As someone that has infrequently used their service, it’s easy to see that their business potential could be taking off and when you compare this to some of the other solutions on the market – PayPal for instance – it’s easy to see why people might want to switch.  Don’t get me wrong, I love PayPal, but their swipe service is virtually non-existent and for someone that wants to, from time to time, accept real credit cards with very quick turnaround, the service is excellent.  Definitely worth a look.  Works on all Apple devices and with most Android phones.

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To call the new phone a success would have to be an understatement, and considering the pricing changes in their line it’s clear that Apple is going to become a player very quickly. However, to be fair, news phones like the Samsung Galaxy S II have sold 10 million in their first five months and Samsung is selling other phones, too.

On an even more positive note, Sprint is saying that the iPhone demand is high which only confirms that Apple made the right decision branching out into new carriers.

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Some interesting side notes:

• Steve Wozniac, Apple’s co-founder, was enjoying the excitement at the Los Gatos, California store last night. He “didn’t want to miss” this great event, even though we all know that he probably has two of the new phones hanging out in his Prius. As an aside, it’s nice to see that he’s taken the high-road and isn’t be accused of “cutting the line” like previous releases.
• The Pleasanton, California Apple store had about 250 people in line with some suggesting that the store had “1000′s of phones” of unknown configuration for unknown carriers. With the ever increasing number of SKUs that Apple has to manage for this release, it’s easy to see how 1000′s could quickly turn into “you’re not getting the phone you want.”
• Local news in the San Francisco Bay Area has caught the fever and are reporting regularly about all the people waiting for their new phone and how successful the launch is. In typical Apple fashion; yes, the launch is successful, woo hoo!

Share your stories, what are people seeing in the queue waiting for their Apple phone?

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On an up note, if you’re willing to start sitting outside your local Apple retail store it’s likely that they will have a bit of inventory on hand for those of you not wanting to pre-order their phone.

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While I’m sure Apple is doing the best they can to make this an easy upgrade process for developers, it’s frustrating, to say the least that after installing the new release of iTunes you will be unable to sync your beta 1 iOS 5 device until you have upgraded it to iOS beta 2. As those are ~750+MB downloads, it’s a bit frustrating. To resume syncing, connect you idevice and follow the upgrade process as you did when originally installing iOS 5; it will work successfully.

Some other highlights culled from notes and the internet:

• iTunes 10.5b2 can’t sync iOS 5 Beta 1 devices
• iOS5 Beta 1 devices can’t iMessage iOS5 Beta 2 devices and vice-versa
• WiFI Sync works with OSX Computers only (has to be enabled in iTunes 10.5 beta 2) – Sorry Windows users
• Over-the-Air (OTA) updates have been released – none current available
• General speed improvements (thank goodness) and bug fixes

That’s it for now – I will add more as I get it.

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The tip tat they offer is to provide a special stack to your dock that includes recently use items of your choice, including: Applications, Documents, Servers, Volumes and Items. You have to switch through each type (by right-clicking and choosing the option), but the ease of use and benefit of having these front and center is huge.

To add the feature to your own dock, simply past the following line into your terminal (/applications/utilities) and when you press enter your dock will restart with a new stack available for your use.

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’ ; killall Dock

Simlpe, easy and so helpful.

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Not sure what this means for the long haul, but it does not appear that Verizon Wireless is being too quick to respond to this problem or the mounting frustration of their users. For many, myself included, the loss of any service above 1xRTT started yesterday evening – not this morning – and it took this long for Verizon to even acknowledge as more than a “just restart your phone” answer from #611.

On a positive note, reviewing the news, this outage marks the first major issue for Verizon’s LTE network. From my perspective it’s the first hiccup and hopefully one that will be short lived. Even at that, it’s worth it for the speed and performance (if not battery life) that I have been getting with my HTC Thunderbolt on the Verizon San Francisco Bay Area 4G LTE network.

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As someone that’s been back and forth with Flip over the years, this isn’t a surprising move to me, although I would have expected Cisco to try and sell the line before shedding it off into oblivion. Knowing my parents (and other people just like them), it just seems like there’s some life left there for people that aren’t ready to carry around a $500 phone. Apparently Cisco doesn’t see it that way, or the sale price wouldn’t be worth losing the long-term potential of reviving this brand.

Lot of other stuff going on at Cisco, most of it about saving money in hopes of reviving this former Wall Street darling, but I suspect that most of it will simply eliminate a free-fall and not change the direction of most high-tech companies. In my humble opinion, Cisco needs to beg, borrow, buy, or steal some revolutionary technology to enhance their bottom line and bring back the growth that made Cisco so popular.

More information at Cisco.com.

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