Reading through my last blog post (about Microsoft fanboys) I started to wonder if I am actually, officially, an Apple fanboy?!

Analysing the evidence (I own a Macbook Pro and a 5th Gen ipod) it seems like I’m half way there, although I have no interest in the ipod touch (I listen to music, I don’t “touch” it) and the iphone is a little large and expensive to sit in my pocket with my loose change and keys.

I love the ipod. People have said Apple products are form over function and I agree to a certain extent. The ipod does what it does very well. It does not have external SD card slots or funky things like that, it just plays music and has a nice interface. The cheap looking white earphones are actually pretty damn good and all in all I am very impressed. It is not cheap, but then again most good things aren’t.

Take my laptops for example. Dell are churning out sub £300 laptops while the cheapest Apple offering is double that, yet people still buy them. Once again I do believe a lot of this is the “fanboy effect”, and a lot of it is down to disillusionment with Microsoft, especially since the debut of Vista, but in my opinion most of it is because “it just works”.

You only need to look at the amount of security updates coming out of Microsoft. The OS is fundamentally flawed and that’s not likely to change soon.

Apple on the other hand have made two very important (and in my opinion very wise) decisions in recent years:

The building of the recent OSX versions around the *NIX platform

The switch to the Intel Core Duo processors

I believe the first of these two is the most significant. Memory and process management is so much better on *NIX and always has been. OSX maintains it’s useability to the “normal” user, yes those who know what they are doing can easily get a root shell and get down and dirty with the OS. This is a big thing!

The second point, the switch to Core Duo, is more of a marketing thing. People like to compare. Previously people had no idea of the comparitive power between the Power PC chips and the equivalent PC. Now the playing field is level and people can see what they are getting. It simply makes it easier to like Apple, and shows that they are working to bring over more of the PC crowd, rather than sitting in their ivory towers claiming to be superior.

So, looking at the evidence, am I an Apple fanboy? Not yet, would be my honest answer. I don’t take their products without seeing them, and even then I believe most of them are not useful to me. I do, however, believe I will be a lifetime user of the Apple OS’s and their fantastic laptops, even if I do need to sell a kidney to afford them!

I admit, in the early days I used to be a fan of Microsoft. I remember for my 18th birthday I was given a copy of “The road ahead - by Bill Gates”. I swallowed it whole and was genuinely excited about the way the world would turn out with Mr Gates at the helm.  I was (and still am) impressed by how Bill got where he is, how he started out and the early decisions he made.

However, things change.

MS DOS came about (don’t forget, nobody will ever need more than 640k… yeah Bill, thanks for that!), then Windows 3.x, and I was still suitably impressed with their products. Things generally worked and there was not a lot to compare, much less compete. I was really bemused by people “messing” with OS/2 (in my mind it was the mathematical definition of half an Operating System!) when Microsoft appeared to do things better.

Not to bore you with the happenings between 1997 and 2007 I will jump ahead…

Vista… the largest contentious issue since the Iraq war. Personally I don’t hate it, but I do think Microsoft are by no means the market leader in the OS arena. I admit, I am becoming a fan of Apple, despite recognising their hardware is vastly overpriced for what it is (even if it is good!). I always used to bat for the PC team, even when I was largely turning off Microsoft. In my mind Apple has made a positive move turning to the Intel platform.

But this is a Microsoft post, not Apple, so we’ll move on.

The thing that irks me more than anything has to be the way Microsoft set “standards” using the springboard of the MS Fanboys. These are the people who appear as brainwashed as lemmings and sign up to every major software release to come out of Redmond, no matter that the quality.

Take Internet Explorer for example; Version 5 was released in 1999, with IE6 following up in 2001. At this point Firefox was non existent and only geeks in University used Mozilla and Opera. Netscape were struggling and so IE dominated the browser market. When they integrated it more and more with the OS this situation was compounded.

What is the problem with this? Nothing, I suppose, if MS went onward and upward and produced a best of breed browser, but they didn’t. Once they “won” the browser war they sat on it for 5 years! It was only with the introduction of Firefox that they finally got shook up into updating their archaic browser. The major issues people had (and still have) with IE is the fact that it is blatantly non-standard. It renders a lot of pages incorrectly and is an accessibility nightmare.

I have been having this debate for years, the usual argument is “everyone uses it”. Ok, that’s ok then! Things do seem to be changing though, which has to be a good thing (IE is now less than 80% of the browser market).

I have recently had the experience of seeing a company-wide Microsoft Fanboy. This is a whole organisation signed up to the “Redmond Treaty”, taking everything Microsoft have to offer, from TFS to Live Meeting. I have no individual issues with these products, but what I find hard to believe is the way the decision seems to have been made without considering the other alternatives.  It’s people like these that mean Microsoft does not have to work at producing a quality product at a reasonable price because they know that whatever the quality and whatever the price there are people all over the world waiting to sign up!

