under the wire

Steve Jobs and Sennheiser Mics

My favorite Steve Jobs anecdote comes not from an Apple employee, but an A/V technician who hooked up the CEO’s audio equipment for videoconferences many years ago.

The story went something like this:

Steve only uses one particular microphone — a Sennheiser — for all his teleconferences and presentations. It isn’t even the best mic for many situations, but he liked the way it looked and the way it felt when clipped on his shirt.

With most people, the A/V guy wires you up, runs the cable down your shirt and clips the mic on for you. But Steve insisted on putting the mic on by himself. He wouldn’t even let me touch him.

The Red Cup

(Submitted to LitUp’s “Take This Job and Shove It!” essay contest.)

I was almost done scrubbing the tables. I hated table duty. The crusty sponge only got slimier with every wipe, staining my finger tips with the smell of mildew for days. The final touch of Simple Green didn’t help much; it just gave me the spins. Lunch tables couldn’t get filthier than the ones at Paramount’s Great America. But I just had three more to go till I could return to my shift at the cash register.

And then I saw it — a red Dixie cup. And I knew my life would never be the same.

*

When I was 15, my group of high-school friends told me there was a mass recruit happening at Great America, and they were all going to get jobs there. “Sure, I’ll join you guys!” I chirped. Young and clueless, we were excited about the idea. What could be better than a group of friends working together at an awesome amusement park that we went to every weekend anyway? We’d get free admission to the park, cuts in line for the Top Gun rollercoaster and all the free junk food we want. And maybe if I was lucky, I could meet a cute girl after an intimate bumper-car encounter, or something.

Six of us one Saturday crammed into a mom’s minivan and headed to Great America’s mass recruit. When we got there — a large, dim room that looked like a warehouse — the recruiters gave each of us ticket numbers as if we were at the DMV. When they called my number, it was my turn for a two-minute interview asking the basics: How old are you? Why do you want to work here? Where exactly would you like to work? And most importantly, are you OK with earning $5.75 an hour?

Then we lined up to get our waists measured, and they handed each of us a navy belt with a bronze buckle, a royal blue polo shirt and a matching Great America baseball cap. We had to buy our own khaki pants (I still don’t understand why) and they couldn’t be baggy or saggy, even though that was in style back then.

Our dreams started falling apart when the recruiters assigned each of us a number for our work stations. No, we wouldn’t all be working together in one place. We were being split up randomly at different restaurants and rides throughout the park. I drew the short straw. I ended up at a burger joint in Kidsville.

So not only did I not get to work with my best friends. I also didn’t get to make eyes at a single cute girl. I served burgers and gave change to parents who couldn’t even fathom the idea of paying $30.75 for three hamburger meals with fries and sodas.

“Are you kidding me?” a huge black man said to me. “That much?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled quietly.

“That’s ROBBERY!” a chubby white mother yelled.

“I know. Sorry.”

Little did these people know how much money I made. I’d have to work two hours just to eat one of those burgers.

And no, we didn’t get free food. Our managers forbade us from taking food home, even though we had at least 20 extra burgers left at the end of every day. All leftovers had to go in the trash.

Over a month, I became close friends with a Filipino boy named Sean who worked at the Dippin’ Dots cart in Kidsville. I was delighted when Sean helped me to a free serving in a paper Coca Cola cup.

That same day though, a manager somehow caught me gorging on this delicious Ice Cream of the Future during my lunch break and reported me. I received a formal written warning and a lecture from my manager Tina, a 22-year-old Asian woman with a pony tail, pale skin and puffy cheeks.

“I hope you learn from this. I’m disappointed because I see you on track to becoming a future manager,” she told me.

I didn’t understand why she’d think that. Tina seemed to scold me whenever the opportunity arose, and I wasn’t particularly good at anything. I remember the first time I wrapped a hamburger with tinfoil — more like crumpled it into a ball until it loosely covered the buns — and Tina never let me do it again. I was just a quiet cashier who could endure verbal abuse from parents, perhaps because I was raised by a Tiger Mom.

