Recently I got a new phone for/from work: an iPhone4 
- although it is a nice piece of hardware, it immediately presented me with a problem: It has system requirements which are over the top:
Requirements: Minimum wireless service plan may be required to activate iPhone features, including iPod features * Mac or PC with USB 2.0 * Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later, Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP Home or Professional (SP3) * iTunes 9.2 or later required for some features (free download from www.itunes.com/download) * iTunes Store account * Internet access
After charging the phone, the truth comes out: Until it has been activated through iTunes, it will only do emergency calls. So "some features" really is "99.99% of use cases". Thanks a lot Apple. Or to use their logic: "Some times I will no longer trust Apple".
It turns out that you need a lot more than just the phone, a charger and a phone contract before you can even consider using this thing:
- iPhone4 needs activation
- activation requires iTunes 9.2 or later
- iTunes requires Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP or Mac OS
- iTunes requires an iTunes Store Account
- a iTunes Store Account requires a valid credit card (even if you are not buying anything!!)
- using the phone constitutes acceptance of the software agreement, warranty and third-party terms (all of which are inside the box, unaccessible until after you've bought it and opened it).
I am quite relieved that I did not purchase this thing for myself - my personal phone will never be an iPhone. But it still left me with the problem of how to activate the phone, since I run Debian GNU/Linux both at home and at work...
In the end, I found no way of activating the phone without using MacOS or Windows. Despite trying several versions of iTunes and several versions of wine. Although it was possible to run iTunes on Linux, the activation part does not work. And since the activation was the only reason for running iTunes, I ended up un-installing it: there are a plethora of ways of synchronizing the music, contacts and email between the phone and the computers. And I was not going to use the iTunes store part anyway
As it happens, my SO has a windows PC, and I managed to grab hold of it for long enough for me to activate the phone.
It did not take long before I then encounted the Apple App Store: to use this I have to agree to a 56 page agreement (yes: FiftySix pages!) that I am sure that nobody reads... But at least you have the option of having it emailed to you so you can read on something other than an iPhone..
The agreement is definitely not about the customer rights, but about Apple's rights. And it is more than 56 pages, as it refers to Apple's Privacy Policy - which also doubt that people read...
- they demand even more information from you -but only after you agree :
- Birth Date
- Telephone Number
- Credit Card Details (even if you're not buying anything!)
Entering this on the phone is somewhat awkward - bordering on painful.
And just to make things worse: I got a phone call just before I had finished the registration process. Which made the f***g thing forget everything I had entered...
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