Paper Bubble by Jason Wagner

Today I had the Apple customer experience and it was without a doubt slick, efficient and, dare I type… cool?

But cool is accurate! And I’ll explain why after a brief explanation of how I got here.

I’d always been frustrated that Apple 15inch MacBooks were limited to a lower resolution (1440).

Thankfully the new selection has a high res option, catching up with PC laptops that have been their for years.

The problem with the high res mac, however was the price; 1919 quid and I just couldn’t condone that kind of cost for Ping at the moment.

However, I had a backup, the Apple refurb store. The only problem with that, however, I needed the latest model to get refurbished. And that’s where my (miser) patience kicked in.

And by golly it paid off. By waiting a few months I ended up saving hundreds of pounds! And you know what, the MacBook is immaculate!

I was prepared and expecting some dints, dents and general wear and tear. I was even expecting it to be a bit clunky regarding packaging but not in the slightest.

A well packaged, ready to go MacBook Pro is what I received, the only difference was a generic white box but that could be due to the order going through online.

From power on to signing in, this is what Apple does so very well. Absolutely seamless, usable and beautifully crafted design, interface and experience.

If Ping can accomplish half of what Apple does with it’s customer experience we are on to a good thing indeed – disregarding any antenna issues of course.

Then Ping can pick up some cool points too.

I’ve finally found time to upgrade my blog and add a few more plugins – the twitter feed over on the right and social networking links below each post!

There has been such a phenomenal push over the past few years to intergrate blogs, sites, social networks and mobile devices but only recently has it started to work successfully. I now have feeds bounces from Twitter to Linked In to Facebook while being able to update this blog via mobile is a real bonus!

Talk about connected!

So today I bite the bullet and decided to update my 3GS iPhone. I’ll be honest I was a little nervous about such a big upgrade.

Although i wasn’t really sure why as I’ve built and firmware upgraded many pieces of hardware during my day.

And this is Apple so I convinced myself it would be fine…

Oh dear. Once I’d hit the 2 hour mark (which included the sensible backup, download new iTunes & OS4
installer) I was getting a bit concerned.

However a quick check online revealed other iPhone users had spent 4 hours in total waiting for the upgrade so I left it alone.

However, at hour 3 when I was in desperate need of a phone (you know to call a client for example) I couldn’t cancel or restore – I just had to wait…

At about 4 hours 20 iTunes crashed !

I guess Apple decided i’d waited long enough and had set a time bomb for overly patient users?

The next stages involved a call to Apple care, hard reset (which didn’t work when I tried it first time), full restore including calendar, apps, contacts and firmware then hey presto OS4 was installed and running… Kind of.

I still had a few other apps to upgrade and settings to re-enable. I’m still not sure if my wi-fi is working!?!

So all in all it was a 7 hour and pretty boring process – one I wouldn’t associate with Apple. Also an idea of how long the install should take would be nice?

More than anything personally I found the entire process clinical leaving the user to just sit back and get on with something else – but I didn’t like that at all.

I’m so used to high levels of control that this automated system was disconcerting. All I got was an Apple logo & status bar – I need more information!

But, credit to Apple it did work… eventually.

In an effort to update my blog on regular basis I’ve now got mobile access.

My breaking news is setting up a new company, Ping – a digital advertising agency & joint venture with The Bridge!

It’s fantastic! As a creative I always wanted the opprtunity to be more involved at the start of a campaign.

Setting up Ping has allowed that to happen. I found myself recently talking to clients in utter confusion about what technology to use when in fact they didn’t have a creative idea?!?

This to me is madness. It’s far more difficult to wrap an idea around technology than starting with a great idea & using the right technology to make it work.

So Ping is creative. We just happen to use technology to make it work!

Tobias Schneider has created ‘Gordon’ a Javascript runtime that allows swf files (flash file format) to be viewed using Safari on an iPhone . It’s not a true implementation of flash player however, as it replies on additional lines of code to make it work.

But work it does as you can see by pointing your iphone to this page of demos. Kudos to the man Tobias!

Mozilla are days away from releasing their mobie version of Firefox codenamed Fennec. This is great news although it will only be available for Nokia’s N900 phone to begin, other handset versions released later.

I was intrigued what a Fennec was and a quick google search popped up what can only be descibed as the cutest mammal ever! Who wouldn’t want this little guy as a logo on their mobile ?!?

So Adobe are moving toward flash support on the iphone… well nearly…

In reality this isn’t flash player 10.1 for your iphone so swf files will not play in a browser on your iphone as the Adobe FAQ explains:

Flash Player uses a just-in-time compiler and virtual machine within a browser plug-in to play back content on websites. Those technologies are not allowed on the iPhone at this time…

However, the good news is apps can be converted from an existing SWF file to IPA and with tweaking be responsive too. How much tweaking we’ll have to wait and see but it’s good news and a step in right direction.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net