Chuqui 3.0

More Contrition, Less Communication From Apple

2008-08-20T12:31:35-07:00

More Contrition, Less Communication From Apple - Faster Forward:

I do find myself more confident that Apple will fix what ails MobileMe. That optimism doesn't come anything the company has said, but from blog posts by Apple alumnus and astute Silicon Valley observer Chuq von Rospach, who left the company in 2006 after 17 years (!) there

Wanna make my day and bring a smile to my face? Wanna see me plug you in my blog?

Okay, seriously. Wanna make my day and bring a smile to my face? (nobody should see being plugged in my blog as high on their "must be done this week" list)

Simply write stuff like this.

But as I've said many times about this kind of stuff, if you hang around long enough, people start declaring you an expert simply because you've been hanging around for a long time.

I certainly try to avoid taking myself too seriously around this place. Consider this my reminder to all of you to do the same.

astute. I've been called many things over the years, but I think that's a new one. it's one I don't need to hide from the family, either!

limited blogging time again...

2008-08-20T09:16:12-07:00

apologies for some relative silence; I'm about to head to SoCal again to do some work with Mom's lawyer on the estate, and to take another run at cleaning out dad's office. As usual, I've got a bunch of stuff that has to get done before I go, and I'm going to be about two days short....

I really do have a bunch of things to talk about that don't mention Mama Apple, but once I opened up that can o' worms, I had to see it through.

But it's unclear if there'll be much time to do some decent writing until sometime next week. or as I like to put it "camera? I have one of those around here somewhere, right?" -- it's been like that again, but in (generally) good ways; stuff's getting done, so I'm not complaining. just busy.

I am hoping, if things work out, to spend some time sunday up in Morro bay on the way back, probably at Sweet springs and at the rock primarily. Depends on time and weather, but I'm really looking forward to a few hours birding, dinner and a late drive home so I can be back at work monday.

Apple 3G iPhone Issues: Finger Pointing

2008-08-19T20:44:41-07:00

Apple 3G iPhone Issues: Finger Pointing » Webomatica - Technology and Entertainment Digest:

The iPhone 3G still has issues. As I write this, the two biggest bugaboos are MobileMe and wimpy 3G reception.
Chuqui 3.0 (former Apple employee) posted two insightful (and juicy) rumors as to what’s going an at Apple regarding to these two issues:

Mobile Me: Rob Schoen, the guy in charge of MobileMe, lost his job last Friday. But the kicker: he came from Microsoft and brought several of his Redmond buddies to Apple.

Blame Deflection: The MobileMe fiasco is Microsoft’s fault.

3G Reception: There’s bad driver code in the 3G chips which were developed outside of Apple (Infineon?). Apple isolated the bug, but the supplier has a “lack of urgency” even though their driver code is an “absolute travesty.” A fix is at least two months out.

Blame Deflection: The 3G reception fiasco is the 3G chip vendor’s fault.

It seems, almost intentionally, Apple positions themselves where they can blame someone else for their problems (iTunes DRM is because of the music labels).

Okay, while I normally enjoy reading Webomatica, Jason has me completely confused this time.

How is this blame deflection at Microsoft? These guys were hired by, and worked for, Apple. Years ago, in the case of Shoen. Jason, you're trying too hard here.

And if the problem IS bad driver code for the 3G chips, it's not blame deflection, it's blame placement. It IS the third party's code and responsibility.

Sorry, guy, you're wrong here on both counts.

Apple - MobileMe - Status: Blog Dead.

2008-08-19T11:25:26-07:00

Apple - MobileMe - Status:

This will be the last MobileMe Status posting. Instead, we have redesigned the MobileMe Support page so it’s clearer and has an enlarged area, now in the upper right hand corner, to report on system status.
[....]

David G.

And thus endeth Apple's brief foray into corporate blogging.

Surprised? not me.

Disappointed? Massively.

Too bad Apple sees communication with its users only as necessary during times of crisis.

The point Apple (and many companies) don't get is that communication during the "good times" is what builds relationships and trust so that when the bad times happen, people are more willing to listen and believe and cut some slack.

There's a strongly jaundiced edge to the discussions of MobileMe these days, justifiably. But it's more than that, it's "bug fixes" being considered an appropriate set of release notes. I could give many examples of Apple playing the "trust me" game here and spoon feeding what information it feels is useful.

As long as Apple didn't stumble, users accepted that. but now the trust is broken -- so is the software -- and that's starting to change the dynamic of the relationship between Apple and its users. Unfortunately, it's clear Apple's not going to try to deal with that until it becomes a crisis. Instead, it's crawling back into its shell, because it think it can.

