the daily snivel
On whiny iPhone users
Cell phones have had a strange impact on our culture. They are pervasive and often used inappropriately as people air their lives loudly and indiscriminately before a captive audience in restaurants, aboard public transportation, and even in movie theatres and libraries. In that respect they are an abomination of our times. On the other hand, they allow people to work and live on the go without having to hunt for a public telephone, and they are priceless in an emergency. They are also often more feasible than a conventional land line subscription for people who don't have good credit or a lot of money. They are often a necessity and may well completely supplant the land line as the home phone of choice one day.
My friend James puts it this way: "One day, we will talk to our children or grandchildren about a time before mobile phones, and they will be utterly amazed that once upon a time people would call a room in the hope that the person they wanted to talk to was in it."
That said, you'd be hard pressed to find an industry that rakes in so much money and yet generates so little satisfaction than the mobile phone industry combined with wireless carriers. Which brings us to the iPhone, launched in the USA on June 29, 2007. A new, simple, attractive, and usable telephone that brings elegance and simplicity to a range of previously complex and less-than-intuitive functions. It came with a simple pricing plan and a slew of well-deisgned features. Apple has so far sold over a million of them and is well on the way to reaching its goal of capturing 1% of the enormous market (that is, by selling 10 million phones) by the end of 2008.
So I am astonished, simply astonished, by the fact that what is arguably one of the most successful and ambitious product launches in the last 5 years has been met with such shameless whining and complaining by a noisy but unavoidable minority of users who are given an audience and legitimacy by the technology press.
The Macalope blog sums up the sentiment pretty well:
I'm writing as somebody who does not yet own an iPhone, but is waiting for them to be sold in Canada with great anticipation. You see, right now I have a crappy phone. I own the Motorola V220, the cheapest flip phone I could buy in 2005 when I lost the need for a land line and gained the need for a phone that would be wherever I went. Now, the phone does the very minimum of what I would want a phone to do: I can send and receive calls with fairly good reliability in most circumstances. For some reason, however, even though other people at work do not encounter this problem, I can barely get any signal at work. If the phone rings, I have to go to a window to get a better signal or I cannot talk to anyone and they cannot talk to me. But my phone cannot use the internet except with great difficulty and slowness. I have to use the numeric keypad to send a text message, which is an infuriating and inarticulate way to communicate. It cannot check my e-mail. It has a terrible camera that takes tiny photos of lousy quality. The hinge creaks when I hold the phone against my head to talk. In short, it is a handy device but I would never call it a pleasure to use. It allows me to make and receive calls, most of the time, and given that this is 95% of what I need to do with my phone, I'm alright with its numerous other limitations. But I know I could be doing more, and so I am outgrowing this phone. My two year contract is up this month, and I am ready to get a new, better phone.
I am not a super geek who must constantly own the latest and greatest. I do not have a Blackberry or any other smart phone or high tech gadget beyond my four-year-old iPod and my new Canon Powershot A640 (my first digital camera and the finest mid-range camera your mid-range money can buy). Furthermore, I swore off programming years ago, and I think hacking is just fine for other people but of no inerest to me, so I'm not interested in having something that can load a lot of weird little applications. All I want is to have the best experience possible with a phone, since I am irrevocably required to have one in my line of work as a lawyer. I travel a lot, as do the senior counsel where I work. They have Blackberries and send e-mail messages around the clock. When you have different groups of people moving around working on tight schedules, it is important to be able to communicate. I could get a Blackberry, but I do not want a Blackberry. I have found a different device that will meet my needs perfectly, and for which I am willing to wait. It is the iPhone.
Here's why I'm exciting about the iPhone:
The iPhone has accomplished all of the above in the USA. By any metric it is a huge success. It remains to be seen what an unlimited data plan will cost in Canada if Rogers becomes the iPhone carrier (as seems likely), but Apple managed to create a simple and affordable pricing plan in the USA for both data and voice access, and I suspect their strategy in Canada will require a similar pricing scheme.
Future features are purely speculative, but given that the iPod touch is already featuring 16 GB of memory, it's likely that the second-generation iPhone will offer at least this much. Whether there are extra applications and support for third-party applications to come is also speculative. But I can tell you that if I bought an iPhone now, getting what I could already expect to get in the USA, I would be happy. I would be extremely happy. I would feel I had found a vastly superior way to stay connected when on the go.
Between the infantile outcry over the $200 price drop and the hyperbole expressed about the recent iPhone firmware update, I'm more than a little disappointed in the stance taken by people who ought to know better. The worst culprits are those claiming that Apple is intentionally disabling phones that have been hacked so that they can be used on different carriers (using the misleading and too-often-repeated term "bricking"). Let's be clear on two points. First, Apple warned users that installing the firmware update might permanently disable a hacked iPhone, and before users could install the update, they had to click their acknowledgment of a confirmation dialog warning them in bold text about this risk. This was not a seek-out-and-destroy operation. Secondly, Apple did not intentionally disable the phones. It was a consequence of the way the hacks and the firmware update interact.
