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Interesting Verbiage Choices in Technology Journalism

23 October 2014 • by bob • Microsoft, Surface, Apple

I often find technology journalism interesting not because of what is actually said, but because of how it is said. Everyone throughout the technology world has their own opinions and biases, but some people are incapable of separating their personal feelings from the facts when writing about competing technologies.

Here is a perfect example of what I mean - a coworker recently shared the following article with me, and pay special attention to the title:

The iPad Air 2 is the second fastest tablet currently available
http://www.mobileburn.com/23674/news/the-ipad-air-2-is-the-second-fastest-tablet-currently-available

Hmm. "The iPad Air 2 is the second fastest tablet currently available?" If so, then what's the fastest? You certainly wouldn't know by glancing at the article's title.

The article continues in typical Apple-fanboy style by continuously lauding the iPad's accolades as the 2nd-best device throughout the piece, with only a single reference to the clear winner: "... Apple's iPad is the second fastest tablet on the market, only trailing behind Microsoft's Surface Pro 3, a slate that has full PC innards." That statement doesn't actually hold water with the chart that the author includes, which shows that the Surface 3 is far and away the best tablet in terms of overall performance.

That being said, I seriously question what the article's author meant when he referred to the Surface 3 as "a slate that has full PC innards." Does having PC innards disqualify the Surface 3 for some reason? If the iPad had come out on top of this performance comparison, I am sure that the article's author would have pointed out that the Surface 3's "PC innards" were somehow responsible.

I mentioned to someone yesterday that the article in question reminds me of days long ago when the USSR would announce that "Comrade So-and-so won a Silver Medal in the Olympics," while never mentioning who took home the Gold. This article's author chooses his verbiage in a similar manner, so it's not hard to see where his allegiances are.

Personally, I would title this article "Why the Surface 3 kicks your Apple iPoop to the curb."

;-)

Why I Don't Like Macs

25 July 2014 • by bob • Windows, Microsoft, Apple

I freely admit that I am fiercely loyal where my employer is concerned, but my loyalty pre-dates my employment. I was a big fan of Microsoft long before I went to work for them, which was one of the reasons why I was so thrilled when they offered me a job.

My affection for Microsoft goes back to when they were the "Little Guy" standing up to "Big Bad IBM," and at the time everyone loved Microsoft for that reason. (At that time, Macs were still pretty much toys.) But I became a huge fan of Microsoft when I started working in IT departments in the early to mid-1990s. At the time, the licensing fees for WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Ashton Tate's dBASE, etc., were astronomical, and our little IT budgets spent more on those licensing fees than we did on hardware, so our PCs were sub-par due to price-gouging. Then Microsoft came along and offered all of Microsoft Office with per-seat licensing that was 50% less than any other single software application, so we suddenly had software for every PC and budget to buy more hardware. This cannot be understated - Microsoft made it possible for us to actually focus on having great computers. To us, Microsoft was the greatest company on the planet.

By way of contrast, let's take a look at what Macs were like. In each place where I worked, we had some Macs, and the experiences were nowhere near similar. First of all, the Macs were hideously over-priced. (And they still are.) When a PC died, the data was nearly-always recoverable, and usually the majority of a PC could be salvaged as well. (It was usually only a single part that failed.) Not so with a Mac - when a Mac died (which was just as often as a PC), the user's data was gone, and we couldn't fix the computer because we couldn't walk into a store and buy over-the-counter parts for a Mac. When a brand-name PC failed, its manufacturer was generally helpful with troubleshooting and repairs, whereas Apple had one answer - send us the Mac and we'll get to it when we can. Seriously. Apple was so unwilling to help their users that we grew tired of even bothering to try. We just boxed up dead Macs and sent them (at our expense) back to Apple and forgot about them until Apple got around to shipping something back to us.

To be perfectly honest, I really tried to like Macs - and I used one for quite a while. I had heard that "Macs are better for [this reason]" or "Macs are better for [that reason]," but in my actual experience most of those claims had little basis in reality (with a few exceptions). Macs simply had a loyal fanbase of apologists who ignored the bad parts of their user experience and evangelized the good parts of their user experience. (Which is pretty much what I do for PCs, right? ;-] ) But after months of using a Mac and wrangling with what I still think is a terrible user interface, coupled with the realization that I could be doing my work considerably faster on a PC, it was my actual use of a Mac that turned me off to Macs in general.

I realize that a lot of time has gone by, and both Apple and their products have gotten better, but years of abuse are not easily forgotten by me. There was a time when Apple could have won me over, but their sub-par products and crappy customer service lost me. (Probably forever.) And make no mistake, for all of the blogosphere regurgitation that Microsoft is a "monopoly," Apple is one of the most-closed and highly-controlled architectures on the planet. What's more, prior to the release of OSX, Macs were a tiny niche, but for the most part they were a social experiment masquerading as a computer company that failed to reach more than 5% of the desktop computer market. In short, Apple was a sinking ship until Steve Jobs returned and Apple saved itself through iPod and iTunes sales. This gave Apple enough capital to abandon their failing computer design and rebuild the Mac as a pretty user interface on top of a UNIX operating system. This was a stroke of genius on someone's part, but you have to admit - when your 15-year-old computer business drives your company to the point of bankruptcy and you have to save your company by selling music players, that's pretty pathetic.

