The Angry Drunk

A couple of posts back I went on one of my semi-annual rants about “social networking” and the fact that the New Media Douchebag contingent that most promotes “social” technology is the group that least gets it. The group of friends that I mentioned in that previous post is a great example of people using “social networking” (in their case MySpace) to enhance, rather than replace actual relationships. For us, MySpace is basically nothing more than a community message board, where we can post pointless little messages or coordinate a happy hour. The real relationships are based in the real world.

There is another group of friends that I have that are utilizing “social networking” (again in the form of MySpace). This group is orthogonal to the first group I mentioned, but they illustrate the other way that services like MySpace and Facebook can actually act to bring people closer rather than act as a way for marketers to gather vast audiences. This group is comprised of people whom I have know, who I still consider friends, but who have drifted out of my life for one reason or another. MySpace is giving us a fairly simple way to reconnect to those people who we may not have been able to otherwise. The irony is, neither group would be able to tell you if a “Scoble” was a blogger, or a skin rash.

Shameless Plug Time

One of the friends who has recently reconnected with me via the intartubes is trying to get a catering service off of the ground. So, I’m going to provide a little link love. If you’re in the Reno area please take a look at Catering Chrissy’s. The website is a little raw at the moment, but it should be getting fleshed out shortly.

August 19th, 2008 | Tags: friends, Personal, social networking | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (3)

MacRumors is reporting that some bunch named the American Customer Satisfaction Index have ranked Apple at the top of some customer satisfaction survey. But wait, I thought that Apple was doomed by it’s horrible hubris to a fate worse than corporate death. Oh, that’s just what the doucheblogs want us to think. In reality, the average consumer probably hasn’t even heard of the majority of the issues that we’ve all been nattering about for the last few months.

Let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time, when I was at EarthLink, I was part of the team that was in charge of data gathering and reporting for customer satisfaction survey data. This means that, among the various unpleasant things I was responsible for, I had not only access to the compiled survey return data but access to the raw stream of survey returns. Of particular note was the survey comments. Based on the comments that we were getting back, it was obvious that EarthLink was possibly the worst company on the face of the planet, and we should all kill ourselves out of embarrassment (a thesis that I’m not exactly disputing).

Now, here’s where it gets amusing. The last year I was with the company, EarthLink won a prestigious customer satisfaction award. In fact, we won that award every year I was there, but this year I was on the panel that got to review the results. It was amazing, these customers seemed to think that we excelled in the very areas that our own internally gathered customer satisfaction data said we sucked ass in. Of particular note was email availability. I’d estimate that while I was in Tech Support, we never went a day without at least 1% of our customers not having email problems (sound familiar), but the external survey group rated us higher than all of our competitors in that regard. What could have caused the discrepancy?

The answer is obvious once I tell you how we gathered our internal survey data. We gathered survey data by sending a survey to every customer who had contacted Technical Support or Customer Service. Simply put, we were surveying a population that was skewed towards people who were pissed off at us.

So, what is my point here? Simple: the douchebag bloggers with their 50 ways to diss the iPhone hit pieces, and the poor saps complaining about their valid, but fairly rare issues on Apple discussion boards, and the borderline criminal “analysts” with their FUD laden speculation reports are about as representative of the actual body of Apple customers as I am of the mass of Hannah Montana fans. It’s time for the blogokleinbottle to understand that.

August 19th, 2008 | Tags: Apple, blogorama, iPhone | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (3)

Hey kids, got this one via the whiny fuckers over at The Consumerist under the delightfully wrong title of AT&T Won’t Honor iPhone Price Announced In Its Own Press Release. The long and short of it is that our Douchebag of the Week contender “Rom” wants an iPhone 3G, and he doesn’t want to pay the unsubsidised price, even though he recently bought a BlackBerry from AT&T too. Hey, chucklefuck, wake up! This is how the subsidized phone trade works. The sooner you dips realize this, the sooner I can stop mainlining Pepto Bismol. I guess I can’t be too hard on Rom though, he is a Ferengi, and we all know what cheap fuckers they are.

(Via Consumerist.)

August 18th, 2008 | Tags: Apple, douchebaggery, iPhone | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (1)

In a welcome break from the current torrent of “Apple is dooomed” reporting, Jason Snell over at MacWorld hits on, what I think, is the real story in this piece. Jason’s argument, which I agree with whole-heartedly, is that the string of Apple failures leading up to July’s mega fiasco is the result of Apple simply biting off more than it can chew. I think that this is self-evident, and if you look carefully I think that you can see the seeds of this situation going all the way back to the release of Tiger and the PPC to Intel transition. Additionally, I think that the signs are there for those who want to see them that Apple gets this, and is working to pull themselves out of the hole. As one tiny piece of evidence I’ll point to the “no major features” Snow Leopard release. The bottom line is, Apple isn’t “arrogant,” or “incompetent.” They’re simply facing the consequences of being too successful.

