My iPhone Is On A Shelf, And Not In My Hands

The iPhone 3G that I ordered just about two weeks ago is on a FedEx truck right now, about to be delivered to my local AT&T store. Am I excited? In a word, yes! But I’m also sad. You see, my wife and I lead such busy lives that we probably won’t be able to get down to the AT&T store until Wednesday. That’s two whole days that my iPhone is going to be sitting on a shelf, within driving distance of my house, and not in my pocket, where it belongs (four days, if you count the fact that it’s been sitting in a nearby FedEx sorting facility since Saturday evening).

To keep myself occupied, and to get myself prepared, I spent some time over the weekend backing up the contact lists from both my phone and my wife’s. I also cleaned up our iCal calendars and organized our Safari bookmarks. Tonight, assuming that a miracle does not happen and that Stephanie and I do not end up home early enough to hit the AT&T store before dinner and bed, I am going to sign up for a free trial of Apple’s MobileMe service. MobileMe got off to a rocky start, as I wrote about on Friday, but over the weekend Apple launched an official MobileMe status blog (Mashable weighs in on this development) that reports many of the services major issues have been resolved or are finally in the process of being resolved. An online Apple Store support person reiterated that message to me during a chat about iPhone cases on Saturday evening.

My hope is that MobileMe will be ready for primetime by the time my birthday rolls around at the beginning of October, which will be, coincidentally enough, right around the time that my free trial runs out. We’ll see.

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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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Worth Your Consideration 009 - A GF5 Linkdump

I know it may not seem like it to those of you who are not Apple people, but I’ve actually been holding back on the number of Apple-related stories I’ve been publishing in the lead-up to the release of Apple’s iPhone 3G. There’s a ton of quasi-news coming out of the Apple sites every day now, but I’ve been trying to limit my coverage here to stories that I actually have a little something to say about.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, on with the linkdump.

• Apple will open its U.S. retail stores at 8 a.m. on Friday to launch the iPhone 3G. This is exciting sure, but the main reason they’re doing a morning launch instead of their typical evening launch is because the process for purchasing an iPhone will be infinitely more complicated than it was the last time. Customers are being asked to bring a credit card, a valid, government-issued ID, their social security number, a copy of their current wireless statement, and the naming rights to their first-born child.
• If you can’t wait until Friday to experience the sheer awesomeness of unboxing a new iPhone of your very own, then Engadget has you covered.
• Or, if you’re like me, and won’t be able to get your iPhone on Friday (I’ll be working and then camping) and are therefore thirsting for some Apple-related goodness to call your very own, check out this news about Apple’s MobileMe service. It will apparently be launching on Wednesday night. If a free trial is available at some point on Thursday, you can be damn sure I’ll be signing up for that. It should make the pain of not being able to be an opening-weekend adopter of iPhone 3G a little easier to bear.
• Or, if you hate Apple and loves yourself some Microsoft, check out this news from InformationWeek. It turns out that Redmond will soon be responding to Apple’s ubiquitous Get a Mac attack ads. The campaign will apparently operate under the umbrella tagline “Free the People.” How long until Apple responds with a “Yeah, free the people from Vista” ad?

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