Who here is an Apple fanboy/fangirl then?

Okay, call me mad, but I thought I would do something crazy today and get up at 6am so that I could be relatively early at the T-Punkt in Kaufingerstraße to have a chance of buying the iPhone 3G.

I was a bit surprised but after seeing the Americans camping out for a week outside the Apple store (probably just to get photos in the media) I was expecting a massive queue in the centre of Munich... there were only about 30 people just before opening! :-} They had a lot of problems with the computer systems not scanning barcodes and also asked me if I had reserved one - I said no, to which they replied that I could only have the 16GB in white! Bastards! I went in only last week and asked if I could reserve and he said "no need, we have enough... just come early!". I thought they weren't supposed to take reservations anyway? Bit crap that I was 2nd in the queue and could not get a black one cos they were all reserved! Harrumph! Anyway, at least I got one :-D

For the last 15 years I have only worked with Micro$oft operating systems and decided some time ago to switch and bought an Apple MacBook Pro... never looked back since! Am now looking forward to using the iPhone and seeing what interesting things you can develop with the SDK! :-D

PS: I also think that T-Mobile have raped us big time compared to the UK... O2 UK: 45 quid, 1200 inclusive minutes, 500 inclusive SMSs; T-Mobile: EUR 69, 200 inclusive minutes, 150 inclusive SMSs

PPS: Which do you reckon will have the higher resale value when I upgrade in future? White or black? I assume more people would be interested in black... I reckon I will also have to be more careful with a white one as scratches/dirt would show up more. Would be interested in what others are buying...

I am! I'm moving to the US in less than two weeks. If I were already there, or I were staying here, I'd have bought the iPhone 3G already!

I've got total gadget envy right now...

I find it hilarious that they say in the manual:

"Don't throw it in an open fire and don't paint it"
"Don't heat it in a microwave"

LOL

to avoid scratches, get yourself one of these:
http://www.bestskinsever.com/servlet/the-8...-3G-Skin/Detail

I have one on my first generation and it goes on easily. Took about a week to arrive from the states.

Can you still only get the iPhone through T-mobile?

what the offer tht u got? downpayment, monthly rent etc'?

Yeah, I quite fancy an iphone just for that, though to be honest, the browser apparently has very good javascript support, so that's maybe as far as I will look in dev terms.

If you write in English maybe I could understand the question enough to answer it... these are not SMSs with limited characters ;-)

Me fanboy!!!

I switched and not being funny but it has lowered any work related/computer stress issues by 50%. Basically I can use the Apple at home and work, I rarely reboot, just close the lid.

I have backup well organised with 2 x Lacie USB external hard drives, 1 home and 1 at work, plus the new Time Capsule at work as well. Would be nice if Time Machine recognised the different backup drives
between home and work (I have to manually switch it over). But hopefully have my arsed covered.

Mail handles my Spam issues brilliantly. iTunes handles my music. All my Adobe packages work beautifully.

I have Apple at home for her indoors and am just upgrading staff to Apple, working through one at a time.

So Apple are getting my cash, but we are more productive and my stress is 10% compared to maintaining Windows XP machines. I fucking love 'em.

Apple-luvin' Commies!

I love my IBM ThinkPad...wait, it's a Lenovo Thinkpad...made in...communist China...

Anyway, for those still stuck in windows land, but lusting after iPods, you might be interested in this over-drawn iPod Visio shape I made...

ok ok.. was in a hurry to type it.. anyways, What was the offer that you got? i saw the offers in tmobile website. The investment seems to be way to high.

you do not need the SDK if you will be developing webapps for it.

A few resources here: http://developer.apple.com/webapps/

I settled for the "Complete L" tarif... can always change up to another tarif later but not downwards as far as I am aware. The investment is a little high, especially for what they are offering but since I work as a software developer and my new employer is also thinking of developing iPhone apps, it will be worthwhile... Haven't extended my contract for a while and haven't changed my phone for about 4 years as I was waiting for something decent to come on the market, so thought it was a good opportunity to upgrade...

I must say, it is really fun to play with and is much easier to view webpages :-)

My ass is a bit sore from being raped by T-Mobile though, but guess it was worth it... :-)

Still plodding on with my 1st Gen one and love it, will be going into the t-Mobile store next week to 'negotiate' upgrading

installed Firmware 2.0 and loaded some apps, not all that impressed with the ones that are available for free, to be honest. Although the Lightsaber app is pretty fun.

ha, Lightsaber was the first app I downloaded Just don't have the firmware update yet to be able to run it :-( C'mon apple.

I read somewhere that upgrades for existing users would be about 15€ per month remaining on the contract. It isn't worth it for me, I already have Tomtom in the car, and I rarely bother using the net when I am not at home. Edge is quick enough and I just can't justify the upgrade cost. All in all, happy enough with the 1st Gen as it stands.

