i have not really written a blog before... so who knows if i will keep this up. But, i have had the idea lately of sharing a few of the things that pass through my mind. So, periodically, i will do just that.
Today it is Apple Computer, Inc.
Writing negatively about Apple is just not done. We Apple users tend to be incredibly loyal to a fault. We do not abide negative criticism of our god. i, myself, have responded harshly to some slob writing about the Mac as if they actually knew what they were talking about, when it was clear their only purpose was in trashing the platform in favor of that convoluted OS churned out in Redmond. We Mac users tend to anthropomorphize our computers far more than WinTel users tend to. So, if our Mac is criticized it is akin to saying something bad about our dearest loved one.
On the other hand, Apple should be criticized more often. While the company may enjoy tremendously high brand loyalty, the company needs to know that they need to keep up their end of the bargain. They need to continue to make the best product for us to continue to be loyal to. And they need to back that product up with the best customer support available. One could certainly argue that we PAY for it. Although i may keep the Mac's that i purchase longer... even if they are buried deep within some closet, i have found that i tend to purchase a new Mac on the same three to five year cycle that i would purchase a PC. And regardless of all the number crunching hype and argumentative articles to the contrary you may find out there... i will pay almost a thousand dollars MORE for my Mac than what i would pay for a PC. Of course, i think PC's are shit, so i wouldn't waste my money. But, the reality is still there. In fact, everyone that i speak to about the potential purchase of a Mac, it is the price tag that always comes up as the decisive factor (another irritant, but that is not the purpose of today's rant).
Of course there are many arguments to be made about devoting ones money to quality rather than... well... cheap headaches... but the fact remains. Unless i go for Apple's bottom line Mac Mini (around $600.00--and a very good buy, by the way) i will spend twice as much for the advantage of owning a Mac than i would pay for a PC. i can go to Dell and get a laptop for the price of the Mac Mini. The Mac mini does not even come with a keyboard, a monitor, or a mouse... Even the iBook is what, base $1100.00? At Dell you can get one for $500.00.
i recently purchased a new Mac Pro. Total cost? Close to $6,000.00. i love it. And, it is true the machine is tricked out. Of course, i purchased most of the additional features from other sources as Apple charges a premium for those as well. Check out the ridiculous price they are charging for RAM, or even their hard drives and compare those against the going prices. You will pay twice, and in some instances practically three times as much for the same from Apple.
i digress. Back to the Apple product itself.
i have an iBook, a Power Mac G4, and a Mac Pro. i also have an iPhone. i love them all. They have, for the most part proven themselves quite dependable, and i have considered them well worth the investment. Prior to this, i have had a Motorola Clone, a Power Mac G3, two Special Edition Clam Shell iBooks... well... hopefully you get the picture. i am a Mac Zealot. i am one of Apple's loyal customers. And i think it is about time for Apple to start listening to its base. We are not idiots. So it is about time for Apple to STOP treating us as if we were. If they are going to charge a premium price, then they need to give us a damned premium product. Right now, i am more than a little disappointed in Apple.
Here's why...
Firstly, let's take the iPhone—A beautiful product. i love mine. i also paid $600.00 for it about a month before they decided to drop the price by $200.00. Afterward, Steve Jobs was gracious enough to give us morons who fell for the hype and went rushing out to buy the thing a $100.00 credit at, guess where? Yeah, the "Apple Store." Well... that was better than nothing i guess. But, the RIGHT thing to do would have been, A.) Sell the damn thing for $400.00 to begin with, or B.) Give a refund, in cash, to those of us who purchased the phone at the original price. If Apple chose to go the path it did, which was to refund us through the "Apple Store,” then they should have done something along the lines of offering us either $100.00 in cash back, or the full amount of the over charge (and it was an OVERCHARGE) at their store.
Apple is kind of like the stereotype of the average liberal. They prefer total control. They not only want to tell you what to do and how to do it, but how you should think as well. (No, i am not some frothing republican (ugh!), and this is not a political rant, so don't get yer knickers in a twist). But Apple, unlike Google, apparently, refuses to allow anyone else to create additions to the iPhone by way of applications. Of course, they have said they will do this next year, but come on. Look at how they are turning thousands of iPhones intobricks because people are trying to do what the overly expensive phone should have been able to do in the first damn place! No, they want to tell you what you can and can't do on the phone and how you can do it.
