A lot of this stuff has been out in one form or another, but the narrative is pretty fascinating. If you plow through the document embedded at the bottom of the post, bear in mind that it’s a tale told by Matthew Broad, a detective in San  Mateo County Sheriff’s office. So it’s possible that other parts of the story, and/or different versions of the same story, may still end up coming to light.

Among the highlights:

• Apple knew that Brian Hogan, the 21-year-old who found the iPhone, had the thing because his roommate, Katherine Martinson, called and told the company he had it. Her reasoning, according to Apple (AAPL) security chief Rick Orloff: “Suspect Hogan connected the stolen iPhone to her computer and she believed that Apple would eventually trace the iPhone back to her via IP addresses. Therefore she contacted Apple in order to absolve herself of criminal responsibility.”
• Martinson told police that Hogan had offered the phone to Gizmodo, AOL’s (AOL) Engadget.com and PC World. While Gizmodo owner Gawker Media had previously said it paid $5,000 for access to the phone, the affidavit is a bit fuzzier. Martinson says Hogan told her Gizmodo offered $10,000 for the gadget and later said he’d received $5,000 from Gizmodo and a total of $8,500. But she wasn’t clear where the other $3,500 came from. “Martinson said Hogan also told her that he will receive a cash bonus from Gizmodo.com in July if and when Apple makes an official product announcement regarding the new iPhone.”
• There’s a long cops-and-robbers interlude where police show up at Hogan’s house, but he takes off and is eventually tracked down at his father’s place. In the end, Hogan and Thomas Warner, another roommate, help the cops retrieve a computer, a flash drive and other equipment they’d removed from their place “in order to ‘protect’” Hogan.
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs did indeed reach out to Gizmodo to ask for the phone back. Here’s editor Brian Lam’s response to Jobs, via email (click to enlarge):

And here’s the entire affidavit, which we’re able to see because a group of media companies, including CNET, Bloomberg, Wired and the Los Angeles Times, petitioned a California judge to unseal it. Gawker Media, via COO Gaby Darbyshire, declined to comment on the affidavit and its contents.

UPDATE: Here’s Gawker’s position, via an email Darbyshire sent Saturday afternoon:

First of all, the warrant and supporting affidavit do not appear to acknowledge the sanctity of the newsroom or even address the serious issues at stake.

Second, the idea that it is a felony trade secret theft to photograph an item that was admittedly left in a bar is ridiculous.

Finally, Gizmodo from the start was attempting to investigate if this item was a genuine prototype of a product belonging to Apple; we believed that confirmation of its authenticity and ownership quite reasonably needed to be made in writing – and once we obtained that, the item was returned immediately.

EFF has a detailed piece on the warrant issue here.

Gizmodo-iPhoneOrder

Indeed, in a March survey of 4,040 smartphone subscribers by ChangeWave Research, AT&T (T) subscribers reported the highest percentage of dropped calls by any U.S. carrier–4.5 percent. That’s significantly worse than T-Mobile (2.8 percent) and Sprint (S) (2.5 percent), and three times as bad as the 1.5 percent reported by subscribers of archrival Verizon (click on tables below to enlarge).

“AT&T was clearly the worst in the March survey, tacking on yet another increase over the last ChangeWave research survey,” ChangeWave observed. “Furthermore, a closer look at the trends show an increasing number of dropped calls among AT&T customers surveyed, and a steadily decreasing number of dropped calls for Verizon customers.”

And AT&T suffers for this. Just 23 percent of the AT&T customers ChangeWave surveyed said they are “very satisfied” with the company’s service. Meanwhile, 49 percent of Verizon (VZ) customers described themselves as “very satisfied.” A tough break for AT&T, which has been doing its damndest to improve the public’s perception of its network as one overtaxed by the data demands of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

That said, it’s important to note that ChangeWave’s research does contrast to a Feburary PC World study that ranked AT&T’s 3G network as the top performer in the 13 markets it surveyed.

