you want to start something?

It’s funny really.

We ordered 2 books. They lost them. After two weeks they said “just re-order”.
We ordered 15 prints. We got them.

We also received 30 prints belonging to someone else entirely. Family holiday photos.

I can’t even begin to detail how wrong that is and how poor Apple’s choice of outsourcing partner for these photos and books must be. Makes me wonder what happened to my first two books.

What do you think?
That kind of service is simply shit.

Tags: Commentary, Mac by mj
1 Comment »

Mitch Wagner of InformationWeek writes, in a long discussion about Apple supporting the Enterprise:

Gruber’s post has the inherent assumption that it’s IT’s job to serve the company’s users. It’s not, though, it’s the job to serve the organization, and its goals. This often means that users get inferior technology because that’s really all they need to do their jobs.

This makes the assumption that serving the organisation and serving the company’s users are different goals with different outcomes.

Happy users are more productive. This isn’t about making sure that every user has their ‘Tunes or a copy of Pirates of the Carribean on their phone but more about making sure the technology is accessible and usable.

The IT manager’s job isn’t to deploy software that end-users find sexy, or that makes them happy. The IT department’s job is to deploy tools that make people, and the organization, more productive.

This isn’t what IT departments do, however.

They deploy tools which make their own jobs easier, users and organisation be damned. That’s why you end up with Windows PCs locked down so tight that the end user can’t change the clock thats 14 minutes slow. They can’t install ZIP software to open a zip of holiday photos they’ve been sent (it’s finally built into Vista).

The most interesting speech from an IT manager I heard was:

We’re rolling out Vista at the end of the year and nothing will make this deadline slip, not the business nor the end users. This deadline is like Y2K.

Great attitude…

Tags: Commentary, infurious by mj
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A man who was spotted in the street using his laptop to access an unsecured wireless connection has been arrested. … When questioned he admitted using the owner’s unsecured wireless internet connection without permission and was arrested on suspicion of stealing a wireless broadband connection. The man was bailed to October pending further inquiries. Dishonestly obtaining free internet access is an offence under the Communications Act 2003 and a potential breach of the Computer Misuse Act.

Next they’ll be arresting people for illegally smelling the perfume and aftershave of people as they walk past. Or illegally hearing conversations spoken aloud in a public place. I’m going to assume that the OWNER of the broadband has to press charges here?

Every day, the Government invents new stupidities to amaze me.

So, what to do.

• 1. You could start using BT’s expensive and slow BT OpenWorld network.
• 2. You could use your mobile carriers expensive and slow network.
• 3. You could join an organisation devoted to Free and Open Wireless using Mesh networks, distributed gateways and supported by goodwill.

[UPDATE: There are some on this BBC Magazine comment list who would compare stealing wireless as being the same as stealing pens, stealing a car or warming your hands in someone else's pockets (brrrr, scary analogy). If this is the case, the onus should be on the owner of the Wireless Access Point to secure their network in simple steps. Ignorance of the proper operation of a device is not really an excuse. ]

Tags: Bedouin, Commentary, infurious by mj
3 Comments »

That’s the gist of this article.

On average, running Javascript on a device that fits in your pocket seems to be slower than on a machine with a dual-core Intel processor, a bucket of RAM and all the gubbins that go with it.

This is not news.

Now, it continues that running native code on the iPhone is much faster than javascript and this is another reason why developers want an SDK.

Yes and No.

Faster processors allow developers to get sloppy. wouldn’t it be nice if people could just use slower processors or processors optimised for saving power and still get amazing performance?

There are lots of reasons an SDK is not available. All of them good. It’s only a matter of time, however, until Apple can be sure that it’s ready for prime time.

Tags: Commentary by mj
2 Comments »

Whatever you might say about the lack of an official iPhone SDK, there is something to be said for a controlled, tested environment.

Earlier today, my Nokia N800 died. Not in hardware, just refused to boot. what had I done? I’d installed Pidgin, MaemoMapper, XMaeme and a few other apps that weren’t endorsed by Nokia. Despite it being a Debian Linux machine, it refused to boot and there was no way to coax it back to life.

The only way was to re-flash it which meant I lost a few days work everything since my last backup. I didn’t lose anything I stored on external cards and I didn’t lose any mail, thanks to IMAP.

But yeah, pain in the butt.

I’m sure the N800 and the N770 before it have sold tens of thousands of units but I’m not sure they would ever outsell the iPhone – the hype monster of the modern era. And I’m sure there are folk out there hacking their iPhones now who really shouldn’t….

Hadley Stern of AppleMatters disagrees and maintains Apple is being arrogant. Maybe so, but it doesn’t make them wrong.

My N800 is working again and I did miss it. At least until I get an iPhone.

Tags: Bedouin, Commentary, iPhone, infurious by mj
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