AT&Tease me..

After a recent trip to Austria where I couldn't use the smart part of my iPhone - not without paying a crapload of money to AT&T - $20/MB for roaming data, vs $30 for 1GB with a prepaid SIM, I decided it was time to get my phone unlocked. I thought that since I'd had it for 18 months and paid AT&T roughly $1500 ($250 for the phone and another $70/month for the minimum plan), so they would be willing to unlock it for me. This was the case with other phones I had had. But I thought wrong. Very wrong.

My first call to AT&T went exactly as I expected. I called and got Monique (her real name). I explained that I wanted to get the phone unlocked so I could use a prepaid SIM. She understood the problem, and when she realized I had an iPhone, directed me to Apple. I was certain she was wrong, but agreed to call Apple anyway. Monique thoughtfully gave me their number.

The Apple support person thankfully didn't laugh at me. Together we laughed at Monique, and the Apple lady explained to me that Apple has a contract with AT&T (hey, me too!) and they cannot legally unlock my phone. Worse, if I get it unlocked, they will not support me (as if telling me "nope, we can't do that" is some sort of 'support'). Blah blah blah...

Back I went to AT&T. Thankfully, the next person I got at AT&T was more competent - Apple cannot unlock my iPhone. But she went on to say that Apple makes the iPhone ONLY for AT&T and they can't be unlocked, ever.

I pointed out that numerous other cell providers around the world sell iPhones that aren't locked to AT&T, but she assured me that AT&T is the only one who can sell iPhones. I pointed out that there are numerous web sites detailing how to unlock an iPhone illegally, but she maintained that the phone could not be unlocked, ever. Deaf ears. At this point, I have to wonder if tech support training includes some sort of "defy logic" lessons.

Eventually I gave up, and just emailed AT&T support to express my dissatisfaction with their policy. I received a near-immediate response - thank you for your service, we value you as a customer, but we're not going to unlock your phone for you, blah blah blah. But wait, it got better. The support rep actually suggested that if I have a different phone, they would work with me to unlock that. Did I miss something? How does unlocking a different phone help me get data when roaming on my iPhone.. Right, it doesn't.

And that, my friends, is why my next smart phone will probably not be an iPhone from AT&T. I don't travel outside the country all that often, but when I do, I would really like to use my phone. If I want to "need" a second phone for travleing, why would I bother with a GSM phone to begin with...

Amusingly enough, I just read on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (it's so cute that they still go by "weblog") that an unlocked iPhone is available from Apple for $699 (sort of).

iPhone OS 3.0 Revisited

I've been running the OS 3.0x on my iPhone for just over two months now (I upgraded near the end of June), and I'm sorry to say that I am very disappointed with it. Sure, it has some improvements -- cut and paste is great when it works, but there are many times that it doesn't work.

By far, the biggest problem I've had with it is performance. It just sucks. I regularly find myself several WORDS ahead of the keyboard when typing, I can't say for sure, but I think typing is actually slower than the initial release when the iPhone 3G was released. Maybe it's me? Do I type too fast Apple?

I've also run into countless network-related problems. I regularly start up TwitterFon and hit the refresh and am told that there is no network connection. Sure, maybe it's a TwitterFon issue? But I get exactly the same thing with Safari - it'll open up, start refreshing the current page, then pop up a "no network connection" message, and then actually refresh the page behind the popup window.

Beyond performance, I've lost count of the number of times I've had to actually turn the phone off and then on again in order to get any sort of network connection. It's almost like I'm running Windows Millenium Edition. Sometimes the phone will say there is no service and and after restarting will have a decent 3G signal. Other times it will have a strong 3G signal and will just not connect to anything (Safari fails, Facebook, TwitterFon, etc).

Did I mention - I still can't send or receive an MMS message?

I have to wonder. Apple - is this intentional? Did you intentionally make the new OS slower so I'd run out and buy a new phone? Maybe you should have talked to AT&T about that (come on, we know you talk to them about everything). I might have upgraded phones if tey didn't make it so freaking expensive. And who knows, maybe next year when my contract was up, I might have thought about upgrading to the iPhone 3GS++. But lately, all I think is "man, is this what life is going to be like, Apple ships an update, I install it, and life sucks" (remember the last two Mac OS X updates trashed my previously stable machine). Do I really want to invest any more in you?