And it can -- for now. All companies are cyclic, and Apple's been running a huge, wonderful string of successes with few mis-steps. But that's going to change, someday. maybe MobileMe is the start of the downslide, maybe not. Apple definitely can no longer be seen as invulnerable or perfect, even to the fanboys.

One of the things I pushed as hard as I could at Apple was conversation -- almost everything I did at Apple for my tenure involved some form of transfer of information out of the company, and back in (where I could convince, finesse, or simply bullrush it back in), or between different parts of the company. Unfortunately, conversation isn't part of the corporate DNA, communication isn't a discussion so much as a lecture.

They've gotten a lot better over the years, usually on the backs of committed employees more than corporate initiative. I have to admit my biggest worry (and one I discussed with anyone I could, back when I was there) was that it wasn't technology or marketing that'd dump Apple's success, but some other company figuring out how to tie into the online conversations and use that to create new advantages that out-competed Apple. So far, hasn't happened, but one of these days, it will.

Then what? Well, maybe they'll throw David G. back to do more damage control. Until then, I guess we're left with "Bug fixes. trust us". Those that trusted them with the iPhone G3 and MobileMe are likely finding those words a bit hollow, and it'll take time for Apple to heal those wounds....

Two little tidbits..

2008-08-19T07:37:30-07:00

Update: got the following email overnight.

Your blog entry is wrong, the VP is not Rob Schoeben. The ex-microsoft person who ran MobileMe was John Martin.
No reason to make Rob look bad publicly. Please correct, for Rob's sake.

Re-update: just got another confirmation of the above, so I've changed the text below. Apologies to Rob Schoeben for tossing the fickle finger of YOU at him (but to be honest, Martin seems to be flying pretty much entirely under the online radar, which isn't easy to do these days...). Some research on the initial contact I had makes me comfortable saying it was an Apple person of some sort, although I didn't know him. My second contact isn't Apple, but I know I can trust, so that seems to settle this.

Schoeben is definitely still there. Definitely not fired.
Within Apple, the blame for MobileMe's launch is widely, if not universally, seen as lying on John Martin's shoulders. Martin is still listed in the company directory, but apparently no longer reporting to anyone.

---------------------

Both should be construed as completely unsubstantiated rumors (which, unlike the rumor sites, I'm more than happy to point out are unsubstantiated....):

First, I heard via one of those "friend of a friend" connections that ~~Rob Schoeben~~ John Martin was (to use their words" escorted off the Apple campus friday. ~~Schoeben~~ Martin was the guy ultimately in charge of MobileMe, but was also VP of Applications Marketing (iLife, iWork, pro apps). He's an ex-Microsoft exec brought in a few years ago. He them, according to this person, "brought in a bunch of his microsoft friends". If it's not obvious, that was not stated as a compliment.

Now, the phrasing of how this was phrased caught my ear. The implication (at least to me) was that this wasn't a "decided to spend more time with his family" parting of the ways, and perhaps even a surprise to ~~Schoeben~~ Martin. Whether he was literally walked to the parking lot iwth a box of his stuff in full view of the cheering crowds of Apple employees, I don't know - but that's the image I get of this, based on how it was told to me. And for better or worse, I can see Steve Jobs doing something like that.

Or perhaps it was all scheduled and someone's waxing dramatic in my direction. Wouldn't be the first time. But it sounds like Steve has a (virtual) head on a (virtual) pike outside of IL1 for the MobileMe fiasco. Whether or not they stoned the poor sap (virtually) on the way to the gallows is sort of irrelevant, but I'm amused by the imagery.

I feel bad for him, too. Don't know him, never worked for him, but it couldn't have been fun recently, but ultimately, it was his ship, and it ran aground in the harbor, and captains never maintain their command when that happens; and most of the time, they're lucky to stay in the service as a paper shuffler.

It'll be interesting to see if I get confirmation, or if Apple actually makes a public statement on this. Or even if it's true.

Second interesting tidbit: there's been a lot of talk about the iPhone 3G disconnects recently, and exactly what the problem is and who's to blame. AT&T has said "not me", Apple hasn't said much of anything, and I've seen speculation running all over the place, up to and including "millions of units need to be recalled".

Well, I was having lunch with an ex-fruity type the other day, and we got talking about this stuff, and they know someone who knows someone who.. (okay, have I obfuscated this well enough? We're at "my sister's barber is Elvis' 2nd cousin's housekeeper's boyfriend...).

