I was wondering how to start my first regular article for the year when I visited an Apple Store with a friend. He was planning to drop off an iPhone with a cracked screen for repair. The store was large, filled with rows of tables holding Apple gear. There were lots of customers and many Apple "Geniuses", each with a tablet to assist customers. I was carrying my Samsung Galaxy S5 and no lightning bolt had struck me. So far, so good.
We were approached by one "Genius" who then referred us to another further back in the store. Then things got a little weird. He wanted us to wait an hour for the "engineer" to turn up to look at the phone. I assume this was to confirm that the screen was indeed cracked. We wanted to just leave it for repair but apparently, that was not the correct sequence, which was: engineer assessment, fill out some forms, leave it for repair. We didn't want to wait the hour so we were then informed that the engineer would be back in a week.
Not being an Apple-device owner, I'm not sure if this is normal, but for every other technology-appliance manufacturer I have used, the process is far simpler than the example above, one that many readers may find as absurd as I did. This of course only reinforces my continuing lifelong goal to never own an Apple device.
Another thing I discovered over the New Year's break was the need to have the correct transformer for electrical devices. In this case I was using an older power supply for a new modem by the same company. What I hadn't realised was that the newer modem needed more amperage to run. The difference was a small 0.5 of an amp, but that was enough to have the new model not perform correctly. It took a lot of modem swapping and testing before the issue was identified, but not before I had damaged the original power supply though thankfully not the modems themselves. Yes, even the professionals get this kind of thing wrong from time to time. Now that it's all sorted, the new Billiton 7800 DXL modem is performing flawlessly.
In this month's this-story-should-never-happen-anywhere, a family in the US is suing Apple because their five-year-old was killed by someone using FaceTime while driving. Confused? So was I. Apple applied for a patent in 2008 for technology that would lock a smartphone when sensors detect that it is being used in a moving vehicle. The patent was finally granted in 2014 but Apple has yet to build it into their phones. The family claims this is "gross negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress". So basically, because a company had not yet incorporated a "we are taking responsibility away from you" technology into their devices, the parents are suing. This is of course beyond absurd, and, as much as I don't like Apple, I hope this gets thrown out as soon as it is heard. The driver is facing manslaughter charges. A better question is, why did it take six years to grant a patent?
Apple users can gloat a little when they hear that Android had the most reported vulnerabilities in 2016, according to Mitre's CVE Details at least. As a single vendor, Adobe still holds the title, landing fourth overall. The analysis is based on information passing through Mitre's Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. Interestingly, numbers two and three on the list were Debian and Ubuntu Linux. This can mostly be explained by the third-party packages that are part of the distribution. As for the other vendors: the next three after Adobe were Microsoft, Google and then Apple.
There are still some very stupid people out there. On a recent Virgin America flight from San Francisco to Boston, some dull spark decided to rename their phone's Wi-Fi hot spot "Samsung Galaxy Note 7". This was noticed by the crew, but it wasn't until the captain announced they would be diverting the plane and searching everyone on the ground that the culprit finally confessed after a number of previous announcements. No word yet on what happened to the perpetrator.
Consumer Reports has decided that for the first time ever, the latest Apple MacBook Pro will not be awarded "Recommended" status. Apple lovers will be swooning in their seats and firing up the nasty tweet engine after this shocking announcement. The problem is an unreliable battery life that ranged in tests from 16 hours down to just 3.75 hours for the 13-inch touch-bar model. The test uses Safari, and when Chrome was used instead, results were better. Apple was supplied with the test logs but had yet to respond at the time of this writing. Store-bought rather than Apple-supplied devices were used. Users have been complaining for some time about battery life, and Apple's response to date has been to "turn off the estimated battery life monitor" for the latest macOS Sierra build.
You may have missed it, but last year was a leap-second longer. I hope everyone enjoyed the extra sleep-in.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.