Thoughts on how High Density Housing is Destroying Silicon Valley

If you're on the road these days, you can't help but notice one inescapable fact -- traffic in the Bay Area just keeps getting worse and worse. Increasingly, we're seeing gridlock on our roads. During rush hour, there are times and places where you have to wait through a green light because you can't make it through the intersection -- there isn't any room for your vehicle on the other side. All of these vehicles and increased traffic density means longer drive times, lost productivity, and increased stresses from time pressures, bad drivers, and road rage.

Commuting home the other day, I took a route that was similar to my commute a couple of years ago and I was shocked by where I experienced traffic back-ups, and by how much traffic there was. My rough estimate, based on where I was seeing the back-ups, is that we may have double the number of cars on the road compared to just two or three years ago.

But where did all of these cars come from? Why are there more cars here?

I have one simple answer -- high-density housing. Over the past five years or so, there has been a trend to transform areas of land that once held one and two-story buildings into high-density residential and multi-use/residential structures. In the photo above (that I happened to take about three years ago), what was once a Santa Clara technology campus with about three 2-story buildings was being transformed into a multi-story, high-density multi-use housing facility. The same transformation is also taking place in a couple of blocks in every direction from here.

The big joke with these places is that they make the claim that these high-density residences won't significantly increase traffic because they're close to the train station and public transit. The reality is that, with most of these places, you need to estimate an additional 1.5 cars on the road.

It's surprising to me that so many of these developments have been approved (and continue to be approved) by local city councils. While there are always calls for more affordable housing (and claims that a lack of housing is the problem), these developments are simply eroding any semblance of quality of life in the area. Here's my latest analogy for the problem:

Imagine the Bay Area like an awesome Internet Cafe, good food, nice environment, good Internet connectivity. Then, people start having meetings there and more people keep coming in. Soon, there is no space to sit, all of the tables are occupied and all of the chairs are full. 

Troubled by this, the patrons call for more chairs, more places to sit. Comfy chairs are changed to benches and counters are added to walls, so more people can fit in, but soon there is no place for coffee cups and few places for computers. 

But the worst is that, while the number of patrons has grown significantly, the cafe's Internet connection is still running on the same DSL line that provided reasonable broadband 15 years ago. The Internet Cafe has no Internet.

The Bay Area is collapsing under the weight of too many users while the roads, our broadband connectivity.

It would be one thing if we had the infrastructure to support the human density that they are building for, but we don't. We have no subways, no metro train system. And if you look at San Francisco as an example, we're going on 10 years and they still haven't completed the Muni line from Union Square to the Caltrain station.

And just when you thought they couldn't pack any more in, there's more high-density housing on the way...

Why I switched from a new iPhone Xs back to an iPhone SE

The one thing that I was hoping for in the Apple iPhone announcement back in early September was an updated iPhone SE. While I'd seen enough on the Apple rumors sites to be concerned that, if the rumored updates to the iPhone SE were true, I'd probably be unhappy with that device. As it was, the rumors sites were talking about a glass-backed iPhone SE with no audio port and no home button -- but I tried to remain optimistic. I'd even considered, in the days prior to the iPhone Xs announcement, purchasing a 128GB iPhone SE just so that I'd have a new one without 2 years of wear and tear on it.

Don't get me wrong, my iPhone SE is still a great phone that still only shows minor scrapes and scratches despite two years of life without a case.

At the same time, you couldn't help but notice the better image quality from her iPhone 8. It didn't help that there were three little spots that I kept seeing in my photos, imperfections that I came to realize was probably the result of damage to the camera lens.

With the iPhone Xs announcement, I'd hoped that Apple would, at least, continue to sell the iPhone SE - dated as it is/was. Seeing it EOLed was probably the worst aspect of that announcement.

So, grudgingly, when orders opened up for the new iPhone Xs back in September, I ordered one. It sounds like a simple decision, a simple action, but it was something more. At the time, I rationalized my decision a couple of ways.

First, I told myself that I'm adept enough with electronics that I could overcome the failures of the design in the iPhone Xs. After all, I thought, how bad could it be? I was sure that, while it might be mildly frustrating at times, I would be able to use the device and would benefit from the new camera. What was surprising was how wrong that prediction turned out to be.

From a size standpoint, I thought the iPhone Xs would end up being about the same size as the iPhone 8. Having used an iPhone 6s Plus for a year, I knew that that phone was just way too big, but I was under the impression that the iPhone X brought something close to a "Plus" size screen into the smaller non-plus sized body. While I knew that it would be larger, I wasn't prepared for how large the iPhone Xs turned out to be.

This week, after almost three weeks of using the iPhone Xs, I switched my phone back to my iPhone SE.

As I used the iPhone Xs, a number of issues because clear. First, while the whole notion of Face ID seemed like an idiotic authentication interface to me, in practice, it proved worse. While I'd initially been impressed with it's ability to recognize me and unlock the device -- almost like it authenticated without effort -- as I used it day-in-and-day-out, I began to notice that it seemed like it failed more often than it succeeded. Running the out-of-the-box software configuration, Face ID fails when you're wearing sunglasses. In other words, when you're using the device outside, you have to stop what you're doing, lift up your sunglasses and force the device to authenticate. It's worth noting that the fingerprint sensor on my iPhone SE worked equally well inside and outside, without regard to whether you were wearing sunglasses.

Face ID also often failed to work if I tried to access my iPhone while it was sitting on my desk in front of me, at a table in a restaurant or a number of other locations that I tried to casually access my iPhone from.

So, imagine yourself at lunch with a colleague and you hear your phone chime indicating that you'd received a text. With iOS 12, the default information displayed on the lock screen is that your received a message from a specified contact. In order to view that on the iPhone Xs, you have to pick up your phone and look at it, something that can be disruptive and be perceived as rude. In contrast, with the fingerprint ID, you can simply touch your iPhone, look down, and you can see whether the text is important or not.

I can't tell you how many times I repeatedly went through scenarios similar to this, particularly since, for many text messages, all you really need to do is determine whether the message is important or not. And worse, because the iPhone Xs locks quickly, you can find yourself having to repeat the whole exercise multiple times in during a single window of receiving multiple texts. It's not just bad, it's terrible.

Additionally, I thought that the lack of a headphone jack might simply be an inconvenience that I would get used to. In practice, I found that this also wasn't true. I should note that, prior to my iPhone Xs, I used my iPhone for all of my telephone communications. It's also worth noting that, while I have Apple Airpods and I use them as a Bluetooth headset when driving or some other activities, when I need to make calls where I want to ensure the audio quality of the call, I use the Apple earbuds that came with the phone. Often, sitting at my desk, I would have my iPhone SE plugged in and charging while using the earbuds for a call.

With the iPhone Xs, initially I brought the lightning based earbuds along, but I soon found myself trying to decide whether to charge the iPhone or to plug in the headset and make a call. Over nearly three weeks of use, I found myself hesitant to make phone calls. Eventually, I put my Lighting earbuds into my backpack and only took them out once or twice. Essentially, whether it was just psychological or practical, I realized that my iPhone Xs was barely functioning as a phone.

