I’m sad to say that the whole process of upgrading to an iPhone 4S (or 4 Steve as some crazy analysts have been calling it), has been more difficult than I would have expected. I’ll admit that I didn’t take the most conventional route to set this phone up, but my experience has not been pleasant. I feel this is a bad sign for a post Steve Apple.
Here’s my situation. I’ve been running an original Edge based iPhone 16 GB for the past 3+ years. I was waiting for the next new iPhone to come out so I could grab one. I was very excited for the announcement of the iPhone 4S, and unlike everyone in the media, I was not disappointed. I liked the design of the 4, and was happy that they were keeping it a little longer. I really have been wanting some more storage space. I like to have a lot of data on my phone, between my huge photo library and some videos to watch while commuting. So, all in all I was really excited about the new iPhone.
Fast forward, I decide not to rush out and grab it on day one because I wanted to make sure I could get my employee discount, seeing as I work for a company that has a close relationship with AT&T. I ordered it on Sunday. That translated to roughly a week and half delay from when they first started shipping. Still, not a huge deal. It would have been nicer to know when to expect the phone instead of having to check the AT&T website everyday to see if my items had arrived and shipped. To be fair, they sent me an email after the items shipped, but not until I had already been on their website and seen the tracking number.
So the phone arrives last night.
Since I ordered it from the AT&T store, I don’t have AppleCare+, because they didn’t have it when I ordered it. So I stopped by an Apple store on the way home, but they don’t carry +, so they advised me to call. I did, but they were closed by 8, despite the fact that a gentleman on the phone said they would be open until 9 PM PST (The representative I talked to on the phone this morning confirmed this). I tried back twice because I didn’t believe them, still closed. The guy at the store tells me that it’s not going to be an issue if I open my phone tonight, though (he was right about this part).
So I go home and unpack the phone and start setting it up. I’ve been reading on the web that there have been a few issues setting up a new phone based off an existing phones backup. To try and avoid these concerns, I initially decided to try and load my iPhone as a new device. I set it up, and got it running. Was playing around for a bit and then realized that I have tons of data on my phone, like SMS messages and other information.
I woke up early this morning and decided I’d try do it the other way. I went through the process of restoring the iPhone as my old phone. This process only took about 15 minutes and looked to be working pretty well, until I tried to use Siri to set a reminder. It said it couldn’t.
I had to call in this morning to AppleCare to get my AppleCare+ thing taken care of, so I figured I’d ask them about it. It seemed to be related to my iCloud settings. Couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, figured Apple would be a good option in finding an answer. Nope.
I first called in with my serial and before I could even say that I was calling to buy AppleCare+, the representative was on it, and said that I was eligible. I told her that was why I was calling, and she took my credit card information. I didn’t think of it until after, but she never stated how much she was going to charge me. I asked afterward, she said the product was $99, and there might be tax and it could be up to $5.25, but she didn’t think there was. She was VERY polite and kind, but not knowing what you are charging me does not seem right to me. I digress.
I told her I was having issues with iCloud. She walked me through the basic steps of setting up the backup and I kept getting an error message. She put me on hold several times throughout this process and was still unable to help me resolve my issues. Again, she was VERY polite, but did not seem to be able to help.
Finally she gives up and schedules me to talk to an iCloud specialist. Not a huge deal, but the first thing she tells me is that the specialist is going to call me, but when I ask her when, she tells me she doesn’t know. She put me on hold, again, and comes back several minutes later saying that I need to call a specialist. I say, that’s fine, what’s the number and when should I call? She puts me on hold again, only to come back and say that the system was down and she will have to call me back.
When I speak to the specialist, he was very kind, but did not seem to understand the problem I was having. We went through several phone calls, as he required me to have WiFi, but I was out and so did not have access to a WiFi connection.
In the end I spent some time debugging it. It was clear that reminders wouldn’t work if they were turned on in iCloud, but they would work just fine if iCloud sync was off. I went to go look at my calendars and that wasn’t working correctly either. When I went to my .mac account on my phone, asked me for my password. Once I entered that and turned on cloud syncing everything started working.
Also of note, Syncing with iCloud and backing up to iCloud are two very different things. Syncing means having your contacts and mail and calendar on the iCloud server. Backing up is a full device backup. A better explanation of that would have been helpful.
In the end I feel like there was just too much confusion with the setup. Most Apple products have been very plug and play. This device required some serious setup to get it the way I wanted, and it was not clear how to get there. I’m troubled because I’m pretty sure Steve would have taken some peoples jobs over how bad this process is and I’m not convinced Tim Cook has the same mentality.
. I got one at work, then I bought one for the home and I’ve been pretty happy with it. There are just a couple of things missing from my standard mac keyboard.
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