It takes 46 muscles to frown but only 4 to flip ’em the bird.

Last Friday in a moment of complete madness and click happiness I okay’d an upgrade on the iPhone from firmware 1.0.2. to 1.1.1 and within 30 minutes wanted to throw myself from the Golden Gate to end it all. Ozzy and Sharon said this week that they made a pact that if either of them ever have an illness that effects their brain, they’d assist the other in not prolonging life any more. I thought that was kind of funny coming from a guy that bites off the heads of live bats and a woman that throws pot roasts over her fence at the neighbors… But I think Ben and I need to come up with something similar. If we’re ever forced into using a stupidly inferior firmware on our current obsession the other will find a way to quickly and quietly stop the other’s suffering at whatever cost.

The good news is that the directions offered up on hackin0sh to downgrade actually work. Although, it was much easier then they let on if you had never attempted to unlock your phone. After the restore and two runthroughs of the AppTapp.exe, I just let the phone “restore” via iTunes and BAM! Everything was back. MobileChat, Springboard and all the pretty themes, Customize, the NES emulator, iFlickr, all of my goodness was there.

If you have the phone, and you haven’t upgraded yet and you really depend on any of the awesome applications AppTapp provides, NO NOT UPGRADE. Not only did I lose all those apps, but my battery life was cut by about 25%. I’m not completely certain that was caused by 1.1.1 but today was the first day that I ran out of battery at work after 6 hours of video playback. Prior to this, I was easily making it the full 8 hours of video playback with battery life to spare.

I’m pretty dissappointed with how strict Apple is regarding 3rd party apps. They need to realize how upset people are. People were returning phones in the hopes of getting one that hadn’t been upgraded yet. It’s okay, Apple. We LOVE our iPhones. We’d DIE for our iPhones. We also love the ability to add pink icons to the desktop and to play Super Mario World on them. These apps are making an already awesome piece of equipment even better.

So here’s my suggestion to Apple: Buy AppTapp, open the source, allow geeks to make your product even more valuable to the end user, sell more phones, watch profit grow.

Oh yeah, if I suddenly disappear off the face of the earth one day, it COULD be because I didn’t read the little box that popped up and Ben’s kept up his end of the pact.

9 thoughts on “It takes 46 muscles to frown but only 4 to flip ’em the bird.

  1. Boooo… I wanted an iphone too. I’m stuck with tmobile for at least another 6 months though, so I ended up with the blackberry pearl, which imo is not comparable to the iphone at all, but at least its close… kinda. Not. hahah.

    Glad you got it all fixed up 🙂 Technical difficulties always make me want to kill myself.

  2. It really is my most favorite cell that I’ve owned by far. It’s a lot of fun and VERY user friendly. So both of you go get one! You won’t regret it! 😉

  3. Too funny. And too true! Two things stop me from getting an iPhone:
    1. Dan killing me since I just spent $350 on a T-Mobile Dash in August
    2. The restrictions Apple imposes

    Lovely pink theme, by the way. 🙂

  4. Just why do you need 8 hours of video playback while you are at work? It’s WORK!

    Always remember, Steve Jobs thinks that the way to rule the world is to create a CLOSED architecture. That is the only reason they lost the personnal compuer market to the PC. Apple has always made good (read superior) products, they just don’t plan in the sandbox well with the rest of the community. Don’t hold your breath on opening the code!

    Lastly, you must be rich, I don’t own and I-phone…

  5. Everybody says that about the video watching but the most surprising part of all is how productive I am! When I have something on in the background I am MORE productive. 180% productivity on Monday (watched the first four Harry Potter movies) and 154% yesterday (watched Sweet Home Alabama and most of the first two Lord of The Rings)! I “listen” more than “watch” and my boss doesn’t seem to mind. 🙂

    I’m really hoping that the outcry from the latest firmware release wakes the folks at Apple up a little. I think that the “open source” pill would be easier to swollow if they hadn’t just dished out $100 a piece to all the people that bought phones before they lowered the price. I thought that was silly. The last phone I bought was available for less than half the price a few months after I bought it and I didn’t get any money back! That’s tech for ya!

    And no, not rich… YET! I didn’t get mine till they had dropped $200 in price! I’ll let you play with it when you visit next weekend! I think that after getting to play with one it will be much harder to resist the urge of the DARK SIDE. MWAHAHAAHAAHH! 😛

  6. I just got a headache reading this and well I’m computer dumb so I think I’ll stick to the nice simple phone that I have. But I do envy your tech savvy-ness!

  7. Apples stupidity regarding the iPhone is the main reason I won’t be getting one. If they were serious about getting this phone out there, they’d make it available on all world wide carriers, and stop releasing stupid firmware updates.

    *sighs*

    At least their operating system is still better than Windows. 🙂

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