Buying an iPad in Hanoi is weird
Posted: March 2, 2013 Filed under: IT | Tags: apple, ipad, iphone, tech 5 Comments »
I can think of few places more Apple crazy than Vietnam.
Above and beyond the omnipresent hardware the logo decorates more than just the machines. I’ve seen Apple jeans, big gold Apple jewellry, even Apple lights. In my last post when we had to think up potential competition prizes the answer to “Does it have to be an iPad that we give away?” was yes.
All of which makes the rest of this post even more odd.
I tend to be fairly pragmatic about the whole Android v Apple thing. Personally for me it’s Apple for laptops everything else Android. So when my wife said she was going to buy an iPad I tried to talk her out of it.
Going along with her to store I was bemused as to just how long it took. This is Apple right? It just works. No? But as I browsed and browsed and eventually gave in and sat in the waiting area (complimentary green tea) it was taken out of the box and, from what I could see from my vantage point, generally messed around with. But annoyed at how long something is taking is pretty much my default Vietnam mood so I just inwardly screamed and tried to tune out.
Eventually at home and I’m trying to get the thing working and…it’s set up to the shop’s account.
Basically they had opened the box, installed their own account and filled it full of software and pirated music and handed it over. After head scratching I managed to delete that account, install our own, the machine crashed and died. My wife went back to the shop to replace it – this time with instructions to just take the box but again they insisted. Their argument being – no, this is how the iPad works.
I read of a similar experience in online reviews at other Hanoi outlets.
When I first bought an Android phone here they wanted to do the same thing and I almost literally had to wrestle it out their hands. Boxes are always opened. Frequently plastic films overlaid over your machines is default too.
My reckoning is that a great deal of people who buy iPads here don’t have laptops to tether them too. Most won’t have credit cards either. So, when you buy them you need to have everything up and running and after that – well that’s that – it’s a dead machine.
And it’s not just iPads. Suggesting to sister in-law-Trang that she could do Cart updates to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare at the same time with an app on her iPhone she admitted she couldn’t download apps.
So is this the norm? And if it is, then how come Apple is so popular? Is this really power of brand over usability?
Most definitely brand & trend pressure. I think every person I know has the same apps because the shop owner set it up with their account. It’s like buying a radio that only plays the salesman’s favorite station….but you’ve got a freakin’ ipad! Instant jealously maker!
I won’t even pretend to fully understand iPads. My wife’s drives me to distraction – whereas I can drag any file to my Android phone and it just works, the Apple link to iTunes is a major pain in the arse. But with an ipad the Vietnam way that crapness is doubled. Unless I am missing something you just can’t download anything. Why wouldn’t you just get a Samsung in that case? As I said in the piece – give me a Mac laptop any days but I don’t get the sheer clunkiness of the Apple tablet or phone.
I finally joined the smartphone ranks (I know, cranky old dude afraid of technology – no, actually I’m just cheap) but Apple wasn’t even a consideration because of iTunes.
I’ll leave it to the sociologists to come up with a politically correct way of phrasing it, but do you think it’s a cultural issue with regards to conformity and unquestioning trust in persons of “authority”? And since negotiation of purchases is much more common than in Western transactions, what would have happened if you had threatened to walk out of the store when the Apple employee started fiddling with what is essentially YOUR iPad?
Jail-breaking your ipad is a piece of cake. Then you can put any app you like on it.
I’m not surprised they wanted to mess with your ipad as it came out of the box. Once people here have a mentality that “this is how it’s done” they often follow it blindly without thinking. It’s one reason I always buy electronics in the US or Singapore.
Apple’s brand is premium. In this culture face is especially important. It’s why people spend lots of money on personal items that their friends will see. They do not spend premium amounts on items in their home that their friends will not see.
Personally I prefer the elegance of ios vs android. I have no problem installing whatever I need on my iphone or ipad. One immensely useful app is Turboscan. You can use it to scan documents and create high-quality pdfs just by taking a picture. It costs a few dollars but it saved saved several hundred dollars I would have spent on a scanner.
Every iOS device I have purchased in Vietnam (4 so far) has come boxed and unopened. I guess you just have to choose your retailer wisely. As far as not being able to understand them goes, well it doesn’t take any longer to figure them out the first time you get one than it does with an Android device. In fact, there is no figuring out to do at all if you have a credit card for your purchases, and no need to transfer files. I use cloud services – no file transfers necessary and, as you know, 3G & wifi is everywhere and near-free. For the record, I have a Samsung something-or-other, and it languishes in a desk drawer because it’s too complicated to use, there are very few decent apps in my interest areas & the phone call process sucks.
Note: I would never jail-break an iOS device. I just don’t see the need, and once you do so you are trapped into waiting for a new jail-break release then taking it back to the retailer every time Apple releases an iOS update. Unlocked iPhones & iPads might not be what a geek or code-monkey is looking for, but they are a delightful world for musicians, teachers, writers, gamers and average people.