mwang.org

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.6 and my categories have just been hosed.  I will be attempting to clean these up in the near future.

[UPDATE] A quick Google search reveals that this is a known and common problem.  The fix looks simple enough but it will have to wait.

When it comes to customer service, Apple has always done me right.

1) iMac intermittent random shutdown - fixed free of charge in 1 day

2) iPhone headset stopped worked in right ear - replaced on the spot with new ones

3) iPhone mute toggle switch works intermittently - iPhone replaced with a new one on the spot

This is why I will gladly keep buying Apple products in the future.

Having been through too many SAP implementations and having dealt with the organization as a customer, I am skeptical as to whether SAP can make the transition to an on-demand service provider.

 SAP ByDesign is vaporware at this point and I’m not convinced that the company has the flexibility or the customer service capability to be a SaaS provider.  Time will tell when this is rolled out for public consumption in 2008.

I’ve just gained new respect for Palm and Apple. 

Palm:  Yes, Palm has cancelled the Foleo.  The Foleo was probably the most ill-conceived product from Palm to-date, and certainly shockingly bad considering it was invented by the same man who brought us the original Palm Pilot.

I still remember when I first got the Palm Pilot 5000 in the winter of 1996.  It was revolutionary to behold.  It changed the way I kept track of contacts and calendars forever (although I did love my paper planner).

Too many businesses will carry forward a product or continue a project even after it is all too apparent that it should be stopped.  It takes guts to admit that you’ve failed, and I applaud Ed Colligan for killing the Foleo.

I hope that Palm’s “next big thing” will be successful.

 Apple:  Apple continues to amaze me as a company.  Steve and Co. continue to churn out product hits, coupled with great marketing and market timing.  They have not missed a beat for years.  Even with a potential PR fiasco on hand with the iPhone price cut, Apple turned it into a coup for itself by giving $100 back to the early adopters (I am one of them).  I cannot recall another company doing this in recent memory.  Moreover, the price cut also represents guts. 

Most other companies in Apple’s position would have milked the popularity of the iPhone for as long as possible.  It tooks guts for foresight to cut the price by 1/3 so that it’s virtually guaranteed to be a runaway bestseller this holiday season.  Steve traded short-term profitability in order to get a revolutionary platform to the masses, and secure its foothold in the smartphone market. 

 Any thoughts?

Well, the next best thing to a free iPhone is iPhoney, which is billed as a free open source iPhone web simulator. Basically, it presents a pixel-perfect 320×480 representation of the iPhone browser so that developers can test their built-for-iPhone websites. Go get it here. Mac only.

Yup, the box from Microsoft arrived yesterday and my 360 is now on its way to Texas for what is hopefully a short repair cycle.

Had a quick debate with myself over whether to get the new iMac or just the new iLife ‘08 and the pragmatic side of me won (thankfully). As a general rule of thumb, I’d like to get at least 3 years of use out of a computer before replacing it (which means my iMac G5 will be “due” May 2008).

I ordered the new iLife ‘08 directly from Apple (with employee discount), which arrived yesterday.

The packaging is nice and small. Inside, you’ll find a registration card and a demo disk for iWork ‘08.

iPhoto

The first and most exciting iLife app for me is the new iPhoto.

For those of you with large iPhoto libraries (I have about 10,000 photos), you will appreciate “Events” which groups your pictures by date. If you have multiple events in one day, you can split them. VERY useful, as folders were getting unwieldy.

Two other features of note are skimming, which allows you to quickly browse your pictures while viewing an Event thumbnail, and hiding, which lets you hide photos you want to keep but don’t necessarily want to look at all the time.

Given the new organization features, I’ve successfully gone through the last year’s worth of photos and properly categorized and organized them all in one evening.

A word of warning - if you use the excellent iPhoto plug-in Keyword Manager, it is currently not compatible with the new iPhoto. The developers have stated that they are working on an update which should be available soon.

Highly recommended - the best consumer photo organizer is now even better.

Thoughts on the new iMovie in Part 2…

Well, it’s happened to so many people that I suppose I shouldn’t be too heartbroken about it. The dreaded three flashing rings of death. I’ve had relatively good luck with electronics so I was hoping that my XBox 360 was one of the “good” ones. I went on xbox.com and Microsoft has at least automated the service repair process (i.e. you don’t have to call anyone). If this repair takes the quoted 4 weeks, I’ll miss a couple of weeks of playing Bioshock. Here’s dreaming that I’ll back a new unit with HDMI!  (BTW, picture below taken with my iPhone!)

The new iMacs are beautiful and I think it’s time to retire my iMac G5. However, I wanted to see whether I should wait for Leopard to be released so that I won’t have to pay the $129 for it.

Apple has this new customer chat feature on their website so I decided to give it a shot. The below is a word-for-word copy and paste.

Needless to say, a frustrating experience.

—– BEGIN TRANSCRIPT —–

You are chatting with Whanda, an Apple Expert
Hi, my name is Whanda. Welcome to Apple!
Good evening

Would you like help with your shopping?

ME: hi

ME: I had a question on the new imac

ME: will i have to pay the full price for OS 10.5 when it is released on october?

ME: or is there an upgrade program for the OS?

WHANDA: Great question, let me research that for you, it’ll just take a moment.

WHANDA:Apple does not comment on products or promotions that are not officially announced. We learn about new products and price changes when Apple makes formal public announcements, and not before. By withholding comments, Apple hopes to protect customers from making decisions based on information that is incomplete, inaccurate, or subject to change before the formal announcement. Apple believes that is the best way to ensure that all customers are treated fairly.
Is there anything else I can help you with today?

ME: so the answer is that if I buy the imac today I WILL have to pay full price for OS 10.5?

WHANDA: That is not what I am trying to say, however, we are not given the information until it becomes official.
so, given the best information we have now, what I am saying is correct.

WHANDA: Thanks for waiting. I’ll be right with you.

WHANDA: That is the best I can do for you.

ME: ok. Thanks

WHANDA: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Thank you for visiting the Apple Store. We appreciate your business.

It’s been a while since I’ve last blogged. Between work and life (1 business trip and 2 personal trips), I haven’t found much time.

My new MacBook has also kept me quite busy. I actually won this laptop at a conference, and I usually don’t win these kind of things. It’s the 2ghz White MacBook, which I promptly upgraded to 2GB RAM and 120GB HD.

I’ve always preferred Mac OS X but work realities has kept me on Windows XP. I also have an iMac G5 20″ at home (2GB RAM, 400GB HD), but it’s my wife’s primary machine so I haven’t used it all too much.

With Parallels, I can finally ditch my Windows laptop. The only app I am running in Windows these days is Quicken. I know, there’s a Mac version, but the conversion process causes you to lose a lot of data, which I’m not willing to put up with.

It’s been about 3 weeks and I’m very impressed with this machine. Superfast, super portable. I can close the lid and put it in my bag, and open it right back up to resume work without any problems. On my Windows laptop, it would not wake from sleep about 50% of the time. I’m spending more time “doing” things instead of “fixing / patching” Windows.
If you need a notebook PC, get a MacBook. Period.