What I will talk about is the lack of a Shopping Cart and the ridiculous pricing scheme concocted by the people at Apple. I understand why Apple decided against the shopping cart it is not a streamlined process and actually gives people an opportunity to think about the purchase before doing it. That is a big problem if you are trying to sell as many things as possible as -fast- as possible. I deal with user interaction on a everyday basis, I know this. This is about as far as they thought it through however, take a look at this:

These are all the applications by My Accounts To Go, a page you can see for yourself by clicking here. Appart from the completely hideous un-imaginative icon, you can notice that while one application is free the other two applications are $449.99. Yes, you read that right, these applications are four hundred fourty nine dollars and ninetynine cents… each. In the description of all 3 of the applications they specify the following “Customer information from Microsoft Dynamics GP or SAP BusinessOne accounting systems are now directly accessible fro your Apple iPhone”. Even though there is clearly one for Dynamics GP and another for SAP BusinessOne, there is only one demo for the two which means they are fairly similar looks wise, but their inner workings are entirely different.

Before you start hating on the price point please understand. These are enterprise applications. These are serious, mission critical, applications and My Accounts To Go will most likely give them support as such. When you buy enterprise applications you are paying for the support and the knowledge that the system is not going to randomly go down. For instance, if tomorrow I check this blog and its not there, I’m going to call my provider, Host Gator and ask them whats up and hopefully they can explain and give me a refund or some credit or something. If I get to work on monday and our server is down, Rackspace actually has some liability in that case. It is an enterprise class application. Same difference, and judging from some reviews the applications warrant the $449.99 price point, so that is not an issue.

The issue is that they are in the App Store to begin with and this is something that Apple needs to address soon. My Accounts To Go is too busy making enterprise applications to give their three applications different icons. So there is actually no way for you to identify them without reading the name. The name is ‘MyAccountsToGo – *’, meaning you have to get through the name of the company to get to what you really want to read which is what version it is that you are getting. Which is not a problem unless you are trying to buy it on the iPhone itself (imagine that…) where it looks like this:

Yes, the price is there, but I never want to be less than two taps away from buying a $449.99 application, and If I did want to buy such an application, I would not like It to be so easy to confuse it with the version I do not want.

I really do not understand if the My Accounts To Go team is unaware that this is how their applications are showing up in the store… or if they are expecting you to make that mistake. Do they not know that their name shows up on top of the application? That if you search, their company name is also a field that the search looks in so therefore the applications can be called different things? Why is this allowed in the App Store?

When Apple set out to create an App Store they wanted to create something where you can buy applications on a whim, but they also wanted to allow serious applications to be available and I applaud them for that because the iPhone is now, not a phone, it is a mobile platform and that is just a remarkable achievement, but this is ridiculous. Can’t they set a cap on the price of items that they show me? I dont want any application that is more than $20 dollars to show up on my iPhone if I am unable to turn off this 1-tap purchase thing. If not give me a switch, and make enterprise applications harder to get to, so I don’t randomly stumble across them during my every-day browsing. You know what? Just give me a SHOPPING CART.

The one application I bought on iTunes (for those of you interested, it was Things, which I talked about in an earlier post) was $9.99  plus about $0.30 cents of tax. What will this end up being with taxes? Why can’t I review my purchase in a screen that details what I’m buying, for how much and what tax will be involved in the transaction? This is an oversight by Apple and they should seriously fix it.

All is fun and games at the App Store until somebody accidentally taps on the purchase button, which is conveniently the price button on the iPhone after one tap, and ends up with a $500 dollar app he/she has no use for whatsoever.

Also… My Accounts To Go, at $450 a pop, you can afford distinct icons for each one of those applications, get on it.

Either way, we went to one of the two places that back then were the only authorized retailers of Macs. A place that goes by the name of Modernica. They did not have the Power Books with bluetooth because of ‘export concerns’. They took 3 weeks to get the Power Book after my friend ordered it, and even then, it was the past generation model. Is Apple to blame?

At the time of writting this is the low end Mac Book Pro model you can buy at Modernica’s website and the low end model you can buy at Apple’s site.

After visiting the Modernica Store in Plaza Las Americas I can now confirm two things, they do not update their website, as they actually -do- have the current model machine for sale. I can also confirm I can’t say ‘in stock’ as they told me they had to order pretty much anything I asked them about, and it would take about 2 weeks. Good thing I wasn’t planning on buying a Mac there.

The other distributor was CompUSA, but since their bankruptcy and subsequent re-opening they seem to have gotten rid of the Mac aspect. So off to the newly opened Best Buy, prices remain the same, but they actually do have a stock of Apple machines.

Where does this leave the iPhone?

The iPhone works. In fact, it has always worked in Puerto Rico. This is against what ATT and Apple both told you at launch. You just have to realize that ‘not available for sale’ does not mean ‘does not work in’. Apple finally signed with America Movil (aka Claro) to bring the iPhone to Latin America, which would include Puerto Rico. This is supposed to happen ‘before the end of the year’. A few people I talked to in the island about it also mentioned that:

1) If you have an AT&T account, activation through iTunes now works as it does in the USA.
2) AT&T will most likely be providing the iPhone in Puerto Rico as well before the end of the year. Making it one of the few places where the iPhone is -not- exclusive to one carrier.

Of all the people I talked to many got it through friends/family in the USA who would just mail the device down. Many others mentioned eBay as the source of their phone.

I have had my iPhone hacked and in use with a Puerto Rico phone number in the United States for almost a year now. Even if I could activate it normally I would still have it hacked, since there are no official applications right now, and if there were, I’m pretty sure the SNES Emulator won’t make the cut.

Apple has been shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has a very avid fan base for Apple computers. The office I used to work at uses them exclusively and many of my friends have switched to mac. But when you go to purchase a Mac you need to know what you’re getting into or you will end up not liking the experience. Having Modernica, the only retailer with Apple Macs on sale in the main mall in Puerto Rico, not have a stock of machines is ridiculous, and adds an extra unnecessary barrier to entry to the consumer that would just like to purchase a machine on that given day.

Best Buy is an option, yes, but it is not a Mac exclusive retailer. Modernica should have the advantage here.

If you are on the fence about getting an iPhone and you live in Puerto Rico, wait until the update (sometime in June) and get an iPhone 2.0. You will not regret it, It will work in Puerto Rico under AT&T if you already have a contract with them. If you don’t wait a couple of months. The iPhone will be available for purchase soon enough.

If you are on the fence about getting a Mac. Go to Best Buy, play with them there, and just do it. Life outside of Microsoft is sweet and delicious.

Apple, please fix this. Give all U.S. citizens equal rights to a Mac!

I will try and upgrade my account to an iPhone account sometime later this month and I will post my findings.