The media’s obsessive iPhone frenzy has practically driven me to tears, so accounts like this are like sweet nectar.
Going through the steps, I’m told that I can’t use my current AT&T number because it’s a “business account.” (I think all that means is that the name MacSlash is on the bill.) It’s got a regular consumer plan, and I don’t get any special “business” treatment from them.
Instead of activating the phone, I’m directed to this clusterfuck FAQ at AT&T’s website. It is the most god-awful, horribly written, techno-jumbled business speak I’ve ever read anywhere in my entire life.
[…] The representative who transferred me to the “business management” number said that hold times might be a little longer than 10 minutes, but because of the volume of calls, they weren’t allowed to give out the actual number to the number I was being transferred to. Now that’s customer service.What annoys me most of all is that Apple apparently gave in to AT&T’s demands to completely break the iPhone unless it’s activated, so here I am left with a $600 911 Dialer to play with until AT&T removes it’s head from the ass and figures out how to let customers activate their phones.
Update: 2:30 AM. After 2 1/2 hours on hold, I finally talked to a woman who informed me that there was pretty much nothing that could be done tonight and I should call back during regular business hours. Awesome. I’m going to bed. The iBrick will be there in the morning, I guess and I can start all over again with AT&T.
As far as I can tell this story is mostly about AT&T reaching out and punching Apple’s key opinionmaking clientele in the nuts. Apple focuses so strongly on branding that you have to assume events like this will make them leery of partnering with a third party again.
Separating the product from the service, Walt Mossberg (AKA Yoda) says that the phone itself is a genre-redefining breakthrough on the order of the original iPod. I really hope not, and not only because it will make people like me who own the cheapest, simplest phone available look further like neanderthals. It also means that the “smartphone” market will quickly narrow to the Apple juggernaut and a small passel of half-baked wannabe Apple products that no respectable third party makes any accessories for.
Concentrating the smartphone market around Apple strikes me as dangerous for a few important reasons. First, the iPhone is not designed to be a business product. It has weak firewall protections and people who carelessly leave their bluetooth active will be ludicrously vulnerable to easily written malicious code. Unlike computers smartphones come with an automatic billing system, so you can (for example) write a short code that makes the phone keep dialing an expensive toll number until the owner discovers the problem and turns it off. This has already been done in Russia, although for some reason I can’t find online the article where I originally read it (it was in Technology Review).
Virus writers love a code monoculture, which (among other reasons) explains why Microsoft draws bugs like a week-old deer carcass. Add to that the phone’s admittedly weak security features and you have a potentially very big problem. The answer, Apple claims, is don’t use the phone for business. Who are they kidding? Every office has dozens of hypercompetitive gadget geeks who compulsively buy the newest and best whateveritis. Telling people not to use the iPhone for business is like selling the coolest BMX on Earth and telling kids that they should only ride it to school. In the opinion of this tech grouch we should all hope for more crippling carrier screwups to keep Apple’s crappier competitors competitive.
Bubblegum Tate
You think you’ve got it bad? I work for an IT news website…the past couple weeks have been nonstop iPhone crap. I’m so fucking sick of that thing. Hell, I was sick of it before it even came out.
ThymeZone
I’m terrifyingly geekish, and keep it under wraps for reasons of anonymity here. But ….
I will someday have an iPhone, after the price comes way down (I’m cheap) and the feature deficiencies have been addressed (the ATT data network is slow, etc).
This phone is the future of handheld devices, probably the electronic gadget of the decade. Like 911, it changes everything. Heh, kidding about 911, but not the phone.
But my main comment here, as a true geek of long standing, is that so much e-commerce software is crap, one is not surprised that some of that has found its way into this story. By crap, I mean unmitigated crap that would never be tolerated at all except in the context of high tech. If somebody put that kind of crap in your car, or in your lawn mower, you’d throw a fit. But in e-tech, we put up with the most hideous shit for products and just don’t say anything. We are pathetic. (I am talking, of course, about the customer service stuff mentioned in the cited article). the iPhone itself is a jewel, but if you hang it on an infrastructure of typical e-tech software, you may end up calling the iBrick like this guy did. That’s how shitty software ruins our day. And …. it’s everywhere. And by that I mean, everywhere.
