Mobile is me…

After much deliberation, I decided to purchase MobileMe.

I was going to purchase it almost immediately, however if you are a follower of all things Apple, you can’t blame me for holding of for a while.

It has to be one of the dark days at Apple, that they allow a product to ship that quite clearly wasn’t ready for primetime.

So I followed the news for a while and saw that the number of complaints fell to an acceptable level, so I decided to jump in, after years of kicking the tyres.

I’ll come to my experiences in using MobileMe in another post; the reason for this post, is to point out the rocky road I myself had to travel, even before I started using Apple’s Cloud.

I decided to purchase the boxed version of MobileMe from a local Apple reseller in Nottingham in the UK. I won’t mention their name, however the name has 4 letters of the alphabet in it and begins with K. If you’re from the UK, you’ll know who I mean.

I wanted the boxed version as it was going to be a present from my wife for my birthday.

So we travelled to Nottingham and tried to purchase the boxed version of MobileMe. Now, it’s here I made my first mistake. The salesperson said that they could sell me a boxed copy of .Mac (the last one in the shop apparently!) for £10 cheaper than MobileMe.

He assured me that everything would work OK, the serial number was the same for both services.

I fell for it, and made my purchase.

Upon opening on my birthday, I visited the MobileMe code activation page and entered my code.

Oh dear. It didn’t work. It kept on coming up with the message, ‘That could has already been used.”

Now, I gave the salesperson the benefit of the doubt. I had heard that there had been a few problems in transferring .Mac accounts to MobileMe, so I called the reseller to give me some guidance.

Well, they were no help. The advice was, “Not our problem, this happened to me, don’t worry, you just need to call AppleCare, here’s the number.”

So, unperturbed, I called AppleCare. I got in touch with a very nice young lady who was no help whatsoever. The told me to goto the help pages at MobileMe and use the ‘chat’ service there.

So, again I launched the chat service and here’s where I actually got some of the amazing Apple service I heard so much about.

Within a few seconds a very helpful person was taking my complaint down, and a few minutes of checking told me what the problem was.

The account had been activated 305 days ago and was already active.

Now, they said they usually tell people to take it back to the Applestore for a full refund, but in this case, they’d give me a new code for free. A few minutes later my account was activated and syncing.

Great service at last.

So the question arises, are KRCS (damn! named them – whoops!) selling copies of .Mac they’ve already sold to someone else (when they set up a Mac for a customer maybe?)

I don’t know for sure, but it sure smells fishy to me.

I have always advocated that you should look after the little guy’s business, but in future, I’ll be visiting Sheffield Apple Store.

Thank you all for listening…

I know that this lowly blog isn’t totally responsible for this news:

Amazon fails to dent iTunes

but it’s nice to know that the record companies plan to cripple Apple’s dominance in the downloadable music industry, isn’t working.

Amazon’s entry into the market has nothing to do with consumer choice. They have allowed Amazon to have DRM-free music, because they want to stop Steve Jobs from keeping prices of music low.

If Apple is reduced to an also-ran, then they can safely ignore them when they increase prices across the board, and believe me they would.

Amazon, being the faceless corporate behemoth they are, will simply roll-over and take it up the ass, but Apple? Steve will probably pull out of the industry all together.

Which is what the music industry wants.

Anyway, I’ve always wondered why people have such a problem with Apple’s Fairplay DRM. 

It is the fairest out there (obviously), and I’ve never come up against it’s restrictions. But then again, I don’t pirate music.

So, if you are fair with the music industry’s property, you don’t come up against the DRM. It’s perfect.

If you never come up against a DRM mechanism, can you really say that DRM exists?

Anyway, it now seems that Apple is finally winning the battle, with the rumours that they will have DRM-free music shortly. But, I spoke too soon:

Labels making specific demands in iTunes talks

It seems that they are still holding out. Time will tell whether they make the right choice for consumers.

iPod software development…

I love my iPod. Well actually I love my iPods, because I have 4 of them, but there’s one thing that’s been troubling me.

The hardware changes, the design changes, but the underlying software features don’t seem to change.

Things have moved on from version 1, and I know that Apple like to keep things simple, but there’s one thing I wish they would add, or I could add myself.

More often than not, I’m listening to my music on shuffle, and I come across a song by an artist I really like, and by extension I like other songs by this artist.

Why can I not simply skip to a list that says:

1) Shuffle to other songs by this artist

2) Shuffle to other songs in this genre

3) Shuffle to other songs in this year

Maybe this could be a special section that you could programme from iTunes, so you would have an Applescript that does this, but it executes also on the iPod.

I know that the ‘KISS’ principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), is behind a lot of reasoning at Apple, but time and time again I come across a situation like this in the car.

The only way around it is to navigate back to the top level,  select ‘Artist’ and shuffle from their entry – it’s not very easy and probably quite dangerous and distracting if you’re driving.

Maybe now that the AppStore is open we’ll see this, but what with Apple restricting certain apps when they duplicate in-built features, it’s not likely.

Psystar breadcrumbs…

 

 

 

Apple’s recent complaint against Psystar has unearthed a brief insight into the hard work they have been doing behind the scenes.

18. On information and belief, persons other than Psystar are involved in Psystar’s unlawful and improper activities described in this Amended Complaint. The true names or capacities, whether individual, corporate, or otherwise, of these persons are unknown to Apple. Consequently they are referred to herein as John Does 1 through 10 (collectively the “John Doe Defendants”). On information and belief, the John Doe Defendants are various individuals and/or corporations who have infringed Apple’s intellectual property rights, breached or induced the breach of Apple’s license agreements and violated state and common law unfair competition laws. Apple will seek leave to amend this complaint to show the unknown John Doe Defendants’ true names and capacities when they are ascertained.

The emphasis is mine. In order of emphasis, here’s my translation:

1) Apple has evidence that Psystar doesn’t really want to sell cheap Mac clones. The whole exercise is a front for a plan by one of Apple’s competitors, who, knowing full well this would end up in court, are trying to destroy Apple’s business model.

2) Various individuals and/or corporations. Microsoft & Dell. In that order.

3) When Apple finds out enough evidence to prove this, things are never going to be the same. This could finally end the technical dead end that Micro/Dell have led us all down. If we can find proof – it will finish them both.

Of course I have no proof. But obviously Apple has a few leads. Whoever this is, they had better make sure that the breadcrumbs don’t lead to them.