Here is that ad we made. We threw it together to explain some of the problems businesses are having activating their iPhone’s. Businesses are left to only use the iPhone as a paperweight. We put this together in an evening, so expect a little more in our next mockeries. Enjoy, we had some fun making it.

Video: iPhone Commerical Spoof 1

About two weeks ago I broke down, again. By that I mean Apple’s shiny dark magic took over my thought process. I did not even know what happened; it was like I was in a trance. I found myself standing outside an Apple store with an iPhone in my right hand and my soul in the other. I turned around to look into the store and all that I saw were droves of people that looked the same, everyone was just a walking Gap commercial. I then saw myself in the window; I had my black hood up with my black Boston cap on, and my black down vest on. I looked like I usually do, but something happened to me at that moment. I knew in my heart I was different then these people, I was an individual, not some drone. But what the hell was I doing buying this novelty that I swore I would never touch ever again? I walked through the mall talking to myself and my conscience was fighting itself. Deep down my heart was telling me to go back and return it. One side was saying “Yo dude, this device is going to bring so much trouble in you life”, and the other was saying to me “All your friends will finally think you are cool”.  Steve Jobs and the Cupertino soul reapers got the best of me that day, but it will never happen again!

So once I purchased the phone I wanted to activate it. I wanted to activate the iPhone with our tax id number so I could charge it to the business. Well obviously the iTunes activation process would not allow that. So I had some extra time one day and drove over to the local AT&T store. I wanted to ask them a couple of questions and see if I could activate the iPhone with the tax id number. I was told by the AT&T rep that it is possible, so he gave me instructions on how to do it. So I went home hopped onto iTunes activation to see if it would work, nope no dice.

So I give AT&T customer support a phone call, I spoke to nice gentlemen and he transferred me directly to the AT&T iPhone division. I guess it was too late because they were not home. So I am starting to get pretty frustrated. I obviously do not want to activate this thing under my own social. I have had my identity stolen once before so now I am very weary of giving it out for anything. So the next day I run over to the same AT&T store, the store is packed. So I head on over to another AT&T store in our local mall. The customer support rep pretty much refused to look at me. He told me he could not help me at all, honestly he did not even look at me. I was just amazed at how poor his customer service was. So he tells me I need to go to the Apple store and talk to them. So I go back to the Apple store I purchased the phone at. I wait in line for about 20 minutes to talk to one of the Apple rep’s, he tells me that he has never heard of anyone activating the iPhone with a tax id number. I asked him how do businesses activate the iPhone then? He responded by telling my “they don’t, corporations have to have each individual user activate it under their own social security number, and they just use the companies billing address instead of their own home address.” He also told me that this was an AT&T matter not Apple’s. He gave me the AT&T customer support number I originally called. I was so furious at that moment. So I went back home, sat down and tried to relax. I told myself I would try one more time to get this activated.

So two days later I went to the original AT&T store thinking I might get lucky and find the original AT&T rep that told me I could activate it with a tax id number. Well no luck, but I did get a rep that seemed really informed on how to activate it with a tax id, he actually told me that he just did for a customer two days ago. So I am pretty excited at this point. So he is telling my how to do it on iTunes. He tells me I first have to have an AT&T number and account. So he signs me up with a 2 year contract and gives me a number and an extra nokia phone just in case I have some problems with the activation at first. He tells me when I start the activation process on iTunes that I need to put that “I am replacing an AT&T phone with the iPhone”. So I do so, I proceed to enter my AT&T mobile number he gave me and my zip code. He also told me “instead of entering the last four of your social enter the last four of your tax id number”. After that I hit the activation button, at this point I am on cloud nine, finally I will have this thing up and running! I wait about a minute and I get a message saying “iTunes cannot activate this phone with the current credit information.” I try it one more time, same thing happens. I am going crazy at this point!!

I call the AT&T store back, and that last rep I spoke to answered the phone. I proceed to tell him what is going on. He tells me to try again in the morning, and proceeds to pitch me wood to get me off the phone. At this point I am ready to drive my car into the store. So I call AT&T customer support. I finally find someone that really knows her stuff. She was amazing. I proceeded to tell her about my past week and all of the drama that occurred. She starts to apologize, and then I tell her what the last rep told me. She flat out said that he took me. She said in no possible way can you activate your iPhone with a tax id. She said even the largest corporations cannot do it. She told me Disney could not even do it. They had to have their employees activate them with their own social and bill the company. At this point I was just dumb founded.

