iPhone, AT&T, MMS

Well, I got my first MMS message on my iPhone the other day. Ugh. It came as a text message (SMS) which read:

I sent you a multimedia message. You can view my message w/in the next 7 days via the web at www.viewmymessage.com using ID A1843 and password M6572

Well, that's pretty handy, except that I then need to open up a browser (by clicking on the provided link) and then key in the cryptic userid and password that I am forced to remember or write down because cut and paste is a concept foreign to the iPhone development team.

This is now my new number one priority, along with being able to record movies, send MMS messages, transfer files using bluetooth add cut and paste and receiving MMS messages. Wait, ok, I'll throw you a bone - if you add receiving MMS messages, I won't need to cut and paste ids and passwords back and forth, so that's lower priority.

AT&T - you meed to hire people to proofread the things you put on your site. This text, for example, is not really English:


See how you've used "this" twice in the second sentence? This is kind of stupid. Here, I'll reword it for free for you:

Your login is being verified. Depending on your Internet connection speed, this may take a few minutes to complete. If it does indeed take a few minutes to complete rather than a few seconds, you should contact your Internet Service Provider and tell them that AT&T says your connection sucks and you want your money back.

See - much better. The first one is free. After that, it costs money.

Revelations

Sometimes it takes a near-death experience (even on someone else's part) for us to see what's lacking in our own lives.

The big story in the news this morning was about the Quantas jet that had to make an emergency landing because of a hole that appeared in the fuselage - good reason to land in my book. Kudos to the crew and passengers for staying calm and landing safely.

What's the relevation, you're asking.. If you check out the news story, you'll see that there's a video clip shot from inside the plane - no doubt from a cell phone camera. So here I am, watching this video clip thinking "jerk, you're supposed to be panicking, not making a movie" and then it hits me - my freaking iPhone 3G can't make a damned movie.

WTF Steve - what's up with that? If my plane is going down, I want to record it at 30 frames per second, not a couple of stills per minute. When're you going to fix this? And would it hurt to have a few "features" with the still camera - maybe B&W pictures, Sepia tone, you know, cheesy things that I thought were cool in my iPhony (Sony Ericsson W810i phone).

iPhone 3G

Patience paid off.  I walked into an Apple store yesterday afternoon and walked out with a new iPhone.  Unlike everyone who felt compelled to stand in line for untold hours (don't you people have lives, jobs, self-esteem?), the whole process took under 30 minutes, most of that time being spent waiting for AT&T to adjust my account so that AppleStoreGuy could activate the phone in my name.

I got the white one, mostly because they didn't have any 16GB black ones.  I think I wanted a black one more, but I convinced myself I only wanted the black one because they didn't have any.

I haven't spent a lot of time with it yet, but I've done a few things - I connected to my home wireless network, I paired it with my Prius, I took a couple of pictures.  I even synced it with iTunes on my desktop which magically copied all of my contacts from my old phone to the iPhone.

I am disappointed in one aspect though - Bluetooth.  I can't remember having a phone that had Bluetooth that didn't let me transfer files from my phone to a PC (all of the pictures I post here are phone pictures).  I remember hearing horror stories from Verizon users about how their phones had crippled Bluetooth stacks.

On the other hand, for Halloween this year, I'm going slightly non-PC - I'll color my teeth blue and roll around in a wheelchair - get it?  Crippled bluetooth?  Yeah, ok, it's a stretch.

European Vacation

Ethel and I just got back from vacation in Austria (and unexpectedly Germany - more on that later). All in all, it was pretty good - by definition vacation is, and spending it with Ethel makes it that much more enjoyable.

For those that don't follow soccer, this year the Euro2008 Soccer championship was held in Austria and Switzerland. I'm not the world's biggest soccer fan, but I do enjoy watching the games. The Europeans thought - they're totally into it. In fact, they're so into it, you might even call them Euro-pee'ins based on what I saw in one restaurant bathroom:

It's a pity there is no scorekeeping though the electronics to make it work would probably be a problem. After a liter of Gösser, I was ready for a few penalty kicks.. A goalie would be nice too.

The other thing I noticed - after the Josef Fritzl thing a few months back, they're taking child welfare much more seriously. I saw several signs like this when we were out and about:


I think this is their equivalent of the Amber Alert; I can easily imagine the little girl pictured shouting "you are not my daddy!"