This post by Mel Martin on TUAW, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, really confused the hell out of me.  I saw the title “Why I’m Staying with AT&T” and was expecting to see things like “I haven’t had the issues everyone talks about,” or “I like their customer service!” No, what I found was a long list of complaints with some reasons why he’s sticking with AT&T through all of his problems.  Let me break this down a bit more.

I admit, AT&T has been sloppy and at times downright incompetent. Who can forget the massive foul up when the first iPhone came out and literally millions of customers couldn’t get AT&T servers to sign them up? It happened again with the 3G iPhone and the iPhone 4.
There’s the really nasty rate of dropped calls, lousy or inconsistent reception, and how AT&T always seemed to put endless roadblocks before developers who wanted to use the iPhone in the way it was designed. Months of delays on the SlingPlayer app, no Wi-FI tethering, and more delays delivering a 3G tethering plan that was overpriced and forced you to give up your unlimited data plan. Oh yes, AT&T dropped unlimited data so it could start enabling some of those features that might force you to go over AT&T’s newly imposed limits. Nice. The list goes on and on.

Let’s see.  That is a list of eleven complains or problems faced on AT&T with the iPhone, not to mention that he put “the list goes on and on” at the very end, meaning there are more complaints!  Any normal, competent person would have tossed their provider out on their ass a long time ago with this list, I know I would have, but that’s because I actually like being able to make and receive calls and texts and data anywhere I like.  This is a VERY bad list of complaints for any cell service and sticking with someone this bad is just insane.

Now, with this list of eleven you figured there would be a much longer list of good reasons he’s straying with AT&T, right? Let’s take a look now, one by one, and try to keep count!

Big Fee to drop my AT&T plan. Way too much. $325 for those who purchased after June 1, 2010, and $10 off of that for every month of completed contract.

This is a good reason! Why would you want to pay a fee to drop your cell company only to have to pay another $200 to buy a new phone which you already own!  Let’s hope a trend of smart follows.

Coverage. We all know that AT&T coverage is generally worse than Verizon, but AT&T ponied up and let me have a MicroCell device for free. It solves the ‘no coverage at home’ problem, and after some initial growing pains it works well

There goes the smart…out the window.  This is where I start getting very confused.  You’re claiming you want to stay with AT&T because of their coverage but you say in the very next sentence that they generally have worse coverage than Verizon?  And because you had such bad service they gave you a personal 3g device to make calls in your home?  So you’re sticking with AT&T because they have bad coverage but solved your home service issue?  Why bother have a cell phone then? Isn’t the point of a MOBILE PHONE to be able to use it…mobile-ly?

Competition is good. I expect AT&T to step up and compete, not because they want to, but because they have to. Maybe there will be a reinstatement of unlimited data plans. Maybe FaceTime will finally work on 3G.

Another stupid point.  While I agree that because Verizon now has an iPhone that AT&T will have to step it up, AT&T has always had this problem and still haven’t resolved it for the most part.  Why would they all of a sudden just start to “compete” now?  Haven’t they been competing in the past, or were they just  riding the dollar waves of the Apple fanboys turning a blind eye to their crappy service just to have an iPhone?  Not to mention that you’re basing this on speculation that “maybe” something will happen.  I don’t know about you but when I’m paying for something now I want it to work now, not “maybe” in the future.

Simultaneous voice and data are huge. I often fire off an email or web link when I’m on the phone. Going to Verizon means I kiss all that goodbye.

Okay, a valid reason to stay on AT&T.  CDMA cannot do voice and data simultaneously and if that’s a big issue for you then you should have no questions to ask, just don’t switch. That’s two instances of sanity.

Speed. At least here in Arizona, I get really fast data on the iPhone. Yes, the Verizon voice network is more reliable, but in local side by side tests on the data side, my AT&T phone really is faster than a Verizon smartphone.

