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We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

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Re: We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

#21

Post by brown9-2 »

aaron111 wrote: post #14

Of course Gruber will quote the parts where AT&T is asking Apple to tweak the iphone (trying to shift more blame on AT&T for their network) and now all the parts about how Apple is extremely hard to work with or where the iphone's baseband radio is incredibly buggy and is arguably one of the main reasons for the constant dropped calls. Gruber is nothing but a hack who's trying to glorify Apple in every way.

Actually I think these snippets reveal the gist of the original article pretty well, and also highlight some pretty basic differences between AT&T and Apple:

1) AT&T wants to cripple features and sacrifice customer experience because it won't invest in it's network fast enough

2) AT&T wants Steve Jobs to wear a suit to meet with it's board of directors. Not only is this something that AT&T seemingly desires, but it needs to have a deputy arrange and suggest the clothing choices of executives before they meet.

So on one side: a company that sacrifices customer experience and makes inane suggestions about clothing suggestions, because appearance matters.

On the other side: a company that releases some bugs in some of it's software.

You pick which is more indicative of an overall company culture. Perhaps Apple seems hard to work with when you come from an aging bureaucracy and an old way of doing business. I can understand how some people might find fighting for the customer and for good products "hard to work with".

Re: We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

#23

Post by warfangle »

I do believe apple has given some opaque concessions. Note that this is anecdotal; I have not scientifically tested this.

I have the nexus one, running on att 3g - the same similar card I used to use in my iPhone 3g. A co-worker just got the iPhone 4.

We both picked up the FCC bandwidth test app.

Testing each phone in succession - not simultaneously - in the same spot, hands free, flat on the desk.

My N1 consistently benchmarked at 2-2.5 mbps down and 1mbps up with a 200ms ping.

His iPhone consistently benchmarked at 1-1.5 mbps down, .2-.4 mbps up, and a 2000ms ping.

Either there truly are antenna issues unrelated to the hand-holding-bars-dropped issue, or the I/O processor cannot handle high speeds, or Apple is throttling bandwidth usage based on geolocation. I don't know which it is Another coworker tested his bandwidth in Vancouver and got over 10mbps.

These tests were performed in Soho. Your miles may vary...

Re: We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

#25

Post by jarek »

jws wrote: post #17
chwahoo wrote: post #6

It does seem that concessions were made. For example, the Facetime app is currently wifi-only. Also, I believe movie rental is wifi-only. Those are understandable restrictions for now, but this article rings a bit hollow in light of them -- It would seem that AT&T won a few of those battles.

Or more likely, the probability of a negative user experience is too high on AT&T's network. To use a non-#attfail example: The little microwave ISP I use in a rural area gives me 10mbps, but they don't have enough backhaul to support that kind of bit rate in a sustained manner. If I start to watch a YouTube video at a better-than-awful bit encoding the first 10 seconds or so are great, then the routers notice my con…

FTA, implied to be more of less AT&T's argument: "It didn’t make sense to build phones and offer features that carriers couldn’t support." Message: AT&T expects to solve user experience problems by removing or restricting features, and this is a bad thing.

Your post: "[T]he probability of a negative user experience is too high on AT&T's network ... Apple knows better than to let Facetime get a [bad] reputation[.]" Message: Apple solves user experience problems by restricting features, and this is a good thing.

Re: We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

#26

Post by cligner »

warfangle wrote: post #23

I do believe apple has given some opaque concessions. Note that this is anecdotal; I have not scientifically tested this. I have the nexus one, running on att 3g - the same similar card I used to use in my iPhone 3g. A co-worker just got the iPhone 4. We both picked up the FCC bandwidth test app. Testing each phone in succession - not simultaneously - in the same spot, hands free, flat on the desk. My N1 consistently…

Or it could've been one of the things mentioned in the original article:

"They complain that Apple hasn’t accepted its fair share of the blame. They say — and Apple sources confirm — that the software running the iPhone’s main radio, known as the baseband, was full of bugs and contributed to the much-decried dropped calls. What’s more, Apple had chosen to source the radio from Infineon, whose hardware was used widely in Europe but rarely in the US, where cell towers are placed farther apart and reception is therefore less forgiving."

Re: We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

#27

Post by jarek »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #24

>we always said, ‘Fine, we’ll escalate it to Steve and see who wins.’ I think history has demonstrated how that turned out.” Really? As far as I understand, the AT&T data network still sucks.

And, more tellingly in combination with this, the Iphone is still AT&T exclusive in the U.S., even though making a T-Mobile version would be essentially trivial (different UMTS band) and Apple already has a history of larger radio hardware customizations for carriers (no wifi in mainland China).

Re: We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

#28

Post by barrkel »

jws wrote: post #17
chwahoo wrote: post #6

It does seem that concessions were made. For example, the Facetime app is currently wifi-only. Also, I believe movie rental is wifi-only. Those are understandable restrictions for now, but this article rings a bit hollow in light of them -- It would seem that AT&T won a few of those battles.

Or more likely, the probability of a negative user experience is too high on AT&T's network. To use a non-#attfail example: The little microwave ISP I use in a rural area gives me 10mbps, but they don't have enough backhaul to support that kind of bit rate in a sustained manner. If I start to watch a YouTube video at a better-than-awful bit encoding the first 10 seconds or so are great, then the routers notice my con…

I have a similar problem with YouTube, but on adsl and with full proper bandwidth available on other websites. YouTube itself throttles the client after the first few seconds, on the theory that many people will quit watching and it's a waste of bandwidth to read ahead too aggressively. But the feature seems flawed in my case, leading to stuttering on an uncontended connection. I often have better luck using a download manager and playing back the flv offline.

Either that, or my ISP is packet-sniffing and throttling video, which seems unlikely since e.g. BBC and ITV can stream fine.

Re: We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

#29

Post by hyperbovine »

megablast wrote: post #10

I get the impression that Apple is not run by a bunch of MBAs, unlike a lot of the big companies around the world.

According to their bios (http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/), every senior exec who isn't doing hardware of software has either an MBA or a JD. More anecdotally, I know at least three people with MBAs working in middle management there. Apple does a good job of maintaining a counterculture image while remaining a pretty average place to work.

Of course, you could make the case that Apple is run by one person, and he didn't even graduate college.

Re: We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.

#30

Post by ams6110 »

If Apple are so concerned with user experience that they are unwilling to throttle the iPhone to meet ATT's network limitations, then why did they partner with ATT to begin with? ATT are pretty generally perceived as having the worst wireless phone service in the USA, and that certainly dovetails with my personal experience.
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