Why can't my iPhone read a text or PDF file just straight up rather than having to read it ONLY through the web browser? Why can't i download something from the Internet onto my iPhone? Why doesn't my iPhone have the same capacity as my iPod (yes, i have one of those too!), which is the ability to act as a hard drive so that i can transport files on it? Why is there not the capacity to store documents on the phone and an application to read the documents outside of a web browser? How damn difficult is this? And if they are not going to do it, what is their hang up with allowing someone else to do so?
Then there is the iTunes Store. Apple says they have to build DRM into the songs. Even their DRM "free" songs have YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION stored in them for ALL THE WORLD to SEE. i have noticed that when i burn the songs i purchase from iTunes onto a CD (which i then re-import into iTunes so they are not DRM) the volume is far lower than any of my other songs (i like to make compilation albums to listen to in my car). Then, if you want, of course, you can purchase songs at higher bit rates than 128k and DRM free. But there again, Apple charges a premium price. For what? i have pretty much given up on the iTunes store. i get all my tunes from Amazon.com now. And so should YOU. They are not DRM, they are higher than 128k, and there are many songs that are much cheaper than $0.99! And, they have quite a good selection going for them... The album covers are there as well. Apple needs to wake the hell up on this as it is surely an issue that could come right around and take a bite out of the ole' Apple. The iPod might be great, but i don't need tunes from the iTunes store to use it. And if i did, guess what, i wouldn't have one, would you?
Then there is customer service. A few years ago i purchased a Power Mac G4. It was the "Mirrored Drive Door Bay" model, AKA, "The Wind Tunnel." It sounded like a 747 landing near my workspace! "Loud" hardly even described this computer. i had so attenuated to this monster that i had actually forgotten just how loud this thing was until i got my new, oh so quiet, Mac Pro. i can literally hear the G4 several rooms away when it is on.
i digress again. The above issue aside, i remember when i purchased the G4 how happy i was that i had not purchased it from the Apple Store, but had bought it from Mac Zone instead. Why? Well, in addition to the horrendous noise issue, the G4's also had the flaw of overheating. i have owned a multitude of Mac's. Since OS X came along they rarely crash. If you have a constantly crashing Mac with Kernel Panic's you can pretty much bet your booty that it is due to a hardware issue. Surely software can crash OS X (yes, even OS X crashes occasionally), but if the Mac has Kernel Panics, this is most assuredly a hardware issue. i am certain there are tech heads out there who would argue this point. Let them. All i can say is that in the entirety of my experience with every OS X capable Mac i have had, and every OS X capable Mac i have come across that anyone else has had, this has in every single instance proved to be the case.
So what is my point? Well, my point is that when i phoned Mac Zone to inform that that i had a faulty computer (out of the box it continuously had Kernel Panics) and wanted a new one sent out to me, they wanted, instead, to repair it. Now i ask you. You spend three thousand dollars on something and when you get it, the product does not work according to the way it is supposed to. Do you want a refurbished product in its place? Or do you want a new product that works the way it is supposed to work? After all, if the refurbished product is good enough for you, then why the hell pay full price for it? Why not save several hundred dollars and buy the refurbished product straight up? This is not to mention the amount of time that it would take for the computer to be shipped back, worked on, and sent back to me: Two weeks, minimum. No one has ever used my name in connection with patience. Ever. So despite the refurbished issue, the weeks of waiting for it to be fixed before i even get to use it is a deal breaker!
So you might be thinking that my issue should be with Mac Zone rather than Apple. Well, wrong. This is not Mac Zone's policy, but Apple's policy. Apple repairs. They do not send out new. Needless to say, after a great deal of cajoling, i was able to get Mac Zone to replace the defective computer, something Apple Computer would never have done.
So, after getting my Mac Pro i noticed that i consistently experienced cross linked files and other hard drive malfunctions. Every time i called Apple they told me to "reformat the hard drive and reinstall the OS. But then the issue was occurring every other week. Finally, i figured it out. The hard drive was failing. So, i called Apple.
The first customer support representative (the Jerk) hung up on me before i got three words out of my mouth… this after being on hold for fifteen minutes to even speak to the Jerk. The Jerk did not even call me back. So, i had to wait, on hold, again for fifteen minutes to speak to another guy. This time, i got one with that all too familiar, but hardly understandable, Hindustani accent—obviously their call center in India was not as busy as the one in the States that night.
