Yes, it’s available right now. Click here to purchase. I wonder, though - will it fit in the dock??

My friend ordered an iPhone with Fido. They renewed her contract and said, sure, we’ll send you one right away!! A few days later she received the email confirmation, and a few days later again she got an email with the UPS tracking number for her new phone. Delivery was supposed to be superfast, one day later! Well, the day arrived, but her iPhone didn’t. Although on the UPS website it stated that the package was “On the truck for delivery”, the truck never arrived at her house. Since it was a Friday, the delivery got rescheduled to Monday. Again, the item was marked as “on truck for delivery”, but it didn’t get delivered. Highly suspicious by now. A few phone calls later she realizes that UPS lost her package! NO!!!! And she cannot complain, because it’s Fido who has to do the tracing. She finally gets someone from Fido on the line that will put a tracer on the package, and she’s being told to wait 96 hours. After 96 hours, she calls Fido back. Nobody has put any tracer on any package, apparently.

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Dear Mr. Jobs, There is talk about iPhone 5 already. There is talk to discontinue the free bumper program by the end of this month. Lots of upgrades are coming out, HDR photography, iMovie, games that are more fun with gyro and higher resolution. Yet over a month from the Canadian launch day, there are STILL no iPhones available from Rogers. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Well, yeah, at the Apple store, but it’s a 2 hour drive to one of the two stores in the city of Vancouver, and you have to line up at 3 AM in the morning, HOPING that there will be a shipment that day. I can’t waste my time with a gamble like that, I work for a living. I work so I can buy the iPhone 4, which I can afford (subsizided) but cannot find.

I don’t know if it’s a Rogers or an Apple problem. Either way, it sucks.

I don’t know if you know about the situation, and I don’t know if you could even do anything to improve it.

And I don’t know if my email is going to make any difference at all, but hey, venting is worth somethin’.  

Have a wonderful day. 

Karin

Owner of an iPhone 3GS,1 iPad, 2 iMacs, 1 iPod Classic, 1 Apple TV, 1 Airport Extreme and if you would make toaster ovens I’d buy one too, provided I’d be able to find one.

… but they’re worth it. If you’re still wondering if you should fork over the extra cash to buy a product from Apple, here’s a little experience I just had.

So I had trouble with my iPad. Something wasn’t quite right. But I couldn’t quite understand what it was. It’s like one of the buttons wasn’t working properly, but not all the time, only sporadically. Very annoying. ‘There’, I thought, ‘the first out of 9 Apple products in 3 years that has given me grief. I guess I’ll have to return it.’ But then, panic struck me! My new toy! They’re so hard to find, what if they have no replacements and I have to wait for MONTHS before they send me a new one!! (Ok, you can laugh now, but only for a bit.)

I decided I’ll give Apple’s customer service a call and find out about my options. They would let me return it for sure… or no? Off to the website I went, where I had registered the product. Straight forward, I need customer service. Phone numbers? None? What’s that? “Email to book a callback from Apple”?? Ok then. Call me… let’s say… today at 4:30, plus minus 15 minutes? That sounds like a good time. 

4:33. The phone rings. It’s Apple.

“Hi, you are having a problem with your iPad?”

“Yes. The home button doesn’t work properly. It will work sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s very frustrating.”

“Have you tried to restart it?”

“Yes. I even reformatted it to factory settings.”

“Ok, did you reformat it and then restore from backup?”

“Yes, and it didn’t make it better.”

“Ok, let’s reformat again but don’t restore from backup. Before you restore it from backup, let’s just reformat to factory settings and just see what happens.”

“Oh, ok.”

He instructs me on how to do it. While we’re waiting for the computer and the iPad to do their thing, we chat. He’s in PEI, the weather isn’t that great, and he’s going to participate in some cancer surviver walk on the weekend. Cool. 

I restart the iPad, and suddenly, everything works as it should. I have reinstalled my apps in no time, and it’s all good. 5 minute phone call. Happy!

“Just try it out for a couple of days now,” he says “and if you still experience any problems, give us a call back with the case number and we will initiate an exchange. Your iPad should work without a problem, no questions about that.”

I thank him, he wishes me a good day.

A good day I am having, indeed.

You might or might not know that about a month ago I bought an iPad from Apple.com in the US. I knew it would be perfect for my needs and not just myself, but my whole family loved it. In fact, I loved it so much that last Monday, when the iPad was released in Canada, I pre-ordered one with the cellular modem, so I could take it with me on the road. Keeping both just wasn’t an option, so I had to find a way to sell the WiFi only one.

I put an ad on Craigslist, but somehow there wasn’t any response. What I did find on Craigslist though were a lot of bitter people posting “iPad Sellers Eat My Short” ads, complaining about many highly overpriced iPads imported from the US, being sold in Canada for a premium. Apart from the fact that you really need to get a life if you find the time to take out an ad in Craigslist just to insult people, I was worried I would get mixed up in the wash of sellers that were indeed just trying to make a quick buck. So late last night I placed a different ad on Craigslist that went something like this:

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Yes. I admit it. I broke it. I tried to make the scroll wheel respond better and I was a bit too harsh with it, and I broke it. So it was either ship it back to Apple and have them fix it for free (but only if they don’t think I broke it on purpose, which they would very likely assume), or fix it myself. You guessed it - I broke the sucker open. Prey that little white plastic casing open with my Swiss Army knife, and loosen then ring around it. Then it comes apart easily. Unscrew the three little tiny screws that hold the scroll ball in place, and take the whole scrolling mechanism apart. Now comes the tricky part - PUTTING IT BACK TOGETHER! Who knew the Mighty Mouse has 4 teeny wheeny magnets in place surrounding the scroll ball, and you have to put them back in the order they were supposed to be in the first place…

Well. You see this typed here and posted, so that means I managed to put it back together. I didn’t have superglue on hand to glue the shell back together, so I used Scotch tape. That’ll do for a bit. In the meantime, I hope Santa will bring me the Apple Magic Mouse for Christmas. No moving parts that can break or get dirty. 

Frankly, I don’t understand why iLounge gives the Tunebase such a crappy review (C+). I have tried various models of iPhone cradles with auxiliary input cables (Griffin, Monster, etc.) and I have to say that in my 2006 Beetle the Belkin Tunebase not only works the best, it also looks best and adapts properly to the crammed dimensions of the under-the-dashboard space. The gooseneck is long and flexible enough to make the iPhone peak out from underneath the dashboard, but sturdy enough to not wiggle when the car is in motion. The sound is excellent – no engine whining noise, no crackling, no disturbance. I now listen to SWR3 on my commute to work, my favorite radio station ever, the one I grew up with in Germany. It’s kinda fun to listen to the reports about the traffic jams the highways in Germany where they don’t even mention anything UNDER 5 km of length! Plus the music is so much better, and only 2 minutes of commercials at the end of each hour. What more can you ask for. Of course, you need an unlimited data plan for something like that, beware. Yes, the Tunebase does not have a very useful handsfree microphone, but it does work in a pinch. I recommend a Bluetooth headset for phonecalls in the car, anyway.

I bought my Belkin Tunebase Direct from the Apple store. I could not find it anywhere else.