Come on Apple - Nearly 2 months for delivery?!

I have been waiting months for Apple to release their Santa Rosa Macbook Pro's.
One morning I logged onto digg as usual and there was the story I was waiting for!
I went straight to the store, selected the 15inch Macbook Pro and added the 7200rpm drive. Delivery went from 2-3days to an estimated 4-5weeks! OK I thought. It will be worth the wait.
I pressed purchase and got my delivery date... 6th July... This was going to be a long month, but it gave me time to sell my Sony Vaio SZ2.

2 weeks ago, my friends sister was desperate for a new laptop. I promised her that she could have my vaio but would have to wait until around the 10th of July when my new mac arrived. Reluctantly she agreed but said it would have to be that time as she was going abroad.

Yesterday, i woke up and wondered why Apple had not been in touch. I looked on the website and added a Macbook pro with 7200 drive to my basket - 7-10 days it said... Hmmm where is mine then?

I rang Apple. They assured me everything was fine and it would be shipped tomorrow. The girl didn't do a great job of convincing me...

Today there was still no confirmation mail. I rang Apple again. I was told that it would be shipped today... I still wasn't convinced.

10 minutes ago I got this email:-


So now it is going to be dispatched on the 20th of July. I go back to Apples site and try adding another one to my basket. Imagine my surprise when this happens:-

Right lets do the Math here. My macbook was going to be dispatch on 6th. If I add 10 days to this it becomes the 16th so why is my Macbook Pro which I ordered on the 5th of June going to be dispatched on the 20th?! I will have to give up my laptop next week leaving me computerless.

Thanks a lot Apple...

Amazon Customer Service

Unlike the USA, us Brits seem to find it hard to complain. As a result, i do often feel that many companies have rather poor customer service. In some cases, the consumer is made to feel guilty for kicking up a fuss even if they are in the right! On the other hand, American companies bend over backwards to please their customers and Amazon are no exception.

If you are new to online shopping or have seen something for a few pennies less than Amazon I would urge you to take a moment to think about what happens if your product is in anyway unsatisfactory. My own experience of Amazon customer service has been simply amazing.

On two occasions i have decided i do not like the product. Within 2 working days, DHL have come to my door and returned my product to Amazon free of charge with no questions asked. Just recently, my Xbox 360 hardrive died after a year of purchasing. I sent it back to Amazon and within 3 days i got a refund.

I wish i could say the same for other online companies. One in particular was so poor that i had to research uk consumer rights laws to get them to refund me... the whole process took over two months!

It is good to see that some huge corporates care about their customers. If only all of them did!

iPod nano "Not recognised by computer" fix

I recently got an iPod nano 8gig. Yesterday i hooked it up to the usb port as usual but instead of being recognised and booting iTunes it simply charged. I tried to connect it to my other machine and the same thing happened. Feeling a little deflated, i tried it on a friends machine and what do you know, the same thing once more :S

If you are having the same problem, do not despair as i found a way to fix this rather annoying bug:

Hold down the middle and menu buttons on the nano for around 5 seconds. This will perform a hard reset to the unit. When you then plug it back in to the computer it will be recognised as usual...

I am afraid that i have no soloution to fixing the utterly crap headphones that come with the current iPods. You will just have to buy some new ones.

Geek: Introducing the new Quad Xeon Mac Pro

Not even the biggest PC fanboy can argue with how finger lickin good this one looks!

Geek: DirectVobSub - DivX Subtitle viewer plugin for Windows media player

This one may have been around a while, but I have only just found it!

This plugin puts configurable subtitles for DivX and Xvid movies into windows media player. Fonts can be resized, colours changed etc.

Apart from the fact that it works flawlessly, the thing I love about this plugin is that it really nicely anti-aliases the text and puts black outlines around it. Unlike many standalone players, the subtitles look like they were always part of the movie...wicked!

Download it now here.

Rant: Lost Series 3

Ok.

So I have now watched both Lost Series 1 and 2. Once again I bow to the amazing writers on the Lost Team. It is a stroke of genius to make almost 50 episodes of a programme that while gripping in parts, manage to leave the viewer not knowing a single solid fact about what is going on.

If you have not seen Lost, then I plead with you to never ever get "into it". Imagine being a Donkey, imagine a carrot being dangled in front of you for around 48 hours straight. After the 48 hours you hear rumours that you may have to wait for at least another 72 hours to even smell that juicy vegetable. Could you really be *arsed*?

Since series 2 I couldn't even be bothered to look online at how long it will be before we are enlightened with a final episode. An episode that answers all the questions that we used to be enthused about midway through this one. According to a friend of mine, the producers are planning on making seven series in total. If this is really true, i am afraid to say that this cynic will have to call it a day and look positively forward to the next season of the Sopranos.

Geek: Hijacking a Macbook in 60 Seconds or Less

Following on from my previous post ,here is at least some proof that purely because one platform gets bad press, it doesn't mean that the others are infallible.

Link to full article

Rant: Is windows really so bad compared to osx?

I have just read this post on digg regarding a malicious banner ad on myspace that exploits security holes in windows and the way it deals with wmf files. The exploit involves running code on an unpatched windows system to install spyware.

Yes, for unpatched windows users this is not good news, but what infuriated me about this post are the comments from users below it.

Once again the Mac evangelists come out from under their rocks to cackle like mad scientists at how this would never happen on their machines.

Now I am one of them rare people that happily use both machines as it’s a necessity in the job that I do. Most the time I steer completely clear of debates of mac vs pc but maybe it’s my time of the month…I simply want to scream!

Mac only users. Your machine is not infallible. Do you not understand that anyone trying to wreak havoc is really not going to bother even trying to hack your beloved grey box? Look at the facts. Yes, Osx is lovely, yes it looks really pretty and quite possibly it is very secure, but does it have even a 10 percent share of the desktop market? In a word no. Anyone with the slightest hint of savvy would not even look twice at it when they wanted to market a virus. It simply doesn’t make business sense!

As Apples market share grows (which is pretty inevitable now that all its machines are in fact PC’s,cheaper than previous incarnations and their marketing is so very good) i am pretty sure that virus writers and hackers will take more and more interest in it. I am hoping that this never happens but as windows has proven, popularity always has a price.

Windows is far from perfect, but if you are honest neither is OSX, Linux or any other platform you care to mention. It boils down to one thing. Personal preference, so be happy with your chosen OS and stop with the playground nonsense.