So we're headed up to Dreamforce today, getting ready to battle the conference crowds along with the bonus Giants' game crowd. Taking Caltrain again. If you remember my previous post, My Terrible, Awful Day at Dreamforce 2013, you'll probably have some sense of why I'm not looking forward to this.
This year, I decided to skip spending the money on the full conference pass. Instead, we're keynote and exhibits only -- adding to the crowd and not much else. We'll see how that works out. There's a part of me that feels like I'm missing stuff by not going to the full conference, but I think it's probably one of those things like not booking a United flight -- your gut telling you one thing, but your brain telling you the ROI isn't there. I shoulda used the Salesforce.com guy's ROI calculator.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
Heroes of Customer Service - 1Password
I write a lot about bad actors, those businesses and individuals who demonstrate really bad customer service. It's one of those things -- sometimes there are those experiences that are so bad or stand out so significantly -- you feel like you need to share them. But the reality is that we often go through the day with hundreds of customer service interactions, that are all just okay. But what about the amazingly good one?
When I get the chance, I like to call those out too. I think it's a reminder that good customer service can save a relationship. Consider this story of my experience with 1Password and their incredible customer service team.
After the theft of my laptop, I needed to change all of my passwords. I didn't want to use any password patterns that I might have used in the past. I also wanted to change the way that I stored my passwords. After discussing various password vaults with colleagues and reading reviews online, I decided to try 1Password by Agilebits.
1Password had some very strong reviews. It enabled you to sync and carry all of your passwords across multiple devices, Mac and iPhone. It did cost some money, but it also seemed to have some helpful security features as well. Thinking that it was a reasonable software to try, I purchased it through the Apple App Store, and installed it on the Friday beginning the Labor day weekend.
Installation was pretty straightforward and before long, I entered about a dozen passwords into 1Password and was able to see and sync them between my Mac and my iPhone. Everything seemed to be good.
1Password uses a single 'Master Password' to unlock your vault. When I woke up the next morning, I needed to get into 1Password for a login. When I entered my Master Password, 1Password rejected it. I checked the caps lock key. I tried reentering it several times. I even entered it using a text editor, then copy and pasting it in. Nada.
I searched the 1Password site, but I couldn't find any helpful guidance. Using the site, I was finally able to submit a ticket to 1Password customer support. I got a response back in less than 15 minutes. When I say a response back, I don't just mean a generic auto-response, but an actual response from Eva, the "Good Witch of the Pacific Northwest".
Eva worked with me through email through the day on Saturday attempting to correct the issue, running a diagnostic tool for their software, and evaluating the results. In the end, we wound up needed to blow out the old version and reinstall. Unfortunately, because of the cloud-based sync, the corrupted master password rewrote the wrong data when I tried to reinstall. It was Saturday evening and I still wasn't up and running. At what worked out to be 3:00am my time (my guess is east coast office), Steve, the "Ninth Inning Closer" joined in, emailing instructions about how to correct the syncing problem. And, by the time I got going on Sunday, I was up and running again.
Since that time, I've had no hassles with 1Password. The application has run flawlessly. While I had to essentially do a completely clean restart, I felt like I owed it to Eva and to Steve to give the software one more try and the product has performed as promised. When you consider that, on that Saturday morning I extremely angry and frustrated, with more thoughts on refund than on repair, Agilebits' customer service saved their business. I went from being someone who was on the verge of being a very negative word of mouth to being... a customer.
People like Eva and Steve can be the unsung heroes of your brand, but you need to empower them and to recognize what an important part of the customer experience they can play. Odds are, if they had not been able to revive me as a customer, no amount of new features or marketing incentives could have brought me back.
When I get the chance, I like to call those out too. I think it's a reminder that good customer service can save a relationship. Consider this story of my experience with 1Password and their incredible customer service team.
After the theft of my laptop, I needed to change all of my passwords. I didn't want to use any password patterns that I might have used in the past. I also wanted to change the way that I stored my passwords. After discussing various password vaults with colleagues and reading reviews online, I decided to try 1Password by Agilebits.
1Password had some very strong reviews. It enabled you to sync and carry all of your passwords across multiple devices, Mac and iPhone. It did cost some money, but it also seemed to have some helpful security features as well. Thinking that it was a reasonable software to try, I purchased it through the Apple App Store, and installed it on the Friday beginning the Labor day weekend.
Installation was pretty straightforward and before long, I entered about a dozen passwords into 1Password and was able to see and sync them between my Mac and my iPhone. Everything seemed to be good.
