Lots of people are talking about product recalls or free bumpers (cases for the iPhone 4 that, because they stop direct contact between sweaty fingers and the phone’s antennae, stop the ‘reception issue’ from showing as much). However, my theory is quite different:

When you update the firmware on the iPhone you are given a great big End-User License Agreement (EULA) that no one ever reads. Ever. Yesterdays iOS 4.0.1 release will likely have said something along the lines of:

…by installing this iPhone software update you are hereby acknolwedging that there are no issues with the iPhone 4’s antennae and there is no reception issue. Ergo, you cannot sue us or complain any more. Ever. About anything. Love from Mr Jobs.

So, later today, when Mr Jobs stands up in front of the worlds media and blogosphere he will stand there all smug and say “Well, 4 million iPhone 4 users just updated to 4.0.1 and, by doing so and agreeing to my terms, have confirmed there are no issues. Please go home and relax. Good night.”

There you have it, how many times have you been told to read everything before you agree? Now you know why.

At the back end of 2008 I acquired an iPhone 3G through PocketGPSWorld – the idea being that it would be used once they started developing their iPhone App (it’s called CamerAlert, if you’re interested, and is available in the AppStore). It was a Pay As You Go so I only really used it for mobile internet and that was pretty much it. My T-Mobile contract then got expensive and, to be frank, the signal in my home village was shockingly bad with frequent drop-outs during calls etc. Many calls to technical support resulted in me being told that our local mast was overloaded and could not keep up with the number of users in the area (which explained why my wife’s mobile signal also did the same). As such I got my £35/month contract for £17.50/month for 15 of the 18 months I was contracted to. Early 2009, at the end of the 18 months, the signal had not improved and I was reluctant to pay full price. So I decided to get an O2 SIMplicity SIM card for £20/month with unlimited internet and a tonne of minutes and text’s. I’d been on O2 before getting the T-Mobile PDA so knew the signal was fine. I used this SIM card in the iPhone…

I hated it. Actually, genuinely hated it. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was but I hated it. After a week or so if fiddling about with the iPhone I actually sussed out what it was – I simply couldn’t fiddle with it. OK, you can change a few settings, install apps from the AppStore etc BUT there were no little settings you could really fiddle with; you couldn’t, at that point, send MMS messages; there still isn’t any bluetooth file transfer… It bugged the hell out of me but for financial reasons I couldn’t (still can’t) afford a new phone or the cost of a more expensive contract with a ‘free’ phone. So I was stuck with the iPhone. A few generous friends offered to take it off my hands, but I needed it for work…

Gradually though, as I used it more and more and also used my MacBook Pro more and more I got used to the Apple way of things. Simplicity CAN be a good thing. It means things are less likely to go wrong as there are less variables that can be changed. I actually started to go from hating the iPhone to loving my iPhone – note the use of the word ‘my’, the more I used it, the more it became a part of me. I still use it as my main phone now, and actually like the simplicity of it all. It is probably the best UI I have used on a mobile phone – it’s easy to use, although not massively customisable, it works really, really well.

So, move on to the end of 2009 when I was given a T-Mobile G2 Touch (HTC Hero) Android phone – again for PocketGPSWorld.com app development. The default version runs Android 1.5 so some of the features are missing (such as bluetooth file transfer, text to speech etc) but, in general it’s a good phone with a lot of features. I should love this phone more than I do though. While it is great that it is highly customisable, the whole UI and user-experience is… how can I say… different. Perhaps I’ve been spoilt by the iPhone’s simplicity but I have to try hard to want to use the Android phone. It’s not that it’s bad in any way, it’s just not my iPhone. Had I not had my iPhone in between my WinMo phone and the Android phone I doubt I would have felt this way about it.

I do like using my Android phone, don’t get me wrong, but my whole outlook seems to have been changed in that I no longer wish to fiddle too much – I just want a phone that works and as simply as possible. There are some things I would like to see done differently in Android, but then again there are things I would dearly love to change on my iPhone too. I’m going to use my Hero for a while this time and see if my outlook changes again. I suspect though, like last time I tried, I’ll stick it out for 2 weeks then just need my iPhone back again! We’ll see – maybe I’m just addicted and I need to break the habit!

So Monday and Tuesday of this week have been spent juggling work, phoning the police, phoning insurance companies, phoning and emailing O2 and getting used to my T-Mobile G2 Touch as a temporary measure. Today is Mrs-MaFt’s birthday and if she doesn;t like the Happy Meal toy I’ve bought her then I reckon things can only get worse…!

Armed with my iPhone, a couple of goodies (you can leave items for other geocachers in some of the larger caches or do swaps for items already in the box) and a thick coat (it was blowing a gale, but at least the rain had stopped); me and Mini-MaFt headed out across the field towards our local alpacca farm for our first ever cache.

