Second generation Iphone - who else is planning on getting one?

gregrichards

I am getting an iphone 3g asap. It will be available to preorder on 02 for some of us unless they have lied.

Leopard

Cavey wrote: »

The one thing I never get abut subscription services is how they can manage to exist. I used to have servers and desktops and with things like VNC, NFS shares, Apache, DynDNS and SCP I could access my data from pretty much anywhere. I now have a laptop and so carry most of the data on it, but there is still a server, which I can access from anywhere from my phone via a bunch of services, for other files I don't normally need.

It's the syncing over the air thing that interests me (which I take it you have not been using for 8 years given the iPhone is only a year old). Does it rely on Apple's servers to send/receive your data? I mean, RIM/Blackberry is the "industry standard" for mobile email (which is kind of odd because other free protocols work just as well... almost like selling ice cream to an Eskimo) and they have allowed peoples' data to leak and had their entire system go down, so these services, cool as they are, generally worry me.

And I understand the connectivity thing. My phone uses active sync and it is quite clever in how it creates a virtual network (over bluetooth or USB) between the phone and the computer for it to use. Sadly, it can't do this over the air (either by Wifi or over the GPRS) as it was removed for being a security risk, but it CAN sync with an exchange server (if you have one lying around).

Now I don't have an exchange server (little expensive tbh), so would be nicer to be able to sync over the air without one, but if I have to subscribe to a service to do this, it seems a bit excessive.

Anyway, the reason why I came back to this thread was I just got a text from O2. It said....

"O2: Apple iPhone 3G lands 11/07. We will text you shortly before with order details. As demand is very high, orders will be on a first come first served basis"

I guess that means a lot of people have expressed an interest... I wonder if they are like me and only "interested" and not desperate to get their hands on one.

Hmm. You seem to "take" most things Apple wrong.

Please don't call me a liar.

For the last 8 years, wherever I have been and whenever I have logged into the Internet with an Apple laptop - be that wirelessly, via fixed line Ethernet or via modem - it has synched, seamlessly and in the background, with my other Macs and with the data I have chosen to store on Apple's servers. There is no additional fee for this; it is part of a range of services offered by Apple for a single, annual subscription.

If I wish it to, any data I add to my laptop gets sent back automatically to Apple's servers and is synched to my Macs at home (which are safely and securely backed up). I have total control over what data gets exchanged and used in any session and this enables me to restrict the data that is actually kept on the laptop itself (which could get stolen or damaged). Far from being a risk, that actually increases my security.

None of this obliges me to maintain an exchange server, expensive or otherwise. "Lying around" at home, as part of our domestic network, I do, nonetheless, have a five year old Apple Power Mac which I purchased on eBay last December for £102 and which runs Apple's latest generation operating system (10.5.4) happily. It has Gigabit Ethernet and it's plugged into my router. It runs (continuously, off its single power supply) four 500GB hard drives internally and, for additional security, I back it up manually to an external drive by Firewire 800 once a day. I can access it from anywhere in the world that has WiFi, a cellphone signal or a landline. it also networks three printers.

I've just returned from a few days abroad. The photographs I took, and then downloaded on to my Apple laptop while I was away, were already sitting in my Macs at home before i started my journey back.

There's never been a security or reliability issue about it: proper safeguards are built into the system by Apple.

This cheap and simple solution benefits greatly from not being "industry standard" and having to run Windows.

We aren't talking "Blackberry", here, either. My companion has recently had a Blackberry foisted on to her by her office and despises the thing. Having experimented with it myelf, I share her contempt for it.

Unlike any other mobile 'phone, an iPhone (like an iPod Touch) simply integrates itself seamlessly into one's personal Apple network - without need for "things like VNC, NFS shares, Apache, DynDNS and SCP".

The whole thing about Apple is that its stuff just works properly and simply. Everything Apple is designed to work properly and simply. Apple makes the hardware, Apple makes the software and thereby ensures that it all just works - simply and harmoniously.

Geeks who revere Bill Gates's commitment to making everything as hugely complicated as possible and who salivate over its complexity find this horrific but for normal human beings who have lives it's great.

A Belkin accessory I purchased online while i was away was waiting from me when I got home. It came with an instruction manual. This goes on for ten pages about how to install it on a Windows system; loading drivers, running a software CD and using wizards. At the end of this turgid saga is one paragraph. It reads, "Mac Users. Simply plug the unit into your Mac; you Mac will find it and configure it automatically." It did. That's what using Apple kit has always been like.

I posted some Apple links for you to read. Those explained what you ask about. Unless and until you take the trouble to discover just what it is you have been missing out on all these years, please stop accusing those who have been enjoying it for the last two decades of being untruthful.

if you did understand what you are writing about, you would realise why BettiePage - bless her - is so excited.

The iPhone is designed to integrate with people's Apple kit and thereby enhance its ability, simplicity and convenience. Running an iPhone with PC kit is like using a Ferrari to go to the local Sainsburys; most of what it is capable of doing cannot be applied because of the limitations of the environment in which it is being used.