TFS (Team Frustration Foundation server) is another product that sparks lively debate on the net. The issue with this one is the best alternative to TFS is open source solution of Subversion, which large organisations shy away from because it’s free (and free must mean crap, right??).

I have read that:

TFS = Subversion(with apache) +  TortoiseSVN + Various other products.

On one side that seems good, on the other side do we believe it is all that… do we hell? It’s Microsoft once again telling us “how it’s going to be” and once again people are sucking it up!

Is TFS cross platform?…. NO!

Is TFS source code open and free of restrictions?… err… NO!

Is TFS licensing reasonable?… ok that’s a contentious one in itself, but I just put it in there for you to think about.

With so many companies wishing to produce cross platform code it is such a shame that the Microsoft steamroller have managed to such so many people into the .NET way, thus restricting enterprise level development purely by providing a solution that fits the latest marketing buzz-words (OO, COM, DOM, or whatever the latest acronym in the board room is). I firmly believe that the best development comes from the people who care about what they are doing (basically the open source crowd) rather than the people who are out to reap the financial rewards (Microsoft) and the people who blindly do what they are told (the MS Fanboys).

I am sure Vista will prove to be the thorn in Microsoft’s side, but the Redmond steamroller will survive it and continue to swallow up vast areas of the market with products that are overpriced and could be so much better.

I ask you this question… How many companies are there in the world who could take so long to produce an OS that is so lacking in improvements, and still know that it will sell (albeit not as well as expected) and will become once again “the standard”?

I am getting constantly disillusioned with the poor standard of service from companies in the UK. I am looking to establish a relationship with a printing firm who I can trust to handle print jobs for myself and my clients.

Firstly I tried to place an order with a print shop/ embroidery shop for a polo shirt with a logo on it. The idea was to get one done to establish quality and then order a few dozen. The company took 2 weeks to produce the design then emailed me. I looked at it and it was good but the colours were wrong. I asked them about it and they never got back to me… that’s over a month ago now.

So, I put that down to a bad supplier and went on with my search. I found a local printing establishment with whom I wished to place an order for some business cards. I went to meet the guy, he was very nice and explained the quality and the pricing well. They required slightly bigger orders than I had planned, but I was still impressed enough to stick with them. I asked the guy to email me some prices and I even emailed him once I got back to thank him for his time and remind him I needed prices… again, nothing! It’s been 2 days now and I am not going to wait anymore.

So once again I put it down to experience and march onward. I found another company whose printing comes with good reviews. I placed an order and uploaded my designs. It all looked good but then I saw their printing presses prefer PDF’s. No problem I thought, I will login to the admin panel. Wrong password! Ok I thought, I will click the “remind me” button, that didn’t work either.

To cut a long story short I emailed several email addresses and even logged a support call detailing the fact I cant login and also the fact I would like to replace the images. This was first thing yesterday and I am still awaiting a reply.

How can businesses in the UK run themselves with such disregard for the customer? I have taken an order, fulfilled a 5 page website and invoiced the customer all in the same time it has taken these companies to “not” call me back.

I guess there is a gap in the market for companies with good customer service and clear lines of communication. I can at least hope, as it’s something I have always prided myself with.

I wonder if this is the same over in the States… somehow I doubt it. Where Great Britain used to be seen as being at the forefront of professionalism I wonder if this is still the case. From what I have seen we are no longer up there at the top. On the contrary, we are mid table at best, and if we are not careful we will be facing relegation.

Out little community is taking off like you wouldn’t believe. On Saturday we will have been around exactly 1 month… so far we have 183 members and over 7000 posts! Pretty good I think! We have a handful of affiliates and a lot of useful information going on there already.

Come and visit us at www.z4-forum.com

I have been working on a BMW Z4 community site for the past 2 days and it’s coming along nicely. There are plenty of BMW sites out there, but not too many dedicated to the Z4. We have a reasonable amount of members already, considering we’re only 2 days old!

I don’t usually post rants on forums, but I feel I must post regarding the poor level of service I have received from BMW Harrogate.

I took my car in for its MOT and to have it checked out prior to the warranty running out. I specifically asked them to check the roof, as it had marks on it and bulges and creases on the passenger side. I have been on the Z4 forums for a year or so and I know what a 3 year old roof should look like, and I do expect some marks, especially when it’s not clean. However, these are actual bulges (and are only on the passenger side).

My issues is two parts really, firstly the quality of the roof and secondly the fact that they have taken over 2 months now and they have still not resolved it.

On 5th April 2007 the engineer at BMW Harrogate looked at my roof and agreed that it had premature wear and tear and needed replacing. I saw the original report and discussed it with a member of the service desk. He also promised me the roof would be replaced. I took the car to them on 16th April as this was the earliest they had a slot.

