Legion of Angels News Archive

It’s becoming a rite of summer: as the mercury rises, Apple introduces a new version of its iPhone. And as the new-and-improved device went on sale last week, campers once again lined the sidewalk in midtown Manhattan. The new iPhone features faster Web browsing, clearer audio and basic GPS functions; so far, reviews have been mostly positive. But as early adopters clamor for this latest high-tech status symbol, let us consider the group at the other end of the wireless bell curve: the one in seven Americans who still don’t have a cell phone.

According to the latest data, the U.S. “adoption rate” for mobile phones stands at 85 percent. That’s higher than the percentage of Americans who have DVD players (84 percent), home PCs (80 percent), digital cameras (69 percent) or MP3 players (40 percent), according to the Nielsen Co. “The concept that within my lifetime we’d have the kind of penetration we have today is unimaginable,” says Martin Cooper, 79, the former Motorola researcher who invented the portable cell phone in 1973. But for wireless providers, it’s a mixed blessing. With fewer virgin customers to bring online, the industry’s subscriber base grew by just 8.8 percent in 2007. To keep revenues rising, the big carriers are focused mostly on stealing each others’ existing customers and getting mobile users to spend more on ringtones, streaming music and other add-ons. But a handful of start-ups are aggressively pursing wireless holdouts. The bulk of the un-mobile fall into three groups, says senior analyst Chris Collins of Yankee Group: children, the elderly and the credit-challenged. (There’s actually a fourth group, prison inmates, but companies haven’t yet found a way to target that elusive niche.)

Lots of parents have mixed feelings about kids’ having phones, but they’re showing up in school backpacks at earlier ages. By some estimates, half the country’s 28 million 8- to 14-year-olds already have handsets of their own. To attract these youngsters, big carriers all offer discounted “family plans,” but lately smaller companies have tried to sell phones and service plans designed specifically for kids. Among the latest entries is one from a company called kajeet. Its phones allow parents to set limits on calls or texts; remotely turn off the device during school hours, or block calls or texts from bullies. To prevent surprise $300 monthly bills, kajeet features a pay-in-advance system, with a basic charge of $10 a month and 10 cents per minute. CEO Daniel Neal says consumers are becoming more averse to the “hidden gotchas”—cancellation fees, service fees and random charges—found in typical wireless plans. Neal believes 80 percent of the 8-to-14 crowd will have a phone within three years.

Fear of runaway bills is a hurdle for elderly consumers, too. But more of them (and their adult children) are becoming convinced it’s good to have a phone handy for emergencies. To appeal to this crowd, last year Jitterbug began selling a $147 phone with an uncluttered keyboard, a huge display and other elder-friendly features (including a $15-per-month, 30-minute rate plan). It has no camera or text messaging, and if a user gets confused while making a call, he can hit zero and ask an operator to connect him to someone on his contact list. Jitterbug hopes the phones may have appeal beyond the elderly: in a May survey it commissioned, 32 percent of mobile subscribers said their current phone has more features than they know how to use. “Simplicity is really the cornerstone of our business,” says cofounder Arlene Harris.

For consumers without bank accounts or credit scores—the third big group of cell-phone holdouts—prepaid phones have long offered an alternative to traditional wireless contracts. Lately, per-minute charges have come down from 35 cents to 10 cents, and companies have offered a better variety of phones; as a result, prepaid phones have been the fastest-growing segment of the cell business. Even so, companies are trying new ways to make them appealing. Trumpet Mobile, which began selling prepaid phones in Radio Shack stores last year, gives customers a phone, a prepaid debit card and the ability to send money via mobile phone using Western Union. Trumpet hopes its service becomes popular among Latino immigrants, who are already using it to send money to relatives overseas.

While these start-ups are long on imagination, so far none will say exactly how many customers they’ve signed up. That leads observers to believe their numbers are low and their odds of survival are unclear. Indeed, one reason big wireless companies haven’t chased the holdouts more aggressively is that they aren’t likely to spend $49 per month—the amount of the average U.S. mobile customer’s bill—making them only marginally profitable (if not unprofitable). And while parts of Europe and Asia feature wireless penetration rates above 100 percent (thanks to people who carry multiple phones), no one is ready to bet when America may hit the magic number, partly because our country still has rural areas with poor coverage. “There is some argument that it will never get there—that it will never be cost-effective,” says Richard Siber, a veteran industry consultant. So even as the early adopters keep buying phones full of new tricks, there will remain at least a smattering of folks who can’t be blamed for the obnoxious ringtones that have become so much a part of life in our wireless age.