Another aspect that anticipated how much of a problem it would be was the lack of a home button. I wish I could tell you how many times I used a "Sweep Up" gesture on the device with no results. It doesn't just fail once or twice, I would estimate the failure rate at greater than 20%. You might argue that the case is a contributing factor, but I don't think that's actually the case. This failure to function has a significant impact on how well the device functions day to day. For example, if you have a problematic app and you want to "double-tap" the home button in order to bring up the multi-task screen and kill the app, you may find yourself trying for 20-30 seconds before getting the interface to change. That's just one example. It happened more frequently than I would have imagined, ane particularly frustrating if you're trying to do something like kill an app.

----

So, after a particularly frustrating round of receiving texts on my iPhone Xs and wrestling with the device functionality just to access them, I decided that I was done with it -- that I was going to switch back to my iPhone SE. I figured that I could simply carry the iPhone Xs around, using it for it's camera functionality and, since it was sometimes convenient to have the larger display, use it as a wifi-based device when I needed the larger display. If I need network access, I could simply use my iPhone SE to create a hotspot for the Xs.

I wish I could share with you the immense sense of joy that I felt once I switched back. Holding the smaller device in my hand brought me an unexpected sense of elation.

At this point, I've been back on my iPhone SE for a couple of days and I'm much happier. The iPhone Xs is sort of like having a pocket-sized iPad. At this point, give me old, obsolete Apple over the new Apple. Whether you want to blame it on Tim Cook, elements in the org further down, or something else, the company is just not doing design and functionality the way that they used to.

How Dreamforce Drives a Wedge Between Our Business and Salesforce

If you follow my Twitter feed, you've probably already seen the framework of this story. In essence, I've been telling variations on the same story for a couple of years. On the one hand, we've been working to expand our adoption and use of Salesforce within our org. On the other hand, we try and register multiple people for Dreamforce in an effort to inspire people and create evangelists and power users, but the process that they use to handle registration and housing makes that impossible. In the end, the only real result is frustration with Salesforce and few, if any, of our staff going to Dreamforce.

Once again, that's the story for us this year. While attempting to work with our Salesforce account team to try and make arrangements for a group attendance this year, Dreamforce registration opened up and, before we even had a chance to confirm a discount code, our hotel options were gone.

No Hotels = No Dreamforce
Since a significant portion of the people we'd want to bring are not local, the lack of hotel options means our people won't be coming. It doesn't matter if they could still register for the conference; if there are no hotels, there's no place for them to stay.

This issue is amplified by the way that Salesforce announces the opening of Dreamforce registration. Essentially, you can sign up to receive an email alert when registration opens. For the past few years, that has been on a random day at 6:00am Pacific time, typically in close proximity to a three-day holiday weekend. In short, the timing seems to be targeted to a time when fewer people are in the office. In other words, they hope to reduce the rush by targeting a time when a percentage of people will be caught up in "you-snooze-you-lose" filter.

Did I mention their classic customer support answer, "that's a bummer man"?

Or, in case you want to raise the issue with your account team, you'll get the timeless canned response, "I don't control the San Francisco housing market. Have you considered AirBnB?" I think that this is written on some internal messaging FAQ sheet that Salesforce distributes.

Keep in mind that this year, prior to registration being announce, I was attempting to work with our Salesforce account team to try and arrange multiple people attending the conference. During that time, they told me they had no idea when Dreamforce registration would open up, but they expected it to open soon.

In the past six months, we've been considering a broader expansion of seat licenses. We've also been looking at the Salesforce Analytics package. We also hired a new executive in charge of IT, someone who you might say is a key influencer in terms of software decisions. Working with our account team, what kind of provisions were we able to make to get that person to Dreamforce. None.

Dreamforce Promotions Serve as a Constant Reminder
There's nothing worse that having something constantly rubbing an open wound. And yet, Salesforce is constantly bombarding you with reminders about Dreamforce. I just grabbed this image from the Salesforce login screen.

That's right, it's been weeks since we've already determined that there are no hotels, no way to go -- but Salesforce is still promoting this conference. I've also received emails saying, "only a few days left to save $200 on the conference." This was also weeks after I'd already determined that there weren't any hotels.

These promotions don't just piss me off, they piss me off enough to be vocal about it. Instead of tempting me to go to the conference, what this constant promotion does is remind me about how -- for all of it's promotion of "helping us to succeed" -- Salesforce doesn't appear to be very tuned in to what we, as customers, think would help us be successful.

What these promotions remind me of, is how Salesforce leaves me, standing alone, trying to gain adoption for their software. It reminds me of the hassles of trying to commute to the event, the frustration of crowds that are too large, the pointlessness of learning tips and tricks, deploying them, and seeing NO change in user behavior.

As someone who's been the Salesforce admin and used it on a daily basis, if I'm frustrated and unenthusiastic, or worse -- pissed off to the point where I'm not willing to spend the company's money to attend -- then I think you've got some problems with your user conference. What's more, without enthusiasm and evangelism, any adoption KPIs that you have are likely to suffer (assuming that anyone is actually watching). Carrying that slippery slope even further, with diminishing internal champions and constant skepticism about usage and utility, come contract renewal and the perpetual (of late) 7% price increase, I think Salesforce may be looking at a 7% increase on a significantly smaller number of seats. But, even as an admin, that's not really my problem. 

What is the Purpose of Dreamforce?
Let's put our design thinking hat on again. If, as a customer, so many aspects of Dreamforce are frustrating me, I'm sure I'm not alone. If that's the case, what is the purpose of Dreamforce?

Once upon a time, the event functioned as a user conference. Dreamforce was a helpful way for people to learn tips and tricks and explore best practices with other software users. It also provided a vehicle for the company to promote new software features. But somewhere along the way, things changed. Several years ago, it seemed like there was a shift in focus for a percentage of the crowd. I liken it the crowd that followed the Grateful Dead -- the crowd changed following the "In the Dark" album in 1987, but things really began to crest in 1994/95. Essentially, there was a portion of the crowd that came to party or hang out outside of the event and an interest in the music almost seemed secondary (at best). In many ways, Dreamforce seems like it's taken a similar path. A couple of years ago, one of the young women in the office said her friends had contacted her, told her that a group of them should head up to San Francisco for Dreamforce -- lot's of parties. FWIW, she didn't even use the software.

The parties. Is this the purpose of Dreamforce? Last year, I stayed in a hotel in the city, but I didn't go to a single party. I've been to these events in the past and often I try to go just as a research point for my own marketing programs. But battling crowds for bad free food and some drinks on somebody else's dime -- not worth it. Even the event a couple of years ago where they gave us a 10 year customer award, meh.

The simplest way that I can summarize is -- most of these parties have no utility. There are few networking opportunities, few times when you actually engage with Salesforce people who can speak about your account -- or much of anything related to your business or industry. If I have to go to a work-related party (as opposed to an event with my friends), I'd better get something work-related out of it. Again, no utility. But even the late night after parties are too crowded.

