Bloggers Make Money? Not This One...

According to a story on this morning's Marketplace Morning Report, a survey by Technorati found that "most blogs earn about $6,000 a year". I've been blogging for just under 9 months now and I've earned a total of ... drum roll, please ... $1.57. Wow.

That isn't even enough to actually have Google send me my money (I have to earn $10...).

The Luke & AT&T

As readers of this blog probably know, I have an iPhone (incidentally, the problems that I complained about back in August were solved by the 2.1 firmware that came out in early September). My service is with AT&T. For the most part, I've been reasonably pleased with my AT&T service. However, there is one major problem and AT&T needs to step up, acknowledge the problem, and fix it. The problem, you ask? AT&T doesn't have coverage inside The Luke.

When I'm at a Colts game, my iPhone is useless (at least for phone calls, emails, text messages, or the Internet; I can still do my sudoku puzzles...). And I'm not alone. I sit with a number of AT&T cell users and we're all in the same boat (I'm curious to know if anyone else with AT&T has cell reception at The Luke). The odd thing, though, is that my phone thinks that it has service. We've all been in areas without cell coverage (or good cell coverage) and seen the number of "bars" on our phones drop to 2 or 1 or 0. That isn't happening at The Luke; in fact, my phone continues to register 5 bars. Similarly, when I'm in an area without 3G coverage, my phone switches to the Edge network and the 3G icon is replaced by an E (for Edge). Again, that's not happening at The Luke; the 3G icon is still being displayed. But I can't make a call, I can't receive a call, I can't send or receive a text message, and I have very, very intermittent connectivity to the Internet (every hour or so, I may be able to connect for a minute or two). My wife has a rare illness (that can send her into anaphylactic shock without much warning), so being somewhere with no phone coverage is not a good situation.

So what gives? I've received two different stories. I spoke the IT people at The Luke. They tell me that they are aware of the problem and that it is due to the fact that AT&T hasn't signed the contract for the cell service tower. AT&T, on the other hand, after "researching" the issue for a few days, told me that it was something that their engineers were "working on" and that it would be fixed by the first quarter of 2009. Maybe I'm wrong, but my hunch is that AT&T hasn't paid The Luke and is looking for a workaround. After all, if there weren't any service, my phone would show 0 bars and would not show the 3G connection. It seems that the phone and the antenna are talking to each other (hence the bars and 3G icon) but the antenna isn't talking to AT&T's network.

For what it's worth, when I look at AT&T's cell coverage map, I don't see a big gaping hole around The Luke; instead, the nice bright orange of "best coverage" covers the entire area (and the entire area is shown with 3G coverage, too). If AT&T is using this map to help sell its cellular services, knowing that it doesn't have coverage in The Luke, then isn't the use of a map that AT&T knows to be incorrect the perpetration of a fraud?

In the meantime, those of us with AT&T service have no telephone service when we're at events in The Luke. That is outrageous and intolerable. And, for people in my situation, dangerous.

I think that the only way to solve this problem is going to be for everyone with AT&T service who attends events at The Luke (or who might attend an event at The Luke) to pick up the phone, call AT&T, and demand that the problem be solved (AT&T's support phone number: 800-331-0500). So long as only a handful of people are complaining to AT&T, it will be easy for AT&T to ignore the complainers and the problem. But if those complaints turn into a loud enough chorus, then AT&T just might be forced to listen. And if anyone in the press were to write about the issue... Maybe, if the problem continues, we can organize a rally outside AT&T's building in downtown Indianapolis before a Colts game (ah, the power of wishful thinking).

If you have AT&T service and have experienced coverage problems at The Luke, please leave me a comment and tell me where in the stadium you sit and whether you're able to get any connections. I'm curious to know how many people this problem affects.

I know that I said that I wouldn't refer to The Luke by its proper name, however, I'm briefly breaking that promise solely so that Google and other search engines can find this entry if someone searches for Lucas Oil Stadium.

Don't Buy an iPhone (at least not yet)

If you're thinking about buying an iPhone ... don't. At least not yet. Not until Apple solves a major problem with the iPhone that is rendering the phones unusable for many people.

I'll explain the problem (and Apple's lack of response) in a minute, but first a bit of background.

