Dan Germain

beard me

The most useful iPhone app so far has arrived.

 

It's called BeardMe.

While we're on the subject of facial furniture, this is worth a look too.

freedom

Freedom is a great thing. Especially when you're trying to write a book.

ipod ads pre-silhouette

Just found this via digg - pictures of the iPod silhouette ads that show the original photos that were used, before all of the Photoshop jiggery pokery. Right here.

They take away a bit of the magic.

you stink

That's what Atari told Steve Jobs in 1976 when he asked them to invest in his new company. Wonder if they'd like a share of the profits from that stinky new iPhone?

picture from an article in Issue 1 of the Design Council Magazine, Winter 2006

tangerine

Here's a clever thing. Admittedly it's only a beta release at the moment, but it's called Tangerine and it helps you create playlists in iTunes. Specifically, it analyses "the BPM and beat intensity of the songs in your iTunes library", which means that it makes it easy to create playlists that are full of crazy beats for when you're off out for a run, or perhaps a more relaxed set of songs for when you're reclining by the pool. Smart.

boring mac battery post

I said I would catalogue the whole process of this faulty Apple battery thing, so here's the next instalment.

This weekend Apple finally sent out an email outlining the issue and telling me how to apply for a new battery. It was written in a clear, business-like tone. It was pretty dry; it did the job and nothing more. And it was 10 days after the event. Not the greatest response time ever.

Still waiting for the new batteries to arrive. They said it would take 4-6 weeks. Next boring battery post due in the middle of October...

apple's batteries

More on the Apple battery recall. Apparently things haven't been working too well, as you can read here.

Having said that, I visited the appropriate page, entered my details and it all seemed to work for me, but I've now got to wait 4-6 weeks for the new battery to arrive. Guess I should keep a fire extinguisher handy.

pic from nondeadly's flickr stream

dealing with the heat

I was interested to see how Apple handled the battery recall, so I went to the UK site. No mention on the homepage. I went to the US homepage - still no mention. Even when you click the Hot News (unfortunate name) link, no hot news.

I found this pretty surprising. If, as new stories suggest, the batteries are possibly a danger to loyal Apple customers (arguably the most loyal/evangelical brand advocates in the world), why not let them know in the most obvious and open way, before they burn themselves again?

It wouldn't be difficult. Stick it on the front page. The fact that Sony made the batteries means that Apple could put a little distance between their brand and the problem as well, if they felt that was the right thing to do.

I imagine that they thought about all of this. The 'hot battery' problem has been around for a while, so I guess that they didn't announce the recall until they were ready to deal with the logistics involved.

But Apple seem to have chosen to keep quiet. Indeed, I only found a link to the relevant support page at the bottom of a page on msnbc.com that I found via digg. The support page is good. It does the job. But it's buried, and seeing as this story is on all news programmes everywhere, burying it seems a little daft.

Anyway, I think my battery might be affected - if it is, I'll blog the results of the recall process and we'll see if Apple get it right. And maybe by tomorrow morning they'll have started talking about the problem in a slightly more open fashion.