During slow hours when the lunch lines died down, Tina made me change the Kidsville trash bags, sweep the floors and scrub the lunch tables. In other words, I was unofficially a part-time janitor. Those were the heaviest trash bags I’ve ever lifted; they would always be leaking an acidic combination of ketchup, meat juice and melted Icees as I hauled them to the dumpster. Sweeping the ground wasn’t so bad — I did this very slowly to avoid more tasks from Tina. But scrubbing the tables was by far the worst, because it was guaranteed that a culmination of filth, grease and germs would come in contact with my skin.

Which brings us back to that fateful summer day that changed my life forever. After I returned from 45 minutes of broom duty, Tina asked me to wash all the tables. I was eager to finish the job quickly. Humming an Usher song to keep myself motivated, I scrubbed each table, circling between them gracefully like a swan in a poisoned lake.

I came to my third-to-last table. There was a red Dixie cup left behind. I scrubbed around it first, and then I picked up the cup to take it to the trash. I looked inside.

It was filled, almost to the top, with vomit.

Some stupid brat kid couldn’t make it to a bush or the bathroom, so he resorted to barfing in a cup. And his parents couldn’t even bother to throw it in the garbage.

My eyes glazed over as I went into stimulus overload. When I carried the red cup to the garbage can, I caught a whiff of it and almost threw up in my mouth.

I had two more tables to clean, but I couldn’t go any further. I walked into Tina’s office. I could see on her computer screen that she was IMing friends on America Online.

“Hey, Tina?” I said quietly. “I’m sorry, but I wanted to tell you I’m quitting.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I’m failing school. I have a D in Algebra.” I lied because I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

She had me sign a form and told me to drop off my polo shirt, baseball cap and belt at the central employee station. That evening, as I strolled through the parking lot in a t-shirt and khakis to my parents’ car, I felt like Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption when he climbed out of a sewer and was showered in rainwater.

The nightmare was over.

Always On: Open to Your Suggestions

(The following is an update on my book project Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything, Anytime, Anywhere Future. For a brief description of the book, see my introductory post.)

My one-month book sabbatical is coming to an end soon, and I’ve made good progress. I’ve covered topics that I feel will be highly relevant (and hopefully fascinating) to people interested in the big-picture implications of an always-connected mobile future. Without spoiling everything, some highlight topics include the effects of a constant connection on human psychology (are we getting dumber or smarter?), the impacts of mobile on medicine and health, and the inevitable erosion of privacy.

With a significant chunk cleared off my plate, I’d love to take the opportunity to hear your ideas for what you’d like to see in this book. Any particular topics intrigue you? Feel free to send an e-mail to brianxchen [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thanks for following along!

Demystifying the iPhone 4 Antenna Presser

I felt it’d be a good idea to gather my thoughts about yesterday’s iPhone 4 press conference while I’m not starving, sleep-deprived and scatterbrained — which is the aftermath of covering any Apple event.

Ignoring all the stuff we’d already heard in Apple’s earlier written letter, the most important statistic from the entire presser was that the iPhone 4 is dropping more calls than the iPhone 3GS. Jobs tried to gloss over this factoid by emphasizing the puniness of the rate: the iPhone 4 drops less than 1 call per 100 calls than the iPhone 3GS.

But the fact it’s dropping more than the iPhone 3GS at all is completely ludicrous in that it contradicts* Apple’s claim that the iPhone 4’s new antenna design improves reception.

It’s a clever trick from the CEO, but you can’t just use small numbers to erase a contradiction. Think of it this way: You tell your daughter you bought her a brand new car, and she found out it was actually previously owned. You explain it was only owned by one person for one year. That doesn’t look like a big deal — the car is still relatively new — but the fact remains that this was a mistruth, and the normal psychological reaction from your daughter would be feeling betrayed.

