Blogging Responsibly?

December 4th, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

Recently I wrote a blog post that painted a local chain of stores in a less than positive light. I have received tons of feedback from people saying everything from unfair to despicable. I think it brings up a very interesting topic for us to discuss in this ever merging world between blogs and news.

The difficult part for me is that I still completely believe what I believed when I wrote it. I think that my opinion is valid and I think that I am only doing what we as Americans have been doing since the beginning. I saw something I thought was not right, and I spoke up about it to try and effect change.

That being said, I am just one guy. My opinion is just that of one guy. In the case of The Mac Store, they are probably getting unfairly punished because my blog gets quite a bit of traffic and always ranks very well with Google.

Right now hundreds of people are reading this article daily and it’s showing up #5, as the full title “Skip Seattle’s Mac Store for the Apple Store.”

While I did mean to write it, and I do still believe my opinion is valid, I agree with one of my readers who said “the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime.”

This is where it gets tricky though. I have two fundamental principles on my blog:

  1. I always post the comments, even if they are negative towards me.
  2. I don’t remove posts.

I think those are pretty sound principles for a blog. I have proven #1, most of the comments call me the bad guy, and that’s ok.

The 2nd one is a little trickier.

Here’s the Rub

I personally think The Mac Store doesn’t give fair value for the used machines they take in. Fair market value is a nebulous number of course, but in my eyes, offering someone 40% of the resale value when that customer is standing there waiting to buy a product in return is amazing. If the customer was standing there asking for cash, obviously it’s a different story because there is no reasonable expectation this person will build a business relationship with you and you are parting with your liquidity, and not another machine that you had bought from someone else for 40% of it’s value.

It’s important to remember that I found someone willing to make a deal for the laptop I wanted as an even trade, and the iMac is gone. I am not out here whining about the Mac Store to try and get them to make a deal. The computer is gone, the deal is done and I am happy with what I got. That doesn’t mean I have to just be quiet about a practice I don’t agree with.

So, what is unfair, defamatory, etc? Is it defamatory when a blog like cultofmac.com posts blogs about how bad Windows sucks? Is it unfair and defamatory when Fox News writes something about whatever politician they hate at the time?

Those sites have way more traffic than me and aren’t at all above writing negative articles about a company, product or person.

So, in effect, am I sorry I wrote this article? Not at all. Do I feel like the attention it has received will make any difference? Nope. Do I think The Mac Store is the devil? Of course not.

Regardless of the snippy comments that went in either direction, I think The Mac Store owes it’s customers a fair return for their machines, 40% is not it.

Is stating that opinion on my blog “using my right to free speech on the internet” irresponsibly? I don’t think so, if only people who agreed with businesses spoke up, we’d all be in a sad state. Whether it makes any difference at all, I want them to know that not all customers are in a take what they can get position, and $500 to keep me from having to deal with Craigslist is insulting *to me.*

In closing, I appreciate that The Mac Store sent me an email apologizing for the poor customer service:

Hey Jason,
Allow me to introduce myself, my name is (Name Removed), and I am the (Title Removed) of The Mac Stores. I just wanted to reach out to you after having read your blog post to say that I am sorry that you ran into this experience. I was hoping you happened to get the name of the person you spoke to on the phone, as I would like the opportunity to coach this individual on how to handle calls such as yours better in the future. While I completely understand your outrage at the service you received, please know that this is very out of the normal.

While it is true that our trade-in program does offer a lesser value than what you could get selling items on the open market, we do this in an attempt to make the process easy and painless for those making trades. It makes it easy for folks who do not want to hassle with Craigslist or EBAY, and are just looking to get something for the older machine.

Again, I am sorry that the gentleman you spoke to on the phone was so flippant with you. This is not a good representation of how you would be treated in out stores, and I would love an opportunity to have you come into our store and meet our Seattle (Title Removed) (Name Removed).
Thanks for posting your experience, and allowing a way for me to contact you. I appreciate feedback of any kind as it is the only way we truly know what our customers are saying about us.

