Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: apple

Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

The web disintermediates. Retail is mediation.

Image courtesy The Drum

Retail is mediation.
Where-ever there is mediation there will be disruption. This is not just the lesson of an economic downturn - it is the structural reality of the networked world - of an Open Economy.
I write as I hear about Blockbuster hitting the great DVD eject button, just a day after HMV called in the receivers. Comet came crashing down just before Christmas, Jessops last week.
The analysts tell similar stories about HMV and Blockbuster - what they both trade in was more easily and cheaply available online.
The same is true of Comet and Jessops. Just because you can't download a washing machine (give it time as 3D printing ramps up) doesn't mean the web doesn't offer an easier trading environment.
So. The High Street is full of fail.
Except it isn't. Apple has the highest value retail floorspace in the world.
Reasons: 1 Products people really want.
We will happily swop good product for ease of trading. Think of Marks & Spencers in its heyday. It was incredibly difficult to trade with. Out of stock in the food stores by a Saturday lunch time and refusing to take credit cards. The products made this acceptable.
Reasons 2 An understanding that the experience is as important as the product.
Apple's stores re-invented the shopping experience. Or perhaps they just learned from a quality car show room. They elevated the products, put them in their best light and let you test drive them (ask a car dealer how much more likely someone is to buy if you can get their butt on the drivers' seat).

If you have products worth celebrating and provide the setting for experiencing those products then you have an opportunity. You have earned the right to be the mediator.

If you don't then expect users to find ways around you, to go more and more directly.
If you are in the middle, unless you are adding value, they want you out of the way.

They are on a journey in pursuit of connection with the makers - something the blandness of the supermarket experience makes attempts to layer on (pictures of farmers on packaging spring to mind) but would much rather massage out. The web disintermediates - and retail is mediation.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Google's skyscraper?

There is a fascinating theory (from Barclays Capital) that where-ever there is a boom in skyscraper building you can be sure rapid economic collapse will follow.
This measurable proposition echoes one of Parkinson's Laws (for which I am indebted to @jobucks on Twitter.) which states that when companies start building monuments to themselves, their precipitous decline is just around the corner.

How is the new Apple HQ coming along, I wonder?
Perhaps this trend has been repeated through history. Perhaps that's why the phrase 'pride comes before a fall' is so well used - and often so accurate.

And then I think about Google Plus. Is it an essential reconfiguration of google's business model? Or one helluva showboat?
Time will tell.
In any event I'm going to be watching what Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook build for themselves with renewed interest.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Beware the survey of the thing they haven't experienced yet

People are notoriously bad at telling you what they want when they haven't yet experienced the thing you think they might like. Apple's Steve Jobs is always banging on about it. It's summed up as 'people don't know what they want.'

Which always sounds, well, insulting and patronising. (image courtesy amydeanne)

This (from December 2007) illustrates the point:

"Am I missing something? The headlines (Consumers Prefer GPS over Mobile Internet/GPS edges out internet as desired mobile feature - study) tell us US mobile phone users would rather have a GPS-enabled phone than a mobile-internet enabled one.

Translation: I'd rather have a sat-nav than be a live, real-time connected node on the network.
What kind of questions resulted in that?
Q"Would you like to know where you are? Or would you like to know any and everything?"
A"Oh, I'll take where I am thanks."
Uh?

But people are exceptionally good at shaping a concept to fit their fitness landscape. In fact, they always place a higher value on something they have had input in creating (which brings oodles of peer-to-peer marketing value).

In order to engage them you have to provide the 'thing' to talk about. That becomes the social object; an integral part of the platform-thinking approach. (discover/bring together/surface/work together to fix).

Give them something that interests them, that engages them. Then they'll help shape it. And if you can give them something to experience - then the 'survey' of their feedback will be all the more effective.

That thing could be a workshop in an interesting location, with physical interaction and decisions made, or a beta site with direct links to the developers, or prototypes to add to and delete from, or....

As long as it's something around which discussion-leading-to-change can happen, the social object will be doing its job. And the discussion is key - the process must be social not silo'd.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

The device-centric era is about to end

You could be forgiven for thinking that, with the arrival of the iPad, and the rivals it is spawning, that we are at the dawn of the era of 'tablet computing'.

But I believe we are at the end of the era of device-specific computing.

The move from urls to apps, closed code to open apis, on-device storage to access from the cloud, all points away from the pivotol role of the device (which is where Apple makes its bucks) to enabling connectivity to your services (the realm, currently, of developers, mobile operators, broadband and wifi providers and ISPs).

