Apple has set forth upon us a bad iPhone 3G — and if you dare to complain about it — or find ways to hope to deal with the matter on the official Apple forums… you will be silenced with the deletion of your discussion thread.
Apple owns and operates their own user forum and they can censor and delete whatever messages they wish — but that doesn’t mean the discussion ends with their deletion.
Here is the forum message I posted today and I am republishing it here to preserve the record of complaint:
I have tons of Apps I’ve downloaded from iTunes. Most of them are paid and many of them cost me a lot of money.
With all the backup/connection issues added to my now total loss of 3G voice and data with the 2.0.2 update — I find myself living on EDGE and on my home WiFi and also living app-less.
It takes far too long to actively manage my iPhone 3G.
It seems like the only way to get any performance out of the phone after upgrading Apps or getting rescued from the White Apple of Death — is to wipe your phone and start all over. Restoring from a saved backup helps nothing and only increases future trouble.
I have entirely given up on backups and finally disabled them via the Terminal command. I’ve resigned myself to starting over from scratch whenever I need to “fix” or “update” my iPhone 3G.
I only have a few vital Apps installed because I just don’t want to waste a day having them all re-installed again and again after a wipe — and it’s strange how many Apps are getting repeatedly updated without providing any substantial new features — that means, to me anyway, that the Apps devs are fighting the firmware as much as we are.
So here I sit — App-less on the East Coast — biding my time on a slow phone with a lousy firmware update that made the phone worse than it was, and hoping that one day, the phone will work as advertised and I can begin to squeeze some value out of all the money I’ve spent on Apps that keep getting updated, but that I am loathe to install.
How are you managing your purchased Apps? Are they all installed all the time or are you just letting them sit until our hoped-for magic day arrives and all our problems are solved?
Do you dare do anything worthwhile with your Apps and created data if you know you have a full wipe ahead in your near future?
Several others replied to my inquiry and here is my response to one woman echoing my disappointment. I have removed any identifying information concerning those who responded to me to protect their privacy:
Yes, that’s how I’m living as well! Since we don’t get any error messages concerning which App is blowing up our phones, the only solution if a hard reset doesn’t work is to just wipe everything and start all over again.
I’ve never had any luck with the iPhone 3G using a stored backup after a restore and on my first generation iPhone I never had to restore once from a backup.
I’m sort of regretting all the money I spent on Apps because we all know that no matter what happens, we’re likely going to have to wipe and reinstall everything with any sort of firmware updates to the phone — and that means doing any data storage on the phone itself is a no-go because you’ll lose everything in a wipe and reinstall.
I do have my method down for setting up my phone after a wipe:
1. Adjust brightness
2. Turn off 3G; set up WiFi
3. Turn off keyboard and lock sounds.
4. Set my local weather. Delete Cupertino.
5. Setup email.
6. Add testmyiphone.com, Google Reader, my Homepage to home screen.If I’m fast and lucky, I can get all the above done in about 3 minutes.
Another person replied to me — also upset with the lack of Apple progress — and here is my response:
That sounds like a safe plan — and it’s strange that some Apps, it seems, somehow retain their settings on the iPhone 3G even if you wipe it and set it up as an all new phone.
Pandora is one App I’ve noticed that retains my email address and password even after I wipe the phone. I sort of appreciate that because I don’t have to set it up again, but it makes me wonder why that’s happening and what other information from other Apps is being permanently stored on the iPhone 3G.
I also think mis-behaving Apps collide with each other — so it may be safe to run one App for awhile and everything seems great… until you install another App that blows up the first App.
In my experience it’s totally unpredictable as to which App will die when, though iNetworkTest was, for a time, a reliable culprit as the starter of the dying Apps condition… and once that App failed, the rest of the phone was in store for another wipe…
Here’s my final reply concerning the viability of backups:
Oh, you’re lucky your backups work! That saves your conditional data you create on the iPhone.
It’s so funny how far we’ve lowered our expectations across these ongoing problems — our phones don’t behave as advertised, yet we’ve convinced ourselves how lucky we are we can still make a call on EDGE and get email! Heh!
I, too, hope there will be a definite fix soon.
Right now I have a few Apps installed. I can’t live without Epocrates even though it takes forever to setup… and the Poker Dice game and AIM and AOL Radio and iTrans NYC and Scrabble… so far they all get along together pretty well and that covers my iPhone Apps needs for a bit.
I am not alone in having my threads deleted on the Apple forum so I shouldn’t feel special or indignant and here is the generic email Apple sent me explaining why my thread was deleted:
David Boles,
Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions titled “Are You Living App-Less? ” because it contained the following:
Off-topic or non-technical posts
Polls or Petitions
Non-constructive rants or complaintsWe are including a copy of your post at the end of this email for your reference.
Our terms of use, which include helpful information about using Apple Discussions, is located here: http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa We encourage you to continue using the Apple Discussions while abiding by our terms of use.
If you would like to send feedback to Apple about a product, please use the appropriate selection here: http://www.apple.com/feedback
As part of submitting feedback, please read the Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy linked to the feedback page.
Kind regards,
Apple Discussions staff
How did I violate the terms of the Apple forum?
Or did I merely speak a truth that Apple does not want propagated on their servers using their bandwidth?