thegeekchannel.com » Failure

Apple iPhone 4S Sales Off to a Limited Start

geek — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:35:23 +0000

It would appear that the only company having a successful iPhone 4S launch is Verizon, because AT&T pre-sales still have not started (thirty minutes into October 7) and the Apple store remains down. Apple’s phone lines say that they’re too busy to take calls right now.

I’m sure the masses will be staying up all night, but I can’t imagine that many people are happy to have waited up this long and then continuing to experience this kind of delay.

What are you seeing?

geek

Verizon Wireless Reports LTE 4G Outage

geek — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:13:38 +0000

Earlier this morning Verizon finally acknowledged a problem with it’s 4G LTE network. Through their official Verizon Wireless Twitter account (@VerizonWireless), Verizon Wireless has reported that “We’re aware of an issue with #4G #LTE connections & our network engineers are working to resolve quickly. Will update here.” As a Verizon Thunderbolt customer, this is a wee-bit frustrating, with the most interesting read coming a few hours later: “Investigating 4G LTE network issue; ThunderBolts making voice calls, may get slower 1xRTT data. Will update here.”

Not sure what this means for the long haul, but it does not appear that Verizon Wireless is being too quick to respond to this problem or the mounting frustration of their users. For many, myself included, the loss of any service above 1xRTT started yesterday evening – not this morning – and it took this long for Verizon to even acknowledge as more than a “just restart your phone” answer from #611.

On a positive note, reviewing the news, this outage marks the first major issue for Verizon’s LTE network. From my perspective it’s the first hiccup and hopefully one that will be short lived. Even at that, it’s worth it for the speed and performance (if not battery life) that I have been getting with my HTC Thunderbolt on the Verizon San Francisco Bay Area 4G LTE network.

geek

Biggest Flop of 2010?

geek — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:36:32 +0000

If the iPad is going to be singled out as one of the biggest successes of 2010, it’s also important to highlight the biggest flop of 2010, and without missing a beat I’d have to nominate the highly anticipated, completely unsuccessful, failure of Google Buzz.

Ultimately this failure will likely be overlooked in the years to come, but for many in the tech and social media fields it has left a lasting impression and the knowledge that Google isn’t perfect, and when it comes to social they’re not even close. Unfortunately, this failure also paved the way for Facebook to become the de facto standard for social media websites and allowed them an unprecedented leader.

Only time will tell if Google can ever make inroads into this rapidly growing marketplace, but I would have to guess with their string of less than successful offerings that it’s pretty unlikely. Critical mass has been reached and Google has missed the opportunity for now.

~geek

Is there a market for Apple’s iPad?

geek — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:36:49 +0000

Apple’s recent announcement of the long-awaited and soon to be released Apple tablet – which they have dubbed the iPad – brings with it more questions that answers. They’ve done a decent enough job of telling us what the iPad brings in the form of new technology (I see it as a great big iPhone… er, without a real phone), but it would seem, like the Newton before it, that this is more of a product in search of a market than a solution to a problem that we all share. Even as an evangelist for technology I question how useful this is compared to my traditional or ultra-light notebook computer.

So while all of these are opinions, my reasons for giving this a great big fail are as follows:

No keyboard: I’m not sure that I believe there is a better (currently available and feasible) input device than the traditional keyboard. That is absolutely personal opinion, but one that I’d be happy to reconsider the next time my flight encounters turbulence. And, yes, I know that an external keyboard will be possible, it just doesn’t seem practical to carry along.

No camera: it’s a digital world, Apple, and your products are supposed to be opening doors and windows – not closing them. This should be as powerful as something like the MacBook Air and that said users are going to expect to be able instant message with tools like iChat and Yahoo Messenger with cam. Not to mention photograph things. Just looking at this from a purely business perspective it sure would be nice to be able to take a picture of someone’s business card and have it dropped into contacts like I can do on the iPhone.

Weight. So depending on what you have to carry with you this could be good or bad, but generally speaking I don’t think that people are going to want to lug around a notebook sized tablet and power and the other crap that they need to make it through their day – they may as well be carrying a notebook computer.

Size and durability. So I get that it’s relatively small and thin and easy to hold and pretty on the eyes, but there are two immediately obvious flaws to me. First is the bezel – does it really have to be that thick? Okay, so assuming it does, isn’t this also something that looks like it will break on the first drop or the first time something like my keys are dropped on it?

CleanlinessMaybe I’m just a pudgy geek with sweaty palms, but keeping my iPhone as clean as I like it has been difficult enough. I can’t imagine how difficult this is going to be to keep clean. Looks to me like it could be more work than it’s worth.

So those are my rants – at least for now – and I am planning a follow-up to this with why I think that this is a game-changer, if only for what it might do for mobile computing and the iPhone platform. As always, your comments are welcome.