That annoying issue where iPhone sync would fail for Windows 7 users with Intel P55 Express chipsets? Gigabyte has issued a beta BIOS update for their motherboards that should fix things right up.

Asus and MSI, which also use the P55 express on their motherboards, haven’t issued any updates yet, but hopefully will soon.

If you’re rocking the Gigabyte and do the update, let us know how it works for you.

[PCWorld via Gizmodo]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Busted Windows 7 + Intel P55 Express iPhone Sync Fixed for Gigabyte Motherboards — Asus and MSI Pending

A few days ago we mentioned issues users were reporting about iPhone Sync being busted on Windows 7 with Intel P55 express chipset. Microsoft said they were looking into it, but now Intel has issued a statement. CNet has the quote and the background:

“Our leading theory is a BIOS or system configuration issue, but we are still investigating,” Intel said Monday. The BIOS, or basic input/output system, is the initial code that runs when a PC is powered on. The BIOS identifies and initializes system devices such as the chipset, graphics card, and hard disk drive. Makers of PC circuit boards, aka motherboards, typically offer their own BIOS.

Again, we’re guessing users are less interested in what’s to blame, and more interested in getting things working again. So, while everyone investigates, check out the link at the top for some potential work-arounds, and let us know if you get up and running or are still having problems.

[CNet via iLounge]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Intel Responds to Busted iPhone Sync on Windows 7 with P55 Express Chipset

According to The Register, if you’re running Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows 7, and your PC has an Intel P55 Express chipset, you’re in for a world of iPhone sync hurt:

For the past six weeks, complaints from users running this trifecta of pain have been clogging a thread on Apple’s discussion board. The posts report that – in most cases – iTunes 9 for Windows will recognize the iPhone, but when a sync is attempted, users are greeted with a cryptic “error 0xE8000065″ – an iPhone-connection failure notification.

While not the oldest or most common chipset, and thus not likely to affect a huge swathe of users, those with problems just want them fixed. Microsoft is doing their… um… investigating:

Microsoft has not seen this particular question posed in the Microsoft Answers for Windows 7 community forum, nor in any of our call centers. We reviewed the issue raised on the Apple Discussion Board and are currently investigating. If we determine this to be a problem specific to Windows 7, we will post an update on the Microsoft Answers site.”

In the mean time, here’s what’s worked for some:

• A USB port on a USB card not part of the P55
• deleting the iPodDevices.xml file from C:\Users username\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\iTunes
• disabling Bonjour
• turning on C-state capability in BIOS

If you’re having this problem, and if any of these or other fixes work for you, let us know!

[Register via Engadget]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Sync Busted on Windows 7 with Intel P55 Chipset

Today’s the day — Microsoft is officially launching Windows 7! If you’ve been using the beta and release candidate for a almost a year already, then maybe today will be just another day. If, however, you’ve just received your party pack, or upgrade box, or just bought a shiny new machine and your next step is to figure out how to move all your iPhone content over — well, we have a fresh new iPhone Help Forum thread for you!

Whether you’re a newcomer to Windows 7 and/or the iPhone looking to fix a problem, or a seasoned Microsoft Guru with iPhone already sorted and willing to help, head on over and let us know your issues and your advice.

Have fun and happy launch day!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Windows 7 and the iPhone — Help and How-To!

Our sibling site, WMExperts.com is doing their part to balance TiPb’s Apple-centricity with a reminder that Microsoft Windows 7 launches tomorrow. However, since most iPhone and iPod touch users are also Windows users, TiPb’s fully on board this new release train as well.

I’ve been using Windows 7 since the beta, and have ordered but not yet received my upgrade licenses (oh, hai Amazon!). Not to get all Mossberg’y, but I’ve found it to be solid, stable, and yes — compatible. However, I liked Vista, so something that sought to make Vista better… it had me from announcement.

Those worried that there might be issues with Windows 7, it looks like both Apple and Microsoft have done everything they needed to do to make sure users would have no problems for iPhone, iPod touch, MobileMe, and/or iTunes 9 users. If you do experience any trouble, hit up TiPb’s iPhone Forums and we’ll be happy to trouble shoot with you.

For now, we’re just curious how many of you plan to upgrade?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Windows 7 Launches Tomorrow, Which iPhone Users are Making the Upgrade?

Attention iPhone users on Microsoft Windows, Apple’s MobileMe News “blog” has announced an update to the MobileMe Control Panel:

With the new MobileMe Control Panel for Windows version 1.5 you can assign your primary MobileMe calendar to sync with the default calendar in Microsoft Outlook. Any other MobileMe calendars you have will continue to sync with Outlook and appear as separate calendars. The new control panel also delivers improvements for syncing bookmarks between Internet Explorer and Safari, and provides compatibility with Windows 7.

iTunes 9 will install the new control panel automagically for current users. For new users, Apple provides separate install instructions.

Let us know how it works for you!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Releases MobileMe Control Panel for Windows 1.5 with Improved Calendar and Bookmark Sync, Windows 7 Support

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: Windows Se7en, Great Googley Android, India’s circling the RIM, the Treo 800w guest commentary, and no other news on Safari for Samsung…

Windows Se7en

Microsoft is still the only real game on the planet, especially when it comes to business, what with their whopping 90%+ share of the market. And as Bill Gates rides off into retirement, he can be justifiably proud at how close he came to his dream of a computer on every desktop and in every home. In that light, his swan song with longtime crony and internet “monkeyboy” dance phenom Steve Ballmer at the “D” All Things Digital was particularly poignant this year, especially given that they chose to use the event to showcase their next generation OS to the public for the very first time.

