MacNoob

Leo [LaPorte] says it, Veronica [Belmont] says it and I say it.  THE NEW iPhone 2.0 SOFTWARE IS VERY UNSTABLE! I had been the proud owner of my new 16 GB iPhone 3G for less than a week when it locked up for the first time.  I took it out of its case to make a call and the little silver apple was all that was on the screen and the phone was completely unresponsive.  After trying several reboots [by holding the "Home" and "Display" buttons simultaneously], it would not get past that same screen.  I finally had to follow the restore procedure (holdong the “Home” button while connecting to my Mac via the USB cable) to get the phone working again.  This procedure completely wipes the phone and any data on it, restoring the iPhone to its “out of the box” state.  Fortunately, Apple has seen fit to include a rather complete backup procedure for the iPhone within iTunes so a restored phone is somewhat complete and current.  The bad news is the restoration process can take over two hours depending on how many applications you have installed and how much media you keep on the device.  The really bad news is the iPhone can seize at any time and, for me, seems to do it when I need the phone the most and can afford a lengthy restore process the least.

So far, I’ve had to restore my iPhone FOUR TIMES in less than THREE WEEKS!  I’m working on the fourth as I write this post.  With exception of the first crash, I can say definitly that the lockups occurred while trying to update applications.  It may have been the cause of that crash also, but I can’t say for sure.  The second and third crashes happened when I tried updating applications over my Wi-fi network.  Shortly after the second crash I heard Leo Laporte relay a similar story on his “Macbreak Weekly” podcast.  He added that if he only updated or added iPhone applications through iTunes and then synced the phone, he had no problems with crashes.  I decided to follow his advice and got the longest contiguous run without a crash, seven days.  I thought Leo had clued me in to an acceptable workaround.  Until today.

Before connecting my iPhone to my Mac today I started iTunes, checked for and updated all the applications that had new versions available.  There were seven.  I connected my iPhone and the sync process started normally.  I left the room for about ten minutes only to return to the little silver apple on my iPhone’s screen and a spinning beach ball in iTunes.  So not to act too hastily, I gave the sync another ten minutes to see if I had just caught the phone in the middle of a reboot.  No such luck.  The iPhone and iTunes were hung up like a couple of chihuahuas.  It left me with no options except disconnecting the phone, rebooting the Mac and starting the [now 2:34 and counting] restore process.

I’ve been parusing the iPhone forums and blogs in recent weeks and know that my case isn’t an isolated one.  Apple has managed to stick its thumb into my eye a couple of times in the last two weeks and I’m not alone by the looks of things.  Between the MobileMe e-mail fiasco and this flakey iPhone experience getting more and more press, Apple may need to hire a good PR person for damage control.  The “I’m a PC” guy may yet get the last laugh.

 Email This Post