It’s official. Thanks to the “iphone-dev team” folks, you can now jailbreak an iPhone (or iPod touch) running 2.0 software. As to why you might want to do a jailbreak, given that iPhone’s App Store already provides the ability to download third-party software, check out my most recent TMO column.

To jailbreak your iPhone or iPod touch, all you need to do is download PwnageTool, launch it and follow its directions. Using its “Simple mode,” the utility walks you through the needed steps. The only misstep, when I tried it with my iPod touch, is that the utility did not alert me to Option-click the Restore button in iTunes, instead of just plain clicking Restore. The Option option is needed so you can select the special custom Restore.ipsw file that PwnageTool creates. As the last step of the jailbreak, your device restarts and displays a pineapple icon, instead of the familiar Apple icon. Cute.

When done, you have a functioning jailbroken iPhone. It all worked without a hitch when I gave it a whirl. I can now add jailbreak software alongside programs downloaded from the App Store. All is well — except for one thing: There isn’t much jailbreak software to install. Virtually all of the jailbreak software that you could run on a pre-2.0 iPhone is not available for 2.0 devices.

Previously, I had jailbroken my iPhone (running 1.1.4) using ZiPhone, which apparently will not be updated to work with 2.0 software. This (and a few other similarly functioning utilities) jailbreak the iPhone using a different technique than PwnageTool. From a practical standpoint (and ignoring some internal political debates between developers in this area), one big difference between ZiPhone and Pwnage is that ZiPhone puts Installer on your iPhone (a utility that I have covered in detail in a previous column) while Pwnage uses Cydia.

Both Installer and Cydia function in a similar way to allow you to install additional programs on your iPhone or iPod touch. However, after completing my 2.0 jailbreak and launching Cydia, I was disappointed to find that almost all of the programs I had installed via Installer on my 1.1.4 iPhone were not listed. At first, I thought that this might be some Installer vs. Cydia difference (with Cydia on the losing end). However, according to the FAQ that accompanies Cydia, the real problem is that almost all pre-2.0 jailbreak programs are currently incompatible with iPhone 2.0 software — and so are not listed in Cydia. The older software should eventually be updated and “ported” to Cydia but, for now, “you will have to be patient.” Bummer!

If you do decide to jailbreak your iPhone, I strongly recommend you read the entire Cydia FAQ before you start complaining about its limitations. The FAQ provides a good summary of the current state of affairs.

I did have one glitch with all of this. After selecting to update or install software from Cydia, the installation appeared to hang (the sundial “cursor” kept spinning and never went away). Eventually, I gave up and did a force quit of Cydia (by holding down the iPhone’s Home button). I have already had to do this twice. All was well after relaunching Cydia, including finding that the software had successfully installed. Still, this has made me a bit nervous about Cydia’s reliability.

Because of such concerns, I don’t yet intend to extend my jailbreaking from my iPod touch to my iPhone. Before I mess with my phone, I want to be absolutely convinced that there are no negative side effects lurking in the shadows — and that there is enough software available to make the jailbreak worthwhile. If and when that day arrives, I’ll jailbreak my iPhone and (of course) I’ll let you know how it goes.

If you want to create custom ringtones for your iPhone, you have several choices. I know. I’ve tried them all. I’ve even written about them in a previous article here at TMO.

You can create a ringtone in iTunes. But that only works with a small subset of the songs in the iTunes Store — and will cost you 99 cents a pop. Alternatively, you can create a ringtone for free from any unprotected music you own — using GarageBand. But that assumes you also own a recent version of iLife (4.1.1 or later) and want to deal with the steeper learning curve involved in using GarageBand. Otherwise, a variety of hacks and third-party utilities can also accomplish this ringtone-creating task, each with their own pros and cons.

That’s old news. What’s new is that there is a new kid in town: RingtoneStudio for iPhone ($14.95 from PocketMac Software). I’ve already dumped all of the old alternatives in favor of this new utility. I believe you will too.

What makes RingtoneStudio the new champion? It does everything you need it to do with the absolute minimum of fuss. First off, it works with virtually any unprotected audio or even video file, including unprotected music purchased from the iTunes Store. It also works with videos such as movie trailers on Apple’s site. Note: If you try to use RingtoneStudio with protected music, it may appear to succeed — but you’ll wind up with an empty file.

To create a ringtone with RingtoneStudio, simply drag the desired file to the application’s window. If you’re looking to select a song from your iTunes Library list, you can easily locate the file in the Finder by accessing the song’s contextual menu in iTunes and selecting the Show in Finder command. If the file is already less than 30 seconds in length (which is probably not the case), RingtoneStudio converts the file to the ringtone format and imports it into your iTunes Library, as a ringtone — all in one step. Done. Finito. That’s all folks.

If the file is more than 29 seconds long (which is more or less the limit for an iPhone ringtone), don’t worry. RingtoneStudio opens up a separate display from which you can select any 29 second (or less) segment that you wish to use as your ringtone. This all works similarly to the ringtone edit function in iTunes, except you don’t have to pay 99 cents to use it. One more click and the edited ringtone is in your iTunes Library.

I did have a glitch with one music file: it hung RingtoneStudio (the program got stuck at the conversion stage until I Force Quit). I have no idea what was up with that particular file. But the program otherwise worked fine with everything else I threw at it.

If you plan on creating your own ringtones and want to do it as cheaply and painlessly as possible, all in one step with just one utility, RingtoneStudio is the tool you want. Get it!