Thankfully this one was relatively easy to find so it was a nice start to what could potentially become a time-consuming hobby! The caches was a clip-lid box with a few goodies in it and a notepad/pencil to record our find. Mini-MaFt got a sliding puzzle from here which he swapped for a toy bear he had brought with him. I logged the find on the geocaching website via the iPhone app and we decided to try and find more ‘treasure’.

A bit of a walk through some more fields back to a road I drive on most days a week. Following the clue took me to a wall where we were looking for a ‘micro-cache’ – i.e. something far smaller and with no room for swaps. This one took a lot longer to find mainly due to the fact that there was a car parked right by it!! I did feel a bit dodgy though routing around next to someone’s car but I figured with iPhone app in hand and son in tow it would be proof enough that I wasn’t doing anything dodgy! I found it in the end though, added our details and fired up the app to see which one to go to next!

Our next cache involved a short walk along a narrow road – thankfully with Mini-MaFt in tow there was a path! Although as we were pretty exposed it was hard not to be blown off the path and into the road! Down a short public footpath through a field with a fantastic view (I love living in Thornton!) and we got to our destination. This time I missed it and it was Mini-MaFt who located the ‘treasure’. Again, this one was a box with a lid so room for some swaps. Mini-MaFt got another little toy which we exchanged for a Pocket GPS World keyring and business card. While we were filling out the log book Mini-MaFt spotted a nasty pirate trying to find our treasure; technically he was a farmer checking a bit of fence that had been wind-damaged but that’s not so much fun to a 4 year old! We quickly hopped over the stile and sat on the other side to get the cache all packed away safely without it being seen.

By this point our hands were numb and the next nearest cache was half a mile away down a steep hill going away from home. So we headed home to warm up, waited for Mrs-MaFt to get home and then let Mini-MaFt let-rip telling her all about the treasure hunt! He was still talking about it on his way to bed later on too. I can see this becoming a new hobby and maybe soon we will place our own cache for you all to find!

We were running a bit late yesterday morning so I used the TomTom on the way down as it was easier to set up quickly – I couldn’t find my iPhone holder and charger right there and then! For the return journey, however, I planned on using a mixture of Sygic, CoPilot and iGO to get us home safely. First up was CoPilot which loaded nice and quickly but then seemed to crash on the main menu along with a bit of a graphical glitch. No problems I thought, kill the app and start it up again! Then the fun began, CoPilot decided to hang on the splash screen and just would not load. Next up I tried iGO which, too, hung on the splash screen – not the best of starts… Finally I gave Sygic a shot, fearing the worst and preparing the TomTom for a return trip. My fears were not compounded as Sygic started up and ran with no issues. Later on I gave iGO another shot and it was fine but then when I tried CoPilot it still hung on the splash screen. I actually think the initial problem with iGO was due to memory issues as I tried loading it as soon as CoPilot had crashed out on me.

Anyway, my point being, had I only had CoPilot with me I would have been rather stuck. The only way to reinstall it is to remove it from the iPhone then reinstall it via iTunes on the PC – now, if I had been away for a week or two and that happened…! Thankfully today I had a back up (I actually considered taking only the iPhone). I find I have started to rely on technology a little too much and I may have to dig out my old paper map as a contingency plan – if one of my actual satnav’s packed in while dodging camper vans through the hills around St Ives I doubt my homing instinct would serve us particularly well!

I like my music and I’ve been using Collectorz.com Music Collector for about 7 years now. MuC (as it is often referred to) is a fantastic piece of Windows and Mac database/collection software specifically for cataloguing CDs, LPs etc. It has a tonne of features that can be viewed via their website (I’m blogging this on my iPhone so am too lazy to fully review it!) but earlier today their ‘clz music’ app was finally added to the AppStore. So I bought it!

Now, instead of having to export my collection to HTML, format it, split it into groups by letter, upload and update the search database I can simply export it to my iPhone and view/search from there! It’s great! No more will I be rummaging around Discovery (local 2nd hand music shop) and end up buying a CD I already own (yes, I’ve done it a few times) or cursing the shopping center for no GPRS signal to check my collection online…

Oh, they also have software for movies, comics, books, photos most of which have iPhone apps to go with them.

I’ve also been playing with ‘Remote’ for the iPhone which works really well. Just to have the iPhone sat next to me to switch tracks without having to keep switching to iTunes itself – it’s really lazy but could be handy if I ever connected the laptop to the stereo for parties. Which I might now it works properly!

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Now playing: Nerf Herder – Easy Mark
via FoxyTunes

One of the new features that’s not actually available easily yet in the beta (without some hacking) is tethering – use your iPhone as a 3G modem for your laptop. Great I thought! Until I read on the o2 site that you need to get a tethering bolt on at £14.68 for 3GB/month or £29.36 for 10GB/month. OK, that also includes unlimited WiFi at the Cloud (and soon BT Openzone) but when you can get 5GB/month on a Three USB dongle it makes you wonder if it’s actually such a good deal… I know that I’ll be just using my £5, 1GB/month Virgin dongle – at least until the prices drop or they let you use the standard Web bolt-on!