Walt-O-Matic

Ever wonder how a well-intentioned policy turns into a horrible nightmare for the very people it was designed to serve? I found the perfect example.

Let’s take the case of Apple’s technical WWDC ‘09 conference in San Francisco. Brilliant talks. Amazing speakers. Fantastic audio and video. It’s good stuff.

Now Apple is a company that is on the forefront of user experience, they pioneer usability and design, and their big presentation this year is on efficient resource and queue management. You’d think this innovative thinking would hold over into how they actual manage crowd control, but you’d be wrong. Apple has totally missed the mark. I know, it seems impossible.

There’s an absolutely stupid policy that’s being enforced, and while the best of intentions are there, the policy isn’t helping anyone. It actually makes things worse. Follow this.

You’ve figured out your course tracks for the day, bunkered down to do some work on your laptop, and are watching a series of presentations being held in that room with your development buddy. It finishes, and so you tell him “Can you watch my stuff, I’m going to hit the restroom before the next presentation.” He says ’sure’ and you leave. After all, being a convention center, the restrooms leave little to be desired in terms of personal space.

On the way out, you’d tell the Apple guy at the door “be right back” and empty handed you walk across the hall to the restroom, return in minute, and reclaim your equipment-occupied seat. At least that was how it was at the start of the conference. All was fine. Things ran like clockwork.

Mid-conference someone revised the policy. Instead, if you leave, you now have to go wait in line to return.

Why did Apple do this? I asked. Two reasons.

First, by only letting people out and not back in, this is supposed to make things easier for the presenters to set up.

Second, it’s supposed to establish an order of fairness for those people coming into line.

On the surface it appears to make sense, but what this policy really does is prevent grown adults from being able to go to the restroom. Instead, you’re standing there with a full bladder and Apple’s staff is literally telling you that you’ve got three options:
a) Hold it until the session starts.
b) Abandon your equipment (as you might not have a buddy to watch it), and then wait in line to see if it’s there when you get back.
c) Go get your equipment and hold it while you do your business, and potentially miss the session (although you already had a seat).

Let’s examine this.

1) Does the policy improve seating fairness?
No. There’s equipment, and most likely a person, reserving the seat until you return. No one standing in line is going to benefit whether you reclaim it now or later. And, realistically, every talk that has been “filled to capacity and people were turned away” had plenty of chairs mid-row, plus people are willing to stand.

2) Does this improve the line?
No. It actually makes them longer, meaning Apple has more to manage. And, as the lines wrap all over the halls, it makes them more cramped, confusing, and uncomfortable.

3) Does it make conference attendees happier?
No. It’s annoying, bordering on rude, telling someone they have to return to their seat and wait for the presentation to start in order to relieve themselves. It’s a frequent conversation topic to overhear, Apple is putting a lot of people off.

4) Does it make Apple look corporately smart?
No. In fact, even its own employees are mocking the policy behind Apple’s back, all the while blindly enforcing it (most of the time), at the door. Even their own realize how ludicrous it is. This makes Apple look bad in a very self-aware Dilbert way. Of course there’s an insulting double set of standards, as the guy managing the gate preventing people from using the restroom calls on his buddy to take his place while he goes to take a piss.

5) Does it make the presentations go smoother for the presenters?
No. In fact, worse. Now one has to wait for the presentation to start, interrupting the speaker, and by going in and out letting more light in the room. It causes distractions. Plus I’ve seen one attendee fall over a chair during a presentation, and two people trip during a presentation, all trying to temporarily exit.

6) Does it make viewing the presentation go smoother for the attendees?
No. Being seated in the middle, one now has to navigate over other people who are trying to watch the presentation. I’ve had my equipment kicked as well as my foot stepped on by someone telling me “whew, now I can go.”

7) Is it safer?
No. There is now less room to get out, where before the row was empty. Plus, there are power cords, laptops, cases, drinks and other obstacles to navigate, crush, and trip on.

8) Does it provide accurate metrics for seating?
No. In re-entering you get counted a second time. This messes up Apple’s counts and artificially makes room seem more full, turning away people who could be viewing.

9) Does it make it easier for the presenters to set up?
No. The presenters are up on stage, a good distance from the audience. No one is trying to interact with the presenters before the talk.