File this under Yet-Another-Reason-Not-To-Go-To-Dreamforce-Alone -- if you have a colleague there, you can have discussions about work and software while you're there.

Ultimately, I don't think I have a good answer to what the purpose of Dreamforce is. But I don't think Salesforce does either. Over the years, I think it's been lost, muddled with so many objectives that it's kind of a mess. We, the customers, have been lost. Perhaps they've forgotten about the band and the music (I'm not talking about the Gala) -- they're just there for the party.

iOS11 Continues It's Buggy Reign of Terror

One morning last week, I received an unusual call from my wife. She was in Japan and, back at the hotel after a day of meetings and a work dinner, she'd tried to set an alarm for an early morning meeting the next day. Suddenly, her iPhone 8 began restarting. Repeatedly. She tried a number of different things to fix it, but when they didn't work, she called me.

After some online searching, I was able to find a path that temporarily fixed it. As you may have guessed by now, it looks like what she was experiencing was the "Calendar bug" in iOS 11.1.2. Later, I was able to text her an alert her to the 11.2 update that patched the bug.

Yet Another iOS 11 bug -- who could have imagined?

And then there's Apple Pay
And so, that same day, I updated my phone to iOS 11.2. It turns out that beyond the patch the highlight feature that's been added with iOS 11.2 is the, "you should really turn on Apple Pay" feature.

After you install iOS 11.2, the phone says that you need to "Complete the Installation Process". It then takes you into an Apple Pay configuration wizard. Don't want to enable Apple Pay? Then iOS 11.2 drops a big red notification bullet on your iOS settings app icon. The only way to turn this off is to either enable Apple Pay or dive into the settings in Wallet and turn off Apple Pay Cash.

About a day after I did this, I was suddenly greeting with a pop-up screen that basically said, "Don't you really want to enable Apple Pay?" I'm not sure what triggered this -- or whether it will recur -- but it occurs to me that when you're having to advertise "an upgrade" in your operating system software in order to gain adoption, you've got some underlying issues with the feature.

Put a different way. I've gone several years without enabling Apple Pay. What could possibly drive the product team to think that if I hadn't activated it, that this feature was the trigger that would make me choose to enable it?

Instead, what this is another example of is Apple's software team starting with the conclusion that this whole Apple Pay Cash system would work more like their imagined model if it was enabled universally. In other words, this design, this feature set, is entirely centered on Apple's imagined needs for themselves and completely disregards my needs as a user. Fundamentally, this is what's wrong with today's Apple on a broader scale.

Apple's new slogan should be "Think marginally different than Android".

And One Patch Follows the Next
Of course, about a day after installing the 11.2 update, there was iOS 11.2.1, another patch to address a camera auto-focus issue introduced with the 11.2 update. It goes without saying that they still haven't fixed a whole host of animation or screen presentation bugs that affect operation.

• The calculator will still miscalculate 1+2+3 if you type it too fast.
• My email client often shows emails in my VIP mailbox, even though I have not received any emails from VIPs. For whatever reason, it errors in it's calculation and display of these mailbox roll-up folders. Additionally, these numbers will linger for a length of time.

As I've noted, it really makes you question the products coming out of Apple these days. These days, when I look at my iPhone, I never think, "this is the best phone I've ever owned." Instead, virtually every time I look at my iPhone, I'm struck by how much of the damn thing has been broken.

Apple at CES: Third Parties Try to Bridge Apple Design Flaws

In my browse through the tech blogs this morning, there are several stories about CES and Apple products. At Recode, Ina Fried wrote about how absent Apple products were, not as a featured and displayed products, but as influencers and market drivers. In past years, even though Apple doesn't participate in CES, Apple products provided technology cornerstones that shaped many of the products at the show. This year, apparently, Apple's featured role has been replaced by Amazon's Alexa.

Meanwhile, MacRumors highlighted products that were essentially third party solutions for Apple's recent design mistakes. You know them, you hate them, so here are the latest bandages to overcome your newest Apple product flaws.

First, from iPhone case maker Incipio, comes an iPhone7 case with a headphone jack and a Lightning port. Of course, this post doesn't say whether it includes the ability to start and stop music with the remote button on your earbuds, but hey, it's a start.

Next, from Griffin, there's a magnetic breakaway technology solution to make the USB-C port work sort of like a MagSafe connector. You've kind of got to see this one to believe it. While I have to give them kudos for trying, I couldn't see myself buying something like this and it goes to show you just how elegant the original Apple solution really is. To me, the part that drove this home was posted in the Macrumors comments. "What annoys me even more is the lack of orange/green status lights for charging in the new machines." I still have a MagSafe connector on my systems and I'm already morning their loss.

Oh, and I don't have a link for this, but another thing I happened across last week. Kingston announced "the world's largest thumb-drive" at 2 TB. It's a big drive, but what it's not is USB-C.

The Eroding Mac: Preview Bugs - Yet Another FAIL

So I came across this bit of news on MacRumors today: macOS 10.12.2 Users Urged to Avoid Using 'Work-in-Progress' Preview App to Edit PDFs. Essentially, Apple in new strategic direction has rewritten the PDFKit and broken a bunch of functionality. Not just broken, but broken to the point where several experts are recommending that you don't edit PDF files in Preview.

Why would they release a crappy version of some core functionality? Well, here's what the article says:

Apple wants to use a common foundation for both iOS and macOS. However, it was released way too early, and for the first time (at least in my experience) Apple deprecated several features without caring about compatibility. And to make things worse, lots of former features are now broken or not implemented at all, meaning that we had to add lots of workarounds or implement stuff on our own. And there’s still work left to be done. 

10.12.2 introduces new issues (it seems that Apple wants to fix at least the broken compatibility now) and of course fixed almost none of the other issues.

Once upon a time, desktop Macs and functionality like the PDF engine in Mac OS were important to Apple. While it may seem like minor functionality, the core graphic rendering engine is more than just a free tool for casual users, it's yet another essential component for the professional user class.

The writing is on the wall. The Mac platform is dying and Apple can't shovel dirt on it fast enough.

Another Day, yaArticle on Eroding Apple Product Vision

I came across this one on MacRumors today, ostensibly talking about the upgrades that didn't happen to the MacBook and MacBook Pro. However, there's more here again about the internal erosion at Apple and the lack of vision.

The source of this MacRumors piece is this Bloomberg article that's probably also the driver for the Business Insider post I wrote about most recently. You may want to check out the Bloomberg article, but be warned -- like reading about politics these days, it's likely to just piss you off and raise your blood pressure. It's really too bad that Steve Jobs can't return and take over the company again.

Seriously though. All of this was probably predictable. If you take the formula of a cash cow product like the iPhone and throw that into the mix, at some point the people who are running all of the programs are going to be the managers, not the innovators. For them, it's going to be all about protecting that real estate that they think that they've won. They're not developing innovative computing products because they're not a hungry computer company any longer. Now, they're a fat cat phone company focused on trying to keep all of that phone money coming in. They are Sony, sitting on the laurels of their Walkman brand.

