My Journal - from wherever I am

An excellent essay by William Deresiewicz from the American Scholar. The lecture below was delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009.

What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.

The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.

Interesting feature about honeybees and emotions from Wired.com:

Honeybees have become the first invertebrates to exhibit pessimism, a benchmark cognitive trait supposedly limited to “higher” animals.

If these honeybee blues are interpreted as they would be in dogs or horses or humans, then insects might have feelings.

Honeybee response “has more in common with that of vertebrates than previously thought,” wrote Newcastle University researchers Melissa Bateson and Jeri Wright in their bee study, published June 2 in Current Biology. The findings “suggest that honeybees could be regarded as exhibiting emotions.”

Some new images of Thomas Heatherwick’s London routemaster bus redesign have come to the surface. The new version of the iconic bus features two staircases and three doors – enabling travellers to once again hop on and off whenever they want!

via @brainpicker.

Guitar man

Selling food

Shoe shiner

Close up

Jail

Graydon Carter offers a memoriam of Christopher Hitchens. Worth a read – the guy was so different from most of today’s bland commentators who always try to be politically correct as opposed to having an opinion and making an argument to support it.

Some great quotes from Christopher Hitchens who died today. One which is a bit trite but funny if you own cats:

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”

The article quoted – The New Yorker:Steve Jobs’s Real Genius has some real gems and is a great read, but this is the best:

Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him—the tablet with stylus—and ruthlessly refining it. After looking at the first commercials for the iPad, he tracked down the copywriter, James Vincent, and told him, “Your commercials suck.”

“Well, what do you want?” Vincent shot back. “You’ve not been able to tell me what you want.”

“I don’t know,” Jobs said. “You have to bring me something new. Nothing you’ve shown me is even close.”

Vincent argued back and suddenly Jobs went ballistic. “He just started screaming at me,” Vincent recalled. Vincent could be volatile himself, and the volleys escalated.

When Vincent shouted, “You’ve got to tell me what you want,” Jobs shot back, “You’ve got to show me some stuff, and I’ll know it when I see it.”

I’ll know it when I see it.

Isn’t that beautiful?!!

As an Apple shareholder and long time Apple customer, I recently purchased a new MacBook Air with Apple Care. As a result of a problem described below, I discovered Express Lane which is fantastic and very helpful.

My initial problem is that I moved from Spain to Hong Kong recently and as such had to change the iTunes store country accordingly. Due to the change, I could not install OSX Lion on my older iMac, and all the apps I have purchased using two Apple IDs do not display in App Store.

After contacting Express Lane, I got a call from a support person who was very helpful. He said to contact iTunes support, which provides only email support. When they replied, the suggestion was to contact an Apple Technician, so I went back to Express Lane to raise a ticket.

The Technician called at the appointed hour, but could not do anything and suggested I go back to iTunes support, so I raised another ticket in Express Lane.

The iTunes support person told me the same thing – iTunes content is store-specific – but could not answer my comment that OSX Lion is hardly country-specific, and since I’ve already paid for it, why can’t I download it on my third Mac (only a purchase link is displayed)?

So the ticket was sent to a senior person in iTunes support who said that maybe I could get a refund of the OSX Lion purchase (not that I want a refund) if I have access to the same credit card in Spain. I don’t, which is why I changed store in the first place.

After responding to the senior person, she mailed me back to say very sorry but iTunes content is country-specific (if I didn’t know this by now, I would be very stupid!), and that: “I also see that you are upset that you will no longer be able to update any applications that you purchased from the Spain iTunes Store.”

Its nice that the support people are pleasant, but please don’t use psychological techniques suggesting that you have heard what I have to say, and understand my concerns. I don’t need someone to say that I am upset, how would you know if I am upset?

What I would like instead is a direct answer to a question you yourself have raised as a possible solution – a refund of the OSX Lion purchase. The senior person doesn’t mention this, so I assume its not a possibility. Thats fine actually, because I don’t want a refund – I’d like a solution if possible and if not, just tell me directly instead of wasting 5 days and then at the end, this senior person doesn’t say “sorry, I hoped we could do a refund but we can’t because you don’t have access to the credit card used for purchase”.

At the end of the day, Apple does not make clear to customers (as far as I know) that changing stores will create problems. Please recognize that we don’t have any choice sometimes, so give your customers a chance to find the content that they paid for.

Thank you.