Activating Apple's iPhone

Last week a client asked me to source one of Apple's new phones. I checked out the Apple website to see what had to be done, spoke to my local O2 store and set about the task.

I expected a typical Apple experience. Smooth, slick, simple and fool proof. This was not what is delivered and we spent a day of immense frustration.

First, you can't pay by cash. Strikes me as a bit odd, but not as odd as the lecture I got from the salesman about what I needed to register the iPhone. Judging by his tone I was getting the impression he didn't much relish the task of selling the iPhone. I was quizzed on whether I had a bank account, but at least I was told clearly that the monthly line rental charge had to be made to a bank account. Why, when virtually everything else I buy can be charged to a card (including pre-pay phone top ups and landline calls), can't the iPhone calls be charged to plastic?

Second is the activation process itself. I started this from the clients office, armed with his bank account details. As I went through the process I found I had to create an iTunes Music Store account. My client has no intention of buying any music from the store, but you can't move on through the process unless you input some account details. No, not bank account details, this has to be plastic. So immediately you have split financial personality. I rang O2 to see if this is really necessary and after the frightful mess of the automated attendant system eventually spoke to an Apple man. No way round it, you have to create an iTunes Music Store account and give O2 and Apple your card details.

Faced with no other option I put in a credit card, followed by their business bank account details. Pressed the next button. Did the phone burst into life? No, I just got a screen saying O2 needed more time to do a credit vet.

I thought no worry, while we're waiting for that I'll set up the rest of the phone's features. Could I do that? No, pending the answer to the credit question the whole phone is locked, just sitting in its cradle charging the battery.

So there it was left late on Friday. One excited client with no operational phone, and I'll have to go back next week to finish off the job. But one of the most puzzling suggestions made to me from another iPhone owner is that once you've started the activation process you can't go back and correct what you've put in (that much is true from my experience) - the only way round it is take the phone back to O2 and change it for another.

Not my best Apple experience.

iTunes Alternatives - Alive and Well

When I set up our CD ripping business, podServe, I looked at several ways of ripping CDs. In the early days MusicMatch did the job. When it arrived iTunes was a breath of fresh air. But from the beginning there have been other ways of getting music on, off or around your iPod. Some were vital in the dawn of the iPod era as some of us were running Windows ME (remember that?) and Apple's offering only ran on XP or their OS. Those were the days. Awful.

For a trip down memory lane I went back to some of the alternatives - were they still there? Did they still work? What's new?

Well, the market for iTunes replacements appears to be thriving. One of the first we tested was Ephpod (www.ephpod.com). This runs on Windows and offers a browser / explorer type of interface which some people might prefer. It also supports 'reverse synchronisation' enabling you to recover tracks from your iPod and load them back onto a PC. This is a vital function when your hard drive crashes or your laptop gets stolen. This product is available from ephpod.com.

In my opinion the market leading podServe saving product is XPlay 2. I have lost count of the number of times this little treasure has saved my bacon or that of a client. Not only can you recover tracks from iPod to PC but you can use Xplay to play music from your iPod through your PC, much as you do with iTunes. You can also recover from drive errors. This is the best (by a nose) $30 I have spent in the last four years - you can invest at mediafour.com.

Hot news - coming soon is XPlay 3, which will add album art functionality (find & install) and significantly integration with Windows Media Player & Media Centre. We'll have to wait until next February so line up patiently behind me with around $15 as an upgrade fee.

Much as I love XPlay I think my most impressive investment was Mike Matheson's iAlbumArt. Great product, outstanding support (I swear Mike never sleeps) and a brilliant way to add album art. $10. Fabulous.

The other product that has stood the test of time is Anapod Explorer - from redchairsoftware.com. Windows still, with a simple drag and drop style of operation. They've kept pace with iPod facilities with added functions to synch photos and the like. Anapod is now a family of products with a maximum price of $30.

One Anapod module is CopyGear. As the name implies this enables you to drag music back from iPod to PC. But - Redchair have released a version of this module to run on Macs. I think they were the first to do this and a very handy utility it is too at a modest $20.

One of my clients loves another iTunes alternative (it came bundled with some diving goggles containing a waterproof MP3 player) is Media Monkey. You guessed it, mediamonkey.com, and there's a long features list albeit Windows only. Price points are free and $20 for the Gold version. Media Monkey offers CD ripping, an album art lookup facility plus a sleep timer feature.

Finally - revolution is afoot in the shape of Floola.

Take a look at floola.com where you can download this cross platform (Mac & PC) system. It's another drag & drop alternative to iTunes, but .....

You can install Floola on your iPod and run it from there, meaning you can run it on any PC. Brilliant.

You can also export your iPod library to HTML files. I'm planning to make use of that very soon. Hop over to floola.com to download Floola for yourself or read more.