She took all my information down; she took the last reps information down as well. She cancelled my two year plan, and told me the rep most likely lied to me so he could get a commission. She told me even if I cancelled my account he would get credit for the sign up. She was a breath of fresh air. She and I chatted for about 10 minutes on how lame the activation process is for businesses. She fully agreed with me that Apple could have sold a lot more iPhones if they would allow tax id activations.  

So at this point I feel better, I still have the iPhone, still not activated, and I am most likely going to take it back. I should have listened to my conscience, at this point the allure and luster has worn off. I still love my ppc6700 with my hacked WM6 rom; I will be sticking with that until I can get the HTC touch via Sprint. 

So again Apple almost gives me a heart attack, the stress this device caused me was incredible. Some of you will say “why don’t you just use your SSN to activate it”. Because I have principles, and I will not give in just to get a novelty.

Oh and to top it all off I have the last AT&T in store rep on tape telling me how to do everything, from start to finish. I also have the nice lady I spoke to last on tape. If anyone from AT&T or Apple would like to hear them then feel free to contact us. I don’t think it is necessary for us to release these tapes publicly; we don’t want anyone to get in trouble.

The Geekery’s own iPhone commercial will be published in about an about 30 minutes or so.  

It looks like those iPhone price cuts were just the thing Apple needed to drive sales, as this weekend Apple’s iPhone reached the 1 million sold mark. “One million iPhones in 74 days-it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We can’t wait to get this revolutionary product into the hands of even more customers this holiday season.”

While reaching this milestone may seem like great news for Apple (and in most ways, it is) there is one downside to that number that is not mentioned in Apple’s press release – namely, Steve jobs promised all iPhone buyers (pre-last week’s price drop announcement) that they would receive a $100 credit to the Apple Store.

Generously assuming that the $200 price drop brought in another 150,000 iPhones customers last week, and that maybe 50,000 folks who bought iPhones in the 2 weeks leading up to the price drop may have gone ahead and gotten their $200 back from Apple during their 14-day price protection policy, that still leaves 800,000 potential iPhone owners (myself included) that will be looking for $100 back from Apple. That adds up to a potential $80,000,000 hit Apple would have to take.

Now, of course, Apple knows not everyone will take advantage of the $100 store credit, and, in order to use it, you have to be buying something at the Apple store anyway, so odds are Apple will make some money off the credits to help lessen the hit, but still, that is a staggering number when you think about it, and it makes you wonder if Apple would have done better to hold off on the price drop a month or so and wait until they had a 16GB version of the iPhone out to justify the drop in price of the 8 GB version.

Well today Saint Steve came out and said everyone that purchased the iPhone before two weeks ago will be getting a $100 Apple Store credit. In an effort to possibly be the coolest CEO around in the public eye only to follow behind this bloke, what is the business world saying about Apple and this on again- off again tactic in creating positive revenue for the company?

From a shareholder’s perspective these have been two really bad days for Apple. Today they closed 1.75 down from yesterday, and it started to decline after Jobs came out with his public apology. Honestly what was Apple thinking, did they suddenly think everyone would forget that they just paid $599 for their iPhone? Granted it is a brilliant move to sell more units, but did they think all of the iPhone users would just take it? Does Apple no longer have a CFO, or any market analysts working for them? They do, and his name is Peter Oppenheimer and he probably has a contract out on Steve Jobs. As I was looking for his name I completely forgot Al Gore is a board member for Apple (weird fact, thought you should know, very off topic).

I guess we won’t really know how all of this will affect Apple and the long haul of the iPhone. Will profits continue to rise or will they fizzle out? If it was me I would not have given anyone their money back. “Its technology” just like Steve said, as time progresses, prices change, tough luck!

But deep, deep, down I think this is a good thing for Apple and the PR machine, this was a gracious move on Apple’s part. They didn’t need to do it and usually something like this would only happen if they had a court order backing the users for Apple to give some money back. But Steve Jobs and Apple do it again, they just amaze me.

I have a message, actually more of a complaint to Apple, if I complain enough can I get my $175 back since you lost me $175 today with my shares of AAPL with that stupid announcement?

That’s what I thought Steve!

