refWrite backpage: Technics: Apple: David Chartier of tuaw defends against Apple-flaws critic

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Today's TechNote quotes a regular contributor of posts on the tuaw.com site. That's David Chartier on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, which blog doesn't seem to have a a homepage or frontpage but instead offers a list of 9 mainstay Bloggers (regular free-range columnists, I guess) and 20 Contributors (occasionals, it appears). Chartier explains, in answer to another Apple-product analyst, the presumed spate of flaws witnessed over the years (and in some notable cases, quite recently) in "1st generation product launches" from the redoubtable Apple, refWrite's computer technology of choice, mostly.* Here, in the blockquotes below, is what Daniel has to say on the matter, a serious tech-answer by way of explanation (no cover-up, no boosterism) to a serious tech-question about a serious tech line of products from a serious tech-company Apple – which nevertheless bears watching alertly and sometimes requires direct consumer response from all us Appligos.**

Principium Consumers Hub [computer hardware & software] :

Gundeep Hora at CoolTechZone [site's frontpage - OS] has taken a critical eye to what some consider are Apple's recent and rocky 1st generation product launches. The article utilizes two examples - the iPod nano scratch issue and MacBook heat complaints - to illustrate what Gundeep argues is Apple's faulty process of releasing products and then reacting to serious flaws when the public outcry spreads across enough blogs and petition sites [my underscore - OS].

TechNotes, by Owlie Scowlie, quoting David Chartier [tuaw]

Whether you're already hastily typing a comment to flame Gundeep or you have one of those aforementioned petitions already open in a separate tab, Gundeep has written an interesting piece that I think could strike a deeper chord if he used a find/replace command to swap the word 'Apple' with 'the computing industry as a whole'. Similar criticism of Apple's 1st generation production quality crops up on the web every couple of months like clockwork, and I think it's because there is an unusually high level of expectation surrounding their products. I'm not saying Gundeep's criticism is misplaced; quite the contrary: my first Mac[intosh computer] ever was the 1st generation of 12" PowerBooks (867 MHz baby!) and I had to go through four of them to get one that didn't overheat or have a hard drive that choked itself to death within hours of bringing it home. To make matters worse, the Apple Store, including its snotty manager, treated me only slightly better than that sticky stuff you try to scrape off the bottom of your shoe. My next Mac experience was the 1st gen 15" Aluminum PowerBook that was a part of the 'white spots' debacle - case in point: I feel Gundeep's pain, but Apple isn't the only computer and electronics company to exhibit these kinds of mass production complications. Other computer makers have had to recall batteries and entire batches of one computer model or another. Dell recently had to replace some faulty displays, and I can't remember which mobile phone company's batteries are exploding this week.

Readers will notice that Gundeep cites consumers' issues, but only those involving computer hardware flaws. On the other hand, my uncle Owlb, editor of refWrite, started with a clunky way-back-when Mac he got from uncle Platypus. When at 60, Unc Owlb was given an iMac (Summer of 2000 model), I inherited my own first Mac, used, that ancient clunker. Later on, I started movin' on up, while Unc Owlb slowly upgraded his Operating System to where he's usin' OS X.3.9 nowadays. He always waits until a new Mac OS is no longer new, but has gone on developmentally thru several fix-ups, before making an operating-system upgrade.

Apple's Mac software has its 1st generation flaws, just like Apple's Mac hardware. Uncle Owlb's main complaint these days is that he's still limited to a 350 MegaHerz speed and a 6 Gigabytes memory capacity (so he's constantly looking around for online web-based storage sites for his overload of folders and files ... an occupational hazard of editing refWrite, now a blog of 3-going-on-4 pages). Moving to third-party related hardware, he says he has no complaints about his LaCie peripheral-storage unit that runs from the limited number of USB portals on his iMac; but he does have major complaints about the software interface app SilverKeeper (a LaCie product) that governs the datafeed to the LaCie peripheral storage that runs off his iMac USB.

