Tag Archives: iPhone

Live… From beautiful Newark, Delaware…

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As promised, I’m coming to you live and in person from the Apple Store at Christiana Mall in Newark, Delaware. At 3AM EST, I’m estimating a line that’s a ragged 250-300 deep. Not surprisingly, the crowd is very subdued and there is a heavy presence of Delaware State Troopers already on hand. Good times. With doors open in five hours, I’ll be back when things start picking up.

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3:35 AM – I’ve been the last person in line for 20 minutes. Does that make me the least dedicated of the early adopters or most dedicated of the regular consumers?

4:17 AM – According to one of the nice people beside me, the line is 254 souls. Glad to see my power of estimation is still pretty accurate.

4:46 AM – Just got an email from Apple. Apparently they’ve started selling some kind of new phone today. Who knew?

5:00 AM – Lots of NY license plates coming onto the lot now. The line is stretching around a corner and out of sight behind me. Best guess is that it’s probably 2x longer than it was at 3AM. After starting to read reports if shipping times slipping into October, glad I didn’t decide to wait and try sneaking in an order online. Three hours to doors open.

5:17 AM – The inevitable asshat with a boom box just showed up playing what I think is called “dance” music…. Although at quarter past five in the morning it may prove to be “get your face smashed to a bloody pulp by tired people in line” music.

5:46 AM – The mall is opening their doors at 6:00, so the line is preparing to schlep inside. Those who brought chairs are now losing their places in line as they dump them back in their cars. Suckers.

5:52 – My little corner of the line before heading inside.

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6:22 AM – Lies. Damnable lies! Still standing outside.

6:45 AM – And still outside. Not sure if it’s an issue with Apple or the mall security set up. I’m guessing the latter just from observation.

7:15 AM – Still outside. Blue shirts came by asking the line if anyone was buying only the 5c so they could form a delegate line. So far, 500 people asked, zero 5c sales. Not surprising, but a fun fact. Also, no availability on the gold model from any carrier.

7:32 AM – All silver iPhones, all carriers are sold out. My level of confidence in getting hands on today is plummeting.

7:52 AM – No more word on stock outs. The line, however, is getting restless.

8:01 AM – All 16 GB AT&T iPhones are out of stock.

8:33 AM – Line hasn’t moved in 20 minutes. Blue shirts claiming the still have AT&T and Verizon availability in space grey.

8:36 AM – 32 GB AT&T is out of stock. Confidence in making this happen today is almost zero.

8:40 AM – stock out of AT&T. Bugger me.

9:25 AM – 2nd in line at a Best Buy that didn’t open early. Crossing my fingers.

9:34 AM – Mission success @ Best Buy!

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12:46PM – Well, that took more effort than I anticipated. The short version: I have an iPhone 5s in hand. I’m back at the house and once I get some coffee and chow into my system, I’ll give you a “first impressions” review. Stay tuned.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. iOS 7. I’m not the kind of guy who’s exactly comfortable with change… and for good or ill, iOS 7 represents a pretty radical level of change in the Apple ecosystem. Maybe not so much in how your device now behaves (most of the same old functions – and some new ones are right there), but it’s certainly looks different while it’s performing all of those magical functions. It looks different to the point where an explosion of the Crayola factory wouldn’t quite be out of place. Soon enough it’ll blend into the background and just be “what is,” but first impressions left me feeling like the new iOS was too bright, to candy colored, and just too un-Apple.

2. Television “experts.” If you want to be taken seriously as a professional commentator on issues that involve firearms, it’s best to actually have some experience with putting lead downrange. For instance when you’re a national news organization and report that a suspect is using an “AR15 shotgun,” well, you sound like an idiot to anyone who actually knows the difference between a suppressor and a stacking swivel. Maybe it’s best to report facts instead of random wild-ass theories, rumors, or things you just make up on the fly. When you don’t stick to the facts you lose credibility… which I suppose is only relevant if being a credible news source if important to you.

