Is the Internet overhyped?

Is the Internet overhyped?
Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published in
Northland Reader
now
Reader Weekly
May 25, 2000

“We know we must connect all our classrooms to the Internet...”  (Pres. William J. Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 27, 2000) (1)

Really?  The band room?  The wood shop?  The English class?

Does the band room need Internet access to provide music?  Or would the money be better spent on buying sheet music and acquiring and maintaining instruments?

Does the wood shop need Internet access to provide project plans?  Or would the money be better spent on acquiring and maintaining tools?

Does the English class need Internet access to provide copies of Shakespeare?  Or would the money be better spent on buying hardcover copies of Shakespeare, Richard Wright, and Ursula K. Le Guin?

Clinton’s statement and similar statements by many others are indicative more of a mania to adopt the “latest and greatest” without thinking through all the consequences.  This mania is seen both in government and private organizations.  Sometimes it comes from the top down, sometimes from the bottom up.

“OK, Mr. Author, if the Internet is such a mania, how come you make so much use of it for your articles?  And if you use it, shouldn’t school kids learn to use it?”  Yes and no.

Yes, the Internet can be a wonderful tool, but it can also be a great waste of time.  “A library is where you go to find facts. The web is more like a garage sale: it's possible you'll find what you want, but only with a lot of digging, searching, and wading through things that smell funny.” (2)

I found out just how true this was in researching this article.  I’ll come back to this later.

No, school children can learn to use the Internet at anytime in their lives.  I am active in the University for Seniors at UMD.  Many of the members are using computers for a wide variety of tasks.  Many of them first used a personal computer within the last ten years.  The successful users among them have two common traits: a love of learning and an ability to type.

“Even some usually pro-technology types, like Apple Computer Co. founder Steven Jobs, have expressed doubts [about computers in schools], suggesting that what students need is more classroom focus on basics like writing and mathematics and higher-level skills such as critical thinking.”  (3)

Because Frank James paraphrased Steve Jobs, I wanted to find Jobs’ own words.  I did a search with Alta Vista for “critical thinking”, “steve jobs” “apple”, and “education”.  Alta Vista found 39 web pages.  The first page was an Apple page of “Hot News”.  I searched it for “critical thinking”, but it had changed!  It was the only Apple page of the thirty-nine.

I checked a few other pages, but most of them “smelled funny”.  So, I decided to start with Apple’s home page and search within Apple’s own site.  I did a search of “critical thinking, steve jobs”, but my browser (Internet Explorer 4.5 for the Macintosh) wouldn’t load the page!  The URL (or address) that Apple’s search feature created was so long that it wouldn’t even fit in the error message window!  I couldn’t even search for “Jobs”!!!

One of the Internet success stories is Amazon.com, a bookseller!  In fact, if you do a search for something on the internet, you are quite likely to find reviews of books on the subject rather than the text as written by the original authors.  Of course, you can search the Internet for free because the search site depends heavily on revenues from booksellers who want to sell you books on the subject of your choice.

One of the most optimistic works on the future of technology is Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead.  It is available in good old-fashioned paper form.  The only way to get the electronic form (a CD-ROM) is to buy the book.  I searched for “the road ahead” on the internet, and no Microsoft page was in the first 10 pages of the 3,997 found.  I went to Microsoft’s home page and did a search for “the road ahead”.  The first 10 pages of the 67 found were not the text of the book.  I did find that the CD-ROM might have an error!  (However, on August 2, 2007, the page describing the error is no longer available.) (

Should computers be in schools at all?  Of course computers should be in schools, in appropriate places.  The first is in typing, sorry, keyboarding.  Who wants to learn to type on a big heavy mechanical typewriter like I did over 40 years ago?  But we don’t need to have the latest, biggest, fastest computers to teach typing.  Even a Commodore 64 can do that.  The second is in the library as an addition to a great, humongous collection of books.

For it is from books and great mentors that we learn writing, mathematics, and critical thinking.  Let us make sure we have well-stocked libraries and highly-respected teachers.  When we have achieved those two goals, then maybe we can think about adding computers.

