No Business Naming Things

After dealing with a VERY helpful Rogers employee on the phone (who took me on my word when I said that I had already tried a restore/reflash - I had) I now have a brand new iPhone coming to me in the post.

I have now been on hold for 40 minutes with Rogers. Thank goodness I have a speaker phone - if I had to be concentrating on holding a handset for that long I am sure I would’ve put it through a wall by now

Edit: after an hour I’ve given up.  I will try again later I guess.

The problem with my iPhone pausing/unpausing songs during playback was unbearable this morning so after getting in I called Rogers customer service. After wading through their system for 5 minutes they told me to call back on a land line. After wading through 5 minutes again they put me through to someone who can’t exactly grasp the problem. This was almost certainly my fault - I am not the most articulate person on the planet, particularly on the phone. After a couple of tries she understands and goes off looking through her database. After another 5 minutes she says that I’d be better off talking to Apple. She forwards my call to them and hangs up. Problem is, Apple technical support isn’t yet open.

*sigh* c’mon guys, you must know when they’re open. Why forward me at all?

So, I’ll be calling Rogers back after 9 so if/when they forward me to Apple again I might actually be able to get somewhere.

Incidentally, the problem was so bad this morning that I couldn’t take more than 5 steps without it pausing. It even skipped tracks a couple of times. When I got in I tried swapping out my Bang and Olufsen headphones for an old pair I had in my desk. Same problem. I then tried a last-gen pair of iPod headphones that I keep for the gym and they worked a lot better. If I REALLY tried I could make it pause but I dont think it’d happen under normal circumstances. What’s more, the connection felt a lot more secure than either my B&O or desk headphones. Hopefully this is something they can correct for without having to send the device in to Apple.

I honestly don’t know how long I’ve owned this thing.  Whatever segment of my brain that is responsible for measuring time has died and rotted.

Rogers 3G service is… spotty… at best.  At several times throughout the day, the most common being 4:30-5:30 pm, I cannot get data service.  Nope, nada.  It appears to be connected to 3G but any attempt at using Safari or Mail or Facebook will time out.  There are additional times throughout the day where it doesn’t work as well, but that time period seems the most consistent.  It’s not working at the moment nor has it worked for the last 15 minutes or so.  How very frustrating.

I’m still enjoying this thing just as much as I was, but there is a more noticible flaw I should mention. Google tells me this is not widespread but it’s not unique either. The problem is that when the iPod is paused (or no longer playing) it will sometimes unpauae itself. Pressure on the headphone plug will often make it happen, but that isn’t the exclusive cause. Sometimes there’s no reason at all (that I can see.). It seems to have become less frequent over the last few days but is not better entirely. I may have to try the stock iPhone headphones and see if that helps - it could be some kind of short from my headphones.

Oh yah… The battery life. Boy does that ever suck. With 15 minute mail updates I might get 2 days out of it.

I caved and got a 16g iPhone today. Perhaps under other circumstances I would have waited but I desperately needed some retail therapy to smooth out what’s happened recently. This is probably adequate to brand me a shallow asshole for life, but I can own that. We all deal in our own ways.

So, verdict after 5 hours of ownership: it’s good. It’s everything I expected it to be and there was only two things that pissed me off. The first, which lays at the feet of Apple, is the (relatively) minor pain of putting on custom ring tones. There is no way in hell that I’m going to pay again for a 30 second clip of music I already own. While Apple doesn’t make it EASY for you to create your own, a liberal application of Garage Band and this tutorial does the trick.

The second is an application problem with FileMagnet. I really wanted a decent PDF reader for this thing and every PDF I’ve thrown at FileMagnet has either frozen it or simply not worked. The thing only cost me $4.99, so I can’t complain TOO much, but I will complain more if I can’t get it working in time.

So, Rogers has thrown another option into the iPhone pricing ring - a limted time $30/6gb offer.

This price seems pretty close to right for me - I could definitely live with it. I still can’t swallow the 3 year commitment, however. Given my history with phones (and iPods) I’m skeptical that I could make any device last 3 years, particularly one with a touch screen. Throw in a contractless option (or a more reasonable 1-2 year contract) and they’d have me sold.

So, the Canadian iPhone price plans have been announced. I’m not surprised in the slightest that Rogers once again decided to fleece their customers - 450MB cap? No unlimited plans? Three year contract?

Behold the power of the monopoly, folks. Sigh. Unfortunately, it’s JUST within the realm of tolerable for me. I need to find a way to talk myself out of it.