Another iPhone Post

Apologies to any readers who aren't interested in the iPhone. It's my little obsession for the time being, so please just bear with me. Exploring it has been a seemingly endless journey, but I believe I will have soon plumbed the thing's depths. Also, with the semester starting soon, and all our cool new goodies in the wings, I should have some other, more network- or desktop-systems-related articles to post in the near future (I am still a SysAdmin, after all). But until then, here's yet another iPhone post (as if the thing needed any more press).

Briefly, I wanted to mention that I did attempt to return my iPhone, using as a pretext the camera's white balance issue, from which mine certainly suffers, and for which I'd heard replacements could be had.

iPhone White Balance Problem: This is a White Wall
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I was persistent (read: pesky but polite) enough to have a Genius take a quick look at the problem. He told me that his did the same thing, and that the issue would be corrected in a software update. That was Tuesday evening, July 31, 2007. Lo and behold, the next day Apple released their first iPhone software update.

iPhone Software Update 1.0.1 Lives in:
~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates
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Yesterday I installed the update, and I'm pleased to say, though the white balance issue has not yet been addressed, a number of other issues have. Firstly, the phone (mine anyway) is much, much more stable. My iPhone was getting to the point where I almost could not surf the web with multiple pages open without a crash. I mean it was bad to the point of me really not wanting to look at the internet at all anymore on the iPhone. Now, however, I find myself able to open several pages at once (including TUAW, which would consistently crash the browser before completely loading) without a crash. In fact, after a day of heavy use I have not had a single crash, where two days ago I was crashing on a very regular basis. This newfound stability is delightful.

iPhone Updating: Took About Five Minutes Total Time
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Secondly, MobileMail, which had previously only showed the top-level folders of my IMAP account, now properly shows all subfolders. This is excellent. I get a lot of server messages automatically sent to me, and without subfolders I had no way to file them. Now, though it can be tedious, it's possible.

iPhone Updated: Much More Stable
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There are apparently a whole host of other undocumented improvements. iPhone Atlas has a partial list. They claim that the earpiece and speaker volume has been improved. I cannot verify this as I haven't made or received a phone call since the update (because I am an asocial loser). But if it's true, it would take care of one of my top 5 issues with the iPhone.

With this update — particularly with the improved stability — I find myself less concerned about my dropped, cracked iPhone. It seems to be undamaged and working quite well. At this point I've pretty much made the decision not to make another attempt to get it replaced. Aside from a few scratches and a small crack, which I hardly ever notice anymore, and a fairly troubling white balance problem with the camera, the phone is perfectly fine. So I'll stick with it for now. If Apple does not fix the white balance issue with next software update, however, I may have another crack at it.

Sprint for the Holidays

Internet communications involve a vast multitude of tiny but complex transactions all working together in a concerted effort to transmit and receive various kinds of data. We all know this. But at no time has this fact been more evident to me than during my visit to my mother's backwoods home in Maryland, where the AT&T cellular service on my iPhone has ranged from intermittent to nonexistent. From time to time, however, I can get a connection just long enough to fire off an SMS, but using any other service that requires the Edge network is like watching the internet in slow motion. Surfing is a non-option. And sending email takes significantly longer in this slowed-down world of spotty service. But I found it surprising initially that SMS is able to get through where mail cannot. My first impression would be to assume that both would go about at about the same speed — both consist primarily of text data and are fairly lightweight. But email is clearly the more complex transaction, requiring the contacting of and authentication to mail servers and often the exchange of said data over secure channels. I'm not sure how SMS works, but it's something much, much simpler and more direct. And when everything is going in super slow motion these differences become painfully apparent.

This trip was to be the ultimate test of my iPhone's capabilities: could I survive a weekend at my mothers without a laptop, using only the iPhone instead? Would it hold up on the train as an entertainment device for the two-and-a-half hour trip? Would it function adequately as an internet appliance for light surfing and emailing? Would it work as a telephone?