He started out with the same line i had heard before about reformatting and reinstalling the OS. It took another fifteen minutes for me to convince him that this was not working. It took another hour (on my iPhone cell phone bill, btw) to convince him to send me out another hard drive. Half of that time was devoted to trying to convince him that, yes, like any five year old, i could slide the hard drive into the slot of my Mac Pro and did not need to transport my computer over an hour away to have a "technician" do it for me. Of course, this is not to mention that before the guy even began to address my issue, he tried to sell me "Apple Care." Now recognize what i am saying. Before he even addressed and even attempted to resolve my issue, he was trying to sell me another product! i completely lost it. Poor guy. Certainly there is nothing wrong with Apple making a sales pitch. But, surely the apropos time to do so would be AFTER resolving my issue!The issue that was keeping me from using my computer to begin with and from doing real work. You know, the work that allows me to buy more Apple products!
So, finally, after over an hour (not kidding, i have the phone bill!) to simply convince Apple to send me a new hard drive, (i think the guy had to call Steve Jobs at home that night to get it to happen), i then had to wait another two weeks for the thing to actually arrive! The customer support rep. had told me that it would be at my home within three days after taking my credit card number to ensure that i would not keep the defective hard drive (the cost of keeping the defective 500 GB hard drive? $477.00—go to newegg.com and price an internal 500 GB hard drive by Seagate or Western Digital please…) When the drive had not arrived within the promised three days, i called Apple. The representative told me that my hard drive was on hold waiting for me to send them my defective hard drive! Go figure! Apparently, communication between call systems in this technologically savvy company is not what we would be led to believe. After being transferred to another rep., i was finally told that the hard drive would be sent out the next day. After all, that was why they had taken my Discover Card number, wasn't it?
When did the drive actually arrive? Two weeks after my initial call. To me this was very telling. This is how much Apple cares about its LOYAL customer base. This is how much Apple cares for the people who bought their product when the company was at $7.00 a share (or lower)! i use my computer for work. Without a functioning, stable hard drive, my work cannot be done.
So then, there is Leopard.
How many negative articles have you read about Leopard? It is almost as if each article written on Apple's new OS was authored by the same robot. And each article goes on and on about how damn great the OS is—how shiny, how fast, how revolutionary and easier to use…
Bullshit. It is all bullshit.
Is it faster? Well… perhaps if you run it through some statistical benchmarking program it will prove itself to be. But as an every day user does my OS actually seem faster? Hardly. But, really, who cares. My computer is pretty fast as it is. The thing needs more RAM that is for certain.
Is it shiny? Well, Leopard is proof that beauty is only skin deep. So what if the finder is translucent. i prefer a nice black interface—Something completely soft on my eyes. That is why i have used Unsanity's Shapeshifter (now broken under Leopard). The cover flow view? Yes, pretty. But, again, hardly really useful and only one layer deep. Click on a folder in cover flow view and you have the same old ugly finder file system glaring back at you. Well… actually, that is not entirely true. You have to move, yes, move, the finder window with the pretty cover flow out of the way to get to the folder that was opened. Why? Well, because it opensbehind it. Yes, that is right. You click on a folder and the folder information appears BEHIND the folder it is in. Really useful, huh? Very easy, right? About as useful as a fish to the head!
Then there is the fact that every single folder has an atrocious pane containing every drive, folders Apple finds useful, etc., on your system within it (yes, just like in Windows). Like Windows is what i want my OS to emulate? This makes every single folder window that you open take up far more screen real estate then it should, not to mention, it is uglier than HELL.
Regardless of whether you change the background color of your folder window, you cannot change the color of this ugly pane. You can't get rid of it. In the previous OS 10.4, the user could merely click twice on the divider bar and this ugly pane would disappear. Now, there is no way to rid oneself of it unless one collapses the entire menu button bar of the folder window, thus getting rid of the really useful options it contains. Then, even if this is done, the pane has an irritating way of reappearing, again and again. So, the problem with Apple comes down to one of control. Rather than allow the user to define their computing experience based on their habits and tastes, Apple thinks it knows best for how i should work, and how the space in which i work should look.
