Despite of the fact I already have an iPhone, I wanted to get the iPhone 3G with GPS to use while sailing (iNavX app) or mountain tracking. My wife would perfectly happy to use my previous model.
I don't believe in "hiring the carpenter to fix the plumbing", so I drove 40 minutes to the Apple store to get it, instead of local AT&T store. There, I learned that Apple went entirely away with the idea of the register and with many people in the place getting any attention without elbowing the neighbors took me 15 minutes. Finally, I flagged down a store clerk who directed me to another one as if selling the item was too difficult for the local "geniuses" in that bar. The sales person, to my astonishment, has put me in waiting line behind a tape. There in waiting line I happened to be the only waiting person, but I guess that made no difference to the sales person. The salesperson asked me diligently if I want an 8 Gb, or 16 Gb phone, black, or white then told me they have only white 8Gb models. Once I made this convenient selection, he wrote a small slip of paper and gave it to another sales person. Now, that I was served by 3 very nice people, each in a different color T-shirt we got down to business. I answered FBI type of questions and after there was nothing else personal about me they could get I gave them my credit card. After running the card they told me that they cannot sale me the iPhone because I have a corporate discount with AT&T and that is blocking the transaction. Fuming, after wasting 2 hours of my time I left without the phone.
Next day, I gave a try the local AT&T store. This time more luck: a local store and the clark waiting in the door -- great, I thought! The nice lady with a notepad asked us if I want to "order" the iPhone, I asked if "ordering" is the same as "buying", she said no, they don't actually have any in stock and that the waiting period if "only" 10 days, which apparently was a good deal comparing to previous 20 days.
I was not surprised when she took my name and asked me to wait.
The salesperson could as well drop the "sales" from his title, he was just a person. To order the iPhone it took him 15 minutes of fumbling with the computer keyboard, listening to the conversation of the girls next to us and asking me another set of FBI questions (Do they really need to know if my place is a house or apartment building?)
Finally, I asked him if he would recommend me a better minutes plan to which he said my plan is fine. I asked him, what about the $600 bill last month. He said "Oh!". $20 addition to my bill fixed the issue.
Why do I write this?
I hope that iPhone gets a real competitor really soon. I hope that Google Android phone operating system will be awesome.
I write about evolutionary anthropology, behavioral sciences, and related AI, particularly small, specialized Deep Neural Networks and LLMs.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Post Scriptum
The views in this article are mine and do not reflect those of my employer.
I am preparing to cancel the subscription to the e-mail newsletter that sends my articles.
Follow me on:
X.com (Twitter)
LinkedIn
Google Scholar
I am preparing to cancel the subscription to the e-mail newsletter that sends my articles.
Follow me on:
X.com (Twitter)
Google Scholar
My favorite quotations..
“A man should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” by Robert A. Heinlein
"We are but habits and memories we chose to carry along." ~ Uki D. Lucas
Popular Recent Posts
-
In my journey building software and managing technology teams, I've often witnessed the allure and danger of what Melissa Perri aptly na...
-
I decided to write down a few thoughts to clarify my obsessions with creating the "multitude" of AI agents that rely on the privat...
-
Physics and the laws of relativity: in parent-child relationship sound waves reach the subject after 25 years.
-
I am pleased with the performance and depth of the 32B Qwen MLX, running locally on my Mac Studio M1 with 64GB of RAM. 9 tokens per second ...
-
My transmission needs to be rebuilt; the engine is the original gasoline Volvo from 1974. I found a couple of pictures of Irwin 28 with the...
-
log DSC_4228.NEF
-
This topic is being updated, visit soon. Bibliography links: Elco Electric Launch Etek Electric Outboard Motor Project Electric Drive Syste...
-
If you are living in Chicago, San Francisco / Silicon Valley or any major city there is a good chance that there are multiple events happeni...
-
When you decide to develop your company you have some important choices to make, many people measure success by how much revenue the company...
Most Popular Articles
-
In my journey building software and managing technology teams, I've often witnessed the allure and danger of what Melissa Perri aptly na...
-
I have noticed a very unsettling statistic on my blog. This prompted a fascinating question about AI, blogs' future, and maybe even the...
-
Prompt: What do you really see in the selfie of myself? AI: I see a volcano about to blow up and I see a lost, scared boy in front of it. ...
-
Choice D Since we are currently renting, we started looking at the houses we could afford. This place fits our budget, but the baby blue col...
-
I found myself wholly emptied, the mental exhaustion where you sit in your parked car and wake up minutes later, unsure how long you’ve been...
-
I tested to belong to Haplogroup R1b1b2a1a1d1. Subclade R1b1b2a1a1d1* (as named by 23andMe ) or R1b1a2a1a1a4 (per FTDNA ) is a paternal (...
-
Introduction: A Language Model of My Own We are surrounded by large language models: systems trained on the vastness of the internet. Models...
-
Sometimes the AI chats surprise me on a new level. Here is an interaction I just had when fixing my AIKO app's Human-AI Interaction (HAi...
-
Something subtle but powerful just landed in my AI pipeline: agent_Observer. It listens. Not to spy, but to sense the mood and intent. It ...
Uki,
ReplyDeleteif anything goes wrong with your iPhone and you try genius bar you will re-evaluate the word genius.
Kinga