Tommy Collison

One of the funnest parts of computers and where my endearing love for them stems from is that a lot of computing (or at least the computing that I do) involves a lot of problem solving, which I enjoy.

On Wednesday night I was preparing my 2G iPhone for selling it – namely wiping all my texts, settings and music off it. I went into Settings>General>Reset>Erase All Contents and Settings, assuming that this would be the simplest way of doing it.

As the phone rebooted after wiping everything, it wouldn’t boot properly – it would just hang on the Apple logo. After talking with an Apple-savvy friend of mine, it appeared that the only thing I could do was restore it, which would cause it to, in short, think that life is better when you only with with an o2 UK SIM card. Not having much alternative however, I restored my iPhone.

A few minutes later, the message flashed up on the screen: ”Connect to iTunes” – in the same tone of voice as teachers tell you to go to the principal’s office.

Thus began a rite I’ve only done once or twice. Part tango, part mud-wrestle, unlocking and jailbreaking an iPhone pits man against machine in a fight over whether or not you get to keep your phone working or not, with the added thrill/annoyance of your iPhone seizing up at any moment, beyond repair.

Restoring the iPhone also forced it to upgrade its software, which was where the problem arose from - the original jailbreak and unlock was undone. I began working on a piece of software to unlock the new software. When it was finished I tried to run it but iTunes threw up an error. I tried again but got the same problem.

I thought back to the older times I’d done this tango, usually late at night at the kitchen table with my so-called ‘Work Music’ – a combination of Daft Punk, Radiohead and The Dresden Dolls – playing in the background. I began to apply maths to it (fantastic approach to problem solving and general deduction) – separating things into what were variables and what were not. What was different to the last time I did this? I realized that the only thing that was different was what software I was trying to install – 3.1.3 versus 3.1.1.

I realized that the only way to fix the problem would be to bring it down off 3.1.3 and back to something that could be unlocked.

And so I downloaded the 3.1.1 software, brought the iPhone back down to that and began the unlock process. After a few agonizing minutes, my iPhone chirruped into life and I breathed a sigh of relief. Motivation is an interesting thing to mention: before now, not having a phone was what hung in the balance, whereas this time, the €150 the buyer was giving me was the carrot on the end of the stick.

I got it to the buyer in the end though completely fixed and everything was fantastic. Job = done.

Update: After getting even more ‘why?’ questions – I found this quote from Steve Jobs regarding upgrades and compatibility from the iPhone O.S. 4.0 Keynote:

Q: Are you concerned about leaving out your older customer base (with the lack of features for older devices).
A: (Steve) Well, a lot of these products that are out there are the most recent products. The old devices will get the update, but they’ll miss some of these features like multitasking. If that’s an incentive for them to upgrade to a new device… terrific.

And that’s exactly what happened :) Not only that, there’s a LOT to be said for being a legitimate iPhone customer. I re-watched the 4.0 announcement this morning, quite excited because I now had a device that would be supporting every single one of the features showcased and it was nice not having to worry about how (if at all) I’d manage to get onto the 4.0 platform. Also, if nothing else, the whole experience has taught me that people would like an iPhone so much that they’re willing to buy one that’s second-hand and not the most recent one – I had 3 people interestedly sniffing my phone when I talked about selling it.