2 days ago
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Review: Case-Mate Pop! With Stand for the iPhone 4/4S
Through Google Offers, I recently had a chance to get a Case-Mate product at a discount and chose the
iPhone 4/4S Pop! Case with Stand. There are a few different cases in the new Pop! line and this one has a pop-out stand on the back to hold the iPhone upright in landscape or portrait orientation. This case retails for $40 and comes in a variety of colors. I chose the all-black color option and after using it for a couple of weeks, I’ve found it to have some great features combined with a handful of negative aspects that put it just out of the running as my go-to case for my iPhone 4S. Read on to find out why.
Upsell me
Upselling is a sales technique whereby a seller induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale.
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have already seen that I’m visiting my mother in Los Angeles and went with her to an AT&T store to upgrade her ancient Samsung flip phone to a shiny new iPhone 4S. The experience was a little exciting for my mom but it was marred by the upselling we were subjected to during the process.
(Though AT&T is not my favorite, my mom is relatively happy with them and had no desire to change carriers while upgrading to an iPhone.)
When we arrived, we were greeted by a chipper girl with an iPad in an open, messenger-style case that was slung over her shoulder. She used it to take down my mom’s name to check her in, telling us that someone would help us in a few minutes.
Rosa*, a woman who appeared to be in her early 20′s with long brown hair and enough make-up to be a Kardashian, came to assist us a few minutes later. We told her what we wanted to do and she took us through the process of upgrading my mom’s line, transferring her contacts from her old phone and explaining everything fairly painlessly. Though she was proficient at these tasks, there were times that I wanted to throttle her with my bare hands.^
As we were going through the upgrade process, my mom mentioned something about a friend having an iPad as she noticed the iPad display against a nearby wall. Rosa paused and took that as an opportunity to show my mom a brand new iPad in a sealed box and tell her about its features.
My mom went along until she heard the price tag (she was already balking about the $20 data plan she needed to add for the iPhone) and declined.
Next, when my mom was handed her shiny new iPhone, she noticed that the screen picked up fingerprints very easily and said so aloud. This launched Rosa into an introduction to some anti-glare screen protectors they sold as well as the new warranty program AT&T now offers that covers accidental damage. I think this is the point when I started to feel the urge to cause someone, namely a young woman with what appeared to be an entire bottle of mascara applied to her eyelashes, some pain.
Not having learned her lesson from my mom’s reaction to the price of the iPad, she explained the warranty in depth. When she got to the price ($9.99 per month), my mom hesitated and looked at me. I half-expected her to voice her frustration at being offered so many extra things to buy at that point, but Rosa’s spiel was better than I thought (that devious wench!) and she asked me if she should buy it. I told her no.
Rosa was not to be deterred, though. When were were almost done and ready to hand over a credit card to finalize everything, she whipped out another goodie. The Jawbone Jambox, a portable Bluetooth speaker. And this is the point when, I’m ashamed to say, my own ears perked up.
A Jawbone Jambox? Hmmm. I’d been eyeing one of those for myself since I’d seen some very good reviews about it when it was released. I like to listen to music when I wash the dishes and clean and normally use a pair of headphones with my iPhone to accomplish this. However, headphones blocking my ears usually leads to my husband scaring the bejesus out of me (complete with high-pitched girl screams) when I don’t hear him enter the room. He always finds this funny. I never do. A Jambox would be helpful to avoid those situations.
Rosa gave us a little demo of the speaker using a smartphone connected via Bluetooth. And it sounded pretty good, matching the impressions I’d seen in the reviews I’d read.
Rosa then said the magic words: “If you’d like to buy this today, we could offer you a deal.”
I looked at her, my eyes narrowed and my entire expression intended to convey suspicion and doubt in an attempt to dare her to give me a deal I couldn’t refuse.
“What kind of deal?” I asked.
“We could offer you a $50 credit on your next bill if you buy one of these now.”
Huh. $50 off? I’d searched for deals on the Jambox myself every now and then and hadn’t found any that steep. Dammit. I was going to bite.
“I’ll take one in black,” I told her. She smiled widely enough that I was reminded of the Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week event. I had to stop myself from taking a step back away from her. Her teeth were so white. And big.
So, yeah. She got me. Despite the fact that I knew exactly what she was trying to do (earn commission) and my irritation at her persistence. But my Jawbone Jambox sounds pretty damn good right now as it plays the excellent “1009″ by Bonobo as I write this. 
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*Rosa is not her real name.
