Well, for me, I'm a teacher and I'm out for the summer, so I have jack **** to do. Maybe there was an inkling of hope that it is better than the usual stock experience. And I just had to satisfy my curiosity bug. Is this a problem?
---------- Post added at 01:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:27 PM ----------
Don't put it in recovery. I tried it, didn't work. It has to be in download mode. I just unplugged it and put it in DL mode and it went fine.
Yeah, I realized when I read through the instructions from Kies, that it actually meant download, even though it said recovery.
Also, this appears to be a "firmware emergency recovery", which I take to mean that it will wipe /data, so any apps and settings will likely get completely wiped out. I'm guessing it won't/can't touch the SD card or the USB storage, but we'll see.
It took a long time to download, decrypt, decompress, etc., and now it's finally done, and I'm doing the intial setup.
And, to reply to the question of why use Kies when we can already get it from the Development forum, brick free? Because this is the officially supported software. If AT&T/Samsung brick our phone, they can fix or replace it. If I brick my phone, I'm hosed. You can say that the XDA version is guaranteed not to brick my phone, but a guarantee actually implies that if something does go wrong, it can be fixed by the person who provides the guarantee. XDA can't do that, AT&T can.
I've flashed plenty of CM9 nightlies, AOKP, UnNamed ROM, etc., and restored to stock several times, I'm not really afraid of any of it, but since this is all a brand new firmware, and I'm getting the official AT&T release, I may as well get it from the official channels, with the official kernel intact. I'll root it and mess around with it later.