Hey, there's an innovative idea, maybe the next MacBook Pro can come in a bright yellow plastic case. Well, just so long as we make it thinner and eliminate some useful ports...

Confirmed at Apple Store: iPhone 6s Reservation System Sucks

With all of the frustration that I've been having with Apple's terrible online reservation system, I was a little worried that I might be complaining a lot while being stupid -- that if I just went over to the store, I could wait in a line that would give me access to a separate lot of inventory that was different that the online reservation system inventory.

However, any optimism on my part was quickly squashed with a visit to the Apple Store. What I learned / confirmed:

• The only inventory available in the store each day is through the online reservation system.
• There is no line at the store. The reservation system is supposed to help save you a trip to the store
• There is no way to do the leasing / upgrade program without purchasing in the store.
• There was virtually no surprise at my frustration with the online reservation system from the clerk at the store working the door.

But probably the number one thing that I confirmed with a trip to the Apple Store is that the online reservation system SUCKS.

It really is kind of astonishing to me how a brand that I used to value so highly could become one that generates such anger in me now.

One Week Later, iPhone 6s Reservation System Still Sucks

I've been out of town for a week, so I didn't bother playing the iPhone 6s reservation system game all week. This morning, I dove in for a new round only to see that Apple's system still sucks. This morning I actually thought I reserved a device at Stanford only to be denied then returned to Stanford as an option for a second chance at reserving it -- which likewise failed.

My best guess is that Apple has some sort of widget or cross-site authentication working that my browser blocks (as I run a fairly locked down browser).

On a side note, while watching some television show or another, I happened to notice one of the characters using an iPhone and, probably because of the timing of when it was filmed, the older iOS interface was displayed on the device. It's an annoying reminder that, once upon a time, the iPhone used to be the best phone ever. And yet now, simply because of the user interface, I often find myself wanting to throw my iPhone across the room -- particularly after a number of repeated attempts to active some control that requires an extremely precise interaction with the touchscreen. That's the way that they've designed the new UI. Terrible.

Apple's UI Design Sucks: More Examples of How Apple has Lost it's Way

I happened to catch a clip of an old interview with Steve Jobs on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. It was early 1990s Steve Jobs, but one of the things that he said about the Macintosh was this notion of bringing "a liberal arts mindset to the computer". If there is anything that embodies a classic Apple value, it is -- or was -- this notion of good design.

Good design isn't simply interesting colors and appearances that make you go wow, it's functional, meaningful, and with purpose. And this aspect is where Apple has totally gone off the rails. A perfect reminder of it, one that I find myself interacting with nearly every day, is the iTunes interface on the phone. I've collected some screenshots for you.

This shot is taken of a view inside a playlist. Each time I launch iTunes on the phone, Apple defaults to taking me to "My Library". It doesn't matter whether I use playlists or whether I was last using playlists. While this is an improvement from the previous generation that always took me to Apple Radio, it's annoyingly dumb.

But there are multiple aspects that suck. Here you'll see the tiny control for playing the playlist. Alternatively, you can click on the specific tune to get it to play.

Another aspect that sucks is Transparency. I've already written about how frustratingly in the way transparency is on the desktop. Here, it's grabbing color from the album image to shade the background, making the UI more difficult to navigate. Even more useless is if you build a playlist using multiple artists. It uses the background from the first album in the playlist.

The team at Apple is probably patting themselves on the back for how they extract color from the album image to define the color palette, selecting the background and then the contrasting colors. But being clever doesn't make it good design. Here's an example of a playlist that is quite difficult to read.

Controls that don't work well suck, regardless of how cool they look
The primary function of iTunes is to make it easy to organize and play the electronic music files that you have stored on your device. If it's difficult to operate the controls, then the UI sucks. If your using iTunes and you're listening to a track, the track progress indicator is a thin little line around the play button on the track and a thin line running through the middle of the controller at the bottom. If you want to fast forward or rewind, you need to interact with line -- or attempt to find another screen to control the software.

You might expect the three dots on the right side of the screen to open a set of options including the option for a larger set of controls, but it doesn't. Instead, it opens the option to add or remove from the playlist.

The main function of this software is to play music and yet it makes the controls for doing this nearly impossible to access.

This is why any love that I may have had for Apple products is being trampled and crushed. New Apple is high fructose corn syrup sweetened and tastes nothing like the product we've grown to love over the years.

Apple's iPhone 6s Reservation System FAIL: Round 2

A new morning and another attempt to use the Apple iPhone 6s reservation system. This time, I tried to be extra prepared. I logged into the Apple site before I selected my phone in an effort to bypass the post selection login. At 8:00am I was ready with a phone selection, but the site doesn't actually show California as an option until about 8:01. I'll blame Comcast's caching for that. Once again, the first store has no inventory, so I wound up trying various South Bay locations. Stanford had a 128GB, so I decided to try that.

Oh, you found one? Time to login. That's right, Apple's Online Store registration doesn't interact with the iPhone registration reservation. Same ID, same credentials, but you have to reenter them. And by that time, as you can imagine, the phone was gone. Again.

This morning made my decision for me, however. I will not be upgrading my iPhone. As I have done with other stores and products that deliver a poor experience like this, I'm walking out. This customer experience is not good enough to get my money.

I remember purchasing my iPhone 5. At the time, I was extremely happy with it. It was the best phone I'd ever owned. The hardware, the design, it was beautiful and elegant. To this day, I still don't put it in a case. The only reason that I might even need to upgrade it is because of the software. That's right, what's wrong with my existing iPhone is that Apple broke it. Everything that I hate about my current phone revolves around how the updates that they've made to iOS have made my phone function poorly. Increasingly poorly. Like software bloat.

Sure I might like a faster processor and more memory, maybe even a better camera. But all of those things, they won't fix the OS. They won't fix the software.

Apple, if you're reading this, you'll find some unopened iPhone accessories sitting in the basket there, the electronic shopping cart in whichever store might happen to have iPhone inventory. I left it there and I'm not coming back for it.

Salesforce.com Email Gets a New Sync

As you know, many of us out in the Salesforce landscape have been struggling with the roadmap on Outlook and email Sync. I've written about it multiple times in the past. I've had a number of discussions with people about this issue, but nothing from Salesforce suggesting any real resolution.

In case you don't want to click the links, let me summarize the issue:
In recent versions of Salesforce for Outlook (the Salesforce-characterized path for adding email from Outlook into Salesforce), Salesforce changed the software so that it validates an Exchange back end. If you're using POP/IMAP on Outlook, Salesforce for Outlook doesn't work any longer (Salesforce will claim that non-Exchange was never "officially" supported). Outlook Connector (aka Original Outlook sync) also used to support POP/IMAP, but it's being EOL'ed with Winter '16.

