Tagged with 'iphone'

With the recent release of iPhone 3G and the launch of Apple’s App Store, location-aware social networking applications will be making their way into the hands of more people than ever before.  The ease of use and simplicity in downloading new apps means that Apple has virtually removed the tech know-how barrier to participation.  Many of the launch day applications are free iPhone versions of popular social networking web sites.  Just about every major player has an app available for download either now or in the near future – Facebook (links open in iTunes if installed), MySpace, Twitter (via a third-party), Pownce, Flickr (via Exposure, by a third-party), and Loopt, who presented their app during Apple’s keynote announcement.  Most of these apps use your location in some way, opening up some exciting possibilities for extremely localized search, directions, and more applications hitherto unimagined.  All of these location-based apps are opt-in due to a restriction in Apple’s iPhone software development kit – the phone will prompt you if the application wants to gain access to your current location.

Of those mentioned above, Loopt has created a bit of a debacle and garnered a great deal of ill-will this week by broadcasting your phone number and current location to everyone in your contact list.

The point of Loopt is to be able to let your friends know where you are so you can get together (without having to actually communicate with anyone via text message, phone, or email).  I for one am a bit reluctant to constantly reveal my current location, even to friends, but by sending SMS text messages to everyone whose phone number you’ve ever added to your contact list, Loopt breaks a social contract by violating their users’ privacy.

Even without installing the Loopt app on my iPhone I’ve been barraged  by text messages from others who have installed it and unwittingly been sending out scores of SMSes without knowing it.  Aside from privacy concerns, sending and receiving text messages costs both the sender and recipient money.  I pay for a 200 text message plan, but after that texts are $.20 to send or receive – imagine the costs involved if you have a lot of contacts in your contact list!  Since contacts are one of the easiest things to sync to my iPhone, I have a lot of contact info for people that I don’t necessarily want to spam with text messages asking them to join a service so they can spam other people with costly SMSes.

Given the backlash on the Internet, it will likely be just a matter of time before Loopt corrects this issue, but in the meantime, be very, very careful which networks you trust with your sensitive information, including your current whereabouts.

UPDATE (16 July): Loopt has announced that they will disable the feature that automatically sends invites to everyone on your contact list in their next update.  No word yet on updates to their SMS service that will respond to the industry standard “STOP” message so non-subscribers can stop receiving spam from them.

I got to the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. around 7:30am on Friday, 11 July, which was only about a half an hour before the store opened.  Sure enough, there was a line.  It didn’t look that bad, so I walked to the end of it only to be informed that it continued past the hospital and across the other street.

Around 8am the line started moving briskly, and many many more people (700-800 according to Apple’s spotters) lined up behind me.

By 9:30am I’d halved my distance to the Apple store, and by a little after 10am I was leaning up against the wall on the Huron side of the store, figuring I’d soon be on my way with a new iPhone.

The line stayed there for a half an hour, and just as I was about to give up it started moving again (a little) so I waited.  Apple brought us bottles of vitamin water and California Pizza Kitchen was taking orders and delivering pizza to the line.  By 11am I was in the store (and the air conditioning).  The line snaked around the perimeter of the store and up the stairs to the “genius bar” stations that were temporarily phone activation stations.  My newfound line friends and I counted people leaving with phones like you’d count thunderclaps – about one person leaving the store with a phone every ten minutes or so.  Most of my moving forward in line was due to attrition – people getting out of line and leaving, not people leaving the store with activated iPhones.

When I got to the stairs I figured I was home free, so when the Apple Store manager told us “Great news, folks, activations are speeding up, and there’s only about 300 people in line ahead of you, so it should only be a couple more hours!” I took off, finally getting a cab into work about four hours after first getting in line.

Ugh.

Saturday afternoon I tried again.  There was still a line, but it was much, much shorter.  I decided to wait, and an hour later, I was able to finally get an iPhone 3G (although Apple couldn’t set up my new 3G phone with the same number as my previous iPhone account, so for now I’m carrying two iPhones – the first-generation with my old phone number and the new 3G with a new temporary number.

When Apple launched the first iPhone last year they revolutionized the mobile phone activation experience by allowing people to buy online or in a store and activate at home. Because of Apple’s new subsidy program with AT&T they’re making sure that people activate in-store to prevent people from unlocking their phones and using them with another carrier.  Because of AT&T’s short-sightedness, to prevent the minority from unlocking their phones, they’re making everyone suffer.

Apple used to protect their customers from this sort of thing.  Whatever happened to “it just works”?

When the first iPhone launched Apple bragged about how they were able to coerce AT&T into letting people activate at home.  The process was painless and people were in and out of the store in mere minutes.  By comparison, this year the iPhone purchasing experience was painful and awkward.

Granted, I could have waited a week and avoided most of the unpleasantness, but considering the high-profile of this product launch I would have thought that all involved would be better prepared.