is the worst solution to the problem! I hated itunes before, now I hate it more now!!

UPDATE: I HAVE ROLLED BACK TO 1.1.4!

Ok, first you need to go to recovery mode. Here are the directions to do this.

Step 1. Turn off your iPhone.

Step 2. Hold down the power and home button.

Step 3. When you see the Apple logo, release the power button but continue holding the home button down.

Step 4. Open iTunes and wait for it to tell you that its in restore mode.

At this point, iTunes will not look for apple to validate or whatever and will try to roll back the software. My phone is recovering as we speak!

UPDATE: still bricked. Apparently, it needs to do some verification even when rolling back to 1.1.4. My mac contact LIED TO ME!!! Oh well, I’ll keep trying…

UPDATE: Finally worked. I am on 2.0 now. What a waste of a day!

You know what annoys me about the iPhone? I waited a few months for the first price decrease. I ended up spending 400 dollars on a 8 GB model. I mean, the phone does everything I need it to do so why not…

A month after I buy it, rumors of the iPhone 2.0 or iPhone 3G start rumbling around. I think to myself, meh who cares. It will probably cost more and I’ll pick it up in 2 years when my contract expires. As I read more about it, I find out the 8 GB model is only going to be 200 dollars!!! WHAT? Let me get this straight here. Better, for cheaper? How does that work? Well, lets go over a few of the gimics the iPhone will be released with and perhaps you can tell me.

1. Faster networks. Apple is trying to break into the Japanese markets and they need the phone to be a bit more zippy. (Don’t look at me, I quote zippy out of Steve Jobs mouth)

2. Better language support. While this feature excites those international users, I will hit the snooze button…

3. Exchange integration (This software should be released for the iPhone 1.0…not sure why we are getting excited that our cheaper brother would not have it…)

4. Better VPN Support (see point 3…)

5. App store (see point 3…) I do think that this will be cool. I would rather get the third party apps legally than having to hack the device…

6. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, nothing like saying screw you to your existing customers…AGAIN! Perhaps there will be a buying incentive for existing users to get a credit for the new device or something. I don’t know, but I just don’t see why the current iPhone is so much more than the newer iPhone….

A client called me up and said that his iTouch is malfunctioning. About a year ago, I would run to the hills with a call like this, since well, I hate ipods. The iPhone has given me a new light on the subject now. I took this call with both eyes open and actually read the error message.

this ipod cannot be used because the Apple Mobile Device service is not started

This struck me as odd and noticed that the service was indeed not started. I threw this message into google and was floored with the resolutions.

REINSTALL iTunes?!?!?!?!

I see no reason why I should reinstall iTunes so for giggles, I decided to check out the services and see if the service was indeed not started. Indeed the service was disabled. In the back of my mind, I wonder why this is but changed that to automatic and started the service. Immediately, the iTouch started to work.

If the issue is virus related, it will occur again and I will have to do more research, but, at this moment, it seems that the issue is resolved! If it is virus related, I will update.

Last night, I was playing an intense game of iCopter on the iPhone and I got a warning that I had 10% of my battery life left. I thought, ok, when the phone dies, I’ll plug it into my computer and let it charge overnight. As I got a score of 700ish from iCopter, the phone died. This always seems to happen when I am doing well in that game!

I let it charge overnight and when I look at the battery percentage, it only had a sliver left and it was red. I thought that was strange but chalked it up to my computer just not charging it last night. I mean, if the computer if frozen, that would happen. Since I do not have a lot of time to futz around with this stuff, I figured I would leave it until I get into work.

During my 2.5 hour commute into NYC, the phone never turned off. Generally, I only have about 15 minutes in the red line before the thing dies. I use the iPhone nonstop and eat the battery on the thing. So after I get into work, I plug it in again. I let it sit for an hour and the thing is still sitting on the red line.

CRAP!

