Archive for July, 2010
Introducing…
Brad(s) Wright
Which one you ask? Well both of them actually.
It is not often you meet someone with the same name as you (unless you are called John Smith I guess).
Some time ago I started receiving mistakenly addressed emails for someone in Australia with the same name as me – Brad Wright. After some research I found his email address and forwarded the mails on to him. He was thankful and we kind of hit it off.
Well Brad was in London this week on business and we met up.
I arranged the meal, which is always dangerous with my (dis)organisational skills, but I thought I had done really well choosing a nice resturant near to where I thought he and his wife were staying in north London. It was a fair drive but I thought it was easier for me to travel as he’s a visitor and didn’t have access to a car etc.
Well for one reason or another I left with just enough time to get there but hit traffic on the M25 and was a little late. I emailed him and called the restaurant to make sure we didn’t lose the booking and they were very nice about it all but this was cockup #1 of the day, #2 as it turns out was that they were not staying in N20 after all but in central london in a private club – in my defense the postcode Brad sent was wrong and I had based my arrangements on this.
I am not the best at making small talk and the couple (Brad and his wife) were very kind and made conversation when I dried up. I was hot, bothered and on edge due to my own issues of hating to mess up (see cockup #1&2).
Despite all this, the company was delightful and we shared stories about kids and wives and work and hobbies and we had a surprisingly large number of things in common (he’s a Mac guy too!) and I wouldn’t of missed it for anything.
So here’s to all the Brad Wrights in the world. If they are all as nice as that one, we are all Wright.
PS. Anyone called Brad Wright reading this, please leave a comment – we’d love to hear from you – oh and I’m the one on the left!
Apple as the new ‘evil empire’
OK, I’ll admit – I am an Apple fanboy. Anyone who knows me will confirm this. I have relied on Apple for my daily wage for the last 25 years, Apple has put food on my table and a roof over my children’s head. Either directly or indirectly I owe a lot to the company.
I love their products but I accept sometimes they have faults, no company is perfect and as a commercial concern they have the right to do what is best for the company but on the whole I trust Apple to sort them out.
I also trust them with my credit card, my personal data and I trust them to deal with my communications and systems. So far, to my knowledge, they have not betrayed that trust.
Over the last 25 years I have watched the company be buoyant, struggle, become beleaguered then rally and become very successful again. Throughout all this time they have been the whipping boy of the industry press, when they are down everyone puts the boot in, calling for the execution of the directorate and the sale of the company to people no better second hand car salesmen. When they are up everyone in the press watches for the slightest kink in the armour and then, when they eventually find one (or make one up) there is a feeding frenzy.
The latest ‘kink’ is of course the signal issue on the iPhone4. No-one I know who has the new device has seen the issue in the UK but still there is a massive disinformation campaign going on at the moment to label the new phone as a useless piece of junk.
When my friend’s dad comes and asks me whether he should wait before buying an iPhone4 because of the design fault and the coming “recall of all the handsets” there is time to be concerned about how my favourite computer company is doing in the PR war.
I read a troll piece on the Telegraph website earlier (which I am so disgusted at I am not going to link) that was designed to spread FUD by quoting an internal support memo that said that bumpers should not be given to complaining customers. This is entirely right if Apple don’t accept that there is a physical issue with the device, it would set a precedence so that anyone could request a bumper for free by saing they were having the issue, once that has started it would be impossible to stop.
The paper however painted that as Apple not caring about their customers and the commenters gleefully joined in. When one poor soul made the mistake of posting that all his Apple kit, including his nice new iPhone4 was functioning just fine thank you, he was verbally lynched by multiple posters who were foaming at the mouth in disgust. I am betting a goodly number of these people have never owned an Apple product and would rather nail their tongue to the table before they did.
I don’t know what Apple can do in this situation. There will always be an issue that can be picked away at like some sort of cold sore, as I said no company can be 100% perfect 100% of the time.
In my experience, most people’s experience of Apple customer service is good to great. In my experience, most people who get an Apple product fall in love with it and would never go back if they could help it.
Why then does the mention of Apple cause the ‘non-believers’ to rise in such fervent anger, Bigotry? Jealousy?
At the end of the day it is just tech. It isn’t worth wasting time arguing the toss and getting stressed nor is it worth insulting someone personally because they like a different manufacturer to you.
We live in a free(ish) world with some personal choice. I choose Apple, they choose Wintel or Linux. why can’t they be happy with their own tech and leave us to be happy with ours?
Hmm, there’s some curious parallels to religious fervour going on here isn’t there? – “My god is the one true god” / “My operating is the best operating system”.
“Why can’t they be happy with their own theologies and leave us to be happy with ours?” = Why can’t we all just get along?