Feb 01

Ignorance, Part II

Blog, Misc Comments Off

Firstly, I’d like to apologise. If you’ve read freshbytes before, you would have realised that I’m actually sick of people who want an iPhone just because everyone else has one – those people that think it’s just a matter of popping into their local iPhone reseller, handing over some plastic, and then popping in their old sim card and off they go, all without any knowledge of iPhone plans, data charges, iTunes connectivity, or anything like that.

In actual fact, though, there are plenty of people who will walk into a store and buy their iPhones, and then walk out again. Just like those people that walk into a store, ask for “this, this, and this”, deny you of any other add-on packages, deals, hand over the cash, and walk out again. For now, I’d like to term these people “decisives”. They know exactly what they want (as well as what they don’t), and are always more than happy to shop wherever they like.

In days gone by, I would have mistakenly taken these decisives as “impulsives” – those people that buy things that are cool, in, or just any gadget that is a “must have”. They’re the ones that follow the crowd, go with the flow, and buy things on impulse.

However, the difference between the two couldn’t be more marked – the decisives are those that have done their research, and in the case of the iPhone example, they’re the ones that know exactly what they’re getting into when they embark on their iPhone journey. They’re the ones that have read every review, talked about the pros and cons online and with friends, and actually gone into a store and tried it out for themselves in-store. When they’re finally happy with their choice, they walk in, buy it, and walk out. Done deal.

I guess it’s my fault.

I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to recognise the two – when you think about it, it’s kinda hard to tell the difference without pressing further, ‘cos with either sale, you’re not doing much talking. It’s more of a customer-based thing, and I’m more than happy to let them do the leading. Sure, I’ll mention things like AppleCare, our excellent Service centres, and the fact that we’re the largest Apple reseller in the world (apart from Apple themselves), but in the end (if they’re the decisive customer I make them out to be), then they’ve already made their decision; they already know what they want, and what they don’t.

Sometimes I can be an ignorant fool – but hey, that’s life, and sometimes, just sometimes, you just have to deal with it.

So deal with it, and stick any comments you have down below.

Note: Benny is yes, still on holidays. Once again, this post was brought to you care of WordPress’ excellent publishing tools, which allow Benny to write stuff, and then set it to publish it in the future.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Jan 25

I’m hugely ignorant.

If there’s something that doesn’t interest me in the slightest, then I’ll probably ignore it.

This goes for pretty much anything you care to name: cars, cooking, house-related stuff, anything boring or tedious to work through. PHP and CSS are the two main ones I can think of at the moment. Oh, and Objective-C.

A good example of this is the recent purchase of a video camera for my overseas trip (Dad kinda figured we should get one, since our last video camera is ancient. Heard of Hi8? Yeah, I didn’t think so). When I was looking at the specs of the thing, I had no idea what the CMOS was, or what the difference between a CMOS and CCD was. (As an aside, I still don’t know what the difference is. If you do, feel free to explain it to me in comments). Sure, I knew what they stood for, as well as what they did, but the difference between the two escaped me.

So anyway, I ended up buying the budget Canon model. No HD here, folks – just plain, simple, which was exactly what we were after. Overall, I’m happy with my decision even though a minimal amount of reseach was undertaken.

However, being oblivious to the digital video revolution that I am, I had no idea how to use the latest version of iMovie. By all reports that I had heard it was utter garbage compared to the old version, but having never used iMovie 08 myself, I had no opinion on this. It wasn’t until I watched the August 2007 Keynote where Steve Jobs demos the new iMovie that I realised how easy it was to use and edit – making your mediocre footage into somthing prefessional-looking in a mattter of minutes. Literally.

As an aside, if you’re interested in watching the August 2007 Keynote, which isn’t available in iTunes as a podcast, hit this link for the QuickTime stream of the event – the iMovie 08 demo starts at 36:35.

Now, slashcare. /care. Just like “meh” is the universally recognised response for just about everything, /care will become the de-facto response For Everything That You Just Don’t Care AboutTM. You’ll certainly see /care a lot more on freshbytes, as well as on on my personal website (I’m purposely not including a link here).

I’m not going to make a website dedicated to it, though. If you use Google, you’ll find one.

I think that’s about it. If I’ve missed anything, leave a comment and I’ll try and get back to you!

Note: Benny is currently on holidays. This post was automagically published using WordPress’ advanced publishing features, allowing Benny to write a post, and set it to publish at a prescribed time in the future. For the record, Benny <3’s WordPress.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,