Ripple effects

Last Friday my iPhone's vibrate feature failed. I had a day or two of odd brrrraap buzzes, wheezy ailing things, and on Saturday, pfft! no more vibrate.

I went to Apple's Genius Bar on Sunday, fighting masses of bored tourists on Easter to get my phone inspected. The technician (genius?) took a quick look at my phone and decided that I had broken the external silence switch when I dropped it at some point. "There's your problem, right there," he said cheerily.

Before I had the chance to get defensive, he had opened a drawer and taken out a small white box. Out came a new iPhone--refurbished, I'm sure, but visually perfect--and within five minutes the genius (technician) had swapped SIM cards and activated the new phone. He took my phone--nine months old, dropped several times, with the scuff marks to prove it--and put it in the box with an explanatory label.

And that was it. "Here you go," he said, "you're all set." And I went home with a new phone in my pocket.

I tell this story not simply to add to the "cult of Mac" but to examine just why Apple has been so successful.

• Trust. The tech who met me listened to my request, quickly verified it, and moved onto solving the problem. No challenges, no curiosities, no wondering whether I had violated an arcane clause of my limited warranty. Heck, the tech even pointed out that I had dropped the phone--surely grounds for voiding my claim, and for which I had prepared an extensive explanation about timing, cause and effect, and so on. But it made no material difference to him.


• Ease. All I did to get my phone replaced was make an appointment, hand over the phone, and sign a form acknowledging my receipt of a new one. No other paperwork or, as noted above, difficult questions.


• Flow. The Genius Bar is, of course, free. I booked online, arrived late on Easter Sunday, and still got taken within minutes.


• Goodwill. The net effect of the above: I am a newly satisfied Apple customer, not only proud of my iPhone (proud! of a phone!) but delighted with my recent experience. I've spent the week telling people my story, which routinely elicits amazement and wonder: what other company is this easy to work with? This in turn continues Apple's amazing halo effect, which translates into ever stronger sales.

The message, to any company selling products: treat customers with respect and make life easy for them. Individual transactions may have a higher cost than a cost accountant may prefer. But the long-term impact is undeniable.

Mobile phones and the Internet

Earlier this week Google announced it was seeing 50 times as much activity from iPhone users as any other mobile handset.

Yes, 50X. "We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again," Google's head of mobile is quoted as saying.

The article goes on to discuss Google's plan for expanding mobile services, but that's not the real news here. It's more about how iPhone users view and use the device, which is unlike any other cell phone.

1. The iPhone renders full web pages. No other phone does this or even comes close. It's so easy to use, and so attractive, that iPhone users (like me) don't seek alternatives, like using SMS to contact Google or buying standalone GPS devices.
2. The iPhone has wifi. A few other smart phones are getting into this, but they're still restricted to mobile-web renderings and all the scroll-wheel-and-chiclet-clicking activity that they imply.
3. The combination of the above two features turns the iPhone into a pocket-size computer. Which means that someone with an iPhone finds it easy to jump online on a whim, and use it in ways other phone (and laptop) owners do not.

This is where the iPhone is shifting paradigms. It's not just about the touch-screen UI; it's about the immediacy it provides.

I can be sitting on my couch, watching TV, become curious about something a broadcaster says, and in seconds google the information with the gadget in my pocket and my wireless network. No reaching for the laptop, waking it up, sitting properly; no fiddling with a typical smart phone's menus and cell towers.

After a while this becomes second nature, which increases the frequency of use and creates the snowball effect Google is seeing from iPhone searches. More and more consumers will move in this direction as the rest of the mobile device industry catches on.