Apple Store

Great writeup about the experiences of working in an Apple store from the perspective of an employee.

Product Launches

We are completely in the dark until they do a keynote speech. We have no idea what is coming and are not allowed to openly speculate. You can get into serious trouble if you speculate—especially to a customer. I am asked five times per day about the next iPad or iPhone, and I quite simply don’t know. But I would be in huge trouble if I said something like “The next iPad is going to have a camera.” I actually avoid the technology section of the newspaper so I have no points of view to accidentally comment with or drop into conversation. I’d rather just be dumb about it. The day of a big keynote, everybody at the store watches it. It’s also really easy to get out of work that day by saying you want to watch the keynote from home. They’ll never say no. Then they’ll start preparing us for the big launch and start scheduling crazy shifts. During the iPhone 4 launch, they brought us food—and good food! Somebody told me that the 5th Avenue store in New York had a masseuse during one launch, and that another store had a kiddie pool full of goldfish as, like, a Zen thing. They also really emphasize how important it is for us to stay hydrated, and we can get big bonuses if we work really long hours on a launch day.

Evil Customers

Its amazing how badly behaved some customers are. I have seen customers have complete meltdowns and get phones exchanged that were like two years old. They scream, cry, curse. And it works. People can be horrible. Sometimes it’s like working at McDonald’s, with better pay. I’ve never been treated so badly in my life. Dealing With Drug Dealers We get a lot of drug dealers who try to buy iPhones with fake IDs. You can tell them instantly just by how shady they act, and they know you know, but you obviously can’t start accusing them of being drug dealers—they are customers, after all. But when they try to check out, they’ll use what are obviously fake IDs or fake credit cards, and it often turns out they’re using a dead person’s Social Security number or something. And when you call them out on that—then, they run.

Pushing MobileMe

We aren’t paid on commission, but you fear for your job if you’re not selling enough. We’re supposed to sell AppleCare product support with just about everything, and honestly, those aren’t that hard to sell, since they aren’t a bad deal. But we’re also supposed to push MobileMe, and that’s really hard to sell. Nobody ever sells it.

Sales Competition

We have a posted list of our metrics, and you can see everybody else’s. It shows you how much money each person is pulling in for the company. If you aren’t doing very well, you start getting manager meetings, and they sit you down and try to figure out why you aren’t selling more.

Chinese Resellers

When the iPad first launched, we got tons of resellers from China coming in and trying to pay in cash. Back then, you had to reserve an iPad before you could pick it up, so they would go to the computers in the back of the store and create e-mail address after e-mail address just to reserve an iPad on the spot. We’d get a lot of weird e-mail addresses, like 9494893@ymail.com. And they tried to haggle us on the price for iPads! This is Apple—no way would that work.

The Apple Credo

Sometimes the company can feel like a cult. Like, they give us all this little paper pamphlet, and it says things like—and I’m paraphrasing here—”Apple is our soul, our people are our soul.” Or “We aim to provide technological greatness.” And there was this one training session in which they started telling us how to work on our personality, and separating people into those with an external focus and an internal focus. It was just weird.

Security

There are security guards everywhere. They are undercover, so you can’t tell who they are. A lot of them are retired cops, and they get paid really well. They have to deal with people doing things like wheeling in strollers and trying to use them to roll off with Time Capsules and iPods.

How to Get Fired

They have a really lenient attendance policy. You have to be late like 15 times before they’ll fire you. But if you talk to the press or speculate to a customer about the next iPad? That’s the end of you.

The Public Computers

A lot of teenagers come in and use Photo Booth and then ask us how to upload their shots to Facebook. A lot of homeless people come in and do live webcasts. Those are fine. Then we have some really scary homeless people who come in and listen to death metal really loudly on the Bose speakers. My favorites are the teenagers who play Britney Spears really loud and start dancing. Not many people use the computers to access porn, but a lot of people change the languages on them. And it isn’t easy for us to figure out how to switch it back from Korean or Russian!

The Phone Room

The worst is when we have to work the Phone Room, which is where calls to the store are answered. The other day, I felt like I was working a suicide hot line. People sometimes call us up and treat us like we’re their therapists. Or we have women who want help with their computers as they try to prove their husbands are cheating on them. Usually I just transfer people to AppleCare so I don’t have to deal with them.

Unlocked iPhones

We get tons of people asking us for unlocked iPhones, which, of course, we don’t sell. We usually have to tell them that if they unlock their iPhone, it won’t work. That it’s going to be like a $700 paperweight, and that the antenna will fry itself on T-Mobile. Of course, that’s not true, but that’s what we tell them. And if they have an unlocked iPhone, we won’t touch it at the Genius Bar. Working There Makes You Power Hungry When I’m there, I get sucked into the competitive culture. Normally I’m pretty low-key, but when I’m at the store, it’s all sell, sell, sell! I wanna work my way up, get promoted and eventually get to the Genius Bar—which is where you want to be. Who doesn’t want to be a genius?