Daring Fireball pointed to this article by Rainer Bruckoff that provided a good and technical explanation why hacked iPhones upgraded to the 1.1.1 version of the firmware both lost the ability to connect to the network as well as why they are resistant to fresh installs of older versions of the firmware. He states:
Apple has taken the position that phones disabled in this way are no longer covered by the product warranty on the basis that the warranty and licence agreement are voided by such modifications. In essence, the hacking community that put the phones in their current state (some of which sold unlocked phones or unlocking software) is being held to the task of getting those phones disabled by the update to work again.
You can disagree on whether or not it is a good idea to take a hard line with unlocked phones, but it is irresponsible and infantile to complain that Apple is being "arrogant" or deliberately working to "screw" its customers (as has been stated in recent days). Lately I've been seeing a rampant sense of entitlement amongst people who were offered an iPhone on the following terms: 1) You can buy an iPhone today for "X" dollars, with no promises about the price we'll sell it two weeks from now; 2) Your iPhone requires a subscription to AT&T; 3) Your iPhone comes with a bunch of cool applications installed and we've put together a way for web-based AJAX applications to be made for the iPhone, but you can't just install any old program on them; 4) If you really want to hack your iPhone to install 3rd-party applications, we can't stop you but we can't promise they'll all work after future updates; and 5) If you hack your iPhone so it will work with different carriers, you probably won't want to install our new firmware, because your phone will probably be permanently broken by it.
All of these things were stated up front. No one put a gun to your head and made you agree to conditions you found unacceptable when you bought the iPhone. It all obviously seemed like a good enough deal at the time that the decision to purchase the iPhone was justified.
So why the bitching? Why the whining? Why act like you got something you didn't bargain for? Why not take some responsibility for your choices and say, "Apple promised X, I got X, and I'm happy with X. If I wanted Y, I'd buy a phone that did Y." I mean, it's only been just over three months since the iPhone came out in the USA. I'm pretty sure that there will be new phones and new features over time, perhaps even the magic features like a software development kit for those third-party applications some people seem so eager to write and install on their phones so they can start crashing their phones by trying to run Photoshop on them. If that's what you want at that time, then buy and be happy.
Until then, why not suck it up and act like there are greater travesties in life than a price cut or a firmware update that Apple made sure you knew might produce unwanted results before you insalled it?
I will make sure that the iPhone offers the features I want for the price I want before I buy it. I will doubtlessly think there are features that could or should be added in the future. But unless there's something out there that does everything the iPhone does as well or better for the price I think is fair, the iPhone is what I will buy and what I will be happy with.
How much simpler could this be?
Update: Roughly Drafted Magazine takes hack tech "journalist" Mike Elgan to task for his sensationalistic and misinformed article about Apple Inc.'s "arrogance."
Comments:My friend James puts it this way: "One day, we will talk to our children or grandchildren about a time before mobile phones, and they will be utterly amazed that once upon a time people would call a room in the hope that the person they wanted to talk to was in it."
That said, you'd be hard pressed to find an industry that rakes in so much money and yet generates so little satisfaction than the mobile phone industry combined with wireless carriers. Which brings us to the iPhone, launched in the USA on June 29, 2007. A new, simple, attractive, and usable telephone that brings elegance and simplicity to a range of previously complex and less-than-intuitive functions. It came with a simple pricing plan and a slew of well-deisgned features. Apple has so far sold over a million of them and is well on the way to reaching its goal of capturing 1% of the enormous market (that is, by selling 10 million phones) by the end of 2008.
So I am astonished, simply astonished, by the fact that what is arguably one of the most successful and ambitious product launches in the last 5 years has been met with such shameless whining and complaining by a noisy but unavoidable minority of users who are given an audience and legitimacy by the technology press.
The Macalope blog sums up the sentiment pretty well:
There's been a lot of noisy garment-rending in the Apple world recently as the combination of the iPhone price drop (since corrected), the change in iPod video output (still a mistake in the Macalope's eyes), the ringtones feature (really a problem with the industry) and the bricking of unlocked iPhones (boo-hoo-hoo) has apparently driven people insane.
The pointy one understands there have been some misaligned expectations about the iPhone, but what's so surprising is that they're coming from some usually responsible sources, and now he's a little concerned that it might be spreading.
....
