kencasting.com

A great article from Chris Anderson on the next Industrial Revolution.

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In an age of open source, custom-fabricated, DIY
product design, all you need to conquer the world is
a brilliant idea.
Photo: Dan Winters

I promised a post about my Dell Mini months ago, but didn’t write it up. OK, my bad, here you go!

Back in July I posted about my Asus netbook, and how great that had worked out on a roadtrip I took in March. Although the Asus was great, Windows XP wasn’t. I’ve used Windows machines for work, but occasionally, not on a day-to-day basis as my primary machine, having mostly used Macs and Linux machines. As a day-to-day OS, I found XP clunky, and frankly not very visually appealing.

I tried Windows 7 and I quite liked it. Between it’s visual and functional workover, and the free Virus protection from Microsoft, Windows 7 addressed all my day-to-day complaints, but although it worked great on my Asus,  it wasn’t technically supported, and I had to decide if I was going to shell out 1/2 the price of the Netbook for a new OS. The Asus had a feature to restore back to a fresh version of XP, I didn’t want to loose that. So, I decided the Asus was best left an XP machine, if I wanted to keep it the cheap functional tool that it was.

But, I wasn’t going to use it daily if I had to use XP, and Windows 7 wasn’t shipping on any other netbooks yet. What to do. Well, I’d read an article on how to get MacOS running on a Dell Mini 9. Apparently, all the devices in the Mini were supported under MacOS, although Apple doesn’t really approve of installing MacOS onto non-Apple devices, but I was going to make sure everyone was paid for their work, and that I accepted I’d be on my own support-wise.

Dell had just stopped making the Mini 9, replacing it with very nice netbooks, but that used components MacOS didn’t support. I picked up a very reasonably priced refurb for $199, with wireless and bluetooth, bought a RunCore 64GB SSD which reviews said was very fast, and a new shrink-wrapped copy of MacOS Leopard.

I followed the easy online instructions (Note that this method has been replaced with a new, universal method of creating a bootable OSX for netbooks) and in short order had a Dell Mini 9 running MacOS. I quite understand why Apple isn’t making a netbook. They’re a big compromise in many ways, and Apple wants all their products to have a minimum amount of compromise vs. functionality. The Air was as much as they were willing to compromise. I had an air for a while at a prior job, and really did love it, but it was frankly too expensive to carry with me as a "rough and ready" personal device.

They Dell keyboard on the Mini 9 is a huge compromise. It’s not nearly as nice as the Asus. The biggest mistake, they not only squeezed a bunch of keys to be very, very small, they moved some. In a huge tactical error, they messed with the "home row" on they keyboard, and they did it by moving the apostrophe key down in a group of keys by the right of the space bar, and left the semi-colon. Think about this for a second. When did you last use an apostrophe or quote? OK, now when’s the last time you used a semi-colon? Yes, exactly. In the world of quick notes and 140 character micro-blogging, you use an apostrophe over and over and over again. Then, to make it worse, the return key is nice and big. And you hit it every single time you are going for an apostrophe. Toss touch typing out the window. I used Ukelele to remap the apostrophe/semicolon keys, and that helped a little, but you’re not going to be typing full speed on this keyboard, where I could get a pretty good clip going on the Asus.

The touchpad isn’t perfect either. Although the touchpad can handle multitouch, it just doesn’t work well with the Mini9 in my setup. No scrolling with the touchpad, which is a bit of a pain. I sometimes use a wireless mouse just to have a scroll wheel if I’m going to be doing a lot of browsing.

The verdict? This is a GREAT little machine! Even with the issues with touch typing, if you go in knowing you’ll have to type slowly, or use an external keyboard, its small and light, battery lasts for at least 3 hours with wireless on, has an SD card slot for importing photos/videos without cables. I use this as a portable blogging machine, a way to archive/post photos on the road, a great microblogging platform, and a great web browser and email machine, and a way to follow my recipes on kencooking in the kitchen without taking up all the counter space! It can also be used to play movies, and works passably there. With the SD card slot, you can load up movies on a card, and bring them with you, not sucking up precious SSD space. I also have a copy of my iTunes library on an external drive, so I can use this netbook, or my big MacBook to play anything in the library. And the 64GB SSD is a lot more space than I had on my 40GB 12" MacBook! Also, the SSD is FAST. Disk operations usually take much less time than on my big Intel MacBook Pro with its spinning rust.

