Tag Archives: iPhone

Chase-ing

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After speaking at the Illinois Conference I went to St. Louis to visit my cousin, Sean, and watch basketball. Sometime during the visit and watching basketball with his old friends, and my new friends, we had 2 discussions about the best. One was who is the best player in college basketball and the other was about what is the best phone on the market. To make a long story short I’ll just point out there’s a reason other players were being compared to John Wall and other phones are compared to the iPhone.

Before leaving St. Louis I tried to find a Chase Bank. Actually let’s back up. Before leaving Lexington I used Google Maps to see if there was a Chase Bank in the St. Louis area because I knew I would need one and wouldn’t be back in Lexington for a while. Google Maps indicated there were some branches so I thought all was good. Back to leaving St. Louis. The branches Google Maps said were there weren’t so I checked online with Chase. When I checked there were none in St. Louis, but a few options about 40 miles away. The Chase website specifically said the ATMs were open 24 hours and could accept deposits. Sean and I decided to drive up to one to get there and not be able to get to it. Sure the ATM may have been open 24 hours, but the building the ATM was in was not. At this point I was only a little annoyed because Sean and I made the most of the drive.

The next day I called Chase hoping talking to someone would be useful. It was an absolute waste of time. The person I talked to was unable to locate a branch or ATM close to St. Louis and wound up transferring me to a branch in Chicago that was closed. Since I still needed an ATM I decided to detour by a different Chase ATM on the way to Mississippi. This detour was about an hour out of the way. I got to the ATM this time, but it did not take deposits. I stopped by 2 other ATMs on the Chase list of ATMs that were deposit friendly and neither accepted deposits. I left St. Louis ready to leave Chase.

I’m done for now, but there’s more coming soon. I haven’t yet made it to Destin or Atlanta or talked about any Cheer Drama. My ending thought is to remind people their first instinct is probably the best one to go with. The amount of information you can process without realizing you are doing it is incredible. This is what you first instinct is based on. Trust it. Trust in yourself and if you don’t believe me read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink.

The iPhone

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We’ve come to a strange point in time when a company restricts how many of their product the customer can buy and will not let them pay cash for the product.

This was the sentiment when Apple made it so customers could not buy more than 2 iPhones and could not pay cash for them. At first I thiought the not accepting cash portion was illegal, but apparently the “This note is legal tender for all debt, public and private” message written on money truly only applies to debt, not consumer purchases.

Apple iPhone

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I’ve been asked about Apple’s iPhone many times over the past few months and have decided to share portions of these conversations with you. The most popular question is people asking me “Are you going to buy the iPhone?”, to which I reply “no”. As much as I like Apple, plan on switching to an Apple MacBook next Spring, and have faith in their talented engineers, I would not buy a first generation phone from anyone. There are companies that have been making phones for a long time, Nokia & Motorola come to mind, that still don’t have it perfect. And lets not get started on the issues with Windows Mobile 5. Why would I take a $600, two year chance with someone’s first attempt?

When people ask for more detail on why I won’t get one I point to a few reasons. First, the iPhone doesn’t work on AT&T 3G network, meaning internet speeds will be slow. I know AT&T upgraded the network prior to the iPhone’s release, but I don’t expect to see any gain from that once a million iPhones start abusing the network. In addition, the storage space is too small. I have a 60GB iPod which is hard to replace with a 8GB device. Next, I have a phone (with 3G connectivity, wi-fi, and Outlook synchronization) and an iPod, so the timing of a convergence device isn’t good for me. When I look to replace my iPod I’ll take a good look at the iPhone. (I say iPod because I go through phones pretty quickly and will probably replace a few phones before I replace my iPod). I also expect a new iPhone to be announced in January at MacWorld. Some say it will be out before Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, which is the busiest shopping day of the year), which seems a little soon to me, but I am expecting a full screen video iPod out by then. And finally, did I mention I wouldn’t buy a first phone from anyone.

The iPhone will benefit almost all mobile phone users in some way. In addition to AT&T’s network upgrade, which instantly puts pressure on competitors to upgrade their networks, AT&T had to make modifications to allow the visual voicemail feature, meaning it will be available on more phones. The iPhone also sets a soft cap of $600 for phones because competitors need a reason to charge more that the iPhone costs for a phone that isn’t as useful or cool. Finally, it will make competitors step up the features of their phones in order to compete. Competition benefits the consumer and Apple just woke up the competition with a resounding slap in the face.