The Blog of Lucien Stals

Not pleased with reports I’m seeing about Apples lack of support for Java in Leopard (OS 10.5).

I’m seriously thinking about upgrading my laptop. Currently I have a 3 year old iBook. I’ve been very happy with it, but I was frustrated when OS 10.4 came about over how long it took Apple to come out with a release of Java 1.5. I took about 1 year for a full blown release to come out for Tiger. And because I did then, and still do, teach Java programming, it was a long year.

Now, if the above story is true, it looks like I’ll have a similar wait for Java 1.6 to come out.

So the dilema is: do I buy a new MacBook or do I jump back and get a Windows machine?

My two main criteria for a laptop are portability and the ability to run Java.

Curiously, from a few sites I looked at, the two best reviewed laptops in the “light” category, were the MacBook and the Dell XPS M1330.

The Dell is ~1.79kg, while the MacBook is ~2.31kg (my iBook is ~2.2kg).

It’s clear which one would be more comfortable to carry around all day.

The MacBook comes with Leopard. I *want* to play with Leopard. But does that outweigh my need to be able to run Java?

The Dell ships with Vista. I considered upgrading it to Ubuntu, or XP. But I just can’t see myself doing that. Perhaps I could learn to love Vista, or wait till SP1 comes out and hope it makes it all good. In truth I haven’t given it a fair trial. Maybe…

I’m a tech junkie. So why am I having such a hard time with this decision?

Of course if I don’t get offered the Java teaching position again next year, it will be a moot point, and I’ll wish I’d bought the MacBook.

*sigh*

How long have a I been preaching the wisdom of planning?

Longer than I’ve been teaching software development. Even as a student, learning programming (formally) for the first time, I drank the Kool-Aid of planning wisdom. It wasn’t a hard sell. In any of my previous career, before I came to software, I knew that you could never get far without a plan. You never start a job without know what you are doing. If you have to cost a job for quoting, you must always be able to plan out every step, every resource required, so that you can budget for it and invoice it.

Yesterday, reading the latest Joel on Software blog post, Evidence Based Scheduling, I nodded knowingly at everything he said. “So wise. The force is strong in this one.” I said to myself.

Today, I get to work and sit down to code up the latest website doo-hicky, and I’m staring at the screen thinking “where is my plan? I have no plan.” I exposed myself as one great hypocrite.

I’ve agreed to hand this thing over in two weeks, and I have no list of specific features to implement, or goals to achieve apart from the vague idea of “get the ‘add document’ page working” and “get the db schema right”

What is this? Amature hour? When did I slip into this cosy bubble of thinking that web dev was different from everything else and that I didn’t have to plan things? Is web dev artsy fartsy enough that the normal rules don’t apply? I don’t think so.

I’m building an application as sure as the sun rises. So why haven’t I planned it? Why don’t I have diagrams? ERDs? Schemas? Use cases? Plans, damn it! Where are my plans?

Time to do as I say, and start approaching web development professionally.

The Saga of the Earbuds is at an end.

Picked up the replacements and they work fine. I feel vindicated that the old ones were indeed defective.

AKA: Earbud Saga Pt.III

I called Apple Customer Relations and I was immediately impressed with how calmly, pleasantly and swiftly this has been resolved. Craig at customer relations did a wonderful job of listening, and didn’t once try to make out like this was my problem. This is in complete contrast to everyone else I’ve dealt with from Streetwise and NextByte who have all tried to tell me I was wrong, or that because of their mistake I should be put out.

Apple have contacted the NextByte store. I don’t know what was said, but now my earbuds are ready for pickup, and there is no hostage exchange for my current iPod (and my warranty is apparently still intact). Exactly as things should have been. I’ll pick them up tomorrow on my way to work (I’m home sick today and don’t feel like a trek into the city). With luck, the new earbuds will even sound good

In the mean time, I’ve been checking out prices for a new MacBook (or MacBookPro. Haven’t quite made my mind up). Leopard is released this Friday, so next week I’ll probably be putting in my order. But I’ll definitely be dealing directly with the online Apple store. I’m over these stores.

The saga of the earbuds just keeps getting stranger.

