Mr. Chris and the Very Crappy iPhone 3.0 OS Upgrade

Yesterday, for those living in a cave, was the long anticipated day that the new version 3.0 of the iPhone OS (Operating System) was released. I worked a half day, as II have been doing this week since the kids are on summer vacation, and headed home.

After a lovely 75 minutes of exercising I got cleaned up and sat down to upgrade my iPhone. Last year because the Apple download servers were so overloaded it took a long time to download the upgrade file.

So, my upgrade experience spanned from a few minutes after 1 PM when I started the download until around 9 PM last night! The download took less than five minutes, and I was very excited, figuring things were going to be much quicker than last year. This is what undoubtedly summoned Murphy and sent him swooping down upon me!

For whatever reason after the upgrade the phone was stuck in the 'connect me to iTunes so I could authorize state. However I tried this, iTunes would not see the phone, or would see it as an unknown device without a name. When connected like this running iTunes diagnostics showed all was well in the realm of being able to talk over the internet to the Apple servers and communicate via USB to the iPhone. It showed also that the firmware had indeed been upgraded to 3.0. Rebooting the unit multiple times (and the PC a couple of times changed nothing. I tried to restore my old config but of course by the the apply authentication servers were swamped so it could not talk to them and get an OK back. The kids and I went shopping, I dropped Danielle at the mall, all while carrying around my expensive Apple paperweight and my old ugly work cell phone.

So, I got home, printed out Scott directions for where he was going with his girlfriend,and then did a restore on the iPhone. While the name of the iPhone did not come back in iTunes all functionality did except Bluetooth which either showed up in settings as unavailable or off. When off, turning it on caused it to go back off within a second! The thing was running twice as slow as it should. It was painful, though I could use it as a phone...apps were very very slow. I was quite annoyed and ticked off and dreaming of a Palm Pre at this point in time.

So, after fetching my daughter from the mall and having some hot dogs for dinner I tried again....same results. I took a TV break and finally later in the evening I was able to restore the backup taken after the iPhone had been upgraded and lo and behold it authorized, it's name came back and Bluetooth was working and the speed was better than it was under the 2.2 firmware. My icons, except one which was pushed off the home page because of the new voice recorder application remained the same and all I tested was working.

It seems part of the problem was the authentication servers at Apple used to verify and then activate an iPhone, were heavily indeed overloaded. Add this to the fact that the upgrade would pause during an iPhone reboot because I have an unlock code on the device probably complicated matters. At one point I actually removed the code though this may or may not have helped.

However, my reward was soon to be at hand. This morning I got in the Mustang, the iPhone connected via Bluetooth to the Clarion stereo as I have seen it do many times before, and glorious stereo music began playing from the iPhone through the car stereo! It was awesome! This is a new feature that was added. While I could make hands free phone calls on the stereo in the Mustang, I could not listen to music from it without a cable connection going from the phone to the stereo.

Many were the times I wanted this capability for my ride to/from work. It's a pain to have to dig out the iPod cable, plug it into the iPhone, plug that into the USB cable from the Clarion, and position the iPhone in it's travel holder. Considering my ride home can be as short as five minutes, it's just not worth the effort.

With the new OS though, when power is not an issue, and it never is for my around town and to/from work driving, the iPhone remains in my pocket and plays through the radio via Bluetooth. This is VERY sweet and I have been dreaming of this for months! I have some nice Motorola Bluetooth stereo headphones that I will pair with the iPhone later today for stereo music when working around the house!

So, thus ended my iPhone 2.2 OS to 3.0 upgrade. A rocky road full of corruption, greed, violence, sex, drugs, and.....oh wait that was high school! The upgrade was full of disappointment, heartache, and frustration......hmm that could apply to high school as well........

In closing let me say that the pain was worth it. I've often heard what does not kill you makes you stronger....well....the iPhone may have been dead for awhile yesterday, but is is better than It was before....stronger....faster..... Oscar Goldman would have been proud!