The thing that smartphones, tablets and laptops (even, Microsoft Surface - remember that?) enable is ubiquity of computing. Always on - always with you. Access is the key here. Very clearly NOT the device.

The device can enable access - but it is only one way of enabling it. Not THE way.

The service and its delivery is king. Not the device.

Apple has allied these two things by controlling what is available in its app store. You have to meet Apple's standards to be allowed to deploy - for your service to be experienced by the user via the Apple UX interface. The service provided, therefore, on an Apple device is good.

That experience can only be as good as the quality of its adaption to the device through which you experience it.

In other words, if a service is as well designed for the device you are currently experiencing it through as it is for an iPhone, then you may conclude it is the device that's delivering that service (hence the growing army of Android fanboys). A well-designed service works brilliantly with the available interface. It isn't degraded by switching from one device to another. It takes advantage of the interface it has to hand.

But holding a device in your hand, having a device at all, may be little more than a hangover from our comfort with the tactile world. The cloud could be accessed in 3D before -your-eyes Minority Report ways.

Or more likely, direct to your mind (remember how far off and way out you thought gestural interface was when you first saw it demo'd on a YouTube video?)

And at that point in the non-device specific future we'll have no one to blame for a crash but ourselves.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Three thoughts about the iPad

Image by marcopako  via Flickr

I've seen all the excitement about the potential of the iPad as the salvation of traditional media. I see some of that. I watched someone on the train this morning consuming plain text on an e-reader. Looked kind of... grey.
I can see it converting some traditional magazine buyers and TV viewers to consuming their broadcast content a little more interactively - a little more tailored to their downtime and their personal consumption preferences.

But mostly a device connected to the internet will always better serve participatory activity. This is the place where people do stuff - rather than have it done to them. The value created by all rather than a few.

So while the gorgeousness of the turny-page thing and the click-to-play video thing will be a pleasant distraction for those used to print, it won't allow them to write the magazine.

In this respect, traditional media hanging its hopes on the iPad is a little like scribes banking on the printing press to mass produce illuminated Bibles to keep them in a job. Broadcast media is not a great fit with a peer to peer environment - just as hand-painted books don't make a great deal of sense in print. And the killer app of the iPad, like every other wifi/3G-enabled device on planet earth... remains the internet.

So that's the theory. But there are also a couple of practical points.

First: I want my music updates to synch to all my listening points at once. It's a nightmare having to update all the ipods in my house every time someone gets a bit of new content to add to them all - even via iTunes.
Clunky, restrictive, crash-tastic and not the intuitive experience for first timers the black-polo-neck brigade would have you believe.

The solution, of course is streaming and it is cloud. Apple must know that, surely?

I hear rumours of a streaming service from Apple later this year. Which should have Spotify quaking in its boots.

Which dovetails nicely with my last point. Apple has made its fortune by being very device specific and device focused. To survive in the age of the cloud it must change.

For example - I'd love to see the iPod speaker doc that an iPad will fit in. My iPhone isn't compatible with mine - so good luck!

Already the device-specific nature of Apple's offerings are so focused they are becoming incompatible with each other. Some older macbook pro's won't charge an iPad either. Screw the legacy hey?

If they are prepared to do that to some current devices- why not all? Imagine all your ipods becoming as useless as your portable CD player. It's going to happen - and soon.

Right now I am waiting before committing to another long-term phone contract - waiting on the iPhone 4G due this summer (I have an out-of-contract 3G currently).

I'm waiting because of the lock-in apple has on my contacts, my music and all those apps.

But I'm starting to wonder how wise a strategy that is.

Services are everything in the age of the cloud - services that play brilliantly out on every possible device.

Those who make the best ones will win. Interesting that it has been outsiders (such as LalA, Spotify and LastFM, who are disrupting the iTunes model and showing the way Apple must behave.

Spotify doesn't make devices. Nor does Google. And perhaps one day soon, nor will Apple.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Seth Godin on how he uses social media

Image via Wikipedia

As I read Seth Godin's blog today we had a brief discussion in the 90:10 office about his use (or otherwise) of social media.

I had my thoughts and theories. I'm sure many of you do. So I thought I'd get it straight from the horse's mouth.

So here (with permission) is the email exchange that followed:

Me: "Hi Seth, please forgive the interruption.

"I've been following your work for some many years and always been interested in your apparent disengagement from social media (ie no blog comments on your blog, no follows or replies via twitter etc).

"I don't see you commenting on other people's blogs when they write something you've inspired, or linking out to others who have inspired you, either.