Gruntled Customer

While I was in Scotland, I had data roaming turned off on my phone so as not to join the huddled masses who get back from a trip abroad with ridiculously high phone bills (thanks huddled masses for taking one for the team and showing us that data roaming is bad!). I was little withdrawn when there was no wi-fi around, but mostly ok.

Except for VoiceMail. No data means no Visual VoiceMail®. Fine, I can live with that, Apple thoughtfully put a "Call VoiceMail" button right in the middle of the VoiceMail dialog. Sadly, it didn't work. When I had a VoiceMail message, I pressed the button and nothing happened. I ended up calling my own number, etc to get my messages (no, pressing/holding "1" didn't work - I tried that too).

Today I got around to calling AT&T to complain for support. Not surprisingly, it was a waste of time (initially). The call went like this:

Me: I had data roaming off so that I wouldn't get charged, but the "Call VoiceMail" button didn't retrieve messages
AT&T Guy: With data roaming off you can't use Visual VoiceMail
Me: I know, but the "Call VoiceMail" button should have worked, right?
AT&T Guy: Does it work now?
Me: I don't know, I'm not in Scotland anymore
AT&T Guy: You need to take it up with Apple, it's a problem with the phone
Me: Thanks

And so I called Apple. Their phone menu asked a bunch of questions, the last of which was "are you having problems with VoiceMail?" - I thought "score, everyone has problems, they have a team dedicated to helping us!" I answered "yes" with just a hint of excitement in my voice. The system responded by telling me that it was an AT&T problem and transfered me back to them.

I think not. I hung up, and called Apple back, and lied to their phone menu (but I had my fingers crossed when I did it) and said I was having a technical problem. I rationalized it internally, telling myself that I was calling because the "Call VoiceMail" button was broken, not VoiceMail, strictly speaking.

A nice guy came on the phone, and after I explained the problem, he asked me to press and hold the "1" key to see if that tranfered me to my VoiceMail. I did, it didn't. Then we debated whether we heard one or two tones. I said there was one, as the customer I was right (though really it was two - the "DT" in DTMF means dual-tone - sorry Apple guy).

Since the "1" key trick didn't work, he said "it's an AT&T problem" and offered to transfer me to them. I explained nicely that I had just spoken to them, and they sent me to him, and if I was going to end up in the middle of them pointing fingers at each other, I would just live without the "1" key and find some very public place to post my experiences. I might've also mentioned that I knew Steve Jobs. Does seeing him shopping at Whole Foods count as knowing him?

Rather than send me to AT&T on my own, he offered to conference them in and go through things with them (i.e. he knew what was wrong with their system and could help them fix it). And that's exactly what he did - we sat on hold for ten minutes or so waiting for someone from AT&T to come on, look at my phone's settings on their end, say "it looks fine, wait, no, let me tweak this" and magically my "1" button now calls my VoiceMail.

And that's why I'm a gruntled customer rather than my usual disgruntled customer. Because some random guy at Apple wasn't sure whether I really knew Steve Jobs or not went out of his way to help me fix my problem even though it wasn't actually his problem to help fixing.

(by show of hands, how many people knew that 'gruntled' was a word?)

iPhone, AT&T, MMS

Well, I got my first MMS message on my iPhone the other day. Ugh. It came as a text message (SMS) which read:

I sent you a multimedia message. You can view my message w/in the next 7 days via the web at www.viewmymessage.com using ID A1843 and password M6572

Well, that's pretty handy, except that I then need to open up a browser (by clicking on the provided link) and then key in the cryptic userid and password that I am forced to remember or write down because cut and paste is a concept foreign to the iPhone development team.

This is now my new number one priority, along with being able to record movies, send MMS messages, transfer files using bluetooth add cut and paste and receiving MMS messages. Wait, ok, I'll throw you a bone - if you add receiving MMS messages, I won't need to cut and paste ids and passwords back and forth, so that's lower priority.

AT&T - you meed to hire people to proofread the things you put on your site. This text, for example, is not really English:


See how you've used "this" twice in the second sentence? This is kind of stupid. Here, I'll reword it for free for you:

Your login is being verified. Depending on your Internet connection speed, this may take a few minutes to complete. If it does indeed take a few minutes to complete rather than a few seconds, you should contact your Internet Service Provider and tell them that AT&T says your connection sucks and you want your money back.

See - much better. The first one is free. After that, it costs money.