iPhone

My Letter to Starbucks Mobile

/ Adam Nash / 16 Comments

Dear Starbucks,

We’ve been close friends for years. I see you almost every day, some days more than once. I’ve visited you in over half a dozen countries, and there are probably half a dozen locations in Silicon Valley where you know me and my drink by name. I’ll be there for you when you need me, and I know you’ll be there for me when I need you.

My girlfriend at Starbucks, Cambride, MA in 2000

My girlfriend at the Starbucks in Harvard Square (2000)

That’s why we need to talk. About your mobile app and the app marketing it uses.

Starbucks Mobile is a Homescreen App

I use your mobile app every day. I love that it works in different countries. I love that it auto-reloads, and it (finally) gives me free drinks without the annoyance of postcards in the mail. And I will tell you, the Starbucks store-finder is a life saver in more ways than one.

Home Screen

It’s on the homescreen of my iPhone 5. Not in a folder. 2nd row. It’s #8 with a bullet.

I want you to know me

There are barristas at five different Starbucks who know the drink I normally order. The one in Los Altos actually knows the drink I usually order for my wife too. And yet, after over 1000 orders, you still don’t know my favorite drink?

The Starbucks app should:

  • Know what drinks I’ve ordered, and rank them by the number of times I’ve ordered them.
  • Know what I’ve tried, and what I should try.

Your best barristas try to know their customers & their drinks. Why not your app?

I want to know where I’ve been, and where I’m going

I’ve been to dozens of different Starbucks. If I drop the kids off a school, I might grab my morning drink at the Starbucks on Alma. If I’m late, I might go straight to the office, and walk to the one on University. If I’m heading to San Francisco, I’ll stop at the one in Los Altos before jumping on 280.

The Starbucks app should:

  • Have a hot list of Starbucks I’ve visited, ranked either by recency or by frequency
  • For each visited Starbucks, show me when I visited them last. Show me what I ordered.
  • If I break pattern, it’s even OK to suggest a drink to me.

You could know all of this, of course. But you don’t care.

I want you to care about my opinion

On most days, your barristas do a great job. But did you know that the line at the Los Altos location is really long during the week? Or that the Starbucks on Alma is the fastest?

Did you know that sometimes, your barristas see me, place my order, and have it made before I get to the head of the line?

I want to tell you these things. I want to let you know when your barristas are amazing. I want to tip them. I want them to get promotions. I want them to know they are appreciated.

The Starbucks app should:

  • Let me tell you when the line is long (like Waze)
  • Let me tell you when I waited a long time for my drink
  • Let me tell you when my drink was made poorly
  • Let me give kudos when my drink came quickly
  • Let me tip when my drink came quickly
  • Rank drinks and user reviews (like Movie Box)

Your mobile app eliminates tipping, and devalues my relationship with the barristas. It should be the other way around.

I want you to save me time

I love the Starbucks experience. But the truth is, I go to Starbucks for four different reasons, in order of frequency:

  1. I go for my daily coffee on the way to work.
  2. I walk to Starbucks for a meeting.
  3. I go to Starbucks as part of a social destination.
  4. I go to Starbucks to relax and read.

The problem is, you seem to only care about the last 3. For the first use case, I just don’t have time to kill. I’m alone, and I need to get in and out as quickly as possible. I love you, but sometimes I just don’t have time for the experience. I promise, we’ll catch up later.

The Starbucks app should:

  • Know my favorite orders
  • Let me order & pay for them before I get in the car
  • Have them ready for pickup when I arrive
  • Let me know when the order is ready

If you are worried about the casual user not getting the “Starbucks experience”, I understand. Maybe this should be a perk for being a frequent customer?

Last Thoughts

Since we’re being open and honest, I might as well tell you what no one else is. Just stop with the nonsense with the app of the day, song of the day. You are giving me a red badge on my app EVERY DAY for something that no one wants. It’s beneath you. You are better than that.

Notify me because you have a new drink, and since I’m such a loyal customer, I get one free.

Notify me because 95% of the time I’ve visited Starbucks on Wednesday by 10am, and check to see if I want one today on the house?

I don’t want to hear about wireless charging mats. Seriously.

I love you Starbucks. Tell me you love me back.

Ding Dong, The Apple iPhone NDA is Dead

/ Adam Nash / 1 Comment

They’ve been celebrating in the streets all day.  Apple iPhone NDA.  Gone. History. Finito.  Buh-Bye.

Great news and timing for the CS 193P class at Stanford, as this means that forums are likely to emerge quickly for students to engage with, learn from, and help each other.

Here is some text from the Apple Announcement:

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

It’s interesting to note the phrase I bolded above… given Apple’s history with the Mac & Quicktime, it always seemed possible that the iPhone NDA was a reaction to those bitter lessons.

The San Jose Mercury has a funny write up here.  Ars Technica has a more verbose post up as well.

I think we’ll see a measurable increase in the number of applications and the relative quality and pace of innovation from this change.  It was shocking how much this simple legal protection was stifling the growth and development of developers new to the platform.