For the next 48 hours (from July 11-13), I’m going to use this blog entry to post my semi-random comments and discoveries regarding the iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software. The most recent comments are at the top.

App Store software: slow to sync, upgrade and backup. [Note: This is my last update for this "48 hours" blog entry.] Today, I upgraded the NYTimes app (that I had previously obtained from the App Store). It was a simple process (and you even see a “loading” message appear under the app’s icon in the Home screen while the update is taking place). But it took about 10 minutes to complete. At one point, my iPhone became so non-responsive, I thought it had crashed.

Similarly, transferring apps from the iPhone to iTunes on your Mac (or vice versa) during a sync takes an unusually long time, much longer than I would expect given the number of MBs involved. Further, when you sync your iPhone, the first step is typically a backup of the iPhone’s non-media content. This appears to be backing up all the App Store apps on your iPhone. If you have added new software since your last backup, the backup takes a long time as well. [Update: Actually it appears to take just as long even if you haven't added new software. If you have a lot of App Store apps on your iPhone, be prepared for long backup times with each sync.]

I guess this is all something I’ll just have to get used to.

On a related note, if you want to browse through the software available in the App Store, with the intent of obtaining and installing several items at once, you are much better off doing so via the iTunes Store on your Mac, than via the App Store on your iPhone. On the iPhone, every time you select to buy an app, it bumps you out of the Store and back to the home screen. When your return to the Store, you have to re-navigate to where you last were. The user experience in iTunes is much better.

A warning: If you do download apps directly to your iPhone, you will get a warning message the next time you connect your iPhone to iTunes. It will alert you that it has found items that are “not present in your iTunes Library…If you do not transfer these items…they will be removed from the iPhone.” So, unless you want to lose these items, make sure you click the Transfer button here. If you do make a mistake here, Apple claims it will allow you to redownload any purchased software.

Update: On the other hand, as described in this iPhone Atlas report, things may not work as Apple describes. In fact, you may have trouble getting rid of an app that you no longer want.

Location Services. In Settings > General, you have the option to turn Location Services On or Off. This is true for the original iPhone (running 2.0 software) as well as the iPhone 3G. Here is what the latest version of the iPhone Users Guide has to say about this feature:

Location Services allows applications such as Maps and Camera to gather and use data indicating your location. Location Services does not correlate the data it collects with your personally identifiable information. Your approximate location is determined using available information from cellular network data, local Wi-Fi networks (if you have Wi-Fi turned on), and GPS (if you have an iPhone 3G).

You can turn Location Services off if you don’t want to use this feature. If you turn Location Services off, you’ll be prompted to turn it back on again the next time an application tries to use this feature.

Note: To conserve battery life, turn Locations Services off when you’re not using it.

Locations warnings are the requests made by applications (such as Camera and Maps) to use Location Services with those applications. iPhone stops presenting the warning for an application the second time you tap OK. Tap Reset Location Warnings to resume the warnings.

You can reset the location warnings: Choose General > Reset and tap Reset Location Warnings.

Reactivating my original iPhone. My iPhone 3G has been running smoothly now for 48 hours. I continue to discover some some minor “clean-up” tasks that need to be done, such as relinking ringtones and photos to contacts, but the phone is overall doing very well. Those first day hassles are already a fading memory.

Update: I am still having some problems with Contacts. All of the photos and custom ringtones changes I made yesterday were gone today. I thought at first that it had to do with an alert I received about Contacts sync conflicts when I last synced the iPhone (apparently many of the contacts were missing the “person” tag). However, after re-adding the custom changes, they were again deleted on my next sync (even though there was no conflict this time). I continue to investigate this.

The final step in my transition weekend to the 3G was to take my original iPhone and switch it over to my wife’s phone number. I had already called AT&T to make sure they had a record of her new SIM card. All I now needed to do was connect the iPhone to iTunes, activate and restore it as a new phone. I did all this — without a single hiccup! In case you are in a similar situation, here is a brief rundown of the recommended steps:

1. Connect the iPhone to iTunes (while logged into the new owner’s account on your Mac).
2. Ignore the request to update the iPhone to the 2.0 software. Instead, click the iPhone name in the Devices list. A “Welcome to AT&T” screen should appear. Click Continue to initiate the activation sequence. As part of the process, you’ll need to set up an iTunes account for the second person (if they don’t already have one). When done, you should have a functioning phone.
3. Next, from the iPhone’s Summary screen, click the Restore button. Turn down the request to backup your iPhone before continuing (as you will be setting this up as a new iPhone).
4. The iPhone Software Update 2.0 will be downloaded and the restore sequence will begin, all without any input needed from you. You’ll see the typical messages: “Preparing iPhone software for restore,” “Verifying iPhone software,” “Restoring iPhone Firmware,” and “Your iPhone has been restored and is restarting…” When the sequence is completed (which can take several minutes), the final automatic step is to sync the iPhone (which adds Contacts, iCal events and Safari bookmarks to the iPhone, assuming you optionally selected for this in a prior step).
5. You can additionally sync any music and photos now. Or not. In either case, the new owner is now ready to enjoy their new iPhone.

Fast battery drain. I’m still testing this one out, but it appears that my iPhone 3G runs out of battery power a lot faster than my old iPhone — even when I am not using it. I believe this is a separate issue from the increased battery usage of the 3G network — which is acknowledged in text found in the Settings > General > Network screen, where you can turn the 3G network on or off.

