Apple’s no-smoking warranty nonsense

I’m not a smoker. I don’t enjoy being in the presence of cigarette smoke. But I still had mixed feelings about the UK workplace smoking ban: you can’t argue with the health benefits, but I am not a fan of Whitehall telling people what they can and cannot do in the comfort of their own pub. And now Apple wants in on the health fascism.

According to The Consumerist, Apple repair centres in the US have recently refused to mend at least two laptops because their owners were smokers. (The full story is here: Apple ‘won’t repair machines belonging to smokers’.)

Typically, Apple hasn’t commented on the story. (I believe the Pope remains dedicated to Roman Catholicism.)

As such, it’s difficult to ascertain the true reason behind the anti-puff stance but, according to The Consumerist, Apple justified the decision to the customers by saying that the amount of residual cigarette smoke inside the computers makes it dangerous for staff to work on them. Which is up there with ‘the dog ate my homework’ in the excuses stake.

(For the record, The Consumerist is part of a group of respected US consumer organisations known as the Consumers Union/Consumer Reports. Think Which? in the UK. So while it’s not PC Advisor’s story, it’s from a credible source.)

Although the story broke only late last week, The Consumerist says it has been on Apple’s case about it for months, and the complaint has been raised as far as the big boss: Steve Jobs. All to no avail.

Is Apple justified in this stance? Well, no. And not least because there’s nothing about smoking in the Apple warranties that these products are, in principle, covered by.

Apple repair workers absolutely have the right to work in a smoke-free environment. Of course they do. But Apple customers who purchase a product and warranty in good faith have an equal right to see that agreement adhered to without the goalposts being shifted.

Are we really to believe that Apple, in all of its technological splendour, is unable to provide a safe way of repairing machines with a bit of cigarette smoke hanging about? And how much smoke are we talking about here, really? (Have they never heard of fume cupboards or, get this: gas masks? My decrepit old school boasted both more than 20 years ago. And we had no computers.)

If a company such as Apple feels justified in denying customers repairs under warranty because of health issues, it opens up a significant can of worms. Apple has sufficient clout that if this becomes its standard process there’s nothing to stop other companies following its lead. Smokers could become the second class citizens of the tech world.

And if the presence of cigarette smoke is enough to void a warranty, we should all be worried. What’s next: warranties being rendered useless because a PC has been been kept in too warm or damp a room? Or used by someone deemed incompetent?

See also:

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Good, clean fun: but what is Twitter for?

Ask even the most avid Twitter fan to explain the benefits of their obsession, and it will take them considerably more than 140 characters to come to no good answer.

For all the obvious popularity of social media, it’s not always easy to see, well, why? ;-(

I recently attended an event that set out to explain how organisations should use Twitter. The beer was cold, the people beautiful and the information… flimsy, at best. I left with only two firm impressions:

1. Twitter ‘experts’ are ironically verbose.
2. Given the above, it’s risky to allow tipsy people to live Tweet to a big screen. LOL!

Perhaps Twitter and other social apps are nothing more than a bit of fun. (As a scoop, this is no Watergate, I accept…) There may something more to the trend, however.

When scrambling to describe Twitter, Facebook et al to the uninitiated, most commentors focus only on the ability to broadcast. ‘How’ you can post pictures and status updates, but never ‘why’. Which is dull.

(I work in ‘old’ media – getting people to talk about themselves is far from hard.)

Social media gets interesting only when you stop shouting – and start to listen. Scout around and you can learn exactly what customers are saying about you, and your brand. More disruptive: you can quickly find and band together with like-minded people.

Take ‘Gamers Voice‘. A nascent Facebook group formed by MP Tom Watson to speak for video game fans in the wake of the latest Daily Hate-led moral outrage, within days it had 14,000 members.

Whether the group can achieve anything from such rapid-fire foundations is moot, but it’s worth watching (IMHO). As was the reaction to Jan Moir’s Daily Mail (them again) piece about Stephen Gately. Tens of thousands of people inspired and able, via Twitter, to complain. >:(

Is this a good thing? It’s difficult to say. Quick concensus is rarely pretty. But it does give a platform to the unwashed hordes and that, at least, is interesting.