"But I've always made the assumption (you clearly aren't daft, after all) that you are paying a great deal of attention to what is said about you and your thinking via social tools; that you are listening, gathering, considering and incorporating - much in the same way as Apple does.

"Am I anywhere close? And if so what listening tech do you use, how do you go about filtering and why have you chosen to operate this way?

Seth: "David,

"Thanks for your note about comments. I'm delighted that you're interested in my blog, and commend you to: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/why_i_dont_have.html for my post on this topic.

"I actually often link to blogs when it's directly on point, I work hard to give credit when it's useful to reader and source and I used to comment on blogs that mentioned me quite frequently.

"I do in fact get an astounding amount of inbound info, and I think if you look at my outbound in terms of impact and number of words, it's pretty big, it's just all in one place.

"Anyway, I hope that link helps you out. It's a disability, but I deal with it.

Me: "Cool. I understand, I think, - something approaching Clay Shirky's 'Fame' thinking (abundance of attention - which Clay and others discussed a little here) combined with the desire to lead (in a triiibes way)?

"Would you mind if I blogged your response; your approach is one often discussed among the people who hang out in the networks I share :-)"

Seth: "sure thing".

So there you have it. Fully engaged.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

First ever Mobile App Stores conference (?)

My friend Ajit Jaokar is running what he believes is the first ever Mobile App Stores Conference, at CTIA in San Diego on October 8.

Great timing, since Apple just announced its billionth AppStore download.

The Mobile Application Stores, Strategy and Deployment conference is a
partner seminar of International CTIA WIRELESS I.T. and Entertainment.

Ajit reckons (and he should know) it is the only conference to focus exclusively
on the business of mobile applications - the opportunities in the mobile apps stores ecosystem.

Featured speakers include:

• Dr. Jin-Sung Choi Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Head MC Global
Product Planning Team, LG Electronics Korea
• George Linardos Vice President, Product Management, Media, Nokia
• Ilja Laurs Founder & CEO, GetJar.
• Tim Haysom, Chief Marketing Officer,OMTP
• Mike Merril, CEO-Smart Phone Technologies
• Ajit Jaokar, President-futuretext
• Chetan Sharma, CEO, Chetan Sharma Consulting
• Jouko Ahvenainen, Founder, Grow VC International
• William Volk, CEO, PlayScreen
• Sena Gbeckor-Kove, Chief Technology Officer, imKon

Tickets and details here.

It's easy to think it's all about Apple, but everyone and their mother is busily setting up mobile appstores.
Recent additions include LG’s Applications Store and Windows
Marketplace for Mobile as well as Android and the Blackberry App World.

It's all come a long way since the likes of Nokia's Widsets blazed a trail.

Friday, June 26, 2009

What does it take to get some service round here?

What does it take to get the attention of a brand using social media these days?

By which I mean - what does it take to get some service around here?

The reality is that any brand or organisation that gives a shiney one about its customers, members or collaborators should be listening to what we have to say - and ready to act upon what it hears.

If you know a brand or org that isn't - (assuming it's one that does care enough to consider it ought to) then by all means (shameless plug) point them at the kind of social media listening services the likes of Brando Social (where I work) offer.

But assuming any kind of half decent blue-chipped customer wrangler is already equipped to listen/search/audit its reputation online, let's perform a test.

Let's see how fast a real live human representative of any of these brands get back to the community that is FasterFuture (ok, responds to this blog post).

It'll be a fairly straightforward test. I'll post about a series of brands (etc) below. And we wait for a response from a representative of the brand or org in question. That response should be a comment made on this post (moderation remains on - but I have pretty much 24/7 access and I'll publish them in the order I receive them).

So:

Qik. I love your customer service. Don't let me down.
Toyota. Surely you have representatives doing the listening in the UK too? I'll help by using the term Toyota Yaris (good little motor my wife runs :-)
Apple. I'm pretty sure you're listening. Just staggered you don't capitalise by responding. iPhone reference to help you out.
Ford. I'll help you out by saying Ford Fiesta. You have the advantage of Scott Monty. Make it count.
UK Government Director of Digital Engagement (he's never responded yet to my tweets or my article in PR Week for that matter). There you go, PR Week - you can play, too!
McDonalds - had another bad experience with you this evening... (inspiring this post)
Tesco - I dread my required and oh too regular visits
Sainsbury's - just to put you head to head. Shopping. There.
Coca-Cola - you better believe this is the real thing
Disney - I am about to pass off many of your characters as my own (if that doesn't get their attention...)

That's your starter for 10. (image courtesy)

Let's see how the first batch get on. By all means let's hear your suggestions for round two. I quite fancy making this a regular test...

