CapMac iPhone SIG

If I want to complete a call on my AT&T Wireless iPhone – I must sit in a certain metal lawn chair in my backyard.  Rain, snow, sleet, hail – it’s the only place I can make calls at home.

I must not lean, change positions quickly, walk around, or sneeze – otherwise the call will drop – not just sometimes – every time.  It’s a problem that I have dealt with for over five years. It’s a problem that AT&T and I have discussed hundreds of times to the same conclusion – I must charge my phone more often – and move somewhere else.

Then AT&T introduced a cute new, free iPhone app called ‘Mark the Spot’, designed to speed up the process of my reporting often dozens of dropped calls a day. Obviously, the cost of coding an app in India or Israel was lower than paying for calming yoga for call-center employees, and having them spend tens of thousands of hours reassuring customers that ‘your call is important to us…’ when it really wasn’t.

After two years of submitting hundreds (yes, hundreds) of trouble reports – there’s progress.

As I whipped out Mark My Spot the other day, I received seven MTS Network updates that proudly announced a new AT&T wireless tower had been planted near Lady Bird Lake in my honor, undoubtedly to improve my service – even better, they wanted to know whether the new tower helped resolve my issues.

While its too early to truly know… it’s good to know that after hundreds of hours, messages, and reports that AT&T finally did something – useful.

Maybe there’s hope for AT&T yet – the customer is, eventually, always right.

Having problems with dropped calls, slow data, or text spam?  Download your own copy of AT&T’s Mark the Spot  – it’s free, easy to use, and from personal experience – they do eventually pay attention. It certainly can’t hurt – and is much easier than enduring their *611 ‘customer service’.

The largest-ever Android malware campaign may have duped as many as 5 million users into downloading infected apps from Google’s Android Market, Symantec reported today.

Dubbed “Android.Counterclank” by Symantec, the malware was packaged in 13 different apps from three different publishers, with titles ranging from “Sexy Girls Puzzle” to “Counter Strike Ground Force.” Many of the infected apps were still available on the Android Market as of Friday afternoon.

“They don’t appear to be real publishers,” Kevin Haley, a director with Symantec’s security response team, said in an interview today. “These aren’t rebundled apps, as we’ve seen so many times before.”

Haley was referring to a common tactic of malware purveyors, repackaging a legitimate app with attack code, then re-releasing it to the marketplace in the hope that users will confuse the fake with the real one.

When the Android.Counterclank Trojan horse is installed on an Android smartphone, it silently collects a wide range of user information, including copies of the bookmarks and the handset maker. It also modifies the browser’s home page.

Although the infected apps request an uncommonly large number of privileges — something that the user must approve — Haley argued that few people bother reading them before giving their okay.

“If you were the suspicious type, you might wonder why they’re asking for permission to modify the browser or transmit GPS coordinates,” said Haley. “But most people don’t bother.”

Some of the 13 apps that Symantec identified as infected have been on the Android Market for at least a month – but were revealed just yesterday.

Google offered no comment or explanation on the massive malware attack on their Android customers.

Apple iPhone users – safe inside what Google purports is a ‘walled garden’ – were blissfully unaffected.

David Pogue seldom misses his mark – and his latest iPhone: Missing Manual is no exception.

Whether you are an iPhone pro, or just bought your new iPhone 4S, Pogue offers a wealth of insights and handy hints to that will unlock the wonders hidden within Apple’s technological wonder:

• Use it as a phone. Learn the basics as well as time-saving tricks and tips for contact searching by voice, texting, and more.
• Manage your stuff in the cloud. Sync and back up your contacts and media across all of your devices with iCloud.
• Get things done. Ask Siri to send reminders, place calls, and more.
• Master notifications. Use the Notification Center to find missed messages, calendar invitations, friend requests, and more.
• Connect with other iPhone owners. Send unlimited iMessages to friends, family, and colleagues who are also running iOS5.
• Treat it as an iPod. Master the ins and outs of iTunes, and listen to music, upload and view photos, and fill the iPhone with TV shows and movies.
• Take the iPhone online. Make the most of your online experience to browse the Web, read and compose email, use social networks, or send photos and audio files.
• Go beyond the iPhone. Learn how to use the App Store, and how to multitask between your apps, organize them in folders, and read ebooks in iBooks.

apple sanlitun beijing store

So much for legendary Chinese patience – unruly crowds at Apple’s landmark Sanlitun Store in Beijing, forced Apple to postpone Friday’s iPhone 4S launch indefinitely.

Many in line, after braving sub-freezing temperatures, began to push and scream as the store prepared for a special 7:00a opening. As Apple employees pleaded for patience and order – yelling, pushing and line-cutting increased – until eggs were thrown at the glass exterior of the store. Finally, police were called to quell the near-riot.

