Smart Phones of today

Imagine if you released a piece of software, let?s call it ?MobileMe.? This software was supposed to allow consumers to sync their data across devices, but instead it made all their precious information go away, or not transfer, or simply not work instead. Yet you still deemed this service good enough to charge people a monthly fee. That would make people upset with your company and various practices.

Now you want to apologise profusely to these loyal consumers, but at the same time save face. Wouldn?t it be clever to ?leak? an internal e-mail voicing your culpability and disappointment in the shortcomings of the service, and as such show remorse yet maintain the impenetrable exterior of your company?s facade?

Yeah, you get it? Apple is sorry for MobileMe not working at all, and random (but really rather good) website Ars Technica claims a leaked memo from Jobs himself has addressed the eagerness to get the service out in tandem with iPhone 3G may have compromised the high standards usually reserved for Apple products.

Steve Jobs wrote:

It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,? he says. ?We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.

Apple has taken further actions to assure that the MobileMe movement from here on out goes as smoothly as possible. Jobs has reorganized his management team and has put Eddy Cue, Apple?s Vice President of iTunes in charge.

Jobs went on to say:

The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services,? Jobs says. ?And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.

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In the world of the PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) we’ve bought over the past ten years, from having-no-other-choice-back-then-but-endured three Palms, then one horrific nightmare of a Sony version of the Palm and then one superb HP PDA, we turned to the Blackberry and have been relatively unhappy with it, like 55% ok, 45% not ok.

We’re now thrilled and amazed at the ease of the Apple iPhone 2’s real-time synchronization through MobileMe? and the app certainly kicks all current Blackberries (have not yet tried the Bold) out of contention for business enterprise users.

Imagine this, my friends. You suddenly have to enter an appointment or a task or remember to do something at a date and time certain. No matter what computer you’re on at the moment, you log on to your MobileMe web-based site, enter your new data and bam, it automatically adds it to your iPhone in real time - or vice versa, which also means that if you’re out in the field and have only your iPhone, you enter your new data on that device and bam, it’s automatically transferred to your desktop application, again, in real time.

No more docking and synching, no more trying to figure out which direction to choose for your update (the old Palm) or trying to remember whether you synched or when.

Boom, bam, it’s all done for you through and thanks to Apple’s MobileMe.

On the darker side, should your Blackberry need repair, for example, and last I checked a couple of months ago, Research in Motion (the Blackberry mfr) has not authorized anyone in the United States to repair a Blackberry, so you can’t just drop it off somewhere close by and then pick it up later, fully repaired.

So what do you have to do?

For those of you unfamiliar with Blackberry repair, get this, kids, you have to mail your broken Blackberry to RIM in Canada.

But today I heard that AT&T now sends you a replacement until it’s repaired, which was never shared with us back when one of our Blackberry Pearls needed a repair last year. AT&T clearly told us it was between us and Blackberry.

Hey, bottom line is that asking your customers to mail you their valuable telephone for any reason is an inefficient (and stupid) business model that only invites problems, promises to give nothing more than either inept Customer Service or falls intolerably short of reasonable and where no amount of internal corporate reasoning is sufficient to justify the inconvenience and potential risk to/for your customers.

Most importantly, the Blackberry certainly cannot be considered a reasonable business enterprise solution to keep customers like us especially after dealing with Apple.

With the Apple iPhone, you find your nearest Apple retailer, log-online for an appointment at the Genius Bar or do it in-store and then just show up or wait your turn. If it’s under warranty, they take it in, fix it and you’re on your way. If it’s not, they tell you your charges and you make your decision.

Apple’s sales, retail and Customer Service paradigms are nonpareil, fancy French for something that has no equal, as in the best.

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