Source — Newsweek

In a tragedy of Shakespearian proportion — at least for those technophiles and trendmeisters affected —the Apple iPhone update failed to deliver the Mac Nirvana foretold in our consumer scriptures.

As reflected across the blogosphere, angry early adopters and tech writers alike report brand-new 3G iPhones that failed to activate immediately after purchase, and bricked original iPhones rendered useless by the recently released iPhone 2.0 software update.

“It’s the iPocalypse” quips tech blog Gizmodo following its headline “Apple and AT&T Stores Having Difficulty Activating iPhones.” More than 400 comments (and 1,600 Diggs) follow the early a.m. post, with many disappointed would-be 3G users sharing their consumer anticlimaxes after waiting in infinite lines.

“iFail” reads one of many flip comments underneath a post at tech blog Engadget titled, “iTunes activation servers go down, iPhone 3G customers being sent home unactivated.” Meanwhile, those who endured overnight vigils outside of Apple stores may’ve fared comparatively better for their dedication.

Kenny Pichardo, 24, camped outside an AT&T in Queens, N.Y. to become first to purchase the coveted 3G. One of the lucky few, Pichardo told Associated Press that it took the sales staff 30 minutes to get his new iPhone fired up and working.

A spokesman for AT&T Inc., the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S., told AP that a global problem with Apple’s online iTunes Store prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store. As a result, those who spent night in their own beds (rather than the sidewalk outside Apple or AT&T stores) paid for their currently useless sleek bits of tech and were told to go home and wait.

Mass frustration
The support discussion forums on the official Apple Web site painted a picture of mass frustration accompanied by a few bright spots of success for those attempting to load the updated Apple software on their older iPhones.

Commenters commiserated on their inability to upgrade, sharing tales of their Byzantine attempts to connect, which were mostly met with failure and followed by iPhones that ceased working at all.

Other areas of the Apple support forum were more optimistic in tenor, with posters boasting success about their 2.0 upgrades and sharing their methods with fellow users, advising patience along the way. Those who followed met with a myriad of results, not all as positive as those who went before them.

It wasn’t just the n00bs failing to upgrade their older iPhones either. Total technophile Raymond Camden wrote about his own frustration on his well-regarded (and aptly titled) blog “coldfusionjedi” in a post titled, “So far iPhone 2.0 is…. DOA”:

“On the first attempt to update, I got an unknown error. I then tried a restore. The restore ‘worked’ as far as I know. iTunes said it was done and was going to restart my iPhone. On restart, the iPhone is now stuck in a ‘Slide for Emergency’ mode where I can only make (I assume) 911 style calls. iTunes sees the iPhone, but gives me zero control over it. It is stuck ‘Accessing iTunes Store… which makes me just a tiny bit mad that my phone is sitting here in brick mode essentially while trying to hit a store that is probably getting tons of traffic.”

So far, there are more than 800 responses to Camden’s post, more than triple the amount he usually receives from his average 4,000 page views per day. Many posters share similar frustrations, some responding with an anger over their iPhone issues that Camden finds surprising.

“I’m a bit surprised by the reaction,” Camden told msnbc.com in an e-mail. “I wasn’t very upset at all (about his iPhone problems). The amount of anger out there is quite surprising.”

Source — MSNBC

NEW YORK (AP) – The launch of Apple Inc.’s much-anticipated new iPhone turned into an information-technology meltdown on Friday, as customers were unable to get their phones working.

“It’s such grief and aggravation,” said Frederick Smalls, an insurance broker in Whitman, Massachusetts, after spending two hours on the phone with Apple and AT&T Inc., trying to get his new iPhone to work.

In stores, people waited at counters to get the phones activated, as lines built behind them. Many of the customers had already camped out for several hours in line to become among the first with the new phone, which updates the one launched a year ago by speeding Internet access and adding a navigation chip.

A spokesman for AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the United States, said there was a global problem with Apple’s iTunes servers that prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store, as had been planned.