Surprisingly, it worked well enough in every capacity but this last one: I could not use my iPhone as a cell phone at my mother's. I eventually discovered that, when laid flat on its back, the iPhone was able to generally maintain a connection to the AT&T network, so SMS, email and surfing were possible though the latter two were often painfully slow. Still, they were good enough to get me through the weekend. Where the iPhone fell down was as a cell phone. As soon as I'd lift it to my ear (sometimes sooner) it would drop any call I might be attempting.

This is a major disappointment. I was expecting the other functions of the phone to be limited, but I was pretty sure I'd be able to use it as a phone most places in the U.S. It worked plenty well in the Adirondacks. But at my mother's house (the phone seems to get healthy reception a few blocks away) I simply can't use my cell phone anymore. This was never a problem with Sprint. Indeed my folks have used Sprint without issue for years here.

Moving to AT&T was a calculated risk. One that, at least in this case, did not pay off. At this point I can only hope that either the iPhone's reception somehow gets significantly more stable in the vertical position in remote areas, or that AT&T's service eventually broadens to encompass the greater Annapolis area. Until then I'll be stuck on Sprint for the holidays.

So, in conclusion: the iPhone does actually replace my laptop as a portable internet and media device for short trips; unfortunately, it doesn't replace my cell phone. And that just blows.

This post written on my iPhone

Gmail vs. Blogger

Apologies if you've recently posted a comment on this blog, and had not heard back from me (I try to respond to all comments whenever I can). Seems that my Gmail account for receiving comment alerts began flagging them as spam. Seems the address for comment alerts was also not among my contacts. Seems odd to me, though, that two Google-made products would suddenly butt heads like that. Seems like they should know better.

Anyway, I'm back on track with comments again, and I've just posted a bunch of responses. So if you were looking for one, check for it. It should be there.

iPhone Follow-Up

So I've had my iPhone for a few weeks now, and I've had a chance to travel with, accidentally lock and drop it. Thought I'd report on the state of the iPhone after long-term, heavy use.

AT&T and My SIM Card

One of the most common questions I got after my initial iPhone review was how AT&T was compared to Sprint. Mind you, I have grown to absolutely loathe Sprint and their treatment of long-term customers, of which I had been a member. Pretty much as long as I could ignore AT&T I figured I'd be happy. And if I did have to call them for some reason, as long as they weren't complete assholes to me and didn't try to charge me for stuff I didn't buy, again, happy camper. Well, I did have to call them.

At some point, while fiddling around with my iPhone's settings, I decided to try locking the SIM card. Locking the SIM is a security precaution: Should your iPhone wind up in nefarious hands, the SIM card is password protected. What I didn't know was that, out of the box, the SIM card is already password protected with a password known only to AT&T, initially. So when I tried to change the password, it asked me for the existing one. When I provided the wrong one, it locked me out as it's meant to do. Shit.

From then on the phone refused to let me make any calls or use the Edge network. I had to go onto a regular old computer to go to AT&T's website. Here I tried to log into my account, which I apparently had not set up yet. I had sort of assumed this had been set up for me when I activated my phone, but no. Setting up my AT&T web account required going to the site and doing so. Unfortunately, this didn't get me very far, though it did get me to a forum article that described the problem I was having and its solution. In the article was a link to an AT&T utility that would reset or send me the SIM card password. This tool worked perfectly except for one fatal flaw: It sent my SIM card password to my phone via SMS text. Uh, guys... That's not gonna cut it...

Loathe as I was to contact AT&T over all this — or customer service in general, for that matter — looks like that's what I was going to have to do. So I gave them a call (on a friend's cell phone, of course). After navigating the inevitable voice-based menus, I was told that my wait-time to speak to customer service would be two minutes. Not bad considering Sprint was usually upwards of twenty. In about a minute, though, I was speaking to a human. Not only that, but said human knew exactly what I was talking about, and how to fix it. He stayed on the phone with me while I entered the old password and set a new one, and after that everything was right back to normal. The whole call took under five minutes. Amazing!