So, what starts as a “good idea” ends up impacting far more people than it should. Compare this to a simple first-come first-serve policy, which would allow everyone to get settled before a talk begins. If seats are full, stand; if you don’t want to stand, sit; if you don’t want to sit, find another session; if you don’t want that to happen, get there on time or before, just like everyone else does. It’s acceptable to leave a session during Q&A in order to find a good seat at the next session.

Unfortunately, as with most failed policies, the solution usually is to add more policies (rather than correcting the root problem). Kudos to Apple for not going this extra step. The slippery slope would be to kick everyone out in order to have them stand in line again; that however would be truly idiotic, especially given the equipment people carry and set up to attend these things.

As a photographer that photographs models, there’s two primary goals that any website that tries to connect models and photographers should aim for:

All else is peripheral.

The idea is that if you’re a model looking for work, you post your portfolio online and photographers approach you with gigs. Conversely, if you’re a photographer, you post your portfolio and jobs start coming out of the wood work. The reality is that few sites can deliver on the promise adequately, not to a fault of the site’s objective, but due to design, business model complexities, or subtleties pertaining to the problem of brokering.

Naturally, for any such site to work you’re going to need a critical mass of both kinds of users just to have a wide enough selection to make this happen. As such, it’s important not to alienate users — something that is very easy to do with bad design or practice. It’s not enough that a site be free.

The closest site that I’ve come across that seems to have the right idea is www.ModelMayhem.com. It’s search capability is right on target. You tell it that you are looking for models in your local area that are some number of miles from your zipcode, that are between the ages of 18-24, female, 5′2″ – 5′7″, olive skin, with shoulder length black hair, green eyes, and poof — out pops a number of candidates.

This is the way it should work. You tell the criteria about what you need, and it finds people with those attributes.

The problem is the interface is klunky, the portfolio space limited, the navigation is horribly disorganized, and pretty much anything other than models is left wanting. Yet it’s still usable.

I wish it had a way to describe the kinds of services photographers offered and made them in a searchable fashion as well. Oh well, at least finding models isn’t problematic.

Such locator services are not a social network, nor are they a dating service. They’re supposed to be resources that connect professional with professional, with the added bonus of having a reasonable idea of what you’re getting. It frustrates me when a site is designed around chit-chat and messaging. Simply put let one professional find another, preview their work, and then get in contact with them by email; don’t obscure things. A site that works gets traffic, it doesn’t need fudging to get visitors.

Conversely, I just deleted my account over at www.aMuseBook.com, a web site that professes to do the same thing: connect models and photographers. I’d argue not only that it doesn’t, but that it physically can’t in my personal opinion — it’s a business model problem gone awry.

While better organized, and certainly much prettier, it’s search capabilities are downright awful. The best geographical resolution is state-level. So, if you’re looking for a model in Texas, that’s all of Texas. Additionally, providing search criteria for attributes just isn’t possible, which means locating a specific model by looks isn’t doable. And if you can’t find candidates, you aren’t going to be hiring.

Here’s another bad design choice that just seems obvious. If you want to find a model, you typically are looking for an age bracket, yes? Well, the site doesn’t let you search by age, instead you have to search by a specific birthday, which is stupid. Oh, and that’s a Day – Month – Year birthday at that. Even searching by year alone isn’t helpful, because simply year subtraction doesn’t give age.

Now while aMuseBook does give you more space to store your photos, it unlocks features using a point system. You gain points by commenting on people’s pictures and telling your friends to join. What becomes transparent very quickly is that the site is not structured to make contacts, but to get you to churn through pages so that Google Ads get thrown in your face generating an alternate revenue stream. I quickly got tired of being told in every email I have to “use” the site and it will ‘work’ for me.

Hogwash. If I can’t locate a model or post a comprehensive portfolio, then neither I, nor the models, are getting any serious value out of the site.

Adding insult to injury, the site gives you the ability to provide URLs to your own site; this sounds good at first, until you realize that many models and photographers keep their photos on Flickr. Why? Because Flickr is great for managing photos. But what does aMuseBook do for those sites? It blocks them out, showing up as www.*****.com, and when I questioned the site admin about it, I got back a response stating they didn’t want their site for depositing competitor URLs and not another portfolio site.

Wait a second. The service is there to help me find people by showing them my portfolio but they don’t want me to show them my portfolio if it’s elsewhere? Plus I can’t post my portfolio unless I leave comments that I wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s stacking the deck and gives unrealistic feedback. And when points are rewarded for clicking on ads, I’m pretty sure that’s against Google’s terms of service for AdSense.

