Sorry for the lack of anything interesting here for the past few weeks. I’m in L.A. right now working on a BMW ad. Thanks to the Sterling to Dollar exchange rate (£1 = $1.94), I’m also shopping! I was at the Apple Store in the Third Street Promenade yesterday where I picked up a Mac Mini.
Updates and hopefully something more interesting when I get back to London on the 16th.
I called the Apple Store in Brent Cross this morning.
Apple Store: “Good morning, Apple Store Brent Cross.”
Me: “Hello. I’ve got a problem with my MacBook Pro. There’s a white spot on the display.”
Apple: “When did you buy it?”
Me: “Around three weeks ago.”
Apple: “Okay. If you have any hardware defects within a month of purchase we will replace the unit. Can you bring it in today? Just bring it up to the tills and ask for Sarah.”
Me: “Great! I’ll come in in the next hour or two. How long will it take you to transfer my data to the new unit?”
Apple: “It could be anything between half a day or 24 hours.”
At around 11am I walked in to the Apple Store and asked for Sarah. She verified the problem and gave me a form to fill out while she went to get the new MacBook Pro. She also told me that it would be ready by 2pm. That’s it. No quibble, no dodging and no uhm’ing-and-ah’ing. I went back at 2.30pm and it was ready.
This is the third time I had to test Apple’s after-sales service. The first time was when my one-week-old MacBook developed a squeak in the screen hinges. They replaced it, moved my extra RAM across (which I didn’t buy from them) as well as my data. I went in at 3pm and the new MacBook was ready at 5pm.
The second time was when I took my wife’s six-month-old white MacBook into the Brent Cross store to replace the palm rests. They were quite discoloured and they asked me to bring it in. They replaced the palm rest, keyboard and screen bezel and it was ready the next day.
In all three instances they didn’t once mention a cost. They were also very courteous and not patronising at the least. Well done Apple UK!
I was in South Africa for the past seven days supervising a shoot. The temperature never dipped below 25° C and the sun was glorious. You can’t look around Cape Town without your eyes trying to find Table Mountain. I took a few photos, mostly of the aforementioned mountain.
The photo above was taken around 6am from my hotel room before the first day’s shoot. More photos on Flickr.
I don't think there's enough chatter about the iPhone on the internets. Duncan has some stunning photos of people adoring the iPhone.
Oh I love this. It may make me look smug but I don't care. First, a YouTube clip from the Craig Ferguson show about the iPhone.
I laughed out loud at this Gizmodo post!
Photoshop CS3 beta is available for download. It's finally universal and the difference is simply amazing. I tested both CS2 and CS3 with similar tasks and the responsiveness of this beta is snappy, quick and satisfying. The only downside is the icon. Thankfully someone tweaked the CS2 icon and came up with what you see on the left.
Unfortunately you need a valid CS2 serial number for CS3 to work. Otherwise you can only try it for two days.