I received a call from BMW Harrogate on 19th April stating that BMW had not agreed this work, as they believe it is a cleaning issue and it needs to be cleaned with the official BMW kit. I have since checked with the previous owner and this had been done already, prior to September 2006. The cleaning helped with the marks a little bit, but (no surprise) the bulges still remained!

To cut a long story short, I took the car in 4 times, engineers looked at it and they took digital pictures. I agreed to this as, as far as they led me to believe, they just needed to send pictures to BMW in order to get permission to fit the roof.

On 17th May I was told that they needed the car once again, as the Regional Technical Manager needed to see it. He came and saw it but told me it was due to the roof being put down when wet! I have never done this… and the bulges have appeared since I have had the car. Also, the bulges and marks are only on one side!!

I received the other day an email from BMW stating it is not a warranty issue and they will do nothing to assist me. I will supply pictures to back this up (they are at home), but this is a word of warning about BMW Harrogate… Their attitude all along has been “we’d be more inclined to help if you’d bought it from us”. That in my mind is condescending and rude. It’s a BMW warranty and I expect better quality and service from a supposed reputable marquee.

The long and the short of it is, they promised me a new roof, in my opinion it requires one, and they took over 2 months just to say flat out, “no”. Beware.

EDIT: forgot to mention, this has been escalated to BMW UK, and since then the communication is a little better. I am still waiting for a call though to see where I can go next with this. Like I said, I don’t usually post this sort of thing, but I am just very disillusioned with the service from BMW Harrogate.

According to our stats there has been a lot of interest in the article regarding sending mail through freeserve/wanadoo/orange/BT. For this reason I have decided to elaborate a little and put forward an offer.

If you have a domain name and you are using freeserve/wanadoo (or whatever they decide to be called this week) then you will have problems sending email… allow me to explain…

When you send email you must connect to an outgoing mail server (SMTP server). This server is usually something like smtp.freeserve.co.uk or mail.freeserve.co.uk.

This is where the problem begins. Freeserve run a check on your message. Specifically it checks if your “from address” is correct i.e. user@username.freeserve.co.uk.

This check is a problem if you have your own domain as you will have altered the from address to be yourname@yourdomain.co.uk

So, what can you do?

Could you could connect to another SMTP server? Errr, no, freeserve/wanadoo have blocked port 25 (the standard SMTP port). Nice of them!

Solution

You need to connect to another SMTP server on another port. We have setup our SMTP server to listen on port 2525 (which is not blocked by freeserve).

Offer

If you wish to get your domain working please give us a call. For £49 per year we can offer the following:

Unlimited access to our 2525 SMTP server, so you can send from wherever you are and whatever ISP you are connected with.

Advanced webmail

Web hosting space

FREE blog/gallery

We also pride ourself on our level of support, so whatever your problem with hosting/email we can help you resolve it quickly and easily.

Web design and development has never been so accessible. With the wealth of content management systems out there a lot of the unknown element of web design has been removed. Designers can base their designs on tried and tested content management solutions like Joomla, Mambo or Drupal.

This means that once the site is completed and handed over you can login and alter the content of the site with a few clicks of the mouse button. Gone are the days of being held to ransom by greedy web designers charging lots of money for altering a few paragraphs of text.

Harrogate has a wealth of good looking websites, we have been doing a bit of research, but 95% of them do not change on a weekly or even monthly basis. Think of this from a customers point of view, would you return a third time to a site that hasn’t changed the last two times you visited it? Returning visitors are 75% more likely to give you business than first time visitors so it is wise to look after them. Content management solutions are great for this.

So next time you are asking for a quote for a site, enquire about a good content management system to save you money in the long run!

I have just purchased a new GPS unit, the Garmin i3. It is a very small unit and will replace my ipaq solution in the car.

This unit is great because it is small (I can stash it in the glove box), free of too many wires (the TomTom needed power to the ipaq and the GPS receiver) and LOUD (I have a convertible and it neds to be loud to be heard!).

I have not taken delivery of it yet, but I will post a review shortly.

I bought it from GPS Warehouse for £79.99… can’t go wrong for that money, they are going for >£100 on ebay!

UPDATE: First impressions are very good. Unit works ok and is quite loud which is a good thing. Only issues I see so far is you cannot scroll around the map and the bloody suction cup mount keeps falling off the window!

If you are a web designer or developer you will know exactly what I am talking about.

You attack a new project with vigor and enthusiasm, producing flashy mockups and impressive menus. However, when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of the project, the coding, the testing, the content, the enthusiasm tends to dwindle.

Sound familiar?

I am not perfect, like most designers my number of aborted projects far outnumbers my finished ones, and I do kick myself for the hours of wasted time I have spent on prokects that never came to fruition. My one piece of advice would be set a timescale and stick to it.

Some of my best work has been for clients who say “I need this working by next Monday”. This way you quickly set the goals, split up the project and get on with it.

With a clear goal in site it is easier to keep motivated!