Herein you’ll find articles on a very wide variety of topics about technology in the consumer space (mostly) and items of personal interest to me. I have also participated in and created several podcasts most notably Pragmatic and Causality and all of my podcasts can be found at The Engineered Network.
The iPad 2 Sold Out - Apparently Not Tomorrow!
I am pleasantly surprised to see that Apple will actually be putting the iPad 2 on sale on the 25th of March as promised with online orders from 1am and store orders from 5pm tomorrow. My original advice to order one online still stands - you really don’t want to be stuck in a seemingly infinitely long queue waiting to buy one. I would also like to add try shopping at other retailers like JB HiFi, Target, Big W, Myer and David Jones and you may find shorter queues - if any. Although the risk they won’t have as much stock as an Apple Store is very real.
A friend has indicated he will be waiting until the initial surge dies down. That’s what I said when the iPad 1 was released in Australia last year. I held out until day 6.
Telstra Adds Visual Voicemail for iPhone Users
Telstra announced yesterday that after several years of waiting, Apple’s visual voicemail feature - originally touted by Apple with AT&T in the US as a big feature of the original iPhone in 2007 - is now finally available for the iPhone on Telstra. There are two catches however.
Catch 1: The phone must be running iOS4.3 - that means it won’t work on an iPhone 3G.
Catch 2: Please hand over another $5 per month for the privilege.
Let’s be clear: Vodafone in Australia have offered Visual Voicemail from mid 2009 at no extra cost to the end user and it worked on all iPhone models from the 3G running iOS2. Why the difference?
The major telecommunications companies around the world use hardware from Lucent, Nokia, Ericsson, Nortel, Siemens and/or Motorola to get the radio signals to and from their mobile phones and each company produces their own software to drive that equipment. Some telecommunications companies use completely different software to manage their users voicemail messages. The problem is that Apple had an exclusivity contract with AT&T initially which meant it worked with them to integrate VVM into AT&Ts voicemail system. If other manufacturers around the world had the same software they were in luck - they could integrate VVM easily. Alas most did not run that software and some Telcos needed to spend their own money developing the software to make VVM work. Vodafone clearly made a decision to develop their VVM application earlier than everyone else - perhaps the integration was not too difficult. I had heard through a inside source that Telstras system was not easy to integrate VVM into.
Be that as it may it’s great to see Telstra doing something to add user experience for their users. Alas it’s the Telstra of old that chooses to charge an unreasonable amount for that experience. Given that nearly all iPhone users are paying at least $49 each month on their iPhone plan an extra $5 for very little extra seems disproportionate and unfair and I can forsee Telstra relenting on this in the long run - possibly for the iPhone 5 release in coming months when they see low adoption rates of this new service.
iPhone Tops User Satisfaction Survey. Again.
In what is becoming a trend the Apple iPhone has once again topped the J.D. Power user satisfaction survey for business smartphones just as it did in September 2010, and April 2010 and so on. They rate the phones based on Ease of Operation, the Operating System, Physical Design, Handset Features and Battery Function (life) resulting in an overall score out of 1,000. What I find interesting is that the competitors are collectively within 2% of each others scores. The iPhone is nearly 5% ahead of its nearest competitors and is really only marked down by its battery life rating being so low. Blackberry continue their backward slide and the competition and Motorola in particular are regaining some of their former glory it seems with good products like the Droid.
The iPhone continues to provide the best overall experience in smartphones and kudos to Apple for pulling it off. Apple do need to be on notice however, as their competitors are closing in if these results are anything to go by. Good experience creates new sales and switchers takes mind-share and market-share away from Apple.
The iPhone 5 and NFC
I came across a good article at Macworld UK today regarding whether or not NFC will be present in the next iPhone. I mostly agree with what Jonny Evans is saying, however he argues that in order to be successful there must be a critical mass of NFC reading devices in the marketplace such that NFC would be useful but concludes: “…That’s still nowhere near enough to confidently launch and promise an NFC-based payment system for the consumer market.”
All Apple needs to do is partner with the biggest player in the market based on NFC readers around the world. I’m not Visa or MasterCard so I can’t be sure who has more readers out there but I’m sure it’s either or both of them that would fit the bill. Transit systems at the moment are fragmented around the world and whilst they may be using NFC technology they’re not using a common transaction method and would likely require their own custom application on the device to make it work. This isn’t such a big deal but it’s another link in the chain that Apple will surely wish to avoid - at least initially.
I think that Apple will enter the market partnered with one or two key players, offer options with iTunes payment integration and gradually chip away at transit companies and other NFC users. It seems to be the way they do business. I think it’s very likely it will be in a future iPhone. I have no special knowledge or information that it will or won’t be the next model but I won’t be surprised to see it announced later this year.