I've heard AT&T has been making a great effort to improve customer service. And, while I still hope to avoid them in the future, I'll be a lot less resistant to giving them a call based on this recent experience. I can't say the same for their website, though. Finding info there seemed to be quite a painful affair. But, so far anyway, we're light years ahead of Sprint.

Travel

Over the last few weeks I've also had the opportunity to do some light traveling and testing of AT&T's cellular coverage in remote areas. I drove to the farmlands of upstate New York this past weekend, and I used Google maps for just about everything. I had taken along a paper map as well, in case I couldn't get cell phone reception, but I rarely needed it. Google Maps just freakin' rocks, and even in farm country, the AT&T network seemed to hold up pretty well. Not perfectly, mind you — there were certainly a few spots where I had spotty coverage, or none at all. But considering where I was, I was pleasantly surprised at my level of coverage.

Drops

One major bummer happened along my travels: I dropped my iPhone for the first time. I had gone swimming and brought the thing along with me. After my dip I went to pick the iPhone up off the pool chair where I'd left it — with a shirt to keep it from getting wet — and it slipped out of my hands and landed on the concrete, face down. The indestructibility of that glass is near-legendary at this point, and I'd only dropped it from a height of maybe three or four feet, so I honestly wasn't even worried. Imagine my horror when I got back to my hotel room and discovered not only scratches, but a small crack in the lower right hand corner of the glass. Yup. A crack. Fortunately, this is nowhere near the touch-sensitive areas of the screen, and the phone continues to work perfectly.

iPhone Glass: Crack-Resistance Over-Stated?

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I've since managed to drop it from full standing height face down onto a hardwood floor, and it has emerged unscathed, so I don't think my first drop was typical. Still, dropping the iPhone can indeed crack the glass, so if you're worried, or prone to dropping phones a lot, and you want to keep your iPhone in pristine condition, you may want to consider getting a case for it. Me, I'm trying to just accept the fact that the phone will not stay perfect forever, and that shit happens. After all, what's a few scrapes and scuffs, right? Builds character!

Yeah... Okay... Whatever...

iPhone Glass Crack Detail: Not So Bad, I Guess

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Anyway, I still love the damn thing. In fact, I have to say, maybe the most frustrating thing about it is how much I like it. It's the reason I bring it to the pool. It's the reason I drop it so much. Hell, it's even the reason I locked up the SIM card. I just can't seem to leave it alone.

So, yeah, still happy, cracks and all.

UPDATE:

iPhone Atlas has posted an article on options for cracked iPhone screens. It's pretty much what I'd expected, but what I didn't know is that Apple has a repair program for the iPhone, and they'll reportedly repair any iPhone for a flat rate of $199 for the 4GB model or $249 for the 8GB model. Why the price is different for the 8GB model is beyond me, but there you have it. Thought I'd let you all know.

"Disable Clear Text Passwords" Breaks Randomly

Typically, when you set up a Mac client to bind to a Mac server using Directory Access, there is one lone entry in the Security settings that is checked by default, and that is the "Disable clear text passwords" setting. This seems like a prudent default, and I always leave it checked. I assume that this means that passwords are then sent to the authentication server in some sort of hashed or encrypted form, and that both server and client are set up to negotiate this transaction properly out of the box. Indeed, most of the time this does not present any sort of problem whatsoever.

But for some reason, every now and then, completely randomly, Mac clients will suddenly and mysteriously be unable to authenticate to my Master Authentication Server. Seriously, nothing's changed. Just all of a sudden, Macs can't authenticate. The solution? Un-tick that "Disable clear text passwords" box under the LDAPv3 server configuration's Security tab. Next thing you know, everything's right as rain.

Directory Access: LDAPv3->Select Configuration->Edit
How in Hell Does this Break?
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Seriously, can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? 'Cause frankly, it's annoying.