The battery drain happens even overnight, while the iPhone is not in use (on in standby mode, but with the screen off). The next morning, the 3G’s battery is significantly depleted, whereas my old iPhone’s battery level has not noticeably dropped at all. Others have reported related problems (see here). I am going to to do some formal testing of this, both with 3G on and 3G off — and I will report back soon.

Update: The problem appears not as bad as I initially thought. One difference in my most recent test: I made sure that the battery was fully charged, as determined by the battery icon in the toolbar shifting from the lightning bolt to the plug. The large battery image in the main screen indicates a “full” charge too soon; don’t rely on that.

• G3 network drop-outs. Sunday July 13. I live in the East Bay of San Francisco, just a stone’s throw from the city. As such, I expected to be within a 3G network coverage area. As it turns out, I am — sort of. However, when I pick up a 3G network in my home, it is very weak (only 1 bar). On the plus side, for an Internet connection, even a weak 3G signal is faster than a 5 bar EDGE connection. Phone call quality also remains good even with a “weak” 3G signal. The problem is that the 3G connection periodically drops out, and the iPhone reverts to EDGE. Overall, as I travel around nearby communities, I get a 3G connection no more than half the time. If that’s the best I can do in this techno-rich area, I imagine it is worse — much worse — in most other places. Clearly, AT&T has a ways to go before iPhone users will get the maximum benefit from 3G.

• MobileMe. Just beginning to experiment with MobileMe (I’ll have much more on this later). As of now (Saturday morning, July 12), if you enter www.mac.com in your browser, you are still taken to the “maintenance” page that says “MobileMe web applications not yet available” (which is not true). If you enter www.mobileme.com, you are taken to the MobileMe PR page on apple.com. If you intsead simply enter “me” or “www.me.com,” you are taken to the actual MobileMe site. From here, you will be given the option to set up your account (new or existing). Once set up, you can access the MobileMe applications, as well as your iDisk.

You can get MobileMe setup help by clicking the “Set Up Now” button at the top of the Info page of your iPhone in iTunes. Or by simply going here.

I was pleased to find that, as promised, all my existing .Mac HomePage Web sites are still there and work with the same URL.

Apple initially released a Mac OS X update that changed the .Mac System Preferences pane to a MobileMe System Preferences pane. It pulled it almost immediately (probably because of some just discovered bug). It will certainly return soon. For now, however, the .Mac System Preferences works for MobileMe just fine.

Update: Mac OS X Update for MobileMe 1.1 is now available, but it has a unique install process: you install it by first launching System Preferences and selecting the .Mac pane (as described here). A dialog alerting you to the update appears after a few moments. From this dialog, you click to go to Software Update, which now offers to install the new MobileMe System Preferences pane. Mac OS X 10.5.4 is required.

Tip: If you currently have an “old” .Mac account on your iPhone, delete it and create a new MobileMe account. If not, you are very likely to have problems with the new push mail features of MobileMe. I’ll be writing more about this and other MobileMe issues in a MacFixIt article due within the next week or so.

• New feature sitings. When entering passwords (many of which I had to be r-enter after upgrading), I noticed that the last character you type now appears in plain text. This is a welcome change, as it allows you detect typing errors. In prior versions, all entered text remained “hidden.”

There are several new settings, including General>Restrictions (it’s a parental controls feature). Plus, third party applications can add their own listing in Settings. On my iPhone, I so far have settings options for AIM and NYTimes.

• Improved sound. Yes, the sound is much better in the iPhone 3G than in my original iPhone. Among other things, the better sound makes playing games a bit more enjoyable. But most importantly, the ringer and alerts sounds are now capable of being much louder. Last night, while I was sleeping, I received a text message on my iPhone 3G. The alert sound was so loud that, even though it was in the next room, the iPhone sound woke me up! That had never happened before.

• Games. Saturday morning. Spent time last night playing Texas Holdem. Wow! I highly recommend it. It has two modes: single player view (in which you watch movie-like clips of each player’s action) vs. full table view (if you hold the iPhone horizontally). Much better than any other Holdem game I have ever seen. Super Monkey Ball and Cro-Mag Rally lived up to their hype. I confess, however, that I am still having trouble using the iPhone as a game navigation device.

• Success! 5:20 p.m. iPhone activated. It took a call to AT&T (not Apple) to get the problem resolved. They had me turn the iPhone completely off, remove the SIM card, and give them my SIM card number — and they then did some voodoo at their end. Apparently, whatever AT&T should have done this morning when I was at the store, was not done. After putting everything back together again, the iPhone worked as expected. Yeah!

Updated my iPod touch to 2.0 as well. No problems. It appears that Apple has finally gotten their servers working again.

• Still can’t activate. It’s 3:50 p.m. PDT. I just tried activating my iPhone 3G again. All seems to go well, except that I still get a message on the iPhone screen that states: “”Activation Alert; No signal detected. Signal is required to complete activation.” The end result is that my iPhone is fully functional except for the phone activation. In other words, I have a sort of “iPhone touch.”

• AppStore apps sync on third try. It took me three tries to get all my AppStore apps (that I downloaded to my Mac via iTunes yesterday) to transfer to my iPhone. The first time, the sync just ended before completing the transfer. The second time, iTunes froze in the middle of the transfer. The third time was a charm.

