Apple has released iPhone software update 2.0.1.
Hopefully this will fix some all of the gripes I had in this post.
I’m downloading the fix now through iTunes.
Download file: 242.3 MB.
The backup begins: 10:53 AM.
I probably should have waited and updated this from home, but I can’t wait.
Backup complete: 11:23 AM. Exactly 30 minutes. That wasn’t as long as I was anticipating it being.
Preparing iPhone for software update…
Updating iPhone software…
Verifying updated iPhone software…
Updating iPhone firmware…
iPhone is activated at 11:30 AM. Now, to test it and see if it takes forever to update apps like it used to.
I can already tell the keyboard is much more responsive. That’s a relief.
UPDATE: tonight’s backup and sync from home took a little over ten minutes (10:15.8). Not bad considering there were transfers of updated apps and also The Faint’s new album Fasciinatiion which I purchased wirelessly today.

From the AP newswire, DC suspends its sales tax to provide financial relief for back-to-school shopping. They do this every year, and I always take advantage of it, even if it’s only to stock up on socks or jeans. The DC government’s info page with more details can be found here. Start shopping!

WASHINGTON (AP)—The District of Columbia has suspended its sales tax on back-to-school supplies and other items for nine days. The sales tax holiday began Saturday and continues through Aug. 10.

The holiday exempts specific items under $100 from the city’s 5.75 percent sales tax. The eligible items include school supplies, clothes, shoes and accessories.

City officials say the tax exemption applies to each eligible item—no matter how many items a customer buys on the same bill.

A second D.C. tax holiday is scheduled for November, beginning the weekend after Thanksgiving.

It consists of walking well-lit yet poorly-populated city sidewalks.

Call and ask if I’m okay, and of course I am, I’ve walked these streets alone and this is not the first time. There is murmer in the background and while it does not startle me, I am on the alert. I need to make time. I don’t have earbuds in, instead I listen to the sound of my city.

Apple has had a good run for their 2nd time around the block. The last ten years have been pretty good to Mr Jobs et al, with very few stumbles (cough: Cube).

I didn’t start out as an Apple Fanboy. I can remember being extremely frustrated using MacWrite in college, but at the time I was trying to do page layout without realizing I was using a word processor. We didn’t have Pagemaker Quark InDesign back in school.

It wasn’t until I BSed my way into my first job where I was exposed to FreeHand 2.0 and Photoshop (notice no capital “s”) 2.0 and I realized what I could do. And don’t even get me started about Windows 3.1, I couldn’t even look at that shit much less get anything accomplished without wanting to hurl.

So this began my amazement with everything this Apple computer allowed me to do, all the time looking great and accomplishing the tasks with none of the c:drive/control/alt/delete/bluescreen crap that I heard the rest of the world complaining about.

I own a unique color Mac Classic, a (super-rare) Newton Messagepad 110, a somewhat rare eMate 300 and the original Bondi blue iMac, purchased on release day August 15, 1998. Fast forwarding thru the iPod years, I would have been one of those guys waiting in line last June for the first iPhone but I really couldn’t deal with only an 8-gig harddrive. But I did buy my 16-gig the day it was released.

Now, six months down the road, things have gotten a little buggy. While the recent release of system software 2.0 which includes the App Store (my checking account’s worst nemesis) has been fantastic and has opened up a whole new paradigm, I’m starting to get a little tired of the downtime.

I will usually update my Apps thru the phone when they become available. Updating can also be downloaded thru iTunes and then transfered but usually I’m too antsy and need the update right now. These updated applications will go through a repeating initializing/updating cycle for about half an hour to update a 500K application. This is over WiFi, btw.

And then there’s the whole issue of actually syncing the phone, which, with the recent update, feels the need to backup the entire phone every time I sync which is usually every evening. With iPhone 1.0 software, this would take about five minutes. But now that it has to provide a complete backup of the entire phone, syncing takes incredibly long. Tonight for example, took 51 minutes. And I don’t understand why it needs to backup since all the information (music, contacts, calender, photos) is being copied over from the computer so it’s still there, it hasn’t been deleted, and would repopulate even if the phone were wiped clean.

So all of this is a little frustrating after having everything run smoothly for the last 15 years. The rumormill is abuzz with a 2.1 software update that will hopefully fix this so why not bring it on? I’d be happy with a 2.0.1 update that would fix the persistant backup issue. Here’s a smart pref: have the user specify how often the backup is made. Duh.