Archive for the ‘On My Mind’ Category

Apple Crap – iMac From Crapple

Sunday, September 30th, 2012

iMac

The Gripe – Our family’s one and only experience with Apple computing has ended in frustration. Our iMac now produces a grey screen. The machine works (we know that from running the machine in its quirky voice mode), but the monitor does not. We see a grey screen that moves from light grey to a darker grey as we manipulate the machine’s brightness control. Perhaps we shouldn’t judge Apple based on this one bad experience, and that’s probably true. But the web is littered with crApple and Apple crap content–content posted by legions of disgruntled Apple customers–so apparently we’re not alone in our frustration.

The Problem – According to the Apple technician we consulted, the source of our iMac’s problem is its logic board. More specifically, faulty capacitors on the logic board. We were told that iMacs of our vintage suffered from poor-quality capacitors on their logic boards, and when they fail, the monitor is affected. Approximately $900 to fix.

Corporate Greed – Considering the excessive purchase price of our iMac and the unconscionable margins Apple enjoys by producing its products overseas (see below), Apple certainly could have afforded quality $0.10 (ten-cent) capacitors for my machine over the poor-quality $.06 (six-cent) capacitors it chose. Yet Apple chose the cheaper, poor-quality capacitors instead. Thanks for thinking of your customers, Apple. Thanks for thinking of me, Apple.

But I get it. I truly get it. I don’t agree, but I get the corporate perspective. It’s all about the margins. Those cheaper capacitors no doubt contributed to handsome corporate bonuses and stock options at Apple in the year my iMac was produced. Picture the Apple corporate pigs feeding at the trough, their blood-filled cheeks glowing brightly as they gorge on the dollars coming through the door. Their appetites are insatiable, and they’ll do anything–literally anything–to keep the feeding frenzy going.

Competitor Quality – So, after only five (5) years of use, our iMac is dead. I’m writing this post using a DELL machine that is twelve (12) years old. Except for the occasional power outage, this machine has been turned on and running continuously for over twelve (12) years (including the original hard drive). At well less than half the cost, we’ve seen well over twice the life span. Now that’s what I call quality. Hats off to DELL, and sad commentary for Apple.

The Social Context – Perhaps like Toyota and other corporate behemoths, Apple seems to have lost its way. After Steve Jobs (who I mostly admired) died, Tim Cook took the reigns at Apple. Shortly after his appointment to his CEO post, Mr. Cook was quoted as saying the following in response to a reporter’s question on whether, considering its tremendous financial success, Apple should think about bringing jobs back to America (as you may know, Apple products are produced at the planet-sized assembly facility of Foxconn in Taiyuan, China):

[sic] It’s not Apple’s responsibility to create jobs in America. Apple’s responsibility is to produce its products in the most cost-efficient way.

This utterly soul-less response from the humorless and unemotional Mr. Cook, offered at a time when Americans and others around the world were (and still are) feeling the pain of the ongoing global recession, confirms that he is the right person to lead Apple into the future–the right person for Apple’s shareholders anyway; but sadly, not the right person for Apple’s customers. By definition, corporations are soul-less and incapable of possessing morals, honor or integrity. Only humans can possess human attributes. But corporations are led by humans, and to my way of thinking, corporate leaders should possess and exhibit morals, honor and integrity. Corporate leaders should have a social conscience, and Mr. Cook is no exception. Pleasing Wall Street is important for any publicly-traded company, but when a corporation emphasizes pleasing Wall Street over all else, that’s when I get off the bus. It’s too late for Steve Jobs to get a conscience, but it’s not too late for Mr. Cook.

To lighten things up a bit in the midst of this otherwise negative post, check out this great article on Foxconn from The ONION (unlike you Mr. Cook, I do have a sense of humor): Sweeping New Labor Reforms Allow Foxconn Employees To Work In Inhumane Conditions From Home.

Action Plan – Well, as you might guess, my family won’t be buying any Apple products in the foreseeable future. As value-oriented consumers, we’re happy to pay a higher price for something if the higher price brings higher quality. But based on our experience, and that of countless thousands of others around the world, that value-proposition equation doesn’t balance for Apple products. In addition to Apple’s quality problems, when we consider that Apple’s corporate leaders are totally devoid of any social conscience, the message is clear: No crApple, no crApple. No crApple for me!

