I’m a pretty happy Vonage user. It’s cheaper than the Cable or Telco alternatives. Especially now that we have an income (I just found a job) and have upgraded our internet to the Time Warner maximum of 5 Megabit, it works really well.

However, I just received a phone call on our Vonage line from…Vonage! Was this because we had not paid our bill? No. Was this because there was a problem with our service? No.

It was a telemarketing call. They were trying to sell, no trick, us into adding a $9.99 second line onto our Vonage account. They could not even be straight about what they were calling for. “Hello sir, we want to let you know we are adding a second line to your Vonage service.” “But”, I said “I was under the impression that that extra feature was 10 dollars extra per month.” “Not so” the kind Indian telemarketer replied. “You will be getting this second line for only $0.99, for the first two months.” You can see where this went. I promptly told him I was not interested and he hung up.

The first place I headed after that, as steamed as I was, was the Vonage website. I logged in, and looked around for a place to “opt out” of said telemarketing calls. Maybe a “how can we contact you?” option. I would not mind receiving emails, but I definitely am NOT OK with them calling my home tricking me and my family into accepting a larger bill for features we DO NOT NEED. No such option is available on the Vonage website.

The second thing I looked for is a place for feedback on the Vonage website. They have a place for email technical support, but NO FEEDBACK FORM.

Vonage, this is completely and utterly unacceptable. It also reminds me of a post I’ve thought about on great, small companies who do sketchy things for exposure (see Netflix). I’m gonna go punch something.

GAAAAAA!!

UPDATE 11/19:  It seems that Vonage is having some real trouble these days. Here’s another disturbing tale regarding privacy and exploitation.

Now, that does make some sense, because Macs don’t by default have a right click button and some people would not otherwise know how to access the right click menus, but there should certainly be a way to turn it off.

Does anyone know how to turn it off?

Update: I figured this one out myself, thank you very much…

The answer? A setting you can reach in Firefox by using the “about:config” function (for all your newbies, that’s type about:config in the Address Box and hit Return/Enter). If you search for “dom”, you will see an entry called “dom.disable_open_click_delay” with a default integer value of, I think, 1000. I changed it to 5000 and now have no problems dragging all sorts of stuff around in Google Calendar. Wonderful!

Another Update: So it appears that I was entirely wrong. The previously mentioned entry in the Firefox config has no effect on the issue I was dealing with. The reason Google Calendar started working was because Google modified their site’s code. Ah well, still looking for a solution for this behavior on Firefox for Mac.

Final Final Update: I just tried this again (holding down the mouse button over a web page in Firefox on Mac) and found that the functionality has either been disabled or completely removed in Firefox 2.0 RC1. Wonderful! Case closed.

Now, on to more substantive matters. There are some major areas in Apple’s OS X OS that need improvement. While Tiger (10.4) was a terrific release, it has only marginally improved through the subsequent point releases (now at the Universal 10.4.4).

Let’s get it started:

1. Safari – Chief amongst the stagnant and dire bunch is Apple’s browser. While rumors have been brewing about a myriad of new features coming in the fruit company’s upcoming Leopard release (10.5), new features are NOT what Safari needs the most. The biggest problems with Safari still lie with the rendering engine itself. Comments from Dave Hyatt and the rest of the WebCore/WebKit team on their blog make it sound like they are convinced the engine is done and are now just tidying up and getting ready for the next gen content rendering stuff. The engine is NOT DONE. Most of us who follow at least some blogs have seen puzzled posts like one from James Rocchi (then the film critic for Netflix) that he could not figure out how to post to his weblog from a film festival’s press center, because they were using macs. Are macs really that different? Do they have keyboards that look different or require fundamentally different skills to use? No. The problem was simply that the WYSIWYG functionality in Movable Type does not work in Safari – the default browser on the Mac. Robert Scoble had the same problem with Wordpress at an Apple Store. So did his son Patrick, though he was using Blogger. In all these cases (and many more), these PC users got very bad impressions of the so-called “ease of use” of the Mac, when it required that they know and remember the HTML link tag to link on their blog posts. This is the sort of problem that should be first on Apple’s list of things to fix in Safari.Why am I so riled about this? Because there is no good explanation. If they’ve already solved this problem and are simply waiting to give us the new rendering engine in Leopard, then that in and of itself is unacceptable and unprecedented. New features? Fine to use to sell a new release. Bug fixes and rendering engine improvements? Bordering on exploitative when used to sell their new release. And in fact, Apple has shown this to be their view as well. When WebCore/Webkit underwent a serious overhaul, they released the upgraded engine inside basically the same Safari as version 1.3 for current users, and that same engine, albeit with many new features in Tiger as Safari 2.0. So it would not seem that they are merely waiting for the next release to bless us faithful customers with these fixes. Which means they are simply not fixing them.There are many other issues with Safari rendering I could talk about. Apple needs to continue to work with banks and e-commerce sites to make sure that they do not lock out Safari users. There is nothing more confusing to my mom than thinking that Safari is the web, until she reaches The Gap and finds that it will not work on her nice white Mac computer. Us techies may be able to abstract the application and its particular compatibility issues away from the computer itself, but normal users don’t. If they cannot reach a website or interact with it succesfully on a Mac using Safari, then they will blame the Mac – not the application.


