No HTML5 for you! (No Flash either)

     Bad news for Steve "no Flash" Jobs and iPhone power users (hipsters, close your browser now!). With all the hype surrounding HTML5, the latest web standard has become a bit self-conscious of its designation. Therefore, it demands that you just refer to it—and all future iterations—as HTML. Got it?

    WHATWG and W3C, the main organizations leading the charge to create a final HTML5 spec, realized that updates and new standards are moving at such rapid speeds that they won't be able to deliver a final standard by 2022 as they promised previously (there, I've said it!). Instead, HTML will simply be a living, ever-evolving specification, the way it's been for years.

     But what does this mean for iPhone users? It means that you will be continuously milked by Apple and other corporations for media that is available for free on a PC or any other Smartphone because HTML won't replace Flash in the next decade. Apple's app-ification of the web stops at the point where you can see your favorite shows for free. Sure there's HULU and other streaming apps that all require a paid subscription and most likely won't work if you're not in the US.

Fearless Feedback

     At Apple they have this way of talking to each other called 'Fearless Feedback'. I was told 'never be afraid to ask any questions to anyone at Apple, we're all ears' but that was a long time ago. I once went above the manager's head and asked a big dog a question via email, then my manager was CC'd in to the reply. And then my manager had a go at me for asking someone in the company a question.

Basically you are supposed to put a positive spin on anything, so take these examples. This is the real life, slightly childish way that we would all like to handle it:

But this is how it is supposed to go on Apple's watch:

Although I've never seen it in action. How would the manager react to the end of this:

"I appreciate that celebrity gossip is important, we all have our interests outside of work, and that Heat magazine is a superb publication, but right now there are 20 people queueing at the genius bar trying to buy iPhone cases. Do you think you could spare 5 minutes to lead by example and demonstrate how fantastic the EasyPay devices are by taking payment, bagging and emailing the receipt to customers that don't care for email receipts? Some of them might need onetoone to show them how to use the case too. Thanks."

Source

Apple mocks open source community, pulls VLC from the AppStore

     Looks like VLC's role as champion of open-source legal rights is no more. Rather than lawyer up, Apple's taken the easy way out, and simply removing the VLC media player from the App Store. Rémi Denis-Courmont, the VideoLAN developer who originally sued to have it removed, reports that an Apple attorney informed him that the company had complied with his takedown request, and pulled the app accordingly which likely puts the kibosh on other potential VLC ports as well. If you think about it, the open-source community may have just planted the first brick in a walled garden of its own. 

     If you wonder why it was so important to have VLC removed, it's easy. As the much hated iDon't list says Apple locks all apps with DRM protection, free or not, open source or not. Thus with Apple's mockery over the open-source community, goes the only decent video player in the App Store. Yet again iPhone users are left with a poor choice of video formats or painful conversion of their videos to the extremely poor choice of codecs available on the iPhone.

Net Promoaner Part 11-15

Booby let us know

"I worked at one in Arizona, USA. It sucked. All the employees are brainwashed hippies that think they have the best job in the world. They’re all mindless zombies who want the satisfaction of making a couple bucks over minimum wage without any incentives."

Cheers Bobby, glad you saw the light.

Another worthy goal for this year, D-man tells us

"At our last store meeting we watched Ron Johnson (on tape of course) talk non stop about how much money the company was making and how that was all thanks to us and that Apple had a special treat for us. We figured iPads, or iPods, a bonus, or something. Wrong. Instead of giving anything useful to us they had the mangers cook us breakfast. Fucking breakfast at our 8 am meeting. Would be nice if anyone knew about it, but seeing as our meetings go on for fucking hours everyone had already eaten. Thanks Apple. And at the next review they told everyone that it had been a hard season for retail, so they couldn't justify "extravagant" raises. Everyone got 1% or 2%. Our two store managers both bought new cars in the next 3 weeks. Assholes. My resolution for 2011 is to leave Apple."

Go for it!

Sian asked a personal story be posted:

"On the iPad launch day, I started work at 6am (without choice), only to receive a phone call at 10am to tell me that my girlfriend had been rushed to hospital. I didn’t know why, all I knew is that she had been rushed in with severe stomach pains and had collapsed. She only had her phone and her pyjamas. No shoes, no coat, no money, nothing.

I obviously went to my manager and asked to leave as she had no one else in the city, all of her friends had gone home for a uni break and her parents lived 3 hours away.

