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.