3 Design Aspects I Already Hate on the iPhone 8

With Apple announcing it's September 19th event and the expectation that they will roll out the new iPhone 8, Right now, everything we know about it is really based on rumors and info extracted from Apple's Homepod firmware. That being said, among the media that track Apple's upcoming products, confidence about many aspects of the iPhone 8 is high.

Based on the current rumors, I thought I would share a few aspects of the iPhone 8 design that I hate and consider deal-breakers for purchasing an iPhone 8.

• No Audio Port. I know that they'll probably never go back on this, but the idiocy of this decision is unparalleled. The lightning-based headset sucks. It doesn't work on anything other than an iPhone 7 (7s, 8, perhaps, but no iPad, Macbook, Mac, or other device). Apple would probably counter with, "what about AirPods?" I have a set of AirPods that I use with my 5se. They work okay, but there are times -- like when I'm in the office with lots of Bluetooth devices -- that the cable just works much better. Better audio, more reliable.
  
• Facial recognition-based unlock. This rumored feature seems like its designed to appeal to the technology pundit class. Technology companies love this idea. Customers, not so much. See XBox One Kinnect original implementation for a reminder.
  
• The stupid lens protrusion on the back of the phone. This design flaw was introduced in the iPhone 6 and we've been living with it since. It's essentially a "must use case" feature. Wanna make the iPhone 8 better? Use that difference in space between the current design and a flat back design and fill it with more battery. Yet another reason why the iPhone 5se design is better.

Anyway, maybe you're excited.

Yet Another Dreamforce FAIL

I've posted about this quite a bit on Twitter, but I felt it was time to put together a longer synopsis of the great FAIL that is Dreamforce registration.

First, background. I've been eight Dreamforce events over the years. There are upsides and downsides to the conference, but if there is one overarching theme for Dreamforce, it's oversized crowds overwhelming insufficient resources. And it's been that way at every Dreamforce I've been to. Sometimes it is simply an annoyance -- like long lines or the inability to get into a session. At other times, like at last year's Dreamforce Gala, it's kind of surprising that people haven't gotten hurt.

When you look at the history of Dreamforce, you see aspects where things evolve to address the crowds. Aspects like multiple locations for lunches and conference sessions reflect thoughtful efforts to address the crowds and adapt. Even the one year where they brought in the cruise ship as an additional hotel, while it may have been a failed experiment, was a step to addressing the oversubscribed hotel market.

Last year was the first year when I actually saw Salesforce change the conference web site to say that the conference was sold out. This happened a couple of weeks prior to the event (it's possible that it may have happened in year's past, but I didn't see it). Practically speaking, the conference was sold out long before that time, as the available hotel space was essentially gone about a day after registration was opened.

Salesforce has known about the sold out hotel problem for several years (thus, the cruise ship), but when you're using (and selling out) all of the available space, broadly, across the region. there are actual commodity limits that you face. And this brings me to the core strategy that Salesforce has employed in an effort to address this. Their strategy is essentially this:

"Surprise, registration is open!"

Last year, Salesforce introduced a tool that would email you as soon as registration opened. As it happened, I was at San Jose airport waiting to board an early morning flight when I received the email (6:05am), and I jumped through hoops to register before my flight boarded. I was able to book the Hotel Nikko (my preferred hotel) that morning. I also reached out to my colleagues, but they didn't register until that afternoon and the nearest good hotel they could find was the Hilton Financial District.

This year, we'd been planning to send a larger group to Dreamforce and help build some sales manager / power user / evangelists (over the years, one thing that we've found is that when our staff attends Dreamforce, it really opens their eyes to the much broader potential of enterprise software). So, the morning that I received the email announcing that Dreamforce registration had started, the first thing that I did was email my colleagues.

It's worth noting that this year's announcement and registration opening came on the Thursday, June 29th, right before what was for most people in the states, a four-day fourth of July weekend. Many people take the entire week of the fourth off and quite a few leave before that weekend arrives. Not only was this true for our staff, I later learned that our Salesforce AE was also out on vacation at that time. Again, remember the strategy:

"Surprise, registration is open!"

By the time I'd emailed my colleagues and gotten through the registration screen, I couldn't find the Hotel Nikko on the list. Part of the problem is that they way that the Dreamforce registration portal shows available hotels, it can be difficult to sort them. As I searched through the list, it wasn't just the Nikko that was unavailable, all of the Marriott properties in the convention center area were gone. I opted for the Hilton, knowing that some of my colleagues were Hilton loyalists (I used to be, but having "lost" hundreds of thousands of Hilton points multiple times, they're no longer a preferred choice).