Sincerely,
(Name Removed)

That’s the entire email, nothing being hidden. I appreciate the apology, but my problem wasn’t with poor service. I have offered them the chance to state their position on trade-in value on my blog with the following email:

Thank you for your email, I would like to apologize for the attention my
article has received. I was simply stating my opinion and I do still stick
to the opinion that your business treats customers unfairly in regard to
trades. While I still am sticking to my opinion, I have noticed that this
article is on the front page, #5,  when you search Seattle Mac Store and I
am sure it’s negative impact on your business is also not fair when you
relate it to the experience of one person. I am not in the practice of
removing articles from my blog but I am open to letting you have your say.
I believe in treating people, businesses and especially customers fairly
and I am sure this article is not painting you in a fair light.

I hope that they do take the opportunity to explain themselves. I am big enough to admit my mistakes and I could have approached the situation more tactfully, but I still would have done it publicly as an email to them saying “I don’t think your trade-in values are high enough” would have made a one way trip to the junk folder and everyone knows it.

I’d also like to apologize to any of my readers the previous article offended. If you took the trade deal, I am not calling you stupid, I am saying you deserved more.

Late Macbook 13.3″ Unibody Review

December 4th, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

This week I traded an iMac I wasn’t using for a 13.3″ Macbook. I already have a 17″ Macbook Pro, but to be honest given the price and size, I just never take it with me anywhere. I have a pretty strict “don’t use my work laptop for personal stuff” mentality. Previously I had purchased a 13″ HP laptop I used when I wanted to be super mobile, but that laptop took a header off my nightstand one night and ceased to be. macbook-plastic-unibody.jpg

I hadn’t bother to replace it until two events conspired in the last two weeks. I had failed at finding a useful place for the iMac in either my office or my studio, and I found a guy on Craigslist looking to trade a Macbook for an iMac. I didn’t take his deal, but it sparked my interested and I pursued and found a deal that worked for me.

The result is a 13.3″ White Unibody Macbook. It has a 2.26Ghz Core 2 Duo Processor, 4GB of RAM, 250GB HD, webcam, all the usual Mac trimmings. It also has a nice tidy form factor that can fit in my laptop bag with my work computer when I need to.

So far I am loving the computer. I am not as constrained by the 1280×800 resolution as I thought I might be, but I can thank Spaces for that. The multiple desktop feature built into OS X is my lifeline when I am not on a multiple monitor desktop.

The machine itself seems to run a little hot, but I’ve been using Apple laptops for awhile and that’s not exactly unusual. The performance is fantastic. I have installed Office 2011, Photoshop CS4, Final Cut Express, Pro Tools Essentials and tons of other smaller apps on it. They all run speedy and other than being a little small on the screen real estate forefront, it’s nice.

This computer is definitely more comfortable for casual use than the 17″, but I do really miss the backlit keys.

Next on the list is setting up Boot Camp on it and installing Windows 7. I’ll use this machine for blogging and there just is no blogging without Windows Live Writer in my opinion.

The battery has been awesome so far. I have been using it for hours and with about 1/3 of the battery remaining it’s still several hours.

I am hard pressed in casual use to notice a performance difference between the two laptops honestly. I am sure during some video compressing or heavy photoshop use I’d notice the 8GB of ram and the faster processor, but for day to day, this machine should be plenty for most people.

Topaz–Great Plugins for Photoshop, Aperture and Lightroom

December 3rd, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

Photography can be quite a fun hobby. I used to spend countless hours in Photoshop tweaking photos until I discovered Adobe Lightroom. Now that I have this great seamless workflow, I find I rarely go into Photoshop anymore. Now that I don’t have those pixel pushing color warping capabilities quite so readily available, it’s nice to be able to find ways to get them right at my fingertips in Lightroom.

Topaz makes an incredible suite of plugins available both individually and in bundle form. I won’t talk in detail about the ones I haven’t used personally, but the Topaz suite includes Adjust for HDR effects on single exposure photos, Simplify for making artistic versions of your photos, Clean 2 for smothing and edge styling, DeJPEG for removing JPEG artifacts, DeNoise for removing noise obviously, Detail for sharpening, ReMask for making selection masks and InFocus for sharpening and deblur.

