Moving my old phone numbers to the iPhone

iPhone 3GS what is in the Box

Here is a photo of what is inside the Apple 3GS box.  On top in a plastic tray is the phone itself, the tray has a hole so it is easy to remove.  Below the tray is the folder with the quick start instruction and a thing to remove the SIM card.  This folder has a tab making it really easy to lift out.  Below this folder is the connecting cord, the power adapter and the ear buds.

I am now just over an hour since the iPhone arrived.  I had to call At&T support to get it activated – it was quick and painless and actually fun.  These are words I rarely use when I have to call any support service.

The iPhone is receiving and sending calls, now comes the part I had been really dreading.  The main reason I had not upgraded my old cell phone in a number of years is the phone numbers I have stored there.  There is no way to connect my old phone to a computer to pull out the names and phone numbers.  Plus I already knew that At&T had no way to connect to my old phone and of course my old carrier Sprint would not port the numbers for me.

It appears it is time to begin to learn the touch pad works on the iPhone.  Pulled up the contacts menu.  Apple must spend a lot of time on their user interfaces,  the contacts menu and the ability to type things in “just works”.  There is nothing complicated at all.   Putting in a phone number and name is amazingly straight forward.  Adding numbers to my old cell phone was a pain, several different menus to even get there.   I added two names and numbers and while Apple has made this really easy to do it was obvious that entering over 200 numbers was not the way to do this.

I have a Mac Pro and it has a contact program in the dock time to take a look at it.  I normally do not use contact programs on my computers, the others are all PCs and I already know how difficult it is to use Outlook.  I have my customer list on Outlook on the PC.  I have to go back to my Office for Dummies book every time I use Outlook.  So I opened the contact program on the Mac, and started to type in names and numbers from my old phones directory.  It went well, typical of Apple this program just “works” exactly like one would think it would.  About an hour later I had all of my contacts typed into the Mac contact program, main numbers, cell numbers, all of the really important stuff I had on my old cell phone.

I have a Mobile Me account with Apple, I got it when I got my Mac Pro, I had never used it or even looked at it but I had read the iPhone could “synch” with Mobile Me.  I did watch the Mobile Me tutorials on the Apple site.  Turned it on and uploaded the information from the Mac.  I turned on the WiFi on the iPhone, entered the security codes for my network here at the store and synched the iPhone with Mobile Me.  Within minutes all of my phone numbers from my old phone were now in my iPhone.  There were a number of surprises – all good – the Mac could “see” the iPhone on my network, the Mac picked up the two names and addresses I had put on the iPhone and the most amazing thing is the iPhone had my Mac bookmarks and a lot of other things.

The truly interesting thing is at this point I have not hooked up the iPhone to a computer at all.  Every thing is happening by using Mobile Me on my Mac and the iPhone.  I have had  a Mobile Me account for more than a year and never attempted to use it.

Tags: 3GS, Contacts, iPhone, MAC Pro, Mobile Me