PodBrix on eBay!

There's a really cool PodBrix Steve Jobs figurine on eBay. Check it out!


Some one should Buy it Now!

-Terry

myLife With Apple

By Terry Goyette

Many people know me as the Apple guy or the Mac evangelist in the family or my group of friends. I am the one who gets called for tech-support questions by my friends. I am the first person to voice my opinion of why Mac OS X is a better choice than Windows XP or Vista, and I can be seen driving around in my car complete with Apple sticker in the rear window, listening to music on my iPhone. I have owned dozens of different Mac models ranging from the classic all in one design to many PowerBooks, G4 and G5 towers, iMacs, AppleTV, AirPort wireless internet Base Stations, Operating Systems 6 through X, Apple monitors, printers, iSight webcam, four different kinds of Newtons, and even a QuickTake Camera (one of the very first consumer digital cameras). At one time, I had seven iPods in the house, and have bought hundreds of dollars worth of music from the iTunes Music Store. And of course, I even stood in line last year with all of the other Apple fan-boys and fan-girls to get my mitts on what was then the new $500 iPhone. Hey, what's the name of my web domain? AppleDoctor.net! I'm also an Apple stock holder.

Back in 2003, my dreams came true and I got a job working for my favorite Cupertino based company at one of their retail locations. Back then it was fun to work Apple retail. It really was barely retail at all. For customers, there were the puzzled people who stumbled in and wanted to know what the hubbub was, and there were also the Apple-fanatics who loved to see their favorite company with an actual retail store. It was a novelty. We sold computers, and it seemed like it was going well enough. The busy time of year was during the holidays and new product launches, but other than that it was usually just a couple of us on the sales floor at a time. Then the iPod took off. It had been out for a while, but with the launch of the iTunes music store for Windows, the iPod just exploded. Everyone wanted one!

It was during this time that Apple’s quality took a dive--at least it did for me. As an employee, I was able to take advantage of a sweet discount on computers, software and iPods. My first big employee purchase was a 15” Aluminum PowerBook G4 (I’m typing on it right now), because I was able to get a refurbished one for a pretty good price. At the time, they were so new (Apple employees sometimes are not able to buy newly released products until the demand dies down somewhat) that the new Aluminum PowerBook G4’s were not available to employees at a discount. I chose a refurbished model because I had bought a refurb PowerMac that is actually still running today with no problems.

When I received my refurb PowerBook, I was appalled at what I found. It looked like someone had hastily put the computer back together after replacing some internal parts. What should be nicely matched and properly fit and finished looked horrendously wrong. The pristine Aluminum was bent in order to close the seams between pieces, and in some places some of the seams were not closed at all. When I started the computer, there was a plaid-ghosting in the LCD, so it was barely viewable. The computer should have never left the factory or refurb workbench. I would have been ashamed passing this off to someone to pay thousands of dollars for it. When I complained to the powers that be, I was told it would be repaired. REPAIRED?! Why not just give me another one? Sorry, employee purchases are non-returnable. I asked if 99% of the parts needed replacing, would they replace the 99% of the parts? They told me yes, and would not give me another one, no matter what. Get it repaired, or don’t. I was hurt that the company I loved so much would stab me in the heart like that. After all the evangelism, the over a million dollars worth of sales while working there, the countless PC to Mac conversions before I ever worked for Apple—after all of that, a loyal employee, stock holder and a customer, they were okay with treating me that way.

I loved working there, despite all of this. For many months, I was the top sales person. Interestingly enough, my sales were many times higher than some of the full-time worker’s sales. Because of this I was able to work my way up the ranks into management. We had an awesome management team, and I miss working with all of them. Some of the best times of my working career was with those people.  You know who you are!  I left Apple in 2005, and eventually went back to school to finish up my degree.  There's more to my story at Apple Retail as far as why I left, but I prefer not to get into specifics because I still know some people who work for and with them.

During my post-Apple time, I have had some of the worst experiences with Apple products. For example, I replaced an AirPort Base Station and found it perplexing trying to get it to work with my existing wireless network. I do computer tech-support and consulting as a side business, so I DO know how to configure electronics properly. I fought tooth and nail with this base station trying to get it to work with my existing set up. After three days of sketchy wi-fi in my house, and a wife who needed to get onto the Internet for work, I finally reconfigured the entire network and was able to get online. Mind you, I am still not satisfied with the results. Why not call tech support? They are no help at all, sorry to say. I’m glad I didn’t buy any sort of support plan with the base station (there is none offered).

The times I have been in contact with Apple’s technical support, I was not satisfied with the results. For example, I was a long time subscriber to Apple’s .Mac (dot Mac) service, which is now called Mobile Me. For $100 a year (or $70 if you knew who to buy it from), you got online tutorials for Apple software, 10 GB of online disk space, sync ability with other Macs you owned, a cool @mac.com email address, the ability to publish photos and blogs to your personal web space with a couple clicks of the mouse, and a whole lot more. During one of my photo and blog postings, something went wrong. My .Mac space was corrupted and would not let me upload or delete anything. I was in limbo. Apparently, the only way to get tech support for .Mac was via email. I believe the fellow who was assigned to my case was in Europe, so by the time I sent him a response to a question, he would read it five or six hours later because he was working while I was still in bed. He would send a response and I would read it five or six hours later. This went on for two weeks. Meanwhile, nothing was ever done to remedy the situation. After many years of having a @mac.com email address, I let my .Mac membership lapse and haven’t looked back.

