The FedEx guy handed me the package at 11 o’clock. Not a very big box, but whatever was in it was much smaller than the container, and was rattling around. I opened it up. iPhone, check. Belkin neoprene case, check. Packing slip, check. Plastic bag to send back the old phone, check. Impact-absorbing packing material? Missing. No matter, everything appeared to be in good shape.
Apple’s iPhone box is up to their usual quality. It’s way more substantial than it needs to be, and once I pulled the phone out of it, I couldn’t bear to just throw it in the wastebasket. Apple has abandoned its too-clever-for-words, scratch-your-head-trying-to-get-the-darn-thing-out packaging; just snap the phone out of its plastic holder, peel way the scratch-protecting plastic on the front and back and you’re there.
I turned on the phone, expecting it to direct me to connect it up to iTunes. It did not. Instead, it led me through a series of configuration screens, and in less than 5 minutes, I was making a telephone call. I told it not to use iCloud, since I was unclear on its compatibility with Exchange. Visual Voicemail is completely integrated with the telephone app, unlike on the Droid.
I configured the Exchange client, and let it download all of my appointments and e-mails, or at least as many as it would allow to be downloaded; although I selected 1000 messages as the upper limit, it appears to have stopped well short of that.
Next, I needed to install some apps. I’m not normally much of an iTunes fan, but, since I was installing a bunch of apps, it seemed easier to install them from iTunes than mess with the small screen on the phone. The process went well, but when I went to sync the phone, iTunes complained that this computer wasn’t authorized. I fixed that, and it still wouldn’t sync. I realized that, since I had manual sync turned on because I didn’t want iTunes to try to download my music library onto the phone, it probably wouldn’t automatically download the apps. I went into the applications page on iTunes, put check marks next to all the apps that I’d downloaded from the iTunes app Store. I pressed sync again, and voilà, there were my apps on the iPhone. I didn’t like the button arrangement, and rather than mess around with the cumbersome process of changing the button positions on the phone itself, I made the changes in iTunes and synced again.
Pretty painless. I’ll let you know what I think after a few days.
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