While dealing with my own registration, I decided to text one of my colleagues to see if she'd seen my email. She replied via text, asking me to register her as she only had her phone and poor network access. One of the great failures of the Dreamforce registration process is that there is no way to register multiple attendees at the same time. This is also true for their room reservation system. That means that, if you want to make reservations for your entire team so that they can stay at the same hotel, you are hosed. By the time I'd finished my colleagues reservation, the Hilton was no longer an option and I had to put her in the Parc 55.

As the minutes ticked away, I realized that, if my colleagues that I'd emailed hadn't started the registration process on their own already, they were hosed. And if they were on vacation, forget about it. Since some of our colleagues were coming from the east coast, they needed hotel rooms -- commuting wasn't an option. In short, any plans that we might have had for a bigger, more useful Dreamforce -- hosed.

The Aftermath of Registration
As you can imagine, I was feeling pretty frustrated with Salesforce that morning. To have registered twice in succession and not be able to have our team in the same hotel? What's worse, it just kept eating at me, particularly as it became clear that my colleagues hadn't seen my email, hadn't registered, and were probably on vacation. I decided to draft an email to our Salesforce AE with a CC to ceo@salesforce.com. It was not a short email.

Of course, I didn't hear back from our AE until a week and half later, on Monday July 10. Like many of my colleagues, he was on vacation.

When it became clear that I wasn't going to get a quick response back from my AE, I turned to Twitter. I sent out my first tweet at 9:43 that morning. After numerous tweets that day, @Dreamforce began following my Twitter feed. I continued to post complaints about the process and my experience. On July 10th when our Salesforce AE replied, his only real response to the Dreamforce issue was, "Unfortunately, I have no control over the SF hotel market but I had clients last year that had success renting places on Airbnb or VRBO, so if you are still looking you could explore that as an option." 

I continued to post my issues about Dreamforce on and off again until, on Thursday July 27th, almost a month after registration opened, Salesforce's Twitter Customer Support team @asksalesforce replied to me asking if there was anything that they could do to help. They actually referred me to @Dreamforce, where they'd been following me the entire time (hats off to their team for actually trying to help).

But, in case you missed it -- or anyone at Salesforce is actually listening -- I'm still pissed off about the registration process. In this report card, you failed to meet expectations. To make it easy for you, here is a simple list of things that I think would make this better.

• Why can't Salesforce Account Execs work with customers to understand their expectations and intentions for Dreamforce? Your internal team knows when registration will open. If they are intend to bring a block of users, why not create a select number of carve-outs for pre-registration and hotel booking? 
• Why not let customers know when registration will open in advance of the date? That way, rather than being stuck with whatever situation you're in when registration opens, you can plan for it -- if it's important to you. Seriously, even concerts let you know in advance what day that tickets will go on sale.
• Why not allow people to register and reserve rooms for up to four people? Dreamforce is better when it's groups of colleagues attending at the same time. And frankly, the idea that each user gets stuck with whatever hotel (as opposed to housing in groups) is just ridiculous.
• The Promo code option in the registration on the first day is not helpful. I spent several minutes searching the Internet for a promo code to apply. If nothing else, allow people to apply one retroactively, since the housing block allocation is the problematic window.
• There should be something like a waiting list for hotel rooms such that, if a reservation opens up at a hotel, you draw from the waiting list pool first. That way more people could have access to their preferred locations.

Frankly, I suspect that it's likely that Salesforce does provide carve-outs for their top tier customers. I'm sure that their sales teams also work closely with them to ensure that their needs for Dreamforce are met. What that says to me -- along with the "that's a bummer man. I don't control the San Francisco hotel market, so I can't do anything for you" response from our Salesforce AE -- is that there is a layer of customer lip service going on here. As customers, we matter in that way of "customers matter" slogans, but not in us, the guys who've been on the platform for over 10 years now, but who don't have hundreds or thousands of seat licenses. At Dreamforce last year, they gave us this 10 year customer award.

At the time, I couldn't help but notice the phallic shape of the award. It was probably the funniest aspect of Dreamforce last year, as I couldn't help but feel like it doubled as a reminder for all of the times I felt like I'd been screwed by Salesforce. But hey, I'm sure it wasn't intentional. 

Just for the record, it's now been over two months since registration opened. I'm still pissed off. And I still haven't heard anything from Salesforce except for the aforementioned contacts.