Friday, February 27, 2009

Thank you Apple

Image via Wikipedia

I have been liberal with my complaints about Apple's poor responsiveness to iPhone issues raised through social media. It seems as if they aren't listening.
I'm pretty sure they must be - they just don't go in for all that messy responding stuff. Shame.
But, that said, when you run out of patience in waiting for a response via social media and take up an issue with the applecare team, it may take a number of calls and emails, a little time and effort, but the guys at the other end of the phone do make you feel like they are on YOUR side. Which is nice.
I won't bore you with how we ended up with Apple agreeing to send me a nice pink shuffle ( I reckon my four-year-old daughter is ready for her first ipod, she certainly thinks she is) and a very fetching Ted Baker leather case for my iphone, but they did - and they have.
And they've followed up to make sure they have arrived.
And now I'm feeling all warm about Apple again - particularly as the shuffle has worked so brilliantly with my pc this evening as I stack it up with High School Musical tracks... (I wish my iphone worked as well with my pc!)

So, thank you apple. But really this is a thank you to a human being, who by their human interactions has given me a new faith in apple. Thank you Sean Granville.

Roughly £70 worth of goods and a quality customer service experience has turned me from someone who may well never have bought another Apple product ever to someone who is likely to carry on cluttering their home with apple prods ad infinitum. Not just me, but now my daughter too.

You cannot place too high a value on human interaction!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

10 Things I love about the iPhone - no, really

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBaseSince I've given apple such a hard time over my iPhone. I thought I ought to consider why I persist with it.

The contract I'm locked into has much to do with it.
And I'd be lieing if the coolness of it doesn't help (though this is seriously undermined in the style stakes by the black rubber condom I sheath my new one in after I dropped the last.
(incidentally, perhaps apple could build in this kind of protection next time around? Or at least box new iPhones with a cheap protective case.)

My daughter told the genius at the apple store that I love my phone.

And she's right.

The iPhone and I have a stormy relationship. Moments of sheer frustration spread widely apart by good experiences.

So 10 things I love about my iPhone.
There are problems with how some of these function, as I've posted and tweeted in the past, but they are powerful.

1. The community. When I have problems with my iPhone I can always find someone who has faced similar, overcome the challenge and shared the result. Apple's real ace is that their customers do their customer service ( and marketing, of course, but that's another story.)

2. No walled garden: I'm on an O2 contract but I don't experience the Internet-as-controlled-for-you-by-O2, I get the real Internet - our Internet.

3. The interface. Not so great for one-handed operation but an unmatchable experience for the eye and speed of navigation. When you aren't walking anywhere.

4. The iPod. Their best yet.

5. The integration with email and calendar services. Easier to set up than most.

6. Intuitive. My daughter could take pictures with the iPhone at the age of 3.

7. Solutions. Updates to make the phone ever better are built into your life. Adding content from iTunes? Want a better phone while you are at it. Ok then.

8. The app store. Easiest installation and best integration of any phone (or computer, for that matter) that I have ever experienced. Some social recommendation to your phone would ramp it higher still.

9. Control of the desktop. That the user can rearrange navigation to suit themselves is a given.

10. The wifi. Connects seemlessly whereever possible. And that's harder to achieve than often credited for.

What do you love about your phone?

Monday, January 12, 2009

iPhone - shattered screens and shattered illusions

I dropped my iPhone on Friday. Face down from pocket height to pavement. I don't know if the chill air made it more fragile, but the screen shattered.

It was still working. Just didn't look very nice or likely to last too long in that condition.

So I rang O2. Who didn't know who did repairs. Suggested I tried rivals Carphone Warehouse.

Actually O2 does have an exchange plan. £156 and your phone has to be sent back to apple which will, only upon receipt, supply another. But the on-the-phone 02 people didn't know that.

So I rang Apple. They told me they didn't do repairs. (image courtesy)

They could do an exchange. And they would make an appointment for me with a Genius (member of staff) at my nearest Apple Store in Cambridge.

They made it for 3:15pm that day. It takes me some time to get into traffic-choked Cambridge. Even using the park and ride.

I had hoped to be working on a consulting brief that Friday afternoon. But staying connected is key for me. Needs must.

So, making the best of it, I trundled off to Cambridge with 4-year-old daughter in tow. She likes a ride on a double-decker.

And we arrive on time. And we sit down for our appointment. And just as the centralised apple care team had told us when making the appointment, there was no replacement screen available. Only an exchange could solve this customer's problem. But.

But.

They didn't have any in stock.

Let me describe a simple logic flow here.

