Apple

There is something more than cool products at Apple that make them the most valuable company on the planet. Whatever that is,it works.

For once, all the images in this post have been taken with an iPhone (3Gs, 4 and 4s). These are on the fly or walking and shooting kind of images and the idea is not to show the images in their best quality but the context.

Before we get any further, and without throwing the stone to either side of the fence, this is not a post focused on whether Apple is a better product or any worthy competitors’ products.

I also want to add that this post is not targeted at anyone and the people I dealt with in this personal experience have been really cool people, professional in what they do, and we remain friends for years to come.

The story is no doubt related to Apple’s release of the new iPhone 5. Boys or girls, when you love, whatever you love become the best in its own.

So, this morning, the 21 of September 2012, Apple has set the date to release the latest of their product: The iPhone 5. Australia being one of the first country in the world to have the product available for purchase, of the shelf. I’ve heard the wind around the globe that people started queuing up in front of Apple stores and Canberra was in the same boat.

After dropping the kids at school, I slowly, withing legal speed, drove of to Apple’s latest retail store in Canberra.

I think for the sake of the readers of this site, it needs to be said that Canberra is Australia’s Capital Territory and people living here have a somewhat pronounced love for everything technology. Be it for entertainment devices such as flat screen TVs, tablets, smart phones, digital cameras, 3D stuffs and even fast cars. You can find more Canon 1D series or Nikon D4 cameras per square kilometre in Canberra than anywhere else that I know of, may be the Olympics .. ?

So, I went to the Apple store in the Canberra Centre a few minutes before opening hours (9am) without any expectations. And yes, there was a queue in front of the store. It is said that the Canberra Centre, for once, opened its doors last Friday at 6AM to allow people to get in to queue up. How cool is that.

From what I can gauge, there was about 500 to 600 people queuing in front of the Apple store.

The below images have been taken with the iPhone 4s loaded with iOS6. The second pix shows my first attempt to create an in camera panorama picture ..

In front of that many people queuing, my initial though was that I won’t be out of the line by the end of the day and I definitely didn’t want to miss out as the store may run out of stock when it would have been my turn to get into the store.

Decided, I headed to JB HiFi on the other end of the mall.

When I got into JB HiFi, I was quite satisfied of myself as there were only around 4 people waiting at the phone area and I was the fifth one… How cool is that? I’m gona be out there in less than two and will be laughing at the people waiting at the Apple store.

It was 9:10am on the Friday 21 September 2012…

A few pix to keep you wait while Telstra’s Sieble system decides what to do dealing with contracts processing..

The shiny MacBook Pro Retina Screen just got delivered by UPS. Sacramento, July 2012.

Apple MackBook Air, Leica M9 and the New iPad sitting next to the newly opened MacBook Pro Retina screen.

When I arrived into JB HiFi, I was advised that there would be a  bit of waiting because it would take around 25 minutes to finalise a contract. I was fifth.. Life’s good. I was told to put my name down and that I could go shopping around and someone would call me when it would be my turn to decide which version of the iPhone 5 I was going to choose. I decided to stick around and shop later.

The wait started and the clock kept ticking.

10am .. 10:30am then 11 am and I was still waiting while other people started gathering around the counter as they have booked in for appointment at that particular time.

All the guys at JB HiFi were awesomely busy and still very smiling but what could not keep up with the job was obviously Telstra’s system to deal with the huge demand for the launch… Changing screens between two consecutive steps of their process took easily 15 to 20 minutes..

I am still amazed how IE didn’t timed out… Actually it did a couple times.. Danm it. If you knew that some thing big is a bout to hit in 7 to 10 days in advance, you’d try to prepare.. yeah?

Since the release of the iPhones 3Gs, 4 than 4s stores have been hit with high demands and for the launch of the iPhone 5, I would have expected a big player such as Telstra, who makes millions during the launch of the iPhone 5, would havetried to put more ressources into their archaic system to deal with traffic.. yeah?

Anyway, at 11:30am, I was advised by some staff to go for a walk and come back half an hour later.. This time, I took the advise and walked out of the store.

Where to go either than checking out the line at Apple store? I wanted to see how bad the line would have been over there.

Check it out for yourself. iPhone 4s on iOS6

What..? See the pix above compares to the first ones posted above this post?