(1)I accessed this quote May 4, 2000 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/SOTU00/sotu-text.html.  That page is no longer available.  I imagine each President deletes his predecessor's records after the National Archives has copied them.  However, the Clinton library's copy of the speech does not have that phrase or any other mention of connecting classrooms to the Internet!  After an exchange of emails with an archivist I learned that there is a briefing copy and a transcript.  My search had only turned up the briefing copy.  The archivist gave me the link to The American Presidency Project's copy. and the correct link in the Clinton library.  I couldn't find the latter because I searched on the date of the speech, but the speech was indexed under the date of inclusion into the web site!  Searching the web is not always a solo endeavour.

(2) “Kev's Collection of Cool Quotes”, Kevin Killion, accessed August 2, 2007.  Kevin moved from the URL that I originally had.

(3) “Plan to wire all schools to Internet falls behind”, Chicago Tribune Online, Frank James, Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau, June 22, 1999,  file available in Chicago Tribune paid archive.

©2000, 2007 Melvyn D. Magree

Corporate runaround

For the second time this month, my MacBook Air started emitting a lot of static.  I pushed the on-off button on the keyboard and the screen went dark, but the static didn’t stop.

I restarted the computer, gave my log-in info, and shut down the computer from the Apple Menu.  The static stopped.

I also went to Apple’s Support Communities to look at what others have said.  Apparently this problem has been going on for three or more years.  One user suggested resetting a VRPRAM or something like that.  Even though I have a long computer background, I don’t like getting into the guts of a computer anymore.

I tried to post my observation, but Apple wanted me to sign-in first.  I did sign in and when I came back to the page to respond, Apple asked me to sign in again.  Other pages recognized that I had signed in, but this particular page wanted me to sign in again and again and again and...

Apple gives me two choices to contact support: telephone or chat.  I don’t care for either.  In this particular case, I don’t want to do more than report the problem of multiple signing-requests.

I know, I know, I probably spent more time writing this than I would have following through on Apple’s contact protocols.  But I have found both methods unsatisfactory.  I much prefer leaving a note and being notified of a response.  I don’t have to think fast because the clock is ticking.

I think that Apple’s introductory slogan “Why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’” has fallen flat.  Someday’s I feel like I am working with the PCs that the Macintosh would replace with simplicity.

Apple Computer and Reliability

I sent the following as a letter to the Editor of Barron’s on 2003-05-27.  Over eleven years later I’m still waiting for the reliability that I asked for in the letter.  And the unanswered list in Apple’s Support Community gets longer and longer.  At least Apple now offers system upgrades as a free download, even major upgrades like Mavericks to Yosemite.  Still I will wait until I buy a new computer for the major upgrade.  I still do believe “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

I have two other ideas for improving Apple than those given in “Beyond iTunes”.

First, Apple really needs to develop OS X as a super-reliable operating system.  It is great that a problem application rarely crashes OS X, but there are many problems in OS X and applications written for OS X that can be very annoying to users, experienced or otherwise.  This super-reliability needs to be in OS X off-the-shelf and in rapid solutions from Apple as problems arise.

Apple’s AppleCare support staff were unaware of problems connecting some Macintosh computers to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who deployed the latest modems (v.92).  The first two I spoke to about my problems connecting or staying connected could only suggest that I completely reinstall the operating system!  After a few weeks of frustration, I stumbled on the cause (the new modem type at my ISP) and the solution.  The fix for my level of operating system (10.1.5) had been available from another unit of Apple before I even called the first time!  The third support person to whom I angrily told the solution had been ignorant of the problem when I called.

Worse yet, Apple’s own discussion boards had dozens of messages about this problem both for my older level of the operating system and the latest level (10.2.6).  The fix I found did not work for those with the latest level.  Apple did not seem to be responding to any of these messages.  This lack of response loses some business for Apple; I should pay $129.95 to upgrade to a system that may be useless to me?

