I used this YouTube vid below. To my surprise, it’s not like iPods of the past, where the face “holds” everything and the back is just a shell. In the case of this device, the face holds about half the guts, and the back shell holds another 50%.

I had started down the wrong path by seperating the silver bezel from the black shell. It was a bit of a battle and didn’t feel right, even though I was successful at breaking the seal around the entire bezel.

At that point I turned to the Google for the real scoop. I was entirely wrong about where the break was to be. To my surprise the video showed the break happening between the glass and the metal bezel. I would have never thought of that.

The suction cup worked perfectly. My girlfriend’s 3G is now working again. It was 100% dead. No idea what I did, but like many electronics surgeries, just opening it and noodling around solved it. I suspect it was a tiny connector that had come off its mate.

Download Pwnage Tool 3, follow Pwnage Tool directions, and Bob’s your uncle. Only problem with my install is that I get You are not subscribed to a cellular data service errors every so often.

At first I didn’t get any EDGE data transfer at all (no email, no web, no weather) until I set  Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network > APN to epc.tmobile.com. Yes, I use T-Mobile for my cell service. I think I might need the full-blown T-zones hack this guy talks about.

I suspect things will smooth out after enough people report back with this problem, and enough smarter people help solve it.

Jailbreaking and unlocking iPhone 3.0 is going to be a huge race between unlocking hackers. The beta has been cracked, but the final release isn’t out from Apple yet so we’ll see who crosses the line first.

Check back here for updates.

[I've harped on this before. Warning.]

I wirelessly synced my phone — a Sony Ericsson — via Bluetooth (BT) with Mac OS from 2003-2008.

Then in 2008 I got an iPhone and lost this capability because Apple saw fit to disable BT sync.

BT too slow for music/movies? Fine, give us the choice to sync contacts, which are typically thousands of times smaller. My Sony Ericsson would sync in usually 5-10 seconds.

It was so simple, so elegant. I’d get home, click the Sync Now icon in my menu bar, and everything would be done while the phone sat in my pocket.

If I had to guess, I’d say Apple disabled this to sell Mobile Me, a very “Microsoft” thing to do.

AT&T Inc. said Thursday it will start selling iPhones without requiring a two-year contract, but they will cost $400 more.Spokesman Michael Coe said Dallas-based AT&T will sell the phones starting next Thursday for $599 or $699, depending on the storage capacity. The two models cost $199 or $299 under contract.

The phone company had said in July, when the latest version of the iPhone was launched, that it would sell contract-free phones in the United States. Such phones are sold in some other markets.

biz.yahoo.com

I just re-downloaded an audio book I bought and listened to exactly five years and 16 days ago, otherwise known as “02/04/2004″, and now it’s syncing to my iPhone.

I’d lost The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy file sometime between then and now, so I went back in (after having discontinued, then started up again my Audible account, mind you) and went to My Library and there it was. It was the first Audible audio book I bought. And also there were the other 22 or so audio books I’d bought since February 2004, all with a friendly orange download link next to them.

Some of the books are available to be re-downloaded, for free, in a much better bitrate than they were originally offered.

That’s good stuff there.

[Apple] announced that it would no longer enforce its non-disclosure agreement for software it has released:

The NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success.

Software that hasn’t been released is still covered by the agreement.

That certainly sounds like a sensible distinction: Companies have a right to keep things that are secret a secret, but once the cat is out of the bag, it can’t be a secret any more.

There have been an increasing number developers complaining that Apple is making it too hard for developers, such as in this blog post on Ars Technica.

Despite its Soviet style of communication, Apple is certainly signaling that it understands that needs to keep its developers’some of its most fervent advocates’from becoming so angry they will switch their efforts to Google’s Android or other projects.

Earlier this week, Apple tweaked a few policies that had made some developers feel that the marketplace in the iTunes App store was unfair. Now you have to have bought the application to be able to review it. And a developer can’t simply make a minor modification in a program to jump to the top of the list of new applications.