I then went on the internet to find out what my options are. I found a few interesting points.
1. The iPhone is covered under 1 year of warentee. The battery life averages 10 months. My battery is only 3 months old so I thought this was very odd.
2. It costs 70 dollars to buy apple care support. This support is for an extra year of replacement parts. They claim it is for 2 years, BUT the first year is free! I can also buy this at any point during my first year of owning the phone so why would I do it now? I mean, it would be nice to have if I break the screen, but to replace the battery? Apple claims that the battery costs 80 dollars to replace.
3. I cannot speak for the screen, but this website has a rather sweet battery replacement plan:

http://www.ipodjuice.com/iphone-battery-replacement-products.htm

They will replace the battery for you for 20 dollars. How can you beat that? Now the only reason why I would want to get the applecare plan would be if the screen cracks. I think I will take my changes don’t you?

As I was looking for the number to call apple, (since I am under warentee and all) I figured I would try something first. All windows computers seem to work better after a reboot so I figured I would reboot the iPhone and see what happens. I mean, it can’t hurt right? So I hold down the top and middle buttons and the phone turns off and back on and low and behold, I have full battery life again! Seems I will be holding off on that call to Apple…

When the iPhone crashes or locks up in a way that prevents the iPhone from responding to the normal iPhone restart procedure, you need to reset the iPhone. Resetting the iPhone is simple.

Reset the iPhone by holding the sleep/wake button at the top right of the device and the home button at the bottom center of the face at the same time. Hold them both until you see the screen go black and the white Apple logo appear. When this happens, you can let go - the iPhone is rebooting.

Resetting the iPhone should not remove or delete any data or settings.

http://ipod.about.com/od/iphonetroubleshooting/qt/reset_iphone.htm

I would like to let everyone know my saga of getting the iPhone to work with my company’s exchange server.  It is not pretty.

Step 1.  Configure iPhone to imap settings

Step 2. Cry as I receive an error message saying that I do not have a replica of my mailbox on this server.

Step 3. Inquire with exchange admin 1.  He says ask Exchange Admin 2.

Step 4. Verify with Exchange Admin 2 that my mailbox needs to be migrated to a specific server (stupid iPhone and their inability to support activesync.  I cannot wait for version 2 to come out….)

Step 5. Migrate my mailbox. 

Step 6. Receive an error.  The system attendant is located at an infostore that is corrupt.  Wait for Exchange admin 2 to fix the problem.

Step 7. Migrate my mailbox.

Step 8. Notice that the migration did not take.  I did not allow for continue after corrupt messages, and I have a corrupt message.  HARAAH!

Step 9. Accidentally purging my mailbox.  I had two copies and I removed the new copy.  This apparently causes much hell on the side of exchange.  I lost access to my mail and feverishly backed up my OST storage information to a PST.

Step 10.  Create a new mailbox for myself.

Step 11.  Close outlook.

Step 12.  Open outlook. 

Step 13. Migrate the mail back to outlook.

Step 14.  Verify the iPhone works correctly.  I AM RECEIVING MAIL!  YEAY!

Step 15. Cry repeatedly as the amount of mail has locked up the iPhone.

Step 16. Pending.  Assume that more crying will be in order…

Well, for a split second, I thought it was pretty cool.  It looked like I had the matrix on my iphone.  It would display the black background and white text, looking all cool like.  The only problem?  The phone no longer worked.  The basic rule here is DO NOT HACK YOUR PHONE! 

After some searching on the Internet, I came across this site with the following directions:

1. Put your iphone in the dock, with the USB cable disconnected from your computer.

2. Make sure the phone is off (The only way I got the phone to turn off is to hold the power button + the home button for like 15 seconds)

3. Once you know the phone is off, press and hold the HOME button then plug in the USB cable to your computer, keep holding the HOME button the whole time.

4. Next it should put a Yellow Triangle on your iphone and it should say “connect to itunes”.

5. Now restore your phone, and you should be GOOD TO GO!
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=395211

If nothing else, I now know not to fuck around with the iphone!