Category Archives: Shameless Rant

My iPhone 4S Purchase and AT&T Activation Lesson

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I wanted to be the first on the block to own an iPhone 4S. I waited 9 hours and 47 minutes the week prior to pre-order the latest and greatest iPhone. It wasn’t until the morning of October 12th that it shipped from China.  I tracked it landing in Alaska that very same day (actually gaining 7 hours). By Thursday it had landed in Louisville, Kentucky. By the time I had gone to bet Thursday night, it had traveled to Salt Lake City, UT.

I went to bed feeling knowing that it would arrive in the Boise Metro Area during the early morning hours and put on a UPS truck for delivery. The iPhone arrived sometime after 10AM Friday October 14th. I had read on Twitter that AT&T was having issues activating the newly arriving iPhones.

This did not detour me. I took some snap shots of the un-boxing with my iPhone 3GS. Posted them to twitter and then began the process. I found that I needed iTunes or a wireless connection to activate the phone. I thought this was weird, but I had alternatives as iTunes 10.5 was not available on my work PC and wireless signals were weak at best.

I took a stroll to the local coffee shop in an attempt to secure a wireless signal for activation. I was in luck and began the process. The new phone displayed a message it would take a mere 3 minutes and I would be activated. After about 3 minutes I received a new message stating:

“Your activation is still pending. You will receive an email notification once your activation is complete. We’re sorry. There was a problem connecting to the server. Please try again later.”

Though my new iPhone 4S was activated around 7PM my time, what transpired in between receiving the device and afterwards is a lesson learned. I tried to complete the activation at an AT&T store in my local area at lunch. I was met with brick wall of “you ordered it through Apple, there is nothing we can do”. I headed to the Apple Store, and was met with yes we have been activating AT&T all day with one problem.

The Genius tried, but failed two different times. An AT&T representative was trying her best to get me along with 5 other with the same issue activated, but with no luck. While about to leave, I ran into a gentleman that walked in, bought an iPhone 4S, activated it on AT&T and walked out of the Apple Store in less than 30 minutes. He said that it was true of many people that day.

Apple Store employees said the same, but could not help in my situation since I had pre-ordered the phone. The AT&T representative only made matters worse by having me complete several non effective tasks in order to complete activation. Discouraged I headed back to work a few minutes late from lunch.

After arriving back to work things got worse.  I read an article that many people were able to activate there pre-ordered iPhone 4S with an AT&T representative over the phone. I made a call. I was greeted by a warm voice that was more than happy to help. She discovered that my data plan was not matching the SIM card. She put me on hold, worked some magic and came back on the line. It was about then the call on my 3GS failed and I had now lost phone service on my 3GS and my iPhone 4S was not activated, but something new appeared, a 3G signal.

After several attempts to activate I continued to get nowhere. I called back to AT&T to see if the process that had been started earlier could bring the phone to life, but no such luck. I was also told that my 3GS was dead in the water as well.

It was time to head home for the day. I attempted over the newly acquired 3G signal to activate the 4S while driving home. Driving home in rush hour I have frequent and long stops. While picking my daughter up from daycare I returned to my car to discover that my phone had been activated. At last after about 8 hours I was finally activated. However, I needed to connect to my iMac to restore my settings.

The next day I arrived back at the Apple Store to purchase a case. I found droves of people purchasing phones without activation issues, most of which were AT&T customers. For all my waiting, complaining and pure madness through purchasing and activation, I could have kept my sanity and walked into my local Apple Store and been in and out in 30 minutes. I learned a valuable lesson in all of this; it’s not worth being the first and AT&T is a terrible iPhone launch partner.

My 9 Hour 47 Minute iPhone 4S Pre-order Experience

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I stayed up to early morning hours of Friday October 7th to order an iPhone 4S. I had already decided on a White one with 32GB of storage. As a current iPhone 3GS owner I had been eligible to upgrade since the early part of September.

At 1:01 AM I promptly refreshed the Apple Online Store homepage to be greeted with the standard “We’ll be back soon” message. While I waited I headed over to twitter to see if any other followers were running into the same thing.

Forward to 1:32 AM and the store is still not up. I respond back to Chris Breen about his complaint about the store being down “@BodyofBreen imagine how east cost people feel. #iPhone4S #applestoredown”. No reply back, but he was on Pacific Time and far better off than the rest of us. It’s at this point I decided to give up for the moment and get some rest. I felt I was in for a long wait.

2:25 AM I wake startled to find that the store was up, but after numerous attempts I can’t get past the eligibility screen. I try AT&T and still no luck. Errors and more errors until 3:01 AM, I get a message that an iPhone had been reserved and that an email would notify me when I could come back to Apple Store and place my order. Not trusting system, I try one more time and get the same message. Well nothing more to do, but back to bed and get some rest.

