So my bday started out as a bit of a bummer. I'd cleared off a section of the day for grunt so I could jump back and forth between the WWDC keynote when something interesting popped up...
As it turns out, this was the only WWDC keynote in recent memory that wasn't streamed. At all. Bummer. I couldn't really understand the reasoning for this, as it's not as though they don't have the bandwidth and its not as though people needed another reason to think Apple might be changing their name to 'Apple Entertainment' in the near future.
posted on June 29, 2004 at 07:54 AM...well it's my birthday too, as I've just been reminded yet again. As a clue to my age, this happy accident hit the world when Star Wars was released. Feel free to send some love, or just cake. I love cake.
Mmmm, cake.
I originally started keeping notes about my last AppleCare experience in a log simply because whenever you have to deal with any form of bureaucracy, no matter how benign, there is one cardinal rule: document, document, document. Had a whole nice little flowchart.
But then it started getting somewhat comical, so I figured I'd write it out and kill a few birds with one stone again... And no, this isn't the larger Powerbook post I've been promising, things are severely backlogged around here at the moment with personal issues.
Who knows, someone might even be able to glean something from it, or at least find it amusing... I ended up logging a hair over 10 hours on the phone alone with Apple over this, and I know I've never, ever had an AppleCare experience like that before.
So I screwed up this evening, and told someone I'd post some 10.4 stuff last night... which, considering I got home at 4:30am and the sheets are calling, just isn't within the realm of possibility at the moment because, well, the pink elephants are telling me its not a good idea.
However something a few people have also asked me about lately is why I dub 10.3 an "edition" release, which is well within the realm my abilities at the moment, mostly because I knew I'd summed it up ages ago which meant I could recycle old words to feed the blog. This is, as you'll recall, blog gold.
If you're not aware, an 'edition' title is generally something that's highly evolutionary. I.E., lets say Acme Co. releases a game which sells well. They'll often come out with ways to keep revenue rolling in as they keep working on the next version to keep the natives happy, usually in the form of 'expansion packs' which might include extra game art, models, or many more levels. These generally don't alter game play itself, but provide extra enjoyment and mileage from the engine.
When Acme Co. finally brings the game over to the mac 3 years later when Apples' consumer hardware can actually run their game (yea, that was low, but hey), they've pretty much ready to release their new version on the PC. But hey, they can still squeeze some more 'free' sales out of the gaming base by packaging the game and all of the expansion levels for a smaller fee, which usually gets an "edition" name. Think gold, silver, or my personal fav: platinum. The good news is that the macs generally get the "edition" version due to economic and marketing reasons.
I guess some people sort of expected me to rant about the new G5s. I tried to summon up some sort of a rant, but there's remarkably little to add from my older G5 squandered post.
The first thing that prolly comes to mind is *Yawn*.
Watching the Reagan services has been a really sad thing for me. Beautiful and moving ceremonies. Most of my feelings about Reagan are wrapped up in my childhood... I'm able to remember the wall coming down, and those images are all in there, but the biggest memory is of the Challenger tragedy.
If you're not aware, SubEthaEdit is a Rendezvous-based, collaborative and distributed text editor, built using Cocoa and available for Mac OSX only. It's garnered rave reviews since it's release, including an Apple Design Award and an O'Reilly Innovators Award, and was hailed as flagship application of Rendezvous.
Martin Pittenauer of TheCodingMonkeys graciously agreed to go slumming answer a whole slew of questions about SubEthaEdit along with a whole lot of other stuff that's only loosely related. Cocoa, WWDC, Obj-C, being a Mac user in Germany, topless women... it's all there.
Which prolly means that after this no other company will ever, ever agree to answer my questions again... so savor this one.
I had to deal with AppleScript on Friday, and it left me as annoyed and weirded out as it always does. If you aren't aware, AppleScript is a scripting language based on an english-like syntax, and is one of the technologies that saved Apple's ass in the prepress world in the late 90s. If you're a windows user, think in terms of VBScript.
Eons ago, the mac UI wasn't riding atop a POSIX-style environment... there was no shell, and what multi-user functionality was eventually added was pretty much a hack. The lack of a shell, or command line interface was a bit of a problem. While graphical user interfaces are fantastic for some things, they are a drag and a half for anything remotely repetitive.
...and I'm backlogged, but making what I hope will be sustainable progress. If you haven't followed, the weather in the midwest has gone crazy over the weekend.
Massive thunderstorms, something like 180 tornados, lots of people without power, some people dying. Luckily the east coast is getting hit with it now, and the midwest weather has just turned... weird. But acceptable.
So the Powerbook post I promised didn't happen... I got heavily sidetracked by moving a bunch of blogs from movabletype to wordpress over the weekend, and the Powerbook has to go in again tomorrow... but it's on its way. Actually two are, as my AppleCare saga has reached a point to where it should be blogged.
Other recent developments... I made brownies with coffee instead of water, and with roasted coffee beans mixed in. They're pretty good, a few of these with a pot of coffee as a chaser really wakes one up. I'm starting to think I might have a caffeine problem tho... sure, I'm wrapping them in brownie goodness now, but I'm one step away from popping straight beans. That can't be good.
I also got pimped out by a group of 7y/old girls, and ended up on a big ladder getting their keys out of a roof gutter. Hero for an hour, even though I originally said no. But they knew the power of the cuteness factor, and simply increased their numbers, and I had no choice but to give in. Considering how high up I was, thank god I was sober.
Speaking of getting pimped out, I've lined up a bunch of interviews for the site with people working on projects that I find interesting. Yup, that's right... interviews, Q&As', questions even. But it won't be the usual suspects, and they'll have the drunken treatment. IE, obscure questions that most people wouldn't care about, but I have a burning desire to know.
I'm enjoying them, so hopefully others will too.
Fred McCann passed on this interesting tidbit over at ThinkSecret, who claim they have gotten their mitts on some early documents showing Apples' plans to shift revenue from the reseller channel to their own. Interesting bits:
A different Apple document says that part of the company's growth strategy would be to "shift customers from channel... Apple would do this through an "exclusive value proposition"... such as the recently-announced ProCare -- as well as competitive repair prices, Apple-branded goods, rewards for loyal customers, and a "better" value for build-to-order hardware......Apple's own numbers indicate that the company has experienced success in shifting sales from the channel to its stores. At a recent private company meeting, Apple revealed that in markets that lack a retail store, independent resellers have grown 8%, but in markets with an Apple store, they have declined 16%. Catalog and Web sales have decreased as well, by Apple's numbers, making CompUSA the only non-Apple winner...
...It then goes on to bring up the lawsuits that have been ongoing for awhile now regarding Apples accounting practices and customer poaching, and other interesting bits. Unfortunately they don't actually show the papers, or reference them somewhere else (send them to the smokinggun.com or something guys), so you can see for yourself.
Most of the info lines up, but without seeing the documents they claim to be referencing in some form it difficult to tell whether or not they actually have them, have heard things, or are making up specifics to fit what we're seeing.