Has iphone got shattered screen?
Yes

Is only resolution of this a replacement phone?
Yes

Has apple store got that phone available to conduct said exchange?
No

Should you waste an afternoon of your customer's limited time sending him into town on a Friday afternoon with zero possibility of a positive outcome?
Can you guess the right answer?

Apple couldn't.

So, there's a customer service issue here. And I didn't half take up some Genius time explaining that in store.

And my annoyance at my wasted time left me asking a range of other questions I really think apple should have a stab at answering:

How much does a screen really cost? Given they break at the drop of a phone (my wife dropped her Nokia yesterday- zero damage) why aren't Apple making cheap and quick repairs available?

Why do you think mobile phones are the width they are? It's because it is the ideal fit for the average human hand (Nokia's interaction designers have known this for a long time). The iphone's extra few millimetres of width make for a great screen but an inherently more droppable design.

Yes apple, I am holding you partially to blame for all those cracked screens. We haven't all just got clumsy. I've owned mobile phones since the mid 90s - dozens. And I've never broken a single one.

And what about this pricing? £200 for a replacement. Hang on a mo. That's what I paid for my brand new one on contract in the first place. I'm still on that O2 contract.

Yet the replacement phone is made of recycled parts (in a new case). And you get no periferals, no charger, no earphones.

I'm all for secondhand recycling, cutting down on waste - but why do you get to keep all the cash saved apple?

The apple store rang me on Saturday to tell me they did now have a phone for me to go back into Cambridge to pay them £200 for (and they get to keep my cracked one - to recycle and charge someone else £200 for. WTF?).

Over a barrel, I went to get it.

Apple care were meant to have rung me at just after noon to explain how they would resolve and recompense for my wasted time.

By 3pm they hadn't called. I had to call them as I dashed for the apple store to make my 4:15pm Saturday appointment.

Poor. You will hear more. Just another day in my life with an iphone.

BTW: My PC was running the wrong time when I restored the iphone from itunes. Which meant to get the right time on my phone I had to reset the computer's time, restart it, restart itunes and then restore the iphone to factory settings and then finally restore all the content and contacts etc. To adjust the time. Ouch.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Apple and the myth of working beautifully part 5...

You may well be as bored as I am by now of my trials and tribulations of iPhone 3G ownership. But anyone who thinks the flakiness of my particular device is a rarity should try to get some time with a Genius (I kid you not) in an Apple shop right now...

(For the record, as of this very moment I can't connect to the internet via my phone once again... a network reset will likely resolve it, but Jeez!!!)

On Sunday I went to the Apple store in Cambridge (having previously been informed at an 02 store that effectively Apple wants to control the customer service. I had to go see a Genius. That's a techy to you and I. The fact that Apple thinks it takes a Genius to solve its user experience issues perhaps tells its own story...

Anyway. Turned out I had to make an appointment. I had to make an appointment to get 10 minutes with a Genius. No slots available today. You can book up to three days in advance. Ooops, all the slots up to three days in advance (that I can get to, at least) are taken.

And in the meantime no one in the store can tell me even whether the issues I am having with my iPhone are isolated or part of a iPhone 3G meltdown (the fact you can't get to see a Genius may guide you to your own take on that...)

C'mon Steve Jobs. It's time for some Lean-Too Marketing to seep into your organisation.

I am getting quite angry with apple's reticence and arrogance when it comes to keeping anyone informed. I want to know if the issues I face with my iPhone are being addressed. I want to know what each of the firmware updates I have tried are striving to achieve (2.01 and 2.02).

I want to know if my phone is a dud that needs replacing, or if its par for the course and being sorted by the next firmware update.

And when I complained of all this to a member of staff they whispered quietly to me that I should try working for Apple - the lack of information is endemic.

In short Apple: I want dialogue. And, by the way, so do your staff...

The rest of this sorry story:

Apple & The Myth of Working Beautifully Part I
Apple & The Myth of Working Beautifully Part II
Apple & The Myth of Working Beautifully Part III
Apple & The Myth of Working Beautifully Part IV

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Apple & The Myth of Working Beautifully: Part IV

I really hope this is the fourth and final part of a series I never planned to begin...
I have finally achieved sync up between google contacts and my 3G iPhone.

The (not wholly satisfactory*, but I'll live with it) solution to this problem reveals the core issue with the itunes/iphone experience currently for me.

I don't mind things going wrong. I get that we're living a life in beta. I am a fan of unfinished symphonies after all.

What I would like is a bit of a steer. Experimentation, playfulness, building as we go, is all fun if we can learn from our mistakes. But apple's error messages are not helping us learn. In fact, they are misleading. Read frustrating.