4:53 AM I get the email telling me the Apple Store is ready for me. I have until Saturday October 8th 5:00PDT to order. I start the process yet again, but run into the biggest issue of the day. I can’t change my shipping address. I try about everything possible for the next hour to make a change in shipping, no luck. I am completely frustrated as I can’t be home on the 14th of October and wait for an iPhone. Why can’t I ship it to my work address? I go back to bed.

10:26 AM I attempt to pre-order via AT&T. I get to the shipping address and find I cannot change it via AT&T either. I scroll down and discover that “for security reasons” I can only have the phone shipped to the billing address of record. I am dumbfounded as why this is a policy, but I play the game. I switch my billing address to my work address and at 10:48 AM my order is complete.

1:44 PM my email Order Acknowledgment arrives solidifying my order. As of this post my iPhone 4S has yet to ship, but I expect it to. I am hearing that people ordering Black 16GB models have received notification. In fact a co-worker ordered a 1 black model and 1 white model, with the shipping confirmation coming for the black model.

The pre-order experience was far from flawless. I believe AT&T was to blame for a lot of the issues. Apple had a great back up plan in place this time. Verizon and Sprint from what I read had little problems, which says a lot about those two companies. Obviously Apple did not intend for customers to wait as long as I did to fill an order. At this point I need a few naps to recover all the lost sleep. Good Night.

Why iPhone Works for Me

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I have been thinking lately why I choose the iPhone over an Android Phone. I mean these Android phones are every bit advanced as the iPhone and in the end complete the task originally assigned, accept and receive calls.  So I decided to make one of those lists that compared iOS to Android.

The Lists

The easiest was the applications, but as I began to dig I come with a list of 10 of my most used 3rd party applications:

  • Twitter for iPhone
  • Facebook for iPhone
  • The Weather Channel App
  • Reeder for iPhone
  • Camera+
  • Flixster
  • FCC Test
  • Sol Free
  • Stitcher Radio

Now there are a few more applications, but the 10 above are the most used that I would miss. Of the 10, only 2 were not available in the Android Market Place, but that didn’t seem to be a compelling reason for why I chose the iPhone.

I then looked at items such as cases, Android Phones offered, cellular network and so forth. I still concluded that neither was more important than the next. Granted I learned the T-Mobile data speeds were much faster than that of AT&T on 3G, but again concluded that it was just a matter of time before that was no longer an issue.

The Revelation

Then after reading the 37 Signals article, Ten Apps is All I Need, a great point was made by the author Niall Larkin regarding iPhone.

“It’s my favorite piece of technology and has been for years. Do you know why? Because Apple nailed the basics. Safari, Camera, iPod, Clock, Weather, Photos, Messages, Mail, and Maps are the apps that I use 95% of the time. Those are the ones that made me buy the phone and stick with it.”

I had to agree with this comment, but what separates the iPhone from Android for me is the iPod function. Sure Safari, Mail, Maps, and etc are great, but they don’t function any better than their Android counter parts. The iPod is what makes the iPhone stand out from Android.

It’s an iPod, a Phone and Internet Communicator

Before the iPhone, the iPod was Apple’s dominate product. Let’s face it without iPod the iPhone may never have come to be. I use my iPod App each and every day. I use it when I come to work, I use it at work and I use it coming home from work. On the weekends I have it connected to my iLuv or my stereo.

Though only 8GB in capacity I am able to enjoy my full collection of iTunes while at home via iTunes Home Share and on the 3G network with applications such as the PogoPlug App. The icing on the cake is that it provides me cell phone and access to the Internet.

But Android Can Play Music Too

Android may have a music player, but in my world without access to iTunes it simply is not worth the headache just as having a typical MP3 player is not worth the headache. When I connect my iPhone to my iMac all my music is synced, my pictures can be imported to iPhoto, a backup is made and I am on my way. No mounting of device, no dragging & dropping, and no lost data like with Android. In the immortal words of Steve Jobs “It just works.”

The experience will become even better once iCloud and iOS 5 are launched this fall. With Music Match I will have all my music in the cloud and will be able to retrieve it at any moment, without having to go through the trouble of uploading it to services like Amazon Cloud and Google Music Beta.

In the end the reason I wanted the iPhone in the first place is the same reason I will continue with the device, it is my iPhone, the one device for music, Internet and apps

iCloud: More Cloud, Less Me and You Can Do That?

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I am sitting in the local Fuddruckers setting up for the monthly Boise Mac User Group meeting when the waitress delivers my chocolate shake. She asks if we were the “Apple” people. I respond yes. She presents me with her iPhone asking why a photo she tried to upload to Facebook keeps presenting her with an error message.