This leads to my second thought.  Apple should take a page from Microsoft’s customer-relations book.  Microsoft has adopted the slogan “Trustworthy Computing”.  Apple should have the slogan “Responsive Computing”.  Not only must Apple provide a even more trouble-free operating system, but it must respond to customer complaints in a more timely fashion.  It seems too often Apple treats its customers as ignoramuses who haven’t even checked if the computer is plugged in.  It has too often pushed customers off on user groups in the expectation that these will have members who can solve all problems.  User groups may have only five or six members who really delve into problems and then don’t use the same configuration in the same way as many other members.   Apple should better monitor its support lines and its discussion boards to find out what problems its users have, seek to elicit more details from those with problems, correlate similar problems, and provide timely solutions to those problems that are widely available within Apple’s own organization and to its customers.

Whiz bang products may get the public’s attention, but it is great customer service that keeps people coming back.

Melvyn D. Magree

A former programmer who has spent forty-five years learning only a tiny bit about computers and who believes, “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” (Now fifty-six years!)

Has ’1984’ come to Apple’s Macintosh?

The first Macintosh ad was for the 1984 SuperBowl.  You can find many copies on YouTube such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZV7PDt8Lw.  The final line was “why 1984 won’t be like ’1984’.

The whole idea of the original Macintosh was that you didn’t need to type in complex instructions to get anything done.  You selected your choices from a menu and you got a window.  In the window you got pictures to look at and icons for any warnings.  Whether disparagingly by PC users or lovingly by Mac users, it was called WIMP.

Several years later, Apple produced the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” ads.  These stressed the multitude of fun things that could be done on a Mac right out of the box and implied it was difficult to do these things on a PC without add-ons.  You can see some of these at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCL5UgxtoLs.

To me, as an almost 30 year user of Macs (September 1984), the Mac was a delight to use and program for.  Then the new whiz kids decided that it should be programmed in C rather than Pascal.  To me, C stood for complex, and I had programmed mainframes with line-at-a-time assemblers.

It is mind-boggling how much more I can do now than thirty years ago, but with OS X things seem to have gone downhill.  Or rather it is an uphill job to figure out what is going wrong.  The response time seems to get worse with every new operating system.

I’m not alone with this judgment.  Apple’s “Community” seems filled with complaints about things that don’t work correctly.

Advice to correct the problem includes:

Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR..; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_; sudo chmod -R

In the 1980s it was said that Mac users didn’t read manuals.  I often found that the only reason I needed a manual was for how to type letters with diacritical marks, such as å, é, î, and ö.  Now I find I am going to the “Community” at least once a month for some problem.

These kind of problems may be happening to users with two or more year-old computers; Apple’s programmers are likely to be using computers that are less than a year old, and they probably don’t have the time to test the new software on older computers than those on their desks.

I may be on to something here.  My wife’s iMac is a year newer than my MacBook Pro.  Other than updates within a major level, she is still using the same operating system that came with her computer.  Meanwhile, I’ve updated two levels since I bought mine, skipped one level because of the problem I mentioned in the last paragraph, and then fell for the enticements to move to the latest OS, Mavericks.  This had many benefits, but I keep wondering if they do outweigh the problems.

Personal and corporate screw-ups

I received a letter today from Minnesota Revenue that I still owed income taxes for 2013.

My first look at my spreadsheet didn’t find anything wrong.  Maybe the state wasn’t considering the tax withheld by payers to us.  When I looked further, I had put fixed data in a worksheet rather than linking to a figure elsewhere.  Ouch!

I won’t let the state off entirely.  The letter only listed the estimated tax payments I had made, not the tax withheld.

As I was adjusting my spreadsheet, Microsoft sent a notice that upgrades to Office were available.  I waited for these to be downloaded and installed, and then continued my correction of my tax spreadsheet.

The download or my correction may have been a big mistake.  Excel crashed twice!  The restored spreadsheet looked was altered in bad ways.  Not only were the fonts in some cells changed, the size and shading of a window was changed.  The resulting sheets were ugly!