Instead, employees were telling buyers to go home and perform the last step by connecting their phones to their own computers, spokesman Michael Coe said.

However, the iTunes servers were equally hard to reach from home, leaving the phones unusable except for emergency calls.

The problem extended to owners of the previous iPhone model. A software update released for that phone on Friday morning required the phone to be reactivated through iTunes.

“It’s a mess,” said freelance photographer Giovanni Cipriano, who updated his first-generation iPhone only to find it unusable.

When the first iPhone went on sale a year ago, customers performed the whole activation procedure at home, freeing store employees to focus on sales. But the new model is subsidized by carriers, and Apple and AT&T therefore planned to activate all phones in-store to get customers on a contract.

The new phone went on sale in 21 countries on Friday, creating a global burden on the iTunes servers.

The iPhone has been widely lauded for its ease of use and rich features, but Apple is a newcomer to the cell-phone business, and it has made some missteps. When it launched the first phone in the United States a year ago, it initially priced the phones high, at $499 and $599, then cut the price by $200 just 10 weeks later, throwing early buyers for a loop.

Rollouts to other countries were slow, as Apple tried to get carriers on board with its unusual pricing scheme, which included monthly fees to Apple. The business model of the new phone follows industry norms, and the price is lower: $199 or $299 in the United States.

On Thursday, Apple had problems with the launch of a new data service, MobileMe. The service is designed to synchronize a user’s personal data across devices, including the iPhone, but many users were denied access to their accounts.

Enthusiasm was high ahead of the Friday morning launch of the phone. Alex Cavallo, 24, was one of hundreds lined up at the Fifth Avenue store in New York, just as he had been a year ago for the original iPhone. He sold that one recently on eBay in anticipation of the new one. In the meantime, he has been using another phone, which felt “uncomfortable.”

“The iPhone is just a superior user experience,” he said. The phone also proved a decent investment for him: He bought the old model for $599 and sold it for $570.

Nick Epperson, a 24-year-old graduate student, spent the night outside an AT&T store in Atlanta, Georgia, keeping his cheer up with bags of Doritos, three games of Scrabble and two packs of cigarettes. Asked why he was waiting in line, he responded simply “Chicks dig the iPhone.”

IPhone fever was strong even in Japan, where consumers are used to tech-heavy phones that do restaurant searches, e-mail, music downloads, reading digital novels and electronic shopping. More than 1,000 people lined up at the Softbank Corp. store in Tokyo and the phone quickly sold out.

“Just look at this obviously innovative design,” Yuki Kurita, 23, said as he emerged from buying his iPhone, carrying bags of clothing and a skateboard he had used as a chair during his wait outside the Tokyo store. “I am so thrilled just thinking about how I get to touch this.”

The phone went on sale first in New Zealand, where hundreds of people lined up outside stores to snap it up right at midnight — 8 a.m. Thursday in New York.

“Steve Jobs knows what people want,” Web developer Lucinda McCullough told the Christchurch Press newspaper, referring to Apple’s chief executive. “And I need a new phone.”

In Germany, sales were brisk at local carrier T-Mobile’s stores, particularly in Munich, Hamburg and Cologne, said spokeswoman Marion Kessing.

Source — CNN

First the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg jumped the gun, publishing his online review of Apple’s new iPhone 3G on Tuesday night, more than a day before his usual Thursday column appears.

Then, about an hour later, the New York Times responded in kind, posting their own review, by David Pogue, on the NYTimes.com front page. Like Mossberg’s, Pogue’s review is datelined Wednesday, July 9.

About the same time (we’ve lost track of the sequence), America’s third national paper, USA Today, followed suit, posting a review by Edward C. Baig.

And so Apple (AAPL) fans eager to hear if the new iPhone is worth buying get their answer — or rather three answers — well before they have to decide whether or not to stand in line.

Once again, Steve Jobs has tightly controlled the initial wave of critical commentary by handing out advanced copies to his favorite reviewers — two of whom make a nice living publishing books about Apple products (Pogue writes “Missing Manuals” and Baig writes “For Dummies” books).

But if he sought to curry special favor — or control the timing — Jobs was only partly successful. Although Baig’s review is quite enthusiastic (”two thumbs up”), Mossberg’s and Pogue’s are what is known in the theater as mixed positive.

