$15 for 250Mb, $30 for unlimited.

Another city packed with iPhone-laden convention-goers, another fail for AT&T. Seriously, what else do we have to say? We couldn’t even send a text message on the busiest days of CES, let alone make a call or use data, and the only solution for getting anything done using an iPhone was to switch off 3G and take your chances with EDGE. Pretty sad, especially considering Clear had set up its own tower on the show floor just to offer better service and Verizon straight-up told The Washington Post that adding capacity was a “simple concept.” We have no idea how AT&T boned this yet again, but we do know that editors with Droids, Pres, and BlackBerrys not on Ma Bell were the only ones who could be reliably reached — and Ross Miller spent the entire week doing his data tasks on a Nexus One connected to T-Mobile and loving life. Oh, and when the NFL playoffs came around, we watched the Packers blow that huge comeback on iPhone SlingPlayer… connected via WiFi to Sprint 3G using the Overdrive. That was deeply sad for a variety of reasons. Get it together, AT&T.

It appears that even monolithic companies fail when they start dipping their hands into unknown territory.  According to PCWorld, Google’s new phone, the Nexus One, is falling subject to bad reviews for Customer Service – and the fact that it basically doesn’t exist.  Users having problems with the phone are either being tossed back and forth between their carrier and HTC (the hardware vendor), both of which don’t know the answers to the problem, or being forced to write Google’s support by email, which leaves them waiting for an answer for one or two days.  There’s no direct support line they can call to get help with their new phone.

In case you weren’t aware, Google’s new phone has been marketed and built by HTC, sold directly by Google as “Google’s phone”, and then of course serviced by a wireless company of your choice – sort of an interesting chain of events which makes it difficult to make the call on who should be supporting the phone.  I think Google should have gone the route of supporting the phone themselves, just as Apple urged its wireless partners to direct customer support to themselves.  I think all eyes are on Google at this point to come up with answers – not HTC or the wireless carriers.

The user experience of the phone boils down into a couple high level categories – those that can use it, and those that can’t.  To those that can use the phone, customer service is probably about 15% of the experience – they call when they need it.  To those that can’t use the phone, customer service is probably about 50% of the experience – if you can’t use the phone AT ALL then customer service is about your last hope, and if customer service doesn’t work… well… you can’t use your phone.

Get it together Google.

Toshiba just announced it’s upcoming mobile phone, the TG01.  It looks promising aesthetically, and the hardware sounds pretty good (minus the touchscreen), but the OS on the phone (Windows Mobile 6) sort of ruins the whole experience.  The user interaction is TERRIBLE.  Little quirks about the phone’s interface ultimately gave this phone a bad review.  I noticed that SlashGear started off the introduction with the dreaded “iPhone Killer” question, but then nearly every paragraph in the article starts with a statement about some disappointing feature of the phone.  Reading the technical specs of the phone unveils a myriad of different things that would instantly take it out of any competition with the iPhone:

1. Resistive touch screen – you actually have to push hard on the screen to make it register.  Traditionally, resistive touch screens also make it difficult to do any sort of dragging on the surface without the screen thinking your finger is bouncing along the surface, losing and regaining contact along the way.
2. No 3.5mm headphone jack – SlashGear actually recommends that you buy bluetooth headphones.
3. It’s running Windows Mobile.  Gross.  Because of this the entire interface of the phone is hard to use – buttons haven’t been sized correctly and the layout of the menus hasn’t been changed appropriately for this size of device.
4. The web browsing experience is sub par for a device of that form factor.
5. The keyboard’s spacebar is really… small.
6. The list goes on and on…

My, what a large spacebar you have!

It does have a few things that the iPhone doesn’t have (which usually correlates to things that you don’t need), but some might see these as perks.

Read the whole review over at SlashGear.

I just jailbroke my phone last night, but the experience was far from smooth.  I jailbroke my phone 3 times, and the first 2 times my phone couldn’t get any service form AT&T.  I’m posting this tutorial thread to help others overcome any of the same issues that I had.

Step 1
Download PwnageTool from the iPhone Dev Team.  Read that post in its entirety before following my tutorial.  They have some special rules/reasons not to use PwnageTool.  Continue at your own risk!

