Force of Good
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Free iPhone Arrived

Aug 22, 07 in Computing   8 Comments

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The free iPhone that I tweeted about last week arrived yesterday. The box is so beautiful that I might just have to look at it for awhile. And I might as well because I have to figure out some things before I can activate it.

I have to come out of the closet and admit that I am still running OS X 10.3 on my PowerBook G4. Yes, it is a bit long in the tooth. But I did not want to upgrade the OS when I heard of heating problems from others when they did so.

But the point is OS X 10.4.10 is a system requirement to use the iPhone. I have an OS that is just over two years EOL and can't run an iPhone on it. Forget the fact I need a computer to use a phone, how iTarded is that? Well about as much as calling a new computing platform a phone.

This line of thought leads to Apple's sloppy branding, which others have noted. Panther, Tiger, Leopard. Who has the time or inclination to remember point release associations? And yes, we are talking about something that is defined as a point release preventing me from using the iPhone. Which is not really a phone, I mean after nearly two months on the market I have yet to see someone actually talking on the thing. But I digress.

Can you believe that Apple has much better support of Microsoft's OS then their own? I can sync the iPhone with my seven year old XP box currently running as a backup server but can not use a two year old Apple OS X on a laptop I use everyday. Why?

An obvious forced upgrade. So I need to either go out and buy a whole new machine (which I want anyway but am waiting on the next upgrade cycle including OS X 10.5). Or go out and buy an OS that is going to be retired in less then three months.

It seems my options are to choose one of the above, take it to the Apple store for activation (and in which case it won't sync, which makes my Treo a preferred device), or wait. Any advice on how to activate with XP and then switch the phone to fully functional with OS X 10.3 or otherwise workaround?

Then again, the box is so beautiful that I might just have to look at it for awhile.

Comments

iTarded. hahahaha. Good one.

Buy a new machine. You will love it.

dtm  |  Aug 22, 07 at 09:18 AM

Hey - You need to use iTunes for the phone activation but that is a one-time task.

From then on, it is like any iPod and you should be able to change the linked iTunes account to another machine, whether it is windows or mac. You just won't be able to sync music libraries across two devices.

Good luck.

Felix Chuang  |  Aug 22, 07 at 03:58 PM

Congrats! I'm trying to get a free iphone too :)

mark  |  Aug 22, 07 at 09:36 PM

I 2nd Dan's comment. You really should get a new mac, if not, then upgrade the OS. I found a copy on Amazon for ~$79 (look under the used section)

Enjoy the phone and welcome to the club!

-mike

Mike Strutton  |  Aug 22, 07 at 11:10 PM

Forget the iPhone, I can't wait to get the gPhone! Link is here: http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/28/google-is-working-on-a-mobile-os-and-its-due-out-shortly/

Blake Perdue  |  Aug 28, 07 at 10:30 PM

The iPhone is a toy and a cell phone compared to what it will become: The next dominant computing platform. Finally someone capable of wrapping advances in GPS location, bluetooth personal area networks, wireless communications, artificial intelligence, digital speech/voice recognition and web services has released a computing platform to take advantage of them all.

You are walking down a city street. You have your iPhone 2.0 in your pocket, and a tiny Apple bluetooth headset on. You want coffee and wifi. Your personal digital assistant's name is Cleo. "Cleo, find me coffee with wifi access." Cleo queries Google Maps for you and then tells you, in your bluetooth headset, the names of 5 of the nearest coffee shops with wifi, starting with the nearest. You pick the first one. "Cleo, directions to Javaology." Cleo gives you directions, and tells you when you take a wrong turn.

On the way, you find you love the neighborhood you are in. "Cleo, find me an apartment in this area." Cleo does. She starts rattling off listings. Pick one and she'll give you directions.

You glance in a store window and see a new book called 'Gary Potter Volume 11,' and you have 1-10. "Cleo, order Kama Sutra Volume 11 from Amazon to my home."

Feeling scared? "Cleo, what is the crime rate in this area?" Cleo tells you.

Cleo will announce the names of other people you meet and will exchange cards between your iPhones.

We'll all start doing things like this in the next few years. The step after that will be glasses which will coordinate with GPS and cell location to overlay 3D imagery on the street, in malls, etc. A la Spook Country, a highly recommended read.

I know that we'll be doing this, because if nobody else does... I'll start a company to build this. But I suspect apple will do it for us.

Russell  |  Sep 06, 07 at 04:47 PM

Russell:

Go build that bad boy as a safari app.

Lance  |  Sep 06, 07 at 05:08 PM

Heh, fortunately there is a complete dev toolkit for the iPhone and it would require some platform integration.

Russell  |  Sep 06, 07 at 06:05 PM

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