Ultimately, Apple users are a cult, Steve Jobs is their prophet (even though Woz is the real hero), and Apple products have always had half the features at twice the price. And that is why I don't like Macs. ;-]

More Examples of Bad Technical Support

18 July 2014 • by Bob • Microsoft, Support, Windows

A few years ago I wrote my Why I Won't Buy Another HP Computer blog, wherein I detailed several terrible support experiences that I had to endure with Hewlett Packard's technical support people. In order to show that not everyone has terrible technical support people, I recently wrote my Why I Will Buy Another Dell Computer blog, where I described a great experience that I had with Dell's technical support people. That being said, not everyone can be a good as Dell, so in this blog I will illustrate another bad support example - this time it's from Microsoft's Technical Support.

Here's the situation: I recently purchased a Dell 8700 computer, which came with Windows 8.1 installed. Since I run a full Windows domain on my home network, I would rather run the professional version of Windows 8.1 on my computers, so I purchased a Windows 8.1 Pro Pack from Microsoft in order to upgrade my system. The upgrade process is supposed to be painless; Microsoft sends you a little box with a product key that you use to perform the upgrade.

Well, at least that's the way that it should have worked, but I kept getting an error message when I tried to use the key. So after a few attempts I decided that it was time to contact Microsoft's Technical support to resolve the issue. I figured that it was probably some minor problem with the key, and it would be an easy issue to resolve. With that in mind, I browsed to http://support.microsoft.com and started a support chat session, which I have included in its entirety below:

Unbeknownst to "Vince", I worked in Microsoft Technical Support for ten years, so I know the way that the system is supposed to work and how Microsoft's support engineers are supposed to behave. Vince was condescending and extremely uncooperative - he simply wanted to log into my machine, but no one gets to log into my computers except me. I know my way around my computer well enough to answer any questions that Vince might have had, but Vince didn't even try. What's more, when Vince sent me a long support thread to read, he took that as his opportunity to simply end the chat session a few moments later. Very bad behavior, dude.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's chat application crashed after the session had ended, so I wasn't able to provide negative feedback about my support experience, so this blog will have to suffice. If I had a way to contact Vince's boss, I would have no problem pointing out that Vince desperately needs remedial training in basic technical support behavior, and he shouldn't be allowed to work with customers until he's shown that he can talk a customer through a support scenario without a remote session. If he can't do that, then he shouldn't be in technical support.

By the way - just in case someone else runs into this issue - all that I had to do in order to resolve the issue was reboot my computer. Seriously. Despite the error message, apparently Windows had actually accepted the upgrade key, so when I rebooted the computer it upgraded my system to Windows 8.1 Professional. (Go figure.)

My 15 Minutes of Fame

25 September 2002 • by Bob • Microsoft

For some inexplicable reason, Microsoft chose me to be one of their featured employees on the Microsoft Careers website. As a result, I was interviewed and photographed, and my information was posted on the Microsoft website for all to see.

Here is what they posted about me:

Robert
Support Professional
Developer and Line-of-Business Support Internet Team

At Microsoft, we have the opportunity to directly impact the development of a product.

Supporting Microsoft's enterprise-level customers with Microsoft's Internet Information Services Team may seem like a daunting task. Not for Robert, a Support Professional with Microsoft's Developer and Line-of-Business Internet Support Team. He thrives on challenge. "Working on the Internet Support Team is living on the 'Bleeding Edge' of technology," he says. "There are always new issues, new problems to be solved."

It's the excitement generated by Microsoft's products that first attracted Robert to Microsoft. "I worked for a community college in Tucson, AZ," he says, "where I managed a large Windows NT network. We were an all-Microsoft shop, and I was something of a Microsoft software addict. When an opportunity to work at Microsoft came along, I jumped at it."

Starting in Microsoft Access Support, Robert quickly learned that a career at Microsoft would allow him to grow and seek new challenges, while constantly making a difference in the lives of Microsoft's customers-to him, the most rewarding part of his job. "Seeing the way our software helps so many people, and helping them use our software to make their lives easier is great," says Robert.

"Another aspect I enjoy," he adds, "is when an idea of mine becomes part of a new product. I can't think of any other companies where an employee has the ability to contribute to the direction of a project simply by e-mailing a suggestion." Some of the product contributions he's made have even been on behalf of Microsoft's customers. "I'm proud of instances in which I was able to represent our customers' wishes to the Development Team," he adds. "It's always great to be the customers' advocate."

When asked what it's like working at Microsoft, Robert becomes animated. "The way people here work together is amazing," he says, "Microsoft hires people from diverse backgrounds; that allows us to draw on each other's experiences to solve a problem." "And," he contends, "the amount of knowledge that is available internally is staggering - searching our Intranet for information is often more productive than searching the Internet.

The atmosphere of cooperation and camaraderie isn't limited to the workday. While Robert and his co-workers share a passion for technology, a passion for helping Microsoft's customers, and a strong desire to learn, they also share a need to relax, unwind and have fun. "Our team barbecues, goes to lunch together, goes to movies or GameWorks," he says. It's their ability to maintain a balance between work and life that allows them to face the challenges of working in the fluid and fast-paced industry of high technology.

According to Robert, the most technically challenging part of his job is trying to stay abreast of new programming language technologies. "All our programming languages are constantly being redefined to take full advantage of new Windows technologies," he says. And it's the dynamic nature of these languages that often leads to the part of his job that Robert finds most exciting. "Programming," he grins. "There are plenty of opportunities to write code, and I love to write code."

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