I got a call today (Saturday) from a tech at the shop I left the earbuds at. The new ones have arrived, but there’s a bit of a problem.

When the tech sent the old earbuds back to Apple, he accidentally said my whole iPod was defective, earbuds and all. So Apple dutifully sent the tech a new iPod to replace my imaginary defective one. I didn’t see how this was my problem until the guy explained that the warranty on my current iPod was canceled in favor of the replacement.

So because some bozo at the repair shop ticked the wrong box, my perfectly good and functional iPod is no longer under warranty. I have to go pick up the new one which now has my warranty. They have offered to copy the existing data from my old iPod to the new one if I bring it into the shop on Monday, but it means I’ll be without the thing for up to 48 hours. And since I don’t work in the city on Wednesdays, I guess I’d have to wait till Thursday to pick it up.

I have also been using the iPod to back up my laptop. I currently have about 30GB of data on it. I only have 13GB of free space on my laptop. I don’t want to “give” all my personal files and private data backup to the guys at the repair shop who have already unimpressed my with their competence. So I’m looking at having to spend an hour or so transferring data from the iPod to my desktop machine via the laptop. And no, the iPod isn’t formatted for Windows or I’d just dump it directly to the desktop machine.

How did one little problem (poor quality headphones) escalate into me not having my iPod for the better part of a week and having to waste more of my weekend dealing with this?

I called Apple directly to express my disappointment, but their customer relations department (apparently it’s no longer a technical issue, but a customer relations issue) isn’t open on the weekend. I have a date to call them Monday morning. Lets see how much more complicated this thing can get…

Three hours sleep, thanks to both sons and the pregnant wife, probably hasn’t helped my mood.

But I’m distinctly underwhelmed that two separate Apple repair shops I went to in my lunch break today both told me that they couldn’t replace my earbuds on the spot (as I had been told I could by the Apple guy when I called), and that they would have to send them away, and it would take a few days to get the replacements.

If I had known that, I would have just gone with the Apple guys first option of having them send me a new pair directly, then returning the old ones by reply post. Would have taken the same amount of time without me having to take two lunch breaks to deal with this.

Now I have this gnawing doubt that the new ones, when they arrive, will be just as bad as the old ones, thus proving that Apple is shipping shitty quality head phones.

I sit here with my head phones on, as does my manager. All that can be heard from the outside is the clicking of the keyboards.

In other news, I spent half on hour trawling through the Apple web site to work out how I could tell them I was unhappy with my new iPods crappy earbuds. It’s like the suport site is engineered to prevent people from lodging any issues.

I found a form I could use to lodge a support issue once I logged into my apple account. But the stupid form insisted that I lived in the US, and that my Australian phone number and post code were wrong. It let me change the post code and phone number, but there’s no option to change the country. The phone number was right. It’s the country that was wrong. And I couldn’t couldn’t submit the form until I’d “fixed” the details. I did notice that “poor sound quality from earbuds” was one of the issues in the nice little drop down list of top problems with the iPod classic. Perhaps I’m not alone in this after all?

Finally I gave up and called the Apple store number (the only phone number I could find on the site). The guy just laughed and transfered the call to the tech department/Indian call center.

Him: “What is the serial number?”
Me: “…5N”.
Him: “five nine?”
Me: “five en. The letter en.”
Him: “nine?”
Me: Argh!

After we got that bit sorted out, I explained the problem with both the earbuds and the login details, and he fixed up my details and logged a job number. Now, I’m told, I can just walk into any authorised Apple repair centre and swap my old ear buds from some new ones.

This makes me happy and sad at the same time:

Happy that this will get fixed.

Sad that Streetwise led me up the garden path and tried to tell me I was wrong when I took it back to them.

Having said all that, I should point out that I’m still very happy with my iPod, but curious to note that the OS on the the iPod is already up to 1.0.2. And it’s only been out a few weeks.

I should know better than to be an early adopter. But it’s a mistake I’m already planning to repeat.

I’m currently hanging out for OS 10.5 (Leopard) to be released. I’m want to get a new MacBook when it does and finally join the intel generation.

Trying to open an Access db, get get the following warning…

What genius came up with that one?