iPhone Quote of the Week

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I was talking with a friend this week about Apple’s new iPhone 4, and she said something that absolutely cracked me up (and made me stop and think). She said:

“If Apple added Verizon as an iPhone carrier choice, and added Flash to the iPhone, and I worked for a cell phone company—I’m not kidding—I would go looking for another job immediately.”

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  1. I am one of the few people on the planet who seems to have better service from AT&T than I ever did from Verizon. My Verizon phone dropped calls when I walk from my office to the kitchen and since I tend to pace back and forth when I am on the phone, this was really annoying, so as far as service goes, I’m good with AT&T, but there is very little excuse for what happened the other morning when the iPhone 4 went on sale.

    It wasn’t a surprise sale, the date was announced a week ago and probably planned for 6 months before that. The frustration people felt when the AT&T network went down, taking the Apple network along with it just went to reinforce the idea that AT&T is incompetent. It also made me wonder why Apple didn’t do anything about it and has me wondering about thier commitment to their customers, especially the ones who will buy the product without ever seeing it in person or actually touching it before buying it.

    Of course, even with nightmare ordering stories and websites being down for hours on end, they still managed to sell over 600,000 of the new iphones in less than 24 hours. I’m sure that AT&T has taken this surge in customers into account and the network will be able to handle the extra traffic. (that last sentence was a joke. I know they haven’t done anything to get ready to the new onslaught)

    I did order one, and look forward to getting it next week.

    1. You’re spot on, Alan. ATT’s phone service is good, networking service is not. Apple and ATT stikes me as a very odd pairing; one very innovative and progressive, the other slow and plodding.

    2. I had AT&T in California and it was horrible, yet because the iPhone is such an amazing device, I put up with it. In Texas my AT&T coverage is way better. I have friends that have Verizon in other parts of the country and it sucks. They all pretty much suck in their own ways, none of them are fantastic in every area, and all of them are struggling to keep up with technology. In all fairness to AT&T, they have had a 5000% increase in data transfer on their network because of the iPhone, and It’s safe to say that nobody on this blog is capable of fixing that problem, including myself. This cannot be an easy task to address.

      I find it awesome how a innovative thinking computer company has come into an industry that was crap for so many years and just shook the cage forever. I’m positive over time that the iPhone will become synonymous with the term “phone” just as they’ve done with the iPod in the digital / MP3 music player industry.

    3. I actually have a unique reason for liking AT&T: Penetration. I work in a lab that used to be part of a complex that housed a nuclear accelerator (in the 60s). They took out the dangerous stuff and renovated the inside, but the room I am in has its back buried in a hill, a 3in thick concrete floor, an 6in ceiling, and the other exterior walls are 2in think concrete with brick cladding. The end result is that CDMA signals cannot penetrate into my workplace. However, GSM (I am generalizing from AT&T phones, as I have never used T-Mobile) can get in here easily. Unfortunately, I have bad reception everywhere else, so at the moment I still have a Verizon phone, which drives me nuts because the power lasts less than a day if I don’t turn it off in the lab because it can’t accept not finding a signal and just keeps searching for one. So I’ll probably end up getting an iPhone next time my contract is up, just so I can have some battery life.

  2. I used to work for one of those handset makers. When the iPhone was announced they all laughed it off. After I pointed out the tear down to a GSM engineer I knew and said – It is all off the self tech, we could have a CDMA version in 3 months if we used Linux and stopped the political infighting. They said it would never sell. (this is the same company that had a project manager in charge of CDMA that said digital was a fad)

    I was one of 8000 laid off (again) before the division finally collapsed.

    If Apple licensed the single chip CDMA solution from Qualcomm ….

  3. I pre ordered my unlocked iPhone from Apple UK for delivery on Wednesday and I’ll be using it on any carrier I want throughout the whole of Europe and further afield. Sometimes I feel sorry for you Americans with just AT&T ;-)

      1. 16GB=£499
        32GB=£599
        Not all carriers offer it at the moment. It’s very new and iPhone is like the first to have it. Seems like there will be 5 carriers who will have the iPhone but most carriers here are GSM.

      2. Sorry, just noticed this. I ordered it direct from Apple UK, cost £599, but it should work out cheaper in the long term as I can get a cheaper monthly deal that I had with my previous locked iPhone. My local telco didn’t have micro sims at first so I just cut down my regular SIM with a pair of scissors. They now have micro sims, as do most other UK telcos

  4. I agree completely with that quote. If the iPhone was on Verizon my whole family and I would be holding one right now instead of our Droids (which I love BTW).

  5. If the iPhone were Verizon compatible (forget the flash) I’d be there. Would have been there loooooong time ago. I hate being a sheep in the herd, but in this case, I’d do it.

  6. I ‘ve had AT&T for the last 2 years with my iPhone and it isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Perhaps it is your certain location that doesn’t warrant you getting AT&T.

    I had Verizon before that for over 8 years. Verizon was good but I still had dropped calls here and there. I get dropped calls here and there too with AT&T so to me it is a wash. I get better customer service with AT&T and their online account management is much better than what I remember with Verizon.. to top it off, I am able to use the best phone on the planet. At least I can text, check email etc. while talking.. I use that feature all the time.

  7. Why oh why does Apple continue to hold the iPhone captive with AT&T? I have Verizon for the sole reason that AT&T has absolutely NO coverage where I live. I would buy an iPhone in an instant if they would just open it up to Verizon…or if AT&T would put up a tower in my area.