^I want to note that I am kidding about wanting to physically hurt Rosa. She was very nice and patient with all of my mother’s questions and in the customer service survey I received afterward, I rated her very highly. The fact that I succumbed to the charms of the Jawbone Jambox she presented was my own fault, not hers.
everythingiCafe: the show “Faster Horse”
Chris Meinck and I recorded episode 51 of the everythingicafe.com podcast earlier this week and it’s available through iTunes now for your listening pleasure. If my site cooperates, it should also be available right in this post using the embedded player above if you’re using a Flash-capable browser.
Chris and I talked about iPad 3 rumors that peg March 7 as the announcement date for the next iteration of Apple’s tablet. We expect it to have a retina display and quad-core processor at the very least when it comes to new features. Rumors also indicate it will have 4G LTE though I’m not sure if Apple will make the leap to 4G quite yet when it’s not available yet in the iPhone.
Also on the agenda was an article from the Wall Street Journal claiming that Apple is testing an 8-inch iPad. I, for one, would love a smaller iPad since I mostly use my current iPad 2 as an ebook reader and I’d like a more portable version. I’ve owned a Kindle before and think that size is pretty ideal for ebook readers.
We also talked about Foxconn a little more, a topic we covered quite a bit when the company was getting a lot of coverage in the news a few weeks ago because of poor working conditions. The manufacturer is going to getting a visit from the Fair Labor Association who will conduct audits of the working conditions. We hope that some improvements will result from this.
Last on the agenda was some news about Path, an iPhone app that got a lot of publicity recently since it was uploading the entire contents of users’ contacts lists without requesting permission to do so. Path has since changed this but they caught a lot of flak for this, and rightly so, in my view.
We did have a listener question from nanikai (thank you!) about apps that come in separate iPhone and iPad versions compared to universal apps that are optimized for both the iPhone and iPad at the same time. This is a hot topic for many since I’ve seen a lot of people get upset when they have to pay twice to get an app for both an iPhone and iPad. Chris and I have had a lot of experiences with these and have some fairly strong opinions on the topic.
My Teh Awesome of the week was Temple Run, a great game by Imangi Studios that I’ve been playing a lot lately. Chris had two selections for the Teh Awesome part of the show this week. The first was the app Mealtime, a neat app that helps you discover new restaurants. His second selection was the Spigen SGP GLAS.t screen protector for the iPhone, which he recently reviewed.
I’m out of town for a week and will not be available for a podcast on our regularly-scheduled day this week so we’ll pick back up on our regular Tuesday recording schedule on February 21.
Fear, loathing and Dragon Express
Click on that screenshot. Go ahead. It won’t bite. In case you’re not brave enough, it’s a Yahoo search of gibberish in Safari. Which opened by itself on my beloved iMac with no input from me.
Now click on this next one. That’s a new email message filled with gibberish in the body. Mail opened all by itself and created this beauty all by itself without my input.
And these weren’t one-time events. I saw several new email messages create themselves and random Google and Yahoo searches execute – all without any input from me whatsoever – for several days in a row in late January. What the hell was causing this? I was not taking any prescription meds or recreational drugs that would cause such hallucinations. And Macs don’t get viruses, right? Or had I somehow found a brand new one all by my little self?
everythingiCafe: the show “Ron Swanson”
Chris Meinck and I recorded episode 49 of the everythingicafe.com podcast this week and it’s now available for download through iTunes. As always, if you’re reading this with a Flash-capable browser you can listen to it right here through the embedded player above.
Chris and I had a fairly long discussion about the hubbub last week following a New York Times article about working conditions at Foxconn, where several Apple products (as well of those of many other companies) are made. We’ve seen some people advocate a boycott of Apple products to protest what they see as Apple’s failure to remedy these issues. But is this really Apple’s fault? If the working conditions of Foxconn employees concern you, what can you do about it? Listen to this episode if you want to hear where Chris and I fall on this issue.
We also talked about the hiring of John Browett to fill Ron Johnson’s old role as SVP of Retail at Apple plus iPhone 5 rumors.
Chris’s Teh Awesome of the week was Voice Control on the iPhone, a feature that is automatically enabled on the iPhone 4S if you turn off Siri (a trick that I did not know about). We’ve discussed in previous podcasts how Siri’s comprehension skills can be less than stellar and Chris finally got fed up and followed a recommendation from listener 4forkssake to go back to Voice Control.
My Teh Awesome was a Twitter app for the Mac, YoruFukurou. It’s billed as a Twitter app for power users since it offers a lot of customization options to tweak the interface to look just the way you want it. My boss also uses it and I thought I’d give it a try and I like it so far. It’s free, which is –as we all know– the best price ever.
I still have some free promo codes for Scrabble and Madpad to give away, as mentioned in this blog post. If you want one, just comment on this post and be sure to use a legit email address (it will not be visible to others) so I can send you a code.