Personally I have used the trial for Simplify and I have purchased InFocus and Adjust.

I’ll include the promo shot from the site, and then a photo of my own that shows real world results with the plugin.

Topaz Adjust

For the uninitiated, HDR or High Dynamic Range photography is usually accomplished by taking a series of photos with different exposure settings, and comp’ing them back together into a single image with a much expanded dynamic range. Adjust is a tool that is able to achieve similar results from a single photo, look at the example below.

adjust

This is a fantastic example of tasteful HDR. A lot of times people go absolutely crazy with it and the image looks like a cartoon. In this you can notice how much the reflections have been pulled out of the finish of the car, the clouds are much more dramatic, the detail in the road is exaggerated and the field absolutely pops with texture. These kinds of details and color saturation are the hallmark of HDR and I have achieved amazing results with this particular plugin. Of the 3 I have used this is the one that I think is an absolute must buy.

Bahama

This was taken about a year ago in the Bahamas. I don’t think I need to tell you that the scene was not this dramatic out of camera.

Simplify

With Topaz simplify, the opposite is the intent. The plugin reduces detail, but in a very attractive way. Simulating several styles of manual art like pencil or painting, Simplify creates artwork that is worthy of hanging from your photos, look at the example below.

simplify

Aside from the stunningly beautiful dog, look how the plugin has managed to capture the detail of the image, and the color, but in a completely believable paint-stroke look. There is even one preset I used that does this in an impressionist fashion with stunning results:

Andy and Mione

This photo is of my son and our dog playing in the creek near our house. I couldn’t love this photo more.

InFocus

This is the newest one I have purchased from the bunch. InFocus is a sharpening and de-blurring tool. I have yet to achieve results as dramatic as the ones in the promo shot below, but I have definitely seen some very nice detail added to my photos.

infocus

My personal opinion would be that this is the least intuitive of the bunch to use, but keep in mind that I have only owned it for about two days. I have become used to having presets to help me learn how to tweak the sliders. I will continue to work with it until I hopefully understand it better.

I think the photo below did benefit from the additional sharpness.

TigerforSheree

I might have went ahead and bought the bundle as I have now spent close to that with just 3 of the plugins. It’s something to consider if you like what you see here. Given the astronomical prices of most good Photoshop plugins, I think these are definitely a bargain.

I can’t say that I love the way you have to leave Lightroom to use them, and it seems VERY slow to sync the changes back into Lightroom, and Adobe problem I am sure.

That being said, these relatively inexpensive plugins could significantly increase the quality of your photographs in a very simple and repeatable way.

Skip Seattle’s The Mac Store for the Apple Store

December 2nd, 2010 § 34 comments § permalink

From the Author: before you read this post and get caught up in the flames, my summarized opinion is that I choose not to shop at The Mac Store because I think they way they do business is not very fair to the customer. To be double clear, this is with respect to trade- ins. I have had positive experiences in the past buying Mac and iPhone accessories. Unfortunately, I am choosing to take my business elsewhere based on the trade in experience and recommending to my friends and readers to do the same. There is no discount on Apple products there vs. The Apple Store, so I choose to shop elsewhere because I think that is characteristic of being unfair to customers, my opinion only.

I don’t usually write articles to slam a local business, but after being totally shocked at a phone conversation I had today, I did a little looking. After reading some of the reviews of these stores, I can’t believe they are still in business.

My Story

I have been trying to trade an iMac I have laying around for a small Macbook for a few weeks now. I had found a trader on Craigslist but they were looking like they wouldn’t be able to get the deal done, so I decided to check out The Mac Store. I went to their site first and saw that in their used Mac section, the Macbooks go for less than my model iMac goes for, $929 for my iMac and $869 for the Macbook. Given they were close in used value, I decided to give them a call and see if we could make a deal.

