Of interest to iPhone users?

Recently I had cause to record a meeting. I started up the Voice Memo app on my iPhone 3G and two hours later I switched it off. When I checked the phone later, there it was - a voice recording of 1h 48m 0s. But it wouldn't play. I clicked (sorry, tapped) the 'play' button, it turned into a 'pause' button and a progress bar appeared. Just as you would expect, except that the progress bar ran from 0.00 to 0.00 and no sound came out. I recorded a short memo (should have entitled it 'me coughing') and that played back fine. Off to Google, then ...

Turns out it's a common problem. The solution which worked for most people on the forum I was reading, and which worked for me, was as follows:

1. Go to http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/ and download the program iExplorer. This allows you to read the contents of the iPhone memory (also works for iPad and iTouch) as if it were a normal external drive, and copy, move, rename etc. files as required. There are separate versions for PC and Mac.

2. Connect the iPhone to the PC and Launch iExplorer.

3. Go to Media and then Recordings, and your files will be there. There will be two files per recording, both with the filename of the date and time, such as 20120116 184403. One will have the extension .m4a, and the other .mov. You need both of these, although I don't understand why. Don't be surprised at that. Copy them to a convenient folder on your PC.

4. For me, the .mov file (200+MB) played fine in Quicktime Player. The .m4a file, still almost 100MB, was silent in any player I tried it with. A lot of people save the .mov file as an .mp3 to make it more useable. I may do this.

No matter - I have the file I need, and I can listen to my saved copy. There are a lot of other possibilities with iExplorer, such as file management directly on the phone device, using the phone as a USB pen drive, and so on. It's free, it's a small download, and it doesn't have any annoying toolbars and popups that so much 'freeware' comes with.

Highly recommended. No connection except as a satisfied 'customer', of course.

iPhone resolved?

My new iPhone was delivered this morning, by a surly twat who didn't take my navigational assistance (yesterday) very well. It was evening before I got round to unwrapping it, and the problems weren't over. It didn't have the latest software version and wanted to update itself, which I did. But then we were back in the loop of :

1. iTunes has detected a phone in Recovery mode - phone must be restored
2. Click 'Restore'
3. Wait 35-40 minutes
4. Phone could not be restored - unknown error (error 37)
5. Disconnect and reconnect
6. GOTO 1.

I tried it on the same computer, but using a different login, as suggested by the delectable Maria from Portugal. Same result. So I phoned Apple Care. It was America again, and at first the rather superior chap on the other end wouldn't talk to me until I had signed up for 12 months' worth of additional warranty. But I explained what had happened in words of one syllable, and asked him to treat the call as a follow-up to an existing case, rather than a new issue. This seemed to work. He suggested doing the restore on a different computer, as sometimes anti-virus software can interfere with iTunes' ability to do this. He said it was an issue that Apple were aware of and were addressing. I bet he says that to all the boys. But it worked. I restored the phone on the netbook and then re-synced it with the laptop, and all is well.

So far.

Look out for a resumption of picture attachments, if the iPhone stays up for long enough.

Poped Out

I only ever watch TV while I am eating my tea, and I usually flick on the BBC News channel for half an hour to catch up. For the last four days, it has been wall-to-wall Popery. I'm not sure I know what the BBC is up to here. It seems as though the coverage has been even more intense than if a US President were visiting - and certainly a lot more uncritical. In fact, the BBC coverage has been awash with the kind of sycophancy usually only reserved for Great and Good figures like Nelson Mandela.

There was a revealing comment made by Matthew Amroliwala this evening, as we watched the Papal jet taxiing across the apron (along with "I'm told that if you look at the third window back, that's where His Holiness will be sitting"). The total cost of the visit to Britain is in the region of £12m, and we were informed that half of the cost will be met by the Catholic Church, and the other half by ... The Government.

NO, NO, NO. The Government doesn't have any money of its own. That money is taxpayers' money. We have given it to the Government to spend on our behalf. If the BBC were truthful, he would have said "half the cost will be met by the British taxpayer". Doesn't sound quite as cosy, does it?

Sounds better than something Anna said, though. As His Ineffable Hugeness [© Peter Cook, Bedazzled, 1967] and David Cameron sat down together in chairs under a gazebo-like canopy in the middle of a runway surrounded by men in frocks and other men in San Serriffe-style begonged uniforms (a bizarre setting, truly), she said that she was glad it was Cameron and not Tony Blair doing the greeting. "If that had been Tony Blair, we'd have seen him kissing his ring and everything." I swallowed down the small bolus of vomit that had risen from my throat and pushed my food away.