Step 2
Download the latest version of the iPhone 3.0 software through iTunes.  If you upgraded your phone through iTunes you shouldn’ t have to download it again.  You just need to make sure that you’re using the same computer when you run PwnageTool (PwnageTool will automatically find the file for you).

NOTE: If you’re a developer and you’re having issues jailbreaking using the GM seed you should try using the later release 3.0 OS.  If you’ve never actually downloaded the 3.0 firmware through iTunes then plug you phone into iTunes and click Restore.  This should make iTunes start downloading the latest version.  When the application starts downloading just unplug your phone that it doesn’t actually restore it.

Step 3
Run PwnageTool.  You can leave it in beginner mode – it should recognize your 3.0 ipsw file you downloaded from iTunes that way. When PwnageTool asks you if you’ve ever jailbroken your phone before, just say no so that it takes you through the DFU steps.

Step 4
Open iTunes.  iTunes should recognize your phone as a phone in recovery mode.  Alt/option + click the restore button.  This should prompt you with an open file dialog.  Select the ipsw file that you saved from PwnageTool.

Step 5
Wait for everything to finish – you should be golden.

IF YOU’RE NOT GOLDEN/IF SOMETHING DOESN’T WORK:

Did you get an error 1600 or 1604 (or any other error) when you tried to install the custom .ipsw file?  Your phone probably had an issue going into DFU mode.

• Press and hold the power and home buttons for 10 seconds.  Release the buttons.  This turns your phone completely off.
• Wait 5 seconds.  Just to make sure your phone is ready to be turned on again.
• Press the power button again.  This should turn your phone back on in the normal mode.
• Open PwnageTool again and click the “DFU” selection at the top of the app to put your phone into DFU mode again.
• Try installing the ipsw again.

If that still doesn’t work and iTunes gives you an error:

• Rebulid the ipsw file by running PwnageTool again.
• Try installing the ipsw file again.

If your installation of the jailbreak works fine, but then your phone has no reception:

• I’m not sure why this happens, but it happened to me twice.  To fix this I did two things, and I’m not sure which one of them solved my problem: I downloaded the public 3.0 release of the iPhone firmware, and I switched from my unibody MacBook to my old 17″ MacBook.  Things worked fine after this.

If you’re having any problems in general:

• Are you using a unibody MacBook?  These have been said to have issues with DFU mode on the iPhone.  I would try using iTunes on a previous generation MacBook or a different Mac.
• Don’t use the GM seed to jailbreak.

If you have any questions at all please let me know in the comments below!

There are some great instructions over at TekNation for getting MMS and tethering to work on your iPhone.  The gist of it is:

1. If you’re not interested in MMS, skip to step 3.
2. If you’re interested in MMS you’re going to have to give AT&T a call to enable WAP Push on your device.  This typically isn’t enabled on an iPhone plan, and I’ve had trouble in the past getting them to enable it, but that was quite a while back.  Maybe things have changed now.
3. Install an IPCC file on your phone.  This is an iPhone carrier settings file that updates your phone with the correct instructions for connecting to AT&T’s network.  You probably don’t want to use this file if you’re using a jailbroken phone and you’re on T-Mobile. (NOTE:  You install an IPCC file the same way you install an IPSW file manually: by option-clicking the restore button in iTunes.  However, in order to enable iTunes to read IPCC files you’ll have to do the following: On the Mac: open Terminal and type in defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE. On the PC: open cmd and type in C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe" /setPrefInt carrier-testing.) You can get the IPCC file here.
4. Enable MMS and Tethering on your iPhone by going into the settings menu on your phone.  When you plug your phone into your computer your computer will recognize it as a USB Network Device.  You’ll have to look at your network connections settings page to see the device.

Voila!  MMS and Tethering.

Go check out the full set of instructions.

iPhone OS 3.0 available worldwide June 17th

My weapon of choice this year for the Keynote stream was http://www.macrumorslive.com.  They have a good stream text feed, and an even better streaming pictures feed.  The pictures updated more often than the text, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they caught every slide…  I also listened to the audio stream at http://live.twit.tv.