What groundbreaking new features did they show off? What killer new technology was highlighted? Was it WinFS, the revolutionary all-registry all-the-time file system they’ve been promising since the code-name “Cairo” vaporware of yore? Was it MinWin, the ultra-small, ultra-modular kernel that will return some long absent agility to the platform? Was it a complete revamp of the horrible mishmash that passes for an API stack, cleansing 8-bit fossils and 16-bit artifacts, providing something uniform for the 64-bit future? Was it a renewed focus on their core business users, streamlining bloat and minimizing eye candy in favor of virtualized compatibility and blazingly fast architectures moving forward?

Nah uh.

It was 10 finger multi-touch paint. 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint! Are you kidding me?! From the team that brought us the big @$$ table, we get nothing of the future promised us for decades by Microsoft, nothing by way of making up for the titanic PR disaster that has been Vista, nothing that may convince consumers who are routing towards the Mac in ever increasing droves, and businesses who are stubbornly clinging to the terribly outdated XP or jurassic 2000, to hold out for a better tomorrow. No. We get 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint and yet another in the endless string of failed Gatesian prognostications about interfaces, inks, and whatever else makes him think tablets have been a booming success for over a decade. (Word to Bill – the only thing even remotely resembling a tablet that’s even approached a modicum of cultural penetration is — wait for it — the iPhone, and it wasn’t made by Microsoft).

But what does Windows Se7en have to do with Smartphones, you may ask? (After all, WMExperts.com thought it barely worth a mock-mention). Unlike Apple, aren’t Microsoft’s mobile offerings similar only in that both have the word “Windows” grafted in front of them? Nope. They’re also similar in terms of the minds driving them, the vision of the future those minds have, and the experience those visions seek to bring to us, the end users.

And right now both Windows Se7en and WinMob Se7en are driven by minds so drunk off their collectives posteriors that their futuristic visions are entirely consumer by 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint.

Great Google-y Moogley: Android Gets Slightly Less Vapory!

Microsoft loses money on search, which is pretty much just a way to glue eyeballs to pages so said eyeballs can be blinded by flashing neon “hit the bouncing monkey!” banners. By contrast, Google’s bouncing monkey banners net them somewhere near 8 kazillion dollars a year. Likewise, while Microsoft’s busy showing off a 2010 desktop OS that really, truly hopes to be competitive with Apple’s 2007 mobile OS, Google is readying an iClone that may just ship this year!

Confession: We thought the Google Android demo was right skippy. Caveat: We though the exact same thing when Steve Jobs did it at Macworld 2007.

Memo to Google: We know your CEO, Dr. Evil… er… Eric sits on the Apple board of directors. We’ve heard he recuses himself from iPhone discussions to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Here’s a thought: how about avoiding the reality of one as well?

Apple is all about the paradigm shift. The command-line in your home with the Apple II. The GUI on your desktop with the Mac. Multi-touch in your hand with the iPhone. It’s what Apple does. The gloss, the shine — the boom.

You need to embrace what Google does. All white screens with nothing but search boxes. That’s what Google does. Forget about the overcrowded iClone market and embrace that. That’s your niche. That’s your Zen.

Circling the RIM: India’s Never-Ending Ultimatum

Yeah, we thought this had been resolved too. Seems India’s still demanding and RIM is still claiming it has a headache. Or whatever. Crackberry.com somehow retains the energy and interest to cover it. We just can’t stop snickering over the fact that it’s the Network Operations Center (NOC), pusher of all pushers, single-point-of-snooping, that let’s India push RIM so hard to begin with.

Big brother FTW!

So You Think You Can Smartphone?

Okay, so we’ve been giving the Treo 600… er… 800w a bit of a hard time around here. Fair point. Certainly opinions must vary, and much like we had special guest quotes from Windows Super Siter Paul Thurrott a few posts back, in the spirit of equal time we turn this segment over to TreoCentral uber-editor Dieter Bohn. Go ahead, boss. Tell us all how great the 600 v3 is:

Look at it. It looks cheap. It looks cheap. I’m like secretly hoping that this isn’t the final casing. That they have a secret casing and this is just the stuff they’re sending out to the beta testers. [...] It doesn’t look professional. I mean recessed screens are so 2003. Whatever. Right? [...] The way it’s recessed looks chintzy. The soft buttons underneath the screen are just sort of randomly there. Nothing about it speaks like… It doesn’t speak like… to being solid or futuristic. [...] A business phone should project an aura of power. [...] This is just not good looking. I’ve been saying for a long time now that this is the year you’ve got to cut Palm a ton of slack, and I’ve been cutting Palm a ton of slack, but this looks like cr@p. [...] It does not look great. This needs to look great. They should have one great phone this year and this does not look great. This looks the opposite of great. [...] I tell you what, [when This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude put up an image of the Treo 600 as the Treo 800w] I didn’t notice. Somebody had to point out the joke to me.

Score!

For those truly interested in the complete, uncensored, Treo 800w curbing, check out the podcast (spoiler: in the name of all things merciful and nostalgic, Mike pulls Dieter off and holds him at bay until the Smithsonian can show up and cart off the old girl’s mangled, circuit board-strewn corpse. NOT for the squeamish).

And in No Other News

Speaking of maulings, some Executard or PR flack over at Samsung, in a fit of drunkful-thinking, shot up a release stating the notly anticipated L870 S60 slider (honestly, do they pull these names off of pseudo-random password generators?) would have not just a WebKit browser, but the full on iPhone Mobile Safari king-of-all-mobile browsers. Absent, you know, an OS, UI, or the basic design and engineering skills to support it.

Riiiiiiigggghhhhhttttt…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude, May 31st Edition