If people are churning pages leaving “Nice smile” comments, how is one to know which comments are real (and therefore useful) versus people just trying to collect points? The information itself becomes devalued. Thus the business structure and the design alienates users in the short term, while the lack of utility alienates them in the long term. It can’t be viable.

And that’s why I deleted my account over there: It wasn’t usable or productive.

No wonder it’s so hard for models and photographers to get connected. I wish there were a simple directory that focused on doing one thing and one thing well, connecting professionals. It’s a hard problem, but the person that cracks that nut can steal a whole lot of business from all these other sites without trying too hard.

Fundamentally, the problem is that a brokering agent has to provide and organize information. Limiting it, not being able to search it, or failing to have a positive user experience drives away the very assets that are needed to make the site work. This appears to be a case where a well simple organized directory could be a winner-take-all.

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UPDATE: I have found an awesome site for models, photographers, and makeup artists. It’s call Miss Online and it allows unlimited photo uploads with no point limitation schemes. It also includes discussions, groups, blogs, and email. The site is very active and quite attractive to use; advertising is at a minimum, and you aren’t coerced into clicking through tons of pages. Plus, and here’s the real proof: as a photographer I’ve had more exchanges with models with this one site than all the other sites combined. It does get you connected.

I used to be a pretty big fan of wimp.com, a site that collected links to all kinds of interesting videos. Not having much time on my hands, this was the perfect aggregation of interesting content.

Now, when I go visit a link, an ad usually pops up. I have to close it. Then the video starts. And, again, another ad slides up from the bottom, and I have to that add. Then all the while the video is playing, I have a little “AD” box overlaid hoping I’ll press it.

The new face of wimp.com — why I’m done.
While I don’t begrudge wimp.com, or other sites, from having advertisements, I really dislike intrusive ads in the video stream.

As such, wimp.com, you’ve just gone from being one of my favorite sites to one of my least visited sites (which means no ad clicks, no ad views, by the way).

The simple solution would have been placing an ad elsewhere on the page, even under the video.

Want to know where the ads should have gone? To the right of the directory listing of links. That’s the page I’m always coming back to.

Another great part of the internet just died for me.

UPDATE 12-Mar-2009: While showing this horrible predicament to a friend the site acted differently; it played the video with no ugly overlays or pre-ads, but displayed an advertisement when done. That is perfectly acceptable! Fantastic compromise guys!

UPDATE 18-Mar-2009: Ugh, now it’s worse — ads pop up while you’re watching, even after you’ve dismissed them.

This morning I woke up to an email, it basically read this:

You received this email because you have created an account on Beyond.com. This is a one-time mailer. If you have any questions, please contact us.

I’m thinking to myself, “what?!?” Actually, I’m thinking something quite a bit more colorful.

Then there’s another message from Customer Service.

Then there’s another message with my username and password.

…right.

After deciding it isn’t some email spammer trying to get me to some foreign national site, I login. And what do I find? Someone had screen scraped an old copy of my resume and contact information and made an account for me.

At this point, I figure that anyone with any common sense should completely discount beyond.com’s credibility completely. Here’s why.

First, if any arbitrary user is able to make up accounts for someone else, then clearly the database of provided by beyond.com can’t be trusted. I know my information was wrong, so clearly any potential employer looking for candidates would actually be wasting their time — it isn’t an accurate representation out there. But more over, this represents bad business and security practice if someone other than the actual person can create an account.

Second, let’s assume that such a thing isn’t possible. The alternate conclusion is that beyond.com is scraping the web, making accounts, in an attempt to build a database to give the appearance they are more than they really are. Will some suckers sign on and “correct” the information? Perhaps. But I suspect many others will ignore it. Again, this is really not helpful for anyone trying to use beyond.com for candidates.

Bottom line, either side of the coin — something is wrong. Very wrong.

And, of course, removing that profile is painful and obscure. The help files toss around words like ‘deactivate’ rather than ‘delete’. Such things should make users of beyond.com question the marketing metrics of beyond.com as well.

To me, and in my personal opinion, beyond.com isn’t worth the pixels its printed on. In fact, it sucks.

REVIEW: Walt gives Beyond.com two thumbs down.

It’s memorial day, and BestBuy had sent me some coupons. Not amazing coupons, but 10% off this or that, should I happen to be in their store this weekend.

