My contract for the current iPhone 3G is on it’s end and so I’m able to prolong it beginning with 1st of september.

I checked T-Mobiles homepage and found their promise for being customers to get the new iPhone4 for a BETTER price… well, not only a better price:

So I contacted T-Mobile by phone and got a operator. I asked about the details of the prolongation and was finally very suprised.

The offer was: give us all your bonus-points, prolong the contract for 24 additional months (beginning with March 2011), pay us monthly 39,– EUR (as I pay currently) and in addition the special iPhone4 price: 199,– EUR.

What???

That’s exactly what EVERY user has to pay when he comes to them and sign a contract with the same conditions – but remember: new customers DON’T have bonus-points! Ahhh, yes. Sorry didn’t understand… the special price is that existing customers have to pay the price as all the new customers and ON TOP give their bonus-points…

Btw: I would have to switch my current contract to a new version… with 1GB only instead of 3GB!

But this is not the end of the story – one more thing…

I’ve two contracts and on the second one are also many bonus-points; so I asked what the price for the phone would be when using ALL the bonus points (almost the double points then).

You won’t believe what the answer was: EUR 650,–

Remember: the unlocked iPhone could be purchased cross the Border in Switzerland for EUR 565,– and in Italy for EUR 659,– WITHOUT ANY CONTRACT or bonus-points…

So every time you give bonus-points the price for the device goes up…

Apple, fun, iPhone

I’m back from Greece – and no, I was not affected by their strikes

iPad 16GB WiFi only

Being back I did what I’ve decided during my vacation – I ordered a iPad at the Apple Store. MediaMarkt – where I checked in for the iPad first didn’t have one any more. They are out of stock… and the shopmen there are really not happy about this situation…

Well – Apple told that they will deliver it on Aug. 11th, so that it’s in my hands on Aug. 16th – but todays ordering-status tells me something different:

iPad ordering status

So hopefully I’ll have it early next week

Apple, fun, iPad

Well – some of you already realized that iBooks is not working as expected –> at downloading books the process hangs up as soon as the progress bar reaches 100%.

What is the problem? I just googled and found an support entry saying that the issue is the jailbreak with [redsn0w]. Downloading books before jailbreaking it works fine – after JB not.

Tweeted MuscleNerd about this – looking forward his response

Update:
And here we go:
For anyone who saw iBooks problems after redsn0w beta, try the latest one (see update #2 at http://is.gd/cYogT )

Apple, iPhone

Well – this is what I’ve expected. The today’s version released by Apple is NOT the same build as the iOS4 GM I was looking on the last view days.

Now waiting to get more infos and what’s all about the issues I’ve described previously…

Apple, iPhone

What the hell…

Just recognized that there’s a problem with the contacts app now. I just wanted to create a new contact (on the iPhone 3G with iOS4 GM, no jailbreak) and realized that there is no field for phone numbers now:

There’s a button to add additional fields – but again no phones, no emails, no fax – NOTHING!

The + button at the ‘ringtone’ field does not work.

So I tried to create a entry and then this:

An entry was created in the contacts database – but the entry was created with EMPTY fields (Ohne Namen –> without name)…

It’s really not the way apple is normally delivering a GM of it’s new OS – so what’s going on here?

BTW: I cross checked this on my second iPhone (3G, iOS4 GM jailbreaked) –> the same behavior

Apple, iPhone

Yesterday I’ve started to update my infrastructure (not GIS powered for those of you knowing them ).

One of the big changes so far: WordPress has released version 3.0 and I updated now. Went fine with one issue coming up:
I had to update my php.ini to allow more than 16M cache for scripting. There have been troubles already in the past when viewing the admin-page – but with 3.0 installed the admin page even didn’t show at all.
To get rid of this I first removed all the plugins to get sure the installation was fine on it’s base. After this the php.ini was updated with this little change: …16M… to …64M… for setting the cache for scripting.
Now it works perfectly.

Second thing was that I’ve updated my iPhones last week with the GM iOS4 and realized that the phones performance went down dramatically.
I wasn’t sure what the problem was – but I saw it running faster on other phones…
In addition I was disappointed that the ‘wallpaper’ feature will NOT work on 3G phones. I think this is not performance related at all, only to push ‘old’ 3G users to the shop for getting a new iPhone4.
So I jailbreaked one of my phones today to check it out – and surprise, surprise… the phone is FASTER and reacting on touch-events now again much better. So my decision for the next days: I’ll give it a try

Others

Do you already know googles potato ad? Well if not – here it is:

But – by the way… do you also know the new Opera ad? You should have a look:

fun

There are rumors in the air that Apple plans an update for the AppleTV box:

• based on iPhone OS 4
• flashmemory at 16GB only
• streaming content from the cloud
• 1080p HD video
• connectivity to TimeCapsule for local storage extension

And all this on a price of $99 – introduced on WWDC 2010? Sounds promising – and would tell us what Apple plans to do with it’s new datacenter

Waiting now for the WWDC…

Apple, Movie, Storage

Steve Job’s response to a user about the higher iPad prices in germany:

Blame your government. Germany just added a new copyright levy for computers.

If this response is really from Steve – it’s more than other got over the last weeks / months

Update:

Prices reduced on the same day – now it’s 499 € for the smallest one. Only the 64GB version has now that fee included – but I think this is still a fault because the fee shouldn’t be applying to such a device…

Update 2:

Apple now reduced the price for the 64GB too…

Apple, iPad

Zuerst mal: Frohe Ostern!

Tja – und da dachte ich mir heute morgen doch gleich ich gönn’ mir was vom iTunes Shop. Eigentlich nicht mir – sondern es sollte ein Geschenk werden.

Recht einfach dachte ich mir  - iTunes bietet da ja eine tolle Möglichkeit per Email Geschenke zu verteilen… aber die Rechnung hab’ ich heute offenbar ohne iTunes gemacht. Meine MasterCard war letztes Monat abgelaufen – und so musste ich heute meine neue bei Apple aktivieren. Doch iTunes weigerte sich beharrlich auch nur irgendeine meiner Kreditkarten anzunehmen.

Also raffte ich mich dazu auf den Support von Apple per Mail zu kontaktieren – garantierte Rückantwort innerhalb von 24h. Zuerst erhielt ich die übliche Mail mit der Bestätigung dass sie ein Mail von mir erhalten hätten – wunderbar, dachte ich mir –> damit hätten sie jetzt wohl mehr als 24h Zeit.

Aber falsch gedacht – kurz darauf erhielt ich doch gleich eine persönliche Mail; recht freundlich gehalten mit der Bitte doch ein paar Screenshots mit Erklärung der getätigten Schritte zu übersenden. Das hab’ ich dann natürlich auch gleich erledigt.

Gleich nach Zusendung der Screenshots erhielt ich ein weiteres Mail – und dieses spricht für sich:

Manche sind Ihrer Zeit voraus...

Also dann: Frohe Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch!

Update:
Das Problem wurde inzwischen schnell und kompetent behoben!

Apple, fun