In the lead up to Dreamforce, Salesforce sent out email about a new mobile app and Chrome plug-in that would be made available starting at Dreamforce. The app and plug-in would allow users to add email from Gmail to Salesforce. This product was revealed to be SalesforceIQ.

During Dreamforce I made multiple attempts to learn more about SalesforceIQ. Unfortunately, it seemed like the primary focus of the SalesforceIQ guys was to sell their SalesforceIQ for Small Business, a product that sort of falls similar to the Desk.com / Salesforce Service Cloud relationship. Since Salesforce.com recently acquired RelateIQ around this product, it's understandable that the team would be focused on promoting their original product, but it became a bit painful trying to get info about anything else.

On the fourth day, I finally found an open guy in the SalesforceIQ section, but when I asked him some questions, he didn't really know the answers and referred me to another guy with more expertise. I then got to watch another demo of SalesforceIQ for Small Business while I waited another 20 minutes.

But rather than go through all of what I went through, let me tell you about the product.

In Chrome with the plug-in installed, if you're using Gmail, it will pop a window on the side of your Gmail interface similar to the Salesforce for Outlook window. You can use this to add email to Salesforce and much more. However, if you add email to Salesforce with attachments, it does not handle those (according to the expert guy there).

There is another feature labeled "Feed" that will go through your inbox and recommend activities for you to follow up on. This is supposed to be the real strength of SalesforceIQ. Theoretically, if you're a sales guy, this will help remind you to contact the people you might have forgotten about. If you're somebody like me, it seems to work more as an added reminder to follow up with those sales people who've sent you random email trying to sell you things (e.g. conference sponsorship) -- a modern inbox version of "green elf has been eating all of the food lately".

One upside of this solution is that the Chrome extension works on both Mac and PC. The downside is that, if you've gotten used to using "Email to Salesforce", the BCC method of adding emails, you may find this provides less functionality.

Meanwhile back on the Ideas Portal...
You may recall the ideas portal thread RE POP/IMAP sync in Outlook. There are still no new updates to that thread. Further, if you have sales people that are used to using Outlook, this still doesn't address their issue.

SalesforceIQ is sort of a fix, but not really complete -- like a chair with three legs; you can use it, but you need to be careful. and it may not really be any help.

Caltrans Offers $25K to Solve California's Transportation Problems

The other day I learned about Caltrans innovation contest, "$25K to find a new way". As it happens, it came up in a discussion about how the size of the price seemed unmatched to the scope of the problem -- sort of like sitting in New Orleans with 60 MPH hurricane winds swirling around, and offering $25K for innovative ideas on hurricane preparedness infrastructure. You know it's going to get worse, but it also seems a bit late to make a real impact.

Here in the Bay Area we're being inundated with more and more people, more and more cars, more and more traffic. Population growth and the corresponding increased load (i.e. traffic) is drowning our ecosystem. For every one story office building or business that is torn down to build three-story high-density town-home condos, you need to multiply each residence by 1.5 cars and probably about one child or so. And yet, there are no new schools being built, and the best answer for traffic seems to be adding the occasional lane here or there.

Finding Solutions
With the influx of so many new people into the Bay Area, the Republican solution would probably be to classify this as an immigration issue. Too many people coming here, destroying the existing way of life. And so, taking everything they learned from Sid Meier's Civilization 2, they would probably demand to "build city walls". Sadly, building a wall is an all-to-common solution presented, not only in modern American politics, but in the various dystopian, post apocalyptic stories -- walls and the ugly evil that lies outside the walls.

Forget the physical wall. Imagine a legal wall, something like California citizenship or a California preferred status -- something along the lines of status on an airline. First, imagine how it might work: I've been a California resident for over 20 years, this entitles me to use the "CA Preferred" lane in traffic, to park in the "CA Preferred" spaces. Maybe it even gives employers incentives to hire "CA Preferred". But if you think for one minute that something like a "CA Preferred" status might incentivize a company like Google to hire a local resident, I think you're crazy. Walls will not solve that which ails us.

Another grand solution is High Speed Rail. Oh, hey, we're working on that. But for those of you high-speed rail fans, here's an interesting story from the Atlantic about, "how come our trains can't run like the trains in Germany". While I found it kind of funny that the folks on the east coast look to Europe as the benchmark for train service (I think Japan makes a better benchmark), it still provides some very interesting assessments from the guys that run the train system in Germany.

Specifically, the report warns against putting stops in sparsely populated areas because that slows trains down. Put them only in the center of major cities, recommends report author Eric Eidlin, as Germany has done. The ICE train, for example, makes no stops during the two-hour journey between Berlin and Hamburg. France, on the other hand, has often dispersed train stations around the urban periphery and the result, Eidlin notes, has been not just slower trips but less-efficient connections to other modes of transport. “California should carefully consider the economic development and access challenges that French cities such as Aix-en-Provence and Avignon have experienced with exurban and peripheral stations,” Eidlin writes. “Thankfully, California has made the wise decision of siting most HSR stations in central cities. However, one notable exception to this is the proposed Kings/Tulare station east of Hanford, which would be located in an exurban location.” Also, the Milbrae and Burbank station locations will be in less accessible areas.

It's kind of funny that the consider Milbrae(sic) a less accessible station since that's your connection to SFO. Then again, there's a broader bit of humor in that, even the "convenient" Bart train between SFO and San Francisco takes nearly 40 minutes as the route takes you out to Daily City before bringing you into the city. The reality is that none of our transportation systems are built with any sort of hub and spoke approach nor any sense of express.

Perhaps the funniest "serious" solution that I heard was a recent KQED broadcast talking about the ferries on the bay. There's talk of dredging and adding ferry service into Alviso. Tired of the Google bus? You may be able to take a boat ride to the South Bay.

Root Cause
Part of the reason we're all suffering from these transportation problems is that the Bay Area operates as a bunch of independent cities that just happen to be near one another. There is no grand plan nor is there the ability to come together and deliver a strategic regional solution. Independent cities means that, if Mountain View decides to let Google or Linked In expand their campus and add 10,000 new workers -- and if that, in turn, creates monster traffic on 85 and 101 -- Mountain View can sit back and say, "bummer for you surrounding communities, we're getting our tax revenue. Highway capacity is the state's problem." (Levi Stadium vs Mt. View parking is an example of this.) And because there is only a small part of it that seems like a city problem, each city feels a limited concern about zoning and the impact of replacing old one-story buildings and lots with 3-story high density homes. They are just a few more buckets of people -- they aren't the flood that's drowning the area.

Meanwhile, transportation infrastructure like an efficient rail, light rail, subway and bus infrastructure -- it might be nice, but not in our backyard.

My Solution
The ideal world would see us with a train system like Tokyo. Train stations would be like mini-malls, centers of commerce. There would be a mix of express routes and slower lines with more frequent stops. An ideal would be rail lines that ran down the middle of every freeway and express way across the bay area, visible from the freeway so that those stuck in traffic can see how much faster the train gets there. If every major road in the Bay Area had rail / subway interconnections, I think we'd be in much better shape to handle the relentless influx of people.