Speaking of spreadsheets, I won’t let Apple get off the hook.  For some reason, Apple has not included named cells or groups of cells in Numbers as in Excel.  One has to use an obscure coding using a page name and row numbers and column letters.  At least, if one changes the location of the cell or group, Numbers does adjust for the change.

Corporations - the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing

For at least three months, Apple has included Numbers and Pages (spreadsheet and document programs) in its free list of Apps in the App store.  However, if one scrolls over the name of the App, “$19.99” appears.  Has Apple decided that “free” means under $20?  Several people have made remarks about this in the review sections for these apps.  Is anybody in Apple reading these reviews?

The New York Times had a review of “Quip”, a document writing program for the Mac, iPad, and iTunes.  If I search for “Quip” in the App Store, I can’t find it.  If I search from iTunes, I find it.  The iTunes page that shows Quip has a header “App Store > Productivity > Quip”.  Looking through “All Productivity Apps” in the App Store, I do not find Quip among the Qs.

If Apple or any other large corporation cannot be bothered with fixing these little but obvious glitches, can we be sure that they will fix big glitches that cost us (and even other large corporations) hours of frustration?

Quip is nowhere near a complete document program, but it is good for two or more people to collaborate on a document.  As I type on my laptop I can see the text showing on my wife’s desktop.

As for Pages and Numbers, I think I’ll wait a year or two or three for when I upgrade my devices and these programs are included.

How many seconds in a minute?

According to Apple, there are ten seconds in a minute!  Maybe even less.

Last week I downloaded and installed the latest Mavericks update on my Mac laptop.  Near the end of the lengthy process, it displayed “10 seconds left” for some part or another.  Twenty seconds later, the display was “10 seconds left” (or was it remaining?)  And again at thirty seconds on up to sixty seconds.  I don’t remember how soon after that time was displayed I started tracking the time, and I don’t remember how long after I had noted sixty seconds had passed before I stopped tracking.

But whatever, is this the lauded corporate “efficiency” that government supposedly lacks?  Whatever else is going on in the operating system that is inefficient.  I do know that Microsoft products have been getting slower to load.  I can almost go downstairs to pour a second cup of coffee while waiting for a spreadsheet to open.  This is even true of spreadsheets that don’t have a lot of data.

And of course, there are all the user complaints that seem to go on for years without resolution.

I do know from personal experience that not all problems are resolvable and that some take a long time to get enough data to solve.  In the sixties at Univac I was part of the small team that maintained the FORTRAN compiler.  We had a user report (number 498, I think) that we never solved.  Our main problem was trying to figure out what had happened on a computer we had no direct access to and not enough information to ask the right questions.  We never had another user report with the same problem.

On the other hand, I see complaints about the same problems year after year in the support communities for Apple and Microsoft.

What is the critical mass for these problems such that the big corporations will put enough resources into resolving these issues?

Here’s a radical idea!  For every unsolved problem a company has, the CEO should have his or her pay docked ten dollars per day.  Let’s be generous, and only count weekdays that are not holidays.  Would these problems go away sooner?

What about docking the CEOs pay for every day that false advertising is present.  Apple has made downloading Mavericks free to encourage people to move away from older operating systems.  Supposedly Numbers, Pages, and Keynote are free.  These are competitors to Microsoft’s Excel, Write, and Power Point.  These three Apple products are listed in a Top Ten Free downloads in the App Store.  However, if you place the cursor next to them, “$19.99” appears rather than “Free”.

Many users have complained about this for three months or more!  Is this another case of Adam Smith’s warning about trusting those who live by profit and have deceived and oppressed the public?

Obamacare and careless corporations

I sent the following letter to the Duluth News Tribune.  It was published 2013-12-24.  You can also find it at http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/286844/publisher_ID/36/.

Enough already about Obamacare glitches

Please, enough letters about the computer problems related to Obamacare. A truism of any organization, government or corporate, is that people tell the boss what they think he or she wants to hear.