Look, there's a reason the Macalope tends to buy Apple equipment and it's not because the company ties him up and puts a red rubber ball in his mouth (let's leave that to Mrs. Macalope, shall we?). It's because their stuff works and looks better than other stuff. If someone wants to make stuff that works and looks better than Apple's stuff, well, the Macalope might have to have some plastic surgery, but he'll be happy to use it.
Leo, if the Macalope's not mistaken, didn't you crash your N95 all by yourself by installing third-party applications? Why is this mythical beast supposed to feel like some kind of psychological victim because he doesn't need that particular brand of aggravation? The Macalope didn't buy his iPhone thinking about all the great apps he was going to install on it, only to find out later that it was locked down and then have to justify his continued support for the platform. No, you bought the iPhone knowing it was locked down and are now upset to find out, no, there will be no peanut butter on your chocolate, chocolate in your peanut butter.
I'm writing as somebody who does not yet own an iPhone, but is waiting for them to be sold in Canada with great anticipation. You see, right now I have a crappy phone. I own the Motorola V220, the cheapest flip phone I could buy in 2005 when I lost the need for a land line and gained the need for a phone that would be wherever I went. Now, the phone does the very minimum of what I would want a phone to do: I can send and receive calls with fairly good reliability in most circumstances. For some reason, however, even though other people at work do not encounter this problem, I can barely get any signal at work. If the phone rings, I have to go to a window to get a better signal or I cannot talk to anyone and they cannot talk to me. But my phone cannot use the internet except with great difficulty and slowness. I have to use the numeric keypad to send a text message, which is an infuriating and inarticulate way to communicate. It cannot check my e-mail. It has a terrible camera that takes tiny photos of lousy quality. The hinge creaks when I hold the phone against my head to talk. In short, it is a handy device but I would never call it a pleasure to use. It allows me to make and receive calls, most of the time, and given that this is 95% of what I need to do with my phone, I'm alright with its numerous other limitations. But I know I could be doing more, and so I am outgrowing this phone. My two year contract is up this month, and I am ready to get a new, better phone.
I am not a super geek who must constantly own the latest and greatest. I do not have a Blackberry or any other smart phone or high tech gadget beyond my four-year-old iPod and my new Canon Powershot A640 (my first digital camera and the finest mid-range camera your mid-range money can buy). Furthermore, I swore off programming years ago, and I think hacking is just fine for other people but of no inerest to me, so I'm not interested in having something that can load a lot of weird little applications. All I want is to have the best experience possible with a phone, since I am irrevocably required to have one in my line of work as a lawyer. I travel a lot, as do the senior counsel where I work. They have Blackberries and send e-mail messages around the clock. When you have different groups of people moving around working on tight schedules, it is important to be able to communicate. I could get a Blackberry, but I do not want a Blackberry. I have found a different device that will meet my needs perfectly, and for which I am willing to wait. It is the iPhone.
Here's why I'm exciting about the iPhone:
- It's time to replace my current telephone, as I've stated above;
- I want to replace my 3rd-generation iPod (10 GB) with a device that will play audio and video;
- I want to be able to check my e-mail when I'm on the road or away from my desk (which is often);
- I want more than basic, pathetic, internet access from a browser that barely and rarely works properly;
- I want a decent display for viewing photos and video;
- I already have an excellent digital camera, but if I'm going to have one on my phone, I'd rather it wasn't the fuzzy, 640x480 rubbish cameraphone on my current phone;
- I want a device that is distinctive, attactive, and easy to use;
- I want to be able to synchronize my contacts and calendars with my computer;
- I want to have the use of visual voicemail so that I can prioritize the messages I check when in a hurry;
- I want to be able to impulsively buy music over a wireless network that will work on my computer; and
- I want to be able to do this with a wireless carrier without paying $300 a month.
The iPhone has accomplished all of the above in the USA. By any metric it is a huge success. It remains to be seen what an unlimited data plan will cost in Canada if Rogers becomes the iPhone carrier (as seems likely), but Apple managed to create a simple and affordable pricing plan in the USA for both data and voice access, and I suspect their strategy in Canada will require a similar pricing scheme.
Future features are purely speculative, but given that the iPod touch is already featuring 16 GB of memory, it's likely that the second-generation iPhone will offer at least this much. Whether there are extra applications and support for third-party applications to come is also speculative. But I can tell you that if I bought an iPhone now, getting what I could already expect to get in the USA, I would be happy. I would be extremely happy. I would feel I had found a vastly superior way to stay connected when on the go.
Between the infantile outcry over the $200 price drop and the hyperbole expressed about the recent iPhone firmware update, I'm more than a little disappointed in the stance taken by people who ought to know better. The worst culprits are those claiming that Apple is intentionally disabling phones that have been hacked so that they can be used on different carriers (using the misleading and too-often-repeated term "bricking"). Let's be clear on two points. First, Apple warned users that installing the firmware update might permanently disable a hacked iPhone, and before users could install the update, they had to click their acknowledgment of a confirmation dialog warning them in bold text about this risk. This was not a seek-out-and-destroy operation. Secondly, Apple did not intentionally disable the phones. It was a consequence of the way the hacks and the firmware update interact.
