iPods @ SFO

I've been gone the past two weeks visiting family and friends in California. But now I'm back and it's time to start posting photos again. One unique addition will be shots from the 2006 Redding Air Show and 2006 San Francisco Fleet Week. Not that I'm a plane or boat nut, these things just happened to be going on where I was at.

Departing at SFO, I again noticed the iPod vending machine. It's packed full of iPods and accessories, but seemingly doesn't want to give them up. There was a man who was intent on buying a pair of Sony noise canceling headphones but the machine failed to push them out onto the little conveyor belt. Recognizing the failure it didn't charge his credit card, and I couldn't help but think about how this service would be much better handed in a shop staffed with humans. Oh, and the iPods come without music, save whatever sample tunes Apple loads on at the factory.

Beside the iPod machine is the Motorola machine. It's full of phones, Bluetooth headsets, and other accessories. The instructions say that you'll need to go to a website to activate your phone. However, once you go to that website there's a message saying that you'll have to call a toll-free number instead. I can imagine somebody buying a phone, trekking over to an Internet cafe to use a PC to activate it, but then having to locate another phone to activate the newly purchased phone. Again, wouldn't it be a lot easier to buy a phone from a human?