Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

The one about Apple Support in northern Canada

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Dear Apple,

This is not a letter of complaint but a note about the situation I have found myself in, that I’m sure others have also found themselves in.

I live in Yellowknife, NT. It is the capital of the Northwest Territories, nestled on the North Arm of the Great Slave Lake. It’s one of the deepest lakes in Canada, you know. If you still don’t know where we are, we are above Alberta. They have the oil, we have the diamonds. There are 20,000 people in this community I call home, 40,000 in the territory. We are a small, diverse group of forward thinking people. Yes, we live in a place that is buried in snow 8 months of the year. A place that can sit below -30ºC for weeks on end. We deal.

And we are a good bunch of people. Yellowknife itself is quite urban. We have high-rises, coffee shops and pubs. We have sports facilities and several big box stores. We are far from uncivilized, we are just far away.

Now that you know where we are you can better understand the predicament you have placed me in.

You see, I have a 2013 Apple 13″ MacBook Pro Retina. I bought it in December of 2013 and it is awesome. It is fast, it is small and it is powerful but it has a problem.

When this beast of a machine is sleeping it tries to wake itself up. This results in it crashing. This poor MacBook crashes when it sleeps too long. It is unfortunate.

I’ve tried to help it. Update it. Repair it. Reset SMC, PRAM, RESPECT. Oh, no wait, that last one is mine. The issue still precedes. So I took further measures. I wiped this bad boy clean and installed a fresh copy of your new sexy Mac OSX. Mr. Yosemite 10.10.

For sure you’d think a clean install is what I needed. A fresh start. A new begging. It’s what I thought my baby needed. Did it work though? No, unfortunately not. Last night at 3:07 a.m., according to the diagnostic logs, while sleeping, the glow of the Apple logo lit up skies of my bedroom and blast the start-up charm as it rebooted once again after crashing. The problem is still there.

So why am I writing to you today? I’m within the 1 year hardware repair warranty. I can just get my poor rMBP repaired. WRONG.

In talking to your lovely support for 59 minutes. Lizzy and Keith came to the conclusion that there was nothing they could do for me. I have to take my computer into an Apple Retail Store or Authorized Dealer. Apparently, you do not offer mail-in repair orders. Something to do with no repair centre in Canada or the postal service. There was no clear reason.

That doesn’t work for me, Apple.

Remember, I’m in Yellowknife. There is no Apple Retail Store or Authorized Dealer here. My closest option is Edmonton, Alberta. On a regular day a return flight can cost around $500+ and driving 1500km would not only take more than one day but would cost me around $700 return. So to get my Mac fixed, which is under warranty, I have to spend money.

I find this absurd because I bought the computer online. It was shipped to me. Telling me you don’t have a better solution for people like me, in my situation, is a complete oversight on your part. If you offer you devices online and allow them to be shipped all over the world, you should be able to accommodate my warranty repair and have a solution over the phone.

We haven’t even touched on the issues that I would – and probably will – have to be without my computer for a couple weeks when I’m self employed.

Apple, I’m not here to bash your products or support. I’m still going to use your products, because they are great and I like them. I just want you to know that people like myself are being put penalized by where we live and I think this is unacceptable of you, one of the biggest companies in the world.

Sincerely,

Kyle Thomas.

Photo from: Unsplash.com

I am an idiot, I bought an iPhone 5

Yes one week from getting Apple’s new iPhone 5 and I’m feeling like an idiot, so before you go ahead and call me an Apple Fan Boy or some variation and tell me I wasted my money, I know. I get it. As my co-worker James would say “derp de deep derp”

I also forget how much klout I have sometimes and forget that one comment about one thing can cause a reaction from many people. This tweet of course was about my iPhone 5’s battery life but I have other complaints too. So here they are in raw anger.

We’ll start off the battery life or the lack there of with the iPhone 5. It is pretty pathetic because I can barely get through a day. I’m not a heavy iPhone user, I sit at a desk for most of the day with email, Facebook and twitter open on my computer so I really have no need for my iPhone. However by the time live after 8 hours it is at about half battery life. Uh… don’t know where that went. 

I got up, unplugged the phone to go to work, left phone sitting on desk = 50% Battery Life.

