The Brad Hole

This past Saturday at 10am, the Apple Store at Arrowhead Mall here in Glendale had their grand opening. Beth and I didn't make a huge effort to be there, but we were at the mall around noon and peeked in. It was a madhouse. There were no iPhone lines outside of the store - they'd contained that to a line of 15-20 people along one wall inside, but it was nearly impossible to move around.

Despite this being an opening day crowd, this is not dissimilar from my experience in other Apple Stores of late. It seems they are crowded to the point where it's hard to shop. I suppose this is a good problem for Apple to have, but when you want to pick up something quickly, it can be a chore - compounded because you buy things by tracking down a blue-shirted employee rather than taking things to a register. Those same employees are usually pretty busy helping other customers with questions. The solution, I would guess, would be to open more Apple Stores more frequently since the demand seems to be there, but I dunno. I'm no expert on retail sales. ;-)

Posted by bradman at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wrapping up our quest to get Beth her iPhone 3G, we went back to the AT&T store the Monday before yesterday. After giving them her name, they went in back to fetch the phone. The lady who appeared to know what she was doing handed the phone to a guy who appeared to not know what he was doing and instructed him what was to be done to activate this upgrade on my account for Beth's account. He exhibited what is probably best termed extreme reluctance.

We had several sweaty minutes as he started punching things into his register, and more sweaty minutes as he gave the screen a worried stare and went in back to ask someone more questions about how to activate. Upon returning, he declared that we were good to go and sent us on our way. It's important to mention at this point that he never took Beth's phone out of its shrink-wrapped box to activate it. He merely told us to go home, insert some new SIM cards and activate through iTunes. Confidence was not high.

On the way home, Beth's existing RAZR "welcomed her to AT&T" and my old iPhone deactivated itself. I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach. However, we got home, inserted the new SIMs and amazingly, my old iPhone activated as did Beth's. We logged onto our AT&T account and sure enough our billing was wacky. It took a phone call a few days later to square that away, but it certainly appears that we're finally all set. Better yet, it looks like I'm still eligible to upgrade my old iPhone to a 3G if I choose.

Posted by bradman at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SciFi had a show last year called the The Dresden Files. Beth watched it and enjoyed it. I didn't care for it nearly as much though. It struck me as just another supernatural show with a not-appealing lead character and set decoration that was way over the top.

Our friends recently recommended the book series to us. Beth took to it instantly and declared it a smash hit. However, it took me quite a while before I worked up the energy to read the first book. I was prepared for it to completely suck. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the novels are fantastic. I'm currently on book 7 - "Dead Beat". The books differ from the TV series in a few key ways for me. The lead character is more of a hapless, nerdy schmo than the TV series.

The books are also page-turners in the best sense of the word. Each book starts off at full speed and keeps the pace going almost non-stop with twists and turns every now and then for good measure. The author has a good writing style that, at least to me, shows strong influences of the smart-assedness and mystic-mixing of Zelazny's more approachable works. It's good pulp fiction all around.

I've been pleasantly surprised by how well the series continues to hold up in both quantity and quality. I give it two bookmarks way up.

Posted by bradman at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think our quest to get Beth an iPhone 3G will become a multi-part saga. At any rate, part 2 of the tale involved going into an AT&T store today to order the phone for her and wait it out.

We entered the store around 1 and were next to get served. That took roughly 20 minutes as only one guy there was qualified to order the iPhone and he was occupied with some schmuck who was having all kinds of issues setting up his Blackjack. If you've been to an AT&T store, you know that there's pretty much nothing to do inside - no place to sit, and just a wall of bluetooth headsets and cheap phones to stare at. 2 kids were clustered around the iPhone demo unit so even that small thrill was out.

When we got served, we got "served". Beth was (as we knew) unable to upgrade her phone to the iPhone for the regular price since she only joined after I got mine last year (see my prior rant). However, her price was $599, a difference of $300 over the upgrade price. Ouch. As it happens, it costs $175 to terminate, which I gently pointed out to the guy as saving us $125 over the full phone price. Turns out AT&T has a policy in effect to prevent people from terminating and re-signing so that was denied to us. It baffles me that she'd have been far better off never having joined AT&T until this moment (as I ranted before) and I made sure to mention that to him.

The solution he presented was byzantine and, as he mentioned, not one he'd done before with the iPhone. He suggested that I upgrade my line to the iPhone 3G (since I'm eligible) and when it arrives, do some kind of account transfer of the new phone to Beth - a separate, two-stage operation in lieu of her just directly upgrading. He asked another co-worker at the store who said she had done this once before and it should have the same net effect as Beth upgrading directly.

My biggest fear at this point, given the shaky confidence our rep exuded (repeatedly and explicitly) is that we'll end up with one or more jacked iPhones and 2 lines scrambled all to hell, as apparently this work-around requires 2 all-new SIM cards.

Common sense tells me that this convoluted work-around is shaky at best. If it's legit, then having the upgrade restrictions on her current phone are meaningless and customer-hostile. If we're somehow working the system, I'm afraid that between now and when the phone arrives we'll get ensnared by some corporate memo from AT&T that disallows this procedure.