What I was told was that 90% of the disconnects are initiated inside the phone, which would exonerate AT&T. Most of the disconnects are being generated by crashes in the driver code for the 3G chip, which comes from the chip vendor, not something Apple written and outside of Apple's direct control. Complicating this -- even though Apple is handing over "here is the bug, here is the fix, update the driver", the turnaround from the vendor on driver updates is on the order of 2-3 months. Said, um, lack of urgency not exactly making people inside the projects happy.

Apple had a very good relationship with the company that worked on the innards of the iPod; for the G3 iPhone, it sounds like it's not working quite so swimmingly. What makes me think there's some validity to this is Apple's recent purchase of the chip design house -- there's no real reason to do this unless you're looking to bring design of these kinds ofchips in where you can control them, and you only do that if (a) it'll save you lots of money, or (b) you've decided you can't afford to let these key components out of your control. If the driver problem (and lack of vendor urgency) is true, that'd explain Apple's interest in bringing this inhouse, because it's not a problem they can directly control, yet they take the hit for the problems. And the phrase used to describe the quality of the drivers is "absolute travesty"

The best aspect of this rumor (if true) is that the hardware is fine; once they can get the drivers fixed (or replaced), the units should be fine. Thinking "recall" is unecessary and overkill, the real question seems to be how quickly Apple can beat the fixes out of the vendor.

Or maybe I'm being lied to again. Only time will tell...

And strangely enough, these rumors found me. I wasn't even asking...

The Tao of Mac: best response yet'

2008-08-18T14:32:19-07:00

The Tao of Mac - HomePage:

Substantiated or not, I’m betting these two rumors are interesting enough to be re-posted and magnified beyond any recognition by the end of the week.

Clearly, the best response I've seen yet on my recent postings...

CNN Doesn’t Include Spoiler Alert In Tweets, Twitter Users Say It Ruined Olympics

2008-08-17T10:23:53-07:00

CNN Doesn’t Include Spoiler Alert In Tweets, Twitter Users Say It Ruined Olympics:

Unfortunately for them, CNN has already spoiled the results.

No, let's have a little perspective here.

The event happened. CNN reported it.

That NBC chose to delay broadcasting it to maximize entertainment value (and advertising value) is not CNN's fault. It is not CNN's job to not report news because some other network decided to not report the news.

This is NBC's problem. Period.

Oh, and by the way, CBC showed it live. which is why we're watching CBC and haven't touched NBC since the Olympics started.

Photography at the Olympics.

2008-08-14T12:53:24-07:00

I admit it. I hadn't planned on it, but I've been taken in by the Olympics. It helps that we have CBC/TSN in the house, so when we get home in the evening, we turn on Ron MacLean and just let it flow, and I'll get through another Olympics without NBC.

The big difference: CBC covers the competition. NBC is covering the event. It may sound minor, but it's huge...

But what's really caught me is the photography. I'm really, really loving the photography coming out of the Olympics. My first love in high school was sports photography (god bless Tri-X and wet darkrooms), so this is really taking me home in ways I hadn't expected.

Here are some of the places I've been watching the images come through. If you haven't been seeing the Olympics through a lens, you ought to; you'll see it in a different way than on TV, one that really brings home the emotion, intensity and competition.

To the folks out there actually DOING this: thanks. it's blowing me away.

Seattle Times: Best Seat in the House

Reuters: Photographers

The reuters guys make me want to pack up my gear, find them, and refuse to go away until they hire me as a sherpa or something....

update: oops, knew I forgot one:

Sacramento Bee: The Frame

and another:

Newsweek

Am I picking on AppleInsider again?

2008-08-14T09:10:29-07:00

Chuqui 3.0: Firefighters respond to fire at Apple's Cupertino campus:

Appleinsider called the building "one of the most famous buildings on the Apple Campus, as it is known to house a number of hardware-based research and development projects that are underway at the company", which puts their journalistic ability in perspective (again), given it's not on campus, and it hasn't housed any significant hardware R&D since the 68000 processor teams moved out.

I got an email asking me why I was picking on AppleInsider, suggesting I was being harsh.

guilty as charged. Why? because I can.

There is, however a deeper aspect. Sites like Appleinsider play the "We iz Journalists. We'z Kul!" game, but there's often very little substance and depth, which ultimately turns it into fanboy crap. And that's YOUR fault, loyal readers, because you give them credits way beyond their abilities. When they get it right, everyone falls over twitching and drooling over having found out some inconsequential detail earlier than Apple wanted you to -- but they get a lot of stuff wrong, too, and everyone forgets that stuff. Of course the site's not going to remind you, so the end result is people think these sites are a lot more insightful and accurate and "rumortastic" than they really are.