1Password uses a single 'Master Password' to unlock your vault. When I woke up the next morning, I needed to get into 1Password for a login. When I entered my Master Password, 1Password rejected it. I checked the caps lock key. I tried reentering it several times. I even entered it using a text editor, then copy and pasting it in. Nada.
I searched the 1Password site, but I couldn't find any helpful guidance. Using the site, I was finally able to submit a ticket to 1Password customer support. I got a response back in less than 15 minutes. When I say a response back, I don't just mean a generic auto-response, but an actual response from Eva, the "Good Witch of the Pacific Northwest".
Eva worked with me through email through the day on Saturday attempting to correct the issue, running a diagnostic tool for their software, and evaluating the results. In the end, we wound up needed to blow out the old version and reinstall. Unfortunately, because of the cloud-based sync, the corrupted master password rewrote the wrong data when I tried to reinstall. It was Saturday evening and I still wasn't up and running. At what worked out to be 3:00am my time (my guess is east coast office), Steve, the "Ninth Inning Closer" joined in, emailing instructions about how to correct the syncing problem. And, by the time I got going on Sunday, I was up and running again.
Since that time, I've had no hassles with 1Password. The application has run flawlessly. While I had to essentially do a completely clean restart, I felt like I owed it to Eva and to Steve to give the software one more try and the product has performed as promised. When you consider that, on that Saturday morning I extremely angry and frustrated, with more thoughts on refund than on repair, Agilebits' customer service saved their business. I went from being someone who was on the verge of being a very negative word of mouth to being... a customer.
People like Eva and Steve can be the unsung heroes of your brand, but you need to empower them and to recognize what an important part of the customer experience they can play. Odds are, if they had not been able to revive me as a customer, no amount of new features or marketing incentives could have brought me back.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
United and MileagePlus Fail to Win My Business
So we're going through the process of booking flights for another trip to Japan. As I mentioned previously, I have Premier status on United and my fiancee has status on American. As we try to coordinate the best flight for this trip -- one that's mostly business for her -- we considered a number of factors in selecting our flight or flights. Here are some of our factors, in no particular order:
That's right. Depending upon the route that we selected, a United flight actually offered a lower priced flight but we opted against taking it. All of those 'benefits' that I've accumulated, lounge access, the theoretical option to upgrade, and the potential flight miles from the trip were not enough -- even with the lowest price. Here's why.
With their new MilieagePlus qualifying dollar requirement, even thought I spent the first half of the year flying on United -- and even with the cost of this ticket to Japan -- it's still unlikely that I would have met the dollars spent requirement. Hey, the company demands that we attempt to purchase the lowest cost fares. I can't do anything about that.
Based on my experiences expecting an automatic upgrade to Economy Plus combined with a new note on their site that says, 'automatic upgrade for Premier Exec with minimum class ticket', I now know that I can't expect an automatic upgrade. I also know from my experiences that the idea of using my accumulated miles to buy a class upgrade is, similarly, a pipedream.
But even if all of those things weren't the case, the low price fares are actually a ticket class that you can't upgrade. C'est la vie.
Practically speaking, what that means is that even with all of the miles that I've spent in United Airlines seats over the years, for all of the customer loyalty that I may have built with the airline, my reward is to be treated as though I was a customer that traveled only once every couple of years.
Similarly, even though my fiancee has status on American Airlines, we won't be flying on them either. In this case, a direct flight and a newer 787-class plane were more important that status. In short, as I mentioned in my previous posts on this topic, the mileage loyalty program has become so diluted that it's not enough to incentivize loyalty.
And the ironic thing is that, if everything goes according to schedule for next year, I have a busy year of travel coming up. Lots of tickets, lots of domestic travel. In the old days I probably would have booked all of that on United and been a happy Premier passenger riding along in Economy Plus. Now, I'll be surprised if I find myself on a single United flight.
The really crazy part is that, with all of experiences in the past, there is a part of me that holds onto the pipedream, deluding a part of my brain into thinking that there is the potential for special, better treatment and that I'm somehow missing it. Even in the face of my experiences in the past year, there is a part of me that feels like I'm leaving something on the table by not choosing United. That's some seriously mad Pavlovian shit there. Even crazier that a business would sit back and just torch that kind of thing.
