[Tech]
[tech] iPad 3G round 4, continuing AT&T fail, minor Apple irony
Now that the iPad hardware issues have been resolved, I did turn my attention back to the AT&T problem. (Which, for those just dropping in, is that AT&T will not allow credit cards with a PO Box billing address to be used to establish iPad 3G data plans.) I called my credit card issuer and had a long talk with a rep there. In the process, we went ahead and did a temporary address change to my street address so I could at least sign up for data and give it a shot. I’ll be changing it right back to my PO Box (they don’t have a provision for permanent reflecting two addresses) so it will be interesting to see if AT&T renews the plan next month.
The rep was astounded that I couldn’t use the card for AT&T. They had never heard of such a thing. (Which confirms I’m not just mistaken here.) They searched their internal database and found no references to disallowing PO Boxes as billing addresses. After discussing it with them and doing some research on the Visa site, I’ll be calling in tomorrow during business hours to lodge a merchant complaint against AT&T. Per the Visa site, I am encouraged to notify my credit card issuer of “any merchant practices that you feel are inappropriate.” Not honoring a card with a legal address and no evidence of fraud certainly counts as inappropriate. I’m also planning to call Oregon’s consumer affairs department, once I figure out which one (there are several) and lodging complaints against AT&T there as well.
In the department of minor ironies, I was trying to view one of the Apple guided tour videos on the iPad section of apple.com, to see if I’d missed anything about how to use Safari on iPad. The lack of tabbed browsing is a real issue. It took about ten minutes for Safari on iPad to stream me the 90-second video about how easy it is to view videos on Safari on iPad. I watched in 5-7 second blocks, repeatedly restarting. Um, yeah. And they say irony is dead.
Posted: 3:18 pm Sun May 02 2010 |
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connatic
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:50 amI know the iPad doesn’t have real tabs, but it does have multiple windows that you can switch between.This uses the third button from the left in the top toolbar. I feel this is inferior to the real multi-tab browsing I’m used to with desktop browsers, but does it solve your issue?
My pet peeve for the iPad is that the TV shows overview page doesn’t list show titles – forcing me to either set album art, or click down to see what each show is. Movies are listed correctly, so this is just an annoying software bug.