That’s how I think a lot of iPhone 4 customers felt when they experienced the “Death Grip,” compelling a large number of them to document the flaw on YouTube.

Jobs says he doesn’t know what’s causing the iPhone 4 to drop more calls than the 3GS. But he provides his theory, which is that a lot of people with an iPhone 3GS use a protective case that helped prevent attenuation and dropped calls. The iPhone 4 is a brand new design, so not many cases are available yet, which makes it look like it’s dropping more calls. This is a valid theory but unsubstantiated and pretty conveniently self-serving.

So the iPhone 4 antenna has a problem and Apple either 1.) hasn’t figured out what it is yet or 2.) is shying away from owning up to the exact issue.

The second scenario seems more likely in this highly litigious country. If Apple explicitly acknowledged that a hardware issue made the iPhone 4 more susceptible to attenuation than other phones, including the iPhone 3GS, then it would probably pave the way for lawsuits to gain class-action certification.

In closing, I don’t buy it that this was a media-invented problem, as Jobs seemed to illustrate on stage with repeated potshots to Gizmodo, Bloomberg and even The New York Times. In fact, if Apple thought Consumer Reports were full of shit, as Jobs is implying, then why did the company heed CR’s advice of handing out free cases? 

The past month’s outrage was the result of an imperfection of a phone everybody wished was perfect. And not only is it imperfect; as a phone the iPhone 4 is even more imperfect than its predecessor. That’s a major Achille’s heel for what is otherwise an outstanding mobile app console, internet browser, camera and so on.

* Update: My colleague Jason Snell points out that testing shows the iPhone 4 does get better reception despite the dropped-call data. I see his point: dropped call data doesn’t fully contradict Apple’s claim about iPhone 4 reception improving, though I do think the ability to hold a call is a very important factor.

Always On

I wanted to quickly thank the people who have been supportive of my book project Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything, Anytime, Anywhere Future. For those unfamiliar with my book, it’s a nonfiction title aiming to answer two complex questions:

1. What do we gain and what do we lose in a future where we can potentially have anything, anytime and anywhere with these always-connected mobile devices? (E.g. how does this change medicine, education, law enforcement, etc.?)

2. What does it mean to be always on? (I.e. what’s this technology doing to us as humans? Are we getting dumber? Smarter?)

This week, I ran my first teaser for the book on Wired.com, in an article titled “Will the iPad Make You Smarter?“ The piece received some (mostly) nice comments, and it also got picked up by Reuters and tweeted by a handful of bright individuals. This early warm reception really motivates me to keep writing. (Motivation is very helpful when you’re trying to write a book on top of working a full-time job!)

Huge thanks goes to Megan Geuss, a Wired magazine fact checker who’s been lending her sharp Berkeley-educated mind to do research for this extremely challenging project. (For anyone hiring an editor or writer, I cannot recommend a person more enthusiastically.)

Equally big thanks to Dylan Tweney, my editor at Wired.com, who’s been as supportive and understanding as a sensei. And much love to my colleagues Alexis Madrigal and Betsy Mason for their moral support and guidance.

Also, kudos to my agent David Fugate of LaunchBooks, who helped forge my chaotic ideas into a solid book proposal that ultimately sold to a wonderful publishing house, Da Capo.

Last but not least, a thank you to Rana Sobhany and Phill Ryu for motivating me to get off my butt to write a book in the first place! 

Always On is due for publication spring 2011. If you have any ideas for topics you’d like to see in the book, feel free to drop me a line at brianxchen [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Sticky Sandwich

I wanted to take a short break from writing my technoculture book to share this fascinating story about HRD Coffee, a family-owned diner located across the street from the WIRED office. 

In the past year this eatery has gone from a shoddy squat-and-gobble to a lively neighborhood staple. Also noteworthy — for years, the diner had an average 2-star rating on Yelp. In the past eight or nine months, its rating has shot up to an impressive 4-star average with over 100 reviews.