Now I know businesses need to make money, I assumed maybe $100-$150 would be enough to get it done. I couldn’t have been further from wrong. I called them, told them what I was looking for, and what I had. The gentleman on the phone then told me that they would be glad to offer me $430 in trade towards a used Macbook.

That’s right, they were willing to give me less than half of the used value, to turn around and sell me another used one. Now I don’t claim to be a math genius, but it seems like offering me $430 for something that they will turn around and put a sticker on for $929, a $499 difference. Ouch! That means that I would be paying $1368 for a used Macbook when a new one costs $999! Are you serious I said?

To which, in true Latrel Sprewell fashion, the gentleman said, “Look, we have to make money.” This is where the conversation turned insulting.

I said, “I totally understand that you guys need to make money, but it seems like a few hundred in profit is still a good deal, I would have to be stupid to take a $500 bath to ‘upgrade’ my computer to one that actually has less value!”

The upstanding gentleman on the other end of the line responded with, “It’s your call if you want to be stupid or not, I am not making you sell it.”

Wow. Talk about customer service. A quick look on Yelp and I had found countless stories of shoddy repairs, poor in store customer service, generally acting condescending towards customers.

If it were me, I’d pass these stores right by and head to the Apple Store or buy what you need from Amazon.

Update:

The Mac Store emailed me to apologize for my experience, and explained the situation. The basic gist is “we screw you because it’s convenient.” The direct quote is below:

While it is true that our trade-in program does offer a lesser value than what you could get selling items on the open market, we do this in an attempt to make the process easy and painless for those making trades. It makes it easy for folks who do not want to hassle with Craigslist or EBAY, and are just looking to get something for the older machine.

I could almost buy that if I was trying to trade in some old beat up machine, but a very recent model with current specs? If we extended their “courtesy” to cars for example (and of course some dealers try to do this, but that’s not the point) and my car had a used retail of $20,105 (which is real), they would offer me $8,846 for it? Kelly Blue Book Trade In is $16,800 though, nearly double the 44% of retail value The Mac Store offered me.

Now I know computers aren’t cars, and I don’t expect Apples to Apples, but I would have been much more agreeable to $803 or 83% like in the car world, which would still have netted them a profit of $166. In fact, in another very petty cash grab, they would have gotten more than that, I noticed the computers they sell say they do not come with a Keyboard and Mouse, so they would have sold the Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic Mouse separately at 100% profit.

Who sells a $1,000 computer with no keyboard and mouse?

They wanted me to call and meet the manager of the store, but I am not sure why. They made no overture towards making me a reasonable offer, and I did in fact trade that computer today straight up for a current model unibody Macbook exactly like I wanted. Even stevens.

It’s almost Christmas, are you buying a PC? Here’s how

December 2nd, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

This time of year I get lots of friends and family members asking questions. They are usually buying someone they love a computer for Christmas and want to know what to pick. Let’s go through some of the decisions you need to make, and hopefully you’ll be able to walk into Best Buy or go to your favorite site and buy a computer with confidence!

Mac or PC

We might as well get it over with. The first question is always going to be Mac or PC. I use both and I can tell you from experience that both are fantastic computing platforms. Each have unique advantages and strengths that play out to specific types of people. My general advice for someone buying a computer, asking this question, is:

If you don’t have a compelling reason to buy a Mac, buy a PC.

What does that mean exactly? Unless you’re buying a computer for an audio buff that wants to run Logic or a video nut that wants to run Final Cut, or you are buying for someone who specifically says “I want a Mac!” You’re best bet is to buy a PC.

The ugly truth is that you will get a lot more value for your money with a PC. Windows 7 is a fantastic, stable and secure operating system. The old Mac vs. PC debates are antiquated. Devices rarely dictate which one you should use. These days it’s mostly about preference and cost.

I won’t go too much into choosing a Mac for the rest of this article. Apple just doesn’t offer a whole lot of choice, so you are pretty much in the situation of choose your form factor (Laptop, all in one or Workstation) and choose how much you are willing to spend, that’s the end of the decision process.