• iPhone 3G half-way activated. The last time I tried to activate my iPhone, I succeeded in getting about half-way. It restored data from my backup but was not able to activate my phone service, giving me a failure notice. iTunes now says that my iPhone is up-to-date and no longer requests that I activate it. The result is that I have an iPhone with Wi-Fi and working applications, but no phone services. I can even get programs from the AppStore (that I had downloaded via iTunes) to sync to the iPhone and work. Still, I assume I will have to do a complete Restore and start over, before the phone service becomes active. Meanwhile, at least my old iPhone continues to work, so I am not completely without a functioning mobile phone.

• 2.0 software hide-and-seek. Apple has apparently temporarily given up on letting users upgrade existing iPhones and iPod touches to 2.0 software. As I write this (2:15 p.m. PDT), my devices are again listed as “up to date” at version 1.1.4. For a brief moment, a 2.0 upgrade was listed and I was almost able to update my touch. But the upgrade failed and when I tried again, the option to upgrade had been removed.

I also have had trouble getting MobileMe setup.

What a mess. I would hate to be an Apple employee today.

• Updating an existing phone to 2.0 vs. upgrading to a new 3G. Apple states in a support article that “Normally if you choose to update, the iPhone or iPod touch software is updated but your settings and media are not affected. If your device currently has a software version prior to 2.0 (1.x) and you are updating to software version 2.0 or later, all data on your device will be erased in order to perform install the new software. In this case, iTunes will offer to create a one-time media backup of your device depending on what content is on your device and what content is stored in the iTunes Library you are connected to.”

Note, however, if you are instead moving from an original iPhone to an iPhone 3G, the above “one-time media backup” is not relevant. Instead, as noted in this Apple article, you will have resync your media to the new iPhone, as you would after any typical iPhone restore.

However, as I have now discovered, if you restore an iPhone running 2.0, it will download the 2.0 software from Apple (as expected) and do the “one-time” backup, even though you are not upgrading from 1.x. software.

Just in case you haven’t already read enough accounts of people attempting to purchase an iPhone 3G today…here’s mine.

With several AT&T and Apple stores within a short drive of where I live, I had to take a stab at which place was most likely to bear fruit — and how early I needed to arrive. I picked an AT&T store — and showed up around 6:15 a.m. There were already 35 people in front of me.

AT&T reps were very friendly and kept coming out to offer us water and candy. At about 7:15, they informed us that they only had 50 iPhones to sell (15 Black 16GB, 15 white 16GB and 20 8GB models). As I wanted a 16GB black model, I calculated my chances of getting one at about 50% at best (I was assuming that most of the early arrivals in the line would go for the 16GB). Meanwhile, there were now over 200 people in line, so many of them would leave with no iPhone at all. The AT&T rep said you could get a sort of rain-check, but no one was looking forward to that.

Immediately after the store opened and those first in line were ushered in, the pace of the line slowed to a near halt. Those of us still waiting were told that the in-store activations were not working and that we would have to activate our iPhone’s at home via iTunes (despite Apple’s prior claims that you would not be able to do this). I thought this might have have speeded up the process, not slowed it down. However, we were also informed that the computers were running slow and (drum roll) the computers were charging customers the wrong prices. Fixing the pricing error was taking a good deal of time; hence the slow-down.

By about 9:15, I made it into the store and nabbed the next-to-last 16GB black phone. By the time I left, they were sold out of all iPhones. According to the reps, more might not arrive until next Friday.

With my iPhone in hand, I went home to activate it. No such luck. After spending about five minutes trying to access the store, all I got was an unknown error (-4) and a suggestion that I try again later.

And so here I sit for now. You would think that after having lived through the previous iPhone launch, and having weeks to prepare (if not months), Apple and AT&T could have avoided these screw-ups. Apparently not.

While on iTunes, I checked to see if my old iPhone or my iPod touch could be updated to the 2.0 software yet. No luck here either. iTunes continues to report that my devices are up-to-date with the 1.1.4 version. Hopefully, that will change soon.

Anyway, after I get my iPhone 3G up and running, I’ll return here with more info.

Update #1 [10:55 a.m.]:

• The 3G comes with a new, significantly smaller, power adapter. That’s an improvement I guess. However, it no longer has a detachable or retractable plug. I especially liked being able to put the metal prongs out of harm’s way. On balance, I prefer the old style adapter, which happily still works with my new iPhone.

• After upgrading to the 3G, I will be giving my original iPhone to my wife (who currently is using a Motorola phone). The AT&T rep told me that this required a new SIM card, as neither her old card nor the card currently in my iPhone would work. They gave me the new needed card. A word to the wise: If you are in a similar situation, be sure to clearly explain it to the rep, so as to make sure you get the new card before you leave!

It also appears that there is no direct way to transfer the address book from my wife’s old phone to the iPhone. Fortunately, most of the needed addresses are already on her Mac. Looks like this will be a minor hassle at worst.

Update #2 [11:35 a.m.]

The iPhone 2.0 software for upgrading original iPhones and iPod touches is out (or at least it was out). However, because of the ongoing mess with Apple’s servers (the same mess that is blocking activation of my iPhone 3G), you’re better off waiting for the mess to be fixed before attempting an update (as noted in this AppleInsider story).

Note to readers: In all of the activity and confusion of the day, I inadvertently deleted the reader comments to several recent blog entries. There is no way to retrieve them. If your comment was one that was deleted, I apologize.

The difference between great vs. poor user interface design can be hard to quantify. Similar to the supposed difference between art and pornography — you know it when you see it.