Zifnab
Yes. I may be young, but I’m not so young that I’ve missed the last 20 years of “latest new thing… with bugs!” I didn’t get Win98, I got Win98:SE. I don’t buy a video game till it’s been vetted for a few months (unless it’s Final Fantasy, in which case I’m practically creaming my jeans waiting at 2am for the store to open and to hell with the consequences). And I sure as fuck don’t buy a “revolutionary, new” hardware anything until they’ve had at least one major firmware upgrade.
However, I imagine Steve Jobs is having one of his legendary screaming fits about now with whomever he can get his larynx in range of. Apple products only sell because we have a culture of technophile-wannabes who seem unable to handle more than one mouse-button and are too ignorant to flip out a RAM stick. If the iPhone suddenly develops the dreaded stigma of “difficult to use”, you’ve killed 90% of Apple’s market right there. For a company that’s billed itself as the “Microsoft killer”, Apple won’t do itself any favors by coming across as just as annoying as Microsoft. I doubt many of the iPhone clients can clearly distinguish between hardware incompetence and AT&T networking incompetence.
demimondian
IT news site? That’s nothing — I work for Gollum, BT. There were people posting to the office internal “misc” lists on Friday enumerating their places in line.
[head-desk impact]
The Other Steve
No offense about how the iPhone is going to revolutionize the world… and yes, the touch screen is really cool.
But I think within a few weeks we are going to be hearing more and more complaints about how hard it is to type a message, or even just dial a phone number.
Why? Because tactile sensation is important.
The iPhone reminds me of digital speedometers in cars, and up/down buttons for volume control on radios. Yeah, it’s cool that we can now do it, but that doesn’t mean you want to do it.
I only say this, because a friend of mine about two years back bought a touchscreen phone like this. He said it was impossible to dial a phone number without using two hands and looking directly at the screen.
I think Microsoft is on a better track in terms of using this new style of touchscreen for computing, with their Surface experiment.
The Other Steve
Internal “misc” lists?
Man, aren’t you guys like down with twitter yet?
Ned Raggett
Yup, right there with you. Buying one of these things first out of the gate was always for suckers. But I do want one or something like it (I have however been a Mac loyalist for twenty years so there’s that — the trick is always wait for at least second generation if not later, and then you’re set very nicely).
Dave
Me too and I agree. Let others be the public beta testers!
Tim, I don’t see people abandoning their BlackBerry’s for the iPhone. I think there is room for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and the iPhone.
Dave
Also note that the iPhone only supports EDGE networking, not 3G (which AT&T has). So the slow down is in the phone, not the network.
Given Apple has been touting the web capabilities of this phone, I find that a huge glaring omission.
Bubblegum Tate
Gollum? Yikes. My sympathies to you, demi.
demimondian
I confess that once MacBook Pros support the multitouch funcitonality, I’ll be inclined to upgrade my current titanium beast (yes, I have a Mac). Otherwise, I’ll move to a Linux laptop.
demimondian
Hey, it’s a significant reduction of evil from my *last* employer.
Wilfred
Some people are a bit more worried about organic handheld devices:
ThymeZone
Good point, but the good news is, it’s easily fixed. One also wonders if they aren’t trying to push the user towards WiFi, since the thing handles WiFi and it’s faster.
Of course the whole idea of divide and conquer broadband access is nutty to me. Dialtone is now ubiquitous, we pay for use. Broadband must become ubiquitous and cheap too, or else the thing never reaches its potential. Where the hell is WiMax? Is the US going to become the last bastion of lousy broadband access, as it is to lousy health care for the middle class? Just wondering.
I recently had an interesting email exchange with some PR guy at Wayport, the firm that handles, for example, McDonalds’ WiFi services. Check their price list lately? It’s grotesque and absurd, people are being asked to pay more for connections at McD than they would pay for their damned food. For the cost of a Wayport “membership” I can Sprint mobile wireless broadband, with its wide swath of connectivity across metro areas, for less money, and get the hardware for free!
Caveat emptor.
Zifnab
Yes, but McDonalds doesn’t exactly see a bunch of middle- to upper-class yuppie businessmen. It caters more to the guy who is willing to spend $5 in gas and $8 in cash to buy the world’s worst plate of breakfast pancakes they could easily have made at home for $1.50
In short, anyone who eats at McDonalds is stupid enough to use McDonalds internet access.
Billy K
“In the opinion of this tech grouch we should all hope for more crippling carrier screwups to keep Apple’s crappier competitors competitive.”
