Linked List: August 19, 2008

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

Another iPhone SSH Client Comparison 

Including a brief look at a fourth SSH client in the App Store, the plainly-named “SSH”.

What Makes for a Good Blog? 

Pretty good list from Merlin Mann.

Ain’t That the Truth? 

Nedra Pickler, reporting for the AP on McCain’s vice presidential selection (emphasis added):

His top contenders are said to include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Less traditional choices mentioned include former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent.

(Via Atrios.)

Things Touch 1.1 

Cultured Code’s $10 iPhone task manager now syncs with the Mac version of Things via Wi-Fi.

Comparing Apple’s MobileMe Contrition With Google and Netflix 

Adam Engst nails it:

Both MobileMe Mail and Google’s Gmail went down on 11-Aug-08 for a few hours. Apple’s recent email doesn’t mention that outage as part of the rocky transition, and the only acknowledgment I could find of it was a pair of entries in the MobileMe System Status page (bookmark this page, folks!). There was no mention of the outage on the semi-anonymous MobileMe Status blog at all, with the most recent posting being from 29-Jul-08, claiming that lost email had been restored and promising (but not delivering) another post later in the week.

Google, in contrast, quickly posted a highly apologetic message on the Official Gmail Blog titled “We feel your pain, and we’re sorry.” It outlines in reasonable detail what went wrong, why it happened, and what Google is doing to prevent the problem in the future. I don’t know if Google offered paying subscribers for Google Apps for Domains Premier Edition (who are guaranteed 99.9 percent uptime) a credit, but since Gmail is free to most users, an apology is mostly what’s warranted.

The kicker is that the MobileMe Status blog was in fact updated today, but only to state that the blog will no longer be updated. Apple’s biggest problem isn’t with its product quality (which, overall, remains very high), but with its communication to customers. The insulting “Bug fixes” release notes for the 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 iPhone OS updates are another example.

Three iPhone SSH Clients Reviewed 

Ben Gross reviews iSSH, pTerm, and TouchTerm.

Blockbuster CEO ‘Confused by This Fascination That Everybody Has With Netflix’ 

How does Jim Keyes still have the job as CEO? Netflix is kicking his company’s ass and he thinks Netflix is the company that’s doing it wrong:

Equally bewildering to Mr. Keyes is the emphasis on catalog size. Why would anyone want to watch anything other than new releases, he wonders.

“I don’t care how many movies are available to me. As my personal taste as a customer, I want to watch the new stuff so whether we have 10,000 movies or 200 movies doesn’t matter if I don’t want to see any of the movies that we have … our assortment is heavily weighted toward newer releases and mainstream staple titles.”

‘Flailing’, Eh? 

Mike Arrington, extrapolating from his own personal experience with some apparent lemon MacBooks:

They need to get their house in order or they risk alienating all these new customers they’ve added over the last few years. The new buyers aren’t Apple fanatics and won’t sit quietly as they try to access broken services via failing hardware.

Let’s see what the just-released 2008 American Customer Satisfaction Index says:

Apple Inc. trounced rival computer makers selling Windows-equipped PCs by historic margins in an annual customer satisfaction survey, the poll’s chief researcher said today.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before, where a company scores 10 points over its nearest rival,” said Claes Fornell, the head of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), conducted quarterly by the University of Michigan.

Apple’s customer satisfaction score of 85, an ACSI record in the personal computer category, was 10 points higher than the closest competitor, Dell Inc.; 12 points higher than Hewlett-Packard Co.; and 13 higher than Gateway, which was acquired by Acer last year.

Is Apple perfect? No. Does it suck when you buy a new Mac that doesn’t work right? Yes. But is Apple doing a far better job than any of its competitors? Yes.

Daring Fireball RSS Feed Sponsorship 

A heads-up to anyone considering sponsoring the DF RSS feed: summer’s sold out and fall is selling fast. There are only five unsold weeks for the remainder of 2008. If you have a product or service you’d like to promote to the DF audience, get in touch.