See story.

To my surprise and delight I found my iPhone adds the requisite umlaut over the u in “Mötley Crüe“.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the o in “Mötley”, and the overall iPhone Umlaut Awareness Test(tm) result is a 1-for-2.

I installed the long-awaited, milestone iPhone software 2.0 on my iPhone and my friend’s using PwnageTool 2.0.1 by the iPhone Dev Team, and this iphone-hacks.com PwnageTool tutorial. Both phones are first generation 16GB iPhones. I used various tutorials during my two 2.0 upgrades, but iphone-hacks.com was the best.

The first time takes around 30-45 minutes, but be patient and keep moving through the instructions. Important: when you get to the question Are you a legit iPhone user? the answer, if you’re on T-Mobile, is No. In fact, if you’re anything but a legitimate ATT contract user, choose No.

Then at the end (after the final step in the iphone-hacks.com tutorial), iTunes asked me if I wanted to restore from a current iPhone or create a new iPhone. I chose current, which put all my contacts, music and photos back onto my phone. (My first inclination was to choose New.)

Appleswitcher Forum post How Many iPods Have You Owned? sheds some light on iPod Turnover. No, not the recipe. I mean how often do Apple devotees buy iPods for themselves (or are gifted them)?

The more data we get, the more accurate the numbers. I’m going to to halt the poll and divide the iPod total # by number of voters to get an iPod/voter count. Right now we have 15 votes, with a bell curve around the 3-4 iPods owned slots.

iPhones and Touches do count.

So if you haven’t registered for the AppleSwitcher forum, register now and vote.

Fortune.com writer Philip Elmer-DeWitt makes a good case that this scenario is NOT the future, at least not the immediate future.

Let’s back up. What is the table that Elmer-DeWitt is setting? The iPhone:Android=Mac:Windows similie is this: Google’s free, open-source Android phone platform will inevitably crush Apple’s brilliant iPhone platform like Windows crushed Mac in the 1990s, despite the Mac’s far superior interface/experience*.

So will it? Elmer-DeWitt says no, that there are two problems: carrier adoption of the massive changes needed to support Android, and the relatively small Android 3rd-party development community vs. Apple’s large, well-coordinated developer community. Continue reading »

Now that Apple and AT&T have squeaked out of the [iPhone Gen. 1 revenue sharing] deal, what’s holding the two companies together? Certainly some would say that it’s that oft-mentioned exclusivity agreement the companies signed, but I don’t know of one person who actually read the thing and no one really knows if Apple can get out or not.But if I had to take a guess, step one in getting out of its contract with AT&T revolved around the revenue sharing deal. And before you know it, Steve Jobs’ latest blockbuster may be on other carriers.

It may be hard to believe right now, but rest assured that the chances of AT&T and Apple no longer working with each other are greater than you might think. Cnet

This would be a 200-mph blast of fresh air into the iPhone Equation, especially after widespread news that the iPhone Gen. 2 will be locked to AT&T’s network. Having a choice of 2, 3 or more carriers to marry your iPhone to would bring down prices and offer new services. It would be mobile device nirvana.

Works over the air. Changes are displayed immediately. Works with Mail, iCal, and Address Book on Mac. Works with Outlook on Windows.

- courtesy http://www.macrumorslive.com/ from the WWDC 2008 keynote address. My bolds.

So that’s why Apple didn’t give us Contacts/Calendar sync over Bluetooth. They want to charge for it with MobileMe.

Background

Unless you’ve been living in Vega, Texas, you’ve probably heard the iPhone does not have a replaceable battery, meaning you can’t bring a second (or third etc.) to pop in that iPhone when you run out of juice, like you can with a notebook computer.

