New firmware

I just finished updating to 1.1.2 version of the iPhone firmware. Things look fine, with no snags during the process, even though I was watching a video podcast while the update downloaded and installed in the background.

The first thing I checked was whether or not my two iToner ringtones were still there. I was pleased to see that they are. It’s good to know the The Police will still warn me when the folks at work are “Sendin’ out an SOS....”

While checking this out, I also noticed that the additional ringtones are now set off from the baked-in basics. Rather than a single list, you are presented with various groups: Default, Custom, and Standard. And there, to my delight, are both of my freebies, right beside the one I made on iTunes and paid 99¢ for, after paying 99¢ for the song on the iTunes store. My freebies, of course, are from songs I ripped from my CD collection.

Since my last post was made just after purchasing my iPhone on release day, let me recap the past few months. There have been many interesting times.
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During the initial surge of excitement with my iPhone, I happened to have a major data loss, where all contacts were lost from AddressBook. I synced with my iPhone, figuring that the names would be written back to my Mac. Wrongo, buddy-boy! So I’m in a hotel somewhere (New York, maybe? Or San Antonio? Who knows - late summer is a blur of travel.) Fortunately, I had a not-too-old backup of my AddressBook data, restored that, and re-synced my iPhone, getting my info back. The habit of backing up my AB database came from MissingSync’s irritating habit of over-writing all the iChat/AIM/Yahoo!Messenger names in my contact list. (Last I checked, that was still happening in TMS, but has never once been an issue with the iPhone.) Syncing software needs to learn that if they don’t handle the field, don’t mess with it! I am so spoiled by iChat’s putting real names in the place of those scary AIM handles some folks have that I am not able to communicate without it. Who the heck is BixlSplic, anyway? The iPhone doesn’t (yet?) support keeping IM names in your contact database, but at least it doesn’t remove it!

Next little blip in this love affair came on a week-long trip to Barcelona. After about a month, I was pretty well hooked on finding where I was with GoogleMaps on my iPhone. I could follow the taxi’s circuitous route, and get an idea of how far the school or hotel or whatever was from where we actually were. (This is not always something cab drivers are excited about, by the way!)

So, I’m three days in country, and the guy I’m presenting with (another iPhone convert, as are most of the folks I work with) happens to ask “Did you set up the text message roaming plan?” Do What??? A quick trip to AT&T’s account page revealed what I was never told - text messages cost differently when you’re roaming. So, I added the roaming service (~$10 a month, if I recall correctly), and hoped that it would cover the whole month. Especially after my youngest and I had just text messaged for about 45 minutes while I ate dinner the night before. She (six time zones away) was telling me about her classes and her new dorm friends. (She’s a freshman in college, away from home for the first time.)

We finished our trip, impressing our clients with the fun gadgets, getting directions with the help of GoogleMaps to places we really needed to see, restaurants, etc. I got home, and the next week, got my second iPhone bill. The first has been within pennies of my previous Cingular bill. The new one was just over $400, or four times the usual! So, lesson learned - don’t text or use wireless Internet while roaming. (Fortunately, since we were in Spain at the behest of our client, these could be included in communications expenses (and fit right in line with other overseas calls). But it caused quite a sinking feeling in my gut to open that envelope and see the added charges!

For those who don’t know, I started a Palm user group back in 2000, and it’s been meeting monthly ever since. With the changes that have occurred in the handheld space over the last seven years, the focus of that group has changed to include other handhelds and devices, but the concentration has usually remained with the Palm. With the release of the iPhone (and my abandonment of the Palm within a few weeks), I decided to open it up to all portable devices - a move that was welcomed by many folks who had also lost interest in Palm over the years. During our user group meeting in August, Chris showed us AppInstaller and all the wonderful third-party apps being written for the iPhone. Several folks in the group over the next few weeks added these products to their iPhones, myself included.

The SpringBoard apps on my iPhone gave me the biggest gadget rush since my Newton 2000 was upgraded. There were updates coming out everyday, the platform was solid (I had maybe two crashes, but Safari would do that many in a week just hitting heavily scripted web-sites. No biggie, the app resets back to the main screen.) This is while traveling for our late summer training, mind you. I’m sitting in airports, getting real work done, answering email, editing user data on our servers through a Ruby on Rails application, and not paying a nickel to the airport WiFi network folks! With on-board data storage, the iPhone was an even more valuable piece of gear.

I’ve been writing this way too long. I need to post it. I’ll detail some of this later on a (hopefully more frequent) post.