iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Wreaking Havoc On Apple Store 285
theappwhisperer was one of a surprisingly large number of people writing in this morning to report that the Apple store is having serious troubles taking pre-orders of the new iPhone 4. People are seeing the error page or just waiting an insanely long time to get pages back. Just imagine trying to do this from an iPhone in a major market!
I Orders, and Why is This News? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Remind me again (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, no. A quick search on Pricewatch reveals that 32GB SD cards are going for about $85 on the street. That puts a 32GB Evo at just under the $299 Apple wants for a 32GB iPhone 4. However, since I get to keep the 8GB that comes with the Evo, that means I get an Evo with 40GB of storage for a little less than a iPhone 4 with 32GB.
I know it's fashionable to make fun of AT&T, b (Score:5, Informative)
I know that it's fashionable to make fun of AT&T. I don't like carrier-exclusive agreements either - I think that they're anti-consumer and shouldn't be allowed. However, AT&T's network is actually the best in most markets as shown in independent tests by Gizmodo, PC World, and PC Magazine.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364263,00.asp [pcmag.com]
http://www.pcworld.com/article/189592/atandt_roars_back_in_pcworlds_second_3g_wireless_performance_test.html [pcworld.com]
http://gizmodo.com/5428343/our-2009-12+city-3g-data-mega-test-att-won [gizmodo.com]
The most recent test (PC Magazine) shows AT&T nearly 80% faster than the other 3G networks (June 2010). PC World's tests show AT&T to be 67% faster than the competition (Feb 2010). Gizmodo's tests show AT&T on top, but by a smaller margin (Dec 2009). PC World's tests do show that AT&T has improved markedly since their Feb 2009 tests (improving speeds by over 200% in some places). By the end of 2009, AT&T's network was the fastest and it's kept improving to widen the gap. Even in so-called trouble markets like New York and San Francisco AT&T is doing well. In San Francisco, their speeds are double the competition's average and over 75% faster than the second fastest. In New York, T-Mobile's HSPA+ network (recently rolled out) is 10% faster, but AT&T is still 94% faster than Verizon and 130% faster than Sprint.
It's fashionable to make fun of AT&T. If you live in a rural area, AT&T might not have 3G service to you. If you were using AT&T in 2007 and 2008, their service was likely slower than the competition. That is not the case anymore. Real data (rather than anecdotal evidence) shows AT&T to be quite ahead of the competition when it comes to 3G capacity in major markets.
Re:Apple Store in App Store (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I know it's fashionable to make fun of AT&T (Score:3, Informative)
According to PC World, AT&T's 3G service improved in Boston by 184% (nearly doubling) between Feb 2009 and Feb 2010.
Public perception is one of those things that doesn't change quickly (no matter what the evidence). I know that a lot of people had billing issues after the Sprint-Nextel merger and that's been resolved and Sprint's service is as strong as I've seen it, but customers still have a bad impression of Sprint.
With wireless service, it's hard to really get good data. Verizon is trying to get people's opinions to be high of them based off of their map ads. However, what you really wants is strong coverage where you are rather than weak yet broad coverage in places you aren't. Coverage isn't a binary situation, but mapping broadness of coverage seems to be what people have latched on to. It would be great to see signal strength and speed measurements on a street level of all the different carriers. It would be great if Google could hook up 4 cell phones to their street view cars to measure that (if they aren't already) and then map the signal strength on Google Maps. I'm sure the carriers would object to such neutral data since they'd rather sling ads at each other, but consumers make better purchases when they have more objective data.
Speed is also harder to quantify since you likely don't notice it without the use of tools. It's easy to notice the binary condition of "AT&T doesn't have 3G in rural Maine", but harder to notice, "AT&T is 39% faster than Verizon in Boston". For what it's worth, Boston seems to be one of AT&T's weaker markets (with Sprint taking top honors in PC Mag's test; yay!) and only beating Verizon and T-Mobile in the 40-50% range.
The problem is that people want to believe that one option is better. There is one wireless carrier that if I always stay with them will give me the best service. There is one brand of car that will always have better engineering. There is one phone company that will always produce a superior product. A lot of the time, product lifecycles make a huge difference. People like being consistent - think how Kerry was labeled a flip-flopper. There's a huge social cost to saying that now you think something else is a better option and almost no acknowledgement that someone could be right *both times* even as they're recommending different things at different times. People don't accept that change happens.
Think of the iPhone 3GS. When it came out, it was faster, had a better display, etc. than the Palm Pre and later the Hero/Droid Eris. Then the Nexus One/Incredible/EVO came out and they had a higher-res display and a faster processor. Then Apple comes back with the iPhone 4 which has an even better display, better form factor, etc. Companies are often leapfrogging each other, but people want to believe that they're always using the best so they justify, ignore evidence, and even downright lie to make themselves feel like they're never on #2. I mean, Sprint has 4G right now, but I don't expect Sprint to always be in front of everyone just because they're the first to 4G - life is more complicated than that and companies change position in an industry a lot.
As a Sprint customer, I'm more than happy with the service I get and really can't get into the "my network is better than your's" that Verizon and AT&T customers spout. Verizon customers are especially bad and will usually recite ads more than evidence. It's why I find evidence so important. In this case, if someone has a less-good wireless carrier, who cares. I mean, really. However, evidence is what brought medicine to where it is today and non-evidence-based medicine is often dangerous. Yet, millions of people commit themselves to opinions and treatments with no basis in science and evidence. That's dangerous! Here, whatever: people like getting into silly arguments about things that don't matter. However, it's a bad habit to get into to rely more on anecdotes and feelings than evidence because there are places where it really does matter.
Re:I know it's fashionable to make fun of AT&T (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I Orders, and Why is This News? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple Store in App Store (Score:2, Informative)
the parent was talking about the fact that the signalling used by the 2 are different.
GSM and CDMA are not compatible and that is why apple took a stand with following the standard used by most of the world which was GSM instead of using CDMA which still hasnt got the same coverage as GSM.
This outside of the obvious no data + voice at same time issue.
Also, WCDMA != CDMA.
The names are similar but they are evolved seperatetly and are two different incompatible standards. Its better to refer to the GSM WCDMA as UMTS instead.
The GSM group decided to take up UMTS as a standard for deploying the high speed networks whereas the CDMA group went ahead with the EVDO standard.
AT&T and T-Mobile are both GSM based telecom, however they are working on *different* frequency band for UMTS (which quite frankly is a pain in the neck) considering that they are not following any of the frequencies used by the rest of the world for UMTS, which makes UMTS roaming very very hard to achieve. None the less, the 2 companies are GSM based and therefore the GSM services would work exactly the same everywhere (well as long as you have a Quad Band *GSM* phone)