Bad Apple
I love Apple. Effectively my salary gets split in 3 equal ways; Alistair Darling, Tesco and Apple.
You might be aware that they launched a major new product recently. There were a few problems, some of which I suffered. But I know it's impossible to have such a huge global launch without a few glitches.
There's one thing I couldn't let slip though. I bought a MobileMe account the other day. I bought it from Apple online. I was expecting an email confirmation and a registration key and then I'd be in. But no, this huge box arrived.
I've worked on products where the thing you're buying is intangible and so the customer needs to get something physical at the point of purchase, but that box is a ridiculous size for this:
That's basically the size of a CD. That little CD sized box would have easily fitted through my letterbox, but this big box had to be left at the depot for me to collect at my convenience. What makes all this worse, is that when I opened all that packaging I got a simple registration key.
That's bad isn't it? Bad Apple.
Whilst I'm complaining. My new 3G iPhone can no longer be charged whilst listening to music on my Bose iPod thing. That's very annoying.
When I took this picture I didn't register what song was playing, but I Want To Tell You seems quite appropriate.
Yeah, Apple finally removed FireWire charging from the iPhone 3G -- it now only charges over USB (i.e. via the USB pins on the dock connector) so any iPod accessories that try to charge via the FireWire won't be successful.
Prime example: iPod Hi-Fi. Bad Apple!
Posted by: Tom | Jul 28, 2008 at 14:16
That is bad. Next you'll be telling us Tesco are rubbish.
Posted by: claire | Jul 28, 2008 at 14:18
And don't you think that Mobile Me identity looks distinctively un-Apple? A bit fussy and cutesy, I thought, lacking the now-familiar minimal, cool, but wryly witty Apple touch.
Plus the technology's obviously been giving them trouble.
Whisper it: a touch of the Microsofts about this one.
Posted by: Mike Reed | Jul 28, 2008 at 16:16
That packaging is appalling. Funnily enough I wrote an Iphone rant today over on my blog. Can anyone tell me a good reason to get one of these mobileme accounts? what are the benefits? I was going to get one but the overly chirpy apple store staff were really grating on me after 4 hours of waiting in a que and I really couldn't be bothered to listen to their "we all love apple, big happy familly" nonsense!
Posted by: James Griffin | Jul 28, 2008 at 18:00
I'm in the Big Apple and had to order some software from their online store for my internship today, it was 5 cents below the free shipping qualification, so we ended up spending $20 more - if that's how it's going to arrive, they could probably have saved that 5 cents straight away on one of those balloon things
Posted by: Tom Harle | Jul 29, 2008 at 00:41