PREVIOUSLY:

• AT&T Tops 3G Performance Study. No, I’m Not Kidding.
• AT&T: “We’re Closing the Gap” in New York and San Francisco
• Apple COO: Leave AT&T Alone
• If You Think AT&T Has Network Problems Now, Just You Wait
• AT&T 3G Improving–If You Can Get a Signal
• Admitting You Have a Problem Is the First Step, AT&T
• Usage-Based Data Pricing: The Solution to AT&T’s iPhone Problems?
• AT&T Ranked Last in Consumer Reports’ Best Cellphone Service Survey
• Apple Joins AT&T/Verizon Spat With New iPhone Ads
• AT&T Awarded Hug and a Box of Tissues in Verizon Ad Case
• Time to Cut AT&T Some Slack, iPhone Users?
• Thanks, iPhone: 2,000 Percent Increase in Bay Area Data Traffic Since 2008, Says AT&T
• Verizon to AT&T: Do Yourself a Favor and Shut Up
• Frosty’s Winter Litigation Wonderland: AT&T Demands Verizon Pull Holiday iPhone Ads
• Verizon Banishes iPhone to Island of Misfit Toys
• Verizon on AT&T Suit: There’s a Word for That. “Junk
• Verizon to iPhone Users: “Want Five Times More 3G Coverage? There’s a Map for That.”
• iPhone Owners Would Like to Replace Battery, AT&T

“The AT&T and iPhone combo turned in the fastest average speeds–downstream and upstream–of the four carrier/smartphone combinations we tested, outperforming its rivals in more than three-fourths of the cities we sampled,” PC World explained it its study.

“AT&T connected the iPhone at an average download speed of 1259 kbps, and an average upload speed of 215 kbps over the 13 testing cities,” the study notes. “The iPhone clocked download speeds of at least 1000 kbps in more than 60 percent of our testing locations, with burst rates often exceeding 3000 kbps, and we managed to obtain a reliable connection in 91 percent of our AT&T/iPhone tests.”

The PC World study confirms results of a similar 12-city 3G performance study by Gizmodo last year.

A remarkable improvement, although it should be noted that San Francisco is still plagued by reliability issues. PC World found just 55 percent of connections made on AT&T’s network in the city to be successful. Bay Area users can only hope that the additional cell towers, cell site upgrades and increased back-haul capacity the carrier is said to be rolling out will improve this metric in short order.

PREVIOUSLY:

• AT&T: “We’re Closing the Gap” in New York and San Francisco
• Apple COO: Leave AT&T Alone
• If You Think AT&T Has Network Problems Now, Just You Wait
• AT&T 3G Improving–If You Can Get a Signal
• Admitting You Have a Problem Is the First Step, AT&T
• Usage-Based Data Pricing: The Solution to AT&T’s iPhone Problems?
• AT&T Ranked Last in Consumer Reports’ Best Cellphone Service Survey
• Apple Joins AT&T/Verizon Spat With New iPhone Ads
• AT&T Awarded Hug and a Box of Tissues in Verizon Ad Case
• Time to Cut AT&T Some Slack, iPhone Users?
• Thanks, iPhone: 2,000 Percent Increase in Bay Area Data Traffic Since 2008, Says AT&T
• Verizon to AT&T: Do Yourself a Favor and Shut Up
• Frosty’s Winter Litigation Wonderland: AT&T Demands Verizon Pull Holiday iPhone Ads
• Verizon Banishes iPhone to Island of Misfit Toys
• Verizon on AT&T Suit: There’s a Word for That. “Junk
• Verizon to iPhone Users: “Want Five Times More 3G Coverage? There’s a Map for That.”
• iPhone Owners Would Like to Replace Battery, AT&T

Not a week after the device’s debut, Google’s support forums are rife with complaints from Nexus One owners who are clearly not getting the level of customer support they expect.

Like most other Google (GOOG) offerings, Nexus One support is self-help driven–FAQs, troubleshooting guides and email forms offered with this earnest caveat: “in most cases you won’t receive a personal response.”

That might fly with folks availing themselves of free Google services like search and email, but it doesn’t with those who’ve just spent between $179 and $529 on a new superphone. Buyers expect their devices to work properly out of the box, and if they don’t, they expect their complaints to be approached with at least a modicum of urgency, preferably by a human.

But that’s not the experience Google is currently offering Nexus One users. As PC World pointed out earlier today:

If you buy a Nexus One manufactured by HTC, directly from Google’s Web site, and use it with T-Mobile’s wireless network–who do you call when you have a problem? Google is only accepting support requests via e-mail, and users are getting bounced between T-Mobile and HTC as neither seems equipped to answer complaints, or willing to accept responsibility for supporting the Nexus One.

So while Google’s new Nexus One distribution paradigm might excel in versatility and simplicity, it fails when it comes to support. Which isn’t all that surprising, I suppose. Google was never really set up to provide customer service. That said, you’d think that a company that takes great pride in improving things and making them accessible and useful, would have made more of an effort to do the same for Nexus One customer service.

