wendy house

Ever since the Cupboard’s face got smashed in I’ve been asking friends and colleagues for advice on what I should do – what sort of computer I should get and when.

My UK friends give diverse advice which naturally mirrors their own preferences. Though the IT professionals quickly get side-tracked onto talking about virtual machines - getting terribly excited at the thought. They seem to run substantial Apples with dual-boot from which they control lots of virutal machines. Not really for me.

I’ve also been popping into local shops that sell computers - Currys, PC world, Comet, John Lewis .   In these stores I get the pleasure of chatting to young handsome fellows who’re very excited about the prospect of being able to save up for an Apple iPad. Cute, but not actually too helpful for me – they aren’t good at ucovering my criteria and herding me towards one of their products. I’ve got wads of dosh in my pocket for something special, yet no-one’s selling to me. They’re selling to themselves. Most bizarre.

On the day that Windows 8 released I pootled along to Currys to play with a copy on their display machines. Everything started well:

• No queue outside the store of people waiting to get their sticky hands on the new fancy OS. Such good fortune. I do dislike all the jostling and the lack of diversity when everyone plumps for the same thing. Even the store’s Demo stand was enticingly empty.  I felt good.
• 5 assistants all ready to help me and the other customer in the PC section of the store. wonderful. I do like having someone on hand to spend time chatting with me – especially if I’m planning on spending more than £200.
• A queue around the Apple stand.  Baffling.  Such ugly and expensive machines. Still not much choice – they’ve side-stepped having to make all the decisions that I’m about to take on…. which manufacturer, which processor type/size etc. More spacefor me to explore!

I wandered over to the windows 8 laptops that looked about the right size and design funkiness. Oh, a small blue one with ripples on the lid (Acer Aspire One).  My first experience of Windows 8 was a message that says:

 ”Automatic Repair couldn’t repair your PC“

Oh how I laughed!

A young assistant noticed my standing looking at the computer, giggling,  he swooped in and offered his help.

wendy: is this manufacturer installed windows 8 or a windows 7 machine that’s been upgraded in the store?

assistant: it came from the manufacturer with windows 8 on it

wendy: it’s not working, that’s not good on a demo machine is it?

assistant: it just means it didn’t shutdown properly, that’s all, I’ll just reboot it

I fell over

LAUGHING

(no broken bones)

Just incase you thought eveything in the Cupboard was running smoothly, here is error of the day “Apple Software Update has stopped working”. This is how the story unfolded

Avoid using any Apple products or services because they:

• are rumoured to treat their employees, vendors, contractors etc rather poorly
• do not systematically promote and drive socially responsible behaviours – Bill gates rocks!
• target being a monopoly. For example they undermine multiple hadware manufacturers. By contrast, companies such as Microsoft promote partnerships with other companies that sell Hardware (e.g. Dell, HP, Nokia, HTC etc). This approach enables those companies to thrive rather than competing with them. This strategy cost’s Microsoft in terms of time - the liaison and planning required and the lack of control leading to lack of consistency that introduces more potential for ‘errors’

Captured by BBC evil alliance

Unfortunately, when I started wanting to use BBC’s iplayer the only way to view the programs that my Licence had helped fund was to use Apple’s quicktime. Furious that the BBC chose to align with a company’s product rather than an industry standard. Darn, effectively the BBC was saying download Apple’s quick time or eff off.

For a while I managed without the BBC iplayer and just fumed until the lure of quality drama on-demand got the better of me. I installed Quicktime and lost a little of my self-esteem in the process.

Pompositively indignant

When I buy or use Microsoft services, part of their profit goes to causes I support. Microsoft products may not be beautiful to look at and they may be error ridden but they genuinely show social values that I respect.  They can have my money and time before Apple anyday because of how they spend my commitment

Excellent

Two students using Apple computers in a coffee house with a free unsecure  wireless access point to create and ad hoc network so that one can give the other copies of her ‘Office’ programs.  

Just the opening phrase ‘turn off your fire wall and enable file sharing’ made my gut twist.    

Setting up an ad hoc network on an Apple computer is not an  inutitive  task based experience.  

The experienced Apple user had done this before. I watched her  ’back track’ and try different things before she successfully created the network.   She recognised when she did  the right thing but was unable to recall (big human memory load) clear steps.    There were numerous obvious usability issues,   for example, when making the connection it was unclear whose credentials were needed,   the local or remote PC login.    Anyone familiar with the necessary technical pre-requisits to set-up an ad hoc network could probably complete this task but the steps are not clearly laid out in a user task centric format.   I was able to understand and follow what the technically able Apple user was doing.   I would have had trouble working it out myself.  

After the Office programs  were installed on the newer laptop they concientiously remembered to turn-off sharing,   turn on  the firewall, and drink their coffee.   Phew….

I’m still a bit confused about how one Apple user can give another computer  a program (in this case Office) without there being any credit sent to the company that sells that program.   Why would Apple want their users to be able to ‘give’ away programs?   If I  owned a business writing quality software programs  this would deter me from writing programs for Apple computers because I would only get money from a few sales before the users were simply sharing the program for free,   leading to my business failing and  my having to go home and live with mother.