And in other news ...

I went to the Vintage Motorcycle Club bike display at Saundersfoot harbour this morning. It's a great setting for a show, with the harbour on two sides of the display area. And there was a good café selling all-day breakfasts, so the TOMCC all met in there for an early fry-up. The show was excellent, as usual. There were very few immaculate restorations trailered in for the occasion: the majority of bikes were in roadworthy but everyday condition, which is how I like to see them. There was a good mixture: some modern 'classics' like a Honda CB400N Dream (eurgh) and close by a CB400F, which was a delight. There were a lot of good honest British 60s bikes, like Bonnevilles, Tigers, BSAs and Nortons, with some unusual characters like an unrestored Scott two-stroke and something with an Ariel chassis and a V-twin engine that I didn't recognise. There were a number of proper 'Veterans', like flat-tank Triumphs from the 1920s anf two examples of the 'Neracar', a feet-forward design that prefigured the Quasar and Voyager that were discussed on this blog recently.

There was a ride-out organised which, I was told, was open to modern bikes as long as they rode behind at a respectful distance. But this wasn't a mass ride-out; all the entrants had been given a roadbook and were setting off individually. I took off and followed a sedate BSA for a few miles, but eventually I got bored and took the longer (and quicker) way home.

No pics, sorry to say, as the new iPhone still hasn't arrived. It was sent last Thursday, and I tracked it through the UPS website. Apparently, they tried to deliver it on Friday, but no-one was home. There was a point mid-way through the afternoon when I was out and Anna was collecting blackberries in the field, so I assumed that was the time they tried and failed to deliver. Then some people, who some time ago had rented a house half a mile away and who had been there to check on the post, called in with a UPS "Sorry but you were out" note. UPS had tried (and failed) to deliver my new phone to an empty house. I went down this evening and pinned a note to the door of the empty house which said "You are a dickhead", only more politely, and with directions to where I really live. They plan to re-try tomorrow.

Fingers crossed.

iPhone Update³

Phew! I spoke to Apple yesterday afternoon and they agreed to replace the phone. This morning, a box arrived with a returns label. It's now in the post back to Apple, less than 24 hrs after my call to Lynda.

Gotta say that's good.

iPhone Bodge - update update

Remember the sellotape bodge? And the long-distance love-affair with Maria from Portugal?

Well, she never did call back. I blame myself. I was never there when she needed me, and the drink thing didn't help, and that business with her sister ...

Sorry. Where was I?

I resurrected the Nokia 6310i* and it has been working fine. It's nice not to have to walk to the bottom of the garden to send a text message, and to charge it only every two weeks or so. But I digress.

The trip to Ireland prevented me from following the iPhone thing up straight away, but today I called Apple Care direct, and spoke to a delightful lady in Lexington, Kentucky (Hi, Lynda!). She listened to all my woes, was quite incredibly polite and helpful, and offered to replace the phone. They are sending me a box, I have to send the phone back, and then they will send me a new one. The whole thing should take between one and two weeks. In terms of British consumer law, this is pretty poor - remember when you could go back to the shop and demand a replacement there and then? - and their alternative, which involves them sending you a new phone first, was too expensive ($60 upfront) and risky (they take your credit card details and bill you £500 if they don't get the phone back). However, if it solves the problem I will be happy with that. The Nokia is great** as a phone, but I hadn't realised how much of my life I had put into the calendar of the iPhone. There's details of bike events for the next 12 months, all the TOMCC meets, doctors' appointments, dates to help my daughter get her stuff to college, and all sorts. I feel quite lost without it.

I miss the camera, too. Not the camera quality, which is risible (my old Motorola V3i had an amazing camera, so it can be done), but just having a camera around when you want to capture something.

*3 months in the glove compartment of the car without being touched. Switched on. Full battery!

** In fact, I would go further. Unbeatable, even in 2010.

iPhone Bodge - update

Disaster!

My sellotape bodge worked for a couple of days, but yesterday I got the 'no SIM installed' message, and I think it's here to stay. I tried doubling the thickness of sellotape, but that didn't work. Taking the SIM card out and replacing it occasionally worked for about 10 seconds, but then the message reappeared.

Cartoon Whorehouse suggested that I did an update to the latest software version. This produced an 'Error (37)' and the instruction that the phone would need to be 'restored'. Clicking the appropriate button put me in a loop with the same messages coming up over and over again. Finally, the phone went dead and wouldn't turn on at all. Just a blank, black screen.

