I’ve had three ‘problems’ with it.

Short Battery Life
Today, on a fresh charge, I turned on music for about an hour to get to work, downloaded my email and checked my rss feeds. Two hours of ‘use’ total, depending on how you math it. Got to work and check and my battery was down 20%. I recharged as I googled what the heck was up with that, and people think it’s either ‘bad email settings’ (possible that my email never stopped checking), or ‘bad network settings.’ Three fixes were to reboot the iPhone, delete all my email accounts (off the phone) and reset them, or a full reset of the iPhone. Option number one seems to have fixed it. By the way, you reboot the iPhone by holding down the ‘sleep/wake’ button (the one of the top of the phone, to the right side) until you get a screen asking you run a slider across to turn the phone off. Do that, wait till it’s been off a minute, and then press the sleep/wake button again. Voila!

No 3G
The next thing I noticed was that after I ran a ‘restore’ on my phone (which is I took all the settings and info from my old phone and put it on the new one), I was stuck on the EDGE network. I’m paying for 3G, I want 3G. Why don’t I have it? Back to google, who gave a lot of crap answers about bad SIM cards, but then I stumbled on someone who said he reset his network settings to fix a bad WiFi password. It occurred to me that my old phone was 2G (aka EDGE) and since I knew the new phone had saved my WiFi password, it stood to reason that it saved my preferred network settings! I reset the network settings (go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings) and suddenly I’m on 3G! I will have to re-enter all my WiFi passwords, but that’s a small price to pay.

It feels funny
The last problem is tactile. The 3G iPhone has different glass than the old one, and it smudges more. The old phone felt ‘soft’ and I never worried about the smudges. My brother, on the other hand, is a fuss and has a screen cover on his to protect it. I bareback the iPhone. But after one day I find myself thinking I want a screen protector. There’s stuff like InvisiShield for $25, that promises fork protection (seriously, the video make me wince), but for now, I’m shoving my phone in an old iPod slip-case when it’s in my pocket.

Oh, and if you get the three being silent joke, then the outpatients are out in force tonight.

I’m the current GM for our RPG. That means I make up the story, they make choices, it’s an interactive “Chose Your Own Adventure”, only you can’t cheat and peek at the end because I control horizontal and vertical. While I do a lot of this stuff online (I use a wiki to keep all my notes, so I can keep notes online and edit at home or work), I end up printing up the next episode and going ‘old school’ when we game, because it feels more personal that way.

Instead of using a lot of CDs, I make playlists on my computer and run them via iTunes to the stereo when we game, which works really well, except I was always using my laptop to control it, since the computer with the music is in another room.

Today I wistfully said ‘I wish I could control my iTunes playlists with my iPhone.’ And then I said ‘Well, why the hell not?’ This sounds like something Mac should have done from the very start! And you know what? It was!

Remote (iTunes link) is freeware from Apple and lets you control your iTunes library from your iPhone or iPod touch. Apparently it’ll let you control AppleTV as well, but personally I wish it would control my DVR so I could mess with people’s heads and change channels or program recordings from work. Still, I set it up (took all of 2 minutes, including download time) and now I am the master! They’ve had this one out there since the Mac Store opened for iPhone apps, and I recommend it to anyone who uses their iTunes library ‘from afar.’

When you run the app, it checks for iTunes libraries on your local WiFi network. This needs iTunes 7.7, but since we’re on 8 right now, you should upgrade anyway. You’ll also need to check your settings in Preferences -> Devices, and make sure you’ve checked ‘Look for iPhone and iPod touch Remotes’. Saying you need to set up a library to share is implied, but you need to do that too (go to Preferences -> Sharing and you’ll see how it works). Once that’s set up, the iPhone app will show you four digits. Go back to iTunes on your computer and pick the iPhone from ‘Devices’ on the sidebar menu. It’ll prompt you for that four digit code. The reason it’s on the computer and not the iPhone is to stop other people using your network to control your iTunes. Not that we’d EVER do that.

You can link up multiple libraries (for people with multiple computers). You can play through remote speakers, just like you can from your computer. In short, you can actually remote control everything like you would do on your desktop.

Thanks, Apple!

As the busses show up, we realize no one knows what bus goes where. After all, we’re city bitches. We take our bus to our stops. The bus drivers are perplexed, and as we ask ‘Do you stop by…’ they get irritated. So I whip out the iPhone and pull up the transit maps.

“135 will take you to the same stops as 134 from here.” People turn to look at me. “33 goes to Ontario, so if you need the loop, don’t take it.” And so on and so forth.

Fifteen minutes later, we’re on our way to work and someone buys me a coffee.

Oh yeah, baby. I rock.