Without further ado:

iPhone 3GS!

• Same external design, all new internals
• Faster than the 3G.  2.1x faster loading of messaging,  2.4x faster sim city load, 3.6x faster for viewing an excel attachment , 2.9x faster for loading the NYTimes app.
• Brand new Camera: 3 MP, autofocus camera.  Also captures video (finally).  30 fps.  640×480 video.  You can scrub and edit video and send it straight to YouTube, MMS, email, and MobileMe too.  These features are also available for developers to use in their applications.
• Voice dialing
• Digital Compass
• support for Nike+
• Better battery life: 30 hours of music playback, 10 hours of video playback, 12 hours of 2g talk, 5 hours of 3g talk time.
• $199 is the price for the 16Gb.  32Gb $299.  Black and white colors. 3G is still available for $99 dollars!!
• 3GS iPhone is available June 19th.

iPhone OS updates:

• there are 100 new features… Cut/copy/paste/undo (works across all apps), landscape mode in Mail/Notes/Messages, MMS support (send and receive photos/contacts/audio files/locations) in Messages app (29 carriers in 76 countries will support MMS at launch — AT&T not until later this summer), search (mail — even on server, calendars, media, notes), spotlight (search everything in one place — first page of the home screen).
• rent and purchase movies from your iPhone!
• Parental Controls
• Tethering: Share iPhone’s internet connection with your computer (but I’m sure it’s going to be expensive…) Works wired and wireless over bluetooth. Seemless experience.  BUT AT&T DOESN’T SUPPORT IT!!  GARBAGE!
• Javascript is 3x faster.
• Inclusion of right to left languages and others.  Now support more than 30 languages in the iPhone OS.  One of the big advantages of a software keyboard.  They all have portrait and landscape mode keyboards.
• FindMyiPhone.  MobileMe users will be able to log in to MobileMe and find their phone if they lose it!  GPS location and everything!  It’s crazy.  Tons of awesomeness there.  You can play an alert sound from the webpage, and even wipe the data from your phone so that people can’t see the info you’ve got on it.  Then when you find it you can just restore the phone from a backup.
• Peer to peer connectivity over bluetooth!  Available in any application!
• Turn by turn directions and google maps can be integrated into any application.
• Push notification

Updated Laptops: MacBook Pro spec update and the starting price dropped $300.  They also added a 13″ MacBook Pro.

Expose has been updated (the dock at the bottom of the screen): The functionality is more like Windows 7.  You can click and hold an icon in the dock and Expose will show all of the app’s windows.  The same works for dragging things into an application – you can drag items to the dock, have the app’s windows pop up, and the drop it into the correct window.

Exchange 2007 (latest version) is now supported in Mail, iCal, and Address Book!  This is big for all the Mac users that work in large corporate environments that use Exchange. You can even see previews of Microsoft Office documents if you don’t have Office installed.

In the picture: iPhone launch on top, Palm Pre on bottom.  For those of you that don’t know, the Palm Pre has had some great reviews that pit it’s features against the iPhone – the palm pre won in 8/12 categories in one review.

Honestly though – this comparison is completely unfair since the iPhone line picture was taken at an Apple store, and the Palm Pre picture was taken at just a regular store (a sprint store maybe?).  Either way, what this picture does show is the power of Apple’s marketing and presence in the tech industry.  Their store is an amazing outlet for the iPhone, and the iPhone wouldn’t have had nearly the amount of success that it did if it didn’t have their stores.  What a great marketing tool!

The pic was from peteryan.net (Thanks).

Zune HD Video Hands On from Gizmodo on Vimeo.  Click the link to go to Gizmodo’s page.  They have a picture gallery of their hands on experience with the Zune HD.

One thing to note – they didn’t show any multitouch interactions in the video… not sure if that means anything or not.

It looks pretty sweet, I’m not going to lie.  It looks a lot faster than the iPhone 3g from a CPU perspective.  I’m still waiting to hear about the development story though.  What is this thing running exactly?  The answer to that question is going to make or break my decision to the buy one for myself.