Recently, I wanted to rent a movie on my AppleTV. It seemed easy enough, but I’m assuming because of the new roll out of the Mobile Me service, my Apple ID is no longer valid on my AppleTV. In order to rent or buy anything using the iTunes Music Store, you must enter your Apple ID, which is usually your email address from when you set up your account, as well as your password. My account was set up using my @mac.com email address many years ago. The Apple webpage I was directed to in order to fix my Apple ID problem told me to create a new Apple ID. If I do that, I will have two different Apple IDs for the music I have already bought, and a new Apple ID for everything new that I am going to buy. No thanks. I just rented an on-demand movie from my cable operator. By the way, the same Apple ID works fine on my iPhone when I buy applications on it. So I know it’s not user error.

The last part of my rant is about Leopard, the latest operating system from Apple. I chose to upgrade our PowerBook to Leopard to see how it would do. So far, it has turned in a once quick PowerBook, into an aluminum slug. This last semester, I brought it to school for a Keynote presentation. Keynote presentations are along the lines of a PowerPoint presentation, but they look and sound much better. Apple’s Keynote is an elegant presentation program. It can put multimedia into a presentation like Microsoft’s PowerPoint wishes it could do. I had my Keynote all set up on my Mac, and it came time to make my presentation. Unfortunately, my poor old PowerBook could not keep up with the demands of this awesome program. The presentation slides lagged five seconds behind my click to advance and it was very embarrassing for me, the proud Mac user.

I bring this up because my five-year-old PowerBook can barely keep up with Mac OS 10.5. Go back to the days of the G3 iMacs and you have machines that can run operating systems that came out many years after they were introduced. My PowerMac G5 is still running OS 10.4, and I have no plans on upgrading to 10.5 on it. It seems like if I want to run OS 10.5 with success, with less spinning beach ball, I should buy a new Intel-powered Mac. Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know if I want to buy another Mac ever again. It’s sad for me to say. One part of me feels guilty; one part feels let down by poor products. I was one of the few “fan-boys” I know who hasn’t upgraded to the new 3G iPhone. I have to say, the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade is pretty sluggish. I hope there is a software fix soon.

Now, I won’t be buying Windows any time soon either (I vowed never to buy a Microsoft product and haven’t thus far), so it looks like it is going to be Linux for me. But I don’t mind, the software is free, and the tech support people know more than I do!

Am I saying "Don't buy Apple?"  Not at all.  This is just my experiences with them.  I wish them well and hope I will be pleasantly surprised by them again soon.

Why Not Just Make Vista Better?

From AppleInsider

By Sam Oliver

Published: 08:00 PM EST

While Apple is encouraging its install base to upgrade to the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system, a new sales pitch by its Redmond-based rival to the north recommends that customers unhappy with Vista take a step in the opposite direction 'for free.'

Speaking at an event Tuesday in the nation's capital, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said his company's licensing policy allows for customers to install the previous generation of Windows should Vista not impress.

"Customers get both," he said. "I don't know how you can do better than getting both."

Baller's comments were in response to a question about whether Microsoft will continue to market retail copies of Windows XP for mainstream PCs beyond its scheduled June 30 expiration.

The Microsoft headman explained that his firm holds no such plans because any customer who wants to purchase XP after June 30 can just as easily buy Vista and trigger its built-in downgrade option.

Earlier this week, the software maker said it would extend the shelf life of XP for installations on "nettops" -- it's term for ultra-low cost desktop systems -- for an undetermined amount of time. That followed an earlier move to continue selling the six-and-a-half year old operating system for ultra portable notebook systems for up to two more years.

InformationWeek's Paul McDougall points out that a number of PC makers, including Dell, already offer business systems that have been "pre-downgraded" from Vista to XP. Though that raises the question, he says, about the accuracy of the sales figures Microsoft has provided for Vista.

"In April, the company said it had sold more than 140 million Vista licenses since the OS became available to the public early last year," he wrote. "But Microsoft did not indicate what percentage of those Vista licenses have been downgraded to XP."

Scanning wallet cards into the iPhone

From TUAW.com


This is pretty much genius. Like Albert, I have a bunch of "membership cards" in my wallet -- they're those cards with a barcode or number on them that you get from places like the local grocery store, or some other retailer. They're useful to have around, but they tend to pile up after a while, and pretty soon, your wallet gets to be a brick of barcodes rather than anything you'd actually want to carry around in your pocket. Albert's solution was to scan all of his barcodes into the iPhone, front and back, as an iPhoto album. And lo and behold, just like the paperless boarding passes we posted about a while back, it worked. All of the barcodes were scannable, which means no more countless membership cards -- just a gallery in your iPhone.

