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Welcome to my personal blog. This is full of my opinions. Not Microsoft's or MacBU's opinions - mine. And remember, this is the internet, so I probably have no idea what I’m talking about.

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August 25, 2007

Caved

Yesterday I was in meetings on main campus (our offices are in one of the not-main campuses… West? Lakeridge? Northbridge? Antarctica? I actually have no idea) and had 90 minutes between meetings. I was supposed to only have 30 minutes, but I found out I had missed yet another freakin' calendar change because my iPhone doesn't have Exchange Active Sync support. That was the last straw, so I caved and went to the AT&T store to get a Blackjack.

It did not start well - I had 5 minute "discussion" with the kid working in the store over whether or not my $30 a month family SMS plan I signed up for covered the iPhone. It started innocently enough, I just wanted to make sure the plan was in place and confirm that it covered up to 5 phones. And then it degenerated. To paraphrase:

Kid: Oh no, sir, you don't understand, the iPhone is magic and you have to pay 20 dollars a month for each phone for unlimited SMS.

Me: How can that be, the unlimited SMS plans was specifically offered to me online as an upgrade for my family plan. And an AT&T rep let me sign up for it for my iPhones.

Kid: Oh no, sir, you don't understand, the iPhone is magic and you have to pay 20 dollars a month for each phone for unlimited SMS.

Me: So are you telling me that not only am I going to get billed $30 bucks for this month, I'm going to get billed $180 for the extra 1800 text messages we sent above the 200 per month per plan?

Kid: <pause> Well, yes, but it is only an extra $10 a month for the two $20 plans and I can sign you up for those and make them retroactive.

Me: But what about this new phone?

Kid: <pause> Well, that is an extra $20 a month too.

Me: This can't be right. I can't understand why the iPhone is any different and wouldn't be covered by the family SMS plan. Which an AT&T rep signed me up for. That the AT&T web site said was something that worked.

Kid: Oh no, sir, you don't understand, the iPhone is magic and you have to pay 20 dollars a month for each phone for unlimited SMS.

Me: Why don't you check my account and see if I'm being billed for each SMS sent by my wife's and my iPhone?

Kid: <long pause> Huh, you aren't being billed for the SMSes.

Me: Great, now let's set up that Blackjack!

The good news is that after that, the kid was great - helpful, friendly. Actually, he was always being helpful and friendly, we just got off on the wrong foot because he (like everyone from AT&T I've talked to so far) isn't completely clear on how the iPhone plans/services really work. I guess you can chalk it up to growing pains, but unfortunately the customer feels the growing pains.

The other gotcha was that when I said I was going to use the Blackjack for Exchange, suddenly my data plan was $45 bucks a month because it was for "Exchange". Ah, well. And of course, in classic fashion, AT&T disables the ability to use the Blackjack as a bluetooth modem, which is what I have used every Windows Mobile phone for since they got bluetooth. At some point, I will have to buy a non-operator specific Windows Mobile phone so that I can use all the features.

The good news is that I now have access to my calendar/email/corporate directory again. The Blackjack is a very nice Blackberry replacement. I really like Windows Mobile as a mobile Exchange device - it is awesome. Plus I can use my bluetooth GPS & run my GPS enabled mapping software on it which I can't do on an iPhone.

The bad news is that I am now carrying two devices - because by God, you can take my iPhone when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Posted by Craig at 9:05 AM | | | Leave a comment

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I had the same issue, but instead broke down and wrote a little Web application that uses Exchange web services to show my calendar on the iPhone. Works pretty well, I can send you the ASP.Net source if you're interested. Then you can remotely check your calendar for updates, without needing to sync it to the phone (not nearly as cool, but it's functional and I only have to carry my iPhone).
I use this in a combination with telling Outlook to send me SMS reminders for my meetings via some add-in, and I'm in iPhone heaven (well, as bast as I can until EAS comes to an iPhone in a galaxy far far away).

Posted by: Ryan Gregg | August 25, 2007 1:49 PM

Ah - the pleasures of talking to Mobile Phone Operators!!

Surely a chap in your position in the MacBU has a direct line to 'The Steve'?

Give him a ring and tell him to sort out Exchange compatability for the iPhone! After all he did recently state Apple and Microsoft have a good working relationship! - Why don't you put that to the test. Although I have to say that I am very surprised the iPhone doesn't or didn't support exchange from the outset and they even haven't done anything about it yet...

Posted by: Steve | August 26, 2007 1:29 PM

There is Microsoft's next enhancement inline:
Exchange Active Sync for iPhone.

Posted by: Enrique García | August 27, 2007 6:07 AM

Hi Craig,

You do realize that the iPhone can work in some fashion with exchange? The unfortunate part of this is that Exchange has to accomodate it at the server.

I'm willing to bet that the folks on campus aren't going to make those changes any time this century. And it's a long century ahead of us.

Re: AT&T - I have a family plan, but each line gets SMS done on it differently, and that's always been the arrangement, that SMS was individual lines, not a family pool. The magic iPhone follows in that path, so I'm not surprised that Pimply Faced Youth was unable to grok the notion of an SMS pool.

Is there no way you can have Exchange push out cal changes to iCal and sync that iCal with the phone? Seems to me that iCal checks remote calendars all the time. The only downer is that iPhone doesn't network sync calendars.

Little steps. Rev1 phone. WinMo has been cursing me for over 8 years (EVEREX cassiopeia device. monochrome. WinCE, baby. Still have it and some gargantuan philips device as well, in storage somewhere.)

