These Verizon ads are borderline false advertising.

I am a current Verizon customer with a Blackberry 8830 world edition. This weekend I drove back an forth from San Diego to Tucson along Interstate 8. according to these maps ads, Verizon has 3G coverage the whole way. Lies.

The drive is 6 hours each way. I had no signal for 5 1/2 of the 6 hours. Not just 3G, no signal at all!

I have heard fr years how great Verizon's network is, which is why I chose them in the first place. But I have gone through 3 phones and have had constant problems with dropped calls an poor coverage all over southern CA.

When I travel outside the country, my 'world edition' phone is next to useless. I have to buy a different pre-paid SIM card in every country and end up with unused minutes on every one, and I have to send my temporary phone numbers to people in the states so they can reach me.

My brother has a ATT phone an his US number works in every country around the world. He never has to deal with the BS I do with my Verizon phone.

And the inability to pull up a email while I'm talking on the phone is ridiculous in this day and age. Everytime I end a call my Verizon phone beeps out of control with all the emails and messages I missed while talking on the phone. If I need to pull up Goigle maps while talking on the phone getting directions from a customer, forget it. I have to manually write down the directions then google it after I hang up. Give me a break.

I can't wait for my contract to end. I'm bolting to a GSM carrier the first chance I get!

This is not as easy as it sounds.

In other countries, every carrier operates the same GSM network on the same bands. (900/1800/2100) So they existing iphone hardware can be opened up to multiple carriers in a country no problem.

In the US, all 4 major carriers operate a different setup from each other. So the existing iphone is a GSM version running the world bands listed above with 850/1900 added for ATT.

Tmobile is the only other GSM carrier in the US, but they use the 1700 band for 3G, which the current iphone does not have. Verizon and Sprint are even bigger problems as they run CDMA networks.

So in order for Apple to get a iphone on other US carriers, it has to manufacture another set of hardware specs in the phone. A Tmobile version would be easiest since they could use the existing GSM iphone 3GS and just add a 1700 band to the setup. But Tmobile is also the smallest of the US carriers.

Verizon is not helping it's cause with the iphone bashing, and the Verizon CEO reportedly laughed at Steve Jobs when he approached them about possibly carrying the first iphone with the now defunct profit sharing plan. So there is some bad blood there.

But let's say Steve and Apple can look past Verizon's insults and are still willing to make a Verizon capable iphone. The problem is that Verizon has already announced they are moving to LTE (which ATT and the rest of the world will also run) for their 4G network, and that they'd be rolling it out starting in 2010. So why would Apple want to invest money in a CDMA version of their phone right now? A CDMA version would carry a lower profit margin since they couldn't buy as large of quantities of discount CDMA chips as they can GSM chips.

So why not wait until late 2010 and then come out with a iphone 4G that supports worldwide LTE networks? That way Apple still only has to manufacture one version of the iphone and it will run on 3 of the 4 US carriers, as well as the rest of the world's networks.

Sprint is pretty much out of luck since they chose to go with WiMax for 4G.

So yes, it's frustrating that other countries get multiple carrier choices now. But that's not necessarily Apple's fault. If the US standardized it's carriers the way Europe and Asia did, we wouldn't have this problem. The iphone will eventually be on other US carriers, but it will probably only happen once Apple comes out with a new hardware version of the iphone, and that's not likely until summer 2010 at the earliest.

Why would I want a CDMA phone that doesn't work anywhere else in the world?

Call me when the GSM Pre is available in America. I'll start caring about Verizon when they light up LTE and gets on a worldwide standard.

The Note2Self app does the voice & email & gps even easier.

I can't believe you skipped the Wall Street Journal News app!

I used to use teh USA Today app, but switched when WSJ's came out.

It's cleaner than USA Todays, and has more real news. 1/2 of what's in USA Today is sports and Hollywood 'news', and the News and Money tabs have only a few more categories.

WSJ has FAR more news from every possible category in Business, Politics, Economy, Technology, World news, and everything in between. they don't have the cool slider bar, but you can customize your favorite categopries as tabs at the bottom, so you can actually access them in 1 tap, not 2 like USA Today's. And if you want to jump to a section you do not have set up in your tabs, you just tap 'More' and then the category. Still only 2 taps, just like USA Today's.

USA Today has all the color coordinated sections just like their newspaper does, and the WSJ app is all black. So if you're more into looks than content, the USA Today app might be your thing. But if you want the best access to News, it's hard to beat the WSJ app.

Huh? MacBook works with my Maxtor external USB drive just fine.

This is useless in the US, in my opinion.

For all the reasons you mention... it can't run on Verizon or Sprint anyway, so unlocking only gives you access to Tmobile here in the US. But the iphone has no 1700 mhz radio, which is what Tmobile uses in the US for 3G. So it will max out at Edge speeds on Tmobile. Who wants that?

Unfortunately, we are stuck with AT&T for any 3G use in the US unless Apple comes out with a iphone that has a 1700 mhz radio or an LTE iphone that will run on Verizon's 4G network. But neither will happen until 2010 at the earliest.

So unlocking your iphone is really only useful if you travel to Europe or Asia and want to use a pre-paid SIM instead of pay AT&T's international roaming rates.

However, the jailbreaking part is still very useful. I love my Itelliscreen app!

Hmm, that's strange. I use a Windows PC and Outlook notes, and it syncs through iTunes to my iphone just fine.

All I did was click the checkbox and click Apply, and everything loaded. So if yours is greyed out, something is wrong. I'd call Apple support.

You can do this directly in iTunes as well. You don't have to go to iSync.

So for Windows users without iSync, it can still be edited.

I still prefer Midomi.

It's also been updated a bunch, and also includes GPS and Twitter features, as well as Facebook.

But even better, it also let's you search for songs in other ways than just listening to it.

Midomi amazingly let's you hum or sing a song yourself, and it will almost always still find it! It also let's you type in a keyword, artist, lyric, etc and will do a search. All of these are great when you are trying to think 'who sings that song that goes like this...' ?

Much more flexible that limiting you to only find the song while it's playing over some speakers.

Plus, Midomi has been doing a ton of search optimizations. So the app runs about 4 times faster than it use to in finding songs, and runs much faster than Shazam now. In fact, it's so much faster and offers so many features, I finally stopped using Shazam at all and deleted it from my iPhone.

If you haven't given Midomi a try, you should.