Disagree? Let me know at Twitter.com/MattJEgan.

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Do Macs need security software?

Actually, the question should be: when will Macs start to need security software? It’s going to happen sometime, Macfans.

Geoff, the revered IT admin here at PC Advisor Towers, would say ‘right now’, and insists that all the Macs in the office have up-to-date antivirus, firewalls and the rest. But the key industry journalist sitting in my chair has been running a web-connected, AV-free Powerbook G4 for more than five years, with no discernible downside. And I’m not going to be shelling out any time soon.

Full disclosure: my feelings of security are based more on the relative obscurity of the Mac platform rather that on any inherent, built-in Apple defence. In the past it may have been fair to say that the Unix foundation made the Mac OS X harder to hack, and Snow Leopard has a healthy batch of native security features. But we’ve seen sufficient proof of concepts to show that it is in no way impossible to successfully attack a Mac. It’s just that at this moment in time, the lowest hanging fruit is unprotected Windows machines, of which there are worryingly many.

(Despite the double glazing, security lights and burglar alarm you could, if you really wanted to, break into my house. But as long as there is a house down the street with an open window, you are unlikely to do so. [Please don't, by the way.])

Security vendors such as Kaspersky and McAfee are keen to punt security products for Macs. Of course they are – everyone likes money, right? But as with mobile phone security software, there’s no need to make a purchase just yet.

That day is getting closer, though. Complacency is not advised.

The Mac platform now accounts for 8 percent of the users who visit PCAdvisor.co.uk every day: and we’re hardly a mecca for Apple fans. The more popular OS X becomes, the more likely it is that online thugs will attack: where there’s brass there’s muck.

According to an interesting, if apostrophe-heavy, blog posting from AVG CEO JR Smith, a Russian network of spam and malware affiliates has recently been “offering $0.43 for each malicious [Mac OS X] install”. Smith suggests that this price tag means the Mac platform is becoming increasingly lucrative to web criminals. And I tend to agree.

My advice? Maintain a watching brief.

Sooner or later, Apple Macs will become a target for attack. And when they do, those of us who run and, yes, love Apple PCs, will need to get secure, fast.

Let the guy over the road be the one caught with his window open.

Further reading: PC security reviews, alerts and advice

See also: The 10 best Apple Macs of all time

Web 3.0: the shopping centre web

If Web 2.0 was the two-way, user generated, cool internet, Web 3.0 will be the era of post-search rationalisation. The shopping centre web. The big brands are taking over.

It may not be cool, but it’s the way it’s going. And it’s the web we made ourselves.

Move to a new town, as I recently did, and the internet is a lifeline. The Yellow Pages makes excellent packing material, but it’s no match for a good web-search when it comes to sourcing local tradespeople, shops and services. But as search engines and web users mature, the realistic options narrow.

Think about it: Google can give you 100 pages of results on a particular query, but how often do you look beyond the first couple of answers?

Take Domino’s Pizza. The US bread-food merchant this week celebrates 10 years of flogging calorific loveliness over the web. It’s the undisputed grandaddy of ubiquitous fast food delivery, with 583 stores within these shores alone. It works because it’s simple – you can order from just about anywhere in the UK, and get a product of known quality delivered in roughly the same time. It may not be the best pizza in the land, and it’s certainly not the cheapest. But it’s the easy option, and you know exactly what you’re going to get.

Domino’s has the marketing clout to ensure it’s the first answer you see, via paid-for search ads and organic results. And, well, sheer size. And it has the infrastructure to add in all manner of payment and ordering technology to make it even easier to be lazy.

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So when I, ravenous after a day shifting furniture in an as-yet strange town, fancied a rabidly unhealthy snack, you know where I shopped. (Clue: it wasn’t a specialist local retailer that required a modicum of web research or – heaven forfend – a phonecall.)

The nature of search technology and even social media means that the winners on the internet get bigger by the day. Talk to any successful website owner, and they can tell you all the clever things they did to make it. Ask them to repeat the trick today, and they’ll struggle. Being good isn’t now enough on its own to get you internet success.