Daring Fireball pointed to this article by Rainer Bruckoff that provided a good and technical explanation why hacked iPhones upgraded to the 1.1.1 version of the firmware both lost the ability to connect to the network as well as why they are resistant to fresh installs of older versions of the firmware. He states:
So, what do these various hacks do to unlock the iPhone? They rely upon bugs in the communications software, firstly, to make the system fall back into a state where it pleads for an external agency to reload its main firmware; cleverly substituted instructions then make it do new things. After several, progressively more complex, phases of this, new applications can be installed. Up to this point, only the main flash memory has been affected and installing a new software update will just bring the system back to the standard state. Now, one of the new applications may try to mess with the radio firmware; it will clear or set regions of it to bring the radio processor's state out of step with reality, or even write bogus activation data into it.
Now, of course, the system's state has been moved completely out of the state space envisioned by its designers. When it powers up, the state is sufficiently consistent - the various checksums check out OK, for instance - for the various processors to confidently start working. However, a few actual values are different from the intended ones - enough to let a different SIM card work, say. Now, if the hackers had the actual source code and documentation available, all this could be done in a reliable way. But this not being the case, they had to work by testing changes in various places and observing what happened, clearly not an optimal process.
Consider, now, the software update process. It assumes that the iPhone's various processors and firmware(s) are in one of the known states - indeed, this is required for the complex cooperation required for uploading new software. If this cooperation is disrupted, the update may not begin - leading to an error message - or, worse, it may begin but not conclude properly. At this point, one or more of the iPhones processors may try to enter a recovery routine, either wiping the flash memories or to reinitialize them to a known state. No doubt this will be successful in most cases, and the new update will then be installable on a second attempt. However, the recovery may fail - since the exact circumstances couldn't be foreseen - or it may be assuming false preconditions (like, a valid AT&T SIM card being present). The system will probably try to recover at successively lower states until falling back to the "can't think of anything more, take me back to the factory" mode; or it may even lock up and "brick".
Apple has taken the position that phones disabled in this way are no longer covered by the product warranty on the basis that the warranty and licence agreement are voided by such modifications. In essence, the hacking community that put the phones in their current state (some of which sold unlocked phones or unlocking software) is being held to the task of getting those phones disabled by the update to work again.
You can disagree on whether or not it is a good idea to take a hard line with unlocked phones, but it is irresponsible and infantile to complain that Apple is being "arrogant" or deliberately working to "screw" its customers (as has been stated in recent days). Lately I've been seeing a rampant sense of entitlement amongst people who were offered an iPhone on the following terms: 1) You can buy an iPhone today for "X" dollars, with no promises about the price we'll sell it two weeks from now; 2) Your iPhone requires a subscription to AT&T; 3) Your iPhone comes with a bunch of cool applications installed and we've put together a way for web-based AJAX applications to be made for the iPhone, but you can't just install any old program on them; 4) If you really want to hack your iPhone to install 3rd-party applications, we can't stop you but we can't promise they'll all work after future updates; and 5) If you hack your iPhone so it will work with different carriers, you probably won't want to install our new firmware, because your phone will probably be permanently broken by it.
All of these things were stated up front. No one put a gun to your head and made you agree to conditions you found unacceptable when you bought the iPhone. It all obviously seemed like a good enough deal at the time that the decision to purchase the iPhone was justified.
So why the bitching? Why the whining? Why act like you got something you didn't bargain for? Why not take some responsibility for your choices and say, "Apple promised X, I got X, and I'm happy with X. If I wanted Y, I'd buy a phone that did Y." I mean, it's only been just over three months since the iPhone came out in the USA. I'm pretty sure that there will be new phones and new features over time, perhaps even the magic features like a software development kit for those third-party applications some people seem so eager to write and install on their phones so they can start crashing their phones by trying to run Photoshop on them. If that's what you want at that time, then buy and be happy.
Until then, why not suck it up and act like there are greater travesties in life than a price cut or a firmware update that Apple made sure you knew might produce unwanted results before you insalled it?
I will make sure that the iPhone offers the features I want for the price I want before I buy it. I will doubtlessly think there are features that could or should be added in the future. But unless there's something out there that does everything the iPhone does as well or better for the price I think is fair, the iPhone is what I will buy and what I will be happy with.
How much simpler could this be?
Update: Roughly Drafted Magazine takes hack tech "journalist" Mike Elgan to task for his sensationalistic and misinformed article about Apple Inc.'s "arrogance."
