Vicky upgraded her mobile phone for one of the snazzy new white 32Gb Apple iPhone 3Gs devices on Saturday.

Turns out that the device needs connecting up to Apple iTunes on a suitably broadband connected MAC or Windows PC.  Not a huge problem, we have both of those in the household but we use the MAC Mini for the iTunes stuff for the other ipods, so we chose to go for the obvious choice – the MAC.  Tried for about 2 hours on Saturday – no joy – just got some none descriptive error message stating that a “generic” error had occurred and to try later.

Simon called o2 (service provider in the UK) to find out how to activate the phone given that it was clearly not having any of it online.  The response was amazing – that is an error that we see quite frequently sir, and there is nothing we can do about it – just keep trying…. Amazing customer service…

Simon tried to activate it again on Sunday morning, and then on Sunday evening when we returned from Bridlington.  All times no access.

So, Simon read something about it maybe being iTunes could not access verisign to authenticate (a google search produced this) and that the ISP may be blacklisting the access – so he tried connecting up the broadband via 3g – again, no dice.

The final test was to install iTunes onto a Microsoft Windows PC and connect the iPhone that way – worked FIRST TIME !!!!

So, would you believe that the iPhone would NOT work with an Apple computer BUT would work with the arch rival Operating System ???!!!!????

Stunned does not quite capture how Simon feels

Vicky is now learning about how to use the device – Simon is pretty jealous 🙁