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 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.

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!

As anyone who has ever visited Harrogate knows, Betty’s tea rooms is by far and away the most famous landmark in this historic town. If you ever get lost in Harrogate you can be sure that the directions someone gives you will navigate you via Betty’s.

I came accross this article (Link to BBC News) explaining that Betty’s are to expand into the opticians next door, and develop into a 4 storey super-cafe! Mmm, I hope they have elevators in there as the average age of their customers is heading for triple figures!

Some of you may remember Dave Gormon. He is a journalist who made famous “The Googlewhack”.

Basically the googlewhack is where you type any two words into the Google search engine (that google recognises) and get only 1 result. It is harder than it seems, try it!

Anyway, I found my first googlewhack tonight:

pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism hounded

The result is this page… perhaps I should tell them they are a googlewhack?!

Yes, after 3 hours of randomly typing words into google I finally found this combination, and thus I got my name in the googlewhack hall of fame… now I can go to sleep!

Goodnight!

I recently installed a new telephone line courtesy of Vonage.

Vonage provide phone lines via VOIP, which to the every day person means “over the Internet”. They provide you with a little box that you plug into your broadband router, and your normal phone plugs into the back of it. From then on you have a normal working telephone, with a few extras…

Firstly I need to point out, this phone line costs £7.99 per month, but allows you free unlimited calls to UK, USA, Canada and several countries in Europe. As I have a very high telephone usage (in excess of £90 per month) I thought I would give it a try.

Wow! One month on and I have had my first bill… under £10 (I called a mobile, which are not included). The quality I must say is excellent too, it’s just like a normal phone. The only down side I guess is having to get a new phone number (in my case with a Harrogate prefix, 01423). Read the rest of this entry »

To celebrate a good friend of mine’s first radio show I have decided to make a shameless plug for his site. If you hadn’t heard, chilli’s are taking the UK by storm! This guy started it, so please take a moment to visit his site (hosted at ThinkSynergy by the way!)