Unfortunately, this probably doesn't fit within the scope of Caltran's contest. So here's another thought. Legislate that all CA businesses over a certain size must offer "work from Anywhere" ala Automatic (Wordpress). If nobody has to go to an office, you've got to figure a certain percentage reduction in traffic.

Reason #17 Why I Hate Salesforce: Dreamforce

Yet Another Frustrated Salesforce.com post. Once upon a time, I used to think that Dreamforce was an incredibly valuable experience where people could learn about the incredible capabilities of the Salesforce.com platform and understand the future of software. Now, Dreamforce has become another grand FU to its customers. I say Reason #17, but I just made that up because I've lost count.

I really wasn't going to go to Dreamforce this year. Between the crowds and the lack of available hotel space, Dreamforce is kind of like getting enrolled in classes at Stanford, but being forced to commute every day from Fresno. Or Truckee. I've written about this in the past, both with my past experiences attending the conference and the frustrations trying to get back and forth to the event.

As bad as my previous experiences were, I knew that this year would be worse. When I lived in Mountain View, Caltrain was ten minutes from my apartment, so it wasn't impossible to grab the train to the city every day. When I moved to Campbell a year and a half ago though, all of that changed. Traffic makes just getting to Caltrain a pain in the ass. It's 30 minutes to get to the Caltrain plus the long Caltrain ride to the city.

Planning and the Corporate Sloth
As corporate decisions go, we always debate about sending people to Dreamforce. The corporate sloth moves slowly. The first unwritten rule of business is never commit to anything, and that is particularly true when it comes to things that involve spending company money or pulling company resources away from doing things like answering phones and stuff where you can see people in the office. Investment in things like training -- particularly on software that we still struggle with adoption on -- it's just crazy. It doesn't really matter that anyone that has attended has come back as an evangelist. We remain skeptical.

Inevitably, by the time our company makes a decision on Dreamforce, the nearest available hotel is in Fresno. Or Truckee.

Why Am I Going?
Last week, our account rep sent me a teaser sneak preview from Salesforce. At Dreamforce, they're talking about announcing an overhaul of the UI. Pages will be built differently. Lot's of stuff. It's one of those things -- if you work with Salesforce, this will probably be important to learn about. A necessary trip into the barrel. Because Salesforce hasn't found enough ways to make us, their customers, feel uncomfortable while they rifle through our wallets. Because help and training costs money, like luggage on an airline. Dreamforce, aspiring to be an airline-like experience. Without really going anywhere.

My last really positive experience at Dreamforce was when I went with two of my colleagues who were experiencing Dreamforce for the first time and we stayed in a hotel close to Moscone. But that was all the way back when Stevie Wonder was the band. Since then, I've been to several others, but long commutes and over-sized crowds to not equate to positive experiences.

Perhaps the funniest thing is, San Francisco is expanding Moscone to make it better for larger conferences like Dreamforce. It doesn't matter that the real problem with Dreamforce isn't conference space, it's hotel space. While I used to think it would be crazy to move Dreamforce to a different city, I think that the crowd has overrun the local. Perhaps Las Vegas would be better. At least then, when some of us don't go, it will be less crowded here.

I suspect that my hate for Salesforce will only grow during my upcoming, exciting week of frustration at Dreamforce. I can't wait.

Why We Tune Out

The phrase "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out" famously championed by Timothy Leary revolved around the idea of opening up to cultural changes and a new world. For the conventional elements of society, this was a call for openness, for a willingness to consider the possibilities of a counterculture. In our modern Silicon Valley, we're often faced with similar calls. "Imagine a world with a new kind of taxi... Imagine a world where you no longer use maps to plan a trip... Imagine a world where everyone shares the details of their private lives, their thoughts, and their locations... Imagine a world where anyone can get published and the whole world can read what they wrote, but that each thought was limited to 144 characters..." Every day our evolving technology asks us to tune in, turn on, and hop on for the ride.

But then there is what Hunter Thompson wrote about Leary in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the other end of the the lollipop, the rest of the candy that we are forced to eat. Take Facebook as an example. We're told that Facebook brings us this all encompassing electronic world. We can keep up with our friends, keep up with the news and learn about our world. It's like a blend of television, the newspaper, your family photo album and more. And yet, it's not really any of those things.

I recently found myself logging into Facebook after a long time away from the service. After a number of visits to see what I discovered, my take-away was far different. These days my feed tends to look more like a ping pong game of political topics. First, some friend or family of a "conservative" ideology will serve up some political crap talking about how terrible the president is or how the gays are destroying, I don't know, values or something. Next up some "liberal" friends posting stuff about the people that think the federal government is taking over Texas. Then there's more of the political back and forth. Then a picture of someone in a bathing suit -- the friend of someone I used to know, but I really have no idea who they are. Then more politics. Then something about a puppy. Then more politics. Then a friend of somebody I used to know with a puppy. It's like they've built a "news" feed out of Two and a Half Men reruns. In short, it's unwatchable. Half an hour on Facebook and I haven't learned anything about anyone or anything. Oh, and I forgot to mention the ads. They're in there to keep some separation between the political ping pong, sort of like a net. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The algorithm that is "tending" the light faces the same problem that network TV programmers face -- garbage in, garbage out. It's hard to curate when you're curating crap.

Linked In has followed a similar trajectory. Where once there was a tool for job prospecting, now there is this platform for brain teasers and Successories inspirations. If you look carefully on LinkedIn, you might notice some jobs posted or linked to by people in your feed, but it's easy to miss as they tend to look a whole lot like the sponsored posts and the somebody liked somebody else's link to a published press release.

Theoretically, these are the two great social media platforms. And they've evolved into being virtually unwatchable. Why? In part, it's because the things that feed engagement metrics are also consuming the other end. It's like the giant serpent eating it's tail. The things that often get republished, liked and linked are the spark plugs, pushing the ideology buttons with emotional click bait. And the algorithm feeds on it. You don't get long form journalism on Facebook. It's more like Headline News and Headline News hasn't been watchable for a decade and a half.

In the broadcast world, as network TV became unwatchable we moved to watching cable networks. Now many of us have exiting TV entirely. The great benefit of OTT programming is that you only have to watch content. There's no need to put up with the social engineering of "breaking news" clickbait.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn -- I still have accounts on all of these platforms. And yet, not one of these platforms provides me with content that I consume on a daily basis any longer. Blame it on the ads, the video, the layout, the algorithm -- social media jumped the shark for me some time ago. What's more, I don't think that this content is even worthy of a binge-watching, Netflix-does-Facebook experience. And when you consider some of the crap that you can sit through, binge watching on the iPad as you wander around the house, it's a sad commentary on our content.

Endless Frustration: Salesforce.com and Email Sync

With support for the Outlook Connector coming to an end with the roll-out of the Winter '16 release, Salesforce admins everywhere are researching email integration solutions. That is, of course, unless you're someone who had already previously found Salesforce's default level of email integration to be way too crappy.