2. iCal – This one is not nearly as dire as the other, but is still pretty important. Calendering is an area where not much innovation is taking place and where so much innovation needs to happen. Jon Udell talked about this recently on his blog, though he was certainly not the first and will definitely not be the last to have this problem. While at least Microsoft believes they have solved the calendering space for corporations, noone has even really tried to deal with group calendering on the consumer level. That is except Apple. If you’re entire family is on Macs, you can each use iCal and subscribe to each other’s calenders, and things will basically work fine. There is not such a great web story, but then again, Apple has never really gotten the web, so that’s no surprise. What I have been hoping for (and am seeing glimmers of in the Hula project) is an Open Source web calendering initiative that would use any of the standards used by iCal for syncing to interoperate with desktop clients. This would give us the best of both the web and the desktop and once someone wrote a killer Windows client that could handle this (MS has a new Windows Calender in Vista that may play this role) things could really be peachy.So what am I asking Apple to do? Most of what I wrote above does not rely on anything that they may do or not do. Well, I would like them to push forward. While the rest of the pack are simply trying to replicate basic calendering functionality on the web, Apple should be doing what they are really good at – moving the pale a football field further. I’m not a researcher, nor am I a software dev, but I am certain that there are many ways that we can improve upon the basic calender functionality that is contained in every calendering application. I’ve seen no indication that anyone else is working on this – so I really hope Apple is.


3. iChat – Here is where I want Apple to do a bit of following, in contrast to my last point. Microsoft has already started showing off the next generations of MSN Windows Live Messenger. The piece that Apple should have gotten first, and that Microsoft seems to be jumping right into, is the collaboration over IM application. Microsoft is tackling this on two levels: on the consumer level with Windows Live Messenger and on the corporate level with Office Communicator. The fact is that Apple needs to give us a way to better collaborate over iChat with our documents and browsing.

There’s probably some more, but this has gone on long enough, so I’ll cut it off here. I’m staying realistic but here’s hoping Apple will deliver.

I love the new Yahoo mail. It’s rapidly becoming my primary mail system. Good spam blocking, great user interface, really works on all my computers/browsers. Gmail doesn’t. And the Gmail UI is looking pretty pale compared to Yahoo’s. Now we’re in a sweet spot, possibly a very sweet spot. Two great development companies competing for our attention, and neither of them is Microsoft. Come to think of it, neither is Apple. Yahoo!

Scoble:

Dave Winer says that Microsoft isn’t trying to compete with Google’s Gmail or Yahoo’s new (and awesome) email system. Um, Dave, that’s not true. You might want to watch this video about the new Hotmail that’s under development or this one about the new Outlook Express, now called Windows Mail, that’s also under development.

I have to disagree with Scoble here. The new Microsoft Mail web app that is shown off in that video is quite cool indeed, but notice that the one feature that Dave Winer was talking about in his brief post on the subject was “works anywhere”—which, for all you Microsofties who aren’t Sanaz or Steve or the rest of the awesome Start.com team, does NOT mean everywhere that runs Windows. When Scoble asks the new Mail team about other browsers, they say that “the majority of our [must be Hotmail’s] user base is on IE 5 and 6” (by the way, I love the use of version numbers of the SAME BROWSER to make it sound like they are supporting more configs). When Scoble then asks Scott Isaacs about browser/OS compatibility for these web apps, he says “it works on Firefox.” While not awful, Microsoft needs to get its act together. The WPF/E team showed off their wares on OS X running Safari, which after all is the default browser on the Mac. If Safari is a bit anemic right now, then Microsoft should approach Apple’s team (as I’m sure they’ve done in the past) and try to solve this. You cannot have a web platform (whether it be the MSN one, ATLAS, or WPF/E) if it only runs on Wintel Machines running IE. Firefox is really important and Safari is somewhat important, and this is what Google really understands, and what from what we’re hearing Yahoo is understanding with this new Yahoo Mail. It remains to be seen, but from what I’ve seen I would pick the Microsoft offering over the Yahoo one[who knows what Google is up to], but alas it probably won’t work on my Safari browser. Maybe next time, right Microsoft?

