CapMac iPhone SIG

‘Better to have people think you’re stupid – than open your mouth and remove all doubt’ was my seventh grade teacher’s way of dealing with self-important know-it-alls.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson should heed those time-honored words.

This week at a Milken Institute’s Global Conference, Stephenson remarked that he wished his company would have never offered unlimited data for iPhone customers, citing the capital AT&T had to invest up front to strengthen its network.

“My only regret was how we introduced pricing in the beginning, because how did we introduce pricing? Thirty dollars and you get all you can eat,” he said during the on-stage interview Wednesday. “And it’s a variable cost model. Every additional megabyte you use in this network, I have to invest capital.”

Really?  AT&T strengthened their network?  I must have been so distracted by my dozens of daily dropped calls that I forgot to notice. Or maybe it was the mysteriously delayed [and expensive]  text messages that were so notoriously delayed that I once proposed paying for them in the month they were delivered. The AT&T Customer Service dweeb was not amused.

Reading Stephenson’s comments, I’m not amused either.

When most of us signed up for AT&T we were promised unlimited data, at speeds that AT&T knew full well they couldn’t deliver. And when they failed – did they blame their own shoddy network?  Nope – they blamed their ‘data hog’ customers. Without apology or explanation, they continued for years to deliver sub-standard service all the while blaming their customers.

AT&T invested in their network?  Marginally. So marginally that when repeatedly pressed for investment figures in specific problem markets – AT&T media reps have repeatedly stonewalled and given hyped-up numbers for regions.  Even their FCC and SEC documents obscure their paltry investments despite earning record profits on the backs of iPhone users.

Most of us were lured into signing with AT&T by promises that they knew they could not keep. In retail that’s called ‘bait and switch’. In legalese it’s called ‘fraudulent inducement’. Either way – it’s wrong.  Now for AT&T’s CEO to so publicly confirm what we knew all along, does that mean we’ll get a rebate for their sketchy network speeds and connectivity. I doubt it.

It may haunt his dreams at night – but at his pay grade – Stephenson can afford to hire a conscience.

AT&T’s abortive attempts to gobble up T-Mobile’s spectrum wasn’t a move to improve service – it was merely a means to block competition and raise rates. Even the blind pigs at the FCC smelled that rancid excuse and nixed the deal.

Now that there is beginning to be competition for iPhone and iPad service – it is time for customers to sit back and reflect on their AT&T experiences. Get over the warm fuzzy emails, and marketing.

AT&T regrets having to provide what you pay so dearly for – it’s that simple.  Overcharging and under-serving is their modus-operandi.

When you look that data plan or iPhone renewal with AT&T next time – go ahead – RETHINK POSSIBLE.

Give Stephenson and other greedy CEO’s a real nightmare.

In the final vote today in Travis County Commissioner’s Court – a lone Commissioner opposed incentives.

Precinct Two Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt, whose district ironically includes the Riata Circle area property proposed for the Apple expansion, refused to join the four other Commissioners in supporting the deal.

In the end, the Commissioners received generous assurances that their additional requirements for wage and hiring levels would be met by Apple at every stage of the expansion.

Only Eckhardt was unswayed by Apple’s capitulation to the Commissioners demands – calling the package a ‘gift’ and not an incentive.

Given the economic hardships facing our city, county, state, and nation – the prospect of having one of the world’s most successful companies expand operations and double employment – in your city, or precinct might be welcome. Obviously Commissioner Eckhardt disagrees.

Apple doesn’t have the vibe of Formula Once racing – but in the long run – Apple’s investments in people and facilities here will enrich our city more than any ‘incentives’ they will receive.

And Apple’s benefit to Austin and Travis County will remain long after Ms. Eckhardt has moved on….

Meals at The Frisco Shop have always been a favorite ritual – awesome food, great service, and the relaxed charm lost in so many Austin eateries.

That’s why seeing an iPad display this morning caught me by surprise.  The iPad is part of new Austin-based service called BellyCard, that offers restaurants and businesses an opportunity to reward loyal, repeat customers. The refreshing difference is that BellyCard offers a quick-read QR code that identifies your patronage quickly and seamlessly using the iPad’s built-in camera.

Each establishment offers its own custom rewards program. For the Frisco Shop, it could be free appetizers or a Down South all the way up to having a stool at their venerable counter named in your honor.  The concept is fun, easy, and easy to appreciate.

And appreciation is what it’s all about.  The Frisco manager mentioned that new customers are always great – but its the regulars that keep the doors open. And rewarding that loyalty is a high priority at The Frisco Shop.

