Socks and Sandals

I finally got my iPhone activated. I have to say that both of the AT&T customer service representatives that I talked to were absolutely first class. The one woman, Lindsay Brewer, tried to activate my phone 5 times and was on the phone with me for over an hour, well past 2AM her time. That was literally the best support call I’ve ever been on and she couldn’t even get the phone activated in the end ;-) Mad superchamp points all around to the AT&T CSR staff; they appear to be holding up extremely well with must be a powerful onslaught of pissed-off people.

And we’re back: man, this thing is totally fucking awesome. I can’t stop playing with it. I haven’t had this much fun with a piece of hardware since… uh… since… um, oops, different story. Nevermind. Anyway, as usual, I have a ridiculous proclamation to purport:

Toby’s iPhone Proclamation #1:

Every other phone on the market is now officially a piece of shit.

Why?

Because the iPhone isn’t a phone: its a Mac that happens to make phone calls.

That’s the real beauty of it, I think. The mobile landscape today is highly disparate and varied today, much more so than the desktop environment. This leads to wildly different user experiences across phones and even applications for the same phone. By enforcing Mac-like standards on the phone’s apps and functionality, they’ve drastically reduced the impedance mismatch between the desktop and phone experiences.

Oh, yeah, and they rocked out on a bunch of other things, too:

• Fixing issues and adding features via iTunes-based software update is pure genius; people are already totally acclimated to that mode via the iPod
• Apps based on open Web standards and Safari will be a ginormous win for the platform over time; potentially any app on the Web is just an URL away on the iPhone (although Orbitz’s calendar Javascript widget is annoyingly dysfunctional on the iPhone). Plus, crazy bad apps have very little chance of crashing the phone this way
• Getting YouTube to spit H.264 video so that the hardware decoder can take care of it. Flash would have required main CPU time, thus reducing battery life: this way, people get YouTube videos and longer battery life! (unlike the new Flash Lite phones from VZ)
• OMFG: tabbed browsing on a phone!!!! Dood, that might be worth the loot right there, for realz
• Only one hardware button: beautiful and no need to figure out what to do with all those other buttons when you reconfigure the UI with a software update

I think the Verizon executives will rue the day they kicked Jobs out of their offices. It was an incredibly stupid move not to ride this wave. Others think that perhaps that mistake will come to be known as the “not-buying-DOS-outright” mistake the ultimately leads to their irrelevance in the marketplace.

I never had a smartphone before and never had a data plan, either. I’ll probably keep the latter for a good while, but “smartphones” are now a total joke. Oh, and to all the naysayers talking about “iPhone won’t work with corporate email systems”: I was up and running with email from our Exchange servers in under a minute from the iPhone. Eat that.

This iPhone launch has really been screwed. Unlike some of my friends, they haven’t deactivated my old phone yet (mostly, I think, because I didn’t call Verizon to tell them anything) but I’m sure they will do so long before I get the email telling me that my iPhone is activated if the rest of the stories are at all accurate.

At this point, I don’t even care who’s fault it is. The thing Apple had to know is that, whomever is to blame, customers bring this thing home and sit in front of their program on their computers to activate it and that fact makes it Apple’s fault. I don’t even believe that its largely Apple’s fault technically, but again, it doesn’t matter.

Lets look at this from a higher-level perspective. If you are Apple, you:

• had to know how many units you were going to ship out to stores and thus the exact maximum activation load AT&T could possibly have to handle
• had to know how long the average purchase was going to take, since making activation offline then turns the point-of-sale into the same experience of buying an iPod, and thus could model the time series of activations relatively accurately (again, being conservative to make sure the launch went smoothly)
• had to understand demand would be higher on the West Coast because you sell a bunch of other shit that has higher demand levels on the West Coast and the demographics between those customers and iPhone customers are largely the same (if they aren’t, you can’t assume they aren’t, anyway)
• had to know that your partner is basically incompetent

Apple has retail stores, for chrissakes! They’ve launched wildly popular items before! (recently, even) They had to have this data. Not mining it correctly was negligent of them.

There are two important meta-points in all of this that I’d like to iterate.