You certainly can’t tell which is a better designed product simply by looking at a list of their features. Two products may have similar options, one may even have more options than the other, yet the lesser-featured product can be far superior — because of its superior user interface design.

Well designed products work they way you expect. As you use such products, it becomes clear that the designers thought about the concerns you might have and designed the product to address those concerns. This may seem like something that happens in the design process of almost every product — and thus not worthy of praise. In an ideal world, such would be the case. We do not live in an ideal world. Too often, I start using a product and almost immediately begin to grumble: “Did anyone even turn this thing on and try to use it before they started shipping it?”

Apple, of course, has built its success on a foundation of superb interface design. More than anything else, it is what has distinguished the Mac OS from Windows. Unfortunately, you can’t always see the value of a well constructed interface from a brief look. This is one reason that Macs have sometimes had a tough time. “Why should I pay more for a Mac? A PC with Windows 95 has all the same features,” a prospective buyer might have asked more than a decade ago. Sometimes I think there are two types of technology users: those who need to ask that sort of question but never “get” the answer and those who get the answer without ever having to ask the question. Fortunately for Apple (as well as for those of us who root for the types of products Apple makes), the latter group appears to be growing.

It is this recognition of superior user interface design that, more than anything else, accounts for the stunning success of Apple’s iPod and iPhone. The arrival of these products sent a clear message: There is a better way! To give you an example, consider visual voicemail on the iPhone. Sure, every mobile phone supports voicemail. But after you’ve used an iPhone, and seen how easy it is to listen to any stored message, in any order you want, without having to first dial a number and work your way through a phone tree — you begin to see how saying “the iPhone and Phone X both support voicemail” doesn’t begin to tell the story.

Not all bathroom scales are equal. If you pay attention to user interface design, it will drive your purchase decisions. It made a decisive difference, for example, in my recent purchase of a bathroom scale. Based on online recommendations, I narrowed my choice to two scales. Unable to easily pick a winner in the store, I bought them both home to test them out.

Both scales needed to be turned on before you could get a weight. With Scale A, however, a tap of your foot anywhere on the scale’s surface turned it on. With Scale B, you had to press a small button to turn it on. If you worked at it, you could press the button with your toe; but it could take several seconds to pull off this minor feat. The other alternative was to bend over and use your hand. It may sound trivial, but this is not want you want to have to do every time you weigh yourself. Unfortunately (for Scale B), this was only the start of the button pressing differential. Both scales offered the option to provide various metabolic data (such as your Body Mass Index, BMI). Scale A cycled through all the data after just one button press. With Scale B, you had to press a separate button to get each of four data points (making this worse, the labels on the buttons were hard to read from a standing position). Without hesitation, I returned Scale B, grumbling to myself: “Did anyone actually stand on this scale and try to use it before they let it leave the factory?”

The TiVo remote surprise. Sometimes, a well-designed feature is so subtle that it is barely considered worth mentioning — even by the vendor. Yet, it can be critical. When you find such a feature, it’s like discovering buried treasure. Such was the case with setting up the remote control of my new TiVo.

I was already familiar with TiVo’s renowned user interface, so there were no initial surprises here. The surprise came when I began to configure the TiVo remote to work both with my TV and my audio receiver. In Step 1, you enter a 4 digit code so that the remote will turn on your TV and adjust the TV’s volume. In Step 2, you enter a code for your receiver. After doing this, the remote’s volume and mute buttons control your receiver instead of your TV. I did this and all worked as expected. Except for one problem: While the TiVo remote could turn my TV on and off, it had no such effect on the receiver. A primary goal for me was to eliminate the need for multiple remotes. If I still needed a second remote to turn the receiver on and off, TiVo had missed the mark.

Here, at last, was the surprise: TiVo had anticipated my concern and had an answer. As I recall, the TiVo onscreen prompts did not tell me about it (a minor flub on TiVo’s part). Instead, I discovered it only after searching the TiVo Web site: After completing Step 2, return to Step 1 and enter the code for your receiver (it won’t even be listed on the screen, you have to remember it). Now, the TiVo remote’s TV Power button will turn on and off both the TV and the receiver simultaneously!

Surprisingly, most other remotes (even most universal remotes, aside from programmable ones such as Logitech’s Harmony remotes) are not able to pull of this feat. At best, if you want a remote to switch from controlling your TV vs. your receiver vs. your cable box/DVR, you have to press a separate “device” button each time. If you forget to do this, it can take several more button presses to recover (such as when you accidentally change the channel on your TV instead of your cable box, and have to reselect the proper Input). In contrast, TiVo’s remote sends signals to all three devices without any device switching required, each button on the remote always working the expected device(s). That’s great user interface design. And it’s a great example of why user interface design matters.

Until recently, my problems with junk email far exceeded the norm. On a typical day, I would get several hundred junk messages, sometimes approaching 1000. Still worse, despite my best efforts at using various junk mail filters, many of these worthless missives evaded detection and wound up in my main Inbox.

Long ago, I accepted what I thought was my fate and routinely spent a small but annoyingly significant part of my day flushing junk mail down the virtual trash chute. If there was a better solution, I was too busy to figure it out.

Until last week.

About a week ago, I woke up and, while still rubbing my eyes and making coffee, went to check my email. Entourage (my email client) started chugging and informed me that it was “getting messages.” After a brief wait, the number of messages to be downloaded appeared: 10,387. My jaw dropped. What the…?