BellyCards are available free for the asking from your server or the cashier, in the form of a plastic affinity-type card, and key-fob bearing your own personal QR code. All you need to do is register your email address.

If you prefer a higher-tech solution, you can download the BellyCard app [free] from the App Store.  Just a few quick questions and you’re ready to scoot across Texas and have your visit recognized and rewarded by the merchants you visit.

We hope to have folks from BellyCard and The Frisco Shop visit one of our iPhone + iPad SIG meetings and discuss this innovative and exciting new service.

It’s always great to feel appreciated – that’s never been a problem at the Frisco – and now they’ve added yet another reason to give into those Chili-Size cravings more often.

I was never a hippie – long hair, counter-culture, rebel sort of thing.  But I was part of the first Earth Day in 1970 in New York’s Central Park.

The event was a grassroots effort, a teach-in, designed to share information, and focus attention on need to conserve and protect our fragile planet.

There was no political agenda. No riots or threats. Just peaceful folks coming together in an oasis of nature… surrounded by man-built towers – being reminded that man and nature can live together with harmony, when there is respect and stewardship.

The nationwide teach-in was the dream of US Senator Gaylord Nelson, after he witnessed the devastation from the great Santa Barbara oil spill a year earlier:

I am convinced that all we need to do to bring an overwhelming insistence of the new generation that we stem the tide of environmental disaster is to present the facts clearly and dramatically. To marshal such an effort, I am proposing a national teach-in on the crisis of the environment to be held next spring on every university campus across the Nation. The crisis is so imminent, in my opinion, that every university should set aside 1 day in the school year-the same day across the Nation-for the teach-in.

Today, 42 years later, our ecosystem remains just as fragile – just as challenged.  As we enjoy the warm spring breezes, and the budding wonder of yet another Spring – let us remember that the great home that sustains us all – requires our help to survive.

The concept remains as simple as our t-shirt slogan:  Be Nice to your Mother [Earth] 

Logitech has just announced what may very well be the most innovative Bluetooth iPad keyboard ever.

While many keyboard accessories have tried turn turn the iPad into pseudo-laptop with an extended case or folio, Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard Cover makes use of the iPad’s built-in magnet mounts to securely cover the screen when not in use.

When in use, the iPad rests nicely in a groove above the keyboard, yet when fully closed, the keyboard sits snuggly against the iPad screen, offering both protection and style. The keyboard’s backing and profile nicely match the iPad, and it puts the iPad to sleep when closed just like a regular Smart Cover.

Full details are available at the Logitech website, along with a superb video of the keyboard/cover in action.

The Ultrathin cover is available for pre-order for $99.00 plus tax and shipping.

Sergey Brin isn’t unlike many other billionaire blow-hards – speak from the hip and complain when your pants burst into flame.

Today comes a rambling blogpost in which Brin attempts to rebuild the bridges he burned, dynamited, and bulldozed in Sunday’s interview with the Manchester Guardian newspaper:

My thoughts got particularly distorted in the secondary coverage in a way that distracts from my central tenets so I think they are worth clarifying here.

After lambasting Apple and Facebook in the interview – he now crawfishes his way back to blaming government censorship as the greatest threat to the internet.

HOLD ON HERE – wasn’t it Google that capitulated to Chinese and Egyptian government demands for censorship? Wasn’t it Google that offered up tones of juicy illegally-obtained data points to Homeland Security and NSA on how many millions of honest, hard-working Americans?

How dare Brin accuse others of doing what Google has been doing all along.

Sergey, remember the First Rule of Holes – when you reach the bottom, stop digging…

As Eunice Bird Pickering, my seventh grade teacher often told us – never point a finger at anyone – the other four are pointed back at you.

Maybe it’s his hip new reality-distortion glasses he’s been sporting – but Sergey Brin’s bull excrement is getting deep.

The Google co-founder used an interview late Sunday to single out companies he saw as potential threats to the Internet – naming Apple and Facebook as two of the worst.

Along with singling out actual censorship and a an aggressive media industry, he informed The Guardian that proprietary environments, such as Apple’s iOS and Facebook’s web code, were considered dangers. They risked isolating information, Brin argued, and an open search tool like Google couldn’t have existed if sites like Facebook had been the norm.

Perhaps Brin forgets that one of the largest threats to the internet is itself.

Major internet players like Facebook and Google have created their own vapid ecosystems based on stealing, bartering and brokering information under the guise of helping you search for facts, friends, or stuff.  The tidbits they glean from your web-wide meanderings become fodder for marketers, lurkers, stalkers, and the government – a fact obviously not seen thru his reality-bending goggles.