When customer complaints about installing Windows7 came rolling in, did the press call it “Windows Steven” after Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, or Steven Sinofsky, then head of the Windows Division?

Complaints are rolling in about Apple’s latest operating system, Mavericks. Has the press called Mavericks “Cookware” after Tim Cook, CEO of Apple?

Creating software is a messy business; the more that is promised, the less that works right. Way back in the 1960s I was part of a team developing a new, groundbreaking operating system. New releases were never on time and never took care of all the reported problems. Very few customers had a day without crashes. That software was simple compared to what we have today on our computers and even in our smartphones.

President Barack Obama was educated in law, not computer science. He has to rely on others, including all the private contractors, to give him correct and timely information. Do you think Steve Ballmer got as much bad news as he should have? Do you think Tim Cook got as much bad news as he should have? I know we were under a lot of pressure to report good news about that ancient operating system.

The designers of HealthCare.gov were probably behind before they even started. Few, in or out of government, fully appreciate the complexity of the task.

Does the Apple of my eye have a black eye?

I've been using Macintoshes and other Apple products since September 1984.  Maybe for the first 20 years I was eager to update to the latest releases.  Especially when I was a Certified Apple Developer so that I could make sure my software ran on the new release.

Then I started getting "burned" by new releases.  One time the migration from one computer to another crashed.  Many times software that should have worked on the new release had new problems.  Often it seemed like I was an unpaid debugger of software (not just Apple but Microsoft and other software publishers).

One of the latest was the introduction of iOS 6 followed by iOS 7.  Many were the problems that I had with each, and Apple's "Community" web site was filled with similar complaints or others that often were never answered.

The latest was the new release of Pages, Apple's supposed challenger to Microsoft Word.  As I would like to move away from Microsoft Word, I was interested in Pages.  Especially so since the rumors are that Apple will be providing Microsoft "competitors" free, even for new versions, in the next year or so.

I looked up Pages in Apple's App store.  Hoo boy!  Many users were angry! Over half of those rating Pages gave it only one star.  A representative comment is:

"But the fact remains that Apple removed so much functionality from what was once a decent, viable and affordable option for desk-top publishing for the Mac platform."

Oh, yes, on top of all those problems, Apple, which pioneered cut and paste, does not allow copy from its App Store!  I had to retype the above comment.

This is another case of the "Corp giveth and the Corp taketh away".

Watch also for "Computer glitches? What's new?" that will appear in the Reader Weekly of Duluth later this week.  It's about how computer problems are not limited to the software for the Affordable Care Act.

Flipped quote of the day – assurances not to be trusted

“It’s another broken promise and more proof this administration’s assurances have no credibility,” said House Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. “This law has been an absolute disaster, leaving us to ask ‘what’s next?’ “
– "Small-business rollout for Obamacare postponed for a year", Noam N. Levey, Star Tribune, 2013-11-27

“The war in Iraq is another broken promise and more proof the  Bush administration’s assurances have no credibility,” never said John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. “This war has been an absolute disaster, leaving us to ask ‘what’s next?’ “

“The release of Xbox/Playstation is another broken promise and more proof Microsoft's/Sony's assurances have no credibility,” never said House Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. “These products have been an absolute disaster, leaving us to ask ‘what’s next?’ “

"[In] 2007 [Microsoft] has spent more than $1 billion to repair the problems associated with the Xbox 360."
– "Xbox, PlayStation deal with launch glitches", Derrick L. Lang, Associated Press, from Star Tribune, 2013-11-28

I wish that those who complain about government inefficiency or corporate missteps would realize that both are organizations of people and people are bound to over-promise and under-deliver.

How not to write spam

I received the following message from "Amazon";

Important For Your Online Account Access . Action Suspended

this email send by Amazon

Dear Customer

During our usual security enhancement protocol, we observed multiple login attempt error while login in to your online amazon account. We have believed that someone other than you is trying to access your account for security reasons, we have temporarily suspend your account and your access to online amazon and will be restricted if you fail to update

Your first clue to an official-looking email being a spam is how bad is the English.  We all maik misteaks and other tipos, but the above is ridiculous.