So, I’m hanging out around the house and come to the conclusion that having a second digital camera would be a really good idea. And shortly later, I’m standing in BestBuy in Sterling, VA.

Mind you, I’ve already decided upon the camera I want. It’s oh so niiiiiice. And, Noah, our helpful sales person, quickly has it in my hands, so I can grope the box with anticipation.

He’s also, it appears, is the master of up-sales, because I’m now also holding the fastest 8GB card they’ve got, a really slick HD card reader, a nice carrying case, and I’ve just signed up for the 4 year warranty plan …with accidental coverage as well. Single handedly, he’s more than doubled the amount I was planning on spending on an impulse buy. It’s not cheap, either.

And you know what? I’m happy. I’m genuine, truly, on top of the world, happy.

We pay in full, and not on credit, mind you. And Noah packs everything in to a big, convenient, transparent plastic carrying bag with handles that’s labeled BestBuy on the side; and just so I know I got everything, he packs my warranty information and receipt against the side so I, and the world, can see it.

It was at this point I made my fatal flaw: I went to leave the store.

Despite having just come from the registers with everything I was carrying dangling visible by my side, as I attempted to leave the store, I was detained to have my receipt and purchases examined. Not peered at. I mean, hands going through your stuff, as in it’s-not-in-your-possession-any-more kind of examination.

Understand what this feels like to the honest, repeat customer. It conveys you, personally, are doing something illegal or untrustworthy.

Understand what message this conveys from a store to its patrons. It says we don’t want you to shop here.

Yes, a lot of people are willing to bend to the hassle of an over zealous or bored employee. That doesn’t mean I am, or should. Store policy and personal whim isn’t the law. I have no contract with BestBuy, as I do with Costco or Sams, in which I happily comply to go over purchases as previously agreed.

The moment the sale is concluded, it’s my legal property. And BestBuy knows this. That’s why when they ask to rifle through my personal belongings when I leave, I can say “no thanks” and keep on walking. Legally.

I simply don’t trust store personnel to be properly trained that they are not the police, and they don’t have the same rights and authority as sworn officers of the law. That said, no one touched me today. But today’s exit was still more intrusive than I prefer.

It was also clear they didn’t think I was a shoplifter, they just wanted to assert whatever authority they thought they had. No big burly man asked me to step aside or go visit the back room; that, incidentally, would have been just fine if they suspected something. This wasn’t even a security guard. It was a regular employee and the greeter.

And so after they were done searching and returned my bag, without leaving the store, I went straight to customer service to return everything.

It was pretty evident, the store did not want me leaving with any purchases today. While my transaction had just been validated by going through my possessions, without my consent, somehow the situation appeared to require further escalation after my change of direction to remain in the store. Looking back, security folks were arriving at the exit.

Mind you, I had neither resisted nor engaged in any verbal exchange back there. It was now turning into a show, and I wasn’t even party to it. Four to five people where watching me talking with customer service from where I’d been stopped.

I got my full refund, and with the smile and friendly service that the camera was sold to me with. It’s clear where the problem area was, because it wasn’t on sales and it isn’t on returns. And, from my brief discussion with customer service, it was quite clear I wasn’t the first to go through this.

Not only did BestBuy lose this sale, but it also gives pause to future purchases I’d make.

It’s a story I’ll be sharing frequently this holiday weekend and coming week.

And, the weekly business purchases that I do for our office will most likely be done online or at the local Staples now, even if that means driving a little further.

BestBuy didn’t prevent theft, it lost business. More than just the camera.

Checking the receipts at the exit is bad policy, and it doesn’t stop theft. I understand BestBuy’s motive for this behavior, but it’s hurting them in the longer run. Far trivial solutions exist which would be far more effective and not cut into profitability or produce lost sales. Short term thinking and the illusion of security is a negative.

But it’s worse than that. I learned something BestBuy didn’t want me to know.

With my return receipt in hand, back at home, I signed on to Amazon and started looking up the products. Mind you, I had purchased the camera and equipment with coupons, so I was using that as my base price.

Even so, through Amazon, the camera was still 83% cheaper. Carrying case, 74% cheaper. Memory, 54% cheaper. And at those prices, I don’t need the extra warranty.

BestBuy had been so convenient that it just hadn’t been worth the second thought to go comparison shop.

Now, since they made me look at my relationship with their store good and hard, since this incident will remain in the forethought of my mind for quite a while, BestBuy has turned itself into SecondBuy.