The compromises aren’t for everyone. If you’re a power-blogger or a writer, the keyboard is a deal breaker. Carrying the netbook AND an external keyboard destroys any portability you gained. But, if you’re looking for a tiny, silent, rugged occasional use machine, especially if you’re out and about, it’s worth a look.

References:

mydellmini
OSX | mechdrew

In March, I did a month long road trip (see the Road Trip category for a play-by-play), and I wanted to blog as I went, incorporating pictures and sharing photos on Flickr. My iPhone is a wonderful Internet device, but it doesn’t do everything.

I could bring my 15" MacBook Pro, but it’s large, heavy, and most of all, expensive. A wonderful machine, great keyboard, big bright screen, I’m using it to write this entry because it’s such a nice computer. But, being on a road trip means leaving your car a lot of places while you explore, you either want to take your most valuable possessions with you, or not worry much about them. Few small-town inexpensive hotels have safes, so you’ll leave gear in your room.

But, I’m also working on some self-employed freelance projects, playing with iPhone app writing, some server-side cloud computing ideas, and building kinetic wind-art, while taking a break from my traditional engineering management work, I don’t want to spend much money since I’m living off some savings for a while. What to do?

Netbooks seem to be all the buzz with the cool kids. They’re small, cheap, have good battery life. They also have crappy keyboards, slow processors, and limited space for memory and storage.

I really want a 12" Macbook replacement, having given mine to my wife as her primary computer, but Apple doesn’t have one of those right now. I end up finding a solution for that, but it’s the focus of part two of this blog entry.

A week before the trip, I read the reviews, figure out what’s in stock given my procrastination, and end up with an ASUS EeePC 900HA  (8.9" screen), and order an 2GB memory upgrade. It quickly arrives, and I start the process of getting it set up for a trip.

I know I’ll have sporadic Internet access, so I need some apps to work disconnected, but I also want to also keep personal information in "the cloud" just in case I loose the netbook on the road, I don’t want it to be full of personal information.

I’ve used Windows on occasion in the past, I can navigate around and use it just fine, but I’m a UNIX and Mac guy, primarily. That just means I’m not instantly conversant on the new top cool Windows apps. I spend an evening hunting around for software that’ll fit the bill.

• Web Browsing: Firefox
• Email: Thunderbird
• Blogging: ScribeFire
• Microblogging: Tweetdeck
• Password management: LastPass

I grab a couple WAP scanning programs to help me find working wireless connectivity on the road, throw iTunes on it so I can play the music I loaded on the second partition, and I’m set.

They keyboard on the ASUS is pretty good. Everything where it should be, I can nearly touch type (I’m 6’4" and have hands to match), screen is mediocre, but I expected that. XP runs fine, I’m not pushing it very hard.

My summary, I’m really happy with the ASUS. I loaded Windows 7 on a second partition which makes the experience even better, it runs for 3-4 hours on the (removable) battery, and as a portable photo/blogging/browsing/twittering machine, it worked great! My only real complaint living with windows is that the required virus blockers are nearly as annoying as clearing my daily email spam. I think Windows 7 with Microsoft’s new virus blocking software makes an even better ultraportable computer. If only I could get such an affordable and portable platform with OSX running on it, I’d be ecstatic. Humm…

Geotagging photos, putting the GPS position information where the photo was taken in the EXIF metadata, has been around for years. Until recently, it was a process reserved for geeks who found some way to grab and store GPS location (a laptop hooked to a GPS or a GPS data logger), then take that information, generally run it through a software program that would match time information from the GPS and from the photo, and put the GPS info into the metadata.

Recently, some cameras have come with the ability to attach a GPS, and even have built in GPS’s, but not very many people are buying a camera just to geotag photos. However, a very large number of people are using their phone’s camera to take and share pictures now. For instance, the iPhone.

What many may not know, all iPhone photos are geotagged. You can turn that off, but it’s not something you’d do ordinarily. To turn it off, you need to go into settings, and turn off "Location Services". That’ll turn off the GPS and the mobile triangulation, but otherwise, every photo you take will have the last known GPS coordinates stamped on it.

This came to light again today when one of my favorite gadget stores, thinkgeek, posted a Top Secret photo of their new office. Just a simple interior shot. But, they posted it directly to Flickr, and it had the location right there in the photo. Oops, so much for that Top Secret new location!