Being “Apple” people I begin to troubleshoot. My first thought is to close down the Facebook App and start over. It is here I discovered running on this iPhone were close to 50 applications. I ask if she had ever closed out of an Application. The response, “you can do that?”

This is a common response to this question. So when Apple made all of the new announcements this past WWDC 2011, I wondered for whom the announcements were attended. Better yet, how many end users will understand 1/10th of the changes heading their way this fall with the release of iCloud and iOS 5?


More Cloud

On June 6, 2011 Apple presented iCloud to the world, declaring it a replacement for MobileMe, admitting it was “not our finest hour”. Apple developers were treated to a list of new features amongst them were iTunes in the Cloud and Photo Stream.

With iTunes in the Cloud users can access each and every song purchased from iTunes for free. For an extra $24.99 annually, users were provided Music Match. Using an iOS 5 on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation), iPad, or iPad 2, or a Mac computer with OS X Lion or a PC with Windows Vista or Windows 7 Apple will provide a Music Match subscriber access to songs not purchased via iTunes in 256k quality. The service itself limits a subscriber to 25,000 songs, but iTunes purchases do not count against the limit.

Missing from the service was an iCloud player to compete with Amazon Cloud player and Google Music Beta, both providing Android Apps to play music. However, with the release of iCloud coming in the fall Apple has plenty of time to make changes. In the meantime Apple updated both iOS and OS iTunes applications to allow the push of purchases to all devices. It should be pointed out this does require the user to activate the feature within iTunes, something maybe my Fuddruckers waitress won’t know she can do.

Photo stream is another new/change feature. Photo Stream holds your last 1000 photos, with the option to create albums. All the photos coming through Photo Stream are kept on your PC or Mac. This makes a ton of sense considering my recent purchase of a new iMac with 2TB of storage along with an external hard drive making me very happy.

Essentially Photo Stream replaces MobileMe Gallery, well sort of. I am not sure how Apple will provide users to share their photo with family and friends as they do currently. One thought I have is with the use of Facebook and Flickr, Apple may have simply given up on this service. The keynote addressed the number of photos taken by an iOS device currently Flickr’s service, which is an admission that Galleries is not that popular.

Remains of the Day

iCloud will continue to store your contacts, bookmarks, email, calendar and documents. It will just do it in a different way. It will cost the user nothing. Additionally, iCloud will backup items and iTunes will allow you to download your purchased apps and music a not additional charge. The user will also receive 5GB of storage.

Are these iCloud features going to better than the current free services offered by the likes of Google, Yahoo or Microsoft? With Gmail I get 10GB of storage. I can set up Google Drive for my documents and of course can set up contacts and calendars. Nothing to big hear but it is enough of change MobileMe subscribers will notice, but is it enough to bring new customers?  With no ads, please sign me up for some new accounts.

Less Me

Lost in the announcement regarding moving from MobileMe to iCloud was what will happen to iDisk, iWeb and the price for extra (if any) storage. Currently for my $99 I am given 20GB of online storage for my email, bookmarks, iCal, file uploads and web space.

As mentioned before iCloud will be free with 5GB of storage. There was no mention of some useful features such as iWeb website hosting. This past Monday came word from Steve Job’s iPhone that indeed iWeb was going away based on the emailed question. I would point out that Steve said “Yep” to the number of questions. Users of iWeb can upload their site via FTP to a web host, but it comes with a cost of another service, however considering the cost of hosting to a MobileMe yearly subscription one could save.

The other useful information not mentioned was the possibility of additional storage. I would be surprised if come this fall that Apple isn’t selling additional iCloud storage. How could they sell stockholders on the idea that “we stopped selling MobileMe for $99 a year to offer its main features and then some for free?” I suspect that Apple will find a way to continue collecting the $99, while also collecting even more from iCloud.

Add iOS 5 to the Mix

Getting back to my waitress from Fuddruckers. Adding iCloud to the mix with iOS 5 may on the outside appear very simple to those in attendance and us Apple Fan Boys and Girls. I do wonder what this means to the typical “I only have an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad” user.

Listening to my list of Podcasts this week leads me to get excited about the announcements, but at the same time think wow did Apple complicate things? There are enough changes in iOS 5 that will cause a lot of users eyes to become glazed over. There is an interesting article from MacRumor that over 50% of iPhone users visiting the Genius Bar have never connected their device to a computer. There is the PC free idea for iOS 5 combined with iCloud connecting to a PC isn’t needed, but if you think about the fact that people weren’t smart enough to connect to a PC to begin with, what else will the not do?  It is clear to me the new features are aimed at the Fuddruckers’ waitress to make things easier. However, I am sure you will continue to hear “you can do that?”