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Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Tech: Looking for a Job? Check for HTTP Response Headers
If opportunity knocks, you may be surprised just what the door just may look like. Look out Bay Area Jobs!
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Opinion: Day 1, Apple Shines, AT&T Falls Flat...
If there was any moment for AT&T to prove to the US market that they had themselves subscribed to the notion that phones and service plans can indeed be two entirely different entities, it would have been day 1 of the much ballyhooed iPhone release. What happened instead was pure carrier grade ineffeciencies, and deplorable customer service. Where there were cheers and high fives at Apple stores as each proud new iPhone owner exited, at AT&T their were 15 minute checkouts per person, and a blatent disregard for line length in relation to limited supply many hours after the scheduled release time.
So did Apple conclude AT&T to be the lesser of too many evils, or was it that Apple could better utilize 3G technology as a stepping stone to rolling the iPhone out to an International audience? Whatever the reason may be, it did seem as though iPhone's release would serve as a lesson to AT&T wireless about how to properly rollout a new consumer device while bypassing all of the service inefficiencies that continue to plague each and every US wireless provider. Yet, even with Apple writing an iTunes storefront for wireless subscribers, AT&T still could not stay on top of the onslaught of activation requests, with some new users waiting hours and even a day after their purchase for the activation to complete.
The iPhone release also served a much needed lesson to AT&T about customer loyalty. Why were there lines outside of AT&T stores for the first time in the Companies' history after entering in to the wireless fray? Because Steve Jobs said it would be a good place to pick one up. In retrospect, it would seem that Jobs was simply making a mockery of what he must have already known would happen at the AT&T locations; which is why every Apple retail employee and extra product that could be mustered assembled at the Apple stores in preparation for the momentous occasion.
I happened to experience the stark contrast between the two companies on day 1 as I stood in the 70th or so position in a line that had formed outside of an AT&T store in Mountain View, California, just a stones throw from Apple's HQ. At 6:00 PM PDT, the line compressed but everyone remained cordial, even jovial that the hype would soon undergo a serious unadulerated level of scrutiny and validation. The first customer did not walk out of the store until almost 7 o'clock, and a handful of others filtered out in 15 minute increments thereafter; some of whom were visibly disturbed by the amount of time it took in order to simply purchase the device. I could only imagine that the AT&T employees were simply filling out "iPhone" or "N/A" in every single form field required to purchase a phone as a part of one of their service plans. Two hours and fifteen minutes in to the line, an AT&T employee began to count off the line, and stopped at around 30. By now the line had grown to almost 150 people because there had been no communication whatsoever as to product availability, and instead of coming clean at 6:00, they had purposely waited hoping to encourage presales from anyone not able to walk out of the store with a phone that day. AT&T is extremely lucky that action did not incite a riot..or maybe it did, but I didn't stick around to watch because I was off to the Apple store in Valley Fair Mall expecting the worst-- because I knew at the Apple store purchases were allowed two per person rather than just one.
The prospects at Valley Fair indeed looked dim as well, especially after seeing another person who I'd been in line with a short time earlier at the AT&T store. There were at least a hundred people in front of us and perhaps another 50 or so already in the store. I was quickly doing the math in my head, 100 people per hour, 2 phones each, 1,000 units total, on sale for 3 hours. As the line quickened my equations altered to , 200 people per hour, 2 phones each, 1,000 units total, on sale for 3 hours. As the "not meant to be" thought crossed my mind, I suddenly realized that "wait, Apple wouldn't let this many people stand in line if they did not have product to back it up". What had seemed so obvious as I left the AT&T store empty handed had already been cast aside by my hastily drawn mathmatical conclusion. In an astoundingly short 8 and a half minutes I walked out of the store after making two separate purchases (1 for the phones, and 1 for accessories). High fives, and an overexuberant enthusiasm errupted upon my exit, and I could almost hardly believe how polarized the two experiences were. So, without even opening the box to toy with the technological ingenuity that the iPhone possesses, it became clear to me at that moment that Apple's wireless phone revolution had undoubtedly already begun.
So did Apple conclude AT&T to be the lesser of too many evils, or was it that Apple could better utilize 3G technology as a stepping stone to rolling the iPhone out to an International audience? Whatever the reason may be, it did seem as though iPhone's release would serve as a lesson to AT&T wireless about how to properly rollout a new consumer device while bypassing all of the service inefficiencies that continue to plague each and every US wireless provider. Yet, even with Apple writing an iTunes storefront for wireless subscribers, AT&T still could not stay on top of the onslaught of activation requests, with some new users waiting hours and even a day after their purchase for the activation to complete.
The iPhone release also served a much needed lesson to AT&T about customer loyalty. Why were there lines outside of AT&T stores for the first time in the Companies' history after entering in to the wireless fray? Because Steve Jobs said it would be a good place to pick one up. In retrospect, it would seem that Jobs was simply making a mockery of what he must have already known would happen at the AT&T locations; which is why every Apple retail employee and extra product that could be mustered assembled at the Apple stores in preparation for the momentous occasion.
I happened to experience the stark contrast between the two companies on day 1 as I stood in the 70th or so position in a line that had formed outside of an AT&T store in Mountain View, California, just a stones throw from Apple's HQ. At 6:00 PM PDT, the line compressed but everyone remained cordial, even jovial that the hype would soon undergo a serious unadulerated level of scrutiny and validation. The first customer did not walk out of the store until almost 7 o'clock, and a handful of others filtered out in 15 minute increments thereafter; some of whom were visibly disturbed by the amount of time it took in order to simply purchase the device. I could only imagine that the AT&T employees were simply filling out "iPhone" or "N/A" in every single form field required to purchase a phone as a part of one of their service plans. Two hours and fifteen minutes in to the line, an AT&T employee began to count off the line, and stopped at around 30. By now the line had grown to almost 150 people because there had been no communication whatsoever as to product availability, and instead of coming clean at 6:00, they had purposely waited hoping to encourage presales from anyone not able to walk out of the store with a phone that day. AT&T is extremely lucky that action did not incite a riot..or maybe it did, but I didn't stick around to watch because I was off to the Apple store in Valley Fair Mall expecting the worst-- because I knew at the Apple store purchases were allowed two per person rather than just one.
The prospects at Valley Fair indeed looked dim as well, especially after seeing another person who I'd been in line with a short time earlier at the AT&T store. There were at least a hundred people in front of us and perhaps another 50 or so already in the store. I was quickly doing the math in my head, 100 people per hour, 2 phones each, 1,000 units total, on sale for 3 hours. As the line quickened my equations altered to , 200 people per hour, 2 phones each, 1,000 units total, on sale for 3 hours. As the "not meant to be" thought crossed my mind, I suddenly realized that "wait, Apple wouldn't let this many people stand in line if they did not have product to back it up". What had seemed so obvious as I left the AT&T store empty handed had already been cast aside by my hastily drawn mathmatical conclusion. In an astoundingly short 8 and a half minutes I walked out of the store after making two separate purchases (1 for the phones, and 1 for accessories). High fives, and an overexuberant enthusiasm errupted upon my exit, and I could almost hardly believe how polarized the two experiences were. So, without even opening the box to toy with the technological ingenuity that the iPhone possesses, it became clear to me at that moment that Apple's wireless phone revolution had undoubtedly already begun.
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