The Odd Couple: ATT and Apple

I recently went to purchase an iPhone 3G here in lovely San Francisco. Walking toward the Apple store, I remembered that halfway between my office and the beautiful apple store at one stockton street is an AT&T store. I don't really need to go to the Apple store, I thought to myself. So instead I went through the glass doors at the corner of Market and 3rd and into customer hell.

The first thing I noticed was the grouchy sullen customers seated around the room -- perched is probably a better way to describe this as there wasn't really anywhere to sit. So they were leaning against displays, sitting on the ground... The second thing I noticed was the sullen AT&T employee with a clipboard who approached me.

"Hi, can I put you on the waiting list?" he asked.

"Uh... how long is the wait?"

"Only 20-30 minutes."

OK, so here I am, a live customer wanting to give them my money, and they want me to sit on the ground in their store for 20-30 minutes in order to have the privilege of buying something from them!? I said no thank you, turned around and walked right out again. Off to the Apple store a few more blocks down Market.

When I arrived at the Apple store it was buzzing with happy people. A smiling Apple employee was waiting at the front door here as well.

"How can I help you today?" he asked.

"I'd like to buy an iPhone 3G"

"I can bring it right to you - do you know what size and color you want?"

This is a company that actually wants my business. Too bad it is attached to one that doesn't. Like Oscar and Felix, you have to wonder (other than a script writer looking for gags) what makes these two companies able to even stand talking to each other much less trying to offer a joint customer experience.

When I happily walked back to my office, I had to stop at the AT&T store again and wave my new phone at the sullen AT&T employee with the clipboard. In the same amount of time that I would have been sitting on the floor of his horrible shop I had walked to the Apple store, had a great shopping experience, and walked back again.

Memo to AT&T executives -- could you PLEASE learn something from your partner Apple?

02 (UK) Free iPhones... Hello ATT?

Thank you O2 for my free iPhone. Yes, you heard me. For a minimum monthly contract of £ 45 the nice people at O2 in the UK will give you a free iPhone. My bill has been more like £ 80 a month with the amount I have been over there, so I happily collected my free phone. I still don't have one here in the U.S. though. Do I really want to commit to another two years on ATT? Maybe President Obama will actually re institute some oversight of the communications industry and ATT will be forced to become more competitive... I think I'll wait and see.

In the meantime, Apple, why can't I take my US SIM card and slide it into that UK iPhone. Did you really have to lock phone serial numbers to particular carriers? Sigh. So now I have to carry two phones EVEN IF they are both 3G iPhones.

Which brings me to my other complaint - why can't the carriers figure out how to let us have reasonable calling rates from multiple countries? Even if I have to have a contract with multiple carriers, my SIM should be "multi-homed" -- registered with each carrier I have a contract with.

Anyone in the telecommunications industry listening?

Naysayers May Now Stop Saying Nay

The iPhone. OK you are tired of the news. So I won't bore you with my first experiences. I'll just observe that it truly is wonderful. Apple has a huge hit. They really have redefined the cell phone experience. Other phone manufacturers should really think this through and not discount the impact that Apple will have in this segment.

My two complaints so far -- AT&T is stupid. But then again, they all are. It was fascinating watching how much Apple has done to make the integration of the AT&T part of the experience work in a smooth Apple way. But Apple can't cover for everything. So when I happened to type in my street address with the full word "Avenue," AT&T's computers responded that the didn't recognize the address but did have a similar one... it was my address but with the abbreviation AVE. This strikes me as the kind of user experience that Steve Jobs would never allow in an Apple product. It just screams "we are stupid!"

Second complaint is that I can't download software. I can't switch from the horrible Safari to the much better Firefox (or Opera or). I can't add in Adobe Flash (why did Apple leave it off the device!? it is part of the web stack!). I can't load my favorite apps...

But there are so many surprises lurking inside this device. There are fundamental changes in the way you think about your phone when it synchronizes seamlessly with your contacts, email, photos, videos, music, calendar... By the way I think it works incredibly well with the Mac but I have no idea how well it works with Windows.