Toyota Alloy Wheels Bubbling – Toyota Quality Concerns

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

The Problem – Toyota vehicles equipped with alloy wheels are experiencing abnormal corrosion and bubbling of paint and/or clear coat finish. I noticed that the finish on my Sienna’s (2005 XLE AWD) alloy wheels had some bubbles several months ago. My wife drives this vehicle almost exclusively, so I don’t “inspect” it too often. But last week I noticed the wheels now look horrible. Looking at other Siennas with these same wheels, most (over 80%) have the exact same problem. The problem affects post-2004 Siennas and other Toyota models equipped with alloy wheels.

Toyota’s Position – At this time, not admitting any manufacturing defect, and not extending any corrosion warranty protection. Toyota has suggested that brake dust build-up and lack of prompt removal of road salt are to blame. Very interesting because my 1998 4Runner has alloy wheels, and they’re in great shape. Same geographic location, same level of care (probably above average), and 7 more years on the road.

My Suspicion – Toyota or its alloy wheel supplier switched to a “greener” manufacturing process, perhaps using a water-based finish process (as opposed to solvent based), or at the very least, a lower level of solvent. The switch-over, although well-intentioned and environmentally responsible, is often difficult to pull off. Recall the peeling paint problem (body panels) GM had in the 1990s. The problem we’re talking about here is similar, originating under the finish, as if there is a problem with the finish’s ability to adhere. The problem has nothing to do with curb rash, stone chips, etc., in which the integrity of the finish has been compromised externally.

Strength In Numbers – If you have the same problem with premature bubbling or corrosion of your Toyota alloy wheels, add your comments below. Be sure to provide the Model and Year of your vehicle. If you submit a photo of an affected wheel (150X150 px .PNG or .JPEG file preferred), I will add it to the “Toyota Quality Wall of Shame” below. Send wheel photos to: olivecg(@ symbol)charter.net. With enough feedback from angry customers, we might be able to get Toyota to accept responsibility for this widespread problem.

Toyota Alloy Wheel Corrosion

Charter Internet Outage – Wausau

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Charter is admitting an internet outage affecting Wausau, Wisconsin. Internet and telephone service are affected, and cable TV may be affected for some customers.

Remarkable PAPR for Hospitals, Clinics and Laboratories

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Logo for the United States Occupational Safety...
Image via Wikipedia
Bio-Medical Devices International (BMDI) manufactures the NIOSH-approved MaxAir, a Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) that was specifically designed for hospitals, clinics and laboratories. The other PAPRs on the market were born in an industrial setting, and their bulky construction materials, hoses and filter cartridges make them less suitable for use outside of an industrial setting.

Occupational health and infection control professionals in hospitals, clinics and laboratories around the country have embraced the MaxAir as their PAPR of choice for disaster and emergency preparedness, as well as daily use. Because it is a PAPR, the MaxAir does not require the annual fit testing that is mandated by OSHA for non-PAPR respiratory protection devices (e.g., the N95). Annual fit testing expenses can be substantial for an organization, and there are always indivduals for whom an acceptable fit is not possible. MaxAir to the rescue.

You can learn more about BMDI and its MaxAir by visiting its corporate website.

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America’s Agenda – Health Care Summit Conversations

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

America’s health care thought leaders share their vision for health care in the 21st Century. “A shared vision with the potential to drive the health care reform that Americans want.”

If health care reform is important to you, and you’ll be in the Madison area on April 7, don’t miss this event.

April 07, 2009 Summit, Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Law School, Edgewater Hotel, Madison, WI.

You can find more details here.

Walgreen’s Giving Free Medical Care to Jobless and Uninsured

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Walgreen Co.
Image via Wikipedia
Walgreen’s announced today that it will be giving free medical care to the jobless and uninsured at its 351 Take Care clinics around the country.  Read the press release here.

I think this is an incredibly magnanimous gesture that couldn’t come at a better time. It’s further evidence that Americans, and at least one American corporation, are pulling together to help one another through these difficult times. With this kind of cooperation and generosity, we will surely succeed and move on to more prosperous times.  This is truly some of the best news I have heard in months!

If this makes you happy, too, sound off below.  You DO NOT HAVE TO REGISTER in order to leave a comment.  If you do not see a COMMENTS WINDOW below, click on this post’s title above.

