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