I’m liking Dave Winer less and less these days. I still really enjoy his offbeat manner and his aging hippy approach, and still subscribe to his podcast via iTunes, but I unsubscribed from his blog about a month ago when he started talking about nothing but his new OPML Editor. I downloaded an the first public release for Windows and I knew within seconds that I did not care. The interface was not only ugly, but very Windows 3.1-like and it was clear that his talents lie in areas other than user interaction design (like probably programming). I had been reading his blog for his views on web issues and on politics, and also because I found some great content through his links, but as the posts started to be mere inane updates on his own software and how it was better than anything else out there, I just had had enough.

Today I was forward back to him via one of the other blogs I read, and it seems he was talking about something dear to my heart, the Mac. Dave bought a Mac to work on the Mac version of his Editor, which he had been saying he would not do, but whatever. He really did not like it and hates Safari. He then proceeded to bash Apple and praise Microsoft:

I just spent a few minutes playing with the Mac. Our OPML Editor needs a bunch of work, I can see that right away. I really dislike Safari, I so don’t care for their choice of sites to feature and the feeds they chose are all the predictable ones. Where’s the Home icon. I would love to be surprised and see some blogs in their default choices, geez, I mean they did get all this free IP from us, but they’re so into big companies. I really really dislike Apple. Sorry if you love them—I don’t. Steve Jobs has a lot of nerve telling Dean that they’re copying them, when they’re doing such a poor job of copying us. Maybe I’ll come around, but I kind of doubt it. Do they have a version of IE for this thing? I’d much rather use that than Apple’s browser.

Copying whom, Dave? You guys created RSS and the blog system, but if it were not for the browser manufacturers integrating it directly into the browser, RSS would have stayed on the sidelines. If you had some browser software (not a newsreader—I know about Radio), please show it to us. What Steve was clearly talking about that day (as ungracious as his comment obviously was) was that the new IE 7 beta 1 (which I am running on my PC) is basically a Safarification of Internet Explorer 6. Minimalist interface? Check. RSS icon that lights up when you hit a page with a feed? Check. Combined Back and Forward Buttons? Check. Combined Reload and Stop Buttons? Check. A simple style sheet based view of RSS/ATOM/RDF xml? Check. Built-in search bar(which other browsers had first)? Check. Printing that shrinks the page instead of screwing it up? Check. I could go on.

Frankly, since most of what they copied are things about Safari that many of us Mac users dislike I’m not quite sure why they did it. As long as IE stays as imcompatible with the modern half of the web, and as long as Firefox keeps getting faster (which it needs to do to continue competing), it’s not going to be much of a contest.

But I’m digressing. Back to Dave. He continued today:

This is the kind of advice I’ve been getting from Mac users. Good stuff. You know, based on the rah-rah’s from developers who are probably too scared of Apple to say what they really think, I thought everyone else thought Apple was the perfect company and the perfect computer. That’s the downside of people being too scared to speak up, we get shitty information. How can we change this system, so that people aren’t so scared? Or can we get Apple to thicken up their skin a bit, and learn to not punish people who have the nerve to criticize them. Blogs were supposed to fix all this. Frankly I think it hurts Apple to just have rah-rah public discourse and commentary. In my experience the leading companies with super-thin skin: Apple, Google, and by far the worst—O’Reilly. It’s so funny people think they’re so cool and not-evil. These are the biggest control freaks in the computer industry, again, in my experience. We were joking about Google at dinner the other night, with their policy of not talking to CNET because they had the nerve to print some public information about their CEO. We really need to do something about this. It’s a gross ugly disease. Compared to these companies, Microsoft is positively laid-back. You can quote me on that. (And Google used to be the best. One person made all the diff.)

Now who’s being fooled, Dave? Yes, Apple and it’s leader are major control freaks, and yes, Microsoft has tried to recreate its image post-DOJ into a company that is open and communicative. But Dave, we are talking about Microsoft here?! This is the company that is trying to put its OS into everything (next stop: cars and set-top boxes) and uses any means necessary to achieve it. This is the company that even now is trying to co-opt J. Allard’s brilliant Xbox 360 into a Media Center/Windows trojan horse for the living room. This is a company that allows all the little people to speak, yes, but not one that is very open at all about the big things they are doing, or about the big business tactics they are using.

Apple’s followers have always loved Apple, but as far back as I can remember (around the release of the first Power Mac) it has always been tough love. Yes, the big magazines gave Apple great marks no matter what they did, but it was the internet (not blogging) that really allowed us customers to congregate around bulletin boards and forums and share our joys and frustrations about being a mac user.

