3G S Has Launched
Today on the way to work I drove by the AT&T store at the University Mall to see how the line was. It was nothing like last year, but it was still a decent size considering the store had been open for an hour. Photos are now showing up all over the internet and the consensus is that the lines are much shorter for this phone. Some sites are saying the new iPhone is a failure for that reason, but there is something different about this iphone launch over the last two. You could actually pre-order the phone and have it delivered to your home or the store. AT&T has already stated that they were sold out of there initial pre order phones, so I think it is safe to say the iPhone 3G S is doing well. I don’t think it will sell as many as the original 3G, but even then I could be surprised. My reason behind that is the fact that many of us 3G users are still in contract and do not quality for the subsidized 3GS price. I personally do not qualify until March of next year. Some 3G owners do qualify in the next few months and AT&T is letting them get their phones now if they wish. The deciding factor in your qualification time is the amount you spend on your phone bill each month. I am on the lowest iPhone plan and that is working great for me. I have like 3,000 roll over minutes built up over the last year.
As I have said before I personally do not see a reason to upgrade now and renew my contract for another two years. I feel the 3G S is just a little improvement of what I have. I can wait another year for the next iPhone which should have enough differences to make me want to upgrade. By that time I will be pretty much out of my contract and can renew with a subsidized phone at that time.
Here are a few pictures taken from http://www.macrumors.com/
And for fun here is a picture of me in line from last year.
iPhone 3G S at AT&T Distribution Center
Last year we got a video showing them arriving at an AT&T store. This year it has gone even further showing all the iPhones at the AT&T distribution center. Keep an eye on the workers in the background around the 45 second mark. You will see them drop a box. Hopefully those iphones are okay. 
A Couple More 3.0 Items
I forgot a couple of other 3.0 features. A big one is now you have the ability to sync notes with the Mac’s Mail App. I’m not sure if there is a way to sync them on Windows or not. Another is the voice recorder app syncs your voice memos with iTunes, so you can play them there.
Finally, another big one I just found out is the iPhone finally has LDAP support. I just added the UVU LDAP server and it worked flawlessly searching the campus directory. This will come in handy for work stuff when I do not know someone’s email address. To add an LDAP server just go to settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then tap add account and choose other. It works automatically in email when you start typing the address of who you want to send an email to.
iPhone 3.0 is Out!
Yesterday at 10:00 PST, Apple released iPhone OS 3.0 and of course their servers went to a crawl most of the day. I happened to get a copy of the OS a little early 
, so I didn’t have any problems with updating mine. I thought I would post a few screenshots showing the new features and some of the subtle things that might be easy to miss. I’ll start with the big ones first.
System wide spotlight search
OS 3.0 adds a new search feature that allows you to search your entire phone. There is a new page to the left of the first app page. You just swipe to the left and your presented with a search bar. On my phone I searched the term ebay and it brought up my ebay app, the Weird Al Ebay song, and some email that I have received from ebay. I can tap on any of those and it will bring up the item.
You can customize what items the search brings up by going to settings/general/home/search results The screenshot below shows all the searchable items on the phone.
A search bar has also been added to many of the built in apps where as before it was only in the contacts screen. Below shows the search now in the email app and the notes app. You can also search within the iPod app I just forgot to take a screenshot.
I love the new search especially the system wide search. I think this will come in handy for users that have many pages of apps. Sometimes I find myself hunting around the pages trying to find a certain app, but now as long as I know the name I can just go to the search and launch it that way.
Copy and Paste
Copy and Paste is finally on the iPhone. Probably one of the features that should have been there in the beginning. I got to the point where I didn’t mind having it as an option, but now that it is here I find myself using it quite a bit. Basically you just hold your finger at the area you want to copy, a bubble comes up asking if you want to select or select all. Then you can adjust the selection with the little holders and choose from cut, copy, and paste. You then move the insertion point to where you would like to paste and then the bubble comes back up again and select paste. Hopefully that made some sense. If you want to undo the paste you just shake the iPhone and then it will come up with that option.