My managers response was this:

“This is the iPad launch. This is the most important product launch in ‘Apple History’. You are required at the store and you can’t go, especially since we don’t know what’s wrong with her, it might be nothing. Wait until you hear from the hospital.”

All I had done – being that I was the admin and my job was to book in parts, I had no experience using the fucking easy pays and didn’t know how to sell an iPhone. The only thing I could do was a ‘personal set up’ which involved me sitting next to someone and watching them open the box like a 5 year old and then, I shit you not, I had to CONGRATULATE them on their new iPhone 4, and show them how to put their fucking email on their phone for them because they have more money than brain cells. All of this was more important than my girlfriend being in hospital, despite the fact that there were like 45 people working that day.

He also said: “can’t she get a bus/taxi home herself?” He has missed the part about her having no money/clothes/shoes etc, and clearly not understood the fact that she had COLLAPSED in a great deal of pain.

One thing I might point out is that the store had absolutely no reception, and can you imagine a poor hospital nurse trying to phone a fucking Apple store on a day like the iPhone 4 launch?? The phone gets ignored on the best of days.

I eventually walked out at 1pm. Only to be reprimanded the next day for my rudeness.

I could send you many emails like this one, but I am at work, at my new, and wonderful job where I am treated like a human being and the people here are absolutely amazing, so I don’t want to take the piss.

If you could post this I’d be very grateful."

A long one, but worth a read! Thanks Sian

Ian says

"Can I just say, I work at a retail store in the Genius team and I think it is great to see someone take lead in voicing the horrid environment we work in at Apple Retail."

It's a pleasure.

The ComboBreaker says

"About time that somebody dug past the brainwashed assweeds that work here and the fake smiles. The managers are complete fucktards with ZERO product knowledge that will bend over backwards and take it in all holes to avoid a detractor. It's about time that somebody said "fuck the whiny cuntbags that are customers, fuck the lazy potheads at BOH, and fuck it to the smug pricks that are the geniuses and creatives (not all, I've seen some good ones)"

Ah huh. Now get back to work and rob some old people of an extra $99! Onetoone, ONETOONE!!!

[iPhone jokes] Geek jokes: Steve Jobs's new year resolution

                          

New Store Openings (or 'NSO' for those in the know)

      The first thing you'll fucking hate is the opening a new store. You'd think from the cheering something major is happening, but really it just another fucking shop surrounded by other shit shops. Everyone whoops, cheers and delivers high fives all round, especially to the biggest loser of them all - the virgin at the front of the queue. Even old people get the cool young hip treatment, look at this poor bastard:

"Congratulations of leaving your piss sack at home and raise that liver spotted hand and gimme some skin bro!!" 

It's all worth it for that free t-shirt tho, comes in handy when cleaning the wheels on your car.

iPhone alarm not working in 2011

     Although it sounds very similar to recent Daylight Savings Time trouble we witnessed back in November, this is much worse, we saw both repeating alarm and single alarm failures. The issue seems to be affecting iOS 4.1 and 4.0.2 as well.

    Following the standard reply all of us annoyed custommers got,  9to5 Mac sayd that the bug will get fixed all by itself once the calendar hits January 3rd:

We're aware of an issue related to non repeating alarms set for January 1 or 2. Customers can set recurring alarms for those dates and all alarms will work properly beginning January 3.

    What now? It's January 3rd. You know, the day you're supposed to return to work / school / life. And the day you're supposed to catch a flight you've had booked for three months and probably a day that you're supposed to accomplish lots of other tasks. Unfortunately you actually believed that your iPhone alarm would fix itself when today rolled around, but based on hordes of complaints seen on Twitter and Facebook, said fix is still hibernating. And thus, you're still sleeping. Who knows when Apple's code-apes will step up to the plate and address the issue; maybe it will be a new feature in iOS 5, alarms & DST!. In the meantime, go get a more reliable Symbian or Android device that probably won't replace your PSP and send your private data to 3rd parties, but hey, at least it will make a good smartphone!

Steps of service

   When you first start work at Apple, you are taught how to interact with another human being. You'll take it with a pinch of salt, but after you realise any brain-dead zombie will stammer into your store, you'll quickly abide by your own steps of service, which in no doubt will be similar to the steps listed here.