First, this is Jobs’ legacy product. The “going out on a high note” dealie. He can’t be pleased with how this launch will be remembered at this point. I can imagine him sitting in front of his iPhone screaming at AT&T execs, voice hoarse from having done so since about 7PM PST Friday night. This may all wash over in the end, but he’s just got to be upset right now.

Secondly, this had all better be worked out by Monday morning.

Why?

Because the people buying iPhones have jobs.

It costs too much for it to be otherwise on a large scale. Those people need to make calls. Having to wait 24 hours to make or receive a call again is not a tenable situation for the vast majority of them. If this rolls into Tuesday, expect to see massive returns of the iBrick.

I think they can pull it out if they work it out by Monday. However, if not, I really can’t see anything good coming of it, since Monday is also the day the news media wakes up and they are all just pining for the opportunity to smash a big pie in Apple’s face. That’s schaudenfraude for you. If they don’t work it out by then, the choice of headline words in news stories goes from “bumpy” to “disastrous”.

As everyone I know who bought an iPhone is currently experiencing the awesomeness of the AT&T end of the Apple-AT&T collaboration , I figured I’d post up this story I found in the forums about one guy’s well-put experience with the iPhone to date:

Getting the iPhone was easy. Getting it to work, however has been more of a Microsoft type experience.

I walked right into the flagship 5th Avenue Apple store last night at 10PM to the still roaring cheers of employees lined up at the entrance.

As I marched down the shiny spiral staircase, the view of the crowds reminded me of Moses’s descent from Mt. Zion, masses of people welcoming me, while at the same time occupied with their own business of conducting their iLifes. I was ushered like a movie star into the iPhone line corral, which had about 5 people in it and in less than 2 minutes flat, my Green Amex card was being silently swiped and I was handed a bag with what looked like a small box of very expensive cologne inside.

I had been “gifted” the most coveted tech prize at all and could hardly contain my excitement as I rushed into the round glass elevator full of other devotees with their little black bags. Walking out it felt like I had won the marathon – more cheering and adoring fans. “Where was the champagne”, I asked myself?

I hopped on my bike and rode home to the Upper upper west side and in seconds flat had the bag and it’s contents opened, eager to inspect the candy inside.

I was not disappointed – the phone, and it’s packaging are a model of Apple simplicity and style, well worthy of all the hype and upholding the companies tradition of doing things right that sings a compelling song to my organizational heart. The packaging is minimal and there are no instructions to speak of. The phone told me to connect to iTunes for set up, which I already knew having seen the video on Apple’s website. After a small bit of frustration with nothing happening, I decided to check for updates and realized my iTunes wasn’t the latest version, so I downloaded that version (again with classic Apple ease and simplicity) and re-started iTunes.

This time, my phone was recognized and I was prompted to set up my new AT&T account. “Hooray”, I shrieked, eager to have the phone up and running so I could show it off to a friend who was stopping by any minute now.

Almost 12 hours later, I am still waiting, the “Your Activation Requires Additional Time To Complete” message still taunting me when I open iTunes. I guess you could call it the Hangover. I woke up at 2AM and when I was still greeted by the annoying, sorry you’ll still have to wait message, decided to call the customer service number on the screen. After an 8 minute wait on hold, I was told by the very nice AT&T lady that I would just have to wait until I got said email.

Again, I am still waiting. I imagine there are tens of thousands of us still waiting. AT&T couldn’t hold up their part of the bargain and must have been overwhelmed by the desire to create new accounts. The thing that baffles me and I find somewhat amusing at the same time is, why did the part that involves human beings (going to store, waiting in line, having credit card and other information exchanged and then getting the phone, take less than 5 minutes, while the supposedly automated part, signing up for service take 10 hours and counting? Is this what one can expect from AT&T? Should I really be dropping my Verizon service?

I’m baffled. I’m annoyed. I’m feeling like I bought an Apple product, operated by Dell.

Its really quite a shame. This was Jobs’ legacy product, to be sure. Now it will be marred by this widespread failure to activate smoothly. Initially, I thought it was ingenious of Apple to do offline activation of these phones, but its clear that they and AT&T weren’t prepared. People are without their phones. I imagine there will be a big dip in sales after this hits the news. Good thing they released on a Friday ;-)