- Cost of the ticket
- Departing and arriving airport
- Miles and status on the airline
- Number of stops
- Fare codes on the various tickets
- The potential benefits of miles on said airline
- The potential to upgrade
That's right. Depending upon the route that we selected, a United flight actually offered a lower priced flight but we opted against taking it. All of those 'benefits' that I've accumulated, lounge access, the theoretical option to upgrade, and the potential flight miles from the trip were not enough -- even with the lowest price. Here's why.
With their new MilieagePlus qualifying dollar requirement, even thought I spent the first half of the year flying on United -- and even with the cost of this ticket to Japan -- it's still unlikely that I would have met the dollars spent requirement. Hey, the company demands that we attempt to purchase the lowest cost fares. I can't do anything about that.
Based on my experiences expecting an automatic upgrade to Economy Plus combined with a new note on their site that says, 'automatic upgrade for Premier Exec with minimum class ticket', I now know that I can't expect an automatic upgrade. I also know from my experiences that the idea of using my accumulated miles to buy a class upgrade is, similarly, a pipedream.
But even if all of those things weren't the case, the low price fares are actually a ticket class that you can't upgrade. C'est la vie.
Practically speaking, what that means is that even with all of the miles that I've spent in United Airlines seats over the years, for all of the customer loyalty that I may have built with the airline, my reward is to be treated as though I was a customer that traveled only once every couple of years.
Similarly, even though my fiancee has status on American Airlines, we won't be flying on them either. In this case, a direct flight and a newer 787-class plane were more important that status. In short, as I mentioned in my previous posts on this topic, the mileage loyalty program has become so diluted that it's not enough to incentivize loyalty.
And the ironic thing is that, if everything goes according to schedule for next year, I have a busy year of travel coming up. Lots of tickets, lots of domestic travel. In the old days I probably would have booked all of that on United and been a happy Premier passenger riding along in Economy Plus. Now, I'll be surprised if I find myself on a single United flight.
The really crazy part is that, with all of experiences in the past, there is a part of me that holds onto the pipedream, deluding a part of my brain into thinking that there is the potential for special, better treatment and that I'm somehow missing it. Even in the face of my experiences in the past year, there is a part of me that feels like I'm leaving something on the table by not choosing United. That's some seriously mad Pavlovian shit there. Even crazier that a business would sit back and just torch that kind of thing.
Friday, October 10, 2014
LinkedIn Search and the Illusion of Continuity on the Web
For several years now I've had a set of saved job searches on LinkedIn. Recently, I discovered that LinkedIn had made changes to their search system and that, when I looked at the results of my saved search, the results I thought I was seeing did not match the criteria that defined my saved search for several years. Put simply, LinkedIn broke saved search in such a subtle way that I only realized it recently and I'm not even sure how long it has been broken.
So here's what happened...
A saved job search is a pretty straightforward query. The odds are pretty high that you know what you are looking for and that what you are looking for doesn't change much day to day (except for those days when you think, I wonder what the job situation is like in Hawaii -- I could totally work in Hawaii). If you build a saved search, rather than rebuilding that job query each time you need to use it, you can just run the query and scan through your results. Many job sites will even email you the results so that you don't need to visit their site.
When you're running that kind of a search, it's probably most helpful to view the list with the most recent listings first. Instead of giving you repeats, it's the kind of thing that makes it easier to see what's new. Scroll down until you get to what you saw previously and you're done. It's the way blogs work, news feeds, you name it.
But when LinkedIn revamped their search, suddenly all of those saved searches that used to be sorted by most recent became sort by relevance.
Relevance is helpful if you want somebody to think that the search results are closely aligned with what you were looking for, but it's not very useful for determining changes because the same results will keep ranking near the top.
This is how I realized what happened. I ran my saved search a week or so after the previous time and the job listings were the same. Some of them appeared near the top for nearly a month. I began to look more carefully at why the results looked the way that they did and, low and behold, LinkedIn had changed recent to relevance. You killed my Saved Search! You Bastards!
While my instinct is to blame it on the accidental fall out of a software upgrade, part of me can't escape the idea that it is intentional -- that somebody felt like always defaulting to relevance would make their product look better. Or smarter. And while part of me wants to get angry, another part of me feels like this is the kind of thing that companies just do, like Adobe and their code bloat (when you realize that, with all of the modern faster processor speeds, memory, and drive interfaces, Adobe Photoshop still takes longer to launch now than it did when we were at version 3.5, there is a part of you that wants to rage!).
Anyway, bottom line. LinkedIn sucks. If you have saved searches, you may be seeing results by relevance now. Caveat Emptor.