Yes, the restaurant did get new owners, which is the simple explanation for the positive change. But for the most part, the menu and the restaurant employees have remained the same. So a more important question is, how did the new owners do it? 

From my observations, it all started with a new sandwich that the restaurant highlighted as a signature item: the Mongolian Cheesesteak. It’s exactly what it sounds like, and it’s both delicious and cheap ($6).

This is what Malcolm Gladwell would call the “sticky factor” in his book The Tipping Point. The Mongolian Cheesesteak is the unique menu item (fusing two foods widely loved by Americans) that gets people remembering and raving about this place to their friends. Looking at HRD’s Yelp reviews, you’ll see enthusiastic mentions of that sandwich in almost every other review for the past year. Word-of-mouth recommendations both in the real world and cyberspace culminated into a social epidemic that dramatically altered the respectability and perception of this diner.

Along with the cheesesteak, HRD made a few more interesting additions to the menu: a Sloppy JoJo (Korean pork with a hamburger bun), a Korean BBQ pork burrito and other fusion offerings. But it was really the Mongolian Cheesesteak that drove momentum for HRD before it tipped.

It’s funny. I used to mildly despise this restaurant and only eat there when I was desperate and short on cash, and the workers were always almost too thrilled to see me because they had so few patrons. Because of the cheesesteak, HRD’s become one of my favorites near the office, and the same employees are busier (and more exhausted) than ever because they are always overflowing with customers.

Just a few days ago, HRD made some renovations to its sign, too, covering its once-drab painted walls with a neon-colored banner displaying a nice clean font. That was a big step to change perceptions of the restaurant, but the Mongolian Cheesesteak came first.

That’s one hell of a sandwich.

Journalists Leaving Facebook

Any journalist who quits Facebook is sacrificing access to a valuable resource for finding leads. I tweeted this earlier, but I felt I should repeat it here so I can clarify what I mean.

The tweet was in response to a live video podcast featuring Rob Scoble, Leo Laporte and Cory Doctorow, who were discussing the controversy surrounding Facebook and people deactivating accounts because of  privacy issues. Rob was kind enough to mention my tweet during the podcast, but unfortunately Leo immediately shot it down as “BS” without taking a moment to consider the thought.

I think Leo and many tech journalists don’t view the term “lead” the same way I do. I don’t mean getting a CEO or a PR person to respond to me with a statement or to agree to meet me for a briefing. When I say “lead” I mean finding information that people don’t necessarily want to be found, which potentially leads to an original breaking story.

Rather than ramble on about inauspicious transparency and accountability, I’ll instead cite our unmasking of Brian Hogan as a testament for how Facebook can be a useful tool for journalists. Without Facebook that story would never have seen the light of day. I also recently helped a colleague investigate her story about PG&E censoring its Facebook wall to bolster its very own Prop. 16 — another original breaking piece.

I have plenty of personal issues with Facebook privacy, but as a journalist I don’t see leaving the site as beneficial in any way. If you’re a journalist deactivating your account, I’m not saying you’re doing anything wrong, but you’re throwing away a useful tool. Whether or not you like Facebook, there are people saying and doing things on the site that could be useful information to your readers.

Update: Zahid Lilani asked me this question via Twitter: Journalists got stories before there was Facebook, didn’t they? I don’t think I would read (believe) a journalist who feeds off FB.

My response: Yes, they did get stories before Facebook. I’m not saying it’s impossible to get stories period without Facebook, but in an age where Facebook is very, very relevant and big, you would be giving up an edge.

Playing Catch-Up

Been bad about updating this blog regularly, so I just wanted to round up links of some recent highlight articles to keep them in my memory.

Pay to play: Some iPhone app sites demand money for reviews

Fallout from Wired.com’s iPhone app payola story

Apple rejects kid-friendly programming app

Review: Apple iPad 3G

A call for transparency in Apple’s App Store