So I phone Orange, using Anna's phone. The signal strength of an iPhone in this house is very poor, and noticeably worse than with other phones, and of course the call dropped off after 20 minutes in a queue and a lengthy explanation to the agent at the other end. I called back, and the next agent took my landline number and called me on that so we could have an uninterrupted call. (And when I got my SIM in another phone later, the first agent had tried to call me back, so full marks to Orange for making the effort.) He went through a lot of diagnostics and then gave up and transferred me to an Apple helpline.

I spoke to a delightful lady called Maria in Portugal, who got me to create a new user account on my PC and use that to restore the phone. This took a long time (it's a slow laptop) and then the phone began to update. The progress bar warned me that this would take about 40 minutes. We chatted aimlessly for a while, but the silences were getting longer, and it was at this point I made my BIG mistake. I asked her if it would be more convenient for her to take my landline number and call me back in half an hour or so. I have worked in a call centre and I know how this waiting was a waste of her and my time, and a bit awkward for both of us, but I SHOULDN'T HAVE LET HER GO. I waited for the half hour to be up, and then another hour, and then I went to bed. She still hasn't called. If she's on lates, then she'll be in work this evening, so I will give her 24 hours before calling them again.

No rush. The SIM card is now in my old Nokia 6310i and working fine. I get a strong signal anywhere in the house and I can go two weeks without a recharge. I kinda like it.

And I'm kinda going off the iPhone.

iPhone Bodge

I had had the iPhone a couple of months when we went to France. While we were over there, I started getting the message "SIM card not installed". I didn't pay a lot of attention, as a restart always cured it, and assumed it was something to do with connecting to the Orange FR network (thinking about it, of course that doesn't make sense). I went back to Carphone Warehouse with the problem and they assured me that now I was back in the UK it wouldn't happen again.

Well, it did, a few times. Today, it happened again and this time nothing I could do would cure it. I Googled the issue and came up with a solution that has worked for me, so far anyway.

The SIM card fits into the top of the phone in a little tray. You can pop the tray out by pushing a paperclip down the tiny hole on the top. Clean the SIM contacts as a first step. My SIM card was filthy and the tray was covered in dust, presumably because unlike in other phones, the card lives quite near the outside world, rather than under the battery or somewhere safe, and all the crap from your pocket ends up in there. I gave the contacts a wipe with a cloth, dusted everything off, and put it back. Nothing. Even resetting the phone wouldn't bring the SIM back.

Then I did the next thing that I found in Google: put a small piece of sellotape on the back of the SIM card. This worked straight away, and the phone has been fine ever since.

My guess (and I am no expert in these horrible devices) is that there is nothing in the structure of the phone that provides positive pressure on the card, and so the contacts are not firmly pushed against the terminals in the phone. In most other phones I have been inside (and that isn't many), the SIM card has been clipped in place with something to push it securely into contact with the phone terminals. I can't see how the little slide-out tray in the iPhone can do this. The sellotape just gives the card a bit more thickness, and whatever is holding the card to the contacts is doing it a bit more firmly.

The iPhone is a very clever bit of technology, but in some ways it's just crap. It's very poor at getting a signal, and I've lost count of the number of calls I have missed because of the feeble ringtone. Today's total waste of time suggests that it's not very well-designed in terms of mechanical integrity, either. Sometimes I seriously think of resurrecting my faithful Nokia 6310i, which is currently in the car glovebox as an 'emergency' phone. Built like a brick, and with no funky features, but a loud ring, easy texting, crystal-clear sound and an ability to find a signal where no other phone can. Drop it, sit on it, throw it at the dog, and it just keeps working. Why Nokia stopped making them I will never know.

OK, so I got an iPhone

As you can see from the last two posts.

It's pretty good. It's not the latest model, as those cost actual money, but it's the best I could get free with a contract from Orange.

Only problem so far is the horrible mess on the screen from all the tapping, swiping and general fumbling around that a touch-screen makes necessary, plus the embarrassingly copious amounts of goo that seem to emanate from the ear when you are using it as a phone. My last phone (stand up, the incredible Nokia 6310i, stalwart amongst mobiles) used to get a mucky screen now and again, which I cured with a quick wipe of my sleeve, but the iPhone seems a lot more delicate, and at £160 to replace the screen I am not taking any chances. I shall have to start carrying a soft, dry, lint-free cloth with me at all times. A bit poofy, but there you are. That's the price of joining the 21st Century, I suppose.