As an Salesforce Admin, I'm not too engaged in day-to-day customer activity, so my own need for email integration has been rather limited. Additionally, since I live on a Mac and most of our users are on PC (and like using Outlook), the ugly dark pit of Outlook integration was something that I tried to hand off to the IT organization -- my best efforts were usually applied to a strategy of "I didn't get any on me, did I?" In that context, one of the reasons we actually chose Salesforce.com as a CRM platform was that it was actually better at email integration than some of the other options that we looked at way back when. Funny, right?

The great "shift" to Salesforce for Outlook by Salesforce was the first big "Fuck You Customer", at least in the domain of email integration. At the time it was introduced, new 64-bit Windows systems were being rolled out, but the Outlook Connector didn't work with them. Instead, Salesforce decided to go down this path of Salesforce for Outlook. Sure it doesn't work with a lot of older systems. Sure it only syncs emails to leads, contacts and opportunities (like email to Salesforce). Sure we've put in specs that say that it requires Exchange. But you can administer this one from the cloud -- sort of. The bottom line was that it sucked. Hard. And when I spoke to the product managers at Dreamforce, they told me, "It should work with POP/IMAP -- we haven't really seen any issues -- you should just move forward using it." And they also said, "basically, you just need to use it, because this is the future -- there will be no more development on Outlook Connector." It sucks. Just eat it.

Now, here we are several years later, and instead of making it better for all of their users, they've alienated whatever percentage it is that does not use Exchange. You could look at it as a mistake, but four years of IdeaExchange complaining about email integration and an overall lack of any sort of rapid response is a pretty good indication that this is no accident. There's no one over in charge of email sync saying, "oops, this looks like it was a roadmap mistake, our bad." No, instead this has the aroma of a plan.

What I think that we're missing here is the "hidden" price increase. Now, you will pay for email integration to Salesforce.com. It is an ala carte option, available only through their partner network -- unless you are Microsoft email customer. For Microsoft email customers, Microsoft will subsidize the cost of your email and calendar integration.

It's moves like these that push you to consider competitive solutions. In the bigger picture, what that means is that Salesforce is increasingly moving the company into a place where they are ripe for disruption. As someone who has gone from the strong like end of the spectrum to the really dissatisfied end, I'm sure that I'm not alone. Given the right circumstances and the right solution, I could see a mass erosion of the Salesforce customer base -- sort of like the death of Syquest.

I still haven't determined the best path for email integration. Right now, I'm looking at Match My Email, which seems to be the best balance of Gmail and Outlook support. But, as I look through the details, I can't help but wonder -- why doesn't Salesforce do this themselves? Oh, because Fuck You Customers.

That Sucks: Salesforce.com and POP/IMAP Email Sync - Another Update

So we're ticking down the days to the Winter '16 release and the end of life for Salesforce's Outlook Connector. As you'll note from my previous posts here and the update here, the roadmap looks like this: if you want to sync your emails to Salesforce, your email needs to live on an Exchange server, or you'll need to pay for a third party AppExchange app (most likely at a per user seat license charge).

The roadmap to SUCKS was probably backed when Microsoft signed an agreement with Salesforce. After all, if you're using Gmail, how can Microsoft force your hand to switch to Microsoft's hosted Outlook365?

But I like to check for updates on these things so you don't have to. And the latest update is... No Update. For fun, I like to periodically check the Idea Exchange post and see if community specialist Kristie Garafola has posted any updates, but it's been three months and nothing new.

You'll still see the "Considered For Future Roadmap" label on the idea, but who are we kidding -- that's been there for quite some time. They might as well label it, "The Check is In The Mail". Please let the excitement around this issue dissipate enough that people forget about it by the time we EOL the Outlook Connector. But if it will make you feel better, you can click the Thumbs Up button!

Apple iOS 8.4: Better, But Still No Love for Apple

Another day, another Apple update that doesn't fix some of the core interface design problems on the platform. It's the sad reality for those of us that use Apple products -- each day is a reminder of Apple's commitment to this crappy interface design. Transparency is not gone. It still fills my screen with useless data -- data that I consider far more offensive and invasive than some of the skeuomorphic elements. With the recent update to iTunes on my phone, I see that they've finally recovered from the stupidity that is, "let's open in Apple Radio as the default." It didn't matter how many times I switched to playlists. It didn't matter how many times I was reminded that I didn't like Apple Radio and that I didn't want to use it -- Apple always wanted me to land there. It was another example of the underlying message of the OS these days, FU Apple user.

With the new iTunes, I see that they've brought transparency to the background of playlist screens. Why? Because, color!

Meanwhile, as I feel increasingly alienated and disconnected from my Apple devices, I find that less and less interest in updating the apps or backing up the device. Oh, my phone fell on the ground. Bummer. The battery doesn't seem to want to hold a charge, should I update? Why bother.

Salesforce.com: This is Enterprise Software Support?

I'm currently "on hold" waiting for Salesforce.com customer support to get back to me. You'll note that on hold is in quotes because I'm not actually waiting on a telephone line. Rather, I'm waiting for a call back following the customer support agent's attempt to telephone me from a number that I don't recognize to a desk phone that I almost never answer. So here I am, sitting in limbo with a problem that I would characterize as urgent. Like waiting for the cable guy to show up. And thinking to myself, so this is "Enterprise Software Support".

I think I've written about this topic before, but as it's timely, it deserves repeating. Several years ago, Salesforce.com restructured their customer support offering. If you wanted to pay several thousand dollars a year, you could get premier support. Premier support is pretty nice. If you have 50 seats or more, you get a dedicated person who, supposedly, acts almost like another system admin for your company. But the main thing you got from Salesforce was a phone number -- you could call them if you had a problem. 

For the rest of us, the rule is pretty much, "don't call us unless your business can't connect." Got a problem? You should start by asking somebody else. Ask a friend, ask a neighbor, ask someone in our community. That doesn't help? Well, you can always submit a form on the help and training site. In which case, our typical response time is 2 business days.

Keep in mind that, for my seat alone, our business pays close to $1500 per year. And we have a number of seats. Also keep in mind that we've been customers since the mid-2000s. I mention that because I think it's important to contrast the support that I've received from Salesforce.com with the support that I received from the team at AgileBits (Heroes of Customer Service) last year. This is the company that makes 1Password. Keep in mind that the entire amount of money that I spent on 1Password probably doesn't amount to 10% of the cost of on year's seat license for Salesforce.com.

Monetizable Tiers or Table Stakes?
As a consumer, you're often sold on two tiers of service -- a business level and an everybody else level. Businesses have expectations and needs. If a business has problems with certain types of services, it starts a chain reaction. As a consumer, we know that we can't really call Google for help with Gmail, but the amount that we pay for customer support feels reasonable when measured against what we pay.