I'll give you a little hint here: some of us, back when I was inside the fruity compound, occasionally held contests to see who could get the weirdest, most funky and outrageous, rumors posted to one of the major rumor sites. The easiest way seems to be to find one of the marginal fanboy sites and convince THEM to publish it, and then watch it ripple across all of the boards and mutate as other boards create their own scoops based only on reading other boards... (attribution optional, of course).

And yes, some of those photoshopped prototypes and other fun and games came from Apple people -- and a few beers. Remember that next time one of these fanboy sites touts some fascinating new "leak". After a few beers, lots of things tend to leak, ya know? (Asteroid, FWIW, wasn't one of those leaks. The fanboy sites that think it was a set up by Apple to get them have way too high a view of themselves in the food chain. Asteroid was -- well, that's a story for a bar and a beer, not a blog.... Sorry)

FWIW, I think some of the rumor sites do a decent job. Yes, they get stuff right. Yes, they sometimes piss off Apple big time. Yes, they sometimes screw the royal pooch, too. And they also encourage people to violate their NDAs and other agreements, so they're also a key reason why developers (and others) have such tough times getting information out of Apple, so there are negatives to all of this, too.

Oh, and to the developers who feed information to these sites... A few years back, my boss and I came up with a way to track down exactly who's doing the leaking. it's very simple to implement, it isn't hard to do, would be invisible to the developers so they'd have no reason to be careful or realize Apple was tracking them, and it'd be accurate, and the leakers wouldn't know it was happening until the hammer fell. At the time, though, the ThinkSecret case was still ongoing so it wasn't implemented. But it could be, some day, if Apple decides it wants to.

So realize not that you're being too smart for Apple, but that Apple's decided it's not worth the hassle and PR to catch you. And hope that doesn't change...

kudos to Canon

2008-08-13T13:55:29-07:00

Gotta drop some kind words on Canon USA here.

One of the projects I took up to help the family after dad died was to clear out his office, organize his papers and to try to make sense of 50+ years of family photos and other "stuff" that he collected over the years.

My last trip down, we got the bathtub cleared out (yes, when his office filled up, boxes started going into a spare bathtub) and part of his office. I'm going down again in a couple of weeks to deal with the lawyer a bit and see how much more I can stuff in the car and bring back.

A lot of this material is, well, surplus -- my dad was to pack rats what Moby Dick is to minnows -- but there's a lot of family history, and I'm trying to build albums and records of everything for myself, mom, my sister, and close friends. And dad kept every piece of paper he ever touched, it seems, and was an enthusiastic picture taker (and occasional photographer); I have crates of photos and probably 30 albums, just in the stuff I've found so far. So this is a project that's going to take a while.

Not complaining, it's fascinating to dig into his life and find out what he considered important enough to write about or keep.

But the only rational way to do this is to bring this stuff into electronic form. As various pieces come to light, others are going to want copies. He was very involved in many things, from historic building preservation to some minor Hemmingway scholarship to a lot of charity and social work, there's practically no other way to make sure copies can get to people and groups and still keep copies for myself and family -- or even find the damn things a second time. going through all of the boxes, throwing some stuff away and then putting it back into boxes just seems -- stupid. Waste of time.

So I realized I needed a scanner, a decent one. And OCR capability of some sort.

So I did some research and bought a Canon 8800f; reasonably good, reasonably fast, both print and film/negative/slide capable, and OCR capable.

I've been working with it for a couple of days, and while the software is -- funky (and the docs fairly weak) -- I've figured out how to get it to auto-scan a set of photos, pick them apart, and stuff them in iPhoto (hint: this should be easier. double-hint: this should be FREAKING BUILT IN TO iPhoto, but despite twain drivers, never has been. oh well).

Except the thing kept locking up, acting as if the platen was locked when it wasn't. I could get it to work, but not reliably. Did my research on google, tried some things. checked out canon's knowledgebase. no good. So I fired off an email to canon support.

they got back to me within an hour -- at 9PM pacific time, no less -- with a list of things to try. Those didn't work, so I emailed them back, and we have a replacement unit scheduled to come in as a warranty swap, due in a few days. Once it gets here, I send them the old unit back. Canon pays shipping both ways.

Now -- that's very fast, competent and not terribly painful response. That it's a warranty swap and not a "send it to us and it'll return some day from repair" is even better. They clearly are working to limit downtime for the customer here, and that's good. Better, they didn't play the "do you know what a power cord is?" game, they started at a pretty competent level rather than assuming I was an idiot. I'm sure they have scripts for those, but they don't start with them. Always nice.

My view is simple: DOAs happen to the best of us, and within reason, I'll accept that, if the company responds well, and they did. I didn't have to use a phone, or stay on hold. I didn't have to wait long for a response, the response didn't insult my intelligence and actually sounded like it was written by a native english speaker -- and while there's clearly standard procedures and boilerplate involved, the general feel of the emails is that they are dealing with MY problem, not cutting and pasting something that is (hopefully) close to what I asked about.