That is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.
How about all the other cellphone makers stepping up the plate and producing a decent product? The reason for all the iPhone Hysteria is that people (rightly) hate their lousy phones. So Apple makes a great product and you wish for them to be hampered so they don’t outdo the companies that can’t compete? (Trying so hard not to make a crack about Chairman Mao or Uncle Joe.)
This is such a stupid statement, my mind is now officially blown.
—-
Zifnab – Apple has never billed themselves as an anything “killer,” especially Microsoft. Did you just make that up?
ThymeZone – they are pushing WiFi usage.
ThymeZone
As a person who lived for years as a single guy eating regularly at fast food places like McD, I am terribly saddened by your remark. As is my cardiologist.
Jimmmmm
Shut the fuck up about cellphones, you assholes.
ThymeZone
Agreed, they are selling “better” and “different,” not killer. And doing it quite well these days. Their stock has gone from the 50’s to 120 recently. That aint too bad.
ThymeZone
Do not hate us for our freedom.
Jake
It bears repeating. I had no interest in the i-Phone aside from thinking it sure was purty because it was brand spanking, boldly go where no man had gone before new. Ergo, it was going to be a bug-riddled nightmare.
I assume the ritual of camping out to purchase a product that is more likely than not be a piece o shit and then bitching when it does indeed turn out to be a pos is a form of masochism. “Oh man it was awesome. I was on hold for ten days and had to eat my own legs to survive!” [shiver]
ThymeZone
Hard to tell when you are kidding around sometimes, but sadly I think you are serious here.
It’s hardly a piece of shit, and I think they will easily sell their target ten million units by the end of 2008. And the era of the true piece of shit celphone, which is basically any celphone you can get at BestBuy, ended on Friday. As of today, the iPhone is the standard of user happiness and interface. Because of our silly preoccupation with the laptop, and the truly POS Palm Pilot model of handheld devices, we’ve ignored the reality that the handheld is the future of computing, and the iPhone is a vision of the future.
Bookmark the post, and come back on Jan 1 2009 and let’s see where we are, okay?
Zifnab
Perhaps you missed the legion of Apple-switch commercials. The ones where Apple brags about being bug-free, glitch-free, faster, and more affordable than its PC counterparts.
Maybe I’m missing the distinction.
Rusty Shackleford
My coworker showed me his iPhone this morning. Very cool. Not that I’m gonna run out and get myself one, but cool nonetheless.
ThymeZone
BMW is a great car, but Ford sells more cars in a day than BMW probably does in a month.
BMW isn’t out to be a Ford or Nissan killer. They’re out to differentiate on quality and performance.
Success doesnt have to be based on selling more units.
Jake
I agree whole-heartedly with the latter statement (see for example the current occupant of the White House) but think it contradicts the former.
Maybe you mean the phone is a good product but AT&T buggered things on their end. Fine. I say the entire thing is a package deal. If it doesn’t work, it’s POS, regardless of the root cause of the glitch. Am I surprised that it has bugs? Nope. Because it’s new and it’s more complex than a stick. I’m not even that surprised that people are suprised that it has bugs. It seems to be a ritual.
“Lookit me, I got Product X and you dooon’t!”
“Oh crap, it doesn’t work!!”
Next year:
“Lookit me, I got Product Y and yoooou dooon’t!”
“Oh crap, it doesn’t work!!”
BLather, rinse, repeat.
Face
Why the fuck does everything Apple put out have to start with an “i”? I’m surprised they didn’t sue Will Smith for “iRobot”.
ThymeZone
Really? Have you looked up the market share represented by 10 million units?
Do, please. If you need help with Google, let us know.
ThymeZone
Really? What percentage of the 500k units sold Friday couldn’t be activated?
What’s the typical activation failure rates for self-activated, similar products?
You are just doing the DougJ thing now, right?
ThymeZone
{ crickets }
In 2005, the US celphone market was right around 2-3 million units a week. Apple apparently plans to sell 10 million in around 18 months.
If the US market is around 3 million a week, and Apple sells 130k a week for 78 weeks, thats …..
sglover
Possibly silly question from somebody who’s vaguely interested in the iPhone, but not enough the follow it much: The gadget is a GSM device, so why is ATT the *only* service provider? T-Mobile runs a GSM network — how come they can’t provide a connection? Is Apple using some kind of “enhanced” (i.e. monopolistic and fucked-up) protocols?
