Does Your Technology Suck?

Those of you who know me know that I am an avid Apple fan. Those of you who didn't know that, well now you do. I love everything Apple, and truly believe that their products make peoples lives easier and more efficient. But I also see the value in Blackberry's and some other laptops (as long as they're not running Vista, of course.) The bottom line is you can't be running around with technology that sucks. If your phone and/or laptop aren't reliable then you may be missing out on important business calls, emails, tweets, etc. At the very least it's taking you much longer to do something than it should.

I was recently in New York City attending Inman Connect and my iPhone had been on the fritz the past few weeks leading up to the conference. I've been through seven of them, and I'm not going to lie, I do give them a beating. This time around my phone would not work in the town where I lived. Lucky for me I'm never home and always seem to be working or traveling so it wasn't a big deal. However, I soon noticed upon entering the city that my problems had followed me to the Big Apple. My service was going in and out, I'd randomly see "No Service" across the top, and I couldn't send emails, texts, or browse the internet. I was lost. I was pissed.

Unfortunately I didn't have time to go to the Apple Store since I was busy at the conference, and it would cost me money in New York to swap it out because of the sales tax (although looking back I would have paid anything to have a working phone.)  So I dealt with the phone, when I noticed it said "No Service" I would switch airplane mode On/Off then if that didn't work I would restart the phone... a real pain!

It was all going fine until I was in the green room waiting to be called up for my panel session. It was set for 11 am and I had been in the session prior and left early to go to the green room. Apparently since the moderator was doing the session before as well he didn't request people go to the green room. It was no big deal really, I knew him well, and my business partner was in the session before, so it would have been easy for them to call me or shoot me a text. Well, of course my phone wasn't working at the time. So 11:10 rolls around in the green room and I decide head up to the session. When I arrived I saw my partner doing the panel, filling in for me since I was late. It was no big deal, he killed it, and it was a great panel. But what if he wasn't there? What if that was something more important? That would have sucked. I would have thrown my phone off the 36th floor balcony, possibly injuring an innocent bystander below. Not a good situation.

Now you may be saying to yourself "James, I thought you said you love Apple?" - well, I do, and this just illustrates an important point. I have what many call the best phone on the market, with the most features, easiest to use. I would have to say I agree, it is the best, hands down. My situation was a rare one, and if I had a second to go to the Apple store before the conference I would have been fine (I went after and they replaced it no questions asked) and probably would have told another technology FAIL story.

Fact of the matter is some people deal with the problems I did that week on a daily basis. I truly believe for the parts of the day I did have service I was more productive overall than the person with the old flip phone with no texting, email, or internet. Not having a qwerty keyboard and email is a death wish these days. Consumers expect instant response to their requests, and if you are only able to check your email once a day, you're not giving them the service they demand. Now I'm not saying you should check your email every five minutes like I do (I'll admit, I'm an addict) but you should check it multiple times per day at the very least.

The cost of technology is coming down considerably by the day. You can no longer use the excuse that it's too expensive. $150 for a phone that is probably more powerful than your first computer is a small price to pay for constant connectivity to your email and internet.

It's 2009, and as we all know most new years resolutions never work, so make one that you can stick to! Head to your local Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile (whatever you have) and go get a smart phone. You'll be glad you did, trust me!