So here's what happened...
A saved job search is a pretty straightforward query. The odds are pretty high that you know what you are looking for and that what you are looking for doesn't change much day to day (except for those days when you think, I wonder what the job situation is like in Hawaii -- I could totally work in Hawaii). If you build a saved search, rather than rebuilding that job query each time you need to use it, you can just run the query and scan through your results. Many job sites will even email you the results so that you don't need to visit their site.
When you're running that kind of a search, it's probably most helpful to view the list with the most recent listings first. Instead of giving you repeats, it's the kind of thing that makes it easier to see what's new. Scroll down until you get to what you saw previously and you're done. It's the way blogs work, news feeds, you name it.
But when LinkedIn revamped their search, suddenly all of those saved searches that used to be sorted by most recent became sort by relevance.
Relevance is helpful if you want somebody to think that the search results are closely aligned with what you were looking for, but it's not very useful for determining changes because the same results will keep ranking near the top.
This is how I realized what happened. I ran my saved search a week or so after the previous time and the job listings were the same. Some of them appeared near the top for nearly a month. I began to look more carefully at why the results looked the way that they did and, low and behold, LinkedIn had changed recent to relevance. You killed my Saved Search! You Bastards!
While my instinct is to blame it on the accidental fall out of a software upgrade, part of me can't escape the idea that it is intentional -- that somebody felt like always defaulting to relevance would make their product look better. Or smarter. And while part of me wants to get angry, another part of me feels like this is the kind of thing that companies just do, like Adobe and their code bloat (when you realize that, with all of the modern faster processor speeds, memory, and drive interfaces, Adobe Photoshop still takes longer to launch now than it did when we were at version 3.5, there is a part of you that wants to rage!).
Anyway, bottom line. LinkedIn sucks. If you have saved searches, you may be seeing results by relevance now. Caveat Emptor.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Apple, My Shit Don't Sync
So, it wasn't that long ago that my Macbook Air was stolen. That device came from a longer line of devices that had served as sync point for my iPhones going back to my iPhone 3G. For nearly six years, my iPhone and my Macbook lived harmonious lives celebrating each other's existence. When the iPhone was plugged into the Macbook, the Macbook would recognize it, then say, "it's been a while since I've seen you. Look at all of the applications that I've downloaded for you. Here you go."
It was wonderful. A perfect family portrait. There were times when I even raved about the relationship -- like the time would I stood in line for nearly a day to get the iPhone 4, activated it, and was able to sync all my contacts in less time that it took them to prepare the Thai food I ordered for my return home. Prior to that moment, my experience changing phones was less than positive. My first phone call on that iPhone was to my girlfriend to let her know that my line ordeal was over and that I was going home. Yeah contacts. Yeah sync. Yeah iPhone. Yeah Apple. You made the phone switch a seamless experience.
Perhaps that set a basis for unrealistic expectations. When my Air was stolen, it turns out that many of my preconceived notions were taken as well. When I brought home a new Macbook, I expected it to connect to my iPhone and form the same kind of bond that my old computer had. After all, they are just electronic devices, right? When I first plugged my iPhone into the new computer, it gave me a warning, something along the lines of, "this iPhone is already synced to another computer, do you want to erase it and sync it to this one?"
The first time that I saw that alert, I still needed to move a bunch of data that -- at the time -- only lived on my phone. So I clicked cancel, not now, no, or whatever the "I don't really want to do that" option was. And from that point, things seemed to go well. I was able to move all of my photos and such off of the iPhone and onto the new Air.
For a day or two, everything seemed good. But then I started to notice a growing number of apps that needed updating. So I plugged my phone into the new Air and clicked okay on the erase and sync option. Mission accomplished -- or so I hoped.
Unfortunately, all that it seemed to do was blow out my playlists. I started out with an iPhone full of music and I ended up with an iPhone with no playlists on it. I had to go back into iTunes and redefine what playlists I wanted on the phone, then resync it. Annoying, but you tell yourself that this was probably a one time thing.
The other thing that I quickly realized was that my Apps didn't sync. I had apps to update, but they didn't update during the sync when I plugged the phone in. I tried unplugging then replugging the iPhone. I tried rebooting the iPhone. Still nothing. I dove down into iTunes to the Apps menu on the phone. Now I was presented with a list of the apps that were on the phone. Next to the apps that needed to be updated there was an update button. It looked like I needed to manually select update for the apps that I needed to update.
