Worth Your Consideration 012 - A GF5 Linkdump

• I really, really, really hope that Marco Zaldivar wins his lawsuit against T-Mobile over “mandatory” text-message fees. I think it’s ridiculous that the company told Zaldivar that turning off text-messaging was “impossible,” especially when, according to Red Tape Chronicle writer Bob Sullivan, “Verizon, AT&T and Sprint allow consumers to shut down delivery of unwanted text messages.” Me, while I’ve sent and received a few text messages in my time, I wish I had known I could turn them off altogether. I think they’re relatively useless when free alternatives such as e-mail, instant messaging, and Twitter exist. But maybe that just means I’m old.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine star Hugh Jackman made an unannounced appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, and he brought footage from the forthcoming film with him, footage which apparently included a fan-favorite from the comic books who has thusfar not appeared in the X-Men film-franchise: Gambit. I’ve never been as nuts about Gambit as some of my contemporaries, but Newsarama’s description of the trailer as a whole does have me excited. I really dig the X-Men film-franchise (including the oft-hated-upon third installment), and I can’t wait for this one.
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog thinks apps for the AppleTV are a good idea and I wholeheartedly agree. I probably wouldn’t turn on regular cable TV at all if my AppleTV could tell me the weather and get me some other basic information like that. And I would be giddy like a schoolgirl if I could watch Viddler videos on my TV (a suggestion that TUAW makes). Apple, are you listening?
• ...apparently not. Apple continues to face major problems with the rollout of its new MobileMe service. While MacWorld gives MobileMe a relatively good review, known Apple enthusiast David Pogue (New York Times) has some serious concerns about the way that Apple is handling a crisis that’s affecting some 20,000 MobileMe users: “This is an airplane that’s stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom. And the pilot doesn’t come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what’s being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: ‘We apologize for the inconvenience.’” I intend to give the new service a spin over the weekend, despite the bad reviews, but I’d been hoping that Apple would bowl me over with this service, and I’m not so sure that’s going to happen now.

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Where’s My Darn iPhone?!? (Video)

The world is out of iPhones, according to research conducted by Internet superstar iJustine. She called more than thirty-five Apple stores recently, and not a single one of them had an iPhone 3G in stock.

I ordered my iPhone at the AT&T Store in Manchester, NH last Wednesday, and I am still waiting. I was told that it would be 10-21 days, so I’m not really all that upset. But the people over on this AT&T message board are far less patient than me. They’re up to 516 pages worth of bitching over there, so far. I’m not even kidding.

According to Where’s My Damn iPhone, which I found on that AT&T thread, I am currently the 53rd person in the AT&T Manchester direct fulfillment line (which includes all phones, not just iPhones). I was the 48th about an hour ago, so I’m guessing the site’s not all that reliable. Still, it’s fun to poke around there and see what all the people on the AT&T thread are going nuts over.

In other iPhone news, The Unofficial Apple Weblog has interesting pieces on cluttered home screens and the applications one writer is actually still using, two weeks after the launch of the App Store.

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Geek Force FiveCast 017 (Video)

This week, I geek out about Wine Library TV wristbands, ordering an iPhone 3G, and PodCamp Boston 3.

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Worth Your Consideration 011 - A GF5 Linkdump

It may be a good long while before I am able to buy an iPhone 3G. I have the money, but when you’re looking to establish a family plan with one iPhone and one non-iPhone, a trackful of hurdles come into play. First, my wife and I need to be in the same place at the same time for something other than dinner or sleep, and that might not happen again until sometime toward the end of the month (she’s got meetings on two evenings this week; we don’t get home until 7:30ish each night anyway; and I’ve got PodCamp Boston this coming weekend). Second, we can’t go to an Apple Store, where it appears that there are plenty of iPhones in stock (there was a line forming outside the Apple Store in Boston this morning, three days after the initial launch, but I’m guessing that’s just excitement and not people trying to snatch up a limited number of devices). Instead, we have to go to an AT&T Store, where we may or may not be able to get an iPhone, because they’re totally sold out.

Ugh.

So, since getting back from camping this weekend, I’ve been living vicariously through others. Here are a few of the most notable links I’ve come across.

• News Askew has released a new iPhone-optimized version of their site. I’ve been thinking a lot about coming up with a mobile version of Geek Force Five, and I’m curious about exactly how News Askew is redirecting people to the iPhone-optimized site.
• Apple’s MobileMe can apparently sync bookmarks from a Mac to a PC. According to the screenshot featured here, you can sync bookmarks into Internet Explorer, if you see fit. I didn’t know that it was going to be capable of doing this, so I’m very excited. I’ll be much more excited if it’ll sync with Firefox instead, since that’s what I’m using on my PC. Me, I’m trying to decide whether or not to give MobileMe’s free sixty day trial a try now instead of waiting until I get an iPhone. Maybe the coolness of that would tide me over.
• The iPhone App Store opened on Thursday afternoon/evening and Jason Kottke opened up comments on his site to ask people what the “cool” iPhone apps were/are. I, of course, cannot wait until I can actually contribute to this conversation. Sigh… Until then, I’ll have to live with things like the visual previews being provided by AppleInsider and others. The Unofficial Apple Weblog believes that the App Store will change the world, in case you hadn’t heard.
• On a much happier note, Apple released an update for my Apple TV in conjunction with the iPhone 3G/MobileMe launch and it’s improved the already-impressive device significantly. Aside from the updated feature list enumerated Apple TV Junkie, I am most pleased to note that browsing my purchased movies by genre has gone from glacially slow to incredibly zippy. TUAW has a gallery of screenshots.

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Worth Your Consideration 010 - A GF5 Linkdump

• David Pogue and Walt Mossberg have chimed in with the first reviews of iPhone 3G, and Mac Rumors has got the linkage. Pogue makes the point that “the really big deal is the iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store, neither of which requires buying a new iPhone,” but the general consensus seems to be that the device is a nice upgrade.
• Apple expects a fifteen minute set-up process for iPhone 3G, according to this article from Bloomberg.com. That’s a little bit better than what I’d been expecting, but it’s still way too long. I wasn’t among the lucky ones who got to buy an iPhone last summer and then activate the thing from the comfort of my own home, but I was looking forward to the simplicity and easy nature of that process quite a bit. I don’t like standing around retail stores. They kind of stress me out. Oh well.

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