Way back in the '80s, I inadvertently became a "Mac" guy. It's a long story that isn't worth going into, but from 1986-1988 I was maintaining Macs, teaching students how to use Macs, and programming for Macs. I even attended a Mac programming conference and served on a host committee for another Mac conference. I even got to play with a Lisa (click... go to lunch... click... go to dinner... click... hey, it did something)! And yes I got teased by my PC- and mainframe-oriented friends. I say all this so that you don't think that I've always had an irrational bias against Macs or Apple. Anyway, when I was a Mac guy I recognized that the Mac had several very big advantages over the PC (remember, this was still the days of DOS), but, even with the early WYSIWYG technology, the mouse, and everything else, I still preferred the PC. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't a Microsoft junkie by any means. I just preferred DOS and my PC (a Compaq portable weighing in at a nifty 22 pounds) to the Mac.

Now, jump forward way too many years. I still prefer Windows to the Mac, although I will readily admit that my current preference is based largely on familiarity with Windows and a corresponding lack of familiarity with the Mac.

One of my criticism of Apple products, both then and now, was that Apple seemed to think that they knew what you wanted to do better than you did and didn't really allow you to customize things the way you wanted them to be. Microsoft has developed this bad habit in Microsoft Office, but Windows itself is much more open. (I know, I know. Lots of Mac folks out there will tell me how wrong I am; maybe I am. I don't know. All I can do is tell you my perception of Macs).

So, until I bought my first iPod a few years ago, I'd never owned an Apple product. For what it's worth, I've loved my iPods. But I've always felt that they weren't as customizable as they should be (come on, it took Apple until last year to allow you to change how songs and artists were sorted and there's still no way to delete a song from the iPod). And I really hate iTunes (although it is slowly getting better, it is still inferior to a number of other music catalogs and players).

Thus, when I bought a first generation iPhone last winter, it was the first Apple "computer" that I'd purchased (somehow an iPhone seems more "computer-like" than an iPod). And I loved my iPhone. But there was a fairly major flaw. It didn't have a to do list. And it didn't have any games. It was a great piece of hardware, but unless I wanted to hack it ("jailbreak"), I couldn't add anything to it other than the software installed by Apple. That was frustrating.

When the iPhone 3G came out last month I was excited. Yes, it had a GPS; yes it connected via the 3G network; yes it did this and that differently. But the really exciting thing about the iPhone 3G was the App Store and the ability to buy and install third party applications. When I bought my new iPhone I immediately started downloading and trying some of these "apps". Lots of great free utilities and games were available and I paid for a few more (Super Monkey Ball and Labyrinth are really cool on the iPhone). I even found a program and workaround that lets me sync my Outlook tasks to the iPhone (not a perfect solution, but at least a stopgap until a more elegant solution becomes available). Every now and then my iPhone would lock up or an app would fail to run, but hey, it's a computer. I expect the occasional crash. Reboot and go.

My biggest complaint with the iPhone was how long it took to Sync with my computer. Every time I connected my iPhone to my computer, iTunes wanted to back up my iPhone. Great idea, but each backup took between 30 minutes and 2 hours. Who has time to wait 2 hours for their phone to back up. So, I got into the habit of cancelling backups, syncing the phone, and going about my business. No harm, no foul.

And then my iPhone died. I was updating an App when suddenly the iPhone rebooted. During the reboot process, the screen turns black and a silver or white Apple logo appears. Usually, the logo disappears after a minute or five and the iPhone is up and running. Not this time. I waited and waited and waited and wai... OK. You get the idea. No luck. So I rebooted the iPhone. Same result. Waited longer. No dice. Tried again. Same thing. Aaaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhh!

On my way home from work, I stopped at the Apple Store. The geniuses at the "Genius Bar" (come on... is Apple serious?) were totally flummoxed. None of them had seen this problem before. Finally, one told me that the only thing that he could think to do was to do a "factory restore" which would erase all my data, but that I could simply restore from my backups. Oops. But what was my choice? Factory restore or no phone. So I told him to go ahead. I waited around for a while and then the "genius" (nice guy, but...) told me that the restore didn't work at which point he gave me a new iPhone.