The cost of entry to the market (a website) is miniscule, but to get genuine traffic (top answers on Google, Bing) you need to be the very first, the very best or the very biggest (with the deepest pockets). Even using social media to attract attention is much harder if you’re wee. You need scale. As time goes by this means that the big brands that can afford to pay for marketing will only get bigger.

The virtual land grab is almost over. But it’s not all bad. The frontier days of the web may be largely behind us. What remains is a more stable and secure environment in which to shop and commune. It just looks a bit like the high-street it replaced.

Windows 7: consumer heaven?

Kudos to Microsoft: Windows Vista is iconic. Even outside the confines of the tech ghetto, Vista is now a byword for failure, recently appearing as a punchline in Radio 4’s venerable News Quiz. Vista has arrived.

That level of public recognition is an achievement, and unfair. I mean it. Vista isn’t a bad piece of software. It isn’t.

But it didn’t match expectations – given the hype, how could it? And anyway, even if Vista had arrived fit for purpose, features and peripherals working seamlessly (and it palpably didn’t), there’d have still been disappointment. Because, in line with all other Windows OS releases, Vista’s system overhead is greater than its predecessors.

Think about it: if you bought the hype and purchased a Vista licence at launch, you’d have put it on to a machine used to running XP. The result of your investment – instantly slower PC. Slower, more expensive PC. Boo.

Even if you bought a brand new Vista computer, the chances are it would cost more and run more slowly than a similarly priced XP rig. No single feature in Vista made this a worthwhile proposition. (You’ve got to really love UAC to buy that deal.)

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Windows 7 changes this. In line with the current mania for less is more, Windows 7 is, in fact, easier on your PC than its predecessor was at launch. As processing power gets faster and cheaper year on year, this makes a Windows 7 PC a faster PC.

Consider it: the computer is now a consumer technology purchase. The majority of modern PC buyers are non-techies who require only web browsing, iTunes and productivity apps. They buy on price and looks, and they want their ‘pooter to, well, just work. Such users care little for underlying technology: speed counts. A lot.

Vista’s good name was battered by yer average punter trying it, finding it unfamiliar and slow, and slating it. Imagine then the PR effect of the reverse: a surprisingly fast, familiar OS. Could be that Windows is back.

Bonkers broadband and call centre hell

“If you know your account number, are calling from the moon, and can recite the words to the second verse of the national anthem, backwards, press 1. For all other enquiries, press 2, get a duvet and settle in for the duration.” Call. Centre. Hell.

I’m about to move house. Dutifully, I’ve given my phone, broadband and TV providers four weeks’ notice of this fact, in the hope of enjoying total connectivity from day one at the new country pile. Fat chance.

Although such mammoth lead time is sufficient to get a phoneline and satellite dish installed, broadband extracts a penance from its followers. Dare to disturb the pipe by moving house, and you can jolly well wait to read your email – £6 tax or no.

Why is it that migrating broadband, or even setting up a new account, is such a dark art in the UK? We are, after all, a small country with a large, tech-savvy population.

I’ll tell you why: the bonkers way digital Britain operates. Ironic, given the history.

In the 70s and 80s, global business eschewed this green isle because they tired of the inefficiency of UK infrastructure. Used to telecoms providers bending to their every whim, Japanese and US businesses didn’t see the joke when they rang the PO asking for a new phoneline to be installed, today, and met with only laughter as a response.

Privatisation followed, and the profit motive set to work. But the job was botched so that one private company (BT) owns, runs and maintains the infrastructure that its rivals (ISPs) must use. Like I said: bonkers.

As a consequence, it will take me a week at best to get a phoneline, and a further seven days before I’m online. Fair’s fair: a fortnight without broadband is irritating rather than catastrophic. I do have, after all, a smartphone and a 3G dongle.

But improving digital infrastructure requires not only faster web speeds, but a slimmer business model, more genuine competition, and much better hold music.

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Technology helps us cheat smarter, not harder

Today’s reports that almost two thirds of students copy work from the web fits nicely into the book of: ‘Well, yeah’. It was ever thus – only the means of cheating changes.

Apparently most students copy information from the web in their coursework, without changing it. I never did that. But then, when I was a student in the mid 90s, I very rarely accessed the internet. Even getting on a PC meant queuing up to get into the lab. Dangerously close to the bar.