Use the force...

iPhone firmware 2.0 & iTunes 7.7

I am finding it really tedious writing SMSs without the handrwriting recognition I was used to, and also with its stupid auto-correction trying to convert every English word to some obscure foreign word :-} Anyone know how to turn this thing off?

Anyone know if there is any handwriting recognition available for the iPhone? <sigh>

Also found it tedious setting up my Email accounts - I would suggest doing this over WLAN initially... It downloads the last 50 emails and, say you delete 20 irrelevant emails that you do not wish to carry around with you, it then downloads the next 20 oldest emails (costing you money in the process!). It also flags that they are all unread initially and so you have to rather tediously go through them all and read them to set the read flag... Doesn't seem to be a way of setting it to read without reading which is crap (unless someone knows better).

Actually, iTunes seems to synchronise Email too via the USB cable, so am not really sure if it synced via USB or 3G... wasn't clear at all... :-}

There is a setting to cache the last xx emails. Unless you open the email it is only downloading the subject and the first xx lines of the email anyway. So far I have not managed to get anywhere near the limit of reading emails to actually incurr any additional charges. 500 megs worth would be a lot of emails!

Agreed with the stupid autocorrection thing. Anyone (JOB) know if it is possible to turn that thing off in the 2.0 Firmware? I sure hope so. It does my head in. I know it is possible to do on the Jailbroken iphones.

As with v. 1.0 you are only able to turn the auto correct off if the iPhone is jailbroken.

Yeah, I am gonna scream with this bloody auto-correction shortly!! ARGHHH!!!

Also, I just clicked on Voicemail and it is asking me to configure it with my password... what password is this exactly?

I can understand now why they add the warning not to throw the iPhone in a fire or put it in the microwave! I can imagine that the auto-correction drives you to take such measures LOL

Surely you don't find it that annoying. It's not that bad and pretty accurate, in my opinion.

I'm Loving the remote app to control iTunes, what a great idea.

It's probably accurate when writing German but not when I write SMSs in English! It suggests obscure words that don't even look like German! :-}
I want handwriting recognition!!! WAHHHH!!!

Ah, are you using the Germn OS and writing in English, just change the OS language to English and it's much better.

is TMobile the only game in town for the iPhone? I'm going to need to get a phone when I come to Germany, so if I can swing it I'd love to get an iPhone. What do the contracts look like (particularly for data)? Can you get one for 1 year or prepaid?
I'm particularly interested because I'm looking for a way to keep in touch with my friends stateside without breaking the bank, and one of the kajillion apps (though apparently it is still in beta) claims to let you skype through your phone, using the data rather than cellphone minutes and all the international charges that implies, so you'd be charged skypeOut rates (~2 cents a min) plus whatever data is rather than germany-to-US rates (~28 cents/min).

here's the link for anybody interested:
http://www.fring.com/fring_is/what_is_fring/

Officially.. Yes, untill the unlockers release their software so you can use any provider. But to get a 3G iPhone, T-Mobile is the only game in town.

Like all other carriers contracts, they suck and are expensive. No. 2year contract only.

But I write in both English and German... you mean every time I want to write an SMS I have to change the OS language?? :-(

its just as bad when you write in German. Whenever I enter a web address with .de on the end it changes it to .es! It is supposed to learn, so if you regularly type english and german you should end up with a fairly accurate dictionary. I say supposedly as it doesn't seem to have happened...
Time to start digging in that sdk me thinks.

Has anyone unlocked the iPhone 3g yet? If so, what software did you use?

As far as the auto-correction is concerned, I found in the settings for keyboards that you can add multiple keyboards... I added German and English and find that when I switch keyboards ("globe" button) when writing SMSs etc that the auto-correction reacts better.

Now I have problems with contacts running slow... have about 700 contacts - seems to be a standard problem that is eliminated temporarily with a soft reset. Bit annoying that business contacts are listed under company name and don't display the person's name underneath, which means that for numerous contacts at one company, you have to look at each one individually until you find the one you want! Grrr!

Another tip: under email, there is functionality that I initially overlooked... When you have your email list on-screen, the is a "bearbeiten" button on top right (assuming interface is in German ;-) ). Clicking this enables you to multi-select emails and there are two buttons at the bottom of the screen to then delete (without having to read them) or move those emails.

No new iPhone yet, but I bought a new MacBook in CA just before moving here, knowing it would be much more expensive here... I've been using Apple computers for nearly 20 years, so yeah, I guess you could call me a "fan".

Does anyone know when the Apple Store in Munich will officially open?

I walked past Rosenstrasse 1 earlier this evening I noticed that all of the windows are now in, from the first floor up. It still looks like a lot of work to be done though. August or September maybe?