BestBuy Taught Me A Lesson: Look Elsewhere.

It’s not just cheaper. It’s much cheaper.

I’m beginning to wonder if my second calling in life should be more formal: that of business consultant in the field of customer service.

It seems that wherever I go I notice two things. 1) Businesses complaining about profitability. 2) Customer service incidents that drive customers away.

Tonight’s story has me as passenger, while my friend tries to fill up his tire with air after going to the nearest gas station. In this case, Sunoco in Ashburn Village scored in the location category, and by its car wash station, it had a coin operated compressed air station.

My friend plunked in 75 cents to start the machine, to which an LED turned on indicating that not only was the machine suddenly out of service, but that it had swallowed his money as well.

Naturally, he drove around to the cashier to ask for his money back.

And here begins the lesson, Sunoco.

The correct response should have been to service the machine, activate it remotely, or hand back the 75 cents with profuse apologies. Any of those remedies would have been perfect and cost Sunoco nothing.

Instead, this happened.

The cashier retorted that it wasn’t the company’s problem, that he needed to call the service number on the machine. Thus, Sunoco effectively took my friend for 75 cents.

Now, to you or me, perhaps 75 cents isn’t worth a quibble over. And, discounting the inconvenience of having to drudge up more quarters, there’s a significant point that’s about to be made.

By not doing any of the good customer service solutions previously mentioned, it creates the impression that 75 cents is too great a sum of money for Sunoco to part with. And, by not placing an Out of Order sign on the machine, it perhaps further conveys maligned intent to steal from others.

The point to be made is one of lasting customer impressions. Because while Sunoco may have made 75 cents that evening, my friend refused to fill up there. And, as other people were in the car, we couldn’t believe how shitty Sunoco treated him. Do you think we’ll be filling up there? How many times will it be that much harder to simply use the Shell station up the street about a minute and a half away? And, how many people do you think this story will be told to?

While it might not make a huge dent in Sunoco’s pockets, and there certainly is no organized boycott, it serves as a good example of lost revenues. Especially when after filling up, we usually go inside and grab snacks and drinks. And, of course, that didn’t happen either.

What really struck home was as we were thinking about it, having filled up and gotten free air at the Shell station, that Sunoco tried to deny the air pump was actually theirs. The service number provided isn’t for customer refunds, it’s for getting the device fixed.

We’ll let you make the decision. Is this a Sunoco air pump? Do you see any Sunoco stickers on it? Oh, more than one? Thought so.

I happen to maintain a number of pages concerning programming led signs for hobbyists.

And, while I am willing to converse with LED sign vendors about improvements and protocols, I tend to only post recommendations for specific vendors and equipment that I have personally dealt with and feel that the end consumer would be better for the experience. I’ve had companies offer to buy a slot, and I’ve turned them down.

Also on those pages, I’m fairly clear that I am not an LED sign vendor or manufacturer. I’m not interested in LED products just because things have LEDs. I don’t want parts lists.

And, while some companies marketing departments don’t read those pages, almost all are quick to correct the problem after a polite email.

I have to say almost, every day I get one or more heavily graphic filled messages from tianjohn806@hotmail.com, john@vedonltd.com, tianjohn806@vedonled.com in which his template spam says “I … know that you are one of importers about LED products”. [sic.] The domain’s contact is suny@gol.net.cn, with technical contact domainadm@hichina.com. A quick scan of the website reveals james@vedonled.com and sales-trade@jee-jee.com.

As this appears to be a company, I’ve written twice (and got human answers back each time), but as one might expect that only steps up the spam. Very unprofessional. And very annoying. That raises more questions about how they’d treat customers, and by extension the quality of their products.

Walt gives Vendon LED two major thumbs down and does not recommend their products or doing business with them. They are a classic example of what’s wrong with the Internet.

Today I was forwarded a review of OS X entitled: Leopard is the New Vista, and It’s Pissing Me Off.

I think it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of Apple, in general, as I find their hardware, environment, and tools far more productive for my development, office, and home needs than I ever did using Microsoft or its products.

I think it’s also fair to say that I’m willing to also point out when things don’t work:

• Duplication Menu Item Problems
• Having to rebuild Spotlight indexes, manually
• And, more recently, Four complaints of Leopard
• And very recently, Five Things I Can’t Do With OS X Mail RSS

Oliver Rist, raises some very good points in his treaty on Leopard’s recent similarities to Vista’s screw ups.

