My new iPhone was delivered today, which made me quite happy. I’ve had a really great relationship with my BlackBerry over the many moons I’ve had it, but I too must jump on the iPhone bandwagon. I’ve had a pretty positive day with the new device, but for some reason I cannot seem to hold a wifi connection here at home. Other routers seem to be very happy with my iDevice, but my home router refuses to play with it. After several hours of researching and experimenting I’m nowhere near closer to understanding the problem. You don’t suppose it could be one of those mysterious ghost problems that vanishes suddenly without warning, do you? I suppose I’ll just have to keep an eye on it for now.
I had a very humorous moment to myself in the family room today. I was opening the iPhone and activating it through my provider’s website, and when I was finished it told me to plug the device into iTunes to finish the activation. I stared at the screen and blinked. Guess who doesn’t have a Windows machine in order to run iTunes?? *raises hand*
In my two solid hours of research I found a single product for activating my phone in a linux environment — and the instructions were bogus. After what seemed like ages of stumbling through every possible combinations of settings you could possibly imagine, I was able to activate my device. Today’s lesson: It’s most certainly possible to do just about anything on linux… if you love troubleshooting, problem solving and possess an endless amount of time to dedicate to the issue.
See, that’s why you need to have Windows!
If I could go back to a working XP machine, I would in a heartbeat. Vista gives me a head throbbing pain, and 7 is… well, I like 7, but now that I’ve been using Ubuntu for so long I’m really quite satisfied with it. I have a low-spec laptop so I can’t run any high end Windows programs anyway.
I’ve used all 3 of the main Windows OSs. XP is too businessy, Vista is cluttered and slow, and 7 is amazing.
It boggles my mind that you don’t have a Windows or Mac installation yet got an iPhone anyway. I have ranted enough about why I dislike the iPhone and Apple’s recent business decisions in general; as a piece of technology, the iPhone is admittedly quite nifty. Nevertheless, it is the pinnacle of Apple’s locked down philosophy. I thought it was common knowledge that the iPhone must by synced with iTunes to do anything useful.
I assume you shall jailbreak your phone so you can free it from the tyranny of iTunes now, yes?
I don’t have plans to jailbreak my current iPhone. It was unlocking, jailbreaking and upgrading that prevented me from being able to use my last iDevice, so I don’t think I’m going to take any risks with this one. I usually pay for the songs and albums I really like anyway. The crappy songs I can stream over wifi when I’m at home or on campus if all I’m looking for is a quick entertainment fix. I buy the odd app now and then too if I think it looks really well made.
I download things for free if I think it’s overpriced or underwhelming.
