Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category

T-Mobile = EPIC FAIL

Friday, September 5th, 2008

So, my wife recently switched from Verizon (good network if you don’t mind staying in the same city for the rest of your life) to T-Mobile (I told her to join me on Cingular/AT&T but she doesn’t seem to like me these days so…). She’d gotten a new phone that didn’t work with Verizon (when will they get a clue and transition away from CDMA?).

At first, everything was fine. But then, recently she started having issues. Calls wouldn’t go through. She couldn’t make calls (the mobile equivalent of the BSOD in Windows = Call Failure). It would happen once in a while (and still does) but there was no explanation for it.

Today, her phone had the issue. She called it in to customer service. The reason? T-Mobile’s having issues merging its network with Suncom‘s. ‘the fuck? She was told the network is going up and down and they can’t currently sign up new customers. Un-fucking-believable. You’re telling me…a known merger that’s been in the news for ages and you’ve been planning for months is tanking your network and sending your five nines into the three sixes?

So, the logical assumption would be, ROLLBACK, right? No word yet. Something tells me some engineers somewhere cut some cables as part of the transition so there is no turning back.

I used T-mobile a while back mainly because I wanted out of Verizon (ahhh, GSM cards) and I didn’t really care about T-mobile or Cingular. As soon as my contract was up, I booked to Cingular. T-mobile drops out at the dumbest places and their plans at the time sucked. I guess the times haven’t changed much…they still can’t suck enough.

CSO

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iPhone Text Messaging Revisted

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Just needed to add another barb against Apple’s woefully oversimple Text Messaging interface…I know, I know…it’s Apple…it’s about simplicity…great. I appreciate that but here’s a thought…While I know not everyone’s that popular and not everyone has automated alerts sent by machines that are in trouble coming in but there WILL be times when you want to delete a LOT of text messages.

When something falls down and goes boom at work, I end up with hundreds of SMS messages. Fixing the hundreds versus one or two issue is a different story. Deleting all those messages becomes a console-thumb-inducing exercise in monotony.

1) Click Edit

2) Click the minus sign

3) Wait a second or two for the Delete button to show up

4) Click Delete

5) Wait a second or two for the message animation to show so you can be sure to wow your friends with the slick way a message is deleted

6) Groan

7) Repeat steps 1-6 ad infinitum

This is up there on my list of reasons Apple can’t suck enough right along side (I mean, they’re neck and neck here) the lack of folder organization in the e-mail client. I love this. I can move messages from my POP3 account inbox to my Sent Items folder (what else would I move it to since I can’t even CREATE a new folder)…but then they don’t show up, presumably because they’re TO me and Apple probably put some sort of filter in there to show everything FROM me…why offer me the ability to move an e-mail if I have NO WHERE to move it?

Which reminds me…want to delete a lot of e-mail (read: spam)? Follow steps 1-7 above…

 

 

 

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iPhone – POP3

Friday, February 29th, 2008

I promised myself I’d post this sucker at some point so here it is.

Gripe time for the iPhone. Now, before I begin, I just want to make it clear that I know I’m using a new “tech” and I know people’s experience with the iPhone has varied…but dammit, the only thing really new about it is that it has that lovely multi-fingered touch interface.

Okay, down to the suckage-mongering. I can’t say I have a “biggest” gripe with the iPhone…there are just so many to pick from. Let’s start with the most annoying to me (who cares about you?): POP3. I still haven’t figured out what Jobsian set of gyrations are required to make this happen but it happens ALL the times I don’t want it to. I’ve got a couple (no, no, I’ll be honest…I’ve got five) POP3 accounts I tap into on my phone though I really only actively use one. For those keeping count, I also have an IMAP/Exchange account on there as well…though this was happening before I added that so whatever.

The problem is that because POP3′s spec allows one, and only one, session at a time to connect to the mail server and because the iPhone under some (read: all but the times I actually try to explicitly reproduce this issue) circumstances decides to not close out this session properly, I can’t log into my e-mail via a computer (via e-mail client, you nutter, I know the Web interface works). Even when I power off the iPhone, that orphaned session is still out there…in the ether…waiting silently…watching me spit at the monitor in frustration…

Granted, my Web host could be nice enough to offer IMAP but doesn’t, but, c’mon…someone forget to add a finally block to some function in the iPhone e-mail client? Oh, sorry, knowing Apple, they likely are still using Pascal and don’t even have try/catch blocks.

And, yes, this has been reported before, though I think because most people aren’t paying attention and most resolutions involve going to their e-mail via the Web or switching to IMAP, no one (especially at Apple) seems to care despite the fact that this has been an issue since launch and there have been plenty of updates to the software since however questionable those updates might have been (anyone notice the one bug they introduced that kept the shift key down whenever you used it and were entering a password?).

You gotta wonder…does Apple have a QA department? Do they pay them? Feed them? Or is Apple living off of the corpses of QA testers that have been driven into the ground trying to meet unreasonable deadlines because Jobsian philosophy focuses on design (good design, in most cases, mind you) and that’s it?

Hard to say…as the Applites march to the Jobs fife, all the eye candy and smart ads keep the good vibes flowin so that the missteps and the “minor” flaws and cracks are ignored behind the technicolor iTunes and iPod ads…must…resist…must…Think Different…ly…Diff…Think…Mac…PC…NeXT…Pixar…Vista?

You are about to switch to a less-hacked OS, do you want to proceed?

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