philippe::niquille | regular niche market thoughts

So yes, I am going to review my iPhone.

Is it worth the money?
Wrong question.

What is so special about it?
You get to use brilliant applications (although Steve denies their existence) and above all, you are now able to hypnotize yourself! And I almost forgot, it’s THE iPhone and not some Samsung.. Accessories are most beautiful and expensive.

So Swisscom is selling iPhones now?
Well no. Since Steve is sick of Europe he might have forgotten small Switzerland. Exorbitant communication fees and court orders may give him faith again?

How did you get it to work in your country?
This probably is the most interesting question. If you wander around a bit you encounter an incredible amount of info, goodies, tutorials and junk. You even find people who want to get paid for perhaps bricking your device. DIY seems to be the most reliable solution:

• 1) Check your specs: US-OOTB (Out of the box) iPhone with firmware 1.1.2
  
• 2) Fiddle with some tools and do a jailbreak by down- and upgrading again.
  Be sure to know the difference between jailbreaking (using the phone as iPod touch without AT&T/O2/T-Mobile), unlocking (use a non-approved SIM), activating (tools which combine enabling of youtube and jailbreaks etc.) and virginizing (changing the baseband of first-gen iPhones).
• 3) Spend some additional money and desperately wait for your Turbo Sim to arrive. Cut and install. But: 1) ensure good contact between the SIM card, the Turbo Sim and your iPhone. I had to put some newspaper on the bottom of the SIM tray. 2) Restart your iPhone after installing Apfelsaft. You then will be able to set your IMEI with your AT&T card.
  Read how this piece of art enables your phone, people around you surely want to know! Also read why week 45+ phones are such a pain in the * to enable. You will understand. Do not rely on any old-school method or eBay seller.
  
• 4) Since German is not perfectly implemented yet (QWERTZ without ÄÖÜ) try some hacks (beware of version conflicts!).
• 5) Put Ringtones in the /Library/Ringtones directory (.m4r extension and AAC conversion) or use tools or hacking.
• 6) Use great applications such as weTools, mcolloquy or mobileterminal by installing them via Installer.app (which you obtained by jailbreaking your device or here). Also consider developing without many docs (SDK to follow in Feb 2008 according to real Steve - how wrong to solely rely on web apps..).

Check sites for tips and tricks since you need to impress everybody by showing off with your new shiny device.

I didn’t quite understand everything you just said - can I do phone calls with my iPhone?
Sure, you can listen to iTunes music, look at photos or get sick of watching Apple’s guided tours.

Does the iPhone change your life?
Yes. I get to do so many things. If I get bored I might even give my device a pink paint job!
I feel alot happier since I’m using MobileStacks (with MultiStack option). Edit ~/Library/Preferences/com.steventroughtonsmith.stack.entries and you are golden. See my stack.entries file.

Christmas is on our doorstep: Will people buy even more iPhones?
Would you?

Happy iSanta!