Why would you care? Well, you’re taking pictures at your house, or your friends house, and posting them to Flickr. Do you really want everyone knowing where you live, or where your friends live? Within 20 feet? For some people, it’s no big deal, but for others, well, some amount of privacy is a good thing.

I’d been thinking about this for a while. I take a lot of pictures at my house, but don’t generally want people knowing where I live, you just never know who’ll use that information, or just "come visit". I try hard to remember to turn off location services before taking pictures with my phone at home, but I’m likely to slip up eventually. That’s when another service comes in handy. When posting to Flickr or other public sites, I user services like TwitPic or Posterous, (and even the cool iPhone app ShakeItPhoto) where your EXIF is stripped before posting. Some might find that annoying, but it has the side benefit of removing the photos location. It might be nice to have that as an option eventually, but right now it’s a great way to go for me. I don’t send photos directly to Flickr from my iPhone, only through one of these services. Of course, Flickr just announced a new feature to tweet about uploaded photos. That’s great, but be careful out there if you want your location information private!

Now another bit of party etiquette I’ll need to have to work on with guests, if you want to take pictures with your phone, that’s fine but please turn off location services first.

Going to toss in my $0.02. With Apple pulling out of future MacWorld’s, the annual WWDC is their one opportunity to tell you what they’re doing that’s cool.

Snow Leopard looks like a great evolution of MacOS. Still don’t get the name, there were plenty of other cats to choose from, rather than one with the same basic name as the existing OS. Everything’s faster, that’s what they touted, perhaps "Cheetah" would have been a good choice. But, naming in software is a very silly thing. I advocate giving your development releases pointless names like "red, green, yellow". Engineers are usually bad at naming, using the analytic part of the brain doesn’t give the coolest names, the artistic part does. Thus, you should have the artistic people in your organizations name your products. Nuff said…

New laptops. All nice upgrades, with the exception of removing the ExpressCard slot. Nice they added an SD slot, but removing the ExpressCard? When you can’t tether the iPhone? So, no cellular data modems that work in the ExpressCard slot. No built-in card, like some of the Dell models. And I’m not a fan of non user removable batteries. Their claimed 7 hours means hopefully 5 hours of real-world time use. Apple’s batteries have long been less impressive than they’ve touted. I’m currently using my 2 year old MacBook Pro, 15". My battery now has 40% of it’s original capacity, and with 386 load cycles, lasts maybe an hour off charge, if I’m lucky.

The best news on the laptops, besides the evolutionary changes, is the across the board price reductions. They’re still pricey, but it’s good to see the price points drop, rather than stay stable as features are added.

iPhone news? Another evolutionary change. Nice upgrades, a faster phone will be good. The 3.0 software will finally bring the iPhone software to a point where it isn’t embarrassing in comparison to 5 year old phones. Well, with the exception of video. The exhibiting iPhone can do video, 3rd parties have apps running well on jailbroken iPhones, but Apple wouldn’t approve any video-capable apps for the existing iPhones. Why? So they’d have a "must have" feature in their next evolution. Since the next iPhone wasn’t going to have a must-have feature, they’re arbitrarily making it video, and saying you need a new phone to support it. But, if you bought a 3G iPhone, you’re still under contract with AT&T, and don’t qualify for subsidized pricing, so a new phone will cost more than a new Netbook. Might be time to look into jailbreaking if you want Video, but have a 3G phone and don’t want to pay $500 for a new, marginally improved phone.

Bad news? AT&T won’t be supporting basic functionality like MMS and tethering. They’ll support it "later". Both features I had on my Nokia E61 4 or more years ago, via AT&T. What the heck? And with the subsidy limits carriers are imposing, a basic 16Gig 3G(S) will cost an existing iPhone 3G customer $417, plus tax, and I think at least one other $18 AT&T fee. $399, plus $18 upgrade fee, according to http://buyiphone.apple.com.

My complaints with AT&T are numerous. The last two gatherings I went to, SXSW and the Maker Faire, AT&T data became unusable. At SXSW, even voice wouldn’t work, nor SMS. 3G was totally overloaded, but non-3G was also overloaded. So, at a conference where you need to keep in touch via a mobile phone, and there is cool software rolled out just to enable it, you couldn’t even use voice to keep in touch, much less applications that required data.

At the Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA, data simply stopped working most of the day, 3G or not. Voice and SMS continued to work, thank goodness. Add to that my ongoing issue that I can’t use AT&T hotspots, even though I’m an AT&T highspeed customer, because I can’t remember my email password for AT&T, and they refuse to reset it unless I fax some random 800 number copies of personal documents, and I’m on a mission to have no AT&T services as soon as possible.