Speed is another thing that I have trouble viewing as a major issue to switch cell carries.  For one, the difference in speed isn’t really that much, unless you’re using 4G on a device.  Now, I would say that this is another good reason if you really need that speed, except for the fact that you point out AT&T’s flaw right in the next statement.  You say AT&T is faster than Verizon (true) but Verizon is more reliable.  Tell me, what’s more important to you: getting something done quickly while praying that you keep a steady connection, or getting something done a little slower, but knowing it’ll get done because you have a strong, reliable connection?  If you say anything other than the latter, you’re a moron.

New iPhones. There will likely be a new iPhone this summer. I expect it will be a lot easier to talk AT&T into an upgrade than Verizon.

Guess what, you’re probably right! It really doesn’t take a genius to figure out Apple’s release schedule. But I also think that if someone wanted to upgrade early they will pony up the dough.  If they switched to Verizon and paid the fees they won’t have an issue upgrading their device.  Not to mention that so many people will probably wait for a new device before switching to Verizon anyway.

And that’s the end of his list. Five reasons he’s staying, five. And only two of them are valid.

Explain that to me please: 11 complaints vs. 5 reasons (of which only 2 of them are valid in any way).  How can someone who apparently knows something about technology see this as a good decision?  If I had half the list of complaints this guy has, I’d drop Verizon like a bad habit.  I have maybe two complaints about Verizon and neither of them has anything to do with service or call quality (mainly cost and devices).  His entire post seems to me like he’s sucking the AT&T pee pee all the way home while getting his free cell service too.

I should also point out that I have called TUAW out on a very misleading title in one of their other posts and they responded by sending me tweets to rumored stories about the iPhone 4G on Verizon.  It seems they do not understand the concept of a rumor.  Over there they seem to be a bunch of AT&T and Apple fanboys…and dealing with fanboys is a hard thing to do.

Sound off in the comments if you have anything to say!

Update note: I found this post on a blog I frequent (The Adventures of Systems Boy!) and I was so happy to read it.  Three sentences and it’s already the best post on the Verizon iPhone. Thank you, Systems Boy!

TUAW blogger, Steven Sande, recently wrote an entry entitled: “My weekend Windows experience, or why I love Apple so much”. This is just a long title for some Mac fanboy bashing Windows like it’s 1998 again. Posts like this are a dime a dozen, and some of them have valid points, but this one just really got me annoyed for many reasons.

Now, if you read the article you’ll know that this guy just bought a “rather inexpensive Chinese-made” Wifi webcam from Amazon that claimed it was compatible with “Apple Mac and Windows”. After he gets the product he finds that it first needs to be set up in Windows before it can be used on Mac, therefore the company lied which means that a) the camera you bought is made by a shitty company in China, b) you should just send it back and get a real camera, and c) anything you do after this point is your own fault, right? Not to this guy, he decided to set it up in Windows Vista, excuse me, a Windows Vista VM on his Mac. This is all fine and dandy, but so far nothing is here about why he enjoys Mac over Windows. Now, his “process”:

3) Fire up Windows, then realize that I can’t use the camera software install CD since it’s one of those mini ones that were so popular in 1998. They don’t work in slot-type SuperDrives. Need to download the software from vendor’s website.
4) Start up IE7 in Windows.
5) Can’t get to downloads page from IE7 so download and install Firefox.
6) Go to vendor site, get to the downloads page. Can’t download the software until I download and install the Flash plug-in.
7) Install Flash Player.
8 ) Download the software, finally. It’s an .rar archive.

Now, all of these steps are pointless. The first thing I notice is that he’s in Windows, which is installed on his computer, and he is using IE7 and doesn’t have Firefox installed already, why he didn’t have it installed is a mystery to me, but it begs the question why couldn’t IE7 download it? This is another problem with the camera’s manufacturer, not Windows. Same with the next step, installing Flash; why is Flash needed by this vendor to download a file, and why the hell wasn’t it installed already anyway? I suppose you don’t want to install all of this extras stuff on your Windows VM because you want to save space for your Mac, but these are essential things for any Windows install, so that’s your fault, not Windows.

9) Windows has no idea what an rar file is. I have it “use the Web service to find the correct program.” I find out that WinZip or StuffIt Expander will work.
10) Realize that WinZip is a program that, with all the add-INS, will cost me almost US$37. Didn’t it used to be free?
11) Go to StuffIt site and download free StuffIt Expander. Wait while McAfee scans for viruses.