I spent most of that evening setting up my new iPhone. I had to reenter lots of my settings, re-sync my music and apps and contacts and calendar. A pain in the ass, but oh, well. Then, the next day, I noticed that the iPhone was not connecting via WiFi. Nothing that I could do would let the phone use a WiFi connection. I called Apple's tech support. They were stumped and decided it must be a hardware problem. So, back to the Apple Store I went and, after a fairly brief stay, walked out with iPhone 3G #3. Another night of syncing and restoring and so on and so forth, although this time it was quicker because I'd made a backup of the faulty iPhone the night before. The next morning at the office I connected my iPhone to my office computer to sync there and, as the sync finished, the iPhone rebooted ... and died. I've since learned that the black screen with the Apple logo is not-so-affectionately known as the "Screen of Death" (at least Windows' Blue Screen of Death provides an error code that you can use for debugging). Yet another visit to the Apple store (the geniuses still claimed to have never heard of or seen this problem) and iPhone #4 was ready to go.

Once I'd finally let my anger boil over and I'd calmed down (at least a bit), I started researching the issue online. Guess what? I was not the only iPhone user to see a Screen of Death. In fact, it appears that literally hundreds of people have experienced the same problem and reported about it online. How many more have had the same problem but don't participate in online forums to discuss the issue? As I read more and more, I learned that all across the country people had been taking their iPhones to Apple stores and been given new iPhones when the geniuses couldn't solve the problem. I learned that people who called Apple tech support to report the problem encountered support techs who claimed that they'd never heard of this problem happening. And I learned that Apple has not commented on the problem at all, not even to acknowledge the problem and say, "Gee, sorry, but we're working on a fix." In fact, not only has Apple been silent on the issue, they've taken to editing posts on their discussion forums to delete criticism of Apple from posts discussing this issue. (One user posted [on another site] screenshots of a before and after post, where is statement that Apple's failure to address the issue was irresponsible was deleted from his post.)

Thankfully, several people have identified a few methods that usually work that allow a user to perform a factory reset without having to exchange the iPhone for a new one. The problems with those solutions are that: (a) you have to have a good backup (and remember how long backups take) and (b) the process of performing the factory reset and then restoring the iPhone usually takes somewhere between 3 and 6 hours. That's right. Every time my iPhone crashes, I'm without my phone for 3-6 hours (and that assumes that I took the 2 hours to back up my phone before it crashed). And so far, I've gone through the reset and restore process about 10 times.

And just so you don't think that I'm making all of this up, take a look at this post on Apple's website (427 posts and 21,000+ views as of the time of this post) or the articles Troubleshooting iPhone and iPod touch issues and Second thoughts about iPhone 2.0? posted on MacWorld. But nothing from Apple. One of the really amazing things is to read the posts from longtime Apple fans who say that this debacle has damaged their faith and support in Apple.

To the best of the community's ability to figure out what's going on (remember, Apple isn't helping), it appears that somehow when the iPhone installs or updates an app, it may get interrupted or the app installation gets corrupted. The problem does not appear to be with the apps themselves; rather, the problem is in the installation or updating process. Many people have elected not to install any apps from the App Store on the iPhone. That seems to solve the problem for some. But I haven't installed any apps that way for a while and I still get crashes from apps installed or updated through iTunes.

The best advice that anyone has come up with is to simply not use any apps on the iPhone (or to use a very small number of apps). While that may be sound advice, the suggestion that a user not use a main feature of the phone is a bit like saying here's this great new computer, but don't install any software on it.

So, for the time being, I've decided to recommend to people that they not buy an iPhone. I'm fairly certain that Apple will solve the problem eventually, but who knows when. In the meantime, I'm walking on eggshells using my iPhone afraid of yet another crash. This weekend, I plan to completely reset my iPhone, delete all of my apps, and start from scratch. I'm going to load a bare minimum of apps until Apple solves the problem. I just hope that day is sooner rather than later; if not, I suspect that I will be a party to somebody's class action lawsuit against Apple. Who knows? Maybe I'll be the lead Plaintiff.

Oh, and if anybody at AT&T is reading this, you need to put some pressure on Apple, because it won't be long before people like me start asking for service credits because of the amount of time that our phones (mine was purchased at an AT&T store) are out of service.