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Activation and Syncing
By the time I got my iPhone home and hooked it up to my Mac (using my existing iPod connection) it was around eleven p.m. PST Friday night (June 29). This was in part because I had not upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4.10, which the iPhone requires (plugging it in to an earlier OS alerts you that the iPhone will not work without 10.4.10). I also needed to download iTunes 7.3. By the time

Fortunately for me, by the time I'd done all the software upgrades, it was late, and this meant the huge rush of activations were mostly over and I had minimal trouble. I'd been smart and pre-transferred my cell phone number to a family plan earlier in the day, so I was considered an AT&T customer, making the activation even simpler. I put in my phone number, the last four digits of my mom's social security number (I'm on her plan), and her billing zip code. iTunes talked with AT&T briefly and then I was asked for my Apple iTunes account info. It's been a while since I put in my iTunes password so I guessed -- and fortunately got it right the first time.

The final screen was where there was a slight delay. It seemed AT&T's server timed out or something because after several minutes I got an error message that told me it was having trouble activating and I should try again in a few minutes. There was no way to tell it to refresh or try again, however, which seemed odd -- and then I realized it was already trying. This second try took longer -- maybe four or five minutes. The time passed quickly as I admired the iPhone and bathed in its colorful glow.

Finally the computer said there was another error and it couldn't activate my iPhone, which was about to annoy me, but then I noticed the iPhone screen had illuminated and there were the glorious words, "Your iPhone has been activated."

I picked up the iPhone and pressed the Home button. Sure enough, everything was working! It was active, despite the odd message within iTunes. I disconnected and reconnected the iPhone to trigger the sync feature, and the iTunes error promptly cleared and the iPhone started to sync.

Syncing is very similar to an iPod, with a few differences. First, you don't have to eject the iPhone -- you can disconnect it any time during the sync. You might end up with an incomplete sync, but apparenty the iPhone is smart enough to handle that problem. This abilty is very nice (i.e. you need leave and want your phone with you), but probably comes at the cost of not being able to use the iPod as removable storage like you can with iPods. Not a problem for me, since I never found disk mode too useful with the limited storage of flash memory iPods (though it's great on my 30GB hard drive iPod).

Another sync difference is that there's no manual mode: you cannot just drag tracks over to the iPhone as it will only sync specific playlists (or all your media, if it will fit). Why, I'm not sure, but this doesn't bother me: I have custom playlists for each of my iPods anyway, so it was not a big deal to add one for the iPhone.

Of course the biggest sync difference is that the iPhone syncs not just media but all your contact info in your Address Book (you can limit it to certain groups if you want), your Safari's bookmarks, and your iCal schedule (again, you can limit it to certain calendars). You can also force a one time update from computer to iPhone, where all the computer's information will take precedence and overwrite any data stored on the iPhone.

Another difference is that the iPhone automatically shows up in iPhoto as a camera -- this is so you can import the full resolution photos you took with the iPhone (emailing a photo only sends a lower resolution copy of the original photo). Fortunately, you don't have to manually eject the iPhone from iPhoto -- iPhoto doesn't seem to mind the iPhone disappearing without warning.

Syncing is impressively quick. Media -- music, photos, video -- take just as long as with an iPod, but if you don't make any changes to your media the iPhone only needs to sync contact information. My contact information is in terrible disarray (I have never fully taken advantage of Address Book, though I am now) so in the first few days I found myself making frequent changes both on the iPhone and on the computer. iPhone quickly synced the changes, giving me identical info in both places. When I changed a lot of things on the iPhone, iTunes would ask me for confirmation that I really wanted to delete records or change contact info before it would sync.

One drawback to the syncing that may only effect me is that I primarily use my MacBook laptop for web surfing, so that's where I have my main Safari bookmarks. However, I sync my iPods to my main desktop machine, where I have extra external hard drive storage for all the media. This means I need to sync my iPhone to the desktop to get my music and videos, but then I don't get my good Safari bookmarks from the MacBook. If I was a .Mac customer I could use its features to sync my bookmarks between computers, but I'm not. There may be third party software that will help me with this -- I have not investigated the matter yet, though I shall probably do so, since it'd be nice to have better organized bookmarks on my iPhone.

Next: In Part 3, Marc uses the iPhone for the first time.

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 1 of 10
Buying the iPhone

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 2 Of 10
Activation and Syncing

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 3 of 10
Using the iPhone

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 4 of 10
Customization

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 5 of 10
Exploring the Applications

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 6 of 10
Exploring the Internet

iPhone: First Impressions Part 7 of 10
Exploring Photography on the iPhone

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 8 of 10
Working With eMail

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 9 of 10
Using the iPhone as a Phone

iPhone: First Impressions - Part 10 of 10
iPod on the iPhone