3. Knowing what I’m in for. Sometimes not know what’s about to happen is better. But knowing that you’re about to stand out in the cold, without enough caffeine, and needing to pee for at least several hours in the middle of the night is just one of those things you’re better off not knowing until you’re in the middle of doing it. I’m old enough to know a bad option when I see it heading in my direction… but I’m also geek enough to know that if I’ve got the opportunity to have the latest toy in my hand tomorrow morning and pass it up for the ease and comfort of sleeping until 5AM, I’ll regret it. And that would annoy me even more than getting up in the dead of night and standing in line.

P.S. And yes, I fully recognize the irony of waking up in the middle of the night to stand in line for a phone whose OS I’m not enamored with… Can’t a guy be conflicted?

The wee small hours of the morning…

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Unbidden, I woke up at 3AM this morning, as if my brain were hard wired to Apple’s central hive in Cupertino. It’s iPhone launch day… sort of. It’s pre-order day for the iPhone 5c – the new polycarbonate-shelled, mid-priced successor to the iPhone 5. Even though I’m not in the market for the “c” variant, my internal clock still managed to rattle me awake in the wee small hours of the morning. Sadly that means being in for a long Friday with way less sleep than usual to get me through to the weekend. C’est la guerre.

It shouldn’t be a particular surprise that I’m holding out for the 5s, the new glass and aluminum Apple flagship. In previous years, this morning would have been pre-order time for it too, but some combination of marketing, constrained supply, and production factors mean that the only options for its first day of ability are buying directly from a retail store on the 20th or ordering online that morning and waiting (if all goes well) until the middle of the following week to take delivery. My plan for next Friday remains a footrace between my dislike of crowded spaces and an equally strong attraction to having a new toy at the first possible moment.

So for next Friday, my choices seem to come down to this:

Option #A – Wake up at 2:30 AM, drive to Delaware, get in line in the pre-dawn darkness and hope that the local Apple Store has stock on hand by the time I get to the front of the line; or

Option #B: Wake up at 2:30 AM, direct my browser to http://www.apple.com, hit refresh until the site comes back online, complete the order process, wait for a confirmation email, go back to bed until 5:00 AM, go to work, and then wait for four or five days for the FedEx truck to back down the driveway; or

Option #C: Waiting until the supply chain is refilled from the early adopter rush, walk into the local Apple Store and buying a phone a month from now. It also involves about a month’s more patience than I have on tap at any given time.

So really, it comes down to A or B… Both bad options in different ways. Option A is a roll of the dice regarding whether they’ll have the unit I’m looking, whereas Option B is an exercise in at least minor amounts of patience. Unfortunately, because I’m upgrading a current line, these options are also mutually exclusive – meaning I don’t think there’s any way to order one online at 3AM and the go try getting my hands on one a few hours later from the retail store.

With a week to go, I remain decidedly undecided.

Lines, lines, everywhere there’s lines…

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So, Apple… listen… you’re a big, multibillion dollar international corporation with a supply chain that wraps around the globe. So I have to ask… What asshat in your marketing and sales department decided that not offering pre-orders for your new flagship phone was a good idea? I know you want the faithful to line up and cram the stores because that’s a great PR image that every news outlet is going to cover, but let’s face it, people are going to line up regardless of whether you have preorders or not. I’ve been on both sides of launch day; waiting in line at Saddle Creek and Christiana and sitting at home waiting on FedEx. Both served me well in the past, but I always had the option.

You know I want your shiny new phone on launch day and you know I’m going to be sorely tempted to schlep over to the Apple Store and get in line, but the fact is I’m older now and less willing to put up with the jackassery of standing around in lines waiting to give people my money than I once was. It’s not that I’ve gotten any more patient. I’ve just grown increasingly intolerant of large groups of people that I can otherwise avoid. As much as I want your new toy on its first day of availability – the day that I’ve had my greasy little hands on every previous model – I think I’m going to have to ride this one out until I can have one left on my doorstep or until your supply chain catches up and I can walk into a retail store and pick one up without getting into a knife fight in the parking lot.