At first, I assumed it was an error in Entourage. It wasn’t. I was indeed downloading over 10,000 email messages. Yes, ten thousand. It took well over 30 minutes just for the emails to download.

It turned out that almost all of the emails were bounce-back messages — those automated replies stating that an email you sent was not delivered for some reason. Of course, I hadn’t actually sent out all the failed emails. What had happened was that some spammer was putting my email address in the header of their junk messages. As most of their spam went undelivered (sent to non-existent addresses that they just guessed might exist), I began getting the bounce-back emails alerting me to the failures. [That spammers can get away with something like this without being castrated on the spot remains a problem for Congress to address. But that was not my immediate concern.]

I had had enough. I was determined to put a stop to this onslaught and get my junk email under control.

The key, I decided, was to prevent these emails from ever getting to the point where they download to my Mac. I wanted to stop them at the source. Although I have several email addresses (such as a gmail and a .mac address), the one causing almost all my problems was the one associated with my personal Web domain. I use pair.com as my Web host for the domain. So I contacted them for advice.

Their initial reply was disheartening, to say the least: there was nothing they could do. “We are not able to stop this because the spammers are not using any of our services.” In an apparent attempt to cheer me up a bit, they added that I needn’t worry about getting into trouble: I would not be held responsible for sending out the spam. Great news! That’s like, after being hit in the head with a baseball, being assured that you won’t be held liable for interfering with the play.

Happily, the pair.com people offered a further suggestion: “Eliminate your catch-all email addresses.”

That did it! I’ll explain the details in a moment. But let me cut right to the punch line: After following their advice, my junk email dropped down to almost zero. I could kick myself for not thinking of this before. I guess I just didn’t want to spend the time to figure out exactly what I needed to do. Until now.

But wait! If you’re hoping to use this solution to solve your own junk email problems, chances are you will be disappointed. The technique only works if your email address comes from a personal domain.

The details. When you sign up with a Web host, you are assigned one or more domains. Your domain name may be your-own-name.com, such as clarkkent.com. In this setup, you commonly have an almost infinite number of possible email addresses. You may choose clark@clarkkent.com as your official email address. But all messages sent to anything@clarkkent.com will be sent to you. For example, if an annoyed someone sends an email to butthead@clarkkent.com, it will arrive in your Inbox. This is what pair.com meant by a “catch-all” address.  

This setup actually has at least one practical advantage. You can assign different addresses for different uses, allowing for easy sorting of your email. For example, when you create an account at a Web site, you can use a site-specific email address, such as amazon@clarkkent.com. You can then set up a rule in your email client, directing what happens whenever email with that address is received. As a bonus, if a vendor should ever sell your email address to a spammer, you can easily identify the culprit — because the vendor’s name is the front part of the email address.

But there is a dark side to this email setup. Spammers may get a hold of your domain name and start sending emails to random addresses within that domain, such as jimmy@clarkkent.com and lois@clarkkent.com — hoping that at least one of them gets delivered. This was a large part of my daily junk mail problem. Further, as was the case with my 10,000 spam message disaster, they can send out email using your domain as the return address. In both cases, almost every email they send leads to a message arriving in your Inbox.

Web hosts typically offer a way to deal with this. In the case of pair.com, you can create “recipes.” These are rules that tell the mail server at pair.com what to do with your email before it is potentially sent to you. In the simplest case, you can set it up so that email addressed to any valid addresses (such as clark@clarkkent.com) gets delivered to you, but all other email is immediately deleted. The deleted email never shows up at your doorstep, so you don’t even have to worry about filtering it.

I confess that it made me more than a bit nervous when I selected “discard all e-mail by default” in pair.com’s email management settings. But after creating the needed recipes to act as exceptions to the default, it all worked as promised.

As I said, this solution may not apply to you. If you have an ISP-generated email address, such as clarkkent43@aol.com, this solution won’t work — because you don’t have multiple addresses under your control. But then, you probably aren’t getting 10,000 emails a day. However, if you are bothered by junk email at all, there a numerous other things you can do (check out this article for some good suggestions).

So that’s how I managed to reduce my junk email to near zero. I hesitated to post this blog entry; I didn’t want it to serve as a challenge to spammers to seek out a new line of attack. In the end, in the interest of spreading the good news, I decided to take my chances.

P.S. None of this has affected the spam I still receive as phony comments to this blog. That’s another kettle of fish; I’ll save that discussion for another day.

Mobile phone plans give you more monthly minutes than you will ever use, at a very reasonable cost. For a bit more, you can get practically unlimited text messaging as well. Many land-line phone plans come with unlimited calling within the United States. With each month, Web-based storage sites are offering more gigabytes of storage for less and less money (free in some cases). And although the analogy does not work perfectly here, I would point out that my TV uses Comcast Cable; there is no limit to how much TV I can watch per month.

And so it goes. As technology improves, it usually becomes cheaper; we get less and less limits on its use. This is a welcome trend — unless you are an Internet Service Provider such as Time-Warner, Comcast, or AT&T. They are seeking to start charging increased fees for people who use more bandwidth, as detailed in this San Francisco Chronicle article.

