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Connecting the Dots

Guidance, Insight and Ideas in a Time of Accelerating Change

November 1983 Macintosh IntroJanuary 5

My 83 year old Dad often tells stories about a mason from Europe, George Dohmeyer, who worked on the house my late grandparents built in 1950. My Dad tells one story about him walking up to the front of the being-built house and asking Mr. Dohmeyer, "Why are you placing that foundation for the steps down so deep?"  He replied, "We're in Minnesota, Bill, and the freeze-thaw cycles will move and crack these steps some day if I don't do that, and you could come back here 50 years from now and these steps will not have moved an inch."

You guessed it probably. Stopping by recently, it was amazing to see that those steps had NOT MOVED AN INCH IN OVER 50 YEARS. I'm telling those stories to my son now so HE understands that "doing it right" and with quality -- even if people don't see the care you're putting into it -- matters.

As a Mac user since I saw Steve Jobs intro the Mac to company personnel in Hawaii in 1983, the essence he's brought to Apple is the subtlety and nuance of an approach, of design and of quality that means what he has brought to Apple, to PIXAR and undoubtedly to his family and friends, will endure forever.

The Mac, OS X, the tools, and everything else he has wrought have empowered people like me to create businesses (our core company publication is 21 years old thanks to my Mac SE/Laserwriter and Pagemaker) and continue to be able to deliver high value content and communications.

In honor of Steve Job's letter today (explaining why he won't be at Macworld) and in honor of tomorrow's Macworld keynote by Phil Schiller, I bring you two videos from Steve's intro of the Macintosh to the company in November of 1983....and I was there!

This man's vision has brought us so much and, I suspect, will bring us much more, starting tomorrow morning.

This was the faux "Dating Game" with Fred Gibbons, Mitch Kapor and Bill Gates. Many don't remember Fred, CEO of Software Publishing, but the other two were an important duo supporting this new computer.

Happy HolidaysDecember 24 2008

 

Taking some time off to be with family and friends. Whatever your tradition at this holiday time, hope you're already having a great time.

DirecTV Will Get Their $280December 17 2008

Though I haven't changed my position that Cancellation Fees Must Die, it was interesting to discover that DirecTV was/is monitoring social media for brand mentions, since someone from the DirecTV Office of the President left me a voicemail this morning due to yesterday's post (and my Twitter mention).  I called "Veronica" back when I got back to my office 45 minutes ago.

It's clear to me that I didn't "follow their rules" and shame on me. Perhaps you think that I'm not justified in raining-on-DirecTV's-parade with my rants -- and I could probably get in to the inferior quality of their supplied DVR as another justification for my buying a DVR replacement at Best Buy -- but suffice to say that due to a broken DirecTV DVR I had a choice: go to Best Buy and have DirecTV service back up-n-running within two hours, or what I now know "their rules" required. Those rules dictated that I contact them for a replacement DVR (and $5.99 per month in a service contract to "protect" their inferior product) while waiting what....3 days for the replacement to arrive by courier and thus be without service?

Since you and I "agree" to allow our conversatio

Cancellation Fees Must DieDecember 16 2008

After more than nine years and nearly $6,000 spent with DirecTV, I cancelled the service today since I've chosen another route for obtaining HD programming.

The problem is that more and more companies are making it very difficult to cancel (AOL and now Vonage are the best examples of creating barriers to cancellation by not answering the phone, putting you on hold forever, and other such goofy practices), and DirecTV has proven to be no exception.

One barrier to switching to a competitor is a practice, which I view as unethical and bordering on criminal, of putting in onerous terms and conditions that make it very difficult to cancel or make a switch by taking any change made during a contract, extending the term automatically, and applying cancellation fees if you choose to cancel. Most people make a change at some point during their time with a company and thus the unethical company can keep stringing people along indefinitely.

In addition to that, you and I have almost no recourse if we want to alter the contract before signing, negotiate or simply not pay these draconian fees. If we choose to tell them to go pound sand and withhold payment, they systemically say "F" you and turn you in for collection, eroding your

Puzzling 'PR': At least tell me a story, willya?December 15 2008

Just now I received a "press release" of sorts from the author of an ebook. Ironically he's getting the buzz he wanted (me to post about him), but it's worth it so you can learn something like I just did.

Upon receiving this email, I instantly trashed it. Opening up a second email from someone in the PR game, and I thought she might appreciate knowing why I took that instant trashing action. As I wrote her an email, it made me think a bit more deeply about what was wrong about what he did and his approach.

The "self-PR'ed" author of the ebook just blasted out this 'press release' with zero personalization -- which I usually receive so it at least appears the PR person has some awareness of my blog and its thrust. Not even a paragraph of introduction on why a blogger like me would have ANY interest in what he's offering which would've been trivial to do.

Here's the kicker:  If he had started off telling me a story about why he wrote this, maybe that he had a full-time job so couldn't afford to take the time to personalize the email (and say "sorry about that" or something to that effect), nor that he was in no position to retain a PR agency adept in social media to help him get the word out, I might've looked at this email and thought, "Hmmm....I'd like to help this guy ou