Your second clue is where do the included links really go.  I find these by just putting the cursor over the links or dragging the message to a text editor program.  In Microsoft Outlook the first shows the link as a drop down.  In Apple's TextEdit the second shows the source code of the message.  You don't really need to know that much about HTML, but you can scan it for suspicious looking items.

Speaking of spam, this blog has a lull in reverse spam from Russia.  These reverse spammers may have moved to Ukraine.  In any case, the number of pageviews from the United States has gone up but not to the level I was receiving Russian "pageviews".  I hope the US pageviews are real human readers who enjoy what I have written.

My computer reads my mind!

An annoying "feature" of Microsoft Excel for the Mac 2011 is that it will, without seeming cause, open a workbook at almost full screen rather than at the last size I closed it.

As I opened a worksheet a few minutes ago, I thought about this problem.  Sure enough, the workbook opened as almost full screen rather than the "tidy" size I last closed it at.

Another reminder that large corporations are not as efficient as many would like to believe.

Of course, I should remember that I do a lot of useful stuff with Excel, but it would be a little bit more comforting if its behavior was consistent and accurate.

The Corp giveth and the Corp taketh away

I thought this parody of Job 1:21 might be original with me.  I found only two references in my first try, both in reference to the Army Corps of Engineers and New Orleans.  When I broadened my search to "the corp gives", I found 17,000 references, some of them with my meaning of Corporation.

I thought of this phrase as I was working with macros in Excel 2011 for the Mac.  Microsoft took away macros in Excel 2008 and put them back in Excel 2011.  But the macros that worked in Excel 2004 don't always work in Excel 2011.

Also, when I plugged my iPod into my Mac, iTunes would automatically be launched.  iTunes would then begin syncing my iPod.  This was true even with OS X Lion.  Then in some version of iTunes the auto load/synch stopped.  I have to start iTunes myself.

This certainly is just an annoyance compared to Job's problems, but one would think the "free market" could provide a more consistent and efficient experience for its customers.

Corporate bureaucracies eat into other corporations' profits

I've often said that government has no corner on bureaucracy.  Almost any large organization, for-profit, non-profit, government, has a large bureaucracy.  They have to in order to look into many, many details that are needed to run the organization efficiently.  You read that right, an organization needs a bureaucracy to be efficient.

Who is going to do the details of hiring and firing?  Who is going to process the payroll for thousands of employees.  Who is going to pay and collect the bills.  Certainly not the executives.  Certainly not the employees involved in developing new products. Certainly not the employees providing goods or services to customers.

The purpose of a bureaucracy is to take care of details that free other employees to do the primary work of the organization.

One corporate bureaucracy is customer support.  These are the folks that process customer questions and complaints and attempt to find solutions.  When run well, customer support provides satisfaction to the customers and feedback to the rest of the organization.  When customer support is not given organization support, it devolves into an unresponsive bureaucracy.  The result is less customer satisfaction, which in turn can lead to the demise of the organization.

A case study is the corporation many love to hate but many depend on for the functioning of their own organizations - Microsoft.

I mentioned my calendar problems in "Quote of the day - Ease of use" and "Misdirected ire".

Since then, I've been subscribing to a thread "Meetings disappearing" on Microsoft's Apple Support Discussions.  Hoo Boy!  Talk about non-responsiveness!  This thread has been going on since February and there appears to be no resolution.

Well, maybe there was some resolution.  Many report that if they set up a regular weekly appointment for a year and then change one, all subsequent appointments disappeared!  How often are regular meetings changed in your organization?  Sometimes changed meetings become the norm.  What was the solution that one writer said Microsoft proposed?  Set up 52 individual appointments for the year!!  Wow!  That certainly is a shining example of productivity improvement.  Guess what?  When the user changed one of the 52 individual appointments, the subsequent appointments disappeared.