Posted by bradman at 05:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The iPocalypse - that's what people are calling the less-than-smooth launch of the 3G iPhone. I was in Austin when it launched - several of my co-workers made the attempt to get an iPhone on launch day and returned with horror stories just like those you've read elsewhere on the net.

Beth had wanted a 3G iPhone since after I got an iPhone last year, so we agreed to wait until it was announced and then go get one shortly thereafter. Since I was out of town during the launch, we figured we'd pop yesterday (Sunday) and get one. I don't know if I can fully express my dissatisfaction with thie process so far - and that's without having attempted to wait in any lines. I'm one of those who thinks it's silly to wait in line more than 30 minutes for a phone, so I'm happy to wait it out, but still - the process this time has been markedly different than the initial launch, and a regression on so many levels that it's hard to fathom.

When the first rumors of the iPhone were throbbing through the 'net, I thought for sure it was a hoax - there's no way Apple could deliver that all-in-one experience without being beholden to one of Satan's many minions, all of whom work in the US cellular industry - an industry populated with sharks and sleaze, driven by commission and staffed by undermotivated, underpaid and undertrained staff. Wireless carriers' stated goal may not be to make your buying experience as horrific as that of buying a car, but it invariably is.

With that in mind, I was shocked and surprised to find that the first iPhone was set up in a way that allowed you to buy it in the store off the shelf and take it home, signing up for your plan and activating entirely from within iTunes - no salesmen forcing upgrades and accessories down your throat or - more likely - getting confused and mistyping/misspelling your name or giving you a plan you did not ask for or want. When the 3G iPhone was announced, it was announced that this was no longer the case - activation and setup in stores was mandatory. So there's one step backward into the morass.

When Beth's Verizon account hit its 2-year contract limit last December, she signed on with AT&T with a cheap phone and we got a family plan, thinking that when the 3G comes out, we'll upgrade. In any other industry, this would be good business. For the cellular carriers though, this has little to no bearing. As it turns out, owing to the way cell companies subsidize their phones so they can sell them cheaply, Beth will have to pay $499 to get a 16GB iPhone. Had she remained a Verizon customer up until now and switched fresh, she'd merely pay $299 for the phone and the privilege of joining AT&T's family. It's actively customer-hostile owing to the oddities of subsidizing, but there it is. Of course I can upgrade to a 3G iPhone today since the original iPhone was not subsidized, but that helps us not at all.

I wonder though - canceling her line outright costs $175, which is less than the "upgrade premium" of $200. It might be cheaper by $25 to cancel and re-sign her as a new account than try to upgrade but I'm sure AT&T has done their math and added some sort of $25 "new user" fee that is not apparent.

Adding to my frustration, AT&T's wireless website seems to be flaky. I can't go 5 minutes without an error page, usually cleared up by my retrying a link. Sometimes it'll kick me off with a cryptic error about a problem with my login session. This happens on 2 different computers. Also, god help you if you have 2 lines and want to add the second line to a family plan. You'll be greeted with a web page with instructions that tell you in no uncertain terms that the process is broken and they apologize for it not working. That'd be fine if it was a short-term glitch but this has persisted ever since Beth switched. The cost to us is negligible so it hasn't been worth pursuing, but the ballsy way it has stayed broken is something else.

We did call around to local AT&T stores yesterday to check on availability. None had any in stock. Some offered to "special order" the phone and get back to us. Some stores gave conflicting information about availability. Owing to the odd restrictions in place on plans, we are forced to buy from an AT&T store rather than the Apple store. There are some truly amazing horror stories about AT&T customer service from brave souls who have gone further than we have on the macrumors.com forums.

All in all, given the chance I'd move away from AT&T in a heartbeat if the iPhone were on any US competitor. I can see other companies being as bad, but the bar is set pretty low right now - it's hard to imagine worse.

Posted by bradman at 05:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We lived down in Chandler, AZ a few years back in a nice rental house. It was centrally located (well, as central as anything in Chandler could be) near a lot of places, one of them being the Apple Store in the mall in Chandler. When we bought our house in Glendale, the closest Apple Store became the one at the Biltmore in central Phoenix, which wasn't really close at all - 15-20 miles or so.

That's all about to change: July 26, 2008 is the scheduled grand opening of an Apple Store in Arrowhead Mall, just a few miles down the road from us - perfect. With a Fry's Electronics 5 or so miles away and now the Apple Store, all my retail computer needs are very well satisfied.

I gave a presentation at the Biltmore Store for Aspyr once (or twice?), showing off a few of our games under development but that's been several years now. The last game I remember showing was Medal of Honor: Breakthrough a few months before it shipped, to put the date in perspective. I remember at the time the game wasn't finished and one bug that remained was that the tanks on the intro level were oriented wrong: they were angled with their turrets pointing straight down into the ground, which was odd but amusing.

I know a few people from the Biltmore store so once the Arrowhead store opens, I'd like to meet with them and see if it's possible to host a few Aspyr Game Days here. I think most new Apple Stores now lack the presentation area, so it may not be possible. As well, I think most Apple Stores nowadays are also a massive mob of people so there may be no logistical way to make it happen. We'll see though - I think it'd be fun to do again.

Posted by bradman at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)