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Poll: Are you satisfied with your HD service?
After breaking things down as best we could this week, we noticed a flood of comments from critical HD consumers about the quality (or lack thereof) of their HD service. Of course, it's impossible for us to take a look at each provider out there and assess just how wonderful (or not) its deliverance of high-definition programming is, so we figured we'd put it out there for all of you readers. Bottom line: are you stoked about the quality of your high-def service? If so, by all means, let the world know who's treating you right. If not, shout out what's keeping you from extolling your carrier -- be it a shoddy HD DVR, inexplicable compression, a high level of outages, a dearth of HD offerings or simply charging too much for too little. %Poll-9224%
Complain to Nintendo, get a phone call
Reader Neal is a man on a mission. When hearing that Chibi Robo: Park Patrol was a Wal-Mart exclusive, he got on his computer and fired off an email to Nintendo questioning Wal-Mart's commitment as a "green company" and Nintendo's press release stating as much. Well, Nintendo cared enough about his email that a Nintendo rep actually called him to discuss it.The Nintendo rep, one Ryan Stoffel, turned out to be a polite guy and very concerned with Neal's thoughts. While his promise to pass along Neal's concerns to the higher-ups can be seen as empty, the fact that Nintendo called him up directly to talk is just astounding to us. Even with some of you informing us of your own dealings with Nintendo customer service, we're surprised they went this far.
Ring of Death: An Xbox 360 story -- Part 1
A tragedy befell a colleague yesterday. For the second time during his tenure of owning an Xbox 360, he experienced the red Ring of Death. This isn't some new system he picked up at the store inexplicably dying on him, this was a system he received directly from Microsoft after his original console kicked the bucket a month after launch.Now, this blogger has his own personal problems with the Xbox 360's loading tray. The Microsoft Xbox 360 defense force said I must have messed with my loading tray to make it not work properly, because obviously when you own a $400 piece of equipment you try to break it and experience all the joy of warranty red tape. Well, as much as this blogger might try to keep his system out of harm's way, it in no way compares to my colleague -- he is über-tech-master-extreme. With a projection HDTV in his incredible loft, everything is neat and proper in a perfect place. Unless he has some form of technological Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, he certainly didn't mess with his system.So, last night he called up India (what, you didn't know Xbox support is in India?), and now he waits to receive the box from support which should arrive in 4 to 5 days, to send his Xbox 360, once again, to Texas for repair. We'll be tracking the progress of his system. Last time it took a few weeks to get the console back, let's see how long it takes this time. It'd be more comforting to know these tales of Xbox 360 malfunctions were the stuff of message boards and YouTube videos, instead of people with one or two degrees of separation from each other having problems.
RFID-enabled smart shelves heading into stores?
What could be more frightening than an uninvited shopping cart following you around with the Jaws theme song looping in your head? How about RFID-enabled shelves that peer into every decision you do (or don't) make while shopping for gifts, gadgets, or everyday necessities? Japanese outfits DNP, Tana-X, and SEARS (not to be confused with Sears), are developing an intelligent shelving system that tracks information on the amount of folks who pondered a purchase, how many tossed it in their carts, which items attracted little to no attention, and essentially anything else regarding the popularity (or lack thereof) of a stocked item. Information is also gathered on the kinds of products individuals purchase together (i.e. a PSP and a UMD in the same trip), and strategically located "POP" machines conveniently give detailed descriptions about scanned items to customers, while sneakily collecting data of its own for those oh-so-clever marketers behind the scenes. While we aren't sure which nations are targeted for primary testing in December, you should probably pack some RFID-zapping heat when perusing through the aisles this holiday season if this tin-hat-donner has you in a tizzy like it does us.[Via Textually]
Apple drops plans for India support center
Apple has dropped its plans for bolstering off-shore support in India and other countries. MacNN is reporting that the company hasn't been very forthcoming with a reason, but they have laid off all 30 of the employees hired under the subsidiary which would run these Indian support operations, Apple Services India Pvt Ltd (fortunately, the employees received two month's severance pay).This is good news, as I've never heard wonderful things about a company's customer support ratings when they make a move like this. Dell's tanked when they tried it, and last I heard they shut the facility down and moved most of their support operations back to the US. Kudos to Apple for taking a hint from others' mistakes.
Cheaper PS3 loses HDMI, slots, Wi-Fi, 40GB
As you can see above, there are a few things different between the two PS3 SKUs planned. (Hint: the obvious alterations concern high-def output and wireless connectivity -- though Bluetooth controllers should work just fine with both, with or without any chrome case highlighting.)So what's HDMI, built-in multimedia card-reader slots, wireless internet connectivity, and an extra 40 gigabytes' hard disk space worth to you? $100? Now that Sony's gone with the 2-SKU approach with its next-gen hardware (a la the Xbox 360's premium and "Core" systems), we can expect some tough consumer choices after six months -- with console shortages possibly for another six months after that -- as $100 separates the base $499 and premium $599 versions of Sony's "Clear Black" hope.HDMI is important to those who want to take full advantage of Blu-ray high def and have the new screens to use it; MemoryStick, SD, and CompactFlash slots would be nice for the PS3 memory-card users and those will run multimedia on the system; Wi-Fi's the only way to avoid stringing ethernet cables for online access; and 360 owners might appreciate the full 60GB available to potential buyers of the premium PS3 model. Neither model comes with a second HDMI port; thankfully, one should hopefully be all most users need. The details are laid out in a feature-comparison table at the end of Sony's official PS3 hardware press release, available in both Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word formats. Determine what's most important to your PS3 ambitions there.[Image pieced together from the PlayStation.com forums; thanks, Guru]
Help the revolution: submit feedback
This is more of a public service announcement and reminder than anything, inspired by TUAW reader Jer's comment on my .Mac syncing UI silliness post. Jer asked whether we were submitting feedback to Apple concerning gripes like the one I blogged, and the answer is 'most definitely yes.' This brief dialog inspired me to take the opportunity to urge all Mac users everywhere to do the same.If you have a complaint, a feature request, or maybe you just found a bug in Mac OS X, or another piece of Apple's software, apple.com/feedback is a great place to go and tell them about it. Most of Apple's apps are categorized there, and it's a simple process for submitting your comment. While I don't believe it's in their policy to reply to anything submitted there, you can rest assured that it's one of the best places Apple uses to collect the information they use to keep tabs on how we like their software, especially when it comes to creating all those official bug reports you'll find sprinkled throughout their support and knowledgebase articles (besides, who wants to take bets that their engineers have TUAW in their newsreader?).So remember boys and girls, when it comes to feature requests, UI gripes and bug squashing: ask not what Apple can do for you... but submit some feedback so the world's best operating system can get even better.
