PushingJelly

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?

In the morning we normally have the BBC news on while we are getting ready. At about 08:20 this morning they did a piece about the iPad, well I say ‘a piece’, it was a hatchet job.

Technology reporter Rory Cellan-Jones, who looked quite flustered and confused for some reason, had a bunch of pad devices in his hands (obviously to show that the iPad wasn’t the only game in town) but only talked about the Apple device and the Kindle.

Firstly he angled the device so that the screen reflected the studio lights (and all the finger prints – it looked like he had been using after eating KFC) into the camera.

He then showed an iBook on the device but slagged it off for being £15 and it not being shareable (“you can’t loan it to your friends can you?”).

Then he tried to demo the new Times app (launched today – this should be good I thought)  but after moaning that it cost a tenner a month, it crashed on launch and he ended up showing a kids book instead – oh how embarrassing, way to go guys, that was your 15 minutes and you failed. Cellan-Jones commented “well I’m sure it will get better” in reference to the Times app.

No mention of iWork, nothing on the thousands of other fantastic apps on the store.

He finally summed up by calling it an expensive useless toy trapped in Apple’s ecosystem.

Tosser.

****Update****

I was speaking to a chap in the studio earlier who is closely involved in the Times App project (he was demoing it on camera for the site) and he knew about the “crash” of the  app. Apparently it didn’t crash at all. It has been rock solid for all the time he has been using it including early betas and watching him demo the thing today it certainly looked like the onscreen graphics that I saw on the spot this morning were actually it’s splash screen with the Times masthead and then the choose and edition page – there’s only one edition in the middle of the screen because the thing only launched today!

Thinking back to the BBC footage, there wasn’t an unexpected close which the iPhone/iPod Touch does to misbehaving applications, they cut away to a wide shot before the app had started and he angled the thing away from camera. There were no blue dialog message boxes popping up or any other indications that is had fallen over.

The plot thickens – was Cellan-Jones deliberately pouring scorn on the Times App at the same time as dissing the iPad to really show it in a bad light?

As I said – Tosser

Someone will be put up against the wall for this one.

http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

No pictures from me Steve, I don’t want to suffer the C&D letters, but it is looking really good. I’ll buy one when you release them.

Don’t be too hard on him, everyone makes mistakes every now and then and he was REALLY drunk (I would have thought any way – you know to cock up this big!).

With the ready availability of relatively inexpensive cloud storage, isn’t it about time some one (COUGHapple) had a small server for the home (COUGHtimecapsule) that had some intelligence to store just enough of your files that were regularly used to make them quick to retrieve (lets call it a cache for want of a better term) but off loaded all your files to the ‘cloud’ (COUGHidisk) automatically so you could have ‘unlimited’ safe storage that was accessible anywhere?

You know the sort of thing, the device would manage what it had on it’s local storage. Of course the online storage would cost a little bit extra on the services you already rented (COUGHwwwmecom) but a small price to pay for ubiqutous access to a robust storage solution surely.

At the same time, why not make the other devices you own (COUGHiphonepadpod) also access the data, hey it’s your data, your playlists, your music, your pictures, why shouldn’t you have (almost) instant access to it right? Would be good, wouldn’t it?

Hey by the way did you see the pictures of that huge data centre that Apple were just building and recruiting for?
Amazing. I wonder what they are putting in there, I bet that’s something to do with mobile advertising or distributing films or something don’t you?

Now where did I put the cough medicine, I have a really nasty tickle.

Well it’s out, the Apple device is called the iPad, is small cute and expensive enough to get some people moaning about it’s price but affordable for the devout/fashionably stupid to get one.

Looks quite nice and I’m sure it will be a roaring sucess, but why isn’t there a camera and iChat for comms? Once again they have overlooked Instant messaging/Video or audio chat for a mobile device – it is so frustrating. It doesn’t even have a mic from the look of it.

Will I get one? well never say never, it is very neat and I haven’t had the thing in my greasy mitts yet but I think I’ll be saving my cash at the moment for the next gen MacBook Pro. Sorry guys, with a MacBook and an iPhone, why do I need something I can’t put in my pocket or run any app I wan’t on.

At the end of the day I don’t spend enough time on the loo or in sitting on a train to justify it.

— update —

Ok, it DOES have a mic apparently, but still no zarking camera – really, I ask you – WHY?

Well it’s the morning after the night before and I have awoken on my sofa. The day is bright and there’s a sprinkling of snow on our cars that looks like icing sugar sprinkled from a giant sieve in the same way as mince pies have.
The start of a new year and a new decade.

In the UK we are looking forward to a change of government this year and although not a Tory voter by any means, the Labour party have been in charge for far too long, they are if not overtly corrupt then criminally complacent and need to go. It’s just a shame there’s no alternative to the Conservatives who let’s face it are potentially as bad as the incumbent bunch of tossers. Don’t start with the LibDems either, as they have no recognisable presence in the political race. I have no idea what they stand for and I am not even sure who leads them any more.

Technology wise it looks quite promising, the tablet finally looks like it is due for release (we have been waiting YEARS Steve, what took so long?), Apple may finally take the AppleTV project seriously and who knows what iPhone v4 will be like (Well Steve and Jonny Ive do obviously, it was a rhetorical question really). 40 Million 5MP camera modules have been ordered – apparently.