Did Google launch the Nexus One with a half-assed customer-service solution? I put a variation of this question to the company and here’s what I was told:

What, exactly, was your customer support solution at launch? I’d assumed that you would initially pay the carriers to handle support, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
We developed a dedicated, comprehensive Google customer support team for the Nexus One. Our support site can be found at google.com/phone/support, which has pointers to our help center, where there is lots of troubleshooting information. HTC provides telephone support for device troubleshooting and warranty, repairs, and returns. Google also offers self-help through our help center, user-to-user help through forums, and email support to customers who are unable to find answers to their questions online. We promise to answer email inquiries within 48 hours. T-Mobile USA fields calls regarding their service (including service billing inquiries).

Why was this solution chosen?
Solving customer support issues is extremely important to us, because we want people to have a positive Nexus One experience. Therefore, we felt this was the best approach to quickly resolve any customer support inquiries.

We felt this was the best approach to quickly resolve any customer support inquiries.

Really? Hard to believe that “we promise to answer email inquiries within 48 hours” is “the best approach.” Clearly, it’s not.

Google VP of Engineering Andy Rubin conceded as much during an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg last Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show: “We have to get better at customer service,” Rubin said. “We have to close that three-day gap [in response time] to a couple of hours.”

Video clip: Andy Rubin on Nexus One customer service issues.

That’s great to hear, but it doesn’t really explain why the gap exists in the first place or why Google felt comfortable launching with it.

So what’s the plan going forward? Says a Google spokesperson: “We are working quickly to solve any customer support issues as they come up, and we are trying to be as open and transparent as possible through our online customer help forums. We’ll continue to address all issues in as timely of a manner as possible, and we’re flexible and prepared to make changes to our processes and tools, as necessary, for an optimal customer support experience.”

Doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me. You?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100112/decent-nexus-one-customer-support-apparently-not-on-list-of-things-google-plans-to-make-universally-accessible-and-useful/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090203/burn-rate-mediamaster-goes-under/ http://allthingsd.com/20090203/burn-rate-mediamaster-goes-under/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:45:15 +0000 Marisa Taylor http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=8184 MediaMaster, a free Web-based application that allowed users to upload music from their hard drives and listen to it online or on their mobile devices, made the decision to shutter its doors, and explained on its Web site that “it is not possible to keep a service like this up for free without some sort of large scale userbase (>500,000) to get ads to pay for it.”

“I would like to thank our 95,000 users over time and especially our thousands of regular users,” the company wrote on its blog.

MediaMaster launched in 2006 to glowing reviews–PC World called it one of the ten best non-Google (GOOG) Web applications, and CNET lauded the site’s simplicity and the ease of creating playlists. Soon after, MediaMaster went on to create a Facebook app allowing users to share their playlists, and then adapted its Web-based platform to streaming playlists to Palm (PALM) Treos or Windows Mobile handsets.

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090203/burn-rate-mediamaster-goes-under/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081111/technologizers-harry-mccracken-speaks-yes-there-is-a-top-five-list/ http://allthingsd.com/20081111/technologizers-harry-mccracken-speaks-yes-there-is-a-top-five-list/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:00:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=6332

Yesterday, BoomTown had a much-belated lunch with longtime tech editor and writer Harry McCracken to catch up on how life has been going since he started his own tech blog site, Technologizer, this past summer.

The former editor-in-chief of PC World got a lot of attention in 2007, after he stood his ground over editorial meddling by former CEO Colin Crawford, who tried to kill a “Ten Things We Hate About Apple” story.

McCracken quit, but was soon back on the job at the IDG unit, with Crawford kicked upstairs to corporate.

But, within a year, McCracken had left again, this time to strike out on his own at his Technologizer site, which is owned and operated by him (and using Federated Media to sell ads). It covers a wide range of tech topics, from PCs to smartphones to the future of cloud computing.

I like the tone of Technologizer, which also uses freelancers to supplement McCracken’s daily posts, a lot.

But what I like better still and which I hope to see even more of in the tech blogosphere at large is the obvious respect McCracken has for accurate reporting, strong journalism standards and also trenchant analysis that actually gives a reader insight into a story.

In addition, McCracken is a very nice guy, as you will see from this video, where we discuss a range of things (and yes, PC Word-style, I get him to make a list of key tech issues too).

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

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