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Charter Communications Bankruptcy

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Charter Communications, Inc.
Image via Wikipedia
Charter Communications, Inc. and its subsidiaries (finally, and quietly) filed bankruptcy last Friday. Charter filed its “Pre-Arranged Plan” and Chapter 11 petitions in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

If the necessary approvals are received along the way, a pre-arranged plan for reorganization can move along quickly, save substantial fees associated with the bankruptcy process, and minimize disruption to the debtor’s continuing operations.

You can view Charter’s press release here.

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Yes, Google Is Getting Too Big For Its Britches – Case In Point: Google Health

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
Love-Hate Relationship – I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Google for several years now.  I love Google because its page indexing is the quickest among all of the search engines, and it consistently delivers the most relevant search results by a wide margin.  Google is also fair.  If you play by Google’s search engine optimization (SEO) rules, over time your web content will gain visibility within Google search results.  I certainly cannot say the same of Yahoo and MSN.  Over 90% of my web traffic comes through Google.  For these reasons, and probably many others, I truly love Google.

On the hate side of the equation, I (and of course, others) feel Google is simply becoming too big.  Various estimates place Google’s web search market share at 70-72%, with its closest rival, Yahoo, holding about 18% of the market.  Admittedly, Google probably deserves its disproportionately large market share for the reasons stated above.  It’s simply the best search engine out there.  However, given Google’s market dominance and the clear lack of any true competition, I feel we all need to start thinking about the “m-word”:  monopoly.

Size Alone – We in the U.S. have a strong aversion to monopolies.  They have no place in our capitalist economy that emphasizes free markets and open competition among buyers and sellers of products and services.  Whether Google is presently an actual or de facto monopoly is open to debate.  But for me, if the debate is confined just to web search market share, I really don’t care whether Google is a monopoly or not.  In purely the search engine realm, Google’s size is apparently working to its advantage, and I dare say to the advantage of everyone who uses Google and enjoys the pre-eminently relevant search results it delivers. But I find I have to get off the giant-search-engine-is-okay train when I start to think about Google’s various extracurricular activities, including most importantly, its data collection activities.

Extracurricular Activities – We all know Google collects all sorts of information about our internet habits: sites we visit and for how long, what we download, what we buy online, etc.  But what Google does with this information, and what inferences Google and others with whom it shares this information draw from it (and for what purpose), we don’t know.  And Google isn’t telling.  This is what disturbs me about Google: its raw size and dominance coupled with its questionable data collection practices.

For example, have you ever had the strange suspicion that your search results within Google were somehow influenced by that Gmail message you sent to a friend a few minutes earlier?  Well, I have.  At first I thought I was just being paranoid. But then did a little testing on my own, and I asked a few freinds to do the same.  Maybe we were the last people on the planet to figure this out, but yes, Google does track the content of your Gmail messages.  The benevolent corporate giant is even forthcoming about this practice (provisions from Gmail Terms of Use):


    Google maintains and processes your Gmail account and its contents to provide the Gmail service to you and to improve our services.

    The Gmail service includes relevant advertising and related links based on the IP address, content of messages and other information related to your use of Gmail.

    Google’s computers process the information in your messages for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering advertisements and related links, preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your messages, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail. (emphasis added)

What, exactly, is “other information related to [my] use of Gmail’, and what, exactly, are the “other purposes relating to offering [me] Gmail”?  All of Google’s various Terms of Use contain similar catch-all phrases and hedges.  Quite honestly, this lack of transparency frightens me.

Over The Top – Google Health – When I first learned about Google Health–a tool that let’s you create a personal health profile online and share that information with whom you decide (e.g., your physician), I cringed.  I don’t know just why.  It was an emotional reaction.  I guess the notion of sharing my personal health information with Google was bad enough.  But the thought of transferring and sharing that information over the Wild Wild Web was even worse–ridiculous.  But wait, there’s more.

Last week Google announced an alliance with IBM to offer a new feature within Google Health. Thanks to IBM, Google Health will now be able to pull data directly from various medical devices (heart rate monitors, scales, blood-sugar measurement devices, and so on) and post them within your Google Health profile.