Symptoms of Apple's Design Ailment

As I've posted a number of times before, I believe that Apple has lost it's design "vision", and their products are devolving into me-too answers and mass-market gimmicks. Take for example, the Touchbar on the Macbook Pro. It's not hard to see that the Touchbar is a useless POS, and more of a gimmick that a functional tool. But don't take my word for it, here's a great little piece from a former Apple employee. Here's the Macrumors post that lead me there. Definitely worth a read.

No More United - Extracting Myself from The UA Ecosystem

Despite previously having frequently held status on United Airlines, over the past couple of years, I've completely quit flying the airline. United was an acceptable airline in the old days when you had status and they'd automatically put you in Economy Plus. However, once they stopped doing that and started putting me in the seats with less space in the back of the plane -- let's just say that I don't consider their standard economy seats to be a minimum viable product.

Unfortunately, I'm still somewhat rooted the United Airlines ecosystem. I have a couple hundred thousand Mileage Plus miles. I still haven't ever used miles to book a flight. What's more, I've been carrying a Chase United Explorer card for several years, but it's become increasingly useless for any of the ancillary benefits -- really, the "no international transaction fees" is the only practical thing it does for me.

Then recently while searching Hipmunk for flights for a family trip, I noticed the results that were showing up from United Airlines included this rollover caveat: "Basic Coach: No Overhead Carry-ons Allowed; Seats Assigned at Check-in; Last to Board; No Elite Qualifying Miles; No Changes or Refunds." I'd read something about United Airlines adding this "Basic Coach" ticket, but this was really the first time that I'd seen mention of it appearing in my flight searches. And when I saw it, it spoke to me like a vision that said, "You will never fly on United again."

In that moment, I realized that I needed to extract myself from the United Airlines ecosystem.
So the first problem is, what do I do with about 200K of United Miles that I have no interest in using to fly on the airline. I always used to spend miles for flight upgrades, but somewhere along the way, that became a pain in the ass, particularly once I quit flying United. So, what do I do? Do I subject friends or family to an experience on an airline that I don't believe meets a minimum threshold? Do I save the miles to use on some international code-share flight? Do I just burn the miles on some overpriced merchandise I don't need from the miles-for-products catalog? The reality is, if there was a simple answer, I would have probably cleared the bank out some time ago.

Next there is the Chase United Explorer card. While I haven't received those passes for the United Lounge for two or three years now (what's up with that?), if I do happen to use my United miles on a United flight, I think that the Chase card may provide some ancillary benefits. In that way, it's probably best not to cancel it until I resolve the mileage bank. And yet, every day that I hold that card instead of another card that could provide me with a more useful return is another wasted day in the United Airlines ecosystem.

And while all of this may seem crazy, it's weighing on my mind enough that last night I had a dream about trying to resolve the whole situation. I was at an airport trying to get help from the United customer service counter and they just kept ignoring me, talking among themselves. They reminded me of Salesforce employees at Dreamforce. I gotta get out of this crazy United ecosystem!

Another Apple Design Faux Pas - Magic Mouse 2

I came across this tidbit about Apple design yesterday in a story with leaked details about the iPhone8. While providing comments about the potential new iPhone design, the article mentioned other recent poor Apple designs and referenced the Magic Mouse 2. Specifically, it noted that when Apple redesigned the Magic Mouse 2 to include a rechargeable battery, they put the charging port on the bottom of the mouse. In other words, when the mouse needs to be recharged, you can't use it while it's charging.

This is the part of the story that really caught my attention. Sure, Magic Mouse 2 is old news, but the fact that this product was actually released by Apple seems telling. This is another example of where form outweighed function, where the needs of actual users came second.

If you've ever had the battery die when you were using a wireless mouse, I'm sure you're familiar with the panic of running around, trying to find a battery to replace it and restart whatever you were in the middle of when the mouse died. Now imagine having to stop what you're doing, put your mouse aside, and wait for the mouse to charge.

Sure, with a quick charge, there might not be much of a wait. But the obvious solution -- following a 30+ year long legacy of mouse designs -- would be to put the connector on the top of the mouse so that you could keep working while charging. That would have been a design that considered functionality. The bottom of the mouse? That's more "let's just sweep the ugly parts underneath the rug" design.