These steps here made me want to smack this guy through the machine. First, if you claim to have years of experience working on windows machines (In the article: “I am familiar with Windows. Way too familiar, as at one point in my career I was a project manager on a 12,000-seat Windows deployment for a large enterprise.”) you would know to just get WinRAR or 7Zip and you’d be done with this stupid mess, but no, you use the “find correct program online” option like a moron and decide to download StuffIt (a pain in the ass in it’s own) instead of WinZip (which you can use free forever). And that last line about McAfee just makes it even worse. You were the “project manager” of a large enterprise deployment and you’re using McAfee?

12) Install StuffIt Expander. “This may take several minutes” it says.
13) Installation continues for an incredibly long time, most of which is marked by a status message that doesn’t change. Considering taking up smoking. Read War and Peace cover to cover while waiting for installation to complete, then build a 1:1 scale model of La Sagreda Familia out of toothpicks. About to perform a self-appendectomy when the installation finally finishes. Put away the X-acto knife and vodka.
14) Trying to reinstall StuffIt when Windows tells me in needs to activate. That’s perplexing since I installed and activated this legal copy of Windows Vista Ultimate weeks ago. Decide to at least try reinstalling StuffIt before going through activation again.
15) StuffIt Expander installer won’t run since it says that there’s already another installation in progress. System monitor shows no other application is running.
16) Restart Windows. Or at least try to. It takes forever to shut down. Finally Force Quit VMWare and hope for the best.
17) Re-launch VMWare, which unfortunately comes up in Windows shutdown mode. Finally find the Shut Down command in VMWare, then restart Windows Vista. It’s now 7:55 PM. Windows Vista plays its 4-tone startup tune, which I salute with two raised middle fingers.
18) Start up the StuffIt Expander installer again. Get an error message. Re-download the installer and try again, this time sacrificing a chicken while starting the installer. The installer takes its good time, but finally shows a completed installation. I feel sorry for the chicken, but happy that StuffIt Expander is installed.

Okay, you’re installing StuffIt inside of a Windows Vista VM and it’s taking forever and you’re surprised? You’re also surprised that it takes forever to shutdown, and restart in a VM? Okay, you’re blaming Windows for running slow in a VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT when it’s not really designed to be run in one. Ever think to blame VMWare for this? Or StuffIt for making a bad installer? Oh right, you’re a fanboy.

Windows asking for activation means one simple thing, you didn’t activate.  I know it says you did, but you didn’t. That is your fault.  Sure, it’s a very annoying occurrence to have to activate Windows, we all hate it, but it’s your own dumb-ass fault.

19) What was I doing before all of this? Oh, yeah – I was trying to unzip the webcam installer. This goes well until the unzip crashes. I see the installer on my desktop, so I double-click to install. This installer runs quickly, but I need to reboot the Windows virtual machine.
20) Weeping uncontrollably, I wait as the virtual machine lies to me about shutting down. It’s now 8:09 PM. I wait, and wait. Did I mention the waiting?
21) I’m so bloody tired of waiting for the shutdown that I invoke the Shutdown menu item again. Windows reboots again.
22) Double-click the webcam software. After I nearly have a heart attack when it temporarily can’t find the .exe file, it launches. This program is supposed to find a camera on the network and allow me to change settings. It’s doing nothing, so I decide to start pinging addresses on my network from Safari. I find my printer’s built-in web server, but not the webcam.
23) While I’m playing on the Mac, Windows mysteriously reboots itself. WTF?
24) I figure out that Windows thinks it is on another subnet. I look at some of the glowing reviews on Amazon and see the key phrase “connect to the camera over Ethernet the first time.” Nice of the vendor to put that in the docs. I’m tired. It’s now 8:58 PM. I decide to try this tomorrow on my old iMac since I have work to do. I’ll set up a small Ethernet network using a router I have, and hope that I can get this to work.

Again, most of this is the camera vendors fault and the fact that you’re running a VM.

