We heard the same nonsense for a couple of years in relation to Microshaft’s Plays for Sure platform vs. the ‘closed’ iPod/iTunes…

Gee, we don’t hear this garbage from uninformed/uninspired asshat reporters anymore… Especially as Walmart just joined a long line of former Play For Sure vendors who shut down their DRM servers.. While iTMS continues to crank…

What is difference this time is you don’t have a former cola executive in charge of Apple signing the company jewels away to it’s chief rival…

OK, now that I have had a chance to consider this whole matter of my hassles with MobileMe and the transition to the Apple platform, I am even more disgruntled. Today, Time Capsule had to be reformatted because, if the MacBook Pro is put to sleep while doing a backup, the disk gets corrupted, either gradually or all at once. This problem, too, could easily be prevented though the use of some protection built into the software, but the best the support staff could offer was, “the user must make a minor behavior change and never close the lid on the laptop if the (tiny) backup icon is spinning.” So, this, on top of the MobileMe fiasco, and I am in the disgruntled user category. Anyoone know the most read blogs about Apple. I am ready to send this thread as an illustration of how Apple is falling from the tree. Here is the thread with Support regarding the duplicate email issues:

###BEGIN THREAD WITH APPLE TECH SUPPORT###

I do not think you understand my point, fully. It was not appreciated that you suggested restoring deleted messages to my Inbox when you have NO idea when I will get a response from Engineering, and that would create an entirely unusable unworkable situation.

When will you next contact the engineering team regarding this matter? I will be reminding you at least 1-2 times per week until this matter is resolved.

I would like this issue escalated to Apple management, in fact. This is completely unacceptable, that you have no idea when engineering will respond, and it is foolish of Apple not to have expectations that engineering will respond within a set time period. At this point, if I could, I would return my MacBook Pro, my Time Capsule, all of the software, my iPhone, and my subscription to MobileMe as a protest against this utterly inadequate response– if I could get a complete refund. I invested over $7000.00 into a transition which has had just as many problems or more than I ever had with Microsoft’s products.

Alternatively, I may start a website along the lines of “MobileMe is Worse than You Can Imagine,” if someone has not done so, already. At this point, I will do my best to convince others to stay away from Apple products, for the time being, and it is largely because of MobileMe’s failed rollout.

So, no, I do not think you quite appreciate the depth of my dismay regarding this and other matters related to my use of Apple products over the past six months.

If someone else at Apple cares to deal with this matter, I can be reached by phone at 510-734-0885

Gregory Alter, Ph.D, NeuroAdvantage

On Sep 25, 2008, at 8:05 AM, MobileMeSupport@apple.com wrote:

Gregory,

I completely understanding that you want to have this matter resolved as soon as possible so you do not have the junk of duplicate emails in your Mail. Unforunately, at this time, there is not an estimated time of when this will be resolved. Once I do hear something from the Engineering team, I will be sure to reply back to you! I do apologize for this.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Juliana
MobleMe Support
http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/ww
http://www.me.com/help

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

How soon do you expect a reply? What is the goal for turnaround on a request like this. If you will please note, I have many hundreds of emails in my Trash, many of which are duplicates. Please direct the engineering team to inspect the Trash folder if they need to observe detailed header information. Without some additional reason, I really do not want to clutter my workspace with all these duplicates. I will leave the duplicates that are there, now, and I will let them accumulate for 3 days at a time, if that meets the needs of Apple. Thanks for your help with this vexing matter.

Gregory Alter, Ph.D., NeuroAdvantage

On Wednesday, September 24, 2008, at 01:06PM, wrote:
Greg,

Thank you for changing the password that I have requested in the previous email. I was able to reenact the issue to where you are seeing duplicate emails in both the Mail application and in WebMail. I do want to request that you put the emails that are duplicated back in your inbox. So, you can just undelete them.

I am requesting this because I have provided the details of your report to the MobileMe Engineering team. As always, the Engineering team appreciates feedback as part of its efforts to resolve issues and improve the MobileMe experience. They may need to test out your account, so this is why you need to leave the emails in your inbox.

I will reply back to you once I do hear something from the Engineering team. I do apologize for this. If you have any other questions, please let me know and I will be able to assist you.

Sincerely,

Juliana
MobleMe Support
http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/ww
http://www.me.com/help

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

OK, Juliana, have at it! I do hope you can figure this out, since I am
being spammed by my own email, at this point, with dozens and now
hundreds of duplicate emails coming in.

Greg Alter
###END THREAD WITH APPLE TECH SUPPORT###

on the Linux vs. Others question.

Back then, there were several Unix contenders but neither of them offered wide application support (word processing, databases) and they were *expensive*. Very expensive. If Unix machines were more affordable, they may have attracted more followers. Unix, for a long time, meant “expensive”.

Apple (Jobso, actually) wen’t through the same phase with NextStep (which BILLG described as “warmed up Unix” one day when he was playing visionary). Next-machine costed five grand (=and hardly any apps) when a PC could be had for half that amount (and a ton of apps available).

Technology wars are always decided with software of some sort. Machines are useless without neat software running on them. Linux, a century later, has all kinds of useful apps and now is a also-ran contender.

Jobso learned his lesson and included Mac OS Classic support into OS X. Nobody cared about it much, but it was there and that made all the difference.

Here is a better question: why can’t Borg redesign Windows to be a kick-a$$ OS with a WinXP virtual machine which can bring forward the compatibility features during transition? It is painful to watch MS insisting that Windows is cool. It is as old as Rome in software terms. It is a wreckage upon wreckage of APIs, no decent application framework (after all these years!), no decent dev tools (compared to Apple) but tons of apps that like to misbehave. Then there is the brilliant wreckage of driver API in Windows which gave Vista its nail for a coffin.

However, Apple seems to be falling into the pit of releasing too soon and letting their polished image suffer because of it. For any developer who has tried the taste of Mac development (yummy), there is a frustrated developer in a competitor’s market. Borg has lost the battle for Best Development Tools to Apple. For now, anyway. Easier development could mean faster software releases to market, faster cycles and better support over time. Combine that with cool, hipster, word-of-mouth advertising and you have to admit it will be hard to beat.

Android is cool but not as cool as Apple’s iPhone. Yet. Also, you can get an iPod Touch if you don’t need the phone to enjoy the platform and its apps. That, it itself, it very very cool.

identity theft, especially via computer or other electronic means, is the hugest worldwide crime wave there is. forget the ease of just stealing your phone that doubles as an debit/atm and suddenly having access to your funds after a bit of hacking, it also makes it open, like all computers are right now, to a world of hurt from russian mob spoof’d sites that load keyloggers, root-kits and the like to record and steal all your personal password & financial info and then sell it off, in packages of such information on thousands of users, to the highest bidder. you gonads saying “i want my cell phone to be just like my atm/debit!” are like lemmings willingly jumping off the “my funds and credit are now willingly bung-holed for years” cliff.

helllooooo? on-line security — have you heard of it?!

and i prefer molly wood’s wonderful take on the whole google android cluster-f in this epiode of her c|net buzz report.

as to the HTC G1 pic — eh. looks like a treo with an iPhone-like screen. and it says, “built-in keyboard,” and a lot of other features lacking that make it just like another iPhone. we’ll see about what gets developed for it, but right now it looks pretty 2nd rate. am i the only one who prefers the iPhone on-screen keyboard (tho’ it could use some improvements, like being able to turn landscape everywhere, especially in mail)? i used smartphones like treo in the past, and i gotta say, tho’ there was a learning curve, i prefer the on-screen keyboard as being a quantum leap up. but that’s just me — i love gee-whiz stuff.