ThymeZone
And let’s see, what is Apple’s share of the PC market?
Hmm, floating in the last couple years around the 4-5 percent mark.
Interesting. Verrry interesting. Jake, did you get that caculation done yet? Do you need help with the math?
demimondian
Actually, TZ, speaking from the perspective of experience in both the mass market software industry and the cell industry, it’s all in the numbers. 10 million units is irrelevant — roughly fifteen times that many Windows Mobile phones will ship this year, and WM is (correctly) considered irrelevant.
The iPhone is a classic example of technophilic masturbation, and nothing more.
ThymeZone
My hunch is that marketing considerations drove these choices.
The Other Steve
I like McDonalds pancakes… actually it’s the only thing I will eat from that place.
ThymeZone
How many years did you work for Microsoft, again?
demimondian
Um, TZ? The relevant figure isn’t the number of phones sold in the US each week — the 10 million figure is, like, you know, world wide? 10 million phones? Dude, please. Your ignorance is showing here. NOBODY cares about 10M phones. Nokia *alone* sells 80-100 Million combined MP3/phones per year, and several times that many “lower end” phones. Samsung, LG…dude, the market is simply vast.
And Apple is irrelevant in it.
The Other Steve
And anybody who is trying to compare BMW’s position in the car market, with Apple’s position in computers has obviously never driven a BMW properly.
Apple is more comparable to Segway.
ThymeZone
Actually, its a platform for handheld Safari. I don’t have a number large enough to describe how many times better than WM that is, and how many times better that glass interface is.
There are reviews like that out there all over the place.
But, think whatever you like.
ThymeZone
My point, you hideously dumb fuck, is that Apple will not sell a large share of the market, but will be seen as successful with the product anyway.
CAN YOU READ FOR CRISSAKES?
jrg
For the longest time, I could never figure out why chicks hit on married guys, until I realized it’s the same reason I won’t buy the first model year of a car… Let some other poor soul sort out the problems before you take it for a spin.
Itunes is the most compelling and differentiating quality of the ipod. Access to that through wifi sounds great, but not for $600 and AT&T service. Other than the UI, there is nothing really new in this device. That said, I’ll bet it will sell in large numbers (40+ million) when the price comes down, but more at the expense of ipod sales, rather than cell phones sales.
zzyzx
I own a mac and plan to replace all of my other computers with macs. I think Apple is a great company.
I have no interest at all in an iPhone. It does less than my current phone, but costs more money. What a deal!
Tax Analyst
Wish I could play, but I still don’t even have a cell phone…and don’t really have any plans for one at this time. I do, however, believe I’ll get an IPod rather soon. I’m taking a vacation trip up North in August and I think I’d rather not try to carry 100 or so CD’s with me to listen to.
Baby Jane
Not so interested in an iPhone, but an iWishyouwouldshutup or an iMbusyleavemealone might peak my interest.
demimondian
Yes, TZ, I can. Here’s a tough thing for you to swallow.
The carriers — you know, the ones whose attitudes really matter — count numbers of units moved and billable minutes generated. Nothing else. They like phones that generate minutes. They don’t care about cute, or important, or novel. They care about MINUTES. It’s all about the MINUTES, baby.
(Cue SteveB voice.) MINUTES! MINUTES! MINUTES!
If it doesn’t sell in volume then IT DOESN’T GENERATE MINUTES. And what, by the way, was the one metric which mattered?
Yeah, MINUTES!
ThymeZone
You worked on Windows Mobile, didn’t you?
I’ll bet you are wistfully remembering the crowds that gathered for the release of that clunky, DOA product.
Those were the salad days, right demi?
ThymeZone
Hey demi, why don’t you find me some articles where people were saying “Wow!” about WM when it came out?
Or, one. Fine me one. Need time? I’m here all week.
Your analysis of what’s important in these products is akin to saying well, it’s about the tires! How many tires and gallons of gas are being sold for Fords!!
Yep, good point. But if I want to drive the best car, I am not going to shop for a Ford. I’m going to shop for an Acura. Sure, Acura doens’t move the gas and the tires as much as Ford does, but …. if you appreciate cars, you will know what I mean.
Apple is a high end, stuck up model. And they just introduced the celphone of the decade. One that will be affecting product designs twenty years from now.
