Unbelievable!!!!

Now, I am totally pissed….. Let me repeated PISSED… I have lost all my Sent mail and could not retrieve old ones after converting my MobileMe to the iCloud. I did a backup initially before moving to the cloud. Of course, neglected to test out the Sent Message folder to ensure I can READ my own sent emails. I saw the messages there but could not read them. After the conversion to the xCloud, I no longer have a copy of the email I sent. Seemed there is a major problem about this. The company is mum about the problem. I just checked the support site for the company, as recent as 2 days ago, this is still problem… No solution in sight……. Wonder if this company will charge us for a fix!

Google has done it for so long, no problem. Why is this such a problem for this innovative company?

driving me nuts!

Am I the only one that has a perfectionist impulse? Or people just shrug their shoulders? Online bookings are suppose to be fast, easy and convenient to the end users. Not really the case today. What frustration I had about all went wrong about poor quality of work, I had all of them today!!!

First off, more LION problem. A bug in the iCal had stopped me from sending out invitations to anyone. iCal wanted me to first enter the recipient's contact information into the Address Book first. Hello? And I already had that person in my f&%&&())inking Address Book. The iCal is officially a iPad version. I couldn't look at next three months on the left side like I used to in Snow Leopard. :-( O if I want to have the old feature back, I have to pay to upgrade to Mountain Lion! What kind of company is this?

Then I tried to book our fix to Singapore for the 70.3 Ironman race in March. I believe Singapore airline's web developers must be from another planet. It used to take me 10 minutes to do the job. Today, just that one pair of fix took me over 30 minutes. Grind, grind, grind. I am not sure if it had something to do with the comm0ie firewall. With a graphic rich website, this could be a problem.

Over lunch time, I finally had a chance listened to my techie podcast. Well… 4 experts were crying about LION too. They want Snow Leopard back. O yeah, and the xCloud… It was pretty much a cloud of dust. Do NOT use it!

After a somewhat relaxing lunch, I continued my far flung virtual world journey to complete the rest of the March bookings. I started at 1pm, finished everything by 2:30pm. Total time spent: 1.5 hours, to book 2 additional tickets, one online upgrade and a hotel booking. How fun was that? The Singapore airline site continue to run slow and I had to hunt for the place that said "upgrade with miles". Many many different screens and lots of problematic site timeout. Then of course, our ever so stable Internet access by Ch!n@ TE!ec0M. I actually lost connection to WWW for 10 minutes. Nonetheless, I am done! Finished!

Martini, where are you?

有无搞错!

For those that can read Chinese and have Chinese rendering on the computer, the subject line read "Are you for real?" or "Are you serious?"

What happened was this, I had spent the entire afternoon trying to move ahead w/ my mobile dev.  Unfortunately, the big @ppLe was so kind I had to download a 1.4G patch to the operating system - 10.7.3.  3 hours.  Then I had to do an App$tore download for Xc0de, the development software specifically for mobile @pps.  The pic below showed a download speed comparison of the download speed.  Initially, I was directed by the developer program webpage to the infamous AppStore to download it.  OK.  Fine, I'll play along.  After the customary redirection and all… I had the blue "Free" download button.  Clicked.  Then I noticed… what?  2 days 25 hours?  Then the indicator slowly dropped to 1 day 20 hours as shown.  No way!!!  I was downloading at less than 10Kbps!!!  Holly sh!T.  So I hunted around in the developer website.  Lo and behold, there was the same download.  I clicked it to download.  3 hours!  What the f^()()&*&nk!  

Now, I have to relearn everything from scratch yet again!  Apparently, the nice white half eaten apple had decided to changed the delivery mechanism of the developer tool.  Keep this up, everyone will be spending 1/2 of the valuable time just to manage the tool rather than spending time developing Apps.  No wonder, during  conference last year in HKG one of the IT consulting firm said developing an App took over six months and costed the client about a mill.  I can believe it.  

The real cost of developing one is about USD 25,000 to 30,000.  One might get away in China for much cheaper but the quality, well…  So how many of the 0.99 or 1.99 and 2.99 you have to charge in order to make a living? Plus, the nice white bitten apple takes a 30% cut on the sale.  Don't think we need a MBA to do a P&L and cost benefit analysis.   

crap?

This is getting ridiculous. Maybe the big apple company is hiring one too many softie developers to work at the mothership now. Nothing is really up to snuff.

My Mail program has been crashing on and off since the roaring upgrade. Maybe the "roaring" was from the customers yelling and screaming about having a crappy operating system. I experienced email crashing on both of my laptops now. One was a totally clean install and the other was an upgrade path. I had wanted to see if there was a difference. Same crash. I had more crashes this last week than my last 5 years combined!!! Yes, last 5 years! That was how stable the operating system had been until now. To fit this stability problem, I will have to climb the mountain to fetch yet another Lion breed. Ummm….. Took away something that worked for the last 5 years. Forced everyone to use this "next generation" of all uniformity, no training operating systems - O we took something away :-) Then, O.. you can get them back by paying again. Honestly, we put it back for you. Seems like the attitude is: take it or leave it. We are the bad apples. I guess the little apples had thought 90% workable was good enough for computer-based software just like the "i Devices". Think again!

And I wonder how this company will get an environmental friendly award when considering it forces customers to buy new hardware every 3 years or so. My 2006 laptop is still working like a charm. I have no choice: can't upgrade, can't use the new "must have's" and if you want to be hip, spend some money.

Next LINUX on an old laptop? And change my Me to just the evil Google? Freedom on the Internet? Ummm…..

rush hours

These pictures were posted yesterday during rush hour traffic in the motherland's capital city. The bus stop was by the Grand Hyatt. Some passengers refused to move away from the door. Eager beavers wanting to get home quickly jump through the windows. What a scene!!!!!!

what the?

What's wrong with this picture on the price column? Computer glitch? Or the new customer focus pricing?

Herd mentality

*** can't remember if I had posted this ***

Waiting for my flight at hkia. Passengers circled the gate 10 ft away. No one dared to approach it.

What the heck. I approached the agent asking quietly when boarding would commence. "Captain just arrived. Please wait a minute" he said. I directed myself to the gate and stood. 3seconds later, the herd arrived with lightning speed. Lined up right behind me. I smiled inside.

Experiment completed. My hypothesis was: most people are followers. Granted this sample of population was not really valid and lack of scientific control group etc. Still fun to see what happened with one's action and everyone's unified desire.

Sent from my iPhone

Will yours?

See the heading on the screen? The answer is NO!!! Here's another piece of perfectly fine machine that will NOT run Lion. Good thing the motherland allowing me to google. The Apple site stated the upgrade requirement: Intel chip. Mine qualified. I, being a bit curious, dug deeper. Perhaps it was good fortune, I got my answer. Not good. Another piece of hardware retire prematurely. I yeah, don't trust the Official site said 1G of RAM will do, get a 8G RAM machine.