Now admittedly, to date, I've bought one magic mouse (v.1) and returned it shortly after I bought it. It wasn't even for my day-to-day system. In short, this aspect of the Magic Mouse 2 design probably would never have come to my attention had I not seen mention of it in the article. Still, I find it yet another indication that Apple's design group has lost touch with the usage requirements of their customer base. Go fashion, f--- function.

The Battle Over Smaller Airlines Seats

I came across this article over the weekend. It will make you pissed off about airlines again.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-28/u-s-court-rebukes-faa-over-incredible-shrinking-airline-seat

This is a perfect example of when regulations could force an industry to meet a basic standard of quality because clearly, the market is not responsive to the airline customer.

Design, Remodel, Alienate? The Hotel Nikko in San Francisco

I'm back from a stay at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco for Semicon West. The hotel completed a remodel earlier this year. Remodeling is an interesting canvas for design, not exactly a blank canvas, but pretty close. I found the results surprisingly disappointing. Normally, I probably wouldn't write a blog post about something like this, but, from a design point of view, some very strange decisions were made. I'll elaborate shortly, but first, some background.

The Hotel Nikko - My Go To Hotel in San Francisco
While I'm not sure exactly how long the Hotel Nikko has been in San Francisco, I do know it's been there a long time. Located in the Union Square area, it's conveniently located to many of the tourist attractions and, more importantly for my team during conferences, just a few blocks from the Moscone center. Hotel Nikko is a Japanese hotel chain, so many aspects of the hotel have always appealed to Japanese colleagues staying in San Francisco.

I began staying at the Hotel Nikko several years ago. With multiple conferences in San Francisco each year, I've had the opportunity to stay at numerous hotels in San Francisco, ranging from the premium, globally branded hotels to the tiny "boutique" hotels than you can find at the bottom of the tradeshow housing price spectrum. One of the things that struck me the most the first couple of times that I stayed at the Hotel Nikko was the unusual layout in many of the rooms. Rather than the row of rectangles set side by side that you typically get with most hotels, the Nikko featured unusual layouts, like rooms with inexplicably long entrance halls. What I soon discovered was that this unique layout contributed to minimizing the sounds you hear coming from your neighbor's room. I contrast this with some of the premium hotels that I've stayed at where I could hear nearly every word of the conversation in the room next door. This aspect alone made the Hotel Nikko my preferred hotel choice in San Francisco.

At this point it's probably worth noting that many of my colleagues tend to prefer the globally branded hotels with broad-reaching loyalty programs like Hilton, Hyatt, or Marriott. The Hotel Nikko has a loyalty program, One Harmony, but there is only one other hotel in Hawaii in that program, so unless you're traveling to Asia frequently, the One Harmony loyalty program is quite limited. Despite it's limitations, I was able to achieve their top tier status -- Exclusive -- simply through stays at the Hotel Nikko. That probably gives you some idea of how much I've stayed at the Nikko. We liked the Nikko so much that, when we had our wedding in San Francisco, the Hotel Nikko was the first place that I contacted to make arrangements for my friends and family to stay. You can safely say that I've been a loyal customer.

The Remodel Designs Me Out
The Nikko closed down in December for about three months to remodel most of the rooms. I'd actually been able to see a draft example of the remodel during my stay at Dreamforce'16, but Semicon West was the first time that I was able to experience the actual remodel. Within two minutes of my arrival in the room, I quickly realized one major failure with the updated room design -- there was no desk.

For some reason that is still entirely unclear to me, the people designing the Nikko remodel eliminated the desk from the room. I noticed it immediately, as the first thing that I began to do when I arrived was to begin setting up my workspace -- or at least, that's what I intended to do. At that point, I went back down to the front desk to request a different room, one with a desk. The staff at the front desk were very courteous, but informed me that none of the rooms -- except for the smallest ones -- had desks now. Apparently, it was not an unusual complaint; they told me that they'd heard the issue from others, and that they would share it with management. So off I went back to my deskless hotel room, questioning the design decision, what my colleagues would thing of the deskless room, and whether the Hotel Nikko would continue to be my preferred hotel in San Francisco.

Of course, the removal of desk wasn't the only thing that had changed, but it certainly focused my attention on the details of the remodel that had issues.