If they just wanted to command the minutes market share, they could have built another crummy LG phone. Or a true hideous piece of feces like the Motorola thing my employer makes me carry around. Your dog could invent a better product that this thing. Okay, not your dog, but most dogs.
Jake
Other products suck ergo this suck is less sucky? Really I don’t know. The suck is permitted because the company knows that overall it won’t make a difference to their sales. But here’s a novel idea: Work really hard to eliminate the suck before launch, even if this means delaying the launch and/or suing the crap out of a partner if things don’t go as planned. Hell, if I buy a new type of blender and all the food I put in it turns grey, I don’t shrug and say: “Oh well, it’s all part of the failure rate for self-activated products.” And for $500 bucks? I expect instant gratification.
One percent.
Side-note: Strange that ATT rose a hair on the NYSE while Apple dropped a hair. Or maybe not since this is an iphone, not an aphone.
jon
The biggest flaw in the iPhone is in the carrier – being shackled to AT&T presents a greater obstacle than anything else to the success of the device. However, because we are a sub-third-world country when it comes to mobile phone service, it was inevitable. Of the 4 national carriers, only 2 are GSM-based, and of those two, only one has national native 2-band coverage (850 and 1900 Mhz). And because you can’t seem to deliver a phone in this country without carrier lock-in, well, there you have it. (Sure, you can buy imported unlocked phones, but it’s a crapshoot as to how well supported they’ll be.)
If Vodafone had bought the original AT&T Wireless instead of Cingular, and we had 3 GSM carriers, you might see sufficient competition to make it worth bringing the thing out unlocked. As it is, the dual-duopoly approach here means we’re liable to keep getting screwed for a good long time.
(Yes, I want one. I’ll trade MMS and video that I never use for a decent e-mail client and a real browser 100 times out of 100.)
Ned Raggett
The biggest flaw in the iPhone is in the carrier – being shackled to AT&T presents a greater obstacle than anything else to the success of the device.
Yeah, I admit to hating that. I was hoping months ago that Apple had just found some way to ride off of the various networks and tell everyone to go hang but alas.
Jake
Like a Jag or a Hummer. Status, that’s the word. People will drool in envy at your neat little gadget (which at least won’t spend most of its time on a hydraulic lift) until the price drops into the “Almost anyone can buy one” range and then it’ll be time for a new toy because you don’t want it if the proles have one too. Those of you old enough to remember when a digital watch made one the shit know what I mean.
grumpy realist
Wait a minnit–I thought that the break-up of Ma Bell was supposed to improve our services? More competition and all that?
So what’s going on with AT&T? Every month the service seems to be lousier and more expensive.
(I’m one of those people who wants the straight vanilla stuff, a service I can depend on, and a reasonable price tag. If water companies were to work the way phone services do I’d be able to get 25 flavors out of my faucets and a price tag of $5/gallon no matter what it was….even if I only wanted plain pure water.)
Face
Newsflash: AT&T sucks. They always have. Not quite as bad as Sprint, who sucks beyond all suckitude, and who’s suckiness is apparent when one looks up “sucks” in the dictionary and sees Sucky Sprint, but AT&T runs a very close second. Their corporate attitude is as if they still own the damn monopoly; ergo, they suck with complete suckness.
Apple is a complete shit-for-brains for trusting such a suck-filled company to host their phones. Period.
Dave
Yup. One of the reasons I’m seriously not considering getting one. I loathe SBC.
Pb
I bet he worked on Microsoft Bob.
Krista
Can’t see myself getting excited about the iPhone. My little Samsung flip phone will do just fine (and yes, it’s pink…got a problem with that?) I do think it might be time for me to invest in a Palm, though…so that when I’m at an event and the boss wants to see the daily logistics chart, I don’t have to have taken my laptop with me (they don’t fit well into an evening bag, needless to say.)
demimondian
Worse: I worked on several components of the Microsoft Office Assistant: Clippy.
sglover
Well, here’s why I’m happy that Apple’s taking the plunge: I’ve never been much more than lukewarm towards Apple (I’m more a Linux/Open Source fan than anything else), but I really like the notion of a phone/net/storage gadget with a slick user interface. Of course, I don’t like it so much that I want to part with $600. I certainly don’t *need* it.
First releases of new gadgetry are pretty much *always* a crap shoot, so I wouldn’t fault Apple much for some early hiccups. But what I’m really looking forward to is the day when its best features become baseline functionality. I expect that in a year or two or three, there’ll be lots of iPhone-like devices available, for a quarter or a fifth as much.