Where is the queue gone? Apple store already cleared the whole queue in front of their store? Already?

And then I thought, yeah maybe people just buy outright and walked away of the shop. That would explain the fast turnover.

I actually talked to an Apple staff and asked him if they only sell outright or if they did contract for the iPhone 5 as well. He said:”we do everything. Sell outright, offer contracts for Telstra (that guy), Optus and Vodafone.”

Telstra, Optus and Vodafone being three main carriers in Australia, along with some third partiesfrequencies resellers businesses. Now I’m stoked.

Before anything, for those who may not know, to be a Telstra reseller you can only sell Telstra services (mobile services) and your business CAN NOT sell any product or services from other carriers (in this occurrence Optus and Vodafone) and that is why JB HiFi, a major tech product retailer in Australia, could only sell Telstra.

Apple comes in and they sell all carriers.. :o)

Now. How come me, a smart az, who jumped the queue from the Apple store to go to a quiet place, JB HiFi, who obviously had stock of the iPhone 5 and who only had to deal with ONE carrier, I had to wait for the whole morning..?

I don’t know and I think nobody does. It’s just the system, Telstra’s system seems to be too slow to handle to orders coming from the entire Australia. Yet Apple cleared more than 80% of their waiting queue.

At 12:20pm, I asked one of the sale guys at JB Hifi on how many iPhones 5 walked out the door since opening this morning. Guess how many? TWO

Again, I want to repeat that the guys at JB Hifi did what and all they could and there was just nothing within their reach that could be done better. It’s just Telstra didn’t deliver.

I guess the whole point of the post today is not to declare the war between Apple products and the rest of the world (of Samsung) products, it’s just whatever they do, yeah whatever Apple does, it just works.

I was even thinking: Yea, whatever, Apple sold more iPhones this morning because they have more staffs and at JB HiFi, they were only two bla bla bla … but think about it, even if it’s real, to clear 400 sales in 3 hours at the speed of JB HiFi (again no offense here) there would have been more than 200 staff in the Apple store in the Canberra Centre. Clearly they are not.

My point here is beyond the coolness of their product Apple brings in more than technology. They bring n the PROCESS and whatever that process might be, IT WORKS. Be sure that I would say the same if this story was about the sale or launch of the Samsung phone of whoever else’ phone or product. It’s just there is NO match.

I finally found out the reason of the latency in the process: when putting through an order, the contract (with Telstra) at sme stage goes through the process of provisioning. What is that? I don’t know. This provisioning status just seems to get stuck in there and before it goes green, the sale or contract is considered not completed and therefore the iPhone 5, the desired object, could not be released, so you, actually I had to stick around.

All good. I went for lunch and came back. Yeah, it’s still provisioning.. Cool.

Then I remembered there was a Telstra shop downstairs, may be I’d pay them a visit and ask.

I walked into the Telstra shop and at the main counter I could see the back of 3 computer screens. The left one says LG, the middle one says Samsung and the right one says HP. What the %$#/&*@..

Cut the long story short, I asked the question, the specialist (oh by the way they also have a counter called Genius something as well …) about the provisioning thingy, he told me: “because the system has to do the back up and it affects the whole system, Australia wide, and there was nothing to do about it”

Wow, what I got me convinced was the conviction he had when saying that.

Anyway, I finally go the provisioning cleared and could pick up my iPhone5, a gorgeous 64GB black finish) and rush out of the mall.. paying $12 for the car park.

For a short moment, I had an inner thought: If Apple could run the world for a couple of months, they may be able to do something cool for humanity.. Hahhaha it was just an upset moment guys. Don’t kill the messenger.

Before we g, some more (iPhone) images from Apple around the places I’ve been.

Apple store Sydney

Apple store New York. Grand Central (just after the launch of the MacBook Pro Retina)

Apple store New York. Grand Central

Apple store Arden Fair. Sacramento

Apple store Arden Fair. Sacramento

Apple store San Francisco

UPDATE:

There’s been a bit of chat and forum posts about eventual slowness of the wifi with the new iPhone 5.

To be honest, this got me worried for a couple of minutes so I did a quick test for myself. Not sure how reliable these numbers are but always feel good when they go all the way up the ceiling :o)

The two first images below are screen dumps from an LTE test. The last one is a Wifi test from my access at home.