In some ways, this is the flip side of the Internet neutrality debate. The ISP’s initial approach has been to have fast and slow lanes for Internet data. Big corporations would pay hefty fees to have their Web site data travel in the fast lane, while most of the rest of us would be be restricted to the scenic route. This would affect end users no matter how much they paid per month: Apple’s Web site, presumably, would load lightning fast while John Doe’s personal blog might take a minute or more to load. This threatens the egalitarian structure of the Web — the same structure that allows small startups with little capital to become the next Google or YouTube. It would crush competition from small players. Even if Small Site A does something 10 times better than Big Site B, users may ignore Small Site A because of how much slower its site loads.

This approach has been severely criticized. And rightly so. With some luck, the approach may die altogether. Perhaps recognizing this, Internet Service Providers are seeking to increase their revenue from the opposite end of the spectrum: charge end users more based on how much bandwidth they use each month. The argument here is that there are Internet hogs, those 5% of users who are sucking up as much as 50% of the bandwidth. Why should someone who only uses the Internet to check their email, so the argument goes, pay the same as someone who downloads movies several times a day?

I admit to a bit of sympathy towards this argument — as I have discussed in a previous column. But only a bit.

First, I worry that this is largely a “straw man” argument. The ISPs claim to want to protect me from having my service slowed by “bandwidth hogs.” Well, I live in the SF Bay Area, certainly one of the densest concentrations of Internet users in the world. And I have rarely been bothered by a slowing down of my connection. Even when such slowdowns have occurred, they have been brief and the cause was usually a disruption in Comcast’s service (not any hogging of bandwidth). So where is the problem exactly? Who has been complaining about hog-induced slowdowns, beyond the ISPs themselves?

There is already tiered pricing for end-users, depending upon how fast a connection you want. Do we really need an additional set of tiers based on bandwidth? I suspect not.

I also worry about the “slippery slope” problem. Once a bandwidth-based tiered price structure is in effect, how long before ISPs modify it so that all but the lowest bandwidth users are paying more per month? It becomes sort of like “basic” Cable TV is today. It’s so “basic” that almost no one who signs up for cable sticks with only the basic plan. We all wind up paying more, often much more. Suggested ISP plans already describe charging increased rates for people using as little as 5GB/month. If ISPs are truly worried only about the upper 5% of users, why not limit price increases only to those 5%? Or look at it another way: Five years from now everyone may be using twice as much bandwidth as we use on average now. If a price structure is put in place based on today’s usage, we could all be paying twice as much in five years.

Finally, the idea that you may ultimately be charged on a $/GB basis (much like you pay for gasoline in $/gallon today) is truly scary. When you rent a movie from iTunes, you are already paying Apple a rental fee. One day, it could turn out that Comcast charges you more to download a movie than Apple charges you to rent it. Every time you want to watch a free video online, or do anything that uses any significant bandwidth, you’d have to start calculating whether or not it’s worth the cost in bandwidth. Ultimately, you may be forced to significantly restrict your use of the Web to keep your costs down. Or wind up paying your ISP a lot more dough. This would not be good — unless your name is Comcast or AT&T.

Some people may argue that the gasoline analogy is more appropriate than I might like. In these days of rising gas prices, we may restrict how often we drive to a movie theater, for example. No one argues that all drivers should be charged the same amount for gas every month no matter how much they drive. True enough. But oil is a scarce resource; we may even run of it in a few decades. We are not about to run out of Internet bandwidth. In fact, quite the opposite. In the decades ahead, as technology improves, we are likely to have more and more bandwidth to play with. The question is: Who will get to control what we pay for it?

I read the other day, in a New York Times article, that Grand Theft Auto IV “racked up first-week sales of $500 million.” This is a truly incredible statistic.

In contrast, take a look at the All-Time USA Box office numbers, as listed on IMDB. Titanic is number one at $600,779,824 and Star Wars in number 2 at $460,935,665. In other words, in one week, Grand Theft Auto IV surpassed the final U.S. gross ticket sales for every movie every made, except Titanic!

Now that’s impressive.

What’s almost as impressive, at least to me, is that I don’t know one person who actually owns the game. Now granted, I am not a youngster any more. And I don’t have much social interaction with people under 30. At least not of the sort where the subject of Grand Theft Auto is likely to crop up in the conversation.

Still, I would have thought that I would at least heard about a few people who had played the game. Nope. Or whose kids play the game. Not one. I confess that I too have never played the game. I don’t even own a game console (Wii, Xbox or PlayStation).

From this anecdotal “survey”, I am led to assume that the galactic sales of GTA IV derives almost entirely from teens and twenty-somethings. Actually, given that the game has an M rating, teenagers under 17 aren’t even supposed to be buying the game. Although I know the rating system is largely a farce, GTA IV’s rating presumably limit sales at least a wee bit. And still the game steamrolls across the landscape. Very very impressive indeed.

For the record, it’s not that I have no interest in games. Quite the contrary. It’s just that I haven’t had sufficient motivation to buy a game console. I have enjoyed playing games on my Mac over the years, including Halo and various Star Wars games. I have always preferred this to the alternative of investing $300 or more in a game console and having to hook it up to my TV — and then paying $60 or so for each new game. Only to have it all become obsolete a year or so later when the inevitable next generation console hardware is released.

But what do I know? Clearly, I am something of a dinosaur here.

I do know that games for the Mac aren’t getting much buzz these days — even among Mac owners. There was a time when the prospect of something such as the release of Halo for the Mac was a big deal. [Of course, for Halo, Bungie was purchased by Microsoft, which put development plans for a Mac version on hold for several years. But that's another story.] There was a time when the arrival of the latest Mac games made front-page headlines in the Mac press, not just a brief mention in a Games column somewhere. That time is gone. And the most popular games, such as Grand Theft Auto, never appear on a Mac. Often, they don’t appear on a PC either, at least not until long after the game has been available for consoles.

