Kudos to Johnny at the Apple Store!

I'm back home with a new iPhone and in the process of restoring it with my data, apps and songs. Have my fingers crossed.

I'm not sure if my issues will be resolved but I give a customer service kudos to Johnny at the Genius Bar at the Fairfax Apple Store (He actually works mainly at the Tysons Corner location).

Johnny was sympathetic with my problems especially after I asked him to read my blog post regarding all the issues I've been having. Plus I think he saw how frustrated I was.

It's guys like Johnny that will make me come back and give the iPhone another chance.

Thanks Johnny! You should get a raise!

Should I exchange or return my iPhone?

I'm actually sitting on a Mac in the Apple Store contemplating what to do with my iPhone. On my way home, I had a reboot and 5 dropped calls ironically while calling the Apple Store. I just about had it with this device. I felt like throwing it out the window.

Maybe I just have a lemon and I should exchange it. But I'm spending more time bitching about this device than any other device I ever owned.

I'll write back on what happens.

Update: I took my MacBook in to the store in case I had to backup my iPhone. Of course it takes forever. It was about 75% done and 20 min into it, when my wife sent me an SMS and the sync stopped. I had to start over again. Instead, I canceled out of the 2nd attempt and left the store with a replacement phone.

iPhone is unstable and lack features. Why?

My friend Steve had a Samsung music player. I had a Sony music player. We both agreed that they are both horrible products compared to the iPod. The device interface was horrible and their desktop software was buggy and looked like some programmer who took C++ 101 put it together. I went through 2 Sony players and both crashed using their own software.

My comment which Steve shared was "It's not like there isn't a successful product (like an iPod) already in the market that they can just look at to see what they have to build to. How can they release something of so poor quality and expect to compete?" Do they think that because they are successful CE companies that anything they can produce can out-compete Apple, a computer company?

So now we fast -forward to 2008 and I wonder if Apple is making the same mistake. Because Apple has been so successful with the iPod, did they simply think they can build a better phone than Nokia and Blackberry?

Don't get me wrong. I think the iPhone is a very nice, feature rich device. It is innovative in design and in how they combined the iPod, the phone and a full featured browser.

But after experiencing all the bugs and all the missing features, did Apple seriously analyse what makes Blackberry a Crackberry? And why Nokia has #1 market position in the world? These guys set the bar and why couldn't Apple match and then go beyond to truly make a world-class device? I just wonder if Apple just rushed the 3G to market before it was really ready.

Recent security flaws (including the one I reported to Apple),
3G issues,
no cut and paste,
MobileMe's launch issues and weak feature set,
No real Push (how can a company like Apple make such a claim and have to retract it?)
3rd party app issues,
sub-par battery life,
inability to tether (I still don't understand this one),
inability to unlock for international travel,
and prob dozens of common features found on Blackberry and Nokia.

I really want to like my iPhone and hope they will release some big fixes soon. But if I was to do a iPhone vs Blackberry comparison, Blackberry comes to the top when it comes getting the rock solid device to market. iPhone is starting resemble the PC in Apple's PC vs. Mac commercials.

Another Security Flaw on the iPhone

There was a lot of attention on a security flaw discovered on the iPhone which allows someone to bypass the set password by using the emergency call mode.

On 8/5/08, I reported another security issue directly to Apple. I was assigned a Follow-up number of 52982558.

The issue I found was that there is that the iPhone does does invoke passcode protection over the passcode-lock setting which determines when the phone will get locked after inactivity. Here's how the flaw is exposed: Let's say the owner of the iPhone sets the device to passcode-lock after 1 hour of inactivity and 30 minutes after last usage, a thief steals the phone. The thief can now change the iPhone passcode-lock to lock after the maximum setting of 4 hours and keep doing this until he takes everything he needs off the device.

This error combined with the flaw reported today leaves a huge security hole.

There is no way, with these and probably other yet to be discovered security flaws, that the iPhone can be considered an enterprise-ready device.

Will Farrell's Landlord video (LOL)

Will Farrell has his moments. I thought this was pretty funny.

See more Will Ferrell videos at Funny or Die

Guilty as charged...