I understand AT&T is doing what it can to hold on to it’s customers, but it’s not doing so by providing them what they want in an easy way, it’s trying to do so via making it expensive to leave, and by doing what it can to indenture you to them. That’s sure way to not only loose customers, but to loose them in a way that you won’t get them back. Ever.

I do understand Sprint and Verizon also have their problems that they are equal to or greater than AT&T’s issues. Someday, we’ll have ubiquitous wireless, and the mobile carriers will go the way of the dinosaurs (or newspapers or cable TV).

My takeaway from all the announcements is compromise. That’s neither a good nor bad thing, and might be exactly the right place to be now. So now, I’ll digress into a diatribe of compromise and trying to control your customers in a desperate attempt to keep them, rather than providing them what they want, and changing your business models to make that happen. Quickly.

With the laptops, Apple’s making a reasonable bet that customers will be fine with non-exchangeable batteries. I know when I did a lot of international travel, that this would be a deal-breaker. They’re going back to more closed laptops, hoping that the capabilities they make available at purchase will be sufficient, and maybe that will work for them.

The iPhone is much more of a compromise, especially with the relationship with AT&T. Apple really needs a second carrier for the iPhone now that it’s got enough influence in the market.

Compromise is what the mobile market is about, rather than exploiting wireless technology for everything it can do. Like it or not, carriers are just that, carriers of data. They’re desperately looking for ways to lock in customers, hoping to keep them loyal to that carriers radio towers, but you can only get loyalty from having great products people want (see, for example, Apple .

AT&T is doing all they can with making offers you can’t refuse on mobile/home phone + TV + home internet. So is Comcast, but they don’t own any cellular bandwidth. Today, Verizon started blocking Google maps on some mobile devices, so you’d be forced to use bing or their inferior mapping products. Coercion is not a reasonable long-term strategy to keep loyal customers.

Again, since it appears we all have to keep saying it: carriers, music/media labels, movie companies, cable companies, satellite TV companies, give customers what they want, when they want it, or you will loose your place as the middlemen between the talented people that make stuff, and the people who consume what those talented entertainers produce

And in case you’re still confused, your customers want connectivity, using the services and accessing the media they choose Anytime, and Anywhere.

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I’ve had DirecTV service since 1996. Its just worked ever since I got it, with a few very small exceptions. It’s like dialtone to me, I often just forget how reliable it is.

The very few times its stopped working, 3 times was DVR failure, and 2 glitches with access cards being unauthenticated. The DVR failures weren’t DirecTV’s fault, in all cases it was hard drive failure, fixed by a call to weaKnees for a disk upgrade.

Sometimes I think about that. Going on 12 years, and the signal has never gone out. I compare that the few times I’ve had cable. I know things are better all around these days, but I can’t think of another service I’ve had that has worked, day and night, for 12 years.

But, it’s not just the uninterrupted, always on service. When I’ve gotten a new box, and had to activate it, aside from the occasional 15 minute hold time, every time I’ve called DirecTV to activate, or rarely troubleshoot, or change programming, by the time I got off the phone, my problem was solved. OK, now that’s just unheard of. I also know I’m lucky in this regard, I’ve recounted this to others, and they haven’t had the same flawless experience. Some of that is related to the newer HD services, and the fact that they’re way more tempermental to cabling and signal loss than standard definition.

Recently, I got a new DirecTV DVR. I loved my TiVO’s. I have 3 of them, but the drive just died again on the oldest 1st generation box. Since it was painfully slow compared to the newer boxes, I decided to try the new DirecTV DVR. Well, long story short (for a change), 2 weeks later, it stopped working. First symptom, it couldn’t play recorded content, the screen just went black. OK, I tried that a few times, decided to restart it. That was the end of that, it wouldn’t reboot. Did a “checking the disk” screen, then said it couldn’t start up. So, I figured the disk died, the new business model for DirecTV DVR’s is sending you leased, remanufactured boxes, and this one probably was on it’s last leg.