The money quotes:

Mossberg: “If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge, if you can live with the higher service costs and the weaker battery life. The same goes for those with existing iPhones who love the device but crave faster cellular data speeds. But if you already own an iPhone, and can usually use Wi-Fi for data, you probably should hold off and get the free software upgrade before deciding whether it’s worth getting the new hardware.”

Pogue: “So the iPhone 3G is a nice upgrade. It more than keeps pace with advancing technology, and new buyers will generally be delighted….But it’s not so much better that it turns all those original iPhones into has-beens. Indeed, the really big deal is the iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store, neither of which requires buying a new iPhone. That twist may come as a refreshing surprise to planned-obsolescence conspiracy theorists — and everyone who stood in line last year.”

Baig: “Extra, extra: iPhone 3G: The Sequel, is worth the wait….It’s cheaper, faster and a lot friendlier for business. Apple’s blockbuster smartphone already had nifty features such as visual voicemail, a splendid built-in video iPod and the best mobile Web browser I’ve ever used. With GPS newly added to the mix, this handheld marvel has no equal among consumer-oriented smartphones.”

Source — CNN

NEW YORK (Fortune) – The new Apple iPhone went on sale Friday morning, but early reports of software problems overshadowed the debut of the faster, cheaper device.

As eager buyers flocked to Apple stores, news sites chronicled reports that Apple’s iTunes store was struggling with a massive outage that prevented buyers from activating their phones.

Apple’s new iPhone is built on third-generation, or 3G, technology that is speedier than the original iPhone’s network.

As Fortune.com first reported, AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive carrier in the United States, cut the price of the iPhone in half: an 8-GB model sells for $199, or $200 less than the original iPhone. A 16-GB version costs $299.

The Apple Store on New York City’s tony Fifth Avenue, which drew a crowd of 150 people just after 5:00 a.m. ET, was moving customers through the line in about 10 minutes per customer when the doors opened at 8:00 a.m., according to Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt.

High expectations

But problems soon appeared. Elmer-DeWitt, who live-blogged from the store, was one of the first to report difficulty setting up his new phone. Eventually he was told, along with other customers, to go home and try to activate his device later.

Elmer-DeWitt was able to get his phone to work about three hours after his purchase. By early afternoon, there were more anecdotal reports online of users completing the activation process.

The system crash affected buyers throughout the 21countries where the new iPhone debuted Friday. Owners of the original iPhone and the iPod touch looking to upgrade their software were also hobbled by the breakdown.

The iTunes outage wasn’t the only glitch Apple customers encountered Friday. Users attempting to sign up for MobileMe, which synchs e-mail and other data across Mac devices, also experienced technical problems, according to the Associated Press. Apple began offering the $99-a-year service Friday.

The iPhone 3G rollout was in stark contrast to last year’s debut, when hordes of eager buyers camped out for days at Apple stores around the country and the purchasing process went off without a hitch - at least on Apple’s end. AT&T, meanwhile, was hounded with activation problems.

On Friday, AT&T was quick to pin the blame on Apple. “There’s a worldwide issue with iTunes that Apple is working to resolve,” an AT&T representative said in an e-mail. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Early hangups aside, one analyst predicted Friday that the second version of the iPhone will have a stronger debut than its predecessor.

One major reason: Apple is releasing the 3G model around the world on Friday. The original iPhone was rolled out from country to country over the course of the last year.

“Based on on pent up demand, expanded distribution, lower pricing,” RBC analyst Mike Abramsky wrote in a research note Friday, “Apple ships 1 million 3G iPhones in the first weekend.” Abramsky said that would be roughly four times the number of iPhones shipped during the same time frame last year.

Apple sold more than 6 million original iPhones.

Some analysts warn that expectations for the new iPhone are too high. For one thing, the economy is a lot weaker than it was a year ago. Consumers may not no so eager to shell out the $2,200 or more it would cost for the iPhone and the mandatory two-year subscription.

Early reviews were more subdued than the glowing critiques of the first iPhone.

David Pogue of the New York Times called the iPhone 3G “a nice upgrade,” but suggested it wasn’t something existing iPhone owners should rush out and buy. The real novelty, Pogue said, was the App Store, where owners of the old and new iPhone can purchase games and other software - most for $9.99 or less.

Source — CNN