iphone, i hardly knew yee

well, it was going to happen sooner or later: my iphone is gone. it's been 36 hours now. i'm going to replace it with a 16 gig white, which i never even knew existed until today. look at it. it looks like the white eggplants going in the yard. how long until it gets scuffed up?

so losing my phone this time was different than before. i've lost my phone a few times, but people have always called me when they found it. this time, i knew somebody found it and had no intention of returning it because i called it every so often and it would be turned off for a bit. i doubt i'll get it back, which i'll attribute to it's being an iphone, and not just because it was lost in detroit rather than the suburbs where previous phones had been misplaced.

there is a major flaw in at&t's service, but they have no reason to fix it. when one loses their phone they are responsible for all calls and services used on it. this means it should be reported lost or stolen as soon as possible to avoid trouble. however, at&t seems to have forget that the phone has become a major part of modern life. when you call and report a phone lost, not only to they cut off service to it, but they close your voicemail box and give people that call your number a 'not in service' message. this is amazingly stupid. i'm still paying for my service, and receiving nothing. it would be very easy for them to make the voicemail box accessible over the web, and to allow the my voicemail greeting to be changed to explain why i'm not answering. one should be able to view there missed call log and text messages as well.

even better: my iphone, out in the wild, no longer has phone service, but is still quite usable for browsing over wifi, watching movies, or listening to music. it is really frustrating to know that apple or at&t could send it a signal to temporarily 'brick' the phone so that it won't unlock without a pass code that i would have to get from at&t after proving my identity as the phone's rightful owner. it could just display a message saying the phone is lost and can be turned into any at&t store for a reward, which i could set the amount of. it could also display what number is best to try and reach me at, so i could come and get it.

the best part: the iphone practically has lojack. it has gps. it can be turned on to record voices over the network. it could automatically take photos. being able to use these features to help customers would not lead to privacy violations, as the government or hackers could do it anyways, without my permission. we all know the phone companies let the government to what ever they want anyways. why not let me get my phone back?

UPDATE: while, i ended up doing exactly what they wanted me to and buying a new iphone, but this time in white! (still pissed)