Stanford CS193P: iPhone Application Programming Launches Tomorrow

/ Adam Nash / 4 Comments

A little too busy tonight for a long blog post, but thought I’d share how excited I am to be helping assist the launch of a new course at Stanford this Fall:

CS 193P: iPhone Application Programming

The class website is still a work in progress, but it will come along.  The course is open to Stanford undergrad and graduate students, as well as through the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) on video.  Enrollment is limited, and my guess is that it will be oversubscribed.

A wonderful opportunity for me to dust off the old Objective-C skills, and help give back to the Stanford community.  Launching new courses is always exciting, and I feel very lucky to be involved with this one in particular.

It might sound crazy to take this on in addition to the full load at both work and at home, but I’m excited to get back involved with teaching, and that’s worth the potential sleep deprivation for the quarter.

Goodbye, Blackberry. Hello, iPhone.

/ Adam Nash / 9 Comments

I’ve now had an iPhone 3G for 48 hours, and it’s like I’m seeing in color for the first time.

Seriously, it’s that delightful.  Oh sure, there are small nits here and there.  I’m still getting up-to-speed on typing, and figuring out which apps are useful.

But the first 48 hours of the iPhone 3G has been one user delight after the other.  Love the App Store.  Love the built in applications.  Love the feel of the phone.  Love the simplicity of synching.  Love the Exchange integration (LinkedIn has enabled it as a beta internally).

Delightful.  That’s the word.  Delightful.

As for you, Blackberry, I’m feeling the same way I did about seven years ago when I got rid of my Palm and moved to you.  At the time, there were more apps for the Palm, but the push messaging and calendar integration of the Blackberry were game-changers.  I knew then that the Blackberry would be the platform to beat in the PDA/Smartphone arena, and that was right for at least half a decade.

The fact that at just 1 year old, the iPhone platform is clearly superior to the Blackberry in 80% of its functions is disastrous for Research in Motion (RIMM).  The pace of innovation at RIMM does not seem as fast as Apple’s, and you can’t argue that RIMM has better people, more resources, or better assets to work with than Apple.

At this point, to be a Blackberry believer long term, you have to really bank that their current entrenchment with IT shops in the Global 2000 will dominate indefinitely.  But 1 million iPhones in 3 days?  This doesn’t bode well for RIMM’s growth rate in 2012.

I don’t think people realize how bad the Blackberry has become.  Sure, the messaging is still fantastic, with great features for expert users.  But the web browsing is worse than a 1995 PC.  The address book still doesn’t synch right between corporate & personal accounts.  And has anyone gotten the calendar synching to actually delete duplicate entries correctly with Exchange?  Don’t even get me started on the lack of functional Mac support.  Just last week, my Blackberry torched the 2GB MicroSD card in it.  That’s right, unreadable.  Photos lost.  No recovery.

See this blog post for an example.  18 months later and a post on how to work around terrible Mac support for the Blackberry Pearl is still a top 20 post for me… and people still can’t get it to work!

I think RIMM went after growth and market share in the consumer market, and forgot to delight their active customer base and keep ahead of the industry.

Look, I don’t pretend to be a futurist.  There are still people who swear by the Treo.  That’s fine.  I’m just one customer.

But I got my wife an iPhone 1.0 8 months ago to replace her Blackberry Pearl because I was sick of trying to fix synching problems.  Not a complaint since.

This weekend, I helped my Mom move from a full-size Blackberry to an iPhone 3G.  So far, so good.

I’d say at least 15-20 people at my company have moved to the iPhone, and they all seem extremely happy with it.  They are comparing apps, sharing tips & tricks, resolving issues, and most importantly, they are enjoying their mobile platform.

I now also have an iPhone 3G, and I’m just loving it.  It’s the first mobile device that actually frees me from my laptop almost completely.  The Exchange email integration works better than I expected.  The ability to read attachments like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF is unbelievable.  The photo application replaces a wallet of “kid/family photos”, the web browser is excellent, and the 3rd party apps are impressive.  And I know it’s only going to get better over the next few years.  I’m even thinking about writing an app or two myself.

I’m never going back.  My string of 3 Blackberry models is at an end, just like the 2 Palm Pilots, and the Newton Messagepad 2000 before it.

I’m all about the iPhone now.  The Blackberry is dead to me.

I May Have Stepped into a Parallel Universe around 2000

/ Adam Nash / 3 Comments

I’ve had the growing realization over the past few years that something may be amiss with the universe.  As a fan of the various modern theories of quantum cosmology, it’s occurred to me that I may have accidentally ended up jumping out of the theoretical universe of maximum probability into another quantum variant.

I think the news that Apple sold 1 million iPhones in 3 days and is now the Number 3 PC Maker in the United States confirmed this for me.  As an Apple user since the early 1980s and a former employee, it’s just too hard to believe that the universe of maximum probability includes Apple’s exponential success in the past five years.

Honestly, doesn’t it seem like the most likely future for the computer industry in the 1990s was Bill Gates launching a mobile computer with sales of 1 million units in 3 days, and Steve Jobs taking a full time role in philanthropy?

Think about it.  I’m guessing the date of cross over was sometime in 2000, right around the time where Apple launched an MP3 player that cost around 300% more than the average player, and yet achieved over 70% market share in just 2 years.

The question is… what other improbable events exist in this variant of the universe?