So as it has become traditional at this part of the year here are my predictions for 2010 (excluding the tablet which is a given)

• Tomorrows World will come back to the BBC (Oh please Aunty, serious tech reporting again – Click’s good but it’s not TW)
• O2 will turn on Apple for the bandwidth issue and drop the iPhone
• Free WiFi Mesh installations will increase in the UK (First one is always free)
• ADSL will reach “Up to” 100Mb/s (actually delivering 5Mb/s for anyone further than 10 feet from the exchange – Lies, Damn Lies and ADSL speeds)
• “iPod Game” will be launched with game controller built in (this is of course a joke entry)
• App Store will come to the Mac platform bringing unlimited secure application delivery to the Mac reducing piracy and in turn application prices and increasing Apple’s profits (30% cut remember).
• Apple will continue to alter the memory market with their bulk purchases of Flash chips causing the cost of solid state storage to remain too high for the rest of us
• The hepatic interface pioneered (read UAT tested) on the iSlate will come to the new iPhone v4 to applause and frustration in equal measure.
• The Apple Tablet will have a cell phone built in and be offered for cheap (£200) on contract

Happy new year everyone.

B

Had a enlightening and infuriating afternoon today.

At 5:45, I was sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop having a latte and a piece of cheese cake with my lovely wife. A small boy of middle eastern appearance and with an accent to match who must of been about ten years old, came over to our table and showed some leaflet muttering incoherently about “this is coffee”.

Bemused at what he was talking about, I placated with a “yes” and smiled and he then left.

As he left, my wife asked where my iPhone was – thirty seconds before the kid arrived it was on the table in front of me.

It had of course gone.

Realising quickly what had happened, I chased after the boy, who by then had run out of the mall and (according to a passer by) met up with another kid and apparently got onto a bus.

Walking back to find a mall security guard (two met me on the way – my wife had got to them first) – I remembered that because it was an iPhone and I have a subscription to Mobile Me (Apple’s cloud data service) I could track the whereabouts of the phone on the me.com website.

I told the mall security officer this and we walked promptly to the recently opened Apple dealer. I quickly explained the issue to a member of staff and they allowed me to log into the me.com website and we tracked the phone.

We called the police while watching my phone travel along a local bus route. We could see the phone stop at bus stops and then carry on it’s route. One of the shop assistants said that she knew the route (the 86) and we told the police where they could find the bus. We were told that they could not send anyone out as they couldn’t “chase around Romford after a bus”. I told them they wouldn’t be chasing around as I knew where the bus was and they could just drive there and pick the little git up.

Instead they told me they were going to send “a unit” to the shop to take details (even though they had taken all the info over the phone).

While we were waiting someone from Romford police station called me and I had to give all the information I just told the CAD operator.

By now I had sent a message to the phone saying that the police were on their way and that we knew the brat was on the 86 bus and in Goodmayes and that he should give the phone to the bus driver.

The office turned up after about 15 minutes (while we watched the kid get off the bus and go to a MacDonalds on our Hybrid Google Map display within me.com’s website.). He was a PCSO who although very nice and apologetic, was unable to do anything apart from take the details of the crime again (third time lucky perhaps). He couldn’t even fill out a crime report.

After giving the info to the PCSO, I went back to the terminal and it had stopped updating. We tried calling the phone and it was off, going to voice mail.

It was gone. The police were useless and were not going to chase the bus. I was not going to get it back.

I decided to hit the kill switch on the website and remotely wipe the phone. I wish I had done this before I lost contact with it, as then I could be sure my data would be safe. As it is, I can only hope that the device will be wiped when it starts back up or when they try too many times to unlock it.

At any rate, I have done all I can to protect myself now.

The system will email me to tell me when the wipe has begun, until then I just have to wait. The SIM has been cancelled however so I am not that sure if it will work.

Things I learned today.

• Don’t trust anyone, including innocent looking little kids.
• PCSOs although nice and all are just there to make it look good, they are as useful as a chocolate teapot.
• The police couldn’t give a crap about petty theft, and won’t do anything – even when you hand them the thieves on a plate.
• If you have an iPhone, don’t send messages to the thieves to alert them to the tracking or they will turn it off.
• Lastly Wipe the phone before they do turn it off – just to be sure, you can always get your data re synced later from Mobile Me or the Mac/PC you sync with.

Ok, Personally I don’t think there’s an overwhelming reason to get the new iPhone.

OK it’s faster, has better GPS, a compass, voice commands and more memory but apart from that, what has it got to offer us right?

But what about you dear reader, are you tempted by the toys, the machismo, the tethering?

Damn, the tethering – OK but apart from the tethering, it’s faster, has better GPS, a compass, voice commands and more memory what has it got to offer?

“It’s got a better camera……”

Express your apathy on our exciting poll below:

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Apparently the word Trojan is associated with a number of different things not just the inhabitants of the city of Troy, a computer malware infestation or a brand of condom in the USA.

But it is a strange quirk of fate that these last two should come together in some small way in the news that some new malware is masquerading as a missing software component when browsing the most popular of website genre’s, the internet porn site.

As this article in Information Week points out the Trojan (called OSX/Jahlav-C apparently) prompts the user to install an Active X component to view a movie, this should of course be a give-away as Active X is a Microsoft technology and is not normally associated with the Mac platform however in the heat of lust driven furvor you guys (yes you –  you know who you are) should beware not enter your admin password when prompted no matter how big they are or whatever she is doing with that legume.

Let’s be careful out there.

I don’t normally have much of a problem with single source supply. It allows a distributor/seller to specialise and concentrate on the product, however when that exclusivity turns into a monopoly because the product is popular, there is always the danger the supplier will use that monopoly to squeeze their customers’ last shekel from their hands, just because they can.
This is bad for the customer of course but also for the manufacturer because the product gets a bad name which results in reduced sales of ‘it’ and by association the manufacturer’s subsequent products.

Where monopolies are concerned they don’t come much bigger or longer standing than AT&T in the US and O2 in the UK.

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