Tim F.
Dude, I wouldn’t let too many people know about that.
Zifnab
/me stabs demimondian in the face with the sheer riping power of his repressed rage.
@ says: It looks like you could use some help calling that ambulance.
Pb
Didn’t Clippy (and all of that Office Assistant garbage) stem from MS-Bob? (and don’t we have Melinda to blame for it…..)
HyperIon
Clippy pushed me into active MS hating mode. How I loathe Clippy. Demi, how could you?
Please reveal the registry entry that governs the appearance of Clippy so the process of your rehabilitation can begin.
Jake
The anthropomorphic paper clip thing?
Evil. Evil I say!
Punchy
Uh…is that the animated paper clip thing that unfolded itself and shat on your XL spreadsheet when you simply misspelled a word?
Oh dear God…the pounding I would give you if I only met you. I’ve busted (true story) TWO mouses with my fist in fits of Clippy-induced rage. He’s like having your Mother-in-Law in your bedroom live-time critiquing the sex your having with your wife…
Billy K
Wow – too many ignorant statements to shoot down… I’ll just pick a few.
For everyone saying that this is the first generation and it’s gonna have bugs and blahblahblah…every product has bugs. This phone has worked flawlessley for me since I pulled it out of the box. My old LG had more problems. Hell, my 5th gen iPod has more bugs. Even activation took only 15 minutes, from the time I booted up iTunes to the time I sent my first SMS. They thought this through and knocked iut out of the park.
Yes, AT&T sucks. It sucks a LOT. Apple had little choice. T-Mobile and Verizonb wouldn’t give themt he freedom they needed to create the device. The iPhone is not a 3G device (EDGE is like 2.5G). The reasons Jobs gave for not making it 3G are worthy – 1) 3G sucks batteries dead very quickly. 2) Only major metro areas have 3G, and it’s spotty even there. EDGE is everywhere; hence they can sell a phone to anyone in the US. That is important. The ‘new’ Apple is going for marketshare. They learned their lesson in the 90s.
If the iPhone moves 10 million units it will be a drop in the bucket – but they will still make a boatload of money. And when they come out with the $200 iPhone nano they will make ten boatloads. Meanwhile AT&T just got anywhere from 200,000-500,000 subscribers this past weekend. Just took them away from their competitors. Tell me that isn’t worth something.
Finally, the success of the iPhone won’t be measured in units, subscriptions or dollars. It will be the way it propels this entire stagnant industry forward.* Like it or not, the carriers and phone manufacturers are going to have to answer to their customers now, as crappy cellphones with lots of features no one can use will just not cut it any more.
And for that alone, you should all be rooting for the iPhone.
*Not to mention how the iPhone is going to revolutionize UI interaction on many, many devices to come.
demimondian
Well, yes and no — mostly no — to both questions.
The notion of building a social interface to your computer spawned both Bob and the Assistant. You can’t blame Melinda for the research, only for how badly Bob screwed it up. (And, to be fair, Bob was a spectacular success with its target audience, computer-fearing home users, who loved it. Of course, there’s some question about how useful something is if it gets in the way of the productive users who actually get the work done.)
The Office 97 Assistant used Bob’s animation system as is. The Office 2000 Assistant used an animation system based on Microsoft Agent. Agent used a hominiform character because its primary motivation was to provide an interface which could interact thorough speech recognition and text-to-speech, some aspects of which (lip-synching and attention signals, for instance) require a face with ears — that is, a person-like object on the screen.
To be entirely accurate, I worked on Agent. However, I also contributed several components to the Assistant directly.
HyperIon
from a seattle times column with 5 pros/5 cons, the 5th con:
he’s not bitter!
srv
Minutes are commoditized now, and will be even less relevant in the future.
Chic platforms like the CrackBerry and iPhone will probably make more profit than the minute folks over the next few years.
srv
I think having worked on Clippy would require at least a temporary ban on B-J. Anyone agree?
Zifnab
OT, Bush just
blew his wad on the rule of lawpardoned Libby, FYI.Psycheout
Forget the iPhone. Today we finally get iJustice!
American hero Scooter Libby’s prison sentence has been commuted!