Every time I tried to sync my gmail contacts via itunes I got the message that my google password was incorrect. I was damn sure it wasn't. Some kind folk I know suggested I reset my password and retry. Nowt. Most people simply couldn't understand what could possibly be wrong. Many nodded, smiled knowingly and muttered N95 ( a clearly better visual content creator compared to the iPhone's superior visual content consumption).

When I gave it a final role of the dice last night at home itunes wouldn't open on my pc. Complete freeze up and worrying beeping noises.

When I restarted I tried to repair itunes. It said it had succeeded. It had not (those misleading error messages again).

So I uninstalled itunes, restarted (again) and reinstalled. And this time, this time! It worked. gmail synced up contacts. I even took the opportunity to whack a load of pics into the 16GB void.

The error was not that I didn't know my google password. It was that apple didn't know itunes was phucked.

Finally; 3G is working, itunes is working, syncing is working. At last my iPhone world is beginnning to smell of roses.

And it could have done so much faster and more easily if only apple's error messages were anywhere close to accurate. C'mon apple. Give us a clue!

The rest of the story?

*Not wholly satisfactory? Well, all my gmail contacts (which I synced from my N73 via Nokia PC Suite) are now in my iPhone... but every field bar the name has been aggregated into the iPhone contacts 'Notes' field. So I have email addresses, phone numbers et al - but I'd have to dial each number or type each email address to use it. Better than nowt... just.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Apple and the Myth of Working Beautifully: Part III

My battle with my iPhone is settling into a series of guerilla skirmishes. A little fire-fighting here and there. I still have the syncing of contacts from either outlook (which I'd prefer not to have to use) or gmail (which itunes insists I don't know my password to) to tackle, for example.

But I thought I'd update you on the issues I had on the day I first used my iPhone in anger. On Friday I headed for London for a day of meetings - in several locations.

I travel by train. On my Nokia N73 I am able to check gmail and use twitter (via slandr) facebook, linkedin etc as pretty effective mobile versions. And these work all the way down the line between Huntingdon and London (barring the tunnels, of course).

But all the way down on Friday with my iPhone I got no signal. Safari said it couldn't reach anything - so no internet.

Arriving in London I wandered through King's Cross station and picked up the Cloud automatically - big thumbs up apple/O2. That worked a treat.

But as soon as I was away from wifi I got no 3G. No internet. Importantly for me; no googlemaps.

I ended up asking a copper for directions when I arrived at Waterloo station on course for a meet at the Young Vic. Haven't done that for a long time! Thanks iPhone.

I texted twitter for help (in the hope I'd find some wifi later to pick up the answers). Text and calls were working. So why no internet even at 2G (or 2.5G) speed?

Among the responses I got from fellow iPhone sufferers were:

"richjm @davidcushman If you get normal signal, chances are it's not the 2.0.1 update. 3G coverage is sketchy. Good around the City, Livp st though"

Chris_Reed @davidcushman is your network setting right? Might be just set to O2 not O2 3g? general>network>enable 3g on. Sorry if it's granny ...

otoburb @davidcushman settings->network->wifi. Disable it and then 3G should lock on. Make sure 3G is enabled somewhere under General->netw

And there was outpourings of sympathy/fun-poking too, of course.

Bear in mind that the people I tweet with are a fairly early-adopter technically adept bunch (certainly compared with the general population). Apple should have a little wobble at this. No one was able to solve my issue (Apple seems focused on enablijng self-help networks rather than centre-out customer services, so it relies on my fellow geek).

I stumbled on it myself, through frustrated experimentation ( I can't call it play, it wasn't any fun). If you can't get the internet on your iPhone try this: Reset the network settings. To do this, choose Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

And finally the beast came to life.

I popped into a Starbucks on Saturday morning to check the O2 claim about free wifi there. I could fine none. No surprise really as it's a T-mobile hotspot. Happy to be corrected though so if you know how I can get free wifi at Starbucks on my iPhone, post away!

I wandered into the my local O2 store to fill them in on my experience. Lots of sympathy but I was also told in almost these words: Apple doesn't want us to get involved in customer service. They want us to sell you the box.

Staff aren't even allowed to open the iPhone boxes - so they weren't even aware about the secrets of inserting the sim card.

One final criticism of the iPhone for today: I can't text with my thumb on it - which means I can't text and walk. That's a hardcore (read killer app) mobile phone function.