I don’t want to start another company feud post, but does anyone think Microsoft would do something like this, by giving back to their community?

We all know Steve Jobs and Apple hate the handicapped, but now they seem to hate money and profit. I was not really excited today at all about the new release of the iPod line up thinking all we would see is a fat ugly nano. I was pleasantly surprised by what Apple brought to the table, and miffed on why Apple dropped the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599.00 to $399.00. They are fazing the 4gb iPhone out, and now you could scoop it up for a very lightweight price of $299. I am simply amazed. Do I dare go so far to make the statement of saying that the iPhone is actually “affordable”…?

But really now it is one of the cheapest smartphones on the block….. I feel strange and very funny inside now. But now I ask a question only the likes of BMW drivers and G5 owners can answer, has the iPhone lost some of its luster because of the price drop? I mean Apple is the brand that caters to only the chosen ones, what is a Soho lad to do?

But overall this is an awesome leap for Apple, it puts them way, way ahead of everyone. I think $399 is the price they should have originally had for the 8GB version, it would have been insane. Apple also launched their new WIFI iTunes store as well.

This time around Steve-O and the boys at Apple really pulled off one hell of a hat trick today.

Congrats to Apple, and I wish the best of luck to any company that tries to compete with Apple in any of these industry sectors, you face a long and hard road ahead of you!

Take a gander at the new lineup of the iPods!

On another note, I think I am going to go buy an iPhone now, please no hate mail.

Just checking in again. Still feel a bit silly, I kind of want to crawl under a rock and hide. I just cant believe they came out with this on the eve of my iPhone rant. If it was a week a later I would not be even be writing any of this, but they just had to rub it in my eyes. At least I own up to it, not like some others that should remain nameless.

On that note lets push forward, this is a great milestone for the iPhone and all of the people that want to obtain that mythical creature they call the “JesusPhone”. Now we are still in this things infancy, so we are still not sure that this software from iPhoneSimFree.com will revert with a simple update from Apple, but the site guarantees it will stay put with whatever sim card of your choosing.

So really what is their to talk about other then when can we all get this software. Obviously iPhoneSimFree.com is trying to make a buck, but nipping on their heels is another group of developers working on making this free. Now I would not mind paying a little dough for this software from iPhoneSimFree.com just on principal alone knowing that they have been working on this since the release date of the iPhone.

So get ready for a flood of duplicate posts from other sites going on and on about this topic. Which in its right is a great piece of industry news. but we will try to keep it fresh with new stories and new findings here at The Geekery.

So I was wrong, I still think it was one of the hardest devices ever to crack, but it really has been done. The iPhone is free and clear of AT&T, and it actually looks like something for the masses. Check it out!

Still amazed, granted they still might get shutdown by Apple once they have flown away from the mothership controller.

Well maybe not. I know everyone is sick of hearing about the Jesus phone, I know I most certainly am. But I wanted to touch on a topic that is driving me insane. I see new articles about it everyday. Its driving me crazy. Now all of you are saying, “What is driving you crazy?”, all the articles about people finally UNLOCKING THE iPhone! I have read hundreds of claims that people have unlocked the iPhone. But the thing is that is all we ever hear are claims. I know some people have actually done it, but to what extent are you prepared to go to unlock that ironclad device. In the end you might find yourself spending more on unlocking it then actually ponying up the cash for AT&T.

I understand the people that don’t want to give into the system, and that’s neat and all. But really why waste your time, energy, and hard earned money on simply unlocking a phone that might or might not work with your carrier. Plus what happens when your phone dies, or has a malfunction. Do you take it back to Apple? I don’t think that will really work. Granted most of the people that are trying to unlock these things are pretty savy with the gadgets, so I assume they would probably be able to fix most issues on their own, and that’s the rub, not everyone is savy with the gadgets. Its a glass half full type of situation.

Now some people are claiming they unlocked the phone monkeying around with the internal hardware, and some claim the TurboSim card unlocks the phone via blocking it from getting any AT&T info, and a recent one I heard today about people doing it via a firmware hack. Once again I reiterate that this is not a bad thing. This is how people discover things about technology and how innovations are created in the marketplace, simply by taking a device apart and seeing how it works. That’s how technology evolves, which is a great thing. But as these shenanigans keep on progressing I really do not see one true process to unlock these devious devices. So I say this once and once only, that the Apple iPhone is the most secure smart-phone to date. If the Apple iPhone was a building it would be Fort Knox, but I think it would be even more secure then Fort Knox. You see Fort Knox is not open to the public, which the iPhone is, and if Fort Knox was open to the public for 2 months people would have already found a way into the safes. But their are many claims of partially unlocked iPhones as well (Thats like partially stealing the gold then getting shot on the way out by the tower guards).

