The Rogue Estate

Two weeks ago after many years of lusting to own a Macbook of my very own and may months of saving money to do just that, I made my dream purchase: a shiney new 15? MacBook Pro. It arrived on Valentines day and there is no amount of chocolate hearts that could have torn me away from it.Hands down the most amazing and wonderful computer owner / user experience ever. And I’ve owned and used a lot of computers in my time. The bar was set very high for me at a young age with the Commodore Amiga. Apple has outdone even that deeply ingrained machine-love.

Today, a mere 12 days after my beloved MBP came into my life, Apple went live with the oft rumored, oft non-materialized MBP product refresh. While nothing overly dramatic, the features updated were enough to sting a little. Video ram doubled, CPU bump, and the highly anticipated multitouch trackpad.

I began looking at Apple’s RMA options and any protections I might have from CitiBank, since I used my Citi card to make the purchase for those added benefits. (and paid it right back with the money in my savings, one of the many “tricks” I learned from reading Consumerist every day). Hoping to avoid a 10% restock on an RMA, which would have been $240, I decided to call Apple to inquire about exchange options. Couldn’t hurt to ask, right?

Lately this is the point of a story where folks expect the other shoe to drop, for a tale of joy to turn into a nightmare. I’m happy to report the opposite. After a 15 minute hold time, which is totally acceptable given it’s an Apple new release day - I was greeted by AnneMarie, who took some information from me, put me on hold for a moment while she verified the policies and options, and then helped me set up the RMA and such, explained everything and then transferred me to Sy, and apple hardware sales guy who stepped through the new order for me.

Everyone was friendly, well informed, empowered to make decisions, insuring superior customer service and helpful beyond all expectations. Apple is cross shipping the updated MacBook Pro to me with expedited shipping at no extra charge, an RMA label is being emailed and when they receive my returned item, my account will be credited in full.

The end result - I get the updated product at no additional cost from my original purchase and Apple gets a loyal customer for life who can and does not only wax poetic on all the virtues of the hardware and software products, but also on the fantastic customer service experience, and even goes so far as to blog about it.

Thank you, Apple. Very well done.

-///

[UPDATE 03/11/08] The replacement MBP arrived a mere 3 days after my call to Apple, right off the assembly line in China to my front door. I moved my data and apps over and shipped the previous MPB back and my creditcard was refunded within hours of the package being delivered. No fuss, no muss! Thanks again, Apple Care - you guys are great to work with.  -///

Nerds who like color, flock together - or some such clever thing. In my quest to create a design for this very site which be even better than an eye massage, I’ve stumbled across the ultimate color palette tool - Adobe Lab’s Kuler. (flash required)

The site hosts a community of color nerds who create, share and rate swatches, complete with RSS feeds for catagories such as “newest” and “popular”. The editor tool itself is really fun to use, as well as extremely detailed. instant visual feedback for any and all adjustments  which show just how those adjustments effect the swatch as a whole make for an extremely interactive user experience.

I figure if by the time you are reading this blog that the color scheme doesn’t make you wince with pain, it means we all have Kuler to thank.-bp

The sale of LJ to SUP - and really, people.. so what? Do you honestly think they’re going to change the site and make it unattractive to it’s users after investing millions of dollars into it? That would be a pretty dumb business plan.

The Beacon ordeal on Facebook is more interesting to me. See this PC world article for an overview of the technical issue… and this Idea Shower Article for a potentially useful method of blocking the data exchange between FB and partner sites.

The above countermeasure requires firefox, but you’re all really smart people and you all use firefox for a safer and more rewarding web browsing experience anyway.

-bp

My idealism sends greetings from Utopia.

Eventually the real live version (yet to be completed) of Rogue Estate will delve into this subject quite a bit… for now, here it is in brief on LJ land.

Social networks, personal identity and the pipe dream of managing one profile that can be transported across multiple platforms.

A good start: http://opensocialweb.org/2007/09/05/bill-of-rights/

Seriously. Myspace, Facebook, Virb, LJ, Blogger, Twitter, Pownce, iLike, Groov, Consumating, Xanga, Joost, Flickr, YouTube… the list goes on and on and on with every possible niche having a social network built around it. It’s too much. One could make a full time job maintaining a presence on even a handful of sites, even with small interoperability hacks and inroads (for example, the widget that allows my twitter stream to be posted automatically to facebook or my Flickr photos to be posted automatically to LJ.)

And lets not forget - every time there’s a new push to a new platform, we all have to go out and spend a few weeks finding all our friends AGAIN.

The big questions are of course - who controls the master silos? (I say google.) How does it all work? how can it be kept secure? What are the limits? There will have to be definite boundaries where the centralized personal data ends and the value-added services of individual platforms begins.

I’ve spoken of it and will no doubt continue to churn away for some time to come. The big prize - the next upheaval (Web 3.0?) will be the plan that brings the dream of Write-Once-Maintain-Many a reality. RSS in reverse. Here is my chosen interface, here is my updated content - computer, do my work for me and make my life easier instead of more complicated.

Total homogeny is definitely not the goal, mind you. Facebooks, Myspaces, iLikes all have their target markets, audiences and their place on the network. The gold would be to be able to move from one to another without having to start from the ground up every time. Much like the telephone number portability law did to ease some of the pain of switching cellular network carriers, I see a social network bill of rights type concept doing for the social web.

How is this even possible? Where do they get these numbers? And why is this entire pile Motorola V60’s?

The numbers are admittably too large for the human mind to truly grasp, much like a those of a holocaust… it doesnt sit right. How is it even possible that many people are getting that many new cel phones on average every single day?

426,000 cel phones per day, 365 days - that equals 155,490,000 cel phones per year, in the US alone for a current estimated population of 302,442,586. By these numbers, every year over 50% of the US population including infants and old timers ditches their phones and grabs new ones.

I suspect these numbers to be a bit… exaggerated. Even taking the iPhone explosion into consideration. I can’t be the only person still adhering to “new every two” to save a few bucks.

-bp