My daily trek from home to office and back tend to be fairly educational. Between the likes of Buzz Out Loud, gdgt, and TWiT for tech with American Public Media and The Economist for news, I listen to a whole collection of podcasts, though with a fair amount of coverage overlap.
Occasionally, a host will acknowledge the presence of an echo chamber – that is, a number of media outlets express the same viewpoint without much critical thought, sometimes repeating the PR selling points without rebuttal. More often, though, journalists sound like company fanboys, especially some tech podcasts; they give really positive (sometimes, also negative) testimonials of features or products from the “cool” companies, convince themselves that something useful to them may very well be useless to the listening public, and repeatedly route conversations back to the same hot topics.
We geeks are a loyal and long-winded bunch.
So I’m sitting here, writing out a blog post over a slow Edge data network and struggling to tap out letters on the sub-optimal iPhone keyboard.
Yea, WordPress for the iPhone…not that great for anything beyond a paragraph or two. Although it does allow for a funny pic:
A week.
That’s how long it took to search, ask, walk, and talk around to decide which store would have the privilege of signing me up as an AT&T customer. Even if I had already purchased a phone two months earlier and finally got to unlock its calling capabilities, I consider it time well spent.
Cell phone shopping is an exercise in patience. A mere 3 1/2 years ago, I was praising competitive Asian “authorized” resellers in providing cheaper phones of the overseas variety; I guess Asian drama marathons really do develop sharper business acumen. Sadly, maybe they’ve turned jaded overtime, or maybe it’s simply me wising on to their tactics, but their cell phone selection isn’t that great anymore (it tends to be the carrier’s lock down policies, though) and the prices aren’t that cheap either.
So this time I stuck with an official AT&T store for my phone needs. In addition to a more professional decor and capacity to serve more than one customer, the official store has plenty of phones in stock (Asian stores tend to only have posters or plastic models of good phones, since they receive shipment once a month and only with the light of a blue moon), and at least the store I visited was nice/desperate enough to drop prices and knock off a few initialization charges – more than enough to cover the minuscule savings from the Asian place next door.
It’s been awhile since I impulsively bought an iPod touch and subsequently exchanged it for an iPhone. After carrying it around in my pocket for two months, I feel like I can finally give an honest assessment on its usefulness and value. ()
Yea, back amongst the folds of the Apple faithful, just being carried along for the ride.
I didn’t really want an iPhone to begin with, being more interested in the new iPods – the Classic and the touch – after I sold my old MP3 player. While 20GB’s of storage and 40 hours of playback was impressive two years ago, the tiny tiny screen and barebones interface discouraged power usage, so I’d stop trying to get more music and video onto the player out of frustration. Not to mention for the same amount of money I can now get 80GB’s worth of MP3 player.
Apple products have this sheen, a bubble of hype whenever Mr. Steve Jobs takes the stage and announces the next great product, causing perfectly rational techies to lay their wallets out in submission. It’s hard to describe or sympathize without experiencing it yourself, but sadly, the instability of my thoughts when I saw the claims of the iPod Touch available 3 weeks before its official date convinced me to drive 20 minutes into the city and claim one of my own.
RMA‘s are such a hassle; spend hours convincing a customer rep. the product you bought in pristine condition imploded, and many shipping adventures later hope that you get a working replacement which isn’t too worn out from its previously unsatisfied owner (i.e., refurbished).
Sometimes, though, the process is so easy you wonder just how much they’re making selling it to you the first time around.
The last time this happened, I spent a few dollars on a cheapo flying saucer thingy which did not take crashes well; the styrofoam split after a particularly vicious encounter with a cubicle closet. Fortunately, customer service turned out to be a pleasant experience as they immediately offered to send out a new one on 3-day shipping at no charge and to trash the broken one since it was, after all, around $1 of construction material and electronics.