I wish I could point to this as a sign of becoming older, wiser, and more responsible… the reality is probably that it’s just a sign of me becoming even more of an antisocial hermit as the years roll by. Then again, maybe it’s just the same concept expressed in a different way.

Resource constrained…

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Everything in life more or less comes down to a competition between wants, needs, and the resources to make those things reality. Needs are fairly basic – those things we must have to sustain life. Wants are more problematic in that the more we have, the more we tend to want. Resources, of course, are very nearly always constrained in one way or another. Having spent six days sitting at home over the previous month and a half when I would have otherwise been working, the constraints are a little tighter now than usual. That’s a shame, because we’re ramping up to that time of year when the wants start following an upward trend. Put another way, it’s the time of year when Apple starts rolling out it’s new mobile toys.

Over the next two months, the boys and girls in Cupertino are set to roll out new versions of the iPhone, iPad, and several varieties of actual computers. Given that I’m currently limping along with a 2008 model MacBookPro, upgrading that really should be my first priority. Of all the machines in the house, it’s the real workhorse and takes the lion’s share of abuse in blogging and general writing. Now that the battery issue is resolved, my iPhone is working well enough and could easily last another year in service. The iPad mini gets its share of daily use, too, but basic web browsing doesn’t exactly tax its considerable abilities. It really should be the last thing I’m looking at replacing right now.

When it comes to new toys, of course, logic and service life remaining don’t exactly play a role in my analysis. It’s almost a mortal lock that I’ll be up in the wee hours of a morning soon after September 10th ordering a new phone on its first day of availability. If I have to make a case for needing a new one, I can always fall back on the fact that the old, standard 8GB of mobile storage isn’t what it use to be. Which is both true and sad all at the same time. I’m a little more hesitant about replacing the iPad at this point. If there isn’t a true retina screen built into the mini this time around, I think I can justify waiting for the next generation in my own mind. Without some exceptional change, a two year replacement on tablets almost feels reasonable. As far as getting over the hump and bringing a new laptop into the family, well, it’s probably going to remain in the easy to justify but unlikely to happen column this time around.

Funny how I can justify a new phone every year in my own mind, but not a laptop unless there is literally smoke poring out of the back of it. Stupid resource constraints always forcing me into the fun decision instead of the responsible one.

Battery backup…

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A couple of months ago I finally had to break down and face that my iPhone 5 was falling down on the job. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the blasted thing to hold a charge for any longer than about six hours under what I would consider not particularly heavy use. A trip to the Apple Store, a battery swap out, and all was right with the world. Or at least it was for about a month.

Apple_LogoI’ve been trying to avoid admitting it to myself, but when I looked at my phone at 9:45 this morning and saw it holding only a 48% charge I’ve been forced to finally admit that history is repeating itself. Which means come Furlough Friday, I’ll probably be trudging back to the Apple Store in the hopes that they can right what has once again gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Sleek as it is, I can’t say that iPhone 5 has been my best Apple experience. If it were my first, I think I’d have a tough time justifying sticking with the platform at this point. I’m absolutely dependant on my phone and need it to be something that “just works,” rather than something I’m hauling around extra charging cables and an external battery pack just to keep in service. My last, Hail Mary play is restoring the phone to factory presets and adding apps back one by one to see if I can determine if one of them is causing a battery sucking do loop. That’s pretty much the only big gun I have left.

If all else fails, I hope there’s a Genius in Delaware who can fix my phone. If we go for round three of this mess, it’s going to be time to start seriously looking at other options and that’s not a road I particularly want to have to go down.

Sunday habits…

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Because you know I’m nothing if not a creature of habit, the very first thing I did this Sunday after getting home from vacation was fire up the laptop, find the five next posts from the archive and load them up here on WordPress. I feel like I owe everyone at least that much given the distinct lack of posts over the last few days. As much as I’d like to say I’m sorry about that I think it’s obvious that I’m not sorry in any way for taking a bit of a break. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy my peace offering… the latest from October 2007.

