Daily Archives: June 28, 2007

Sim-locked

So the iPhone hype (iHype?) is reaching fever pitch.

I’m struggling to get excited … yet.

I’m guessing it’s going to be years before they are available here in NZ.

And it doesn’t look good for those who were considering using something like Shipbuktu to get their hands on one …

“Then there is the issue of the iPhone being sim-locked. And I don’t just mean that the phone is locked, nope, the sim is locked physically into the phone! It can’t be removed. Seemingly there is a way to map your existing number to the sim in your iPhone – this will be part of the activation process. But you can’t take your sim out of the phone for any reason. What happens when you want to upgrade to a new phone? No idea. Presumably this will be straightforward if your new phone is another iPhone – but if it is not…”

From: Tom Raftery’s Social Media

Those in the US need to sign up for a two-year contract at US$60 per month.

Now that’s lock in!

UPDATE: (from this thread on GeekZone) apparently this video shows that you can actually remove the sim by poking a paper clip into this hole.  So, not easy, but possible.

Bring on the Bose!

After a bit of faffing around I finally got Parallels up and running earlier in the week.

So, with access to IE7 again for the first time in a while I decided to try again to buy the Blackbox M-14 headphones I’ve had my eye on (see my previous post for the back story).

I hit their homepage, already anticipating the enhanced quietness that was now only a few clicks away …

Install Flash 8

Sigh!

So, I installed Flash 8 and, held my breath as I tried again to get through the check-out pages.

Woo hoo, it worked.

But then, this:

System Busy

Enough!

The next day I walked into the Bose store (which is dangerously close to the Xero office!) and walked out with a pair of QC3s. It was too easy. Offline shopping just works so well.

I don’t want to completely bag the guys working on this site. I got a comment back from Leon at Oktobor to say that they were onto the problems I pointed out last time and were working to make it better. It wasn’t just words – they have re-labeled the buttons on the check-out form to make them more intuitive. And, I got an email from them later in the day to say they had been having some technical problems and I should try again, which at least shows that they are now tracking abandoned orders. But, by then it was too late.