Number 24 wouldn’t come naturally to someone who isn’t a tech person, but since this guy claims he is one, he should already know that when running in a VM you’re on a fake subnet created by the host to allow you to share the network connection. And the fact that you didn’t setup the camera over Ethernet FIRST is beyond me. For someone who knows technology this is pretty fucking stupid. Also, what kind of tech person doesn’t have a fucking network setup in their house? How do you not have an extra Ethernet port somewhere, ANYWHERE in your house? What the hell?

25) It’s now the next afternoon. I set up the old Linksys router, grab a few Ethernet cables, and fire up the camera app on the old iMac under VMWare and Win XP. Not surprisingly, Win XP works much better than Vista and within about 5 minutes I’m seeing the camera “anonymous” in the camera app.
27) Reading the tiny print in the poorly-translated user manual for the webcam, I see that the vendor recommends using IE to bring up the built-in administrative web page and set up Wi-Fi. I double-click the name of the camera, and I’m immediately rewarded with a login screen for the admin web page. I log in using the default user ID and password, and then watch as IE7 proceeds to block the various controls that are trying to load.
28) At this point I’m discouraged and shouting four and more-letter expletives at IE7. I decide that it’s time to grab my spouse and go out to eat (and drink) away my frustration. A few beers later we’re back home and I download Firefox onto the virtual Win machine.
29) I launch Firefox, go to the IP address of the camera, and become very happy when the camera controller loads properly and responds to my commands.
30) With the webcam finally up and running, I tell Windows XP to quit. Soon I’m greeted with a happy message that says something like “Windows is installing update 1 of 37. Do not shut down this machine.” I wander off.
31) Two hours later, the message says “Windows is installing update 31 of 37.” I may never get to shut down Windows.
32) Another hour passes. The message hasn’t changed. I decide that Windows XP has locked up, and I invoke the magic VMWare virtual power switch. Who knows if the flippin’ thing was updated or not?

Alright, you decided to ditch the Vista VM and go for a XP VM, good job, it only took you a day to figure that out. Now you’re going to try IE7 again and you say it’s “block[ing] the various controls that are trying to load” and you’re now discouraged to use IE7? Guess what, that means the camera vendor fucked up again, not Windows. Windows is in fact probably doing you a nice favor by blocking this vendors’ shitty software. Not to mention, you can tell IE7 to load those controls fairly easily. Also, if you’re using a web browser to set this up now…why not just use Mac OS? As a matter of fact, why didn’t you do steps 1-20 in Mac OS? All you had to do was fire up Safari and download the RAR file and open it with your StuffIt expander in Mac OS and guess what, you’d have taken like 4 hours out of this entire cluster-fuck process you went through. Again, if you’re a tech guy you should know this shit.

The last few things are just asinine. You’re blaming windows for taking forever to shutdown again (IN A VM!) because it needs to install updates. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but you are supposed to install updates. If you’d boot into your VM more often to secure it with updates you wouldn’t have to wait an hour to install 37 fucking updates.

Then this ass-hat goes on to put this in:

But the point of this entire exercise was that if Apple had ever stooped to selling Wi-Fi webcams, the installation process would probably be like this:

1) Plug your Apple iCam into a wall socket.
2) Launch the iCam utility software on your Mac or Windows PC. It’s included on the CD that came with your device.
3) Your iCam appears in the “cameras on this network” list. Highlight the camera you wish to update.
4) Give the camera a name, and click save. Note the web address that is now listed on the page — this address is where you can point any web browser in the world to view your camera and listen to what’s going on in streaming stereo audio.

Guess what, if you bought a better camera instead of your cheap Chinese piece of shit (your own words only shortened) you could have done this. Just because it’s not Apple doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be simple. He also goes to bring up the virtual machine issue:

And I’m certain that someone will say “A real PC wouldn’t have done that; you’re running a virtual machine on a slow Mac.” Wrong, this type of thing has happened to me many times on real PCs as well. This isn’t a slow Mac; it’s a quad-core i7 iMac running 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate.

Guess what? They’re right. You wouldn’t have had half of these issues. I don’t care what kind of processor you have, running in a virtual environment is never the same speed or experience.

