December 2009:
Rick and I have been having some fun sending iPhone photos back and forth. Just stupid things. My breakfast. His grapes. My coffee. His newspaper. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But fun.
I was reading some on my iPhone and wanted to forward it to my other email account. When I did, the forwarded email would sometimes include the photo and sometimes not.
I configured a second SMTP account into my iPhone and sent them via that account. No difference. I sent them to my different email accounts to see if the receiver was messing them up. Nope. Then some came through with the photo. Then some did not. Then one did. Then they did not.
I called Apple support (or rather I submitted a call via the web site and they called me) and spent two hours on the phone with them. I spoke with two front line reps and finally with one second line product specialist. Each person was nice, listened to my problem, and did NOT read from a script. They understood the troubleshooting work I had already done and suggested new things to try. We sent email tests back and forth to each other to demonstrate the problem to them.
In the end, Apple noted that it does seem to be a problem. He had no solution to offer. We think we found a workaround...
When you forward an email with a photo, you must copy and paste the image back into the forwarded email. Steps:
1. Select email
2. Tap image in email. Tap copy.
3. Select to forward the email.
4. In the new email drop your cursor in the body of the email. Then touch and hold until the Paste option comes up.
5. Tap to paste.
How could they not know about this bug? The Apple rep assured me he will submit a bug to the development team. I hope we get a fix soon.
Jim Schrempp is a sometimes freelance writer (only Vanity Press will publish his work) living in Saratoga, California. His writings have appeared on numerous pages on his own web site. The opinions expressed in this piece are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of anyone else (although Jim wishes more people shared his opinions)