My bite on Apple

Love it or hate it, it’s the kind of company that leaves no one indifferent. It showed the world (at least to the masses) the personal computer, the graphic interface, the decent portable music player, a real smartphone and what a tablet should be like. All very nice and disruptive. All products are incredible well made, beautiful design and taste, and they just work out of the box like no other in the market. I should love it. But the sad true is i don’t.

Company culture runs top down, and Steve Jobs was indeed a visionary and incredible smart person, but also a manipulative, control freak, indifferent to his own child’s, cruel kind of person (probably a big jerk). Unfortunately a lot of that spilled over to Apple.

Lot’s of (unnecessary) proprietary stuff.
Long story of conflicts with other companies and standards. Adobe, Google, just to name a couple.
Closing the market with all kind of patents and legal tricks.
Mac OS X has a huge portion of FreeBSD on it but i don’t see a cent donated by Apple (list of donors include Cisco, Google, Juniper, NetApp, McAfee, Dell, etc).
I see Google doing some incredible work at a social level, Google foundation, X-Prize. In counterpart is there an Apple foundation?
One buys an Iphone/Ipad and must pay a developer account or jail brake. The SDK is only available for Apple computers.
One must get his OWN files to his OWN device trough Itunes…

And the list goes on and on… does the profit, a vision, or whatever justify this kind of policies? Do the ends justify the means? For Steve Jobs sure, for Apple sure, but not for me. So me choices are rather obvious (check here, here and here).

FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM bitch!

One more thing 🙂 … it’s kind of sad that all those geeks that were upset some ten years ago by Microsoft monopolistic actions and autism, most of all switched to Apple, giving their love and support to an even worse company in that matter. You can get in a meeting with IT staff and 90% of those that were running Windows laptops some years ago now proudly show their Apple gear… talk about brainwash… i can only recall the old Apple motto “Think different”… probably will glue this to my Linux laptop one of those days.

(semi) Victorious

Last Friday (finally, 8 months after the accident) i received the court decision about the process against Allianz Seguros SA. I had to sue them in CIMPAS, an arbitration court, about a road accident, where i was hit and run by i an Allianz insured shit bag (pardon… driver) and they didn’t want to willingly pay the damages.

So, the outcome was very positive, it was proved in court that all responsibility is due to Allianz Seguros SA, so all the physical damages to the car are well covered, but i was only given 30 euro a day for the 3 days the car must be in the repair shop, which is very little to cover a substitution car. Also the judge didn’t order Allianz Seguros to pay the vehicle technical inspections (mot, tuv, etc) and re-inspections simply because he didn’t quite understand that i had to do it so i didn’t get fined by the police…. i think that he doesn’t quite understands the mechanics of technical inspections time frame, maybe he gets a new car every 3 years… if this is the new justice, i really can’t imagine how the old justice works…

Anyway, after all said and done, this is a financial and moral victory against an evil corporation (Allianz Seguros) that is profit centered only, and treats persons like numbers, that uses all the dirty tricks in the book to avoid paying. But, and it seems there is always a but, i will never get the right compensation for all the headaches of this situation, and these companies will continue to behave the same, just because they can, because the justice here is too soft with them.

More about this issue later…

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

Ensitel – What the fuck?

Quick digest:

  1. Customer gets a phone from Ensitel.
  2. Phone is faulty and client goes to Ensitel to exchange phone.
  3. Customer is sent to Nokia to make exchange because at Ensitel there is no available phone.
  4. At Nokia customer can get a repair but not a new phone.
  5. Back to Ensitel, a new phone comes up, but the exchange is denied because the faulty phone is scratched on the phone (Ensitel can see the scratch, customer can’t).
  6. Customer wants to return the phone and get the money back.
  7. Customer is again denied to a scratch in the battery cover.
  8. Customer goes into legal action against Ensitel.
  9. The case customer Vs Ensitel goes to trial after several months and expenses.
  10. At trial at a Consumer Center, the judge/referee orders the customer to deliver the phone to Ensitel to repair.
  11. Customer ignores trial delivers phone directly at Nokia to repair.
  12. Customer writes about this situation at own blog.
  13. Ensitel starts legal action, against customer to remove blog posts about Ensitel.
  14. Customer writes yet another post about the legal action.
  15. A big reaction starts in the social networks, condemning Ensitel behavior.
  16. Eventually it breaks out to mainstream mass media, tv, radio, newspapers.
  17. Ensitel makes heavy threats to sue customer.
  18. Customer starts a donation campaign to pay legal expenses.

So, as by now, this novel is not yet closed… and further developments are to be expected.

Who are the parties involved?

Ensitel: a company member of Avenir Telecom, a French based multinational, a corporation quoted in the stock market. So, this is what i call a company without a face. A bunch of guys in suits, members of a board of directors, CEO, CFO, etc… all focus in pushing the delivery of results to the stockholders and themselves.

Maria João Nogueira: an individual person, that works on the SAPO Blogs team. She has a wide audience blog and is wife of E. Pinto (SAPO CTO or senior tech something). So definitely not some lame blogger.

The Good

The customer resistance, against the big corporation, the juridic system. Never broked her spirit. How many of us, have been abused by big corporations, that can get away just because they can, and it takes too much time or effort to fight.

The Bad

Of course the juridic system and consumer protection system. Its simply unreasonable. The customer must must fight with the same weapons than a big corporation that is in a very upper hand. Its expected that the consumer, rules out first all the extra judicial mechanisms, then you should hire a lawyer and sue the corporation in a consumer center. Then if the corporation doesn’t accept you should go to common court….The corporation “burns” some hours of some legal services contract, and the consumer a large amount of time and money.

In the end, after months (sometimes years) it doesn’t solves anything,

The Ugly

Ensitel behavior. First its quite obvious that there are superior orders to deny or delay a phone exchange. Then it shields behind the inefficient portuguese consumer protection. Afterwards, when the customer tells the world about it in a blog (ok, one with a large audience), it “burns” some more legal contract hours in a legal action to force the customer to remove the blog posts. If, there is no limits to plain stupidity when the bomb blows up and the hype in the social networks build ups and crosses to above the line, they don’t do any kind of damage control, some rather lame announces on their own Facebook page. Hello!! Is there anybody with a brain in the house?

The cherry on top of the cake is the very strong menaces to the customer.


© Expresso

I already have made a symbolic donation, because i identify myself in this fight against big corporations and know in first hand how hard it is to play in a field that is so much leaned to one side. The Ensitel reputation is down the mud, specially online (see here too).

Anyway, the key point will be at the end the court decision, that should answer both of these questions. Is there any special limitation in the personal online publication of facts and opinions? If one publishes negative content about some corporation, can one be liable of brand depreciation? If yes, to what extension?

So let us just wait and see.

Update
as this post was still a draft, Ensitel as dropped the legal action against Maria João Nogueira, so we will not have a legal decision. For sure, this or other evil corporation will mess up bad again, and an angry customer will publish the story online. In other situation, with much less hype probably the final outcome wouldn’t be the same…