Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Real Reason’

Breaking: AT&T website stops selling iPhones in New York City?

Filed under: iPhone

What kind of Christmas present is this? The Consumerist is reporting that AT&T has stopped selling the iPhone in the New York metropolitan area, at least via the company’s website, due to high data congestion (or possibly due to online fraud). Update: While Consumerist’s post still cites ‘network congestion’ as the reason for the NYC sales hold, we’ve been told by other customer service reps that the real reason is a spike in fraudulent purchases; other sites have gotten the same story.

Stephen in Brooklyn says he made the discovery while shopping on AT&T’s website for an iPhone today:

I was on the AT&T Wireless website trying to get an iPhone. However, when I put in my zip code 11231, the site says the iPhone is unavailable. This seemed a little odd so I started punching in other famous zip codes: 90210, 60609 (spiegel catalog), 02134 (zoom, an old children’s show).
For theses cities, LA, Chicago, Boston, iPhone is available. Then I looked up some other zip codes: Dallas, Miami, St. Louis, Philadelphia, San Francisco. All those cities are ok. Then I started putting in more NYC zip codes: midtown, Staten Island, the Bronx…no iPhone available.

This is weird…AT&T has cut off New York City.

Laura Northrup at the Consumerist contacted AT&T Customer Service to check if the lack of iPhone availability in New York City was a website glitch or a planned disruption. The online rep she chatted with confirmed that the phone was indeed not being sold to New Yorkers via the website, although it remains available via the Apple store website and via both Apple and AT&T physical stores. Mashable, BoyGeniusReport, and Gizmodo have also verified with AT&T Customer Support that the iPhone is indeed not available through website order in New York City.

This is sure to piss off thousands of potential customers in NYC. Let’s just hope AT&T Media Relations releases a statement clarifying when the ban will be lifted and if it will happen in any other cities. In the meantime, just think of this as more fuel for the fire as to why Verizon should have the iPhone; and of course, NYC iPhone shoppers can continue to pick up iPhones at the Apple Stores or at the AT&T outlets in the city.

TUAWBreaking: AT&T website stops selling iPhones in New York City? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

What Is The Real Reason Dell Is Discontinuing 12-inch Netbooks?

Dell has retired their 12-inch Intel Atom-powered netbooks, they said today. The official reason – “It really boils down to this: for a lot of customers, 10-inch displays are the sweet spot for netbooks…Larger notebooks require a little more horsepower to be really useful.”

That makes absolutely no sense, since it requires no additional hardware horsepower to power a 12-inch netbook v. a 10-inch netbook. The only difference is power usage from the bigger screen. And the two extra inches more than makes up for the shorter battery life or slightly heavier device from packing in more batteries. It only costs a few more dollars to build a 12-inch v. a 10-inch netbook, and users get a bigger screen with the same performance.

In fact, Intel’s official position on 10-inch netbooks is almost exactly the opposite of Dell’s. Intel says “If you’ve ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size–it’s fine for an hour. It’s not something you’re going to use day in and day out.”

So why is Dell really discontinuing 12-inch netbooks?

Probably a couple of reasons. First, Intel doesn’t like 12-inch netbooks because they are deep into dual core territory, where Intel has much healthier profit margins. For casual users a 12-inch netbook with an Atom chip works just fine, and they are buying these devices instead of more expensive dual core machines. Intel has put pressure on OEMs to build netbooks that have 10 inch or smaller screens.

This includes direct pricing pressure – Intel prices Atom chips based on the size of the device screen. Anything over 10 inches is priced higher than devices with 10 inch or smaller screens. We think this is an inappropriate way to price Atom chips.

Dell may also be seeing customers who would otherwise buy a dual-core 13-inch or 14-inch Inspiron choosing the lower priced (and less profitable) 12 inch netbook instead. That’s something they aren’t going to be happy about.

Netbooks should be getting bigger, not smaller. That’s what users want.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Read the whole story…

Is AT&T behind the rejection and removal of Google Voice apps?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Wireless, Bad Apple, iPhone, App Store

In the wake of TJ Luoma’s report earlier tonight that the two independent Google Voice applications have been removed from the App Store, Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch says that the official Google Voice app has also been given the shaft. He theorizes that, despite the official Apple line that the apps “duplicate features that come with the iPhone,” the real reason the apps were removed was because of squawking from AT&T.

While TechCrunch doesn’t offer any definitive proof that AT&T is behind the Google Voice blockage, they do cite GV Mobile developer Sean Kovacs’ point that Phil Schiller himself, who you may remember from Apple events like Macworld ‘09 and WWDC, personally approved the GV Mobile app last April. In fact, Kovacs says that Schiller called him to apologize for the delays in getting the app approved.

Given that high-level support for the app, it’s not hard to follow TechCrunch’s logic and set sights on AT&T when looking for reasons for its removal. While few people would argue that Apple’s app approval process is pretty broken right now, it’s hard to believe that an application that was approved by Apple’s VP of marketing was somehow magically unapproved because it “duplicates functionality.”

As TJ said in his post, it’s difficult to believe that Apple truly thinks users will be confused by an application that does the same thing as the built-in Phone app when they went out of their way to purchase and download it. Even setting that aside, it’s not at all clear exactly what functionality is supposedly being duplicated. If it’s the dialer, then that’s a poor excuse; lots of other approved apps include dialers, including Skype. If it’s the SMS functionality, again, poor excuse, as other apps provide SMS functionality as well.

It’s true that Google Voice isn’t necessarily as “scary” to AT&T as a true VoIP app like Skype, but some of the Google Voice functions that TechCrunch describes, like free SMS messages and cheaper long distance, certainly do sound like something that would rattle AT&T’s cage.

Take into consideration that Skype was approved because it will only work over Wi-Fi, even though there’s no technical reason it shouldn’t run over 3G. Look at how crippled SlingPlayer is compared to the same app on other phones. Now, Google Voice is dead in the water on the iPhone. What we have is a very clear and disturbing pattern. Applications that provide innovative solutions to users, but which fall outside the bounds of what a traditionally-minded telecommunications company like AT&T considers acceptable, are being either hobbled by arbitrary restrictions like Skype and Sling or blasted out of existence like Google Voice.

Whether it’s Apple’s fault or AT&T’s, it’s getting tiresome to see innovative applications like Skype or Google Voice constantly kicked to the curb or kneecapped. Are we headed for an App Store with nothing in it except fart apps? Those, at the very least, don’t duplicate any built-in iPhone functionality that I’ve heard of.

One more thing: who else thinks it’s ironic that a company started by a couple of guys who spent lots of time phone phreaking in a garage in the 1970s now kowtows to AT&T and kills apps that help people make cheaper calls?

TUAWIs AT&T behind the rejection and removal of Google Voice apps? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Read the whole story…

Village Voice Wishes McMaster Would Hate Them, Too

And you thought the South Carolina v. Craigslist story was dead.

If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it’s being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice’s BackPage.com.

That’s all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled “Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.”

In an email, Village Voice’s PR firm accuses Buckmaster of “leveraging the legal bind he’s in to damage Craigslist’s competition.”

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn’t make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they’re proud of it: “We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings,” they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ — Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can’t sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later “submarine” edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a “need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

“Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist’s (relatively tame) ‘adult service’ section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) ‘adult service’ section of their own?”

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation – they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure – by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure – is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We’ve put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We’re fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads – the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix – Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don’t endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren’t going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn’t viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena – which he built in part on adult ads – and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it’s all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York’s Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver’s Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM’s products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Read the whole story…