So, here we have an example of an Apple hardware consumer who just can't keep up financially with the new products available - a fact that leads dialecticaly, in his case, to a contented stasis with the hardware he's got, no major flaws, lots of time-tested maintenance apps like third-party UNIX-tech open-source Applejack, and thus no complaints or petitions to write. But, in contrast to hardware, Apple software is a very different story for him. And also he does complain about Apple's web-based features like Dot.Mac to which he subscribes devotedly year by year at a hefty charge, also Homepage the Dot.Mac website system which is woefully restrictive like the free Blog.Mac host which operates out of Homepage with some very nice feature-details, but accompanied by a huge number of restrictions compared to, say, blogs hosted by Google Blogger's free BlogSpot. Dot.Mac also now offers membership groups, accessible only by registered members and called Dot.Mac Groups for which Unc says the pages and internal features are quite clunky, thereby discouraging his use of them. So, regarding software, he could sign some petitions, he says. But where would he find them? And to what end? The neglected software development aspect of Apple is so glaring that one can only wait for possible improvements in, say, five years time. Meanwhile, he's hoping for an iPod for his sixty-sixty birthday. Phat chance!

To wrap this all up: Apple sets the bar high with their unique design and flashy marketing, and because of that, I think their customers and the media at large simply hop on board for the honeymoon each and every time the company whips out a shiny new toy. Criticism like Gundeep's seems to appear when the fantasy inevitably hits speed-bumps that are simple facts of life and mass production. In the end Apple is a company, like any other, that is susceptible to hardware defects, firmware botches and software hiccups [my italics - OS]. Then the conversation turns to products, quality and accountability of the industry as a whole - but I think that discussion might be better suited for a different post. Granted, none of these issues are any fun when you're the one stuck with the bad apple (yes, a pun), but sensationalizing the situation isn't going to solve anything. Keeping a level head, however, and understanding that 1st gen hardware can sometimes be a gamble - no matter who it's from - just might save a few headaches, and perhaps then you won't need to sign that petition after all.

A great stoic summary about mass-produced consumer-computer goods and services, I say. Now, dear readers, we come to my notes on asterisks I inserted above:

* I explained how Unc Owlb and I came by our Apple-prone predilection (and never did like what we understood of "the Others" among computer hardware producers for individual and family consumers); other refWrite staff members also use Apple computers only, as does our publisher, Albert Gedraitis, much like Unc Owlb.

** "Appligos" is a coined term by Anaximaximum that characterizes Apple-users who are less than fantatics, still are wary of MicroSoft software products and MS's encroachments on ISPs like Sympatico.ca, and maintain a supportively critical stance to their computer brand of choice, a relaxed loyality to their cybernetic preference. The term "Appligos" is also a pun on the brand of choice of another reformational Christian computer user, Dr. Andrew Basden, who has a fierce loyality to the Amiga computer brand. Basden is Professor of Human Factors and Philosophy in Information Systems at University of Salford [UK]'s Information Systems Institute, from which he has been seconded annually to University of Lulea, Sweden, part of each year. He also works closely with Prof Sytse Strijbos, Philosophy of Informatics, Free University, Amsterdam [VU]. Andrew - was he joking? - has said he prefers the obscure Amiga brand of computer because it is more normative ... it treats the textate word as the whole point of computing and disdains all the graphic, visual, and audio/visual "doodads" that characterize especially the entirety of the Apple (maybe I'm conflating his two issues here, better check out Amiga to see if it's constrained to the semiotics of the textated word only). In comparison to the good professor's amigo Amigo, an Appligo is someone who warmly appreciates all the multi-layered semiotic-enrichment of the products of the Apple brand - making it the preferred brand of workers in graphics, photography, and videography - and now with the iPod developments, also in sound and music (iTunes, iTunes Music Store, and GarageBand. On all these semiotic levels and in the integration of these diverse semiotic-technical sources, Apple products often lead the way and are copied profusely by the competitors. Finally here, after reading Prof M.D. Stafleu's new English version of his book, Protestant Ethics: Relations and Characters, the word at hand - "Appligos" - has become an organizational name, as well, for a league of reformational Christian personal-computer users, consumers of the Apple brand products who are not employed by the company and have no ownership of the company's stocks. Appligos has become an association of reformationally-committed Christians who use Apple-products in the ways and spirit outlined above in the entirety of this blog-entry, and who are interested in the reformational philosophy of technics, computers for general consumers (PCs), and the work of Andrew Basden, Syste Strijbos, M.D Stafleu, and Egbert Schuurman - interested as well, outside the foregoing religio-intellectual community, in the fine Apple-product critics like Gundeep Hora and David Chartier with whose ideas we began this blog-entry. - Owlie Scowlie