I called support (and at 9pm I might add), expecting we’d go through the reset dance a bit, then find the box was dead, and swap it out. And, that’s just about exactly what happened. I got another good customer service representitive, and we started. Now, one thing about DirecTV’s phone support, these folks seem to mostly know their stuff. They’ve got their book/screen for “try step a, then step b”, but they seem to actually understand what they’re saying, and when they get a response they don’t expect, they almost always can look it up, or find another path. I don’t feel like I’m talking to someone who has no idea what they’re actually talking about.

We go through the standard resets, try disconnecting the satellite feed, a few different front-panel tricks. Nothing. Finally, he said “well, looks like we’re gonna have to swap out the box. But, there is one more thing to try, it’ll reformat the disk, and you’ll loose your information”, well I’d loose it anyway, so we tried it. Viola! The DVR was working again. I was sure it was toast, but the last resort worked. Yet again, off the phone with my problem resolved (although I would have considered a box swap as resolved too).

Just reflected on the far less than stellar customer support I’m coming to expect, and then having one service be so head and shoulders above the rest. I read a lot in the forums about less than satisfactory service from other vendors of TV programming, and that’s actually stopped me from signing up with anyone else, along with the much higher cost, after you factor out introductory and multiple services discounts. Now only if DirecTV was able to make a healthy profit!

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Tried publishing as an edit, didn’t work, so, now it’s a new post. Oh well.

Now that the furor has turned into a low growl, a few thoughts. I’d “hacked” my phone with iFuntastic. Mostly because I missed the ringtones on my E61, where I could pick any media file on my phone to play. So, I tossed in a few of those ringtones.

Yeah, I get that the RIAA figured out there was big money in ringtones, so they came up with special licensing to extract money for that too. However, because of the RIAA’s heavy handed tactics, and actively attacking customers, informing us that paying for music doesn’t mean we actually own how we use it, I have to admit, I, like it appears the majority of their customers, aren’t big fans of the RIAA. Just a hint, when you actively, and even more, proactively alienate your customers, you will eventually go out of business. And, you cannot regulate and intimidate behavior change with your customers. All the more so when the “competition”, i.e. unsigned artists, are better, by and large, than the “product” you’re peddling. Nya.

So, most of my ringtones are from non-RIAA sources. I have several friends who are musical artists, I have their “personal label” CD’s, and their express permission to use their music however I want, short of reselling it. And, some are from old recordings for which no ringtone rights have been negotiated. So, if the music isn’t popular enough to license as a ringtone, does that means it’s explicitly not licensed as a ringtone? I don’t think so. I don’t see any EULA in my CD packet here for my Mozart symphonies dictating what I can and cannot do with snippets of the music I bought. But, Apple needs to placate the mesozoic media companies, so I guess it had to make deals with the devil to agree to disallow any random ringtone creation.

Anywho, so I did that. Then folks figured less arduous ways of putting ringtones on the phone. That was cool, but I already had mine set up, so I didn’t mess with that. Then the infamous 1.1.1 came out. Now I was a little nervous. I knew I’d eventually want to upgrade, but now I might have a pending brick.

Now, I think it was a poor marketing choice for Apple to go this route, but I don’t see anything inherently evil. They came out with an update, they knew it would and in some cases would brick phones, so they warned you before you updated. Threw in a special “Danger, Will Robinson!” dialog and everything. At that point you could a) say to yourself “self, I modified this phone, do I really want to risk updating”, or b) take your chances.

When I bought the phone, I got a device, and a set of software with it. That’s all I got. Folks found a way to hack that version of the software, great, if I wanted to use it, that’s my choice. I don’t have any illusion that I bought that and the right to tweek it, and the right to free updates from Apple. If I want to use a device, with the restrictions that were made clear to me when I bought it, that’s my choice, and if I choose to disregard those restrictions, which I often do, well, you break it, you lost it.

The train of thought that you bought the phone, so not only can you hack it, but that Apple owes you compatibility, and owes you not to unhack it? Sony has been battling back and forth with the PSP for a very long time, and DirecTV had a similar battle with people unlocking all the channels for a long time, until that got pretty difficult to pull off as well. Not everything you buy is a general purpose computing device. A Palm, mostly a general purpose device, other smartphones? Kinda similar. The iPhone, well, not so much. And, if it wasn’t so absolutely brilliant at doing what it does do, then we wouldn’t really care, now would we?

So, how about this, if you want to hack it, fine, hack away, but don’t update until the hackers catch up with Apple, and if Apple does something that makes future updates just not work, well, enjoy what you’ve got. Works for the PSP folks, should work for the iPhone too.