When I say secure, I don’t mean secure software, or secure from software exploits, I mean it is locked down to the mother-ship and the tractor beam is strong. Their are thousands of some of the best PDA/Smart-phone crackers in the world working on this, and no one has came out with a true unlock method for the masses. The funny thing is that whenever if ever their is one Golden Key to unlock the palace, Apple and AT&T will sit and watch as people start unlocking the phones. Now this is the painful part, they will watch, but they wont be upset. They will be sitting over a tech’s pc telling him to deploy the new firmware that will brick every single one. ONE KEYSTROKE. Then the process begins all over again.

My point to all of this is that the masses will not go along. Once they have touched that glassy interface they will not be able to go back to any other smart-phone. So they will eventually cough up the cash for the AT&T service, and it will come with another rush of profits for the two companies.

Like I wrote about last week, these companies thrive off control. They want to control the influx of information, they want to control your hardware and software. Frustrating at best, but what can we do? Except not buy there hardware and software. This is why I have taken a stand. I would love to have that gorgeous phone, but it does not work with my carrier. So I am waiting for the revised version of the HTC Touch.  To me its as close to an iPhone as any other device.

I guess I have not been struck with the Jesus phone syndrome yet?

Here are some examples of the claims I have been talking about:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

I think ten example are enough, I could link to different stories all day.

I am not one to trump up stories and create chaos in the blogosphere, but supposedly the fellows over at Bladox have unlocked the iPhone from its master. They are using the Turbo Sim card toolkit that Bladox produces. They are saying over on the user forums on Bladox’s site that the phone is 100% unlocked. But it seems like only 3-4 people have successfully unlocked it.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is great and all but what happens when AT&T or Apple get word of this, which most likely has already happened. Can you smell a possible update to 1.0.2? Which in my eyes will most likely happen, and to the people that think AT&T wants the iPhone unlocked, “You are dead wrong”. Why would they want it unlocked, yeah they are making a ton of money off the hardware, but mostly everyone knows cell companies make the money off the actual plan. I guess no one has told them that the iPhone has one the highest bill ratings out of most of the smart phone plans on the market. So the answer is “no” AT&T does not want this, and Apple certainly does not want this either. They like locking people into services, ever heard of ITunes.

Both of the companies like control, more in the direction of love control. AT&T likes censoring bands and Apple likes censoring anyone they can. But large companies thrive off control.

So for all of you that want to get out and buy an iPhone ($599) plus a TurboSim Card ($80) I dare you to do it, actually I double dare you to do it. I bet you in no less then 3 months that thing will be bricked and you will be SOL.

Now I would love this not to happen to you, but like I said these are companies that love control and love to control you.

Oh by the way the 2 of the so called 4 people that have got it unlocked are from Australia (Vodaphone)

Well what did you expect? Nothing was too much of a secret. But this is going to get some of you mac fans furious, but I am not one to consider feelings most of the time. Sorry that’s just me.

Well I had this long touching post written the day of Apples release of the new imac’s and .mac updates, but I never posted it. The reasons why I didn’t post it are many, but only one phrase sums it up for me, UN-IMPRESSIVE!

Yes the new imacs are pretty, just like the last ones. Yes the new keyboards are sleek. Yes some of the new software updates are neat. But did we expect anything different? It makes no sense to me why Apple would come out with all of these updates on the heels of the release of the Jesus phone. Why wouldn’t you release the new platform devices first, like the imac before you release the industry changing IPhone. I was so excited for the release of the new imacs, I really thought they would do something to trump the greatness of the IPhone, but that obviously did not happen. I thought just maybe they had a trick up their sleeve, but nothing.

Now I know a lot of people are saying that the new imacs are going to be great, which they most likely are. But I am just saying the announcement and keynote were just not exciting at all. I simply was not impressed. The thing is that we were and still in awe of the IPhone, so once again I ask the question why didn’t you come out with the new updates for the imacs and .mac first ???