So this bothers me for a few reasons as I stated above; first it just shows how stupid people like to blame their fuck-ups on technology that they obviously don’t know. Whether it’s some moron complaining about installing updates in Windows when they haven’t updated their computer in a decade, or it’s some guy saying “Macs are dum cuz they don’t have 2 mouse buttins” it’s all the same idea. You bash the OS you don’t like with stupid shit like this.

This also upsets me as a Mac user in general. According to Steve Sande’s bio on TUAW:

“[Steve is] A 52 year-old Apple geek, Steve has been writing online since 1986, when he started up a Mac Bulletin Board System (BBS). He’s been a Mac user since ’84, was a Newton Developer, and has been involved in the mobile computing space since 1993.Steve lives in Colorado with his rocket-scientist wife of 30 years, a cat, and many Apple products.”

This guy has been working on computers since before I was born, and I guarantee that this guy has been using ONLY Macs since then. So he’s not a Windows person: he is an Apple user. He knows what Apple people deal with from people when it comes to tech support for products, and what people think of Apple users (hippies who don’t know how to use a computer…blah..blah) and guess what; it’s because of guys like Steve Sande that people think this. You bitch and moan about Windows problems and then go to say “Well if this was Apple it’ll be like this and so much better.” Yes, Apple makes it super fucking easy to setup things with them, but if you notice one simple thing you’ll realize how they can do this: They are all made by the same company. Surprise! Apple products work very well with other products made by Apple, they’re designed for each other! Do you know how easy it is for me to set up my HP 1020 Laserjet in Windows over network? It’s so easy that I probably don’t need to explain it (plug in, turn on, find on network, done). It was a nightmare in Mac OS. I have to download third-party drivers and then an extra program just so it can find the printer, then I have to change some folders around until it works properly. So am I going to bash Mac OS because they made it so hard for me to get my printer working? Fuck no. I’m blaming HP because they decided to stop support for Mac OS 10.5.

I see things like this everyday online, in both directions.  Go on an Apple-based blog and it’s WINDOWS SUX! Any gaming site and it’s GET A REAL COMPUTER! MACS SUX!  Turns out, the users suck, not the machines.  If you’re not smart enough to do something or to realize that something you have just won’t work with your system the don’t blame Windows or Mac OS, blame yourself.

Before I even get into the list I come across this

This is the first of a series of letters to Apple on your behalf, telling the gang in Cupertino what would make their wonder-phone even more wondrous

And it even goes into a real letter to Apple.

Dear Apple,

While it’s clear the iPhone is the best smartphone on the market right now, you have a lot of competition creeping up. We want to help you blow them out of the water with the iPhone OS 4.0. Here are our suggestions:

Now, if you know Apple AT ALL you know that they really don’t listen to the user. TUAW certainly knows this since they write about Apple all the time.  Apple’s idea of market research is “Steve said this was good, so it’s good.”  This isn’t always the case of course; they brought back firewire to all of their laptops after omitting it on most for a time, but Apple really isn’t going to listen to you all that much.  They will look at the market and see what other phones have that they missed, and probably include some of those.  For instance, people use removable-media on their devices a lot, some people prefer it over internal media of course.  Will Apple ever put a microSD card in their iPhone or iPod? Probably not.  Why?  Probably because it’s something else that could break that they don’t want to have to worry about, but it’s probably because they don’t want people to add more space to their devices without buying a whole new device.

Now to the list (please read the article if you’re going to ask questions or complain or whatever, I will only be posting the main idea of each item, not the description of the idea)

1. The lock screen needs to change

This one is nothing too crazy.  The lock screen could change of course to show more information; a list of to-do’s, emails, whatever.  So this one I really don’t have an issue with.  Other phones do this a bit; on Android you get your notifications with an icon in the top menu bar as well as a different colored blinking LED on the front of the phone.

2. A new home screen. The iPhone is the smartest phone on the market. Make it smarter. Introduce a location-aware home screen.

This is another one that I really don’t have an issue with.  I actually like this idea and wonder why more phones/devices don’t have it.

