Apple letter breaks little girl's heart

Apple's corporate policy for dealing with unsolicited ideas may be changing. The company held a special meeting to discuss ways to improve its cold-hearted, boiler-plate response to any unsolicited improvements or suggestions submitted to the company, after it found out that it shattered a nine-year girl's heart. According to CBS 5 News, 9-year-old Shea O'Gorman wrote to Apple CEO Steve Jobs as her class was learning about writing business and formal letters. The third-grader wrote Jobs to offer suggestions on improving her iPod nano, such as adding song lyrics so listeners can sing along to their tunes. Although it took three months, the company finally responded to her letter--although it was not what O'Gorman and her family were expecting. Instead of a polite response from Jobs, the girl received a cold, stern letter from Apple's legal counsel telling her that the company didn't accept unsolicited ideas and that she should not send any suggestions to the company.

Apple's full legal policy, designed to protect itself from protracted legal battles about royalties and licensing from submitted ideas, was available online, according to the letter received and read by both O'Gorman and her family.

"She was very upset, and kinda threw the letter up in the air and ran in her room and slammed her door," the girl's mother told CBS 5 News.

Although Apple declined to comment on the story, a company representative reportedly called the girl to offer an apology (following an inquiry by CBS 5 News); in addition, the report says that Apple held a special meeting last week to discuss ways in which it could improve its corporate policy when dealing with children.

Bingo. If you were using an XP with the same compromised fonts, it would be having problems with the same apps crashing as well.

Really, the PC is dependent on fonts for its operating system?

Let's look at this a little more closely...the fonts that are being sent to us that are causing problems are those created for a PC. Mac can not handle them. Hmmm, do you think if we had PC's we would have this problem? Of course not. You make my point, not yours.

You STILL have not answered my question, what is it that a Mac does so much better as to justify having to have extra IT staff and expense, more expensive machines and CONFLICTS with the rest of the world.

It is a very simple question: can you tell any difference in the final production quality of an ad made on a Mac and an ad made on a PC

Does the Mac provide for any efficiencies that overcome the inefficiencies inherant in using a bastard system? (who took that bite out of that apple anyhow?)

Really, the PC is dependent on fonts for its operating system?

I did not say that BJ... I said the APP would crash. The Mac's OS X does not crash because of bad fonts... but apps certainly can.

The Mac can handle and HAS handled fonts created on and for the PC for decades... but poorly executed fonts, used outside of their size parameters can and do cause crashes on both computers. I have had clients with PCs who have had font issues in Pagemaker, Quark, Indesign, Illustrator, and other graphic intensive apps... the difference was that when they crashed they tended to take the system down with them. Its never consistent... some corrupted fonts that would crash Quark were handled nicely with InDesign... and some that worked fine in Illustrator or Photoshop would crash another Adobe app. This was true on the Mac as well as on the PC.

I find that integration of the Apps and multitasking is much better on OSX than on XP. I can literally have three dozen apps running at the same time and see NO reduction in speed on the Mac if the other apps are idle. I do not see the same on PCs with XP... even idle apps give a system and resource hit.

What conflicts? Macs handle PC file formats easily. They can produce files that are transparent to Windows apps.

Extra IT staff? Every study I have seen has demonstrated that Macs have a lower cost of ownership than PCs... even studies done by PC pros. Those who operate dual IT in large installations, find that while it take 1 IT guy to service 20 PCs, one IT guy can easily service 100 Macs. More expensive machines? Not when you compare Apples to Apples (Excuse the phrase)... meaning computers with similar configurations and software installed... in fact, it is often the Mac that is cheaper. It is certainly cheaper when TCO is calculated.

Can you tell the difference? AT one time I could... but it is getting more and more difficult. However it is the PRODUCTIVITY of those producing it that counts for the bottom line. Many people who use Macs, after having moved from PCs, sing their praises for the increased productivity they experience.

Does the Mac provide for any efficiencies that overcome the inefficiencies inherant in using a bastard system? (who took that bite out of that apple anyhow?)

What "bastard" system... it is the PC that is using the poor copy of the Mac user interface.

First, glad to see we are headed into some substanative discussion here. Second, the above is exactly the opposite of the opinion of our IT guys. They say, look at the difference, the PC's rarely if ever give us trouble. Or you don't see these problems with the PC's do you?!