But for a business selling software services to other businesses -- and a service that many price at the upper end of software in it's category -- you expect a better baseline level up customer support. Whereas once I considered it a Salesforce.com strength, I now consider is a rather significant question mark on the platform. Consider, in nearly ten years as a Salesforce customer, I've probably needed Salesforce customer support a total of four times. I'm at about once every three years or so. Does that justify a premier support charge?

Southwest Airlines: Monetizing Imaginary Money

Southwest Airlines is a great example of one of those love-hate relationships that just make you crazy. On the one hand, with their unique approach to service, Southwest Airlines revolutionized our expectations of low cost airfare. So often, when you see some of the financial results come out for the various airlines and Southwest is profitable while other airlines struggle, you can't help but cheer. In part it's like, "see, you can be a nice, fun environment with low cost airfares and still be profitable." But regardless of however many quarters Southwest outperforms them financially, they never seem to learn the good lessons and the airline industry as a whole seems to strive for the gold-standard in sucktastic customer experience, the cable company.

But yes, in the midst of all of that, there are aspects of Southwest Airline's service that you want to love. Price is one. Once upon a time, you could hop on a plane to LA and return for under $100. These days, that number looks closer to $200, but it increasingly comes with caveats.

Over the years I've spent many hours in airplanes on many carriers. There have been a few years where my percentage of travel was close to 50% -- not as great as some, but not insignificant. It used to be that there was a certain amount of credit given to seasoned travelers. For most of us that traveled on business, your main goal was a streamlined trip through the airport travel experience. That meant a carry-on because you didn't have time to waste with checked baggage. It also meant your were flexible with your routes; changing flights was no big deal. But when most of the airlines started charging for carry-on baggage, suddenly the overhead space became crowded with Aunt Susie and Uncle Pete's luggage. They didn't care about efficiency, they just wanted to save money -- or they were afraid of losing their luggage.

For business travelers and premier flyers, "perks" like boarding early weren't about anything but getting in front of the chaos that comes with boarding. Aunt Susie and Uncle Pete, meandering down the aisle, trying to find their seat. Putting their bag in sideways because the "carry-on" didn't seem like it would fit. Filling the overhead bin space with bags of snacks and souvenirs that they didn't have room for in their big checked luggage.

Southwest gets lots of these travelers who don't travel frequently. Families. People on vacation. People who may rarely fly. Their system is great if you're one of these travelers, but the chaos sucks for experienced business travelers that benefit from efficiency. No assigned seats means if you arrive for boarding at the last minute, you'll be lucky to find a middle seat in the back of the plane and your bag is probably getting checked -- no waiting around sending those last minute emails before you board. Probably the worst part of that is that you could have probably squeezed your bag in somewhere, but those people filled the bin with sideways bags have taken that space and often the Southwest flight attendants just let the chaos happen.

These are just a few of the reasons why, for business travel, Southwest kind of sucks. If you add in that, in the old days, their was no in-flight entertainment system (admittedly now an extinct feature), as a business traveler I never chose Southwest for long duration business flights. It's one thing to put up with the chaos for a 1 hour flight, it's another thing entirely to deal with that for four hours or more.

I think that this is part of the reason Southwest tried to create a "business class" boarding process and associated fare. Unfortunately, it doesn't really address the issues with late boarding and last minute, it just puts you at the front of the line when they open it up. For most Southwest flights that I've been on since they added it, it's not a time when people are actually getting seats, it's just one more thing that the gate attendant has to say before they begin letting everyone else on board.
Where Southwest Outperforms the Other Airlines
As noted, Southwest Airlines sucks for business travel on so many levels, but they actually do offer certain advantages when it comes to the number of flights. While the traditional carriers like United, American and Delta may offer only two or three flights per day to primary travel destinations, Southwest often runs six to eight flights. Don't want to catch the 6:00 am flight to LAX, take the 8:00am or the 10:00am. You can get Southwest flights throughout the day. When you're planning your departure from your home airport, it's usually easy to predict your schedule, so lots of flights may not seem like a big advantage. But where it is helpful is -- if you know you need to arrive in LA by 5:00pm, you select an early flight, say 12:00pm, and if something happens to delay that flight (incoming flight problems for example), you probably have two or three options for later flights that will still get you to LA in time.

Historically, this has also been true with return flights. If something happens and your on Southwest, there are probably several more flights that day that could get you there -- you probably won't be stuck overnight. As I mentioned in my Twitter posts related to this, in the past, I've also happened to show up at the airport early and been able to get on an earlier flight just because it wasn't crowded and they let me go as standby.

Unfortunately, twice in the last year, I've booked flights on Southwest specifically because of the multiple flight advantage, then managed to wrap up my business and get to the airport early, hoping that I might be able to get on an earlier flight. Both times, the Southwest customer service rep informed me that I couldn't change my flight without paying more than $100. When I wrote about this on Twitter, here's what Southwest Airlines customer service had to say:

and this was their comment on me noting the "no change fees" promotion in the jetway boarding my flight.

With nothing to do in the airport on Wednesday afternoon, I had lots of time for Twitter.

Technically speaking, Southwest is correct. If you're changing the ticket and there is a new corresponding fare and you're not charging something extra to make that change, it's not really a change fee. But while legally your statement may be accurate, as a customer, it feels a lot like a "fee" to change. Put a different way, if you have to argue the nuance of language with your customer as though you are a lawyer, you've already lost a marketing battle, particularly when the nuance involves just how much it's going to cost the customer.

Still, when you drill down into it, the tone underlying this debate is essentially something like this, "you're trying to get over on us." You selected one of our "loss leader" low cost fares, and now you expect to be entitled to all of the 'privileges' associated with our airline. By "switching" from one flight to another "not full" flight, you cost us. Parenthetically speaking, what does this change cost? It costs the potential to charge the increased far that you would have paid if you planned to make that change. In other words, it costs imaginary money.

On Wednesday, when Southwest didn't want to change my flight and put me on standby on one of two earlier flights, they saved themselves $200 of imaginary money. $200 that I didn't spend, $200 that they didn't make, and $200 that they didn't lose by just making the change for free.

But if that's not bad enough, here's why Southwest sucks for business travel. Here's an example snapshot from my corporate travel engine. I picked a Tuesday in June for an example "trip" to LAX. As you can see from the screenshot, I have a couple of options (I limited them to Southwest between 10:00am and 1:00pm for simplicity).

If you were booking through the Southwest Airlines web site, you'd see this fare as a Wanna Get Away fare -- the fare with no changes available. But, from the corporate travel engine, it's just another flight. You can dive into the terms, but there's another factor here -- the corporate travel engine just looks at the price, $148, and bases policy calculations on that number. Want flexibility? That fare isn't shown and, if it was, it would be out of policy because this fare has set the baseline.

Then again, we should be happy that Southwest fares are even displayed. For years, if you wanted to book Southwest, you had to go outside of this system and jump through corporate hoops just to select them.

So congratulations Southwest Airlines. You're watchful management of my airfare has saved you hundreds of imaginary dollars over the past year and all you really lost was the "happy" that used to be connected with the "customer" when you described me.