We've already heard of barcodes reading both on and off of the iPhone, of course, and we'll hopefully see more of this when the SDK drops in just about a month here (maybe, in the future, someone will write an app to generate barcodes from numbers, so you don't even need to get a clear scan). But even without an external app, this is pretty handy solution to clearing up some of the clutter in your wallet. Obviously, for anything important (driver's license, credit cards), an iPhone scan won't do. But just to get the membership prices down at the Jewel-Osco, scanning wallet cards into an iPhone seems to work just fine. Very nice.

Micro-hoo? Macro-whew!

From Yahoo! News:

SAN FRANCISCO - With its quest for Yahoo (YHOO) abruptly over, Microsoft (MSFT) must now pursue a Plan B to compete with Google for Internet advertising dollars.

Microsoft dropped its blockbuster bid to acquire Yahoo late Saturday, after the two tech titans could not agree on a price.

The software giant withdrew its offer hours after it sweetened the bid to $33 a share, or about $47.5 billion, at a meeting in Seattle between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, said people with knowledge of the talks who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the discussions. Yahoo's board insisted on $37 a share, the sources said.

Microsoft's decision to walk away culminated a whirlwind, three-month courtship that it initiated on Jan. 31 with a $31-a-share unsolicited bid.

In a statement Saturday, Ballmer said Microsoft would continue to pursue other online efforts.

Those options could include acquisitions and partnerships.

"Microsoft should look creatively at how to invest $40 billion-plus instead of looking at an entity that may have passed its prime," says N. Venkat Venkatraman, management professor at Boston University.

Yahoo repeatedly rejected Microsoft's offer, saying it undervalued the company. Microsoft at times vowed to lower its bid and threatened to launch a proxy fight to oust Yahoo's 10-member board, including Yang, if Yahoo didn't accept the offer by April 26. Yahoo ignored the deadline.

Yet in a letter to Yang that Microsoft released Saturday, Ballmer said it did not make sense for Microsoft to pursue a proxy fight, which could take months.

In a statement Saturday night, Yang said, "This process has underscored our unique and valuable strategic position." Heartening Yahoo were better-than-expected first-quarter results last month.

Microsoft's withdrawal was as abrupt as its audacious takeover bid. The retreat could have lasting implications for Ballmer - who has been questioned by some investors and analysts for attempting such a landscape-shifting deal - and Yang, who is trying to right Yahoo after a rough financial patch.

The breakdown in the talks is likely to send Yahoo's shares reeling and intensify anxiety among investors about Yahoo's management, which has been criticized for moving indecisively as it, too, struggles to compete with Google.

Should Yahoo's stock take a beating, it is not out of the question for Microsoft to take another crack at acquiring it - perhaps with a lower bid, says Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates.

But two of the sources close to Microsoft told USA TODAY on Sunday that the software giant is through pursuing Yahoo.

Shortly before Microsoft's deadline, Yahoo entered into a search advertising partnership with Google. It also explored a merger with Time Warner's AOL.

Apple's value is now quadruple Dell's

From TUAW.com

There's no love lost between Steve Jobs and Dell founder Michael Dell. Back in 1997, when Michael was CEO of Dell, he famously told a group of IT big wigs, ""What would I do [if I were in charge of Apple]? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."

Oh, Michael. That's the kind of statement that waits in a corner for years, thinking, "I'm going to bite him in the backside ... hard."

The time has come. Earlier today, Apple rose $6.05 (3.48%) in NASDAQ trading, closing at $180.00. Compared to Dell's standing, Apple's market value of $158.66 billion is now four times Dell's $38.97 billion.

Only a year ago, we were excited that Apple had doubled Dell's value. Here's to the next twelve months.

Leopard drubs Vista in corporate satisfaction survey

From ComputerWorld.com

March 26, 2008 (Computerworld) Corporate users of Apple Inc.'s Leopard operating system are more than five times more likely to say that they are "very satisfied" with the OS than business users of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista, a research firm said Wednesday.

In a February survey of 2,200 U.S. corporate computer users, 53% of those using Mac OS X 10.5 reported that they were very satisfied with their operating system. Of those using Windows XP or Windows Vista, however, 40% of the former and only 8% of the latter said they were very satisfied.

"Apple continues to set the standard for corporate customer satisfaction," said Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave Research. That, and the fact that corporate buying plans for Macs remain at historically high levels, indicate that users like what Apple's doing, continued Carton.

According to ChangeWave's survey, 7% of the corporate respondents who said their company would purchase laptops in the next 90 days were planning on buying Apple. "Apple held at 7%, the same as November," said Carton, referring to a similar survey late last year.

Most other vendors, in fact, slipped in ChangeWave's corporate buying plans poll. Fewer companies with purchasing plans figure on buying a Dell notebook in the next three months than reported they would in November (down a percentage point). HP (down two points), Lenovo (down two points) and Toshiba (down one point) also dropped in the survey.

But while Apple shows some sales strength even as the general pace of U.S. corporate computer sales looks to slow in the next quarter, it remains a minor player in the market, reported ChangeWave. More than half -- 53% -- of the computers companies plan to buy in the second quarter will be equipped with Windows XP, the survey said, compared to 20% with a version of Windows Vista and just 8% with Mac OS X.