- Semper Fi -
Archive for January 2010
When my 24 inch iMac was dying it’s long and painful death amongst the many issues I encountered was an annoying drive related problem. Since, the entire machine was becoming more unstable by the day I had more to worry about than the niceties of drive names. Sadly I’ve encountered the same issue several times recently and knew the time had come to undertake some research and hopefully formulate a fix for it.
So the magic day has arrived … I’m out of contract on my iPhone 3G *deep joy*
Time to change to a better value tariff so off I headed to O2 in Bolton. I knew what I wanted was a tariff called Simplicity 20 for iPhone … if only acquiring it had been simple. Sadly, it was a complete disaster, for the full horror of the day take a listen to MacBites episode 40.
The store staff had clearly had no training in what was available to cater for the specific needs of iPhone customers. A glaring omission given that all the customers who purchased an iPhone 3G on the day of release are out of contract this month. The staff were all most helpful and cordial but this didn’t translate into a smooth transaction when they were unaware of the difference between a Simplicity tariff and a Simplicity for iPhone tariff.
For the record this is the difference:
From my experiences I’d by-pass the stores, they don’t seem to have a clue what is the best option for iPhone customers coming out of contract, and call O2 directly. If given a choice, which you should be if ringing via your iPhone, select the option to speak to the cancellations department. The option actually connects you to a department called Retentions who seem to be the only people at O2 who have any knowledge of the existence of the iPhone version of the Simplicity tariff.
Tell the Retentions department you want to switch to Simplicity 20 for iPhone with 600 free minutes, 1200 free texts, 2 bolt-ons and visual voice mail. If they deny all knowledge of its existence ask to speak to a supervisor and/or show them this screen capture of my O2 account … it really exists!!
You might have to wait 24 hours for everything to be activated and you might have to manually reconfigure your settings. One of the side effects of changing tariffs was that the phone reset itself and failed to connect to the 3G network. This was easily rectified by entering the following settings into the General > Network > Cellular Data Network of the phone:
The only other gotcha I encountered was having to set Visual Voice Mail up again from scratch but this shouldn’t be necessary if O2 transfer you to the correct tariff in the first place. Being without my visual voice mail made me realize that it was a feature of the iPhone that I had greatly under-appreciated … a mistake I won’t make again 
Good luck with your tariff transfers and I’d love to hear how you get on so be sure to leave me a comment below!
So it’s that time of the year when resolutions are made, plans are crafted and successes are plotted.
Judging by my lack of progress in blogging last year I think rather than picking one or more of the Top 10 New Years Resolutions I should resolve to dedicate more time to blogging.
In my defence I did notice in 2009 that the number of episodes of MacBites we released increased in direct proportion to the lack of blog posts though!
So with an interesting 2010 to look forward to I shall endeavour to blog my geeky thoughts much more than in 2009.
Why interesting you ask? Well it looks as if the as yet mythical Apple tablet might just see the light of day and I’m lusting after one (or two!!) of those new shiny 27 inch iMacs too. In business terms I have plenty of speaking engagements booked and more in the planning stage so be sure to keep an eye on my Presentations page for details of both upcoming events and recordings of previous presentations.
Since I spent the whole of New Years Day dismantling and reassembling hard drive enclosures I guess my love/hate relationship with my storage devices would be a good place to start. Be warned though as threatened on Twitter it could well become a mini series! Watch this space for the first installment of drives from hell, coming as soon as I’ve written it.
Let me take this opportunity to wish you and yours a happy and prosperous 2010.
So there it is the first post of the year, day 1 and I’m ahead of myself. As I say on MacBites … See you next time 