I'm getting used to the touchscreen typepad and starting to like it and what it can do... but it's not a joyful journey.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Apple and the myth of working beautifully, Part II

I finally got my hands on an iPhone yesterday - the 16GB 3G version. And while the unboxing was a very fine experience... (see qik video with this post) most of the rest was not.
First things first; in store. I got a tip off that phones were in so I headed off for an 02 shop (I won't name the location to protect the uninformed) and avoided the queue nastiness that has put me off in the past.

See Apple And The Myth of Working Beautifully

Experience so far, good (cartoon, right, by Hugh). Asking questions of the staff revealed some flaws in the training (I'm being charitable).

To be fair, my first encounter was with a young girl labelled 'trainee' and wearing a iPhone promo t-shirt.

I asked about contracts and tariffs. She knew nothing about the costs of data. Pretty critical on the iphone you might have thought?

When a more senior colleague could join us they claimed the 02 iphone contract meant you could use wifi free whereever wifi is available. "Mcdonalds" she quoted (it's free there anyway) and Starbucks (which I think there is a deal in place with).

I assured her it was not possible that they could have done a deal to offer everyone's wifi for free. It's not an issue for me - just an odd and misleading claim to make while selling an iPhone.#

Signing up was easy enough.

And so the evening, and trying to make the bleeding thing work.

Instructions say simply connect to computer and iTunes will do the rest. What iTunes does is tell you nothing is going to work for you, sucker, because you haven't got a valid sim card in.

I know, I was kind of hoping you were going to tell me how to instal it since there are no instructions.

The 02 site and phonelines couldn't cope with the demand for help, so I went to ask my twitter pals.

Turns out there is a piece of card rattling around in your box with some archane heiroglyphics on (no words) which purport to show you what to do with an odd-shaped slither of metal - the sacred key that opens the secret door to sim card placement. A case of apple being blinded by its own brilliance.

Here's some of the tweets that followed:

Latest live from Qik [qik] - Iphone 3g http://qik.com/video/150269

f'ck me. how stupid can o2 be? no instructions on how to open iphone or insert sim. genius
otoburb @davidcushman It's that picture on the black insert with the strange looking metal piece.
@otoburb er? ah thankyou.
bellhead @davidcushman in the US they have the SIM already in them (done way upstream).
btinternet downloaded itunes 7.7 at a stately 180kb at best. stand by my post re apple and the myth of working beautifully
rmmarshall @davidcushman So good to hear someone else who isn't falling into the fanboy irreality trap.
if i should die before i finally start this iphone, who would like it left to them
ilicco @davidcushman thanks, but you can take it with you. also, if you want proper 3G, use JoikuSpot on a Nokia N82 and WIFI your iPhone
hadn't appreciated iphone comes with watching paint dry app pre-installed
@rmmarshall nokia would die before making it this hard to make a phone call!
spanx @davidcushman iPhone tip. Turn 3G off unless you're using the Internet on the move. It's a battery killer.
@spanx cheers. how's it done?
spanx @davidcushman It's under the system settings thing. Badly needs a one-click 3G switcher app.
rmmarshall @davidcushman It's such a UScentric idiom - they don't get phones. Like the paint dry app analogy - 59p from the appStore!
technokitten @davidcushman ooh I'm feeling left out! I want a 'watching paint dry' app too ;)
hmm a flaw. iphone opens itunes then insists on installing new version, without auto closing itunes first. dumb.
golly. now its restart time. this better be worth it mr jobs
apple. the walls of the garden arent meant to be for banging my head against
superb. itunes install failed. now trying to repair
ok. lets try a second restart. am very bored now
finally itunes opens up. cant access some synch or other. i should try later?
@gapingvoid thank you. apple and i aint buddies 2nite
andrewgrill @davidcushman you should have bought an E71 ;-]
6consulting @davidcushman May I suggest placing it in the blender? seems to have worked for others!!
neilperkin @davidcushman thanks for keeping me entertained whilst working at home :)

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Hey Apple - mind if I manage my own music please?

Is it just me, or is the fact that the Iphone requires hacking around in order to use selections from your own itunes library as ring tones (in the UK) just plain bizarre?

Which part of that doesn't suck, apple?

I'd have thought selecting my own music as a ringtone would be core functionality for a device which is, at its heart, for managing your music and making and receiving phone calls.

There are ways around it. Jemima Kiss was kind enough to share this tweet from @samhs:

"there is a simple method for converting songs in your library to ringtones.
"Save song as AAC,
"then rename from .m4a to .m4r"

But my point remains; why should we need a work round? They don't in the US (via Chris Reed who suggests saving songs into garageband as another work round).

Another myth of everything apple working beautifully exploded?

