BELLAMYBUDIMAN

Today, Telkom Speedy called to the office and said:

Telemarketer: Sore, ini dari Telkom Speedy.
Me: Mau nawarin internet ya?
Telemarketer (excited, for some reason): Betul, Bapak! Kami mau menawa…
Me: (hangs up)

And the conversation is done.

For the record, this is probably the hundredth time they offered Speedy to us. The least they can do is to keep a database of those who want and those who doesn’t want their stupid service. But they wouldn’t be called Telkom if they did, would they?

We all agree that the new external antenna design of the iPhone 4 is groundbreaking, but at the same time it became a bag of worms to Apple because of that antenna “bridging” problem for left-handed users. It is also surprising why this issue escaped Apple’s product testing prior to the launch, and why they did not coat the antennas with non-conductive materials (as stated by AnandTech). Personally, this has not been a much issue for me, as I always put my iPhones in a case. But this is not what I’m going to talk about here. What I’m going to talk about is how people cannot make coherent comments about this matter, especially when they are relating the issue with how cheap Apple are paying to make these phones.

Some people commented that Apple made a lot of profit by manufacturing the iPhone for $188 a pop, and then selling it for several hundred bucks. These people probably never had the terms “R&D”, “marketing” or “manufacturing cost” crossing in their minds. If you idiots want Apple to sell these for $180 each then how are they (as well as other normal businesses) supposed to run their business?

Take Microsoft, for instance. How did you think they do their business so that they raked up humongous amount of money? Do you think they sell Windows for 10 cents each? Maybe you thought so because you live in Indonesia where you can buy a pirated copy for 25,000 rupiahs. They are selling Windows for at least $100 each. Now why don’t you go to them and complain that they should just charge people as much as they were copying the DVDs? I don’t know, like a buck each?

Let me put it this way. You people buy cars, right? In fact, some of you are probably lucky enough to be able to purchase European cars. Do you have the slightest idea how much they spend on manufacturing those cars? It’s probably half of what you paid for, if not less. Do you complain? No. You freaking know that Audis here cost more than they do in Europe, but you keep buying them. Do you know how much restaurants spend to make a soup that they sold for a severa thousand rupiahs? It’s probably just mere cents. Do you complain? No. Do you go barging into the kitchen demanding that they should’ve sold it as much as the production cost? No.

Apple is a premium product, and by being a premium product—despite of all its weaknesses (you dumbasses should also start to realize that nothing is perfect and even Ferraris have flaws)—They will not give a damn to those who doesn’t want to buy their products. As simple as that. It’s not fanboyism, but it is a simple fact. That is their product positioning, and it will be like that whether you like it or not.

So if you constantly whine on how Apple should do their business and that they need to lower their prices, then you can simply just ignore their products. Big deal, maybe their products were not meant for you. Now go buy an Acer or something and stop acting like a 10-year old, or you can probably try whining to Lexus that they should sell their cars as cheap as a Chery QQ. Hey, who knows? Maybe you can convince them.

Signing up to the UPH Alumni mailing list has been a hilariously comedic experience for me. Today, I stumbled upon a story that is supposed to be an alert from NASA because several planets in our solar system is lining up, and it will cost gravitational alterations that would cost humans many lives (I’m serious, the post stated that and I’m not making shit up).

Ready for the NASA alert that started it all? Here it is:

Menurut NASA tepat pukul 5:00 pm waktu Greenwich atau pukul 12:00 tengah malam ini (tgl. 6 Jul 2010) planet Merkurius, Bumi, Venus, Uranus dan Neptunus berada tepat satu garis dgn Matahari. Hal ini terjadi 20.000 ribu tahun sekali. Akibatnya gaya gravitasi menjadi bertambah 6 kali lipat, pd saat itu akan terjadi fenomena luar biasa : 1. Laut akan mengalami pasang naik, kemungkinan laut akan meluap, 2. Berat benda akan meningkat 6 kali lipat (jika kita menimbang benda 1 kg akan jd 6 kg, jika berat badan 50 kg akan jadi 300 kg), 3. Semua benda akan tertarik ke permukaan bumi. Jika kita melempar sesuatu, maka benda tdk akan bergerak ke atas namun kebawah. Burung, kelelawar, dll yg terbang dlm jarak 1 km dr permukaan bumi akan lsg tertarik dan jatuh. NASA sdh memperingatkan semua persh penerbangan agar tdk take off pd jam tsb diatas. Fenomena ini akan berlangsung sekitar 10 menit. Silahkan broadcast berita rahasia ini, alami fenomena 20.000 thn sekali dan cegah musibah jgn sampai terjadi.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Last night, I stumbled upon Telkomsel’s website because I want to sign up for their electronic billing statement service (A service which signup link has yet to be found until now). I was already on my bed, and decided, hey, why don’t I just open the website from my iPhone and sign up from there. After all, Telkomsel is the exclusive provider for the iPhone, so they had to have a good mobile version of their website, right? Right? Right?

No.

Because here’s what showed up in my mobile Safari:

It is probably, by far, the ugliest mobile website I’ve ever seen from a mobile provider. It is badly designed (look at those jagged rounded corners of the icons), badly developed, and it doesn’t even give you any information other than referring you to mostly outdated apps in the App Store. Not to mention that most of those apps are not good looking either.

It also doesn’t give you the option to switch to the regular website, it needs you to explicitly enter “http://www.telkomsel.com/web/home” in the browser (luckily I bookmarked that one) so that it will give you this:

By the way, that screenshot was taken on a Mac, so in the iPhone, the main feature slideshow as you see there is not available, because it’s using Flash (while it’s easier to do that with jQuery, but hey, they’re technologically advanced people, right?).

But this is not the website’s feature that I want to talk about. If you look at the lower right section of the website, you’ll see a customer login. Everything there seems to be right (despite the ugliness of the website’s design). But when you look closer, you’ll get this:

People, if you ever want to forget your Telkomsel login password for any reason at all, then worry no more! Telkomsel has that feature made for you.

PS: If someone can point me on how to signup for the electronic billing statement, it would be much appreciated. It seems that talking with their jackass customer service won’t do much good.

I’ve received at least two phone calls a week from credit card telemarketers, and from what I observed, here’s a new trend of how they do things:

Telemarketer: Selamat siang, dengan Bapak Bellamy BeneDITO Budiman? (Yes, they never got my name right)
Me: Ini dari mana ya?
Telemarketer: Saya XXX dari bank XXX.
Me: Ada apa ya?
Telemarketer: Apa betul Bapak mengajukan aplikasi kartu kredit ke kami?
Me: Ngga tuh.
Telemarketer: Tapi data-data Bapak sudah lengkap, apa mau saya bantu proses?
Me: Ngga.
Telemarketer: Sayang nih, Pak, datanya sudah lengkap.
Me: Fuck you and everyone who works there. NGGA! *hangs up*

And, yes, that’s just about it, around twice a week.