What a way to run a railroad or any business!  I've had better responsiveness from city, state, and federal bureaucracies.

Misdirected ire about buggy software

In "Quote of the day - Ease of use"
I berated Steve Jobs and Apple about his quote "Everything syncs without us having to think about it" because calendars in Microsoft Outlook, Apple's iCal, and my iPod were not synching properly.

Well, the problem was far worse than a few duplicated events.  I had dozens and dozens that were duplicated over 100 times and one possibly over 500 times.  That's a lot of shift-clicks followed by a delete.  I've spent over a week now cleaning up at least three months a day.

Why delete duplicates from nine years ago?  Because each item takes up space.  For every three months cleaned up, I would back up the calendar.  For 2004 it could take well over five minutes to backup.  When I cleaned up into 2010, it started backing up in a minute.  When I cleaned up into 2011, it backed up in less than a minute.

I also spent lots and lots of time looking at Microsoft's support pages.  Hoo, boy!  There ain't much praise there!  Message after message complains about this and similar problems.  The only posted responses are from MVPs (whatever that stands for), volunteers who try to direct users to relevant support pages.

Microsoft put out an update last week that I downloaded and installed.  However, despite people complaining about sync problems since April 6, there was no mention of them in the notes for the update.

I wonder how much Microsoft is even screening any of these comments.  I posted two comments on June 13, and they are still marked "Your comment is awaiting moderation."

This whole situation has the earmarks of upper management declaring something should be done by such and such date, middle management trying to figure out how to assign the work to too few people, and the programmers trying valiantly to put round pegs in square holes.

Shades of Dilbert!

Shades of the bad old days of mainframes!  We felt lucky to get out a new system that crashed a few minutes less frequently than the previous version.

More foibles of free enterprise

I write these little diatribes against "free enterprise" not because I oppose "free enterprise" but because I get tired of those who believe "free enterprise" should be free to do what it damn well pleases and that government can do nothing right.

"Free enterprise" and government are both human creations and, as such, can do wonderful things and can really screw up.  The latest free enterprise screw up screwed up my day recently.

I use my computer and my iPod to keep my calendar.  Because I prefer the calendar in Microsoft Outlook, I have to use Apple's iCal on my computer to synchronize the iPod calendar and the Outlook calendar.  Normally this works "seamlessly", but a few times it hasn't.

Last week the calendar on my iPod became blank.  All the entries had disappeared.  Years of past data and months of future data gone without any effort on my part.  I checked iCal on my computer; all that data was gone also.   I checked the Outlook calendar and the data was all there, whew!

But, could I restore the data to the other two calendars by synching or would the Outlook data be wiped out also?

Off to the wonderland of Apple support.  With most large companies, this doesn't mean talking with an "expert" anymore.  Instead you have to rely on hundreds or thousands of other customers asking and answering questions.  This means sifting through dozens, if not hundreds, of messages that seem to be about a problem similar to yours.

There were many threads about iCal calendars disappearing, going back to 2006 (or was it 2004).  I'm using the latest publicly available version of OS X (10.6.7). Come on, Apple, can't you get this problem fixed permanently in five years?

I did find a suitable solution, which involved deleting a certain folder from the Library folder and replacing it with a backup copy from before the error occurred.  Well, the certain folder wasn't where the message said it was, but it was close enough for me to find it.  Second problem for many people is how often do they even back up their Library folder.

Fortunately, I have installed Apple's Time Machine, which frequently backs up my internal hard drive to an external hard drive.  And it backs up multiple copies for up to a month.  I selected a copy of the folder from when I knew my calendar had data.

Bingo!  The computer iCal was restored and after I synched the iPod, I had both calendars up-to-date, sort of.

But I was not home free.  After the Outlook calendar was synched with iCal, I had double entries for many events.  I still haven't removed all the duplicates.

A half day shot for the "efficiency" of free enterprise.  Those who make the false comparison between free enterprise and government either don't use computers or are blinded by their ideology.

