Apple Doesn't Want My Filthy Disabled Money
deborah.dreamwidth.org
deborah.dreamwidth.org
You only need a credit check if you are getting a phone on a contract. Perhaps the carrier you want a contract with has some policy about credit checks or driver's licenses. Did you try going through the carrier directly?
It sounds like you've given up or are at least very soured at this point (I don't blame you) but it might be worth cooling down and trying again via the carrier. Here in Canada you can get a credit check done with an existing credit card number and your SIN (social insurance #). Politely suggesting, to Apple or a carrier, that a credit card and SSN should be enough for a credit check could be worth a shot.
For the record, I'm Canadian and I have never once had to proffer ID to purchase an iOS device, and I've owned an iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Sounds like a requirement of whatever carrier you are trying to get the phone from because you don't have much of a credit history or an existing relationship with a carrier. Not exactly Apple's fault.
I'll give her the accessibility thing, but when is that ever the case? I mean with the exception of possibly wheelchairs and items that are designed for disabled people, what company has reps that can properly explain all the accessibility features in a given product? Accessibility in iOS and OS X is documented much better online.
How about this: just buy the damn thing from Best Buy, try out the accessibility features, and if you feel they aren't adequate, return it within 30 days. You'll learn everything you need to know, and you'll give some kid an open box iPod touch to purchase at a discount. Everyone wins.
> I understand that Apple is trying to position the iPhone as the phone that's great for people with disabilities (which to Apple means "blind people").
Custom vibrations are for blind people? Screen flashes/LED flashes for alerts? Mono audio? Custom gestures and TouchAssist? I don't know why she found it necessary to throw in that little condescending comment at the end.
Apple bakes in thousands of dollars (literally, what it costs to add these features in to Windows 7 or XP) of accessibility features into iOS and OS X, for people with all sorts of disabilities. It's really insulting to characterize that as just some token features for the blind.
What more do you expect from a retail store? They're going to have someone who went through a training course on the devices they sell.
They're not going to have someone on staff who has studied and published manuscripts on device accessibility, just like they're not going to have a baseband firmware engineer there on staff to tell customers what airplane mode means.
It's very hard for someone who doesn't suffer from a disability to imagine how someone with a disability will interface with their product. Screen readers/accessibility for the blind is relatively easy - write some software that reads the screen and presents what it sees in an auditory menu. Imagining how other disabilities affect the user, and then working around that, is hard. Given the extensive range of disabilities in the world, it's impossible to take into account everything. A device has to be designed with the most common disabilities in mind.
Her problem may be rudeness. But rudeness is not stupidity. Confusing the two is either stupid or rude (depending on the reason for the confusion).
And how is it you're magically divining that the people she encountered were not whiny, rude, or disrespectful?
If so, it was only to apply, and only when I visited the local Social Security office (initial application in the middle of the last decade was online). I don't remember being asked for it, but if I was I most likely wouldn't remember.
After that, in the journey of a successful appeal because the denial was totally bogus (as in the denying staff doctor, who never saw me, wrote up a report that the administrative law judge, his assistant, my lawyer or myself simply couldn't understand), and dispersal of benefits, absolutely no demands for an ID card were made.
Side note: I have an official Missouri "NONDRIVER LICENSE" (that's what it's called :-). Amusing name aside, everyone understands what that means and for everything non-driving related it serves the same purpose. It's also very cheap to get. Heck, my father has one because Missouri's concealed carry renewal period is shorter than the driver's license renewal period so this saves him money and hassle.
EDITED: Massachusetts has one: http://www.mass.gov/rmv/license/13bMAID.htm along with a "Massachusetts Liquor ID" (!) that appears to be the same thing except for the obvious age limit. A bit expensive at $25/5 years but that's Taxachusetts for you (says this refugee from that benighted state). One also heard horror stories about suburban DMV offices but I always found the central Boston one to be on the ball, pleasant and efficient.
In the UK people will usually say "Passport or Drivers License" (or if your in a bar just 'ID?') since almost everybody will have at least one of the two.
Pherhaps this is because less people in the US have a passport?
It's an embedded cultural assumption that gets written down for people who abdicate thought to what their computer screen literally says.
Historically, almost everybody in the US has a driver's license, and almost no one has any other meaningful form of ID. Many, if not most Americans will never leave the country, making a passport useless, and up until a few years ago, a US citizen could travel throughout much of North America and the Caribbean without one anyway.
They say it because it's what people say. Treat it as an historical quirk of American English.
its really rare to be asked for ID, it happens but only on the really big stuff (loans, getting a car, buying a _house_).
You would not need to provide a driving license to buy an iPhone.
I have just moved to the US for work and I am amazed at how often you guys get asked for driving license / SSN etc.
Because more people are confused by government ID thinking it means passport, military ID or something like that, than are confused by thinking Drivers License means only a drivers license and nothing else. They may also try to offer items that don't count, such as a photo-ID health card.
It just seems to me surprising to declare someone as stupid for assuming that 'drivers license' literaly meant 'drivers license' as opposed to 'drivers license or equivilent' especially when the customer service person did not help them understand, lots of people end up with various forms of ID from passports to membership cards, it doesn't seem that surprising that someone might not know exactly which forms are equivilent by memory.
Reminds me of confusion in the early 90s with some software requirements specifying "IBM PC" when really meaning "IBM Compatible PC".
I really can't emphasize enough the degree to which the US revolves around state-issued photo IDs, whether in the form of a driver's license or a simple ID card. This assumption is baked into everything.
Take a look at this page: http://www.travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/stats/stats_890.htm...
In 2000, there were fewer than 50 million valid US passports. That's less than 18% of the population at the time, and a chunk of those passports were probably not truly valid -- US passports are good for 10 years, and nobody bothers to tell the State Department when somebody dies.
10 years earlier, in 1990, there were only about 11 million passports, less than 4% of the US population at the time.
This is because nobody needed one. Few Americans leave the US to go anywhere other than Canada or Mexico. Until 2009, land-based travel to Canada and Mexico did not require a passport, and until 2007, air travel to Canada and Mexico didn't, either.
This isn't Europe, you can't drive across multiple international borders on a day trip. It's possible to traverse over 4,400km in a straight line (on land) without leaving the 48 contiguous US states, and over 6,600km in a straight line (on land) going from northwestern Canada to southern Mexico, with only the US in between.
In contrast, by the time it became common for Americans to need an ID card at all, drivers licenses were also becoming common. Win-win.
My ex was career military. So was his father. He spent most of his life on or near military bases, where everyone will take a federally issued military ID. He renewed his driver's license by mail one year when we lived very far from the state where he was registered as a voting citizen (paying taxes and keeping his driver's license from there). It showed up with no photo and in place of the photo it clearly stated that it was valid as proof of license to drive but was not to be used as "identification". He was on recruiting duty, so we weren't actually near a military base. Which meant that for the first time in his life, no one wanted to take his military ID (with photo and SSN on it) as ID if he wrote a check or something. They all wanted his driver's license, which he would then whip out and show them it couldn't be used for ID purposes. This stumped a great many people in entry level retail jobs.