Picking a PC

Get the Laptop or desktop question out of the way first. These days prices and features are very similar for both. Make that choice first, and then we can get into what all these components are and what you should pick.

Processor

It’s fortunate that today’s processors have more than enough beef for what you want to do. Unless you are going to be doing some serious computing the processor is almost a non-issue. That being said, you are going to run into two flavors, Intel and AMD.

Both brands have several tiers of performance. I’ll kind of summarize with Intel’s offerings:

  • i3 – Lower end, great for someone who is just doing web surfing, basic productivity and communications
  • i5 – All-Purpose, this CPU is great for what 90% of people do with their computers.
  • i7 – High Performance, if you’re getting this machine for audio, video or gaming, you want an i7, preferably a quad-core.

Gone are the days of one CPU, these days a single chip has multiple cores, or chips inside it. Dual-core is the most common and Quad-core is coming up fast. Unfortunately software has to be written to take complete advantage of all those cores, so a Quad-Core computer doesn’t blindly mean “twice as fast” so choose carefully unless the cost is negligible. Today’s dual core processors are blazing fast and will most likely do everything you want to do. Like I said, if it’s a small premium, go for the quad for future proofing. If that moves you into another model, and the price is significant, don’t feel cheated going home with two.

Don’t get too caught up in clock speed. If it’s a normal machine anything over 2Ghz will be fine, if it’s high end, shoot for over 3Ghz.

RAM (Memory)

These days computers come stuffed with RAM. I usually give very simple advice with memory. Get as much as you can afford, but pay more attention to how much it will hold. Memory is very inexpensive these days, I just bout 8GB for my laptop for $99. I’d rather give someone a machine with 4GB of Ram that holds 8GB than one that comes with 6GB but only holds 6GB. More is better, but it’s a cheap and easy upgrade, so don’t let it be the driving force behind your decision.

Hard Drive Size/Speed

If you are going laptop, you are likely going to get something in the 250-500GB size range with a speed of 5400rpm. That’s a pretty standard laptop drive. If you need more performance because it’s going to be for video or gaming, look for a 7200rpm drive as they usually read/write data nearly twice as fast.

If you are getting a desktop, you’ll likely see 500GB-2TB sizes out there. This is another one of those cheap upgrades and externals are usually not only a cheap upgrade, but a smart one too. Keeping your data in a way you can move it around is great. Skimping on hard drive space is bad, but these days it’s very hard to. Unless your loved one is going to store a ridiculous amount of music or work with editing high definition video, you’ll be fine with a 500GB drive. If the latter is the case, look for 1TB+ and make sure the computer has room for more inside or a fast connection like FireWire or eSATA to connect external drives to add more space.

Video Card

This is much like the processor. If the computer is going to be used for surfing the web, email, chatting and productivity, you’ll probably never notice the difference a better video card will make.

If the computer will be used for games or video, look for the fastest card from either nVidia or ATI to be in the machine and with 1GB of video memory or more. Also pay attention because sometimes they will put cheaper laptop video cards in PCs that share memory with the computer. If the card uses shared ram, it’s likely no better than not having a dedicated card at all.

Monitor

Simple, go big. The biggest you can afford is gong to have the best bang for the buck. I personally prefer Samsung monitors, but Dell, HP, Viewsonic and LG all make great monitors that you are likely to find in the big box stores. Things to keep an eye out for are the extra features.

You want a variety of inputs, HDMI, DVI and VGA are the standards, I’d suggest getting one with all 3 so you never worry about not being able to connect it up. Some come with speakers, but they are usually terrible so don’t let that drive your decision.

The Bottom Line

You can find a great PC Desktop or Laptop for $600 these days. That’s going to provide a lot of fun and entertainment as well as help with the productivity side of life too. I recommend sticking with the major brands just from a support perspective so check out the Dells, HPs, Gateways, Acers, Lenovos and Apple of course. Find what fits what your looking for the computer to actually do, and your budget, and buy with confidence.

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