It’s good stuff… and includes my initial reaction to being an iPhone owner. I’ll bet it’s not the reaction you were expecting.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Filling up the quiet time. Some people assume that because I’m not talking they need to find a way to fill in all the quiet time. Rest assured, if something needs said I’ll say it in front of princes, profits, potentates, or presidents without regard to their rank, race, or religion. I’m quiet, not shy. There is a difference. On the other hand, when I don’t have anything of substance to add, I’m happy sitting quietly. I don’t need an endless nattering buzz of small talk in my ear to make me feel connected. Most days I desperately wish some people didn’t have a pathological need to fill in the quiet times with pointless chatter.

2. iPhone. I love my iPhone 5. It’s been a workhorse since the day UPS handed it to me. Since then, we’ve gone everywhere together. We’ve been inseparable. Sure, the UI could use an update and I wouldn’t mind a bigger screen sometimes, but those aren’t the issues that make up the hate end of my love-hate relationship with this phone. It’s the battery life. It wasn’t great right out of the box, but over the last few months it’s gotten progressively worse. Through resets, wipes, switching off functions known to draw lots of power, and aggressively managing what apps are open, I can sort of slow the battery drain a bit, but that’s not exactly a substitute for a battery that doesn’t suck. I’m trying to think of a good reason why after three hours of pretty limited use, my battery is drawing down towards 50% and none really come to me. I’ll limp along with a handful of cables and a external battery pack until the 5S comes along… but if that battery doesn’t show some significant performance enhancements, it might be time to reevaluate iPhone’s place as my daily carry.

3. Turning left. When you’re the first vehicle in the left turn lane, you should go ahead and pull all the way forward to the stop line. That way the invisible traffic gnome knows that you’re trying to turn left at the intersection and can wave his green light wand to change the signal. When there’s a line of traffic 40 cars deep sitting behind you in the left turn lane, it’s sort of a bad time to be confused by basic effing driving skills, you useless excuse for a meat sack. I have no idea why it’s socially unacceptable to drag people from their cars and beat them with a Stick of Shame for such mindless asshattery.

Launch 5.0

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7:12AM – Good morning and welcome to the iPhone 5 launch day live blog. This is the second year that there was no option to reserve a phone for pickup at the local Apple Store, so rather than lining up and hoping that there was stock on hand by the time I got to the front, I opted for home delivery (translation: I’ll be casting alot of longing glances out the window looking for signs of UPS). I miss the festival atmosphere at the yearly Apple Store line up, but I have to admit that sitting here in the kitchen with a fresh steaming mug of coffee is generally better than waking up at midnight and heading over to Delaware to stand in the cold until the sun comes up.

For anyone curious about the new phone, I’d recommend checking out the venerable Walt Mossberg‘s early review. If you’re interested in some hands on discussion, take a look at the forums tab at MacRumors.com. As always, I’ll keep this space updated with anything quirky or interesting that I come across over the course of the day. In the interest of not flooding the page with separate posts, all updates will be made here on Launch 5.0. Stay tuned as Steve’s faithful enjoy Christmas in September.

8:06AM – One thing I didn’t mention in the bulldog-induced angst yesterday was that FedEx dropped off three Lightning cables. That still won’t replace all of the cables I currently use, but it will at least let me make keep two at home, one in the car, and one at work without needing to remember to take a cable everywhere every day. I’m glad I got that order in before people realized the adapters weren’t going to be available until sometime in October. What I didn’t take into account with the replacement of the 30-pin dock connector was just how small the Lightning connector was going to be. It’s about a quarter the size of a standard USB connector… For reference, here’s Lightning compared to a standard issue paperclip. Pretty slick, right?

8:20AM – If you upgraded to iOS 6 or if you’re considering it, here’s a good piece on some of the more beneficial changes Apple made by Jacqui Chang over at Ars Technica.

11:24AM – UPS makes an unexpected morning stop at Rental Casa de Jeff… Box in hand, I’ll give you the rundown once things are up and running.

11:45AM – First impression: This phone is surprisingly light, but still manages to feel like a very solid build in your hand. I’m setting up the phone now and will put together a more complete first impressions piece later today.