Chris, new to an iphone himself, added:
"It's worth the wait, but for me, for the first time ever with a mac, it hasn't worked as I want straight out of the box..."

And now after initially being told new deliveries of iphones would be arriving yesterday, we're seeing +7 days being added on... at least.

And every day that passes, my current operator, 3, makes me a better offer...

Apple and the myth of working beautifully

The myth of Apple = everything working beautifully, was soundly debunked on 3G Iphone Friday.
The fabulous 9838 error was just one among manifold user experience issues: queues, crashing systems, restricted supply etc etc.

Ipod's are less than intuitive ('I've forgotten how to switch it on', moaned my wife when she last picked hers up). And is it wise that there's no lock function (to prevent unwanted button-strikes) for something that often sits in your pocket? (that's fixed on the 3G Iphone)
Itunes is clunky and slow. Macs require their own suite of software.

I'm picking on Apple for a reason. They are among the very best at delivering delightful user experiences. So good at it that Jemima Kiss yearns for an Apple eBay (just watch a newby try to work out what to do with eBay and you'll get her drift).

And yet Apple still gives us iphone Friday.

There is headroom for better. Much better.

And it's worth going after. There is a large and cash-rich segment of the world's population who are not geeks, not prepared to fiddle, not prepared to kill two-three hours of their lives upgrading with new software, not prepared to learn their way around...

They want satnavs as easy to use as a book of maps, mobile phones and computers that transfer calendars, address books and applications from their old ones to the new (in a PAC-code, cloud-ready world why shouldn't your next mobile be pre-loaded, charged-up and ready to roll when it arrives?), they want search to find what they're looking for, digital cameras to upload, store and share without the need to get to a computer, peripherals with the software built-in rather than awaiting their attention on a CD etc etc.

Briefly: They want things to work, beautifully, intuitively, first time.

You can tell these people until you are blue in the face that if they master this or that they'll save loads more time (it's one of the stumbling blocks to getting more people to blog, for example).

But they need more than a promise of future time savings (in adspeak, selling the benefits just doesn't do it).

The experience, right from the start matters. Show by your actions. You need to act, not talk.

How easy/delightful is it to find out about the product or service?
How easy/delightful is it to buy?
How easy/delightful is it to use (from the box)?

The first and second hurdles are easily as important as the last.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

What do you pay for when you use ITunes?

I was on a panel at Digital Asset Management in London yesterday and threw into the ring that perhaps the 'assets' that we aim to manage don't have value (at least not in and of themselves).
I was talking, of course, about the Because Effect. You might not make money with content but you're likely to because of it.
In other words Prince understands that his music is freely shared so he gives it away for free. That which was scarce has become abundant.
The because effect is that more people hear his music and he creates more demand for the thing that he does have that is still in limited supply - live concert tickets/ merchandise/limited edition this and that...

Someone asked, but what about ITunes? People pay for content there - and the success appears to continue to grow.

I don't think its the content we are paying for on Itunes - it is the service (with the experience intertwined in this).
You could go and find the same music freely shared somewhere else. You could. It might take you a while. You could find ways to get it on to your ipod. You could.
But it's all time consuming and clunky.
You pay itunes to take all that hassle away and make the download quick, easy and beautifully done.

Services around the effective delivery of the right content? Now there's a thought for media.

By the way, I've posted this from an I-google gadget (in other words without leaving my google homepage).

Cool little widget. A service I have taken with me on my journey - one which treats the user as the destination. Neat.

Monday, June 09, 2008

3G IPhone day today

I'll update with news of the new I-phone (due to be announced today) when I get a moment. Rumours I've heard, it'll be 3G, better camera, video camera added and... price (in the UK) at least will be surprisingly low.
In the meantime Go here for the latest I-phone google news.
UPDATE: Turns out no video (but that's already available as a hacked app). Go here for the full grift (in the UK and Ireland).

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

iPhones: The Great Escape

Looks like a quarter of the Apple/AT&T cellmates have gone over the wall: Yep 27% (or 1 million) iPhones sold in the States have been unlocked, according to a BBC report.
Information wants to be free. So do consumers, it appears, in a networked world.
Looks set to cost Apple $500m in lost revenues by the end of the year (they get a share from all revenues derived through AT&T).
Wonder what the unlock rate is in the UK?
Leaves me a little baffled though. Presumably to acquire your iPhone you've had to sign up to some lengthy contract - which you are committed to continuing to pay whether you use it or not. And then you have to pay to use your iPhone with another operator.
What am I missing? Are 27% of people unlocking their iPhones just because they can?
Please, if anyone can clarify... you know the drill.