Nothing reveals this better than the "Downloads" folder. Now i ask you, what complete moron does not know how to create a folder and then direct Safari or any other web browser for that matter, to download files into that folder? i have done this since OS 8 (and before, i think). Yet, this is a feature? Please. It is a "feature" that supposes that we are blithering idiots! And, it places all our downloads into our home documents folder. i preferred to keep my downloads on a separate hard drive just in case i downloaded something nasty... you know, like a virus? But, who cares. So they want to create their own "Download" folder. Fine. i can still create my own "Download" folder where ever i want to... i guess until the next OS comes along at least.
But then this dummied down is taken to an entirely new level with another much-applauded feature: "Stacks." Is it pretty? Yes. It is pretty. Is it useful? Like a blithering fish to the head! Stacks actually remove a feature, puts on a glossy face, and calls itself "enhanced." This is another word for "Bullshit," by the way.
See, before "Stacks" came along, the user could pull a folder, the hard drive… anything they wanted to the Dock and access what was inside that folder, and subsequent sub-folders, by way of navigating through them to reach that specific file you wanted without actually opening all the previous folders. Now, with the advent of "Stacks," you can only go one layer deep.
Then, you have to navigate through each sub-folder, one by one, to get to the file you want. What moron at Cupertino thought this was an enhancement? Sure, make things pretty, make things pop out, scroll, blah, blah… but don't take away tried and true features to do so! And if you MUST do this, at least leave the user with the capacity to turn your "feature" off!
Then there is Time Machine. A great idea, but really, is this the best Apple can do? Here is a program that you can tell what you do not want it to do, but hardly what you want it to do. You can tell it not to back up certain folders or hard drives, but you can't tell it to watch a specific folder and back that up. Doesn't Apple know that you get more by advancing what you can do rather than what you can't? Why can't i tell the program to simply back up my system, and there after back up any changes made to that system, and to watch specific folders to back up what is in them? What i mean by this is that i have four hard drives on my Mac. One hard drive is allocated almost purely to Mp3's. However, after backing up the system, and a secondary hard drive, and then the Mp3's, the program fails in any attempt to make further back up's because there is not space on the drive for a full and complete back up of all files again… like this is necessary? Once it is backed up, certainly a remaining 370 GB is surely enough to back up any files that are changed. But the program is not smart enough for that.
Then, there are the bugs... such as the utter implosion of Windows XP after updating to Leopard's Boot Camp due to the "hal.dll" error. (Boy, was this a time when the Beta software was far better than the Final). And mail continuously asking for the same password again and again to check e-mail if you leave the program open in the background, or addresses losing their search capacity in Address Book... the newly found and rather significant issue where data can be lost when trying to back up over a network... And we waited three additional months for this?!!!
So there you have it. i could go on, but i have hit on what i believe are my most salient irritations at Apple in the moment. The company is beginning to play to the lowest common dynamometer. Mediocrity is beginning to reign supreme once again in computer land. Do i have to switch to a WinTel PC so that i can have options that are useful rather than forcing me to interface with my computer from the perspective of a two year old? i continue to be a loyal Mac Zealot. But there is a huge difference between "ease of use" and making a product so limited and dumbed down that only a fucking moron can find use for it. Granted, one of the downfalls of Windows is its myriad of useless options. But, i am not talking about useless options here. i'm talking about usability and keeping the options we have had for years. i'm talking about leaving features alone, or if they must be fiddled with, at least actuallyenhance them rather than put a glossy finish on them and take away truly useful features. i'm talking about freedom and liberty. i'm talking about being able to think and do for myself without having some smart ass trying to tell me they know what is best for me and over charging me to do it. i want a stable OS that is transparent and allows me to workthe way i want to work. i mean, what's next at Apple, a "Registry"? i want an OS that moves out of my way and allows me to work. Leopard is a step in the wrong direction… it is an OS that gets in the way, that stifles the creative workflow rather than enhances it.
This, i fear, is what is becoming of Apple today. It needs to pull its head out of the clouds and get back to reality. It needs to stop trying to tell the rest of us how to think and start to actually "Think Different" like the majority of its loyal user base already does. Thinking Different is not trying to emulate your competition—We don't use Window's because there is OS X. If OS X is just trying to be Windows then why the hell bother? After all, we could just all save a bundle of money and just go straight for the crap straight out of the gate if that is to be the case. At least then we know we are overpaying for what we are getting without any hopes to the contrary. Right?
