The day following the infamous $200 iPhone price drop, my only reason for not getting an iPhone vanished and I found myself driving up Campbell Ave. to the Apple Store to buy one.
For anyone who hasn’t bought something recently at an Apple Store, you may be in for a bit of a shock. Apple has done away with cash registers, instead opting for roving employees with product scanners and wireless credit card processing devices. Since there is no place to form a queue, I had to roam around the store, constantly looking for an employee to free themselves from other customers. Instead of waiting in a line for ten minutes to get my iPhone, it took me forty minutes just to catch a free employee to fetch an iPhone and check me out.
On the whole, doing away with cash registers isn’t the problem — giving employees mobile checkout devices is actually a great idea. The problem is not having a designated place for customers to line up and make their purchases. Everyone complains about having to wait in line, but lines have stuck around for thousands of years because the alternative is chaos. The result of chaos is that a significant number of your customers feel like they were treated unfairly.
Frankly, I can’t see this absurd no-line policy resulting in anything but a decrease in retail store sales for Apple. I came very close to being frustrated enough to walk out without making a purchase.
My friend and co-worker, Collin, has noted this odd behavior from other companies. Dell, for instance, would list blade servers in their catalog, but not actually list their price. Instead, the catalog prompts you to call a rep and get a quote. As far as Collin is concerned — and quite rightfully so — Dell advertises but doesn’t actually sell blade servers. Perhaps Apple doesn’t have retail stores, just open houses where you can demo their products and drop stuff off for warranty repairs.
As for my iPhone, it’s great. Unfortunately, AT&T’s service in Tucson isn’t quite as good as my former provider (Sprint), at least in the two main places I need to use a phone. But I can make and receive calls in both places, and it seems like AT&T’s coverage is better than T-Mobile’s inside the office. For a while I had seriously been considering an unlocking hack because the Cell Test app (accessed by dialing *3001#12345#*) had me obsessing over signal strength. Eventually I realized that the real test of cell phone signal quality was whether or not I can make and receive calls from the places that mattered. I could, so I’ve stuck with AT&T.
Another surprise was how susceptible the iPhone’s antenna is to interference from the hand holding it. Avoiding covering the antenna, located underneath the black plastic at the bottom of the iPhone, greatly improves signal quality. Apparently this is a problem with all GSM phones, so I can’t hold it against Apple.
One of the cool things about the iPhone is, or rather was, the developer community that rapidly evolved around it and the hack that enabled read/write access to the iPhone’s file system. The 1.1.1 iPhone firmware update just as swiftly put an indefinite hold on unauthorized third-party development. Sadly, third-party apps had just started showing signs of being useful.
I’ve already upgraded to the 1.1.1 firmware, mainly because the “double-click the home button” feature outweighed the benefits of the third-party apps. If development continues on the third-party apps for the 1.0.2 firmware and they become truly useful, I’ll have to consider downgrading.
Now, John Gruber and Mark Pilgrim are saying that if you wanted a phone that’s open to third-party developers you shouldn’t have bought an iPhone. I fully agree: if Apple decides the iPhone is a closed device I won’t regret my purchase. What is disappointing though is that we do not know if the iPhone is a closed device or not! Apple won’t confirm or deny if an SDK is forthcoming.
Apple is a notoriously secretive company, but usually it’s for reasonable reasons: to protect themselves from competitors or to keep forthcoming products from hurting sales of current products. If Apple does have an SDK in the works, I don’t see the harm in pre-announcing it. If it has no plans for an SDK, why can’t Apple just say that it currently has no plans? Apple should show a bit more respect for the developers who want to write apps for the iPhone and iPod touch platforms, and for the users who would really like to consume those third-party apps.