Apple

Removing lapsed customers the web 2.0 way

by Jason on September 29, 2011 · 0 comments

facebook upgrade reminderI received a helpful reminder last night from Facebook that they’re about to make some major breaking (but, it should be noted, well-publicized) changes to their app requirements.  Specifically, some authentication code that used to work won’t anymore, and all apps will have to be hosted on servers with SSL certificates.

This is going to be interesting, since up until now, if you had web hosting somewhere, you had everything you needed to have, say, a custom Facebook tab on your company page.  Now you’ll need to pay for a cert, which might not even be available if you’re on a really cheap shared server plan.

I imagine that there will be a few phones ringing on the 1st.  But maybe not October 1st.  The fact is, after a platform’s been around for a while, a lot of “experiments” get left by the wayside, basically abandoned, so for many they might not realize there’s a problem for some time.  For others, this will provide a welcome relief in the form of an excuse to kill off an ill-conceived initiative.

For others, though, there may be trouble if they’ve outsourced the work long ago and need some changes made in a hurry.

Apple has a similar system in place for their app store.  If you don’t pay the annual fee, your apps no longer appear in the store, a fact that I know has surprised a number of independent developers who had free apps in place but didn’t feel like they had to remain responsible for them.

And just like with Facebook, I’m sure at this point every single day a company loses their app (but doesn’t necessarily know it) because it was released into the wild by a well meaning contractor who didn’t see fit to renew.

Two takeaways here: first, are your products and services available “forever,” without the need for users to take some form of action, financial or otherwise, to stay on the books? Forever’s a long time.  And on the other side of the fence, are you in control of your technical deployments?  Disaster recovery planning focuses on large scale events, but “I lost that guy’s phone number” is something that should (yet really, really shouldn’t) be on a lot more organizations’ scenario lists.

iOS sightings: the iPad as PowerPoint killer

by Jason on December 10, 2010 · 0 comments

Not to get repetitive, but if I don’t monitor these things I won’t be able to tell if I just think I’m seeing more of them because I wrote about them (like that thing where you buy a car and then all you see is that model – and colour – on the road,) or if it’s an actual trend (which I suspect it is, because duh, Apple is so cool.)

Medical device firms are giving iPads to their reps, claiming it’s a more engaging way to pull out sales data for prospects that beats out sheets of paper or waiting for a laptop to start up to run a deck.

It’s not clear in the article how many sales presentations are custom apps and how many are simply Keynote presentations.  It’s possible that some are using special sections of the company website, which would allow for quick distribution but then you’ve got latency and possible network outages. I know I’ve seen a few sales presentation apps in the store (not tools to make presentations, actual presentations,) but one would think that these things would be best distributed internally to avoid competition.  But hey, what do I know.

I’m also curious what the going rates are for custom-built sales presentations for companies going the app route.  We’re at a weird nexus point in time here, where development costs are still high (for good development, anyway,) but you could literally (badly) photograph a pile of poop and show that on the iPad and prospects would still oooh and aaah over the device, and probably buy whatever the poop’s covering (or the poop itself.  Note to self, contact fertilizer companies for sales pitch.)

The other angle would be the divide between good salespeople and good sales tools.  I’d wager that good salespeople could compete against poor salespeople with an iPad, but as a retention policy, companies would be well off to equip their people with every tool they want.  Closing rates might not justify the deployment and maintenance costs in themselves, but the HR savings might make it work.

Say hello to Nicolas Cage

by Jason on February 24, 2008 · 0 comments

Black MacBook
I went into the Apple store with credit card in hand, and honestly had every intention of buying the MacBook Air – 3 pounds! A few minutes later sanity prevailed and I realized that while 80 gigs was as big a laptop hard drive as I’d ever used, it wasn’t going to let me replace my ThinkPad, and that opened the door to the concept of instead of taking one light computer with me on a trip, having to take one light one and the same old heavy one.

So: the MacBook (Black) with 160 gig hard drive.

I was skeptical about the chicklet keyboard and the glossy screen, but Ange has been using one for a few months now and it doesn’t seem as bad as I used to think. I’m really missing the ThinkPad keyboard (soooo nice), but everything else after a few hours of use is head and shoulders above my ThinkPad Z61t:

  • When you open the lid, you’re ready to go. Opening the lid on the TP led to an indeterminate wait of 5 to 60 seconds before it would wake up. Then the wireless would decide if it was time to turn on. MacBook: online in seconds.
  • The magnetic power adapter. I thought this was silly, but I’ve already found it useful (OK, I was wrapping up the power plug before I unplugged it from the computer, but the whole point of the design feature is to protect computers from people, right?)
  • World of Warcraft is fast! Yes, this is more a feature of the dual core processor versus whatever chip was in the older ThinkPad, and an upgrade to the T60 would have probably given me the same oomph. I don’t care, I’m just happy to see 60 fps after far too long at 9.
  • Battery life: 4 hours. The old laptop got just under 2 with wireless off and doing nothing but coding. A fresh battery would have helped, but I’ve never seen 4 from a Thinkpad – the things bleed 10% of their charge overnight.
  • 5 pounds. The ThinkPad was 6 I think. 1 pound never seemed like such a big deal before. It’s not the 3 pounds of the Air, but I’m happy with the lighter device, and my shoulder is too.

I’ve installed Parallels, and Visual Studio just finished installing so I’m looking forward to seeing how this “best of all worlds” theory pans out. I’ll still be doing most of my coding on my desktops (dual display is a bigger productivity boost than any hardware upgrade), but if I can lug this new box wherever I go and get some coding/writing time in at various non-home/non-work locations (food courts are great, with no wireless, people around so you don’t feel isolated but don’t get bothered, etc), I’ll be a very happy guy.

Oh, and I named the computer Nicolas Cage. Because you can’t live in fear. Also:

jld-nicolascageenvy

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