With regards to extra staff, by virture of the fact that you have two operating systems under the same roof, you have more invested in tech time to service them. That is irrefutable.

And even if as is your view that the Macs are less intensive to maintain, the question remains, which way is the most practicle to go: all Macs or all PC's?

There is absolutely no way the Macs are going to be eliminated in the company. In fact, the PC's replaced the Macs in many departments and it was a big decision at the time. But none has looked back and said that editorial or accounting or sales or the presses should go back to running on Macs.

So we are left with only one more question: Are the Macs and the associated extra IT costs necessary? I say that even if they have some benefit as you say, the benefit does not outweigh the added expense, not when a PC will do the job sufficiently well enough.

I will give you the point that Macs are better for the sake of making mine. So please explain how Macs are so much better as to justify the added expense (and at our operation, added aggrevation).

I say that even if they have some benefit as you say, the benefit does not outweigh the added expense, not when a PC will do the job sufficiently well enough.

Staying in the Newspaper industry, not too long ago I posted an article about a major newspaper where their networked PCs were all infected with one of the 100,000 or so viruses and crashed... totally. There Macintoshes, on the same network, were unaffected. They were able to publish for the four days it took to rebuild everything they lost in the PCs... solely because of the Macs.

With regards to extra staff, by virtue of the fact that you have two operating systems under the same roof, you have more invested in tech time to service them. That is irrefutable.

I disagree with your assertion that having two in house Operating systems has to be more expensive. In fact, I am going to refute your "irrefutable assertion" . . .from the real world.

A business that had around 400 PCs installed had an IT staff of 18 to maintain them (This comports well with the industry standard of one IT tech to keep 20 - 25 PCs working). Under the urging of one of the IT techs, in one department they replaced 40 of the PCs with Macs... and after a few months, they laid off three IT techs. The 40 Macs were easily maintained by one IT guy... the tech who suggested the change. They later replaced 30 more PCs with Macs and laid off four more PC IT guys... and didn't need to hire another Mac tech, because he was still idle 50% of the time.

Last I heard, they were up to around 120 Macs or so and down to about 280 PCs... but their IT department was only 12 IT guys... 11 PC guys and one Mac guy... but the Mac guy is starting to think they might need someone else familiar with the Mac: he wants to take a vacation...

Before bringing in the Macs, their IT department, ignoring hardware purchases, software licensing, etc., and concentrating only on Human Resources, cost about $630,000 a year (18 techs times $35k salary and benefits [est.]). That calculates to about $1575 per PC per year. After bringing in the Macs, it was $420,000 per year (12 techs X $35k salary and benefits)... which works out to only $1050 per computer per year. But if you break it out by OS, it is $1375 per PC per year but only about $300 per Mac per year... and the PC guys are overworked with each of them servicing 25 or 26 computers. The Mac guy is cruising - servicing 120 Macs - when they need it.

Meanwhile, the bottom line of the business was increased by a mere $210,000. Not too shabby.

Going the other way, a local college once had the largest Mac network in the world... something like 3500 Macs on Ethernet. The IT department head retired and they hired a PC type guy... who proceeded to replace the Macs with PCs... and increased his department payroll by almost tenfold... and of course he needed a raise because he was now supervising ten times the number of people it had taken to maintain the Mac network. Of course, the IT manager laid off all the Mac techs... so it will be very expensive and difficult to go back.

Costs were up, individual computers were routinely infected with viruses, Trojans, worms, etc., network downtime increased as well... but the IT manager got his promotion and raise... after all, he was now the supervisor of a VERY large department.

People who worked at the college told me that before, with Macs, if they put in a call for help with a problem that wasn't solved merely by restarting their Mac, someone from the computer department would call them on the phone and say "Do this, click that, and restart... " and the problem would be solved... now, with PCs it ALWAYS requires a tech to visit... who often took their computer away... and when it came back it was ALWAYS missing personalized settings and local files... like email and even LAN email accounts... which would require another call to the IT department to have them come back and reconfigure

Oh, incidentally, this switch at the college was pre-OS X.

It was good for me and a couple of my clients 'cause I got to buy a lot of Macs at bargain basement prices. You should have seen the college staff grabbing Macs at the auction... and heard them bitching about having to use the new Dell PCs and the problems they were having networking them...

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