And now, from vmarks theatre, Craig and the Pimply Faced Youth!

CRAIG
Y'see here, kid, I have a phone. It's a good phone. I need all the same services, but in something that's not as nice. I'm not giving up what I've got.

PIMPLY FACED YOUTH
Would you like butter on your popcorn?

CRAIG
Just give me the same oily stuff you put on everyone else's.

I need my SMS pool, my minutes, my familytalk, and all the other goodies. And bluetooth. I need that personal area network.

PFY
But sir, the phone you have is magical and resists all logic or reason. You cannot have your shared SMS pool.

CRAIG
I'm sure that I can. (doing best impression of John Wayne, pissed off after 10 consecutive cold showers) I've the bill here, showing the history. You did it before, I'm sure you'll take good care of me now, right, son?

PFY
But sir, you don't understand. I can't do that. I would have to roll better than 20 on a 36 sided die, and then roll a 12 after that, and I just don't have that kind of magick. (see how cool I am? I spelled magick with a K. I could even be cooler if I spelled 'spelled' with a T. spelt.)

CRAIG
We're doing this deal. I'm taking this phone. I'm going to have both, and have all the services I want. And then I'm walking out of here.

PFY
Sir, you can walk out, but you'll be back. They always come back.

CRAIG
This has been a mostly pleasant exchange, boy.

PFY
Exchange? That's going to cost you, and I don't come that cheaply.

CRAIG
Sorry, son. This ain't a date. I've got the bluetooth modem set so it's not promiscuous, and neither am I.

Craig walks out of the shop, leaving the PFY in the dust, looking longingly at the clock until he can get home.

Posted by: vmarks | August 27, 2007 8:27 AM

odd. I had posted a comment here yesterday. today it is gone.

Posted by: vmarks | August 28, 2007 12:22 PM

July 29, 2007

Million-to-One Scenario

Today I tried a really unlikely, impossible to imagine scenario for a wireless operator – a family member (my wife), after seeing my cool new phone and using it, wanted one herself. That would NEVER come up. Edge case. Million to one shot. No one could possibly be expected to plan for that unlikely scenario.

I bought KT an iPhone a week and a half ago, and I finally had time to activate it today (I've been just slammed at work the past bit). I plugged it in and iTunes told me that I can't switch to a family plan throught the software, that I have to call the iPhone activation number. Okay, sure, why not - I call. The polite rep tells me that because I want to add a line, I have to talk to their "add a line" people (even though the number I was told to call was specifically because I wanted to add a line - but whatever). I wait on hold, waiting, waiting, thinking, man - too bad there isn't a machine that could automate repetitive tasks so that people didn't have to sit around waiting while other people did a bunch of repetitive tasks. Some day, maybe. And maybe a man on the moon, too - but I know I'm out there in my thinking. Anyway, I wait on hold, and get the "add a line" person. After explaining that I want to activate my iPhone, she tells me that she can't do iPhone activations. I had to ask - then why did I call the iPhone activation line if you can't do iPhone activations? I get back a very polite "we can't do iPhone activations from here". But I'm told that if I go to a store, that they can do it there.

Like I said, million-to-one scenario - who would have thought that a user might want to add an iPhone to an existing account and turn that existing account from an individual account into a family account? But maybe it will come up a few times, and AT&T will figure out they should support it instead of leaving a p*ssed off customer without a working iPhone. Yeesh.

Posted by Craig at 2:21 PM | | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

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Maybe it's better off that they didn't let you activate the 2nd iPhone. I was "successful" adding the 2nd iPhone to my account. My first AT&T bill for 1 week of service - $805.54...

I took me 6 hours to get that resolved. Love the phone - hate AT&T.

Posted by: Pat Friel | July 29, 2007 6:39 PM

I'm giving you guys over there a lot of wiggle room, don't push it too far! Good move with the delaying MacOffice, let's schedule another delay announcement when they're stock recovers a little more!

Posted by: Steve Ballmer | August 2, 2007 10:02 AM

Or consider my friend's experience http://www.oreillynet.com/etel/blog/2007/06/iphone_first_impressions_what.html

Where AT&T refused to activate his account for the longest time.

Meanwhile, Craig, how's that Office 2008 coming along? We're anxious :)

Posted by: vmarks | August 2, 2007 4:37 PM

April 27, 2006

Text To Landline: darned cool

On Tuesday, Sprint announced a Text To Landline feature. I gave it a try, and I think is very clever and well delivered. You send a text message as normal. A few seconds later, the landline rings and you get told that phone # blah-blah has sent you a message, press 1 to hear it. The text to speech is pretty good. Once you hear your message, you can either reply by 5 pre-canned text messages (Yes, No, Please call back, Thank you, Where are you? ) or a voice message. The voice message is cool, you get a number back in the reply SMS and when you call it, you hear the message the person left for you. Another neat feature is that you get a response SMS when the person listens to their Text to Landline message. Handy. This is a trade off - by making me press "1" to receive the message, they can know I have listened, but if they didn't require that, my message would have gone to the persons voicemail. There are pros and cons to both. Here is a recording a made (using my cell phone) of the callback I received: TextToLandlineRecording.wav (101 KB)

You could argue that this feature is silly because I could just call the person. But I don't think so. The advantage of SMS and IM is the non-real time nature of it. I can fire a message, move on to the next thing, then deal with the reply when it comes back. Plus it is private - placing a call is not. Extending SMS/IM paradigm to the landline allows someone to send a message to anyone during a meeting, class, etc. Could be a killer feature for desktop and mobile AIM.

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