Closure on T-Mobile

Twenty-one days into owning an iPhone, I am still all giggley everytime I find a new feature or just simply amazed by how intuitive it is to use the phone and how creative it is. Hopefully by now everyone who has heard of the iPhone acknowledges that AT&T is the sole wireless carrier that provides services for the iPhone. I was a former T-Mobile subscriber and made the switch in a heartbeat, well almost a heartbeat - I made three calls to T-Mobile before switching over, via iTunes, to AT&T with my new iPhone.

So we received our last T-Mobile bill. Excited to see the final bill, bringing closure with T-Mobile, only to find a $200 termination fee. It's pretty cleverly described in the bill for the $200 line item - account termination fee. It doesn't state early termination, because our account was no longer in contract, so it somewhat misleads people into believing it to be either the early termination fee (which in this case they couldn't have gotten away with it - I called T-Mobile 3 times before switching to iPhone with AT&T to make sure we no longer had a contract and there was to be no fee involved in terminating the contract, the the 3 times made sure such conversation got recorded for "quality" purposes) or the account closing/termination costs - which technically do not exist if there is no valid cause for such penalty. Most people probably would have bit the bullet, but I wasn't going to let T-Mobile get away with this one.

Remembering how I was nearly harrassed during each of the three calls I made to T-Mobile to making sure IF I had switched away from T-Mobile, I was not going to be penalized, for getting deliberately transferred to a "specialist" whose is trained to (try to) talk people out of switching away from T-Mobile because of the arrival of the iPhone, I prepared my mind for another agony. Much to my delight, the T-Mobile rep that answered my call maintained diplomacy and agreed to look into the account, in detail, after I reminded him of the three calls I had made and that I knew they were being recorded. He eventually stated that there were some "discrepencies" in the account, but he does show the notes that it was agreed there was going to be no early termination fee (which by the way he stated was what the $200 was charged for). After about 10 minutes on the phone, he volunteerly took the fee off - which will take 48 to 72 hours to process - so we will see. Not about to let me off the hook that easily, he said "so I see you might have been interested in getting the iPhone, did you get it?" Funny he asked, of course I got it. I went off telling him how great the iPhone is, how it is a revolution, I actually got the admittance, for the first time by a T-Mobile customer rep, that "it's too bad T-Mobile doesn't offer the iPhone". I reminded him that T-Mobile is the sole service provider for iPhone in Germany come this fall, he followed by saying "it's too bad it's not here though". He went on by saying how he loves Apple products - he has the iPod, Shuffle, loves iTunes, and would love to play with an iPhone - true passion for Apple finally shown. We concluded the call by him asking me to reconsider T-Mobile in the future when they do have the iPhone, and I asked him to go check out an iPhone finally, we both laughed. Well, the finally thing for me to do to put our now terminated T-Mobile contract to closure is to make sure the $200 was taken off as agreed, which a situation any dignified service provider should rightfully fix.

iPhone Rocks!

The long awaited iPhone finally hit the stores today, and it was everything as promised and more! We got the 8-gig from the Tysons store a little after 7pm tonight. After playing with it, well, all night, we concluded that it is indeed amazingly intuitive, fun and easy to operate! We signed up from the iTunes website and literally took 5 minutes to enter my existing phone number to switch over from T-Mobile, and then the actual transfer was transparant to us and took exactly 30 minutes. The extra large screen real estate is great for scrolling with the fingertip swiping motion as well as ease of reading. The high resolution makes the contents so clear. The mute button allows the phone to be muted while still allowing the alarm to function usefully - excellent feature per my husband who finds his Treo nearly retarded for muting the alarm when putting the phone on mute. The 2.0 mega pixel camera works great and when docked, the picture taken on the iPhone gets snyched with iPhoto. Photos work great and the zoom in and out features enabled by pinching of two fingers are even more jaw-dropping in person. I was able to find the YouTube videos I searched for in seconds, bookmarked them for frequent viewing, and shared them with family and friends. The email setup was so easy that gmail setup took less than 1 minute, after mastering the on screen touch key board. The google maps are as good as promised; we were able to zoom in on our house in the satellite view. They sim card slot is nearly unnoticeable; the sim card tray requires merely a push of a paper clip and slides out gracefully. We tried swapping in JD's sim card with existing AT&T number but that did not work, as anticipated. The iPhone runs on OS X, so if one is familiar with Mac OS X, will find iPhone's user interface extremely familiar to use. All in all, I am extremely pleased with the iPhone. Extra memory down the road would be helpful but I am equally happy without the extra memory...and JD can't stop saying wow.

Yankees comeback

Since my last posting about the Yankees, they went on a winning streak of 9 and closed in on the Red Sox and improved to second place in AL East, untill the last three losses against the Rockies. What happened with the Rockies' sweep? High altitude? I don't see enough homeruns as should be. Veterans are making rockie mistakes and the Rocket is not performing! Perhaps it's Rockies' recent winning streak out-lucking Yankees' winning streak? The Yankees need to go back to Bronx and put on those pinstripes. But for now, let's hope they have better strategies in San Francisco.

Parallels and Windows on Mac OS X

Something wrong with this picture? Windows Explore and Mac Finder are being used in parallel in Coherence mode using Parallel. This utilizes the Parallels Desktop for Mac along with Windows XP Professional install. The average boot time is about 4 seconds and allows windows applications to run in native speed. Works great!

iLife

It was fun spending a night alone creating a video stream from the latest travel archives while the rest of my family is either watching basketball, geeking out at WWDC, or sleeping in a different time zone; what have I become...someone having fun geeking out alone.  Check out the latest stream made available for streaming and Podcasting by iWeb, created using iMovie HD from clips of short movies stored in iPhoto and audio imported from iTunes.  Yup, you guessed; together they are called iLife.

Podcast: pcast://itpc_rss.mac.com_jdman_iWeb_homemovies_podcast_rss.xml

Stream: http://web.mac.com/jdman/iWeb/HomeMoviesMP4/Movie.html

Dying to have an iPhone

It has been quite some time now that I've heard the discussion of how iPhone is going to change this, and the iPhone is going to change that, and if we only just get an iPhone, NOW. These were conversations among nations top scientists, and how they know a good piece of equipment when they spot it. June 29 is just around the corner. Three new ads have been launched by Apple Inc., each intrigue and attention grabbing. All in the while, I ask, why didn't I think of that, and I bet the rest of the cell phone industry is thinking the same thing. The questions is why didn't they think of it. Is Steve Jobs the only genius in this world, or the CEO world at least, or is he is just one of them among the many Mac geniuses that are spreadout in each Apple store? Bottom line, I trust Apple's products and can't wait to get an iPhone!

Apple and AT&T

Two stocks to bank on for the next 12 months. While the Apple stock (SYM: aapl) is already high, it's still building the momentum for the company's upcoming product release of iPhone. Speculations have it that the iPhone will reshape the mobile phone market. If you want a proven track record, just take a look at the iPod. AT&T (SYM: T) on the other hand will be picking up the windfall of the iPhone mark since its predecessor Cingular signed a 5-year exclusive deal with Apple for being the sole service provider for iPhone.