When this mission of you company is “Organizing and Securing your information with the most up to date portable media and web technologies” it’s pretty much assumed that we would be investing in a device that delivers that experience optimally. Yes, I said “investing.” Despite what a lot of other nay-sayers are saying in the tech industry we believed it was important to get the iPhone early in order to start learning how to use it, to test our web and other portable media projects and to provide greater service to our clients when we are on the field.

In addition to learning about the device itself we also learned some things are the companies involved in this device. On Friday evening, after working on some web projects, Heather and I headed out for dinner and a movie at the Cherrydale Point Shopping Center in Greenville, SC which also has an at&t store. As we were driving there I said, If they have a phone, great but I can wait a few more days if they are sold out. When we got to the store we did have to wait but only for about 10 seconds or so as they would only let so many in because of fire marshall rules. The store had really changed on the inside since we bought our last phone there. I was greeted by store employee, Juan Sanchez and I will mention his name because he gave excellent service and was a good salesman without seeming pushy. We were in and out of the store in no more than 5 minutes but I left with a good impression of the store and “Retail Sales Consultant”. Heather and I then went to an Asian Restaurant where they also gave us some of the best service we have had in a restaurant in a long time. Following that we went to see “Live Free or Die Hard” and it was a very fun movie to watch and interesting that Justin Long, the guy who plays the “Mac” in the TV commercials was the main co-star opposite Bruce Willis.

The only major glitch we experienced was in the activation process. I decided to wait to Sat. morning to activate the phone over the Internet. After I went through the process of setting up my calling plan I received a notification in iTunes that the process would take extra time to complete. That was a 8am in the morning. Around 10:30pm I called a 1-800 number to at&t and the rep on the phone gave me the story they had sold 3 million phones and I would need to wait about 24 hours but my info in their system was correct. I “googled” that 3 Million number and found out that Apple and at&t were stocking about 3 Million phones. This morning I found out the number was closer to half a million.

On Sunday afternoon I decided to call at&t after reading a comment on a blog posting at Engadget.com. Someone suggested calling the number 1-877-149-4500 and I figured why not. I had wished I had known about this number first. It was obvious the lady on the other end (sorry didn’t get her name) was a lot more knowledgeable that the person I talked to the night before. She asked more for a lot more information including product numbers found on the box the the iPhone was shipped in. After that she told me that when people get their order number (which I got the day before) it takes a lot less time to activate the phone so she forward me to another support person. After confirming some information he was able to manually activate my phone and after switching the device on and off it was up and working and so far the experience had not been perfect but has been one of the best I have ever experienced with a handheld media device.

Last night we attended a family gathering at my sister in-laws house. One of my wife’s sisters picked up the device and immediately used the YouTube section and found a video she was looking for. She is as “technical” as my wife or myself but it was fascinating to see that see hardly needed any instructions on how to use the device to do what she wanted to do. That is why we got the iPhone. If non-techie consumers can easily pick it up and use it like that we need to be prepared not just for our sake but for the customers we develop web sites and other portable media for. In the month’s and years ahead we will be keeping our eyes on the future considering not just the iPhone but other competing devices that will make it a lot easier for consumers to get to the information that want to find anywhere they are.

Technorati Tags: business, clients, communications, computers, innovation, Internet, iPhone, new media, photography, photos, podcasts

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 6:53 am and is filed under Announcements, Greenville,SC, Innovation, Internet, Photography, Portable Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.