Here’s my take on his five points.

Vista Similarity 1: Wait for a Service Pack—Perpetually

Rist is right in saying that “[With Tiger] Everything. Just. Worked. Period.” I’m also quite in agreement that with Vista, even “a year after its shrink-wrapped release” it still has problems, driver issues, and “doesn’t work with 50 percent of new software.”

But I wonder how far back he’s actually recalling. Historically, I recall that each early version of Apple’s OS had serious kinks. Is comparing Tiger 10.4.9 with Leopard 10.5.1 actually a valid Apple to Apple comparison? (excuse the pun)

I’m with Rist if he thinks it should be, but accept the reality it isn’t. In my mind, Apple changed a number of things about the OS that they didn’t have to. Stability, size reduction, and additional hardware support will always earn high marks on my reviews. Unless the new glitz is functional, it doesn’t do much for me; but more on this in a moment.

At the moment, I’m tolerant because historically Apple has made right in reasonable time. By 10.4.3 and 10.4.4, I was quite happy. Given that I suspect Apple’s real purpose was not to make GUI fluff, but to pave the way for resolution independent graphics and new Core Animation, I’m surprised how well things held up.

Microsoft, Direct X improvements aside, gets no such pass, because as a whole, I still have problems with the OS, and it’s been around longer, and had more people working on it.

That said, I’m also aware that a good number of the Microsoft blue screens of death aren’t Microsoft’s fault — directly. When drivers do bad things, it can topple an OS. Of course, this leads me to wonder why Microsoft didn’t manage their kernel layers a bit better.

Knowing this actually provides some insight for Leopard as well. Everyone understood how Tiger worked. Too well, perhaps. There were quite a number of OS resource tweaks that delivered amazing integration and features. I was certainly one of the advanced users.

However, Apple assumes, and I think rightly so, that if you intend to do an upgrade in place, then if you’ve changed the operating system out from underneath them, you roll the dice. A number of people were bit by Unsanity’s Application Enhancer that didn’t upgrade at the last moment before installing Leopard.

Keeping up to date with OS X third-party applications is just as hard as it is on Windows. That’s why I eventually plopped down the money for Version Tracker Pro. Had I not, I would have been one of those that the new install would have taken out. Diligence is king.

Even so, my problems with an Upgrade was slightly broken features, like the password working after a screen save (despite the settings to the contrary), and performance. I later learned that the former was a permission problem on the preference, and the latter was a library extension that didn’t work with Leopard and just tried to keep reloading itself.

My solution was to do an Archive and Install. All of my options were preserved, just like an Upgrade in place, but because the OS was virgin fresh, my system behaved wonderfully.

I give Apple this round, simply because a “fresh install” with Microsoft is so destructive.

Oh, and yes, once you’ve touted something as a “new” feature, like 64 bit, you can’t do it again for the next release. That’s cheating.

Vista Similarity 2: Needless Graphics Glitz

I love eye candy as much as the next guy, and in my operating systems too.

However, I question the real value one gets out of it. As long as it doesn’t get in the way, that’s great. If it communicates more information subtly, that’s great too. Incidentally, what I mean by that is effects, like Genie, which show where your Window is going when you minimize it, is useful.

All these different preview modes, sliding covers, and non-sense, I could really care less about.

Though, I have to admit I’m a closet user of them. Sometimes it easier to quickly view an image to make sure I’ve got the right one, or scan the contents of a document because a poorly chosen filename was used. I’d like to think Apple could have done this without the big production.

What really gets my goat, however is that Tiger had transparent Windows. Then it went away! That really made me mad, because I was using them since I had a small desktop.

So, that made me go find Virtue, in order to have multiple desktops. My gosh, I loved that product. Where else could you have different backgrounds, on a 3D cube, and get to them by keystrokes, mouse maneuvers, or tilting or laptop or waving your hand over it and triggering the ambient light sensors!

But then Apple went and created Spaces. With no real future, Virtue is going away – - and killing off a fantastic sales tool for me. With no competition, I don’t see Apple adding these things back.

And, only now, are we starting to talk about the transparency I had before. Argh!!!

So, while Vista is pretty, and Apple is pretty, Apple got by for having slightly more than fluff for fluff’s sake. Apple gets to take this round, begrudgingly.