Chad N. Freude
Not pardoned, sentence was commuted:
Krista
Say it ain’t so! (The mini Einstein version is the only tolerable one, IMHO.)
demimondian
Same interface, same animation engine — that was my part. I happened to like the mini-Einstein myself
Zifnab
Same difference. Libby pays a quarter million that Papa Cheney can easily cover for him, and is sentenced to two years of electronic ankle braclets and midnight curfews (assuming he forgets to tip his parole officer).
Tim F.
Thought about it, but retroactive criminalization is unconstitutional. We would have had to have that rule on the books before Demi’s revelation.
Keeping that in mind, I will propose a new rule: anybody who is personally responsible for interfacing Windows ME with digital microscope cameras will have to either fill out a detailed quiz on plot minutiae from the director’s cut of Battlefield Earth or else face a ban until they can. Some memories never heal.
Chad N. Freude
No, it’s not, but it does mean that he won’t have to wait 30 months to start drawing a K Street lobbyist’s salary.
demimondian
Besides, the pretzelnet would have just commuteraterated my sentence.
ImJohnGalt
Which is only important because The Apple Fuckers gave the i(masturbate)Phone an unreplaceable battery. But let’s not talk about that.
Honestly, I don’t understand why you let TZ get to you, demi. He’s the one that consistently says on here that he’s playing a role on B-J. Usually it’s “grouchy old man”. Today it’s “Tossing-Steve-Jobs’-Salad guy” over a piece of easily replicable hardware that is selling at three times what it should for functionality that isn’t that much different than the WM5 HTC handheld that I’ve had for two years, and was just using Skype on with the native WiFi from internet cafes in Botswana and Zambia last week to call back to Canada.
It’s the same shit that pissed me off about the iPod. I owned a Rio MP3 player that was a fraction of the cost of the iPod. It played FLAC and OGG files as well as MP3 files, with gapless playback and a very small form factor, and ran for a week on a AAA battery. But thanks to Apple’s relentless marketing and their own very special set of “28 percenters”, we’re left with very pretty hardware that doesn’t do half of what my slightly uglier player (from a company that is basically now out of business) did.
I recognize that I may be missing out on something significant (?) by not jumping on the Apple bandwagon, but man, those sycophantic fanboys are as close to intolerable as Republicans are, and I hate Republicans.
zzyzx
The dolphin for the Japanese Office was pretty cool. I worked on the localization team for Outlook 98, so I got to see their assistants. The Office Lady would never have been allowed in the US.
demimondian
Oh, man, are you right. Particularly the “comes in an sits on the desk” listening animation…instant sexual harassment suit!
Andrew
I almost slapped someone who was conspicuously using his iphone in public this weekend.
Look, dude, we get it. You spent $600 on a phone. You don’t have to be a douchebag about it.
“Comes with an iPhone hat, so people know you own an iPhone during the brief periods you’re not using it.”
filkertom
Here’s what I thought about it. Haven’t seen anything to change my mind.
swej
I work in an outsource call center and we share floor space with “cingular now the new at&t” outsource reps. This past friday was insane. Reps breaking down crying because of crazy iphone customers going off on them and supervisors clearly frustrated by having to send reps home with calls stacked up. You couldn’t move in the smoking area because of all the cingular reps crowded around and traffic outside the ladies room was pretty intense aswell.
Personally I haven’t bought a “new” gadget in many years because tech releases are so ugly but this one makes me smile. iCrap has taken over the market not because it’s better than the competition but because it’s more trendy. Trend whores need instant gratification and hopefully they will walk away from this iPile and apple will leave the smartphone biz to companies who are serious about functionality. People who want fashion phones can get a razr or a crazr or a rokr or whatever the fuck motorola is calling their phones these days. That’s why blackberry is such a big name, they put function in front of form. Granted every move is not a success, and they have some stiff competition aswell, but atleast they’re not making phones aimed at the Paris Hilton crowd.
Zifnab
There are several features that define any Apple product. 1) Must contain the letter ‘i’ in its name. 2) Must appeal to yuppies. 3) Must be so easy to operate, Terri Shavio can use it. Sans feeding tube. 4) Must contain excessive amounts of sodder.
Seriously, you want to know why Macs only have a 5% market share? Because Kingston and Maxior and PlexWriter and Invidia and anyone else that produces plug-in-play hardware hate Steve Jobs with a passion that burns.
The Other Steve
It’s interesting. They’re reporting that iPhone sales are more than they expected.