Is Apple always perfect? Far from it, but you need look no further than the recent posted letter from Giles Turnbull to his brother about getting a mac:

My point is: sometimes Macs break, and I think it’s important to make that clear before you go and buy one. I’m not the kind of raving Mac fan who will try to brush over, or avoid this. Macs can break. They can be expensive to repair. But I still think you’re better off with one. Why? Because it’s the software that’s the main attraction of the Mac. The operating system really is impressive when compared to Windows – which is not to say it’s perfect. Just better than Windows, in my opinion. It’s easy to understand and use…

Safari happens to be my browser of choice. The Mac happens to be my computer of choice. For the foreseeable future, Scripting News will not be my blog surfing destination of choice.

Is it just me, or does leaving your iPod (I’ve got a 6GB mini) plugged into your mac cause quite the slowdown in iTunes? I feel like anytime I’ve got the iPod loaded in there, iTunes hangs every time I click on something. Even scrolling through my library doesn’t work well – but only when the iPod is plugged in!

I’ve got my mini set to not use disk access, so it mounts just to sync, then unmounts in the Finder, but stays in iTunes until unplugged. This actually brings up two other problems I have with the way iTunes (at least until 4.9) works with the iPod mini.

First, the lack of autosync. Yes, if you have a large-HD iPod or a small music library, then iTunes and iPod do autosyncing quite nicely, but if like many of us, you have an almost 30GB music library and you carry around a subset of that on an iPod mini, then it only syncs your selected playlists upon connecting. After that, if you make changes to those playlists, import or download new music, even rate a song, the only way the iPod will see those changes is if you manually click “Update,” which is hidden in the File menu. At least, the “Browse” (which gets grayed out for autosyncing iPods) should change to “Update” when you’re on the iPod, like it does for Podcasts. But really, why can’t any change to the selected playlists cause the iPod to resync?

Second, since we mini users need to configure what is going to end up on our iPods, we would also benefit from the iPod shuffle feature of leaving the iPod (really a ghost version) in the Source list for editing, even when the device itself is not plugged in. This way I could make the decision to pull a playlist or album off the iPod, and then only plug in and sync when I’m ready to leave. The way it works now, setting up my iPod is not a natural iTunes activity, but something that requires pulling out the iPod, getting and untangling the cable, and waiting while the mac figures out that the mini is plugged in, then locks up while it connects iTunes with the mini. Really not optimal.

Apple, the iPod is clearly the best out there, but we can do better.

Anybody have any thougts?

Update: I contacted Gamefly about the latest long wait for a game, and they apologized and sent out my next game right away. Good customer service, but let’s see how long this one takes to arrive, huh?

Update: NBA Street 3 was shipped on July 22 according to Gamefly and arrived yesterday afternoon, July 25. Three days is not bad at all, especially considering that the 22nd was a Friday and the 25th is a Monday. Good job, Gamefly!

Steve totally blew it off at the time, but only a few months later iTunes 4.9 with podcasting is here and what?

It’s #1! Guess this wasn’t just the mild-mannered test Steve said it was…

All this would be fine, since the podcast is actually quite good, if only it would be available on Tuesdays! For the last few Tuesdays, the podcast listing does not even update until late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, and even then it gets an error when it tries to download. By the time it’s actually available, it’s Wednesday afternoon. So much for New Music Tuesdays…

The working assumption on the web is that there are two typical business models: advertising and subscription. Don’t be fooled by that “and,” we are speaking about either an advertising model OR a subscription model. This works on TV: Comedy Central is supported by ads, while HBO has no ads but costs money per month. This works on radio: AM/FM stations are supported by advertising, while XM/Sirius have no ads but cost money. This even works in software: WeatherBug, LimeWire, Opera all have ads, while their for-pay versions have none.

The practice of offering your content for free with ads, while trying to get people to subscribe works for one reason: people will subscribe to GET RID OF THE ADS! If you leave the ads even for subscribers, you’re screwing up the system!

IGN does not seem to understand this simply system. Yes, they have some great content. So like many foolish gamers, I enjoyed the content but hated the ads and decided finally to subscribe in order to keep what I liked and lose what I hated.

So once I had paid my money and logged in, I was aghast at the remaining presence of the half-page ads. Well, perhaps I merely need to “opt-out” of advertising in the settings of my newly-created account. Lo and behold, at the bottom of the account settings page, there it was: the opt-out of ads setting! Since this post is getting a bit long-winded, I won’t go into the list of insidious kinds of ads that they let you know you are turning off, but let’s just say that a large, established site like IGN should not be using such means.

To make a way too long story short(er), that option does not disable the most irritating of the ads, the half-page flash movies! You pay a 20 or 25 dollar subscription fee, and they still bombard you with advertising! Totally and completely unacceptable.

All the more so, because I also subscribe to Gamespot, who handles this absolutely perfectly.

Moral of the story: DO NOT support IGN. DO SUPPORT Gamespot.

More on why I love Gamespot another time…

Note: Yes, this post was originally located here.