    I hate that Apple has limited themselves to just one carrier…and a bad one at that.

  8. I have a HTC Incredible and my son has an iPhone. I (emphasis on what I actually need from a phone ) have not found one thing that the Incredible can not do that his iPhone can. In fact until the latest iPhone, the Incredible IMO had a leg up on the iPhone.

    As for service – I have yet had a drop call or lost service ( New England), where when my son is on the road, his calls seems to drop off to the point he has to call me back from he work Verzion Blackberry.

    I question the need for one feature that the iPhone has introduced, the front view camera for video calls. Do we really need videos calls while people are walking or driving ?

    As for 200,000 + apps vs 80,000 +, once you reach the top 500 or so , does it matter.

    Just my two cents.

    Scott can we discuss something less controversial such as PC vs MAC, or flash and no flash, or HDR (Sorry already did that). Um, how about raising ponies :)

    Thanks for keeping our brains active.

    1. You won’t be able to do video calls while “walking or driving” because for now it only works on wi-fi. It will be nice if traveling and at the hotel want to chat with the wife and kids back home.

  9. I was with Verizon before they were Verizon.  I switched to AT&T years ago when they were Cingular. Both are good, but neither is perfect.  But then again, I’m just happy that I can make phone calls from a device that’s smaller then my wallet. If I drop a call once in a while, so what. I’ll just call back. I guess that’s the risk you have to take in order to make calls from almost anywhere. 
    BTW – I’m writing this on my iPhone, while watching my girlfriend play tennis. 

  10. For those wanting an unlocked iPhone, check prices in Hong Kong, too. It is illegal to sell a LOCKED phone in Hong Kong: that’s why you can buy sim cards in every 7/11 there. If you are in H.K. on vacation, just buy a $20 cheapie unlocked phone, (or use your currently unlocked phone) and a $5 sim card and talk to anyone there or the U.S. for three cents a minute. If you want a 16Gb iPhone, it’s around $800 because you aren’t subsidizing the cost with a contract. I’m in H.K. 2-3 times a month and I haven’t gone that route because of the complications with using it while I’m in home in the U.S. Good luck.

  11. I too am happy with my Driod plus Verizon. In the mountains where I live you are crazy to not have Verizon. SO would love an ipod but after all… it must make calls to be of use to me.

  12. I think Apple may be way too late to enter the Verizon market. Even if Verizon gets the iphone by the end of the year, there is not going to be a lot of people switching carriers since AT&T hiked its early termination fee. And people who are already on Verizon are not going to want to switch from their Droids right away.

    So I predict a really slow adoption rate of the iphone on Verizon. And I think Google knows this, so that’s why they’re aggressively saturating the Verizon marketplace with Droid. Apple’s biggest mistake was carrier exclusivity.

  13. This is what I just don’t understand about Apple. They get a product this close to being the ultimate product, but always, always, leave out one or two essential elements. A bit frustrating and why I don’t own an Apple product other than an iPod.

  14. Verizon has no one to blame in this matter but Verizon themselves. Apple went to them to try to give them the contract and Verizon tried to play hardball when it came to the deal. This gave AT&T an opportunity and Verizon learned a very important lesson, never mess with Steve Jobs’s wrath.

    I’m not an Apple guy, but I’m definately an iPhone guy! After being an IT pro for the last twelve years, nothing makes me roll my eyes more than the “Mac is SO Much better than…” That being said however, Verizon will get their second chance in another year or so. The problem of course is that current iPhone subscribers are tied into a 2 year contract with AT&T so you either wait the additional year to make the move by skipping a new release of an iPhone or you accept that AT&T isn’t nearly as bad as the marketing hype people say it is (their data is actually really wonderful) and start to quantify how much voice you actually do. For me, I use 90% data and 10% voice. Makes little to no sense for me to change over to Verizon.

  15. I have to agree… I have been screaming Flash since iPhone 1. I just do not understand Apple’s marketing strategy here… Flash has its issues, but it still looks good. As for AT&T, I’d be gone in a second if Verizon was an option with unlimited calling.

    Paul Abell
    Atlanta Sports Photographer

  16. To all the people who wonder why people love apple products so much, it can be summed in one word: seamless. By the way, why did they make the htc hd2 or whatever so BIG. I can’t imagine anyone who has pockets using that thing, or maybe there will be a boom in man purse’s, i mean european carry-alls.

  17. I have been with pretty much all the carriers available over the years. Due to my location, in the middle of the boonies, none of the carriers have ‘great’ service. For the major ones, Sprint is non-existent; T-Mobile and AT&T are marginal at best (work in my kitchen, but not in my living room); Verizon is the only one that has reasonable service (not perfect, but reasonable). Overall, I am quite happy with their service as it is, although I would REALLY prefer GSM – but that’s another story.

    As far as the iPhone is concerned… Well, I really have no urge to get one. For one, my music, podcasts, and audiobooks are available on my iPod Touch, and I have WiFi connectivity in about 90% of the places I ‘hang out’ at. I am quite satisfied with my ‘Incredible’ and like the open platform – the only thing that REALLY irks me about the iPhone & iPod is the fact that I HAVE TO use iTunes, and Apple feels the need to “pre-choose” what I can and cannot get… But again, another story :)

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