AT&T should shut up about Verizon iPhone

AT&T Wifi Box in Starbucks store in San Mateo

I see over on Business Insider that AT&T’s PR boss is already bashing the Verizon iPhone that will be announced next week.

AT&T should shut up.

I still can’t use my iPhone in parts of San Francisco and at CES? AT&T was nearly unusable.

AT&T has absolutely NO credibility to bash its competitors. It has, simply, provided horrible service over the past three years and I’ll be very happy to leave it, even if top-end speeds are slightly slower.

Why am I happy to leave AT&T? Because it has proven unable to support us at big events. Yes, SXSW was pretty good. But the World Series? Unusable. CES? Unusable. Web 2 expo? Unusable.

They refuse to make the kinds of investments they need to make to keep our service up and running and now they are trying to bash Verizon?

Hello AT&T. Every Verizon phone last week at CES worked just fine.

You should shut up. Maybe after 40% of your customers leave because you mistreated us for so long your service will be faster. But it won’t matter at that point because you mistreated us for so long.

Sincerely, Robert Scoble, a guy who has paid you many thousands of dollars over the past three years to have your horrid service.

UPDATE: Oh, and now I see that Verizon is going to be offering iPhone/Verizon users unlimited data plans, in contrast to your lame 2GB cap. Screw you.

Advertisement

The walking tour of CES (first look at the eBay augmented reality shopping app)

Samsung's booth

I recorded a 45 minute walking tour of CES where I walk through almost the entire CES from one side to the next. On the tour I met up with Bre Pettis, founder of Makerbot Industries, which is a 3D printer that really rocks. You can watch the whole thing which has no edits, just a straight walk, but did you know I can link you to very specific pieces of video on YouTube? Here, let’s take a quick tour.

Just to underscore how crazy CES is, right after I met up with Bre we saw an electronic cigarette booth next to an exercise machine booth.

1. eBay’s fantastic augmented reality shopping app.

2. Walkthrough of LG’s booth.

3. A look at Motorola booth signage. Very cool LED fence.

4. Walking through Microsoft’s booth.

5. Walking through the Intel booth where we met up with artist Hugh Macleod.

6. Walking through Panasonic’s booth, where we talk about some of the “3DTV without glasses” tech (it doesn’t work well enough for your home).

7. Walkthrough of Samsung’s booth (I want its 75-inch TV, best of the show in my opinion).

8. Walking across a freeway to get to the third hall. Yes, CES is THAT big!

9. We say hi to Epilog and see their laser engraver. Bre praises them. While there we see Dave Taylor, of “Ask Dave Taylor” fame.

10. Walk through MakerBot Industries’ booth, Bre’s company. While there we see Brady Forrest, who runs O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 and co-chairs Web 2.0 expo, plus he was the one who started the Ignite events.

11. Walk through RIM’s booth where its tablet, the PlayBook, was getting a lot of attention.

12. A walkthrough of Kodak’s booth.

13. We end up at the CNET booth. They announced the Motorola Xoom was the best of the show. (You can see my video of that from the other night).

Whew, I’m tired, and glad I’m back home where I can just did through the thousands of posts journalists did at CES.

Here’s some “best of CES 2011” wrapups:

** CrunchGear.
** Engadget.
** Gizmodo.
** Laptop Magazine.
** PopSci.
** PCMag.
** Huffington Post.
** Boy Genius Report.
** Popular Mechanics.
** Technologizer’s Last Gadget Standing.
** TechRadar.

I’ll have the final word tomorrow morning on CNBC at about 7:30 a.m. Pacific Time. See you then!

Robert