kdmurray.blog

The crossroads of life and tech

Daily Archives: September 14, 2006

MacBook: Still Waiting…

Though I’m super-excited about my new MacBook I can’t say I’m very impressed with Apple’s honesty with regards to shipping dates.

Their website advertises a shipping date of 5-7 business days.  When I ordered the laptop they gave me a shipping date 8 days out.  I could understand that being back-to-school time and all, but on business day #8, they changed my shipping date!!!

Instead of shipping on September 14th like they had promised, the new shipping date is September 25th.  That’s a full 7 business days after the maximum ship-date that they promised on their website.  And to top it all off, they’re website STILL advertises a 5-7 business day shipping window.

My confidence in Apple’s customer service has been severely shaken.

Microsoft turns over a new leaf?

Subsequent to an article I posted back in April (Microsoft Joins the Free Software Revolution), Microsoft has made another step towards public good-citizenry by making its Open Specification Promise on August 13th. This declaration states that Microsoft will not assert certain patents that it presently holds, or will hold in the future, around Web Services.

In David Berlind’s blog Between the Lines on ZDNet he notes that this isn’t the first time Microsoft has made a community-friendly move with regards to its intellectual property. In addition to opening the doors to developers by offering the Express editions of Visual Studio free of charge, it has also made steps forward with the Office Open XML document format which will be a part of the new release of Microsoft Office 2007.

Its refreshing to see the software giant evolving with the times and making an effort to be a good corporate e.Citizen.