But people I have talked to said, you can walk into any store and buy one… there is no shortage as people were claiming.
Randolph Fritz
“The gadget is a GSM device, so why is ATT the only service provider?”
It’s locked, just like any cell phone you can buy from ATT. ATT (and, probably, T-Mobile, the other US GSM service) undoubtedly demanded that the device be locked before they would sell it at their stores; I expect Apple chose the firm they could get the best deal from. ATT doesn’t seem to have held up their end of the deal, though. I hope we will eventually see unlocked iPhones distributed in the USA.
Behind all this, the shadow of a larger issue: there’s no reason I can see why low-bandwidth wireless service couldn’t be a public service, just like roads. The cell phone oligopoly is vastly overcharging for poor service; I can’t see any good reason to continue to allow it.
JC
Re: The IPhone.
It is without a doubt, the biggest cellphone launch in the history of the U.S. By many magnitudes.
Over that 3 day weekend, the phone sold as many unites as it took the Razr ONE MONTH to sell. Which was the PREVIOUS biggest cellphone launch.
Also, consider the margin on the phone. 50-55%, I believe. Like the Apple Macs, the biggest profit is in the high end. Apple can make the same money selling 1 computer, as other computer vendors make selling 20 computers.
That same logic applies to cellphones. Who else is making $300 pur profit off of every phone sold?
Supposedly, the IPhone has now passed the million mark in sales – according to one rumor (who really knows though, right?)
Assuming that’s true, then on top of the 700K in the first three days, that is another 300K in the next 4 days. Figure by the end of July, another 1 Mil? (250 K per week).
That would mean the IPhone would sell 4 times what the Razr did in one month – at a much higher cost.
For myself, I have grown to like Apple products, more and more.
Back in the early 90’s, I used Apple stuff – I liked it more.
But once Windows 98 came out in ’97, and I tried it out, I was like – “Apple, I’m out of here!”.
Since then, I’ve had Windows boxes, and for the education, had two old boxes that I’ve loaded Linux on. But no other Mac.
Same thing with a music player. I started out with a Zen Nomad, until it crapped out on me.
Then I decided to get an IPod – and fell in love with the feel and the interface.
Finally, this year, I decided to get a Mac notebook – (ONLY GOT when they switched to Intel, so I could Boot Camp it). And again, just fell in love with the hardware. The feel of it. Of the keys. Of the fast startup. The easy interface for wireless. Of the not having to shut it down, really at all, when in Mac mode. The look of the interface.
In some ways I still prefer, for an applications guy, I still prefer the Windows system. “The Apple way”, in software, is a good way, but windows gives you options that I prefer, not to mention all the cool software written for Windows, games etc.
But, in terms of a computer as a PRODUCT? Really, the hardware is just a FINISHED product, that has STYLE. (Even if I’m in windows on that product half the time.)
Also got the Apple router. Head and shoulders above my five or so Linksys routers. Not even a close competition. (Let’s hear it for Bonjour!)
So for a 10 year windows guy, having made the transition recently, Apple simply makes better products – they LOOK better, they FEEL better, and for the main, they simply are easier to use, none of that “conifiguration headache” you get with Windows (and even more so with Linux).
Someone made the BMW comparison. That seems somewhat apt, but even a better comparison might be with a big screen TV. You can go with a “low end” big screen, and plenty of people would be happy with it. But people can and do spend 500-1000 more on a “better” big screen, with not necessarily better features, just better quality. (And of course, if you are talking laptops, you can make a very good argument that the apple pros are financially competitive, as well as being the most pleasant.)
I’m at that point now with the three Apple things I’ve bought this year are – on look, feel, ease of use, simply a joy to have an operate – and, will get most likely pick up an IPhone later, for the same reason. You want to buy something that is a treat to use, pleasant to use, every time. And the apple stuff simply is built to please. May not have the most “features”, may not be the smallest, but is the best overall implementation.
JC
One more comparison – I’ve been to a store and used an IPhone.
And on the quality of the total product – look, feel, style, ease of use, new cool features – it really does blow away any other cellphone out there.
Take for example, the LG enV phone, which my fiancee uses:
This phone has many of the features of the IPhone – music, a decent keypad, “internet access”, etc.
Having used her phone quite a lot – in terms of product, the IPhone simply BLOWS IT AWAY.
Seriously.