Screw the Consumer

Stumbled unintentionally on this site today: http://www.yesnomayb.co.za (it was actually an ad on a site I was on, and since I’m all about Google Adsense clicking these days, thought I’d click to ‘donate’).

By chance, and despite using Win32 platforms most of the day, at night I use my Mac Mini. And Safari.
Now I know that Safari 3 beta is out and it’s had its fair share of problems. Especially now that it has migrated to Win32. However, it’s not the version I am using. I am still on Safari 2 that has been in production and live since I started building the house I’ve been in for nearly a year already.

And I see this…

So I send them this little note through their Contact Us page:

While every Internet browser has bugs, some more than others, it’s a fair statement that Safari and it’s *nix base is dramatically better than IE. Firefox is good too.
I can only suppose that you’re getting the Google referal click on Firefox; hence the bashing of Safari.
Safari and Firefox are equally W3C compliant. If your lazy ass is too opinionated to take into account a new riser (not even Mac-only these days) browser…
Take some client and software friendly tips from agilemanifesto.org:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
And one from the world of sales: the customer is always right. Don’t tell them they are wrong.
Success is a long damn reach for you guys… you simply don’t get software or Internet based commerce.
Bugs in Safari, however few or relevant, is no excuse for poor programmers or programming.

I blame the bosses. They don’t let their programmers see the light of day or the color of the customer’s eyes.
Screw this crowd for so badly misleading the eyeballs that hit their site.

I’ve owned an iPhone for three days now. And it is actually a great little device - not said through any attempt at averting buyers remorse but a tipping of the hat to Apple for making an effort that is clearly evident. It’s as though this is the third or fourth cellphone Apple made, not the first.

Try it. Find someone who has one and try it. To do anything on this phone/ipod/browser/etc. etc. requires no reading of a manual. It simply makes sense. It’s obvious.

However, if there were some things to fix…

- When selecting a video from coverflow only the audio plays. Where’s the video I was waiting to see?
- Safari frequently crashes, gracefully reseting back to main menu. I’ve had an Intel Mac Mini since March 2006 and have had two application crashes in total (and it was the same application in a trial version). Can only suspect that this is a Safari 3 beta derivative.
- Mail doesn’t spin content into landscape mode. Especially annoying for HTML emails.
- Notes doesn’t spin content into landscape mode. Not a big deal though.
- Being able to add multiple SMS recipients is missing.
- Can’t select multiple emails. Doesn’t matter what I want to do with multiple emails, I want to select them all! Actually, I want to mark them all as read when loads come in at once. I’d hate to make comparisons (because there really isn’t - iPhone is not comparable to today’s high end handsets)… however the Blackberry has this and it’s useful.
- Can’t sync Notes to anything. It does let me email my notes though.
- GPS connectivity would make this a killer mobile device. Why’s it missing? Especially with Google Maps being such a great tool on the iPhone. And no, the pseudo direction thing does not work when travelling as you need someone else in the car to press Next.
- Better Bluetooth. Or, put properly, any Bluetooth connectivity. Last minute implementation?
- Can’t open emails forwarded from Thunderbird. Thunderbird attaches the relevant email instead of including it in the body of the forwarded email. Doesn’t work.
- Safari doesn’t truly multi task with multiple browser windows unable to download pages simultaneously or on the background when other apps are working. And with EDGE - it’s a pain in the ass to not take advantage of any available bandwidth.
- And speaking of EDGE: it is painfully slow for full pages. Or anything, for that matter. Stay near to Wi-Fi network.
- Text corrector should also take into account noun and verb positioning for suggestions.
- Camera needs zoom and better picture control. Pictures are not great. Badly miscolored.
- No reply to all on emails.
- Need junk filter for email client.
- Needs an IM client. For me, iChat would do great.
- Needs a Skype client. Yet another killer app for this, however I’m sure AT&T would puke at the thought.
- Ability to store files missing. Not essential though.

And speaking of AT&T - they are the PC of the cellphone industry. Actually, the cellphone industry is the PC… and Apple was left to try and figure out the best looking mushroom in the compost patch.

Comparison: in the queue at AT&T that I was in it took forty minutes to work through the first five customers who were allowed in the store. In the same time the local mall with an Apple store had worked through to number 80 in line. The difference? AT&T tried to perform a credit check on everyone, upsell half the store, explain in great detail about the downsides of the terms and conditions and next steps if online activation doesn’t work out. Apple sold the iPhone in a box - job done.

AT&T better pull their damn socks up. Apple does ‘raise the bar’ pretty damn high for any business. Apple’s share price today is $121.26, and AT&T’s $41.85. Share price aside; it’s easy to figure out who the more successful company will be.