Ben Drawbaugh

Like many, I had nothing but trouble activating my iPhone with AT&T. I was porting a number over from T-Mobile and adding to an existing AT&T account in my name. The problem was the porting, the email indicating the reason for the delay wasn’t very clear that I would have to wait 6 hours before using my iPhone, because until it is activated it is basically a brick. After 4 hours of waiting for it to activate, I called AT&T and Apple, and while Apple support was great, (other than not being able to help me) AT&T support didn’t have a clue what was going on. After two calls to each number I figured I had to wait it out and exactly 6 hours later I received an email indicating my number wouldn’t port. So being impatient, I tried to request a new number at which time the activation process indicated that I didn’t pass the credit check, which really bothered me considering I have been an AT&T customer in good standing so long they changed their name and back again. So I activated it as a goPhone till I was able to make a trip to the AT&T store.

When I got to the store I had to wait behind a few others with the same problems, the employees were very nice and helpful — especially considering the fact that since I bought my iPhone at the Apple store they didn’t credit for the activation. They told me that my number had ported over already and that my credit check was successful according to their system. So they called the porting department to verify everything was in order. Since I’d already activated as a goPhone they gave me a new SIM card and instructed me to activate again, but this time choose to use an existing AT&T number. Lucky for me, this time it worked.

The bottom line is that AT&T activated system wasn’t working and was reporting incorrect information. If you are having the same problem call AT&T and ask them to check the status of your port, if everything is ok, then try again.

I’m not sure what Apple could have done to make this any easier, but it seems that AT&T dropped the ball, the least they could do is give you a demo mode instead of denying you from playing while you wait.

In honor of iPhone week, here is my 2 cents as we count down to iDay.

I have wanted an iPhone since I first heard the rumor that Apple would make a cell phone and there are a few reasons. I’m one of those people who have never liked their cell phone, each one dissapoints as much as the next, and while I haven’t owned as many phones as most people I know, I have had the first Blackberry phone from Nextel, a Treo 600, Treo 650, VX6700 and finally a Blackberry 8700c. While all of these have worked, none have been plesant to use and I could write a long essay on my annoyances. It isn’t the hardware that I haven’t liked, but the software and ever since the first time I used a iPod I have faith that Apple can really make the first cell phone I will enjoy using. For this level of usability I am willing to deal with EDGE and the lack of wireless sync. The second reason is I do get sick of carrying around both my cell phone and my iPod and finally it will be nice to own a device that will natively sync with my Mac.

My Plan

Like most people I have to work on Friday, and since I live in Tampa — which is a big area, but still only have the size of the greater SF area — I hope that it will be possible for me to just show up after work and get an iPhone. I am going to do what I can to get off early and there are a few outlets for me to try in my area, I just hope this is good enough.

Jeremy from Living Digitally asked me how much I thought iPhones would be going for on eBay at launch. I really didn’t know what to tell him, I am probably being naive, but I really hadn’t considered that scenario. I guess I am hoping that there are enough to go around. The worst part is that in the past, every time I have seen gadgets go for unbelievable prices on eBay I have always persacuted the manufacturer for letting it happen and even pointed to Apple as a great example of how to service your customers while at the same time ensuring some eBayer didn’t get to profit from your product.

This also got me thinking, what would I do for an iPhone; and if I do happened to get one on the first day and can sell it on eBay for double, would I even keep it?

As much as I want an iPhone I am not willing to stay over night to buy one, or to pay a cent more than retail for it. And if the touch screen doesn’t live up to it’s hype, I will promptly return it within the 14 day return policy that most cell phones have.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t wait for the next 14 days to be over so we can finally see if this thing lives up to the hype.

From the very beginning I intended to use my old MBP hard drive as a pocket drive and I finally got around to buying an external case. I really wanted one that was USB powered, but since the drive itself was SATA, I also wanted an eSATA port. This feature came in handy when I wanted to test out enabling the eSATA port on my Series3. The drive does require a lot of power via USB, and interestingly enough only works in the right hand side port on my MBP. This is actually ok, just as long as I don’t have to use the dual USB cable that came with the enclosure.

I picked up an enclosure for $24 from Newegg and despite a few reviews stating the drive rattled, it looked like it hit the spot. It come with a few screws, so of course I used them, and what do you know, my drive isn’t rattling. Anyways, I formated my drive with both a FAT32 and HFS+ partition so I could use it to sneaker-net files between windows computers if needed.

BTW, I took these pictures with my new Nikon D40, I am still learning how to use it so would appreciate any pointers.

I see this report stating that the iTunes video model will soon peak and not be successful, which I find pretty funny. The reason I find it funny is because it seems like a wanna be self fulfilling prophecy by big media, who just doesn’t get Internet media. Sure the instant gratification is great, but most people would rather use the VOD features of their main provider if that is their main goal. The reason why people download content from the iTunes Music store is the same reason they buy DVDs; they want to own the content and they want to watch it when they want, where they want. Saying the iTunes Video model will not survive is like saying DVDs will stop continue to be successful. The other models require that you be at your computer and you can’t fast forward through the advertisements.

When will these analyst learn that it is the freedom to watch what we want, when we want that makes iTunes –and DVD for that matter– popular.

Read

As long as I have had my MacBook Pro I have regretted ordering a 120GB 5400rpm drive. I ordered it when the it was first announced, and in my all my excitement I failed to notice the performance difference between 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives. My good friend Frankie quickly pointed it out; no, I didn’t appreciate it. As much as I wanted to swap the drive, I just couldn’t justify it because of the price and the fact that my drive is always full, until recently 160GB 7200rpm drives weren’t even available. I was very excited when I learned that Seagate was releasing a drive for me, only to be disappointed to have to wait to actually receive it. Well the time has finally arrived and it was worth the wait. Anxious to justify my purchase I rebooted and ran back to back XBench tests to get a baseline before swapping in the new drive (more on that later).

After following the great disassembly instructions at iFixit and only loosing one screw I used my favorite Linux LiveCD Gentoo to dd the original disc which took just over an hour. I used the same technique I did for upgrading my Series3, and lucky for me, 2.5″ SATA drives use the same physical interface as the 3.5″ variety. I put everything back together and what do you know, it booted.

Just before I got started my friend Ryan reminded me that 7200rpm drives will kill my battery faster than 5400rpm does, thanks for hating on my new purchase! So just after I booted with my new drive and ran XBench a few times, I researched the drives specs and more specifically the power requirements. The original Toshiba MK1234GSX drive averaged 2.5 watts when seeking compared to the Seagate which was 2.3 watts, while the Read/write uses 2.0 watts vs 2.1 watts and lastly the idle/standby: 1.0/0.25 vs 0.8/0.25. So not only is the new drive bigger and faster, but it also uses less power!

On to performance.
I ran multiple XBench tests so I took the best from both.

Total Disk test results: 30.41 vs 41.86 or 27% increase.

Sequential test results: 35.76 vs 89.12 or 60% increase.

Random test Results: 26.46 vs 27.35 or 3% increase.

My overall XBench score also went from 83.64 to 97.54, which I think makes it well worth the $199 for the new drive, not to mention the additional 37GB of usable space and now I can turn the old 120GB drive into a pocket drive.