
 Apple tweaked iPhones to lessen strain on AT&T network - report - AndrewWarner
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/30/apple_tweaked_iphones_to_lessen_strain_on_att_network.html
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jws
_John Donovan said he and other executives flew to Apple's Cupertino, Calif.,
campus to give the handset maker a "crash course in wireless networking."_

The prospect of nitty gritty communications issues being communicated by
executives is possibly frightening, but I suppose a CTO could be briefed up on
the issues.

The issues they mention, e.g. message querying, sound more like a "we don't do
this particular operation very well right now, please stop hurting us" talk.
These can be fantastically productive. Back in the '90s I was with a group
that got one of these from Sybase. (They called it a talk on optimization.)
The presenter knew their products warts inside and out, started us down the
road with the big, common ones, then worked with us on our specifics. No where
in the printed documentation would you find this knowledge, but once you had
it passed to you orally you could dramatically improve performance. I have
never seen a project benefit more from a half day meeting.

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abstractbill
The balance of power ought to be tilted towards Apple in this situation right?
I mean, I've never met anyone who owns an iPhone and actually _likes_ AT&T. So
I'm a bit surprised to see Apple doing work on their end to make the iPhone
less network-heavy, rather than demanding that AT&T moves faster to upgrade
their network. Am I missing something? Does AT&T actually have any negotiating
power with Apple?

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silencio
I have an iPhone and I like AT&T provided that I'm in a city with good
coverage. I feel like they've done a decent job in LA and they're improving
constantly (faster and faster 3g it seems), and they're about on par if not
better than the service I get from Verizon. I don't know that many iPhone
users in LA that are angry at AT&T. Only if they can't get service in their
homes, or if there's some major outage...happens occasionally, but not enough
to be a serious bother.

That being said, I go up to San Francisco like once a month, and up there my
calls exceeding 1 minute drop at an alarming near-100% rate, my text messages
are delayed, half my phone calls can't even be received, location services
never works because data never works, and if I can't even get GPRS, there goes
all my email and more. It's a complete wreck and I can totally understand the
AT&T griping then.

Part of me thinks that Apple is caving in here to AT&T's requests because the
level of service AT&T is providing is hurting Apple because a lot of people
are refusing to buy or are no longer buying iPhones because of AT&T. Also
because for AT&T to upgrade their network, it will take time, and these little
changes can make a big difference while we're waiting for these upgrades to
happen (now, whether or not AT&T is actually upgrading their network is a
different question....).

Lastly, I feel that this kind of situation is one that any carrier would have
run into if they had a phone like the iPhone available on their network. It's
not just any smartphone, it's a smartphone that changes the usage habits of
the users, and changing the user experience of what these users are looking
at...no wonder we're all using more data. It would be a strain on any network.

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gojomo
The main differences I've noticed in recent weeks: (1) the presence of 4-5
bars of signal strength is no indicator of whether a call is possible or
stable; (2) wild swings of connectivity even without changing position; (3)
the presence of the '3G' icon and bars is no indicator of whether a data
connection is possible.

That is, it's gotten worse -- less reliable, and the indicators of service
have become less connected to the actual level of service available. (This is
in San Francisco.)