Vista Similarity 3: Pointless User Interface “Fixes”

I’ve got to say, again, I agree with Oliver. The new dock may look pretty, but Apple had an uncanny way of letting me know what was going on with those nice, readable from a distance, black, unobtrusive triangles.

Do I have a way to get them back?

Can I switch an put the dock on the side and get something more acceptable looking? Yes, but then again I don’t want it on the side.

It’s crappy decisions like this that cause people to write utilities to hack the operating system which cause the initial instability problems in the first place.

Using Vista as the example, just because something is pretty doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable to use.

Having said all of the above, I have to admit that many of the things I initially didn’t like, I quickly grew to use. They bother me less.

Let’s just say in this round, the bell rang, and there was no winner.

Vista Similarity 4: Nuked Networking

I groan when I see Microsoft operating systems splinter over stupid artificial limitations like how many network connections can be concurrently inbound or outbound. I shake my finger at any operating system which can’t handle jumbo packet sizes or let me switch between 10/100/1000 ethernet speeds.

But I do accept that Windows shares, using Samba, can be difficult with Microsoft deliberately sabotaging protocols to force a homogeneous network with them being the vendor. Embrace and Extend. Anti-Trust. Bogus interoperability. Halloween Memos. I just can’t take the message that Microsoft is out to help me seriously anymore; too much bad history; too little progress. DRM, WGA, poison pill updates, spying – that’s the reason I left Microsoft.

While I recognize that Apple and Microsoft are in a cat’n'mouse game for accessing Windows resources, I do have a complaint to put on Apple’s shoulders.

And that is: just because I have a network, doesn’t mean I want to network. Unless I’m trying to comb my network’s machines, don’t bring them all to my Finder. I don’t need that. I know what kind of network traffic Microsoft generates.

On the other side of the coin, VNC is now built in. And, well, wow. Apple, you did well there. It’s almost as if Apple knows I’m slowly expelling Microsoft and replacing it with Unix systems.

But that doesn’t change the fact that when I do need access to a Windows box, and I’m using my Mac, I want it to be just as seamless. Just the other day, I tried to copy a file from a Windows share to my local desktop to work with a local copy. Locally. (Sense a theme?)

The Windows box said “that file is in use” (because someone had the network Excel file open) and wanted to know if I wanted a read-only copy. The Mac, however, simply said Permission Error and never told me why.

Apple: I need error messages to not be so abstract. Give me a way to Option-Click on them or something and dump the error.h code; in short, if I’m smart enough to fend for myself, let me. Or, just make it work.

I assume people have already heard that if you Move (not copy) a file from one resource to the other, if the destination is full and aborts the copy, the source file still gets deleted (the other half of the move). I hope that’s fixed.

Now, the sheer fact that Microsoft has a horrible time with other OS’s (and depends on them playing by their rules), the final score for this one goes to Apple. Though Apple got lucky.

Vista Similarity 5: Bundled Apps as New Features That Suck

Oliver and I may start to part ways at this one, although not that far.

All the standard home and media applications Apple bundles with their OS are really top notch in my opinion. In fact, I buy iWork in addition to iLife. It’s Apple’s Pro applications that use a interface that I find very dated. And ugly.

But the feature we all seem to gripe on is Time Machine.

My first experiences with Time Machine were horrible. The system would seize up, and, well to be fair, I have to admit that this all went away after I did an Archive and Install, rather than the Upgrade in place over my existing patched OS Tiger.

And, while I applaud the concept of Time Machine, I don’t like that I can’t force it to kick off when I want. Or that I can’t easily point it at a common server. Or use it wirelessly.

But my biggest beef is why in the world Apple just didn’t hold off, wait until ZFS was working the way they wanted, and delivered something that managed things directly with the filesystem itself.

In addition to Time Machine, I find myself using SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner to make quick, efficient backups, that are also bootable.

What I think Oliver might have missed is a subtle difference.
- With Time Machine, everything is backed up.
- Not that Time Machine backs up everything.

Let’s cover that a little closer. Time Machine does do a full backup, but then everything from then on out is incremental. And intelligently so. In fact, you can even go wandering around the files on the backup disk directly, should you choose to.

The way I’m reading things is that the review gives the impression everything is always backed up. That’s just not so.

Would I like to be able to tell Time Machine to only back up what I want it to? Yes. Please.

Would I like to only delete the things I intend to? Of course. But, realistically, it’s when I delete an important system file, and Time Machine has a copy, that I’ll suddenly become more forgiving of why it does what it does.