I just got back from a 3-day camping-at-night roadtrip, and I had my iPhone on me. Here’s what I learned about power management.

iPhone Travel Tips

So what can you do on the road? Here’s some quick tips:

1. bring a car charger Pretty simple stuff. We had a Belkin iPod charger that worked fine for my iPhone. It’s just slow to charge the iPhone.
2. bring your wall charger and grab AC power whenever you can The iPhone recharges much faster from AC wall power than it does from a car charger. As few as 15 mintes can give you a 1/4 to 1/3 charge. We’d stop at restaurants and I’d find an AC outlet and pop the phone in it.
3. turn off WiFi while driving You won’t need it, and it sucks juice.
4. dim the display I had mine on auto-dim, and realized I could really conserve battery by turning this off and moving the slider as far left as I could stand.

Next time I’ll come equipped with a solar charger, an external USB phone charger, or both. Fighting for  car charger time (vs. another iPhone owner and an ancient MP3 player) was no fun.

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=Apple+iPhone+-+16GB+(Refurb)&q_sku=sku2530221

via Ars Technica

I’m not going to pull punches. In my opinion the iPhone is the coolest consumer gadget that man has ever produced. Following up on What I Don’t Like About the iPhone, here’s what I do like about it, and what I think Apple got right.

Integration

The iPhone is stunningly well integrated. It’s a phone, music player, web browser, light emailer, SMS’er, map utility, calendar, weather updater, alarm clock, and game player, and all these features work well together and blend visually and conceptually.

Example: do a search for a shop on Google. If like most business searches on Google these days, it’s under “Local results for [business name]” (has a tiny map icon next to it), click the link

1. you’re taken to the iPhone’s Map application and the store is centered, and “pinned” with a standard Google pin marker
2. a tap to the flag for the pin takes you to a Contacts-style page with the phone (just tap to call), store URL, address, and some map buttons including Directions to Here
3. a tap on Directions to Here will do a faux-GPS of your current location and mark the route to the shop on a Google map from wherever you are
4. Holy F#ck!

Continue reading »

Texting has its oddities. In email or SMS mode texting is vertical (portrait) -only, making the keyboard narrow. But when the iPhone is in browser mode and you’re entering text into a page’s <textarea>, the keyboard can go into landscape mode, making writing much easier. What gives? Give us landscape SMS and email capability.

The headphone jack port doubles as a surgical-quality flesh-removing device. It’s REALLY sharp. I keep my phone in my front jeans pocket, and 4 times now I’ve conducted impromptu surgery on my finger reaching for a ringing phone. I now keep the phone upside down in my pocket, so when I reach for it I get to keep my digits.

No Bluetooth sync!? No BT syncing of Address Book contacts and iCal events?! Something I’ve been doing for FOUR YEARS with my lowly Sony Ericsson T610 is suddenly NOT AVAILABLE to me with this $500 phone? Hmm. Note I’m not asking for music sync over Bluetooth because I understand it would take decades to transfer gigabytes over Bluetooth.

The silent ringer switch sometimes moves itself. Nitpick. Many things in my pocket move.

My iPhone hunts for WiFi connections. And it asks me several times if I’d like to join. There’s an on/off setting for this, which is a little all-or-nothing for me. I’d like intelligent hunting, for instance,

• alert me if there’s an unlocked WiFi signal,
• connect to known signals,
• but stay silent and in EDGE data mode if the only signals around are unknown and locked

The interface is laggy. Sometimes it will not keep up with my scrolling in Safari, and will stutter after deleting a few emails back-to-back. X-ing a URL in Safari sometimes locks the interface for 5 seconds. C’mon, iPhone, just clear the URL field so I can type.

Overall I love my iPhone. These gripes don’t really affect my intense enjoyment of the device. I’ll have a What I Like About the iPhone post in a week.

…Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney believes Apple has ordered 10 million 3G iPhones. The piece also said that Dulaney believes Apple will use an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) display in the new iPhone. The piece also said that Dulaney believes Apple didn’t do as well as it expected in Europe with the first version of the iPhone.

courtesy Tech Trader Daily

This would be a big shock… 3G iPhones so soon after the early February iPhone storage bump (to 16GB). This rumor has powered AAPL from the low $120s to $144 as of this writing.