Category Archives: Apple

The Apple Catch 22

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My son needed to book an appointment with a ‘genius’ at the local Apple Store to find out what’s wrong with his MacBook. So he went online to www.apple.com/uk/retail/ to book an appointment. The reservation system took him through the various steps and accepts a reservation for 09.20 tomorrow. But then the Apple system pops up an “Oops, there was an error” window. So we phone the phone number listed for the store (01223 253600) to check that the reservation actually got made and get the usual “For [this] press 1, for [that] press 2…” rigmarole. It then helpfully tells us that Apple “regrets” that it unable to discuss reservations on the phone. To do that we are advised to log into www.apple.com/uk/retail. Bah!

LATER: In the interests of fairness, I should report that (1) the system had registered the appointment, and (2) that the ‘genius’ was admirably efficient, courteous and helpful. The hard drive had scrambled itself and the machine was repaired under warranty within the hour.

STILL LATER: Kevin Cryan pointed me at this nice essay by Clive James on dealing with computer systems and automated call services.

Control-freak news #4302

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A reader writes:

I recently bought an iPod touch, having waited for the price to come down (a bit!), for the capacity to go up, and (most importantly) for a convenient (third-party) pdf reader to become available (Goodreader). With this program, and GoodReaderUSB, you can conveniently transfer all manner of files to the Ipod without using Itunes. Now, guess what, the Goodreader app has been updated, with this function removed to comply with Apple’s requirements – and this retrograde step is also being imposed on other (best-selling!) apps:

http://www.mypodapps.com/update_notes.php

Apple’s Mistake

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Paul Graham is a terrific, perceptive essayist. (If you haven’t read his collection Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age: Essays on the Art of Programming then might I humbly suggest a visit to Amazon?)

His latest essay on how Apple is treating the programmers who develop Apps for the iPhone/iTouch is characteristically acute.

This is how it opens:

I don’t think Apple realizes how badly the App Store approval process is broken. Or rather, I don’t think they realize how much it matters that it’s broken.

The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers more than anything else they’ve ever done. Their reputation with programmers used to be great. It used to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. The App Store has changed that. Now a lot of programmers have started to see Apple as evil.

How much of the goodwill Apple once had with programmers have they lost over the App Store? A third? Half? And that’s just so far. The App Store is an ongoing karma leak…

Take a break. Grab a coffee. And read the whole piece.

The only way to break Apple’s stranglehold on the Apps business is to find a way of making the Android platform attractive to developers. The problem is — as Graham points out — that most geeks have iPhones and we know from long experience that the best software comes from programmers “scratching an itch” (as Eric Raymond put it). So maybe an intelligent strategy would be for Google (or Motorola or other handset manufacturers who aim to offer Android phones) to identify developers and offer them free Android phones.

Apple declares war…

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… on unauthorised ingenuity, to wit this:

According to Wired,

the latest update to Snow Leopard, version 10.6.2, drops support for the Intel Atom processor. This means that anyone with a “hackintosh” who tries to update to the latest operating system version will see their computer die, going no further than the gray Apple logo on startup.

The reports are lighting up various hackintosh forums, and OSx86-co-author wizard Stellarolla sums it up thusly:

“Well, looks like I was right, again. The netbook forums are now blowing up with problems of 10.6.2 instant rebooting their Atom-based netbooks. My sources tell me that every time a netbook user installs 10.6.2 an Apple employee gets their wings.”

It shouldn’t be long before some clever hacker figures out a workaround and releases a patched kernel to the world, re-enabling the OS on Atom-based computers. But that’s not the story. The bigger message is that Apple has finally stopped ignoring the incessant buzz of the hobby-hacking, Mac netbook scene and instead pulled out a fly-swatter and dealt it a whack. The war is officially on.

Hee, hee! Thanks to a warning from Quentin, I shan’t be ungrading for the time being. And my lovely little Dell/Apple hybrid will continue to be a delightful workhorse.

The thing that gave me most pleasure when I hacked the Dell in the first place was that I was simultaneously annoying two of the world’s great control freaks! Apple’s latest gambit only increases the pleasure.

Orange’s ‘unlimited’ iPhone

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Rory Cellan-Jones has done a useful investigation into whether iPhone users on the Orange network can expect a better deal than they’d get from O2. Conclusion: don’t bet on it. He concludes with this para which, in a way, tells you everything you need to know about the iPhone:

The problem for the operators is that users no longer see the iPhone and similar devices as phones but as small computers. And who wants to be told 25 days into each month that they must now stop playing around with their computer and just use it to make calls?

It’s also pretty clear from his account that the deal Apple has extracted from Orange leaves that unfortunate network with very little wriggle room for undercutting O2.

UPDATE: Email from my colleague Michael Dales, who has a long memory:

This has always been the way with Apple – if you look at how much Apple charges for computers, and how much resellers charge, the prices hardly change at all. Apple seem to police the prices – you will charge our RRP or forget it.

On the original iMac I remember there was a fuss where Tesco managed to get a job lot cheap from somewhere or another and were selling them a great discount, and I think Apple tried to stop them.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/04/20/tesco_offer_shifts_400_imacs/

Welcome to the world of Jobs :)

Overturning Apple’s cart

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This morning’s Observer column.

IF YOU want to understand what’s going on in the mobile phone business just now, think of it as a hen coop into which two foxes have recently arrived.

The first intruder is Apple, which was once a computer company and then had the temerity to break into the mobile phone business, where it has been wreaking havoc ever since. The second predator is Google, which began life as a search engine hell-bent on world domination, and sees mobile phones as a logical stepping-stone on the way. It has only recently found its way into the coop, but last week demonstrated its formidable potential for creative destruction…