Then there is the 7 hours after that where I am moving around. I may check my emails, tweet and Facebook but nothing that should kill the battery any more than normal. So by the time 9-10pm rolls around I’m at 10% – I’M IN THE RED

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Okay fine, maybe it is the LTE network… and the fact that the iPhone keeps jumping from 3G to LTE… and the fact this is Apple first LTE phone and they don’t have there shit together but still. How can a phone not be able to last a day on moderate use.

Looking back at my iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, which I still have. My 4 lasts a day with normal use still, after being in snow and water for 4 month and my 4S which lasts a good day and a half with the use I described above.

My only other issue right at the current moment is the change in cable port. Not that Apple changed it but more that Apple dropped the ball on getting suppliers more cable adaptors and cables. With crappy battery life I like to have chargers near by, I have one at work, in my jeep, in my office and bedroom, but can’t because I can’t get them yet.

Grumble Grumble. Yes I’m whining about a $600 product that I didn’t even want to by and don’t even think is all that great.

Oh but I have no issue with Apple Maps… they work fine. 

So Steve Jobs has resigned

As pathetic as it may sound, when I first read that Steve Jobs had resigned yesterday afternoon I was taken aback. This all the tragic news this past week has possessed, I thought I was reading Steve’s last words (kind of like Jack Layton), but alas it was just a resignation letter. I was still taken back though.

I don’t follow the day to day workings of Apple so I’m sure with Tim Cooke at the helm it will all be fine, but there was still a nagging feeling in me that thought, if Steve Jobs leaves Apple will follow apart. And, yes, I know this sounds rather pathetic and I’m sure it makes me look like much more of a fanboy, but the way Apple was presented sometimes made it seems like Steve watched over everything.

What will happen in the next decade with Apple, will it become a big clunky company like Microsoft or will stay on top with it sleek looking, easy to use products. Time will only tell.

Steve Jobs Resigns

5 Minutes with Mac OS X Lion

I have spent about 5 minutes with Lion so far. I’m not even on Lion writing this because I left it at the office, but I do quickly want to touch on a couple of the main feature, features which I don’t think I will use all that much.

Launch Pad

This is Apple’s way of making Mac OS X more iOSy, right? The idea is you press a button or the icon and a group of your apps shows up on-screen. This is not going to work for me. I don’t need it, next, boring, useless feature. I really don’t use that many apps when I’m on the computer. Maybe browser, mail, twitter client, marsedit, aperture, itunes, all which fit on my dock. To even go one step further, I have become accustom to using Spotlight to quick launch any app I need. Cmd + Spacebar, enter first 3 letter of app and hit enter (it learns what I want) to open. That process takes me less time than it would with opening Launchpad, finding app and clicking open.

Reverse Scrolling

This is the one feature I don’t really care about. I’m unsure why Apple is trying to reverse our habit of scrolling, maybe because they have some master plan or maybe because Steve Jobs just wanted to change the way we do things. Either way it is not a big burden on me, I simply just scroll up instead of down. I learn the new way, I move on.

Mission Control

Supposedly Mission Control is the combination of Expose, Spaces, All Window Display and a couple other older features together. First off, I have never really used Expose, mainly because I don’t really know what it does and secondly, I use to use Spaces, but found I hated it for some aspects, so I abandon it (I have two massive monitors at work, why do I need spaces). Really the only thing I seem myself using here is the ability to display all the open windows I have, but that is nothing new.

Mac OSX Lion

So those are the three features I briefly used in the 5 minutes I had to try out Lion. There are somethings I still need to check out and report on, like Mail and Full Screen Apps. I have a hunch those two might get used more than the others.

We will see. Have you played with Lion much, what are your thoughts?

OS X Lion is out today

I could jump up and down in excitement that the latest Mac OS X is out (Operating System), but unfortunately I’m not. I’m a little sceptical as to how great it really is.

There is a lot that is change in terms of UI and I like the current way of doing things, so I don’t know how open I am to changing somethign I don’t think is broken.

I will admit it all looks really good and the price is unbeatable, so eventually I will upgrade, but I think I’m going to wait and see how other folks like it.

Mac OSX Lion

Thinking about it though, I do have three Macs, one being the MacBook Air. From what I am guessing the Air will benefit the most from this upgrade. It will make it more iPad-ish if you will.

If you happen to download it today, let me know what you think.