After returning from vacation last week, I noticed that a portion of the screen on my iPhone was not responding to touch. It covered the whole width of the screen, but less then a quarter of the screen height. It made certain funcitons impossible, like starting apps that were in the second row of the home screen.

I tried a number of things in an attempt to resolve the problem (including reseting and restoring), but couldn’t fix it. It was obviously a hardware problem. As a last resort I asked Apple for help. Using their online support tool was super easy, and I was actually able to have them call me! This was perfect considering I was unable to dial the top row of numbers on the phone keypad.

The Apple Support Rep was awesome. He was extremely knowledgeable, and was even in the US. Right away he apologized for my problems and told me they were going to make it right. Even though my phone was 100 and some odd days out of warranty, they were going to replace it for me. The only catch was that I’d have to wait about 5-7 days until they got my phone and shipped me another. This wasn’t a great option for me, since my mobile is my only phone. It turns out that for only $29 Apple was willing to rush me a new phone, as long as I shipped mine to them afterward.

Within 2 days I had my new phone (potentially refurbished internals, but looked brand new). The packaging was awesome, nothing short of what I’d expect from a new Apple product. It even contained the packing tape needed to seal up my broken phone in the same box. I also got the special SIM card removal tool – a pseudo paperclip.

This experience was awesome, and definitely the best that I’ve had with a technology company. I’ve also had a great look at a refurbished Apple product and am very impressed. I’m now definitely leaning towards a Macbook for my new laptop. I may even get a refurbished one with AppleCare.

Thank you, Apple!

This question came up during a discussion a few days ago and I felt compelled to find the answer. Apple included the ability to remotely wipe an iPhone when they released version 2.0 with Exchange support. They also gave the ability to force the use of a passcode lock. But does that mean your corporate data is secure?

Each time a user syncs their iPhone with iTunes, the contents of the device are backed up onto their computer’s hard drive, in which your employer’s IT department has no control over. This means that someone could potentially obtain this data from their computer, which may not be password protected, encrypted, or have basic security controls like patch compliance or a firewall.

I wanted to dig into the backed up content to see what was hidden there for an “attacker” to find. I used a tool called the iPhone Backup Extractor. It allows you to extract the backup data for specific iPhone applications. For this topic, I was only interested in the Mail and Calendar apps, since that’s all I sync with my employer’s Exchange server. The data for the default Apple applications was all located under the application “Other”. To my surprise there was no information stored in the Mail folder other than some configuration information. This, at least, is excellent news.

However, inside the Calender folder I found a SQLite database file. I simply opened it up with a text editor to see what was easily visible. Right away I noticed information that was obviously from appointments on my work calendar. Since I only used a text editor, I was unable to determine if any attachments were included in the backup.

It appears that the answer to the question above is yes, however this would depend if there is any sensitive information in the synced calendar (and potentially contacts, since I didn’t evaluate it). One problem here is that in the event of a lost or compromised personal computer, the employer’s IT department probably wouldn’t be informed, and would have a hard time determining what was in the backup.

This entire post, with the exception of adding the hyperlink, was created with WordPress for iPhone. The photo feature is very nice, allowing you to add photos from your Photo Library or take new ones.

This is precisely what I have wanted, and I think it will greatly increase my number of posts. Even if I want to do some touch-ups from a desktop browser before I publish a post, it will be waiting for me as a draft.

UPDATE: I also discovered that it has a helpful recovery feature that can recover changes to a post that were not uploaded/saved properly before the application was closed.