iPhone Mania

Ok I admit it: I am a freak for the latest gadgets and always will be! There I said it, now someone please find me a 12 step program… Pip Coburn, who I just spent a many enlightening hours with, mentioned that the gap between market expectation and product development looks a little like this:

The miracle in the above diagram at Apple is called Steve Jobs and the latest obsession in my life is of course the iPhone which has both his and my fingerprints all over it. As Bill Gates said “I would give a lot to have Steve’s sense of style.” So when I heard that Apple really were doing a proper iPhone I did two things, I set about acquiring one and I bought some more Apple stock.

Then I heard that the exclusive partner for the iPhone was AT&T and that only the US would be graced with its presence! That was an indecisive microsecond for me… Which clearly I got over as you can see by the picture below.

So how did I get an iPhone and how is it working in Europe? The following tale is embarrassingly revealing of my ridiculous propensity to go to great lengths to get what I want and also demonstrates that when I need something my primary tool is networking.

Having a US credit card and an address there that I can use certainly helped me as well, in fact without these you will end up with an iBrick or with a little hacking a solid state video iPod not an iPhone. So six months ago, armed with my Amex card I set about becoming a Cingular customer (I wanted to try the Samsung Black jack anyway) and I spent a bit of time in the park avenue store getting to know Kathy who is without doubt the most excellent phone company customer service person I have met being more on a par with the concierge of the Waldorf across the street than what I had expected from the (New) AT&T. (Think concierge of the Tikrit Hilton) All was in place months ago and then on the day of delivery Kathy and the store staff were told at the last minute that only people who stood in line would get a phone and that no stock whatsoever would be sent via courier in fact only store managers would even be allowed to touch them. So at 1 am Swiss time I get a frantic text telling me to get someone down to the store quick if I want to get my phone and here is where networking really pays off because I went to XING did a quick search and found three of my NYC contacts who were reachable and was able to have Ejovi’s brother at the store just in the nick of time to miss the last phone available (thankfully he went up to the 5th avenue store and they had one left) I also had some people on the west coast standing by now I knew that it was tougher to get one than I had thought and so at 9 pm last Friday my iPhone was safe in the Hands of Fedex and Last Wednesday it arrived in my own hot little hands.

By this time I had found out that activating my iBrick (for such it is until activated) was not going to be a piece of cake and sure enough it sat in its dock while iTunes brought up a little message saying “Your registration will require extra time” (note there is no indication of how much extra time!) and then an email arrived suggesting that I call customer service. I will spare you the details except to say that at two points in my call I had one AT&T operator in Calgary conferencing me in with another AT&T operator in Texas in order to exchange a series of codes about what services could and could not be activated on my account to get the iPhone activation to go through (This is after I had already gotten pre-approved credit) apparently PTTKC is a bad thing to have on your service and MMTM is a necessary thing and when I asked what these things were my Calgary operator pleasantly informed me that she had only been there 6 months and so did not know what the codes stood for while my Texan friend retorted that he had mastered the codes after a mere 3 years… AT&T probably can claim this as remarkably good customer service as the phone did end up working and yet the strange thing is that while I was required to call them I did not in fact give any useful input I just got to listen to different parts of AT&T talking to each other…

Amazingly after ONLY an hour international long distance my little gem pleasantly informed me that it was activated and the fun could begin… and what fun it is! I have not had this much fun with a piece of consumer electronics since… well ever! My iPhone has gone from objet D’siree to constant companion in record time and it attracts unbelievable attention wherever I go and hey guys it’s a phone right? Wrong it’s a piece of SJ Apple branding magic and it’s amazingly addictive to play with in the same way that all other smart phones aren’t.

In between meetings last Friday I went with Anju to help her pick out a handbag and we ended up in Dior in Zurich and while she was browsing I checked up a couple of emails and before you could say fashionista the entire service staff and several leggy customers crowded around requesting to just be able to touch it! Now when the fashion mavens in Zurich get excited about a phone you have got to wonder what the other phone manufacturers have been doing all this time? Indeed I get visions of product development teams being summoned to marketing tails between their legs and lists of excuses clutched in their nervous hands.

So for once I feel very fully vindicated in being an early adopter and that does not mean that the iPhone is perfect, far from it. You cannot install new programs, you cannot download stuff via wifi to it, you can’t add anything at all really without adding it to iTunes first and if you sync it with another copy of iTunes on a different PC (say the one here in the XING Hamburg office vs the one at my home)  IT ERASES THE IPHONE CONENT!!! and then  there are a heap of other niggles and yet there could be a thousand more I still would not care. I am glad I have it and it is just so cool, fun and useful despite the flaws and the flaws can all hopefully be fixed in software or in the next version. (Please Steve Please!!!)

And speaking of software! Last Wednesday I have my toy and I see that it supports that Multi V/Card format for importing contacts like the iPod does and with that in mind I called our product guys in the middle of their weekly development cycle with a question, “Umm guys is there any chance I could get my XING contacts on my iPhone?” He asked expectantly…

Well I am very pleased to say that in three days eg. by Friday, the answer was YES in fact not just YES. In fact its went live on Friday so we have a new feature on XING which allows the export of your contacts as a multi V/Card (which you can use for a lot of different mobile devices) up and running in three days!

You can see here the new button in the address book which lets you tell XING to compile your export:

You then get a todo on the Start page once your file is ready.

Just click this link to download it and then you can open it with iTunes and presto XING Contacts on your iPhone with pictures.

This has pretty much completed my happiness and I can confirm that I am in gadget nirvana! I am happy to answer any questions about my iPhone experience in Europe so please post them here and I will respond. Next I want to see a European version (3g Please Steve 3G and HSDPA!!!) though I admit the auto switch to wifi from edge when in range is SWEET!

In the words of Ferris Bueller “If you have the wherewithal I highly recommend you pick one up!”