As a student I once spent a night copying out an important essay from an obscure textbook, only to close the musty old tome and see my tutor’s face staring back at me from the back cover. D’oh.

Having tried to cheat my way around a tough assignment, I then re-wrote my opus, and found it much easier – even at 4am. I ended up with a first (for that particular piece of work).

In trying to cheat the system I’d absorbed all the information I was supposed to (as well as several packets of Pro Plus). Then with a few of my own opinions, I produced a solid piece of work.

Crucially, I also knew that my tutor would spot the plagiarism.

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If the means had existed to crib data directly from the web, I’m convinced I would have done so. But in order to get the right information, you have to know what you’re looking for. Cheating isn’t all that easy. At least, cheating in such a way you don’t get caught, isn’t.

And anyway, the modern workplace doesn’t require people to memorise and regurgitate facts. The ability to absorb information, select the relevant pieces and present a coherent whole is key. Indeed, not being able to crib data from the web would be a critical flaw for today’s school leavers. So the fact that 20 percent of surveyed students spend five hours a day online should be worrying to web laggards – not the digital natives. Trust me, being web savvy isn’t going to get any less useful any time soon.

Plagiarism is never going to be acceptable, but neither is examining students on only their ability to memorise. Ultimately, if students are daft enough to copy and paste someone else’s work without adding their own finishing touch, teachers should be bright enough to catch them out. Search technology can easily finger cheats, after all.

But there’s no point in getting hot and bothered about students copying from the web. It’s gonna happen. Just reward the ones who do it best. And remember: exams were much harder in my day, kids today have it easy and… er… bring back national service. Or something.

God bless ESD: get Windows 8 for just 1p

Picture the scene. October 2012, Moon Station 1: Steve Ballmer invites President Bill Gates on stage to launch Microsoft’s next-gen desktop and mobile OS: Windows 8 – available to loyalty card customers for just 1p.

Far-fetched? Yes. Possible? Certainly. (Apart from the President bit: Gates likes actual power too much.)

Eidos recently did a clever, thing. The games developer offered up the latest iteration of its flagship football management sim – Championship Manager 2010 – for as little as 1p. After paying a data fee for the download, the punter can pick his price (I’m not being sexist: it almost always is a he).

This is exciting if you’re looking to waste time while eating junk food. It’s also indicative of the changing face of the software industry. And the big winners are set to be you and me, dear reader.

First, some history. Championship Manager once was the dominant market leader, loved by millions of aspiring gaffers, detested by their spouses. Then a bunch of developers jumped ship to rival Football Manager, and Eidos spent several years shedding market share, crying all the way home from the bank.

By delivering the game as a download, Eidos incurs none of the costs associated with burning discs, printing artwork and shipping. If you pay only a penny, Eidos adds 1p to its bottom line. Software is, after all, just code, and ESD (electronic software distribution) changes the game. If you’re at all interested in football games, you’ve no excuse not to buy. You’ve certainly got no excuse to download a dodgy licence.

Despite Windows Vista’s lukewarm reception, market share isn’t a problem for Microsoft. Good will is. And the company desperately needs to ween Vista-scarred users off Windows XP and on to Windows 7.

That’s why there are so many ’special offers’ and multiple licence deals for Windows 7. Microsoft may not yet be prepared to drop the top-line price, but like a bottle of wine that’s permanently on offer, it’s happy to take a hit on profits to sell more. (Given that in a better world Win7 would be Vista called SP2, this is only fair.) Shop around for Windows 7.

Right now, Microsoft’s nervous about selling an operating system as a download: an insider told me recently that she didn’t think people would have the patience. The fact that 4 percent of PC Advisor readers are ALREADY using Windows 7 RC – available only as a download – should change its mind. Eventually. Mark my words.

Once you’ve built and sold a single software licence, selling the second one is, in essence, free. Market forces dictate downward pressure on prices. And as the cost of delivery drops, aggressive pricing and ESD help to combat piracy, too.

We may not see a 1p OS as soon as 2012, but the cost of keeping up with the Ballmers is going in only one direction – the right one.

Related articles:

• Windows 7 forum
• Windows 7 review
• Windows 7 video guide

Does technology make us lonely? Anybody? Hello..?