Oracle vs. Google Lawsuit

Prepare for battle. Oracle’s lawsuit against Android (Google) just got a little bit juicer. Florian Mueller has been on a tear these past few months with his unearthing of various tech patent suits on his FOSSpatents blog. The biggest one he’s found is a pretty major bombshell: at least 43 Android source files that appear to have been directly copied from Java. That’s huge for Oracle, seeing as Oracle is currently suing Google for patent and copyright infringement in Android — which isn’t a hard case to prove when you’ve got 37 Android source files marked
“PROPRIETARY / CONFIDENTIAL” and “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE” by Oracle / Sun and at least six more files in Froyo and Gingerbread that appear to have been decompiled from Java 2 Standard Edition and redistributed under the Apache open source license without permission. In simple terms? Google copied Oracle’s Java code, pasted in a new license, and shipped it.

Verizon iPhone Personal Hotspot 4.25

With the Big Red (aka Verizon) getting the iPhone 4, it will be running a slightly modified hardware to compensate for it’s new CDMA antenna and slight relocation of it’s side hardware buttons (resulting in new cases for everyone). One of the newer features launching that’s different from AT&T is the internet tethering called “Personal Hotspots”. This feature will allow you to become an internet hub for up to 5 other wifi devices to connect and share the internet with. No note on how fast the battery will drain but this is great news for those who want to ditch their home internet plans and opt for a pure wireless option. No word on pricing for this feature.

And one big difference on Verizon’s iPhone vs. AT&T is that you can’t multi-task a phone call and internet at the same time. Thanks CDMA

Daily Mobile goes to CES 2011

Hit us up at phil@dailymobileblog.com if you want us to stop by your booth and give you some coverage.

iPad 2

We just heard from Digitimes, that Foxconn is currently assembling “400-600k” iPad 2′s for shipment within the next “100 days” which puts the ship date at around March.. If this is true, we can expect a press conference in mid-January and a release date of February or March, which is line with Apple’s traditional start-of-year releases. It looks like CES (January 4-9th) is about to be spoiled.

As far as we can tell, the iPad 2 will have a front-facing camera made by Largan Precision and have the desktop version of facetime available on the iPad 2

Verizon LTE 4G Service Launching

LTE is running on 700 MHz nationwide and hopes to cover the entire 3G footprint with LTE by 2013. Performance is expected to be 10x of that in 3G and perform at a range of 5-12 megabits per second. Latency will be half of current 3G figures which will be comparable to performance on “wired networks” said Malone.

Expect to be priced an arm and a leg for 4G service where 5 GB will cost you $50 or $80 for 10 GB. (It should be noted that these are cheaper than its current 3G offerings)

Sprint Launches 4G Service in more Markets

Sprint officially released 4G to our pockets in the following new markets: Los Angeles, Miami, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. Customers in these regions will be able to take full advantage of Spring 4G and be able to browse up to 10 times faster than 3G service. With the addition of these six markets, Sprint 4G is now available in 68 markets[i] across the country, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and New York City. Additionally, the wireless carrier announced that it expects to launch the San Francisco market – home to Silicon Valley and thousands of tech enthusiasts – on Dec. 28.

Since launching their first 4G service in Baltimore in September 2008, Sprint has made large improvements in it’s coverage but still lack sufficient coverage in Los Angeles where we tested this in West Los Angeles and parts of Brentwood. Coverage has been spotty but nevertheless, downtown and other geographic areas where there’s a clear line of sight work just fine.

Sprint is delivering the power of 4G as the majority shareholder of Clearwire, the independent company that is building the WiMAX network.

Mount Everest gets 3G phone calls

The Hindustan Times reported some interesting news the other day reporting that the reach of globalization has finally come full circle. A Nepali telecommunications firm just started providing third-generation (3G) mobile service at the summit of Mount Everest at 29,029 ft

I can hear it now “Hey mom! You won’t believe where i’m calling from!”

Let’s just hope facetime works up there without freezing

The Hindustan Times carried a small news item the other day that, depending on your perspective, is good news or a sign of the apocalypse. It reported that a Nepali telecommunications firm had just started providing third-generation mobile network service, or 3G, at the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, to “allow thousands of climbers and trekkers who throng the region every year access to high-speed Internet and video calls using their mobile phones.” – NYTimes

Apple iTouch Peel

Remember our post a while back about turning your Apple iTouch into an iPhone? Well it’s available now for a cool $109. You better like it, because they don’t accept returns on this puppy if you don’t like it (unless it’s DOA).

- Gives you 4.5 hours of talk time
- 120 hours of standby time
- Integrated microphone for speech
- Integrated speaker for hearing recipient on call
- Durable hard shell design ensures long-lasting quality
- Charging port
- Volume buttons
- Reset button, Battery and SIM card slot

Price: $119 (Shipped by October 4th)

http://www.peel520.net/buy/

HTC HTD7 Launching Soon

Too bad we don’t have the real picture to show you but here’s a schematic that’s close enough to the real thing. The picture above is the newer generation of the HTC HD2 and the HTC HD7 will be powered by Windows Phone 7. Expect the phone to be launched sometime around October 18th first in Germany. The Handset will cost 79 euro ($106 US Dollars) on O2 Germany with a 2 year 20 Euro per month plan. Or you can get it for $559 Euro ($750 USD) commitment free.

You can get the HTC HD7 in any color as long as it’s black folks. If you have any photos of this device, send it in to info@dailymobileblog.com

Here’s the HTC HD7 Release Date:

HTC HD7 Release Date