Messaging
The messaging app now does text messaging and mms. Unfortunately, AT&T does not support mms at the moment, but has said it will be available later this summer, so I have not been able to try out that feature. However, there are some new tweaks in the messaging app. One of them being it now supports the landscape mode keyboard. The keyboard has also been applied to the notes app and has always been available in the email app. I thought I was decent with the normal keyboard, but I do find my accuracy is a little better with the landscape mode. Here is a pic of it in action.
Another new feature is now you can now also delete individual messages. Where as before you could only delete the whole conversation deleting all the messages you had received from that person up to that point.
New/Updated Apps
Voice Memos
There is now a new voice memos app which allows you to take voice notes and even share them by email. Before this app there were some 3rd party ones on the app store, but this one seems to do a decent job for basic stuff.
Stocks
The stocks app has been updated to a new landscape mode. Here is an example showing Apple’s stock.
Photos
With the photos app you can now email up to 5 photos where as before you were limited to just one. You can even copy and paste the photos. You just tap on the icon in the lower left hand corner and then it allows you to start selecting photos. Then hit share to email them.
Youtube
The youtube app now allows you to log in with your youtube account, so you can rate videos and leave comments now. Here is mine logged in showing the videos I have uploaded to youtube.
Safari
In Safari now if you hold your finger on a link it give you some new options which include: Open, Open in New Page, and copy the link, so you can paste it somewhere else like an email.
Safari can also now remember your information for forms and names/passwords. To enable those settings from the home screen go to Settings/Safari/Autofill
Contacts
In contacts you can now email that contact as a vcf file. Just bring up the contact on your phone and tap on share contact. It will them open up an email with the vcf file attached. Here is an example with the store Cobwebs in Salt Lake. This is almost similar now to back in the old palm days when you could beam contacts between devices with IR.
Incoming Calls/Call History
This is one little touch that I like. Now when you have an incoming call or check your call history below the name it tells you where they were calling from based on the info in your contacts. Now I know if someone called me from there home phone or mobile. Also, now an unknown number shows what city/state the number is registered in.
Another new feature, that was available on some iPods, is the ability to shuffle to the next song by shaking your iPhone. Finally, the iPhone now supports stereo bluetooth headphones. I’ve been looking at getting some of those as that will eliminate the cord while I mow the lawn this summer.
I believe that covers most of the changes. I’m sure there are more that haven’t been discovered yet. Overall a great update that adds many features that users have wanted since the release of the first iPhone two years ago. For me it has been very stable and the whole OS seems a little faster than it was before which is pretty good for a .0 release. The main feature I’ve been wanting to try is push notification. Apple seems to be taking their time to approve apps that use it. As of right now no instant messaging apps have been approved. I’m wondering if they are beefing up their servers for it. I read on the Beejive support forums that they submitted their app a little over a week ago and are just waiting for it to be approved. I’ll do an update once I am able to try that out.
Time Machine Saves The Day
I am now an advocate for Leopard’s Time Machine feature and luckily it was implemented just in time. Last weekend we went to St. George. My dad asked me about setting up Time Machine for him on his external hard drive, but it said that there wasn’t enough space for the backup. I tweaked the settings so it only backed up his user account instead of the whole operating system. It took awhile to do the initial backup, but worked without a hitch.
We drove back to Orem on Sunday and right when we got back into town I got a call from him saying his iMac was not booting. I had him try a few different things that did not work. We determined his hard drive must have gone out as it was not even showing up from the Leopard install disc. Luckily, he has Applecare (extended warranty), so he was able to take it to Computers QED in St. George, which takes care of warranty work. A day later they had a new hard drive in the machine. My dad did a clean install of Leopard and during the install it asks if you would like to restore from a time machine backup. It completely restored all his files, wallpaper. and preferences just how it was before the crash. I’ve got to say this is one of the nicest backup solutions for an end user and after the initial setup you don’t even have to think about it. I still can’t believe how lucky it was to have the backup done a few days before. Needless to say I am looking at an external hard drive now so I can finally setup my computers with Time Machine.
You can read more about Time Machine on Apple’s site at http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/time-machine.html
