Apple/itunes/iphone - fantastic when it works, horrific when it doesn't

Update: DO NOT DO THIS! This process kept the photos, but lost the music :(

My wife's laptop crashed so we found a spare computer for her. Being the optimistic sort I installed itunes and plugged in her iphone thinking "it will just copy the music/photo collection from the iphone". Does it my rear end!

I cannot believe Apple make it so hard, Apple make it impossible - there is just no way to update your computer from your iphone. Syncing offers to wipe out your iphone! How hard can it be! I am just speechless.

At least there is no way to do it *officially*.

Long story short you need to:

- use itunes to backup the iphone (it will do this even if you haven't synced it - right click on the phone under devices and choose "Back Up") - jailbreak your iphone (which luckily I had done on a previous iphone) - install ftp - copy all the data manually onto the new computer - sync

Lame lame lame.

And yes, jailbreaking does prevent the iphone being upgraded to v3.0 when it rolls out, but I don't really care because co-incidentally a shiny new one will be arriving tomorrow courtesy of the fact it was dropped last week and the 7 or 8£ a month I pay to o2 insurance :)

NO! O2 - I (might) hate you!

I love the iphone.  Yeah, I know, sad but true.  I purchased the first generation, and then the iphone3g when it came.  I also bought one for my wife.

I didn't mind paying the mega bucks as I knew that early adopters usually got the chance to upgrade to the next gen.  Not so with the iphone 3G S it appears, at least not according to <a href="http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2009/06/09/o2-customers-furious-at-iphone-3g-s-upgrade-costs/">this link</a>.

Really?  Are O2 that short sighted - I won't be upgrading on principal (I don't really need the new model, just the new OS), so what incentive is there for me to spend mega bucks? 

O2 really need to understand that people like me don't mind spending money, we do mind not feeling special.  I just want to know that I am getting some sort of loyalty discount.

The <a href="http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/paymonth.html">pay monthly cost</a> has also increased - I pay ~£35/month and didn't pay for my handset, now for the same monthly cost I will need to spend an extra £184.98!!!  OK, the disk space has doubled, but I don't need any more disk space!

Sigh.

When the iphone came out it was exciting for two reasons:

 - it was a fantastic piece of kit in itself (both the hardware and OS).  It was a paradigm shift from a phone with a few extra apps to a mini computer with a phone
 - it set a new level for the competition

I would hope the competition has had time to react and respond with alternatives.  Maybe I will start checking them out.

Apache Tomcat service fails if running on a 64bit JVM

Our deployment platform is Windows 200x, 64 bit. Don't ask why - I too am a Linux fan boy. Anyway, installing tomcat as a service works, but trying to start said service fails. Turns out that unless you want to jump through a few hoops you need to install the 32bit JDK. (don't forget to update the windows environment variable and then open a new console to pick up the new environment variable ;))