August 13th, 2008 | Tags: Apple | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (13)

So, I’m sitting here in my office, working diligently (seriously, for any potential employers out there, I’m working my ass off). I’m also seeing tweets fly by, and reading blog posts by Robert “I have more followers that God (literally, 31,617 vs 600 as of this posting)” Scoble shilling the latest New Media Douchebag Approved™ social blogging network whatever. Meanwhile, over in my email client a funny thing is happening. People I know, people I would even go so far as to call friends are emailing back and forth, planning a happy hour gathering for tomorrow (and incidentally accusing each other of being either hippies or red-necks).

Email! I know, it’s fucking shocking. I mean, it’s so 1990’s. No Loopt, no Twitter, not even a dynamic group blog leveraging social networks. Fucking email. Even worse, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, some of us will actually telephone people not on the mailing list to give them the heads up.  We may even use landlines.

The point behind the snark here? This is what actual friends do; and this is the point that the New Media Douchebags fail to miss. Things like Twitter, and MySpace, and blogs, and Loopt are there to enhance the social experience, not replace it.  People make “social” networks; not technology.

August 7th, 2008 | Tags: blogorama, friends, new media douchebags | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (4)

Ok gang, I’m throwing this out there as support for my call for the blogokleinbottle to lay off the “Apple had a bad month, they’re doooomed” bullshit. Here is Chuq Von Rospach, a man who actually know that the hell he’s talking about (imagine that) commenting on the MobileMe launch fiasco, and Apple’s response.

Addendum:

And, of course, the first comment on Chuq’s piece is someone talking out of their ass to disagree with him.  Gotta love the internet: everyone’s an expert, except the people who fucking know what they’re talking about.

August 7th, 2008 | Tags: Apple, MobileMe, not a jackass | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (2)

Breaking headline from the jack-holes at iPodNN.

“Dev Team: iPhone 3G owners should avoid 2.0.1 update”

Ok, let’s see what’s wrong with this, starting with the headline.

“Dev Team:”

Which “Dev Team?” Apple’s? Someone who’s opinion I give two shits about? No, of course not. It’s the ever so mature creators of the “Pwnage Tool”.

“iPhone 3G owners”

Wait, I’m an iPhone 3G owner! What’s the 2.0.1 update going to do to me? Absolutely nothing. To quote the article:

The creators of the PwnageTool note that while the update is officially meant to fix bugs, it also makes changes to the underlying baseband code, which could potentially block any future attempts to unlock an iPhone. At the least, the update undoes any jailbreaking performed with PwnageTool.

Heavens To Murgatroyd, you mean Apple may feel the need to update their own hardware in a way that doesn’t necessarily play fair with “Pwnage”? The monopolist bastards!

To be fair, the blog post by the “Pwnage” people is a fair bit less FUDy than the iPodNN headline; since they at least acknowledge the actual audience that is effected by this. So I’ll have to direct the majority of my ire at the douchebags at iPodNN. Seriously you nitwits, learn how to report facts or go away.

Bleh, I’m too sick for this shit.

August 5th, 2008 | Tags: Apple, douchebaggery, iPhone | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (3)

Ok, so July 2008 isn’t going to go down in the annals of Apple history as one of the company’s better months. The Mobile Me launch was handled badly at best, iPhone 3G demand exceeded supplies by a retarded margin (oy to have that problem), iPhone developers are still unbearably shackled by the “fucking” NDA, and Apple was abysmally late with a set of security updates. No one who isn’t a complete and utter tool would argue that any of the above-mentioned issues is a good thing; but really, does every single story involving them have to end with dire warnings of impending Apple-doom?  

Yes, Apple screwed the pooch big time on a few different items here, but they’ve fucked up worse before, and I’ll bet you a shiny dime they fuck up worse sometime in the future. Look at this as a learning opportunity. In the meantime, here’s a desperate plea to the “journalists” out there. Tone down the FUD and breathless hyperbole; it only serves to insult your readers’ intelligence and make you look like a ninny. Thanks.

PS:

Apple is either “all marketing and PR” or “has worthless at PR.” Pick one, you can’t have both.

August 5th, 2008 | Tags: Apple, iPhone, jackassery | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (5)

Just a quick note to my loyal readers (sorry started laughing at that then lost my breath), I’m not actually deceased. I’ve just been too busy/hungover/flu-infested to generate a proper rant.

That is all.

August 5th, 2008 | Tags: blogorama | Category: Posts |  Print This Post | Comments (4)