This was not the way that it used to work. And so I scoured the preferences and settings, looking for the thing that would fix this behavior. I looked on the iPhone and in iTunes. There is a setting for automatically sync apps, but that does it over the air. Not what I wanted. I thought that maybe the update to iOS 8 might fix all of that it didn't.
Finally, I was so frustrated, I made an appointment with the Genius guys at the Apple store. Side note -- a sucktastic feature of the Apple Store appointment engine, it doesn't create a calendar record or send you an email with the time for your appointment. I missed mine because I forgot which time I chose right after I closed the confirm window. I went back to look -- no record.
My Genius experience bordered on the worst ever. Since I missed my scheduled appointment, I was cycled through a serious of "not genius like technical genius, but smart guys" who didn't know much about iTunes and iPhone syncing to one last guy who changed the UI on my iTunes, complained about my use of the "original" trackpad scrolling direction, and checked all of the same settings that I had already looked at. His final proclamation -- after talking to someone else -- was that the behavior that I was seeing was the way it was supposed to work. That my previous version must have been an old version of iTunes. Now, according to this guy, all of the sync went from iPhone to laptop, not the other way around. And we were done.
Until a week or two later when the iOS 8.01 & 8.02 updates landed. My iPhone wouldn't update the apps and I wound up with a list of nearly 30 apps that needed to be updated. My theory is that it wouldn't update those apps until I updated the phone to the latest version of the OS. Eventually, I was able to go through and manually select update for all of the apps that needed updating, but it is so incredibly stupid that it makes me want to toss the phone across the room.
Today my iPhone shows a badge with 29 apps to be updated. I might as well have a carrier-designed Android phone it's so un-updated. But hey, this is the way that it's supposed to work, right?
It was wonderful. A perfect family portrait. There were times when I even raved about the relationship -- like the time would I stood in line for nearly a day to get the iPhone 4, activated it, and was able to sync all my contacts in less time that it took them to prepare the Thai food I ordered for my return home. Prior to that moment, my experience changing phones was less than positive. My first phone call on that iPhone was to my girlfriend to let her know that my line ordeal was over and that I was going home. Yeah contacts. Yeah sync. Yeah iPhone. Yeah Apple. You made the phone switch a seamless experience.
Perhaps that set a basis for unrealistic expectations. When my Air was stolen, it turns out that many of my preconceived notions were taken as well. When I brought home a new Macbook, I expected it to connect to my iPhone and form the same kind of bond that my old computer had. After all, they are just electronic devices, right? When I first plugged my iPhone into the new computer, it gave me a warning, something along the lines of, "this iPhone is already synced to another computer, do you want to erase it and sync it to this one?"
The first time that I saw that alert, I still needed to move a bunch of data that -- at the time -- only lived on my phone. So I clicked cancel, not now, no, or whatever the "I don't really want to do that" option was. And from that point, things seemed to go well. I was able to move all of my photos and such off of the iPhone and onto the new Air.
For a day or two, everything seemed good. But then I started to notice a growing number of apps that needed updating. So I plugged my phone into the new Air and clicked okay on the erase and sync option. Mission accomplished -- or so I hoped.
Unfortunately, all that it seemed to do was blow out my playlists. I started out with an iPhone full of music and I ended up with an iPhone with no playlists on it. I had to go back into iTunes and redefine what playlists I wanted on the phone, then resync it. Annoying, but you tell yourself that this was probably a one time thing.
The other thing that I quickly realized was that my Apps didn't sync. I had apps to update, but they didn't update during the sync when I plugged the phone in. I tried unplugging then replugging the iPhone. I tried rebooting the iPhone. Still nothing. I dove down into iTunes to the Apps menu on the phone. Now I was presented with a list of the apps that were on the phone. Next to the apps that needed to be updated there was an update button. It looked like I needed to manually select update for the apps that I needed to update.
This was not the way that it used to work. And so I scoured the preferences and settings, looking for the thing that would fix this behavior. I looked on the iPhone and in iTunes. There is a setting for automatically sync apps, but that does it over the air. Not what I wanted. I thought that maybe the update to iOS 8 might fix all of that it didn't.
Finally, I was so frustrated, I made an appointment with the Genius guys at the Apple store. Side note -- a sucktastic feature of the Apple Store appointment engine, it doesn't create a calendar record or send you an email with the time for your appointment. I missed mine because I forgot which time I chose right after I closed the confirm window. I went back to look -- no record.
