Yes, I'm alive. Long story short: I've been too busy at work to be pissed off by anything that I couldn't unload on Facebook... Go figure.

That aside, I thought I'd offer a small Public Service Announcement around the release of iPhone 4S: if you have a Bumper from your AT&T iPhone 4, go buy a new one.

Go on - I'll wait until you're back from the Apple Store before explaining why.

I picked up a Bumper on the day I got my iPhone 4. With the glass front and back, I was tempted to wrap the thing up in bubble wrap - and titanium - but I really like the look of the 4 so I wanted to keep as much of it showing as I could. The bumper was a nice approach since the metal edges would scratch easier than the glass and it would allow heat to escape from the back when playing games... also the Bumper added added minimal depth and weight to it which is important to me. Didn't have to worry about docking it, since the port was exposed, and the rubber edges made it a little easier to hold without worrying about dropping the slippery 4. I also liked the fact that they had real buttons on the edges rather than the customary silicon nipples... full of win.

Then I started using it... and it uncovered one very basic flaw: it was so well designed and fit the phone so perfectly that I often had issues with the headphone jack (deja vu, iPhone 1?) and if I tried to use some of my older iPhone/iPod/iPad cables, they didn't fit through to the port at all... ah well, the Bumper is easy to pop off, right? The downside of that approach is that after a year of that, the thing was getting loose... it happens, but was disappointing.

When the 4S was announced, I noticed that the slot for the mute button on all models had slid down to where the Verizon 4 was... this made the AT&T 4 the odd man out. This also made me glad that I sold my Bumper with my iPhone 4; I would have had to buy a new one anyway, since my v1 Bumper was designed when there was only an AT&T iPhone. Yesterday I wandered into the Apple Store to pick up a new Bumper. I checked with the Blue Shirt that it would fit the new 4S and she was all smiles about that.

And that's the PSA of the post: the new Bumper has been quietly redesigned. Or quietly enough that I didn't care when they did it. Maybe it was done for Verizon's 4 or for the new 4S but either way: they've given the headphone jack some extra space and they've made the bottom port pass through much, much more generous. All of my cables now fit the thing; the only port that's questionable is the cable in my MINI but to be honest, that's way oversized...

Was a nice surprise, is all. Worth buying for the new hardware, but to be honest, I would have put up the $29 for the old 4, had I known.

Yay stuffs.