• The dresser / credenza that replaced the desk and dresser. As I posted on Twitter, this design reminds me of Graceland circa the 1970s. Or perhaps a Holiday Inn near Graceland during that time. This piece provides drawer space, but it also houses the coffee maker that used to be above the minibar. While I know hiding the coffee maker cleans up some of room lines, I think it was reasonably out of the way in the old style.
• The vanity station in the bathroom next to the sink. This is a new addition, the closest thing to a desk in the room. I actually used this area as a desk, but the downside was my laptop was living in the splash-zone of the sink. And my desk chair had no back. And made noise whenever I slid it in or out. But other than that, it sort of worked as a desk.
• The "updated" bathroom. For my wife and I, the old version of the Nikko bathroom served as a benchmark for things that we wanted in a bathroom. We were even using some of the size specifications as a guide for what we wanted when we renovate. There are a number of small changes that make the new Nikko bathroom less desirable. First, while we didn't have a tape measure, the tub seems smaller. Additionally, they used to have a spray hose for rinsing your hair at the tub, but that has been removed. In the shower, they changed from a two-nozel showerhead plus showerhead on a hose to an overhead "rainshower" head and a hose that features one of those bar nozels that only has a soft spray, no changeable settings. After using that for a week, I found it to be functionally poor. 
• Workmanship. Perhaps the single clearest example of issues with the renovation was the toilet seat in my bathroom. I've stayed at many hotels and used many bathrooms in my life, but this is the first one that I've ever seen that was assembled so poorly. To me, the toilet seat was the antithesis of the sensibilities I expect from a Japanese hotel. 

Here are a few photos to show you what I mean.

Hotel Nikko Credenza - gold, mirrored top, reminds me of Graceland

The new, rather useless showerhead on a hose.

The toilet seat at the Hotel Nikko aligned rather poorly.

A Japanese plumbing fixture, but not Japanese quality workmanship

Who's your Target Demographic?
Another interesting aspect of the post-remodel Hotel Nikko is the way that they are marketing the hotel or who they define as their target demographic. There are several aspects to this:

Dog Friendly.
Prior to the renovation, they'd actually added an outdoor area for dogs, but with the renovation, they've elevated their self promotion as dog-friendly. In some ways, this seems to me like a strange strategy for a hotel to pursue. Don't get me wrong, it seems increasingly common to see people with their dogs out at shopping malls and restaurants, particularly places with outdoor seating. Clearly, there is a significant segment of the population that are dog-lovers. At the same time, there is also a percentage of the population like myself and my wife, with allergies. Dogs are a potential allergen. For me, when I see this dog-friendly promotion, I'm always wondering if dogs stayed in my room previously and if that's going to be an allergy-issue. And don't get me started on the anxiety over fleas (enhanced by a run-down hotel experience in the skin-drying Las Vegas air). So I have to wonder whether the heavy dog-friendly promotion generates as much anxiety for others as it does for me.

To highlight the dog-friendly theme, they've added a stuffed dog to the assortment of decorative pillows in the room. The stuffed dog can also be purchased for $25. If you happen to be traveling with a child, you may find the stuffed dog to be a frustrating addition to the room. At the same time, it's probably worth noting one guest we overheard in the lounge (with multiple children) comment that the Hotel Nikko wasn't particularly kid-friendly. While we didn't evaluate the particulars of this, it seems like a funny contrast compared dog-friendly and the stuffed dog.

The Video Loop
A dog similar to the stuffed dog plays a starring role in a special Hotel Nikko video loop that they put on the TV when they do the turn-down service. Normally, I don't watch these kinds of things, but when you're staying for a week, you start to see these kinds of details. Here's a short synopsis of the video loop.
Scruffy guy and lady arrive separately at the Hotel Nikko. They are different in separate rooms and the don't seem to know one another. Scruffy guy spends the day sightseeing in San Francisco. The lady, meanwhile prepares for and gives a presentation to a large meeting room of people. In the early evening, the lady goes to the hotel gym to do yoga. The scruffy guy, meanwhile goes swimming in the pool. Following his swim, the scruffy guy is sitting on the outdoor deck and the live version of the stuffed dog runs up to him. He starts petting the dog, and the lady appears, clearly enticed by his dog petting. Next, they're off to dinner together at Anzu Restaurant in the hotel. Then watching a singer at Feinstein's in the hotel. Then, closing scene, they're looking over the San Francisco skyline (from the Marin side). Clearly, they've hooked up.

And suddenly, it all comes together. Of course, neither scruffy guy nor the lady seem to need a desk to work on, but it's an interesting demographic / lifestyle loop.

The Bottom Line
While I'm sure that there will still be some interest from our Japanese colleagues to stay at the Hotel Nikko, having spent a week there without a desk, I found that it's kind of deal breaker for me. It's kind of disappointing really -- we were actually quite fond of place before.