Now, does this cause Apple some headaches? Well, sure, when there’s some real hardware/software competition to the iPhone, and it’s open and developer/hacker friendly, then there will be some migration.

But, remember, Apple didn’t build and market the phone to developers/hackers. Just like the iPod wasn’t opened up, and yet became the largest selling music player, they’re betting that same thing will work with the iPhone. And, for non-power users, that want power a different way, they may be right.

I’m gonna enjoy the heck out of it, just like I did my E61, until the NEXT killer device/platform comes along! I’m just excited that Apple kicked the mobile industry in the butt with a platform that could be built today, if only other providers had thought out of the box enough to do it. The iPhone is, as a friend told me, “The Mac on a phone”, it’s kinda like Frontpage. Apple’s got a way they want to interact with Consumers, and a lot of it is in limiting the customization. That’s got a similarity to my day job, looking at ways to make general purpose hardware and OS’s more like an “Appliance”, once you know what you want the device to do.

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Was going to do a “nice little things about Leopard” post, but that’s not coming together. So, I thought I’d post one of my favorite features. Mail context-sensitive text. I found the first bit by accident, ran my mouse over a name in an email message, and a popup frame faded in around the name. Clicking on it I had the option to “Show in Address book”. So, Mail.app had scanned the mail, found names it knew in the address book, and they were clickable. Cool.

But then, I went to copy the location of a meeting so I could create a calendar appointment. As I moved over the date/time, it became active, with the option of “create new event in iCal” and “show in iCal”. This happens with dates, times, dates and times, and date ranges as well. So, to create an appointment from a description in a mail message, I just choose the text I want for the subject, click on the time/date, create an appointment, then paste the text.

Yeah, it’s not going to save me hours a day, but I’m now using this one Mail feature every day or three. Pretty amazing. I’m sure it’s mentioned somewhere in the “what’s new”, but I like this one feature better than those popup folders in the dock that I’m not really using a lot yet.

Oh, and today’s cool utility? Hazel. Found it during a Lifehacker perusal last week, and I’ve now got it managing the only two folders left on my desktop, Inbox and Outbox, and managing my trash too.

OK, so I got one blog entry in in November. One a month, that’s all I ask!

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I finally got around to trying this, and swapping back and forth a bunch of times, and this does work, with caveats, and I did only try the one mode I was interested in, heck, it took me this long to try that! OK, so I wanted to sync my music/photos/podcasts/video from my home machine, where all that stuff is sitting on, as you might remember, a Ready NAS hooked up to the PowerMac. Just an aside, my new work laptop, a MacBook Pro feels to be about 2x faster than my dual 1.8Ghz PowerPC based deskside. My PowerMac is feeling inadequate now, but I’m not willing to plunk down $8k for a hot new Mac Pro system. This’ll just have to do, I’ll probably end up moving some video conversion to the laptop though.

Anywho. I first tried to just syncronize my calendar from my laptop, but sync my address book, etc, from my desktop. No go. You can do a sync specifically of that data from multiple machines, and have it merge it, but when I hooked the iPhone back and forth between machines, both machines turned off all the other “info” items turned off. So, for regular syncing, you have to do email, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks from the same machine. I also noticed when I turned off auto-sync on my laptop, when I next hooked it up to my desktop, auto-sync was disabled there too. I’m thinking that’s kinda OK, we’ll see if I keep it that way or turn auto-sync back on for both.

The media portion of our iPhone can come from the other machine though, and there’s no problem with having it get wiped when hooking it to the laptop. The first time I did do the sync, I got the frightening “do you want to overwrite…” message, but it only overwrote the section I’d checked. There is also, as you might have noticed, an Advanced section in the Info tab in iTunes that allows you to merge, rather than overwrite info on your iPhone.

So, this is working for me for now. That’s good, since I can update my calendar on the go to my corporate calendar with the laptop, then sync my phone. Would love for Apple to get an over the air sync for the iPhone in a future update though.

Next question, why after 2 months of billing cycles can I STILL not check out or change iPhone rate plans on the AT&T site? I’ve gotta call a representitive if I want to change my plan. I might need to bump my minutes, since I’m now only using my iPhone, and never a desk phone anymore. With all my prior phones, I’d switch to a landline if one was available. Of course, I’ve got a great deal on a legacy plan, $39.99 for 450 anytime minutes with 5k night and weekends with rollover. But, I’ve now eaten through a bunch of rollover minutes

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