At Apple, “refurbished” is “rebuilt” and paying more money is a value.

I’ve had a couple run ins with Apple over the last couple weeks when trying to help people.  In both cases Apples Orwellian language games came out.

The first situation was a dead iPhone.  I went to an Apple store with my friend for a dead device.  It’s a few months old and just shut down.  It refused to power on.  The Apple employee said Apple was going to replace the device for free.  I asked if the new device was brand new or a “refurb.”  The Apple guy said that they don’t have “refurbs.”  It is either “new” or “rebuilt.”  What a load of BS!  My friend was happy to have a working phone, so that’s a nice conclusion.

The other incident revolves around the new OS X version “Lion.”  A friend of mine needed at least “Snow Leopard” so she could connect her iPad to her machine.  This came up on the day “Lion” came out.  I decided to check out if it was possible to upgrade directly to “Lion” from “Leopard.”  It turns out Apple doesn’t allow this.  Apple forces users to do double upgrades.  That means you have to spend double money.  I discussed this with the Apple guy in the previous story.  He said it’s better than it used to be because in the past it cost over $100 to do the same thing.  Somehow this didn’t comfort me.

One other thing of note is that “Lion” is a diskless install.  It must be downloaded from the Apple App Store.  This cuts out local Apple resellers like Tekserve.  I know Apple is doing incredibly well right now, but it must be impacting longtime Apple support services like Tekserve.  I hope they’re OK because they really do terrific work.

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Another day, another problem with a third party free application (iTunes)

I feel like I’m spending too much time tending to the Flash player, iTunes, and AIM’s of the world.  My company allows some of this stuff because there’s a legitimate business need.  Managing these apps have become an unnecessary time drain.

Flash player stops working on its own.  AIM threatened users with loss of service for weeks unless they upgrade.  Apple has done both of those in the past with iTunes.  Now they seem to be going for a more passive aggressive route.  They throw up an error when users try to access the iTunes store that has nothing to do with the store and with upgrading.  The only (easy and obvious) way to access the store is upgrading to the latest version.

The error is “Your request cannot be completed.  The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the US store.”  This line of BS translates to “Upgrade or Else.”  So if you find this post after hours of trying to figure out why you can’t access the iTunes store, the answer is that you must upgrade iTunes.

Adobe Download Manager is a WASTE OF TIME!

Dealing with Adobe’s freebee products has always been a pain.  This goes back to the Macromedia days.  It periodically and unpredictably stops working because it needs to update.  This process has always been annoying, but manageable when I could just download the installer.

Now Adobe forces you to install a “Download Manager.”  The installation of the “Download Manager” is slow on its own, but the installation of the software I ACTUALLY WANT (ughhhh) is even slower.  It takes several minutes to install PDF Reader and Flash instead of seconds without the Download Manager.

Adobe is wasting peoples time with this Download Manager scheme.  I am a lot more sympathetic to Steve Jobs view of Flash than I used to be.