Google and Facebook have acquired and amassed huge data centers full of intensely personal data, and profited from its aggregation – while holding federal regulators impotent.

Witness our lame-ass Federal Communications Commission [FCC] fining Google only $25,000 for their admitted theft and improprieties during their StreetWise activities during which they vacuumed neighborhoods for private WiFi data, and email. Where the justice in a $25K fine?  That’s barely petty cash for a Starbuck’s break for Google.

Nope, the greatest threat to the internet is self-serving founders of ginormous web companies like Google and Facebook who steal value from unsuspecting users, and then broker it for cash, fame, and to provide a podium for themselves to berate and intimidate others others – including limp-wristed government regulators.

Where’s Apple in all this?  Building products that are wildly popular, but still outsold by hucksters like who rather ‘give away’ their technology while stealing something more valuable behind your back.

When its all said and done, Google will remain as an evil child of ego and distraction – because its aspirations take it no higher.

Apple, on the other hand, chooses to change the world – not enslave it.

Bells toll on both sides of the Atlantic tonight – marking a century since the loss of over 1500 souls in the greatest maritime disaster of all time.

While most everyone remembers the loss, the berg, the lifeboat shortage, the band, the notables on board – few have noted the nascent technology that saved hundreds more, brought help more quickly, and flashed the news to both sides of the sea.

Guillermo Marconi’s new wireless technology was just coming into fashion – and the Titanic was one of his first, and most notable installations.

From the Marconi Room, company operators passed traffic both mundane and romantic across the seas using some of the most powerful equipment ever installed. Never did they suspect that within days – that same technology would summon nearby vessels in the futile search for survivors. One fortunate outcome of the Titanic disaster was it clearly demonstrated the value of wireless communication.

The luxury of radio communication a century ago, has become today’s necessity.

Were it not for pioneers like Marconi, and disasters like the Titanic – we might still not recognize and value the technology as we do today.

Additional resources

• The Titanic Radio Page  – images and narrative from the Titanic
• Marconi Wireless on the Titanic  – technical details on the radio installation
• Messages from the Titanic  – timeline and text of messages from the Titanic
• Titanic Background  – photos and details from the disaster

Next to the indignity of having your iPhone stolen – imagine the additional insult of having AT&T reactivate your phone for the thief – no questions asked.

Three plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T in California Superior Court this week, alleging that the company acted as an accessory to theft by re-activating their stolen iPhones for the new, illegitimate owners.

The suit comes as the telecom company is making moves to address smartphone theft—earlier this week, the AT&T as well as Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint announced a plan to create a national database of lost or stolen phones so that thieves could not reactivate pilfered devices.

Still, the plaintiffs believe they have a case, as AT&T and other telecom companies have registered and assigned names of legitimate users to legally purchased smartphones for years, but still neglect to check with the original user when reassigning registration of the phone. Telecom companies operate with the knowledge that users will simply buy or replace smartphones in the event of theft – so why not make money both ways.

The complaint accused AT&T and any other “Doe Corporation Entities” that were “in some way legally or proximately responsible” of negligence, civil conspiracy, accessory to theft, and fraud and breach of contract, among other charges:

“Plaintiffs have been told by AT&T representatives that they will not, and ‘cannot’ block and effectively kill usage of stolen cell phones by thieves and criminal organizations, however, such representations are false an fraudulent”.

Other countries like Germany and Australia keep databases that prevent reactivation of stolen phones, which has lowered incidences of theft.

As with any announcement from AT&T – the first reaction was skepticism.

But alas – an AT&T spokesman has confirmed:

‘Beginning Sunday, April 8, we will offer qualifying customers the ability to unlock their AT&T iPhones,” a spokesman said. “The only requirements are that a customer’s account must be in good standing, their device cannot be associated with a current and active term commitment on an AT&T customer account, and they need to have fulfilled their contract term, upgraded under one of our upgrade policies or paid an early termination fee.’

The initiative follows a number of complaints to Apple CEO Tim Cook that led to a handful of case-by-case unlocks.

Many other carriers world-wide have been offering after-sale iPhone unlocks, most notably in Canada – but until now AT&T has declined to do it – even for customers who paid the full unsubsidized price.

More incentive exists for AT&T to unlock phones now that AT&T is retaking spectrum in advance of its migration to HSPA 4G. By unlocking the phone, leveling of network demand and congestion can be reduced in some areas.

The change also enables users to switch carriers more easily.  ;-)