Full disclosure: I am one of the 300,000 or so members of the PC Advisor forum (we’re bigger than Slough), so I’m an unlikely opponent of online social networks. Even so, I know this: in suggesting that social-networking websites undermine communities, Archbishop Vincent Nichols is talking out of his cassock.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales opined in the Sunday Telegraph this weekend that MySpace and Facebook lead young people to seek ‘transient’ friendships. He suggested that electronic communication makes ‘quantity’ more important than ‘quality’ in friendships. He even suggested that the relative weakness of such relationships was a factor in teenage suicides.

Is he right? (It’s possible: although unlike his boss he isn’t infallible.) Are we so reliant on email, SMS and web communities that we struggle to form and maintain actual friendships?

Clearly there is a modicum of truth in the Archbishop’s claim that social-networks commoditise relationships. I’ll accept any Facebook friend that I can even vaguely recollect from school, and you have to be called @spammer for me to block you from following my Twitter feed. I’m not going to lie: to a certain extent it’s a numbers game.

But I do also have, you know, friends. And family. And a wife. And I retain the ability to connect with them despite spending my working life staring at a computer screen.

And then there are the outer circle. If a casual friend from university gets married, I’ll see the photos on Facebook. Five years ago I wouldn’t have even known to send them a congratulatory message. It’s not deep friendship, but it is nice. And harmless.

If I happen to be in the home town I last lived in more than 10 years ago, there’s a much greater chance of me hooking up with an old face by putting up the bat signal via Twitter or Facebook than ever there was via phone call or letter. (Is this a bloke thing?)

My mum and dad see a lot more of their granddaughter because they have Skype and a webcam, and finding a trusted business contact is a lot easier via the implicit referral of a LinkedIn connection.

The point is that the Archbishop is right, but only half right. Electronic communication can never replace face to face contact. Nor should it. What it does is offer extra possibilities over and above the friendships you maintain with the people physically closest to you.

And occasionally, just occasionally, it offers something more. We have had at least one marriage with its roots in the PC Advisor forum. We’ve witnessed many more occasions were members have been down, alone and at the end of their tether, and have found plenty of people willing to rally round.

Relying solely on electronic communication for community would be plain wrong. But friendship is friendship, regardless of the medium.

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If Vista’s a fail, Windows 7 is a cash cow

I can’t lie, I’ve grown fond of Windows Vista. Like the perfect life partner it’s pretty, practical and mostly stable. Sure, it flakes out on occasion, but we all have our slow days, right? [Editor's note: get on with it.]

Nevertheless, in the final months of Windows Vista’s reign as the top dog at Microsoft, around 64 percent of PC Advisor readers are still running Windows XP on their PCs. Top dog? You lot think Vista is a hound. (Click here for the full PCA Windows stats.)

According to Windows user stats gathered from the 4,000 users of our free, online PC Performance Monitor tool, only around 34 percent of you are running Vista, with the remaining 2 percent already enjoying some variant of the Windows 7 Beta/Release Candidate.

Such stats may explain Microsoft’s keenness to get Windows 7 on to store shelves – nearly three years after Vista was finally completed, two-thirds of a group of passionate, educated and tech-savvy Windows users have remained faithful to XP. Worse, a small percentage prefer to use an operating system (OS) that remains in beta.

If Vista was a rip-roaring commercial success, Microsoft might still be about to release a new OS product – but I’d wager it’d be called ‘Vista SP3′. You don’t have to be a cynic to believe that this is exactly what Windows 7 represents (although it helps).

Windows Vista’s perceived failure is not due to it being an inherently bad piece of code. Vista’s unpopularity stems from the fact that it limped out late, on insufficiently specced PCs, missing promised features.

And once labelled a failure, Vista was condemned to remain thus.

So the Microsoft marketing machine is now offering creaking XP systems and self-loathing Vista users the chance to start again with a brand-new OS.

Here comes the irony bit: if Vista had been a success, there’d be no Windows 7 and no rush to buy it. Botching the Vista launch may have cost Microsoft dearly, but it’s set to reap the rewards now.

See also: Microsoft to KO Google in (Windows) 7