7/12/08 the iPhone saga continues

I'm at the library. Rodney couldn't call me (because I have no phone) to say he would be late. Fortunatley, Farmington is a small enough town that he called the library, asked Lisa at the desk if she knew who I was and would she mind relaying a message. So when I arrived, I got the word. Now that's a full-service library!

I diddled around awhile, waiting, and then decided to see what I could find on the web. No interesting solutions in Google. Most people who had brick problems were having messages about accessing the iTunes store. I didn't see any postings for the error messages I was having. So I decided to open iTunes and just see what would happen. I plugged in my phone and got the favorite "iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes." So I clicked "Recover" again and this time, it went to search for software, announced that it had found iPhone 2.0 software, made me click on an "I agree" button for terms of service for the new software. Whooop! Maybe there's hope!

It's been 40 minutes now and the only message I have is: "iTunes is currently busy downloading software for the iPhone "iPhone". (I never did give my iPhone a very interesting name, hence the quotes around "iPhone," which is its default name.)

It took over an hour for the software to download. when it finished, nothing happened, so I clicked "restore". It extracted software and looked like it was going to do something. Then I got the message "The iPhone "iPhone" could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (6)."

7/11/08 iPhone!

Today's the day! Rodney and I promised we would wait for each other and do this magical upgrade together. He had an added issue of he had a brand new old iPhone, i.e., he had to send in his old first generation iPhone for repair and they sent him a new one in its place, so he had to activate his phone. That he tried to do before I arrived but with all the server issues (bazillions of folks trying to activate new iPhones as well as first generation iPhoners trying to upgrade their software to iPhone 2.0), he hadn't succeeded in that yet.

So we decided to tackle my phone first. We upgraded to iTunes 7.7 without a hitch, but when I plugged in my iPhone and it did its sync, it said it had finished syncing and checking for software updates and I had the newest version. But I still had 1.1.4! I tried it again, but no luck. So then we did a Google search to see what others were doing. Could Apple have really not made it available on the day they promised? We found a reliable website that had the file on it and explained how to manually update the software (hold down the option key while clicking on "update" and then pick the downloaded file). So I did that. Oooops. It ran into an error. Now when I plug my phone in, it says iTunes has detected an iPhone that is in the middle of a restore. You will need to restore it before you can do anything else with the phone. I clicked OK and then restore but to no avail. My iPhone shows a picture of a USB plug and the icon for iTunes as it would if I had a brand new phone. But every time I plug into iTunes, it detects an iPhone that has not been fully restored and when I say it's okay to restore, it tries and then fails.

Now my phone won't turn off. It goes black, then shows the Apple logo, then the combo of USB plug and iTunes logo. It does that for over an hour. The phone is getting hot! I try holding down power and home keys simultaneously and it looks like it's shutting down but then it turns itself back on again. Well, eventually the battery will wear out, I guess.

Tomorrow's another day. I'm not going to worry about it. I'll just be incommunicado for a while. Rodney and I will meet at the library at 10:00 when they open. They have free wireless internet access there. And we will see what we can figure out.

48 hours without an iPhone

I stood in line on June 30 to get my iPhone. I was one of the MacFanatics (still am) who was willing to buy the point 0 version of a brand new technology. I was so excited because it was a graduation gift from aunts, uncles, cousins, and my sister. I used it constantly while I was moving and it was a godsend on our 2,500 mile trek from Texas to Maine.

And now, 7 months later, my precious iPhone succumbed to the "top half of touch screen quit working". Oh no! I tried the physical reset. I did the software restore. It didn't help. When I knew I was going to Boston I decided I could hobble on half a phone for 10 days until I could get to the Apple Store in Boston. But it's really hard to use a phone where only the bottom half works. If anyone's phone number had only 7, 8, 9, or 0 in it, I could call them (I have no contacts with only those digits in the phone number). I could look up contacts and finagle the list so that the contact was in the bottom of the screen. But as soon as I touched their name and the info page for that contact showed up, I couldn't call the first three numbers listed for them because they were above that line of demarcation. I could still connect the phone to my computer and sync it. So the people that I really needed to contact for whom I only had one number, I put in their one phone number on the home phone line, the work phone, the fax, and the mobile so that when I looked them up on the iPhone, I could press the mobile number (which might really be their home number) and reach them. It was getting pretty old pretty fast. I'm not sure if I was more excited to go to Boston to see my college friend or to get my iPhone fixed.

Then, the horrible snow came and I couldn't get out of town and down to Boston safely. I could talk to my friend I would've seen if I had gone, so it wasn't too bad that I didn't get to see her. But my iPhone! what was I going to do now?

I looked online and there's a support line just for iPhones. 1-800-MY-iPhone. Yep. It was free. I got a very nice young man named Neil who immediately said, "We'll take care of it." I called on a Friday and he promised that on Monday, a box would arrive and I would follow the directions, put my phone in the box, take off the label with my name on it and underneath would be the return label. I would give it back to the FedEx driver, and would receive back either my repaired phone or a replacement phone within 3-5 days. Wow. All at no expense to me. Gotta love the folks at Apple. :-)

And sure enough, Monday afternoon, the FedEx driver dropped off a box. This is what was inside:

The shipping box had foam in it with a cutout exactly the size of the little white box that would hold the phone. the box was that extra sturdy kind that you get from a fine jewelry store. Inside that box was a protective pouch that I was to put my phone in. There was a directions booklet and a stack of packing tape strips that could just peel off to seal the box back up for the return trip. Additionally, there was a little zip loc bag with a paper clip inside and a sticker on the outside showing how to pull the paper clip apart to make the tool needed to remove the SIM card. I've always referred to this unbent paper clip as "The Mac Tool". From waaaaaay back, that's been the official tool for doing things like ejecting a floppy disk from a stuck drive. It was just one of those brilliant, creative, good problem-solving solutions that Apple is so famous for.

And for those who won't read the simple 4 page mini-booklet of instructions, there's the sticker in the lid of the box that covers the basic critical information:

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The box arrived from Apple on Monday the 11th. The FedEx man didn't wait. I packed up the phone (after marveling at the beauty and simplicty and efficiency of the boxes and the process) and called FedEx. Tuesday the 12th, the FedEx man picked it up. Wednesday the 13th was the horrible ice/snow day. Thursday the 14th, I received the loveliest Valentine's Present--a new iPhone was in a sturdy shipping box direct from Apple's repair center in Fort Worth.

And look, it's another lovely box set. this time the phone is in a black box, very similar to the one that my brand new one arrived in just 7 short months ago, except there's no power cord or charger included.

And there's just one sticker inside the box this time. It shows how to re-insert the SIM card and how to sync your phone back to restore all the old data.

It's Apple. It's Magic.

forgotten password

I was trying to log into my .mac account at apple.com and though I was pretty sure I knew my password, it wasn't working. So I clicked on the "Forgot your password?" link and it brought me to the classic "enter your information and we'll send you an email to reset your password" page. I happened to look at the title of the page . . . those words that show up at the top of the browser. It simply said, "iForgot".

2/15/2008 Let's get started

It's time I finally break down and start this blog. I actually set it up a year ago but was too afraid to write anything. What would I have to say that the greats aren't already saying? But I'm not going to worry about what the others have to say, I'm just going to get started sharing what I observe, what I know, and mostly what I learn about technology and the art of using technology in the classroom. I'm especially interested in how we help prepare tomorrow's teachers today.