- Semper Fi -
Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category.
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!
Within days of getting my iPhone 3G in the summer of 2008 I’d found a real time saving feature on the keyboard for entering URL extensions and blogged about it too at Quick URL Entry on an iPhone.
Well after the v.3 update not only is the feature still there but the range of extensions has been expanded.
Ireland will forever thank you
Nice attention to detail there Apple!
So after a fantastic night chatting with MacBiters in the MacBites chat room during WWDC I eagerly downloaded the release version of Safari and installed it.
While I’m installing I ponder the slightly surprising decision to revert the top mounted tabs to their original location but I’m sure I’ll get used it again.
Trouble is after downloading it and installing it I didn’t get as far as seeing the tabs. Instead I was greeted with this:
So where were we up to with the story of the repair from hell?
Oh yes Friday, 24 April 2009 no news, status “Repair in Progress”.
Worse than that I haven’t had any communication from the Store regarding my e-mail sent 4 days ago. This is despite a promised investigation, by the staff member identified only by a first name, I have heard nothing at all from anyone.
As those of you who follow me on Twitter or those who have heard the Mac20Q Roundtable Podcast or the International Mac Podcast will know I am the *not so* proud owner of a sick iMac right now. Many of you have contacted me with advice and/or support for which I publicly thank you all now. I thought for posterity I should detail the whole sorry saga, here goes …
Finally, the news I’ve been waiting for a long time – the Liverpool One Apple Store is opening it’s doors on Saturday 26 July 2008 at 9 am.
I’ll definitely be there covering the great event live for MacBites – hope to see you there.
I love the .com button on the iPhone keyboard but often wished it was configurable – what I hadn’t discovered is that it already is!!
Clicking once on the .com does indeed add .com to the current address but holding your finger or thumb on the .com button produces a fly out menu containing extra options.
The precise options vary country by country and a full list is available from iPhone Central at Macworld.
The options shown here are those available in the UK.
How cool is that?
So how was iPhone launch day for you? I spent all day *and I do mean all day* enjoying myself in the Apple Store purchasing an iPhone … brace yourself for a long and funny story …
Mike and I spent the entire week tracking every Apple related site we could find to see if Apple would be selling the iPhone on Friday’s launch day and found nothing. The Apple Store couldn’t or wouldn’t confirm whether they would be selling it or not and referred all enquiries to the web site which was finally updated at 08:02 on Friday morning … you’ll see why that was no use later LOLOL
So the great day is almost upon us and the most important question (well it is if you leave out which store to go to … but that’s a whole different post) is a black backed iPhone or a white one?
Decisions, decisions, decisions