• Approach customer with your bog standard "hi there", and don't try to personalize it otherwise you'll accidentally come out with "Nice haircut dickhead. What the fuck are you looking at a Mac mini for?"
• Probe politely to try to find out how much money the customer has, as it looks like not much and you may well have to explain that unfortunately we don't give cash discounts to the tax evading working class.
• Present a solution that the customer cannot afford to take home today, including the likes of various crap like MobileMe.
• Listen for any regional accents, grammar mistakes or any other signs that signal this finance will not go through.
• End with an apology from the bank, a smug look on your face and an invitation to return on your day off.

Apple Sued For Sending User Data To Advertisers

   Apple has been sued this week over "allegedly transmitting user information to advertising networks without the consent of owners" of its iOS devices.

   Jonathan Lalo, of Los Angeles, says Apple and a group of mobile app developers sold his personal data (age, sex, location) to ad networks:

"[Lalo] did not expect, receive notice of, or consent to Defendants' tracking of his iPhone app use and did not want Defendants to engage in such activity."

   The user agreement policies state that apps are not allowed to transmit data without a user's consent. The suit comes at a time when the WSJ has broken news that many mobile applications transmit personal data to third party advertisers without user content.
    About time for somebody to gather evidence and file a case as the risks have been there ever since the first iPhone and as apple never took a any action to cover the holes, it became obvious they didn't take any action for their own interest: iOS 4 - as insecure as ever, Apple personal information free give-away, October is the iOS security flaw month at the iPhone Fever!
    Unfortunately solvng the issue requires rewriting of a major part of the iOS kernel that unlike Symbian or Linux (Android, MeeGo) doesn't have any embedded security features like firewalls (hint: iptables).

One of the most high-profile apps named is Pandora, the popular Internet radio app.

Via: WSJ

The Business Team

Black t-shirts with a collar. That's well business.

   Someone needs to tell the business team in my store that getting the VAT back on your purchases is not a discount, and to stop being so smug that they can offer such bullshit and actually work out what they can do for the customer. 
    "I've got this guy, he's spent loads of money here, is there any chance you can..." 
   Is there any chance you can tell him to shit off and get back to work?

News Flash: iPhone 4 camera worse than the one in 3G or 3GS!

     This may or may not be old news, still The iPhone Fever has to serve it's role as an index of how much FAIL you, my dear iPhone user, are willing to pay for. 

       Some iPhone 4 owners have reported color oddities with photos they’ve taken with the camera on the back of the newly released phone. The iPhone’s 5-megapixel camera will take mediocre images in low light with, or without, the LED flash.

      Images shot in warm, indoor lighting without the flash, have an obvious yellow and sometimes green cast to them. Sure,  get a real camera for photography you'll say, but unfortunately the exact same photo taken with an iPhone 3GS or 3G will not (so just like signal GSM is somewhat a downgrade from 3GS) . You can see for yourself in the image below—the photo shot by the iPhone 4 (original file here) appears in the upper right corner, while the 3G and 3GS images (original 3GS file here) are on the left. I also included a photo shot by a Canon 5D digital camera for the sake of comparison, check below.

The 5 Year plaque

I'm ashamed I own one of these.

   Hard to believe, but some people on the planet have actually been getting to yes for over 5 years. To confirm that the company then owns the employee's soul, they get given a little something for roughly ten thousand hours of work. Something cool right? Well get ready, it's a piece of paper in a cheap frame!




    Oh well, it's got Steve's signature on it, maybe it will be worth something on eBay. Oh hold on a sec, what was I thinking? It's just a printout. He can't take 60 seconds out of his month to say thanks to a dying breed of employees by scribbling on a piece of paper, he's too busy emailing customers back telling them how to hold a fucking mobile phone.

Steven "Grinch" Jobs wants his share from starving children's meals

    In August, PayPal added a donation feature that allowed users to make charitable contributions from within the services's iPhone app. In late October, Apple made them pull the plug with no warning and little explanation.

    Anuj Nayar, on behalf of PayPal, would only say, "I can confirm that we added the donations feature to our iPhone app in version 2.5 in mid August. We removed the feature in version 3.0 of our PayPal Mobile iPhone app. This was done at Apple's request."

    A little background: to implement its donation feature, PayPal partnered with MissionFish, whose mandate is to help non-profits raise funds through online donations. In PayPal's case, users of the app would be given an option to donate to either a featured charity or one of nearly 18,000 organizations in the MissionFish database. Choose the non-profit, choose the amount, hit submit, and you were done. Because PayPal already has a payment method on file for the user, it was essentially a two-click operation. And in the few months that the feature was operational, it had raised more than $10,000 at an average donation amount of $12.