3. That new home screen? Let us access it by vertically swiping.

This one confused me a little bit. I can see the desire to have all of your feeds and shit within a simple swipe, but why?  Do something like Android and use a drop down menu at the top.  You select the top menu and slide it out, this way you don’t accidentally swipe vertically while you’re reading something and open your home screen. The mock-up looks nice:

Credit: Teehan+Lax

But it reminds me of the drop down in Android, just more refined.

4. Overhaul app navigation.

This is another one I really like.  Tape the home button when on your app menu and it shows all of your homescreens in a nice “exposé” style manner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7soM07Y3qNI

This should be standard too.  If hold my home button on my DROID it brings up my running programs and I can switch between them (more on multitasking later).

5. 85% of us want multitasking and 3rd party background apps

This is where I get a little annoyed with iPhone users.  Now, multitasking is something that the Palm Pre does with WebOS, as well as Android phones, but the iPhone falls short here.  It SHOULD have it, but iPhone users used to ask me “Who needs that?” or “Who cares about that?”  Well, apparently 85% of the people polled care about it enough to respond to TUAW.  This is a good demand…until I see the next line: “but not at the cost of battery life.” What? Really? You want to run multiple applications at once and not use battery life? What kind of engineering do you think Apple does?  Come on now, be realistic!

6. Almost 80% of us want Flash, even if it’s a bad idea.

Again, a pretty good request.  I want it on my DROID too.  Apparently it’ll be out for Android before the iPhone though.  Also, running Flash on anything MacOS related is a death sentence.  They realize this in the post, but I’m just throwing it in there also.

7. We love that you introduced landscape mode across virtually all apps in iPhone OS 3.0, but 70% of us want the ability to selectively turn it off.

Okay, this really isn’t built into the phone?  Android has it built in already…why didn’t Apple?  I don’t know. But it’s actually a legit request also.

8. When we leave an app, we want it to remember where we were.

This one is part of the whole multitasking thing. When multitasking comes, this better be in it, or you’re doing it wrong! (Yes, Android for the most part has this, and I believe WebOS does as well.)

9. 65% of us want the ability to remove Apple-branded apps.

This next one is a fair request, but it just won’t happen. Apple doesn’t care…really.  They don’t want you to remove their apps on the iPhone because, well, it’s their apps.  There are ways apparently to hid the app from your screen, but not to remove them. These apps are so small what should it matter? This is what you’re getting with a brand; the device and the apps to come with it.  Same on most devices.

10. 60% of us want a universal “documents” folder.

Okay, fair again, but a question is why doesn’t it do this anyway? “We realize this breaks the sandboxing model that prevents one app from blowing away data belonging to another one, but we have every confidence you can make it work.” Yeah, and when an app comes out that removes all of your pictures and documents who are you going to blame for allowing this? Thought so.

11. Better Support for Codecs and Add-ons.

This one is basically asking to allow WMV and AVI stuff to run. I suppose this is another valid request. Next!

12. The iPhone is a hard drive with a screen, so….[Give us Disk mode in the OS. 50% of us want to use our iPhone as an external USB/Wi-Fi hard drive.]

One of my favorites. I wonder why Apple doesn’t allow this.  Maybe it’s because they don’t want people to be able to remove their apps so easily, or copy some over, or maybe it’s because they want their users to use iTunes.  You know, one of their most popular pieces of software.  It’s all about controlling the environment the phone runs with.  You can use other programs to add songs, and documents and pictures, but adding apps is all iTunes.  There is really no third party app vendor, is there? You’re stuck with iTunes, like it or not.

So that’s really my $.02 on this blog entry.  It’s probably biased, but it’s me being honest.  I like the iPhone.  I think it’s a great device, but it does have some stupid flaws that can easily be fixed (as well as being a shitty phone).  Unfortunately these requests might fall on deaf ears,  Steve Jobs is not going to listen much, he’s going to make you listen.

Fixing or adding any of these features to the iPhone will still not help if you’re sitting on a shitty network. I’ll keep m DROID and use an iPod Touch (or my 6th Gen iPod Classic).  I’ll at least be able to do everything I can on an iPhone while actually being able to make phone calls.
There will most likely be a part 2 from this article, so I may just have to wager in on that one as well.