So, let’s get this straight.  Google already knows a bunch of personal stuff about me just from my internet use (and it won’t tell me exactly what it does with that information).  Now I’m going to sign on to Google Health and feed a bunch of very personal information to Google–voluntarily.  And then, when I’m done with that, I’m going to wire up my blood-sugar monitor to my PC–voluntarily– so that Google can pull personal information directly from my body!  I don’t think so.

The New Relevant Question – The question, “Has Google gotten too big for its britches?” is no longer relevant.  Fact is, Google has gotten too big for its britches.  And Google Health, together with its remote medical device monitoring capability, proves it.  The relevant question now is, what do we do about it?  What do we do about Google’s size and questionable data collection practices?  How do we end this Orwellian nightmare?

Your thoughts and comments are welcome (below). You DO NOT NEED TO REGISTER in order to leave a comment.  If you do not see a COMMENTS window below, click on this post’s title (above).

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New eRFX Tool for Procurement

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

VendorSelect

Nuckles Technology Law Firm and Olive Consulting Group LLC are pleased to announce introduction of their new eRFX Tool. It’s called VendorSelect, and it was designed from the ground up as a sophisticated, stand-alone electronic RFI and RFP solution.

We’re proud to offer these eRFX features exclusively to clients in support of their procurement efforts:

Web Hosted – No software to buy or download.
Intuitive User Interface – Incredibly easy to set up and administer projects.
Excellent Vendor Acceptance – Increases vendor response rates.
Flexibility – Suitable for use with small and large projects. 100% scalable.
Numerous Configuration Options – You’re not forced to work from a canned template.
Document Management – Easy import and export of project documents and attachments.
Scoring Options – Numerous scoring and weighting options, including multi-group scoring.
Logging – Embedded logging feature tracks every sponsor and vendor transaction.
Dedicated Hosting – Supports the firm’s close and secure collaboration with clients.
Undisclosed Principal – We can conduct your RFI and RFP processes anonymously.

As a buyer, you can access many market- and industry-specific RFI and RFP templates to jumpstart development of your requirements, questionnaires and vendor selection criteria for your procurement projects. As a vendor, you can develop your own response templates and attachments and add them to your library for easy access and re-use, allowing you to respond to solicitations more efficiently.

Our new VendorSelect eRFX Tool is the perfect complement to our process-driven approach to information technology procurement, whose objectives are to compress the sourcing phase for your projects, reduce vendor negotiation cycle times, obtain the best overall short- and long-term pricing, obtain the most appropriate buyer protections and remedies (reduce project risk), and save you time and money at every step of your process.

Learn more about the features of VendorSelect here.

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First SaaS or More SaaS for Your Organization?

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Are budget pressures forcing you to take a look at adding SaaS applications to your organization? If so, keep the following tips in mind to assure a successful hosted deployment.

User Expectations – If you will be replacing an existing on-premises application with an SaaS application, be sure that your user group will experience all of the functionality they enjoyed previously. Track current transaction times under the current application, and measure them against those within the SaaS application in a demo or test environment. Do the same testing in your environment for any new application that you’ll pull off with SaaS.

Your Networks – Evaluate your company’s internet connections. If your user base is already experiencing bandwidth and latency problems, adding more traffic will only strain your connections further. Clear up any of these problems before you launch your new SaaS application.

SaaS Provider’s Service Record – Most Saas providers make their service performance records public. If your SaaS candidate does not, this should raise an eyebrow. In addition, double-check an SaaS provider’s public statistics against actual user experiences. Look for independent reviews and comments posted on the web.

Service Level Agreements – Use an SLA to establish uptime and other performance characteristics that are important to your organization. Although SLAs are a great tool for establishing performance expectations and corresponding penalties for nonperformance, remember two things.

One, if your SaaS provider’s performance is really bad, should you be content knowing that at least you’re getting the bad service at a healthy discount? Or, is the service so bad that it’s hurting your organization? Your SLA should be structured such that it gives you a way out of the deal if service drops below some level. And think about asking for redeployment expense as part of this type of provision.

Second, SLAs are burdensome to administer–both for you and your provider. The more complicated the SLA, the more difficult it is to adminster. For this reason, many SaaS providers (even reputable ones) do not offer an SLA option. In all events, you’d much rather have premium service all the time and not have to worry about tracking performance metrics.

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