I'm not completely unsympathetic to the problems of software.  When I closed my software business fifteen years ago, I had a problem book at least nine pages long.  That program was a toy compared to the complexity of most software today.  Much of modern software is not the product of one programmer in a home office, but of a vast bureaucracy.  The bureaucracy screws up a lot, but boy, we still get lots of great stuff from the bureaucracy, be it corporate or government.

Computers: How the times change!

Twenty-eight years ago last month, I left Univac to form my own software company based on the new microcomputers.  Partly I felt Univac was stuck in old paradigms of big boxes, and partly I wasn't doing very well myself on creating new ideas.

A few years after that, Burroughs bought Univac and called the new company Unisys.  Unisys continued making mainframes for a few years and slowly moved to being more of a consulting company.

Before that really happened, I moved to using Macs only and haven't stopped since.

Now, Unisys is now considered a "technology services specialist", and some Motley Fools think that Apple and Unisys may reach some agreement to help Apple seek enterprise and government contracts.

Also, once companies started adopting personal computers, the "gold standard" became PCs and Microsoft.  The Mac was a toy and not a business computer.  Now "Apple's Tim Cook [acting CEO] says the iPad is being deployed or piloted in 80% of the largest corporations today, and 88 of the Fortune 100 companies are testing or using the iPhone."

See "3 Stocks Ready to Roar", Motley Fool

And older readers may remember all the predictions of Apple's demise in the 80s and 90s.  I read somewhere that Apple now has more market value than Microsoft.

And as I've said many times before, we ain't seen nothing yet in technology.

Health care repeal is the real job-killer

The Republicans are calling for the repeal of the "job-killer health care bill".  But have they considered that the previous health care "system" was the real job killer?

Why?  Consider that many people seek jobs based on the "benefits" offered by the company – "benefits" generally meaning health care insurance.  These people will seek jobs in large companies rather than smaller companies.  Once people work for large companies, they are almost "locked" into their jobs.

People who are "locked" into their jobs won't venture out on their own, whether to be consultants, to be employees of smaller companies, or to start their own companies.

When people move in any of these directions, they may be moving to a more creative environment.  That creative environment may in itself create more jobs.  Thank goodness that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were young, healthy, and well-enough off to start Apple and Microsoft, respectively.

But have many people not started companies because they didn't want to be concerned or couldn't afford health care for their employees.  That situation is/was a job-killer.

About the only job-killing I think the health care bill does is reduce the number of people who are looking for ways to deny care.

Want Windows 7? Buy a Mac!

That's the advice that Forbes gives in "Want To Run Windows 7? Buy a Mac", Brian Caulfield, 2009-10-20

Apparently, the new Macs have many of the features that make Windows 7 shine that many other PCs don't, for example, fast graphic processors.

If you do buy a Mac to run Windows 7, you'll have to buy a separate copy of Windows 7 and install it yourself. Apple's Boot Camp, available on all late model Macs, makes the process easy. See "Built for Compatibility". The available interoperability and connectivity from Macs to Windows is mind-boggling. I don't think I have any recently created file that I can't email to or put on a CD or DVD for a PC user.

Let's see, is it the FTC or the FCC that's worried about bloggers shilling for products. If so, here is my disclaimer. As far as I know I stand to gain nothing from Apple for writing this blog. I have used Macintosh computers since September 1984 and really don't want any others. OK, iPods and iPhones. What I might gain is more Mac users, fewer complaints about the difficulties of using PCs, and fewer people recoiling in fear at the mere mention of Macintosh.

Technological irony

Apple placed one of its cute "I'm a Mac; I'm a PC" ads in today's online New York Times. The initial banner ad was "Vista - one of the biggest blunders in technology". Unfortunately, Safari 3.0.4 would not complete loading the page; it stuck on 88 items of 89. Safari 3.0.4 is included with Mac OS 10.4.11, the latest update to the OS prior to OS X Leopard. Firefox 2.0.0.12 did load the page successfully.

I used the "Report Bugs to Apple" feature of Safari to report this situation.