Following the incident, Apple said it would suspend its iPhone 4S sales at its five retails stores located in Beijing and Shanghai. The smartphone, however, is still on sale through the company’s online store and authorized retailers, such as China Unicom, the country’s official carrier of the Apple iPhone.

Apple’s high-demand products are often the target for mass-purchase scalpers who often demand to buy products in great quantity only to resell them at high markup to less ambitious shoppers. Many on hand at the launch reported that the melee originally began as scalpers jockeyed to get to the front of the line bypassing shoppers who had waited all night in the cold.

Apple has no word when sales might resume in their own stores.

*freedom not included.

Ask any feudal slave owner – some slaves prefer to be kept that way. Protected. Fed.  Unfree. And just like Android users, they don’t know escape when they see it.

Recent furor over Andy Rubin’s blog post about Google’s ‘openness’ has led many folks to re-examine this whole freedom vs. walled-garden argument.

And thankfully, today’s editorial in Electronista nails it. It’s an enlightened, solid read – with plenty of fodder to throw back at your uppity Android using friends.

Some of our oldest relatives are enjoying their new iPads – kicking back, playing games, drawing, and making crazy FaceTime calls, while they eat bananas…

It had to happen – orangutans are using iPads. Behaviorists at the Milwaukee Zoo report that curiosity drove them to see how one of mankind’s closer relatives might react to an iPad. It was love at first doodle. Apes immediately took to the touch-and-go interface and the ease of use. In fact, they even seem to enjoy interacting with other apes via FaceTime.

Other zoos and wildlife conservatories report similar results with their ape populations also taking keen interest in the iPad.

I wonder if behaviorists have any concerns about apes become too familiar with iPads. Perhaps they’d consider enabling parental controls and blocking access to all ‘Planet of the Apes’ movies….

Read more on their fascinating story at the BBC website.

Coming off three massive network outages in a month – Verizon has decided to thank customers by imposing a new $2 charge to those paying their bill online or by phone. The new charge takes effect January 15th, 2012.

VERIZON WILL CHARGE USERS TO PAY THEIR BILL? Yeah, its a ‘convenience charge’. Really?  Does that mean that disgruntled users of Verizon can charge them an ‘inconvenience fee’ when calls drop, or the network goes down for hours and hours at a time? If that were the case – Verizon and certainly AT&T would often end up owing us money at the end of a month.

Verizon’s brazen money-grab is not unlike many other fees and ‘government allowed’ charges you find on virtually every utility bill these days. It’s just a tad more upfront – and wrong.

Want to vent? Call Verizon Customer Service at  *611 from your Verizon phone, or dial (800) 922-0204, from Monday-Sunday 6am-11pm Central – and remind them that changing the terms of your contract during the contract period, gives you the right to terminate the contract if you do not agree with the new terms they have imposed.  Play hardball.

And remember that the beleaguered customer is always right.

Apple’s holiday themed ad is proving to be a winner. Several audience measurement and viewer perception surveys have named the new Apple ad as the season’s runaway winner for grabbing viewers and creating strong brand perception and loyalty.

WOW – all that from one ad?  Well, if you haven’t seen it yet – take a gander at this link.

It’s beautifully crafted, and sure to win over even the most hardened Grinch.

At this moment, Verizon subscribers are seeing red – and that’s not a good thing. Users nationwide are reporting the data network is slow, or completely down.  Verizon user forums carry reports from across the country.

Verizon reports that their technicians are working on the ‘software related issue’ and hope to have a time-to-resolution ‘soon’.

The outage comes during the peak travel days for the holiday season – as families coordinate travel and shopping plans. The outage also affects business users who are now data-less during many of the last productive business days of 2011.

As Verizon says – we’re on it….

UPDATE – According to Verizon, today’s outage has been resolved without further explanation:

Verizon Wireless 4G LTE service is returning to normal this morning after company engineers worked to resolve an issue with the 4G network during the early morning hours today. Throughout this time, 4G LTE customers were able to make voice calls and send and receive text messages. The 3G data network operated normally.

at&t ceo randall stephenson

Typical for AT&T – their call to gobble up competitor T-Mobile has dropped.  The thud caught many observers unprepared.

Facing regulatory opposition from the Federal Communications Commission and the US Department of Justice – AT&T decided to exit gracefully – at least for now.

Since regulatory agencies voiced that any acquisition of T-Mobile would be denied on public-interest grounds, AT&T has repeatedly hinted at a renewed effort once lobbying efforts get traction. Observers expect AT&T’s brain-dead proposal to remerge like a money-hungry zombie.

For now – AT&T stands to lose $4 Billion in cash and spectrum value – chump change considering the hefty monthly bills their customers face each month for increasingly sketchy service.