I do see a glimmer of good news here — at least for those of us with an iPhone. There’s a reasonable chance that, after the release of iPhone 2.0 software in July, games on the iPhone will become the next big thing — even surpassing devices such as Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). With its use of a touchscreen and accelerometer, the iPhone offers a unique game environment, one that just might give it a critical competitive edge. At least I hope so. I would welcome being on the leading edge of games again, without having to buy a game console or stick an extra device in my pocket.

Here’s a true story.

My neighbor was in the market to replace his aging PC, running Windows XP. While he was debating what to get, I made a small effort to convince him to switch to a Mac (”It can run Windows when you need it and be a Mac when you don’t”). He has an iPhone and loves it; his daughter has a MacBook and he is impressed with it. All in all, he seemed ripe for a switch. Still, in the end, he chose to get a Dell PC with Windows Vista pre-installed.

At first, he was thrilled with his purchase. He could not believe how much faster the new machine was. His only lament was that he had waited as long as he did before upgrading.

Within a few days, however, his mood had changed. “I returned the computer,” he told me — with a sheepish look on his face. I was a bit surprised. Naturally, I wanted to know what had happened.

The first glitch was when he found that he couldn’t run his copy of FileMaker Pro 8 on his new PC. He was told that, in order to work under Vista, he would need to upgrade to FileMaker Pro 9. He did — at a cost of almost $200.

Next, he discovered that his old HP printer wouldn’t work with his new PC. Once again, the problem was a Vista conflict. The old driver for his printer was not compatible with Vista –– and HP did not intend to release an updated Vista-compatible driver. The advised solution was to get a new printer — at a cost of another $200.

Then came the last straw. He has two monitors, each a different brand. They both worked fine in tandem when connected to his old PC running XP. However, on his new Vista machine, he could only get one of them to work at a time. He was eventually told that Vista only permits dual displays if the two monitors are of the same or similar brand — and thus use the same driver software. His choice at this point was to get a new monitor or return his new PC. He chose the latter.

If you’re thinking this is where he switches to a Mac, you’d be wrong. He stuck with Dell. However, he wound up getting what Dell claimed to be the only PC they sell that still ships with XP.

My neighbor did not give up on Windows. At least not yet. He did say sayonara to Vista though. In this regard, his travails fit nicely with Apple’s recent “I’m a Mac” ads.

To be fair to Vista, some simpler, less expensive, solutions may have been possible (such as a universal driver for the printer or displays). I don’t know. And, although they happen less often, similar problems can happen with a Mac.

Still, listening to my neighbor’s woes with Vista, I couldn’t help thinking that I should have him contact Apple. Maybe he could replace John Hodgman as the PC in Apple’s ads.

It’s official. The iPhone 3G is here. Sort of here. Almost here.

It’s a dizzying and exciting time for iPhone users. Heck, it’s a great day for all Mac users, indeed for all computer and mobile phone users.

But there was more to today’s announcements than just the iPhone 3G. Much more. The information overload at the WWDC Keynote today was so great that it will be days before I can absorb it all.

The biggest news was, as everyone expected, the iPhone 3G — with 3G network support, GPS built-in for Maps, improved audio and a price as low as $199!

On the heels of this news, there was the announcement of a new me.com service (replacing Apple’s .mac service), offering enterprise-like capabilities for the “rest of us.”

Apple also revealed, in almost a throw-away comment, that it would be showing a sneak peak of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) later today — but just for developers attending the WWDC.

Added to all of this news were further details about the variety of new programs coming to the iPhone’s App Store, the newly announced ways to privately distribute iPhone applications (in particular an Ad Hoc option, useful for situations such as a professor who wants to distribute something just to his/her class), the new server-based notifications, the ability to view iWork and Office documents on your iPhone, and the previously-announced enterprise “push” features.

Whew! My head is still spinning.

Yet, there was one definite downer amidst all the excitement. The new iPhone 2.0 software and iPhone 3G will not be available until July 11.

Now, I am usually one to defend Apple when it comes to “unexpected delays.” My general position is…a year from now…what will we remember more…how great the iPhone 3G is or that it shipped a month later than we thought? The former. In the end, the delay won’t matter much. And I still believe this to be so.

But for today… I have to gripe just a little.

Come on, Apple! How long must we wait for your third-party iPhone software support? How many delays must we endure?

There were hints that Apple would be announcing such support back in September. When the big announcement finally came in October, all we got was a promise that the support was indeed coming. We would have to wait until February to find out the details. In February, we were disappointed to receive only a “road map” and an SDK from Apple. No software for end users was released. No real details were provided. The actual software, we were told, would not be available until June. Well, June is finally here. And now we are told to wait yet again. It will be July 11 before we can get our hands on iPhone 2.0.

It’s starting to feel like a “bait-and-switch” except that the switch is to just keep waiting instead of switching to some other more expensive product.

I’m sure this mild irritation will quickly wear off once July 11 rolls around. But for now, I am more than a bit bummed.

There were also a few new iPhone features I was hoping to see that are apparently not coming in July — features such as voice-activated dialing, MMS support, expanded Bluetooth options, and a better camera.

Regardless, there’s more than enough news and new stuff to sift through for now. I won’t be needing to look for things to keep me busy, while I wait for July 11 to arrive.