All his GUI gripes with Time Machine are dead on. However, when you get Time Machine working (via a clean Archive and Install – which keeps your preferences, data, and applications, btw), it does work as advertised.

It’s close. Time Machine’s integration is trivial. But over all, I think Vista’s backup, is better in the long run. Vista wins this round.

Oliver, I think, in this case was guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To be ticked off at the first version of a new application that could have been better, is justified. To extend that assessment to all bundled apps, as he does in his title, is not.

What the world hates is that after buying the OS, you still can’t do much with it. With Apple you can. And, with most Window machine purchases, you get a lot of crapware. Apple, you don’t.

In fact, I think Apple misses the mark. QuickTime Pro should be bundled with the OS, and if they were really on top of things, iWork as well. I’d gladly even pay the full retail price rolled into the cost of the machine. Why? Because can you image if everyone’s machine out of the box shipped with software that could do Office related stuff? You’d have a killer do-all platform from time the machine was powered up. There’s no way Microsoft could do that.

So, while Vista won this round, I’m gonna give Apple half-credit, since I think it was an unfair contests.

Walt’s Final Score

Apple 3.5 / 5; Vista 1 / 5.

I’d still rather use OS X Leopard than Vista any day of the week.

Walt gives OS X Leopard a thumbs up, even though it still needs some work.

Today I went to Target, and there in the DVD section was Battlestar Galactica: Razor.

I picked it up and held it in my hands. In fact, I did better than that. I went to the check out register.

That’s when the device beeped. I was quick to learn that the product could not be sold to me until December 4th.

I understand Target’s contractual obligations, and I respect that. But it’s also very unlikely that I will be in Target that day, having plenty of time to price compare. These kind of delayed releases actually cost stores sales, especially those impulse buys.

As a consumer, I’m not at all thrilled with waiting, whether it be for Harry Potter book seven or the latest movie release. When delay is introduced, I believe we all lose. The consumer learns they can live without the product, and to wait a little more causes no harm. The store is aware the consumer is willing to pay the most when they first see the product.

So, rather than groaning about the movie industry inflicting self-wounds and collateral damage, here’s what I read on the DVD.

First, it was the Extended Widescreen Unrated “What They Couldn’t Show You On Television” Edition.

It had Battlestar Galactica facts, and what looked to be a really neat directors commentary.

It was unclear if the unrated was for more brutality, sexuality explicit scenes, or just because the new content wasn’t passed by anyone who would take the time to rate it.

Based on what previewed on the SCIFI channel, I speculate that this DVD is gonna get a Thumbs Up.

Well before Vista was even real, I wrote about the problematic issues, bad practices for customers, and locked in formats that would make Apple Mac a highly attractive option. Pretty much most of the things people said couldn’t or wouldn’t happen have. It’s no wonder that the US Government would rather keep XP than move to Vista, that students on college campuses are reporting terrible problems interfacing with the IT departments and campus infrastructure, and that even Office formats are in dispute.

Even in our own offices, Vista has been one disaster after another, causing us all kinds of heart ache and productivity loss.

We thought the nightmare was over when we found a clever hack to make Vista think our networked HP LaserJet was a local printer (and we’d given up on being able to even use sound). However, we’ve been getting terrible disk performance on a laptop with Vista installed. Turns out the drive is badly fragmented.

Obviously, an XP user would simply run Disk Defrag and let that be that.

Not so with Vista. Sure, it has the program, but it provides no indicator of how much work needs to be done, and no visual interface at all about what’s being done. All you get is a stupid message that says the operation could take minutes to hours to complete.

So, we let Vista run overnight. And performance didn’t improve. At all.

You’ve got to see the conversation over on the Microsoft Developer Network about Vista’s defrager.

It seems that Microsoft expects you to leave your machine running all the time, and at some time like 2am on Wednesday, it will run the defrag automatically for you. Whether you want it to or not. And it will do the same crappy job.

If you’re running an enterprise service, you do not want to take an I/O channel hit “just because.” If you’re an IT administrator, you don’t want to screw with scheduling. If you’re a laptop user, you don’t want to leave your machine running.

Now I know I said I wasn’t going to give Microsoft support anymore. But I occasionally will share tips.

Grab the free version of Auslogic’s Disk Defrag. It will impress you. It’s clean, crisp, visual, astoundingly fast, and most importantly: it solved our fragmentation problems.