My Genius experience bordered on the worst ever. Since I missed my scheduled appointment, I was cycled through a serious of "not genius like technical genius, but smart guys" who didn't know much about iTunes and iPhone syncing to one last guy who changed the UI on my iTunes, complained about my use of the "original" trackpad scrolling direction, and checked all of the same settings that I had already looked at. His final proclamation -- after talking to someone else -- was that the behavior that I was seeing was the way it was supposed to work. That my previous version must have been an old version of iTunes. Now, according to this guy, all of the sync went from iPhone to laptop, not the other way around. And we were done.
Until a week or two later when the iOS 8.01 & 8.02 updates landed. My iPhone wouldn't update the apps and I wound up with a list of nearly 30 apps that needed to be updated. My theory is that it wouldn't update those apps until I updated the phone to the latest version of the OS. Eventually, I was able to go through and manually select update for all of the apps that needed updating, but it is so incredibly stupid that it makes me want to toss the phone across the room.
Today my iPhone shows a badge with 29 apps to be updated. I might as well have a carrier-designed Android phone it's so un-updated. But hey, this is the way that it's supposed to work, right?
Friday, October 3, 2014
More Net Neutrality Positioning
So I came across this post, Why Phone, Cable Companies Want to Kill the Internet’s First Amendment, yesterday. It's a good reminder how political messaging often attempt to transpose a message positioning. Honestly, I would write more, but I think that the piece speaks for itself -- totally worth a read.
But just a warning, if you've managed to get less pissed off about Net Neutrality, this will probably refuel your fire.
But just a warning, if you've managed to get less pissed off about Net Neutrality, this will probably refuel your fire.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Apple it's Still Messed Up - Download All Updates
After I published my post yesterday, I started thinking about other things in my Apple universe that still behave stupidly, don't work, or just generally annoy me. It reminded me of the giant Powerpoint that came out of the Apple Samsung trial showing all of the features that Samsung copied, did wrong or were poorly designed. It began to make me wonder -- what if I went through my list.
So here's today's issue:
iTunes Update All Apps
I think this became a bug when Apple updated iTunes to the current version with the pull down menu to select music, apps, etc. I think that was iTunes 10 or 11, but I'm not sure. As someone who has been through every generation of iPhone other than the original, the method for updating apps on your phone was, traditionally, to use iTunes, download the app on your computer, then sync the phone with iTunes on your desktop.
There were a lot of reasons why this worked well -- often, your desktop Internet connection was better than the wireless connection on your phone. And there were also limits on the size of the download that you could pull down through a cellular network.
Okay, so when they moved iTunes to this pull down menu that ever seemed to be in the right interface, you had to go to Apps section, then check for updates (if there wasn't already several of them). If you had more than two, you were presented with a button that offered the option, "Update All".
When you click the "Update All" button, iTunes will ask you to authenticate with your password (if you haven't been downloading stuff already). Once you do this, iTunes will begin downloading the first of the apps to be updated. Once it has downloaded, the process dies. In order to update all apps, you need to click "Update All" a second time in order to restart the process.
It's something that seems like a simple bug, one that could be easily fixed. And yet, despite a number of updates to iTunes since the issue was introduced, no fix. It's still broken. It's not life ending, but it may be another brick in the Jump the Shark wall.
So here's today's issue:
iTunes Update All Apps
I think this became a bug when Apple updated iTunes to the current version with the pull down menu to select music, apps, etc. I think that was iTunes 10 or 11, but I'm not sure. As someone who has been through every generation of iPhone other than the original, the method for updating apps on your phone was, traditionally, to use iTunes, download the app on your computer, then sync the phone with iTunes on your desktop.
There were a lot of reasons why this worked well -- often, your desktop Internet connection was better than the wireless connection on your phone. And there were also limits on the size of the download that you could pull down through a cellular network.
Okay, so when they moved iTunes to this pull down menu that ever seemed to be in the right interface, you had to go to Apps section, then check for updates (if there wasn't already several of them). If you had more than two, you were presented with a button that offered the option, "Update All".
When you click the "Update All" button, iTunes will ask you to authenticate with your password (if you haven't been downloading stuff already). Once you do this, iTunes will begin downloading the first of the apps to be updated. Once it has downloaded, the process dies. In order to update all apps, you need to click "Update All" a second time in order to restart the process.
It's something that seems like a simple bug, one that could be easily fixed. And yet, despite a number of updates to iTunes since the issue was introduced, no fix. It's still broken. It's not life ending, but it may be another brick in the Jump the Shark wall.
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