And they're dealing with the problem to minimize my inconvenience, not minimize their costs or hassle.

Really nice customer focus here, from a large company. I wish I didn't have to point out how nice it is for a company to do this stuff right; but man, so many do it wrong, no?

it took them maybe two hours to take me from "man, maybe I should have bought that Epson" to "I'm glad I buy Canon stuff" again.

well done, folks.

update 8/14: my warranty replacement scanner has been shipped, and I have the tracking number. Nice, fast turnaround.

Firefighters respond to fire at Apple's Cupertino campus

2008-08-13T11:19:15-07:00

Firefighters respond to fire at Apple's Cupertino campus - San Jose Mercury News:

Firefighters were battling a fire at Apple's Cupertino campus late Tuesday night.
Heavy smoke was in the area as units from Santa Clara County, Saratoga and Los Altos responded to the scene. The two-alarm fire was on the second floor, firefighters said, of building Valley Green Six, 20705 Valley Green Drive.

Ow. That explains the sirens I heard tonight, even from home.

Valley Green six was the building I worked in, primarily housing IT. Here's hoping everyone got out okay and that all that got damaged was physical things.

If I hear anything from anyone I know there that I can talk about, I'll pass it along.

update: via Don Melton on twitter, pictures. three alarm fire.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6323910

looking at coverage today, it looks to be an airconditioner on the roof that set it off. Not a lot of flame, lots of smoke, with smoke and water damage, especially on the 2nd floor.

Appleinsider called the building "one of the most famous buildings on the Apple Campus, as it is known to house a number of hardware-based research and development projects that are underway at the company", which puts their journalistic ability in perspective (again), given it's not on campus, and it hasn't housed any significant hardware R&D since the 68000 processor teams moved out.

Possible they got confused between valley green (the suburbs) and infinite loop 6 (the campus); valley green is on the other side of Frogger Junction (the area of De Anza between Mariani and the 280).

It's the primary building for Apple IS&T, aka the IT group. It also has housed things like the Apple online store and iTunes back end teams, but they should have all moved out long since as Apple got things going in the old tandem buildings.

Word is about 100 people were in the building when the fire broke out. So far, I've heard everyone got out okay. Looks like it could have been a LOT worse, but today's a good day to sit back and say to yourself "how are my backups? If my house burns down, where's my data? If my work site burns down, how's my company?"

You probably won't like the answer, will you?

Update: AppleInsider updates it's mistake, and gets it wrong again:

AppleInsider | Three-alarm fire scorches key building on Apple campus:

The building, also known as Valley Green Six, was at one time believed to house a number of hardware-based research and development projects. However, it's now said that the building is used strictly as an IT data center

Nope. Sorry. Data center across the street. Or was, the main data center is now in Newark. That move was just starting when I left; not sure what's left in the old data center these days. Oh, the Appleinsider folks are just nailing the landings today, aren't they? (hat tip venturebeat, who can't be blamed for propogating the mistake)

update 2:

Mercury News has a really nice overview of the problem, if you ignore the rather fanboyish open....

Three-alarm blaze at Apple's Cupertino campus damages building - San Jose Mercury News:

The fire, which started around 10 p.m., caused significant damage to a 120,000-square-foot building located at 20705 Valley Green Drive, according to Santa Clara County Fire Battalion Chief Kendall Pearson.
Pearson said the fire was limited to the attic and roof and was difficult to battle. Inside the gray, two-story building - which has two wings and is separated by a center atrium - firefighters found a typical office setting: workstations, cubicles, iMacs.

"My guess is for the near future, that one wing of the building will probably be unusable," Pearson said.

Early today, it was difficult to tell that the fire - which gained national media attention - had even occurred. Streams of sudsy water flowing into the street were the only remnants of the blaze. Fire crews had gone home by 7 a.m., and heavy Apple security prevented any closer look

Disqus Revamps its Look and Improves Integration

2008-08-12T13:24:11-07:00

Disqus Revamps its Look and Improves Integration - ReadWriteWeb:

We've mentioned Disqus here on ReadWriteWeb numerous times. You can even preview Disqus' popular commenting system across numerous personal and major blogs. It's been taking off since it hit the scene with advocates such as Steven Hodson and Louis Gray. Now, they're taking their platform to the next level with a new look and improved integration.

Very nice stuff. Disqus really seems to have taken off and taken control of comments within the extended social space.

But what I'd really like to see now is the same sort of support they've added to Wordpress in Drupal...