Free TUAW iPhone app -- try it now!
AOL Tech

Engadget

FEATURES: Holiday Gift Guide Droid review Palm Pixi Review Bold 9700
Blog Activity
Blog# of Comments
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)6 Comments
Engadget Mobile1 Comment

Recent Comments:

Great ads! Though they kinda skipped the part where the phone locks up when you try to do two things at once. I guess it's in the 60 second version?

But seriously, multi-tasking my ass. Oh, and another satisfied NYC customer btw!
I have a problem, which I'm not sure is effective anyone else.

I just got Google Wave. And it's neat I guess. Anyhow, I want to get it up and running on my iPhone. Everywhere I look, everyone seems to have the same suggestion: simply point my mobile Safari browser to wave.google.com. But instead of some login, I instead get booted to some generic info page about Wave. Can't find any login info anywhere. Help! This is seriously driving me nuts. Thanks!
Thank God this issues has been somewhat isolated. The inability to open up a large number of files has been driving me up the wall. Didn't realize the key attribute was that they were freshly downloaded (just selected all the files in a folder that wouldn't open before, and now they magically do).

And yeah, this is by far one of the stupidest new "features" that Apple has ever come up with. I was hoping it was a bug that would be fixed in 10.6.2, but if this is the way it's going to be... might have to downgrade to 10.5 after-all. Splendid.
For me, it's Preview. Am I the only person who has this issue in which, if you select a bunch of different images, not all of them will open up? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Anyone?
I'm sorry, but that place has always made me embarrassed to be an Apple user, and will perhaps continue to do so till the end of time.

First off, the employees there are uniformly some of the rudest people you will find anywhere, just a bunch snobby Willamsburg hipsters who care more about shooting the shit with themselves then helping anyone, and by the time your number is called and it's your turn, they're immediately impatient and condescending. Though shit customer service aside, what I find most appalling is that absolute lack of any real technical knowledge. I can think of at least TWELVE different occasions over the years in which various friends brought their machines to do some repair work, and afterwards their machines were worse off, in which I had to step in and fix the original problem (I myself have a minor background in Mac repair), and in at least one of these instances, it was a Tekserve employee!

If you're a woman, forget about it; my roommate at the time, a teacher, had her iBook die on her, so she brought it to them with hopes that the grades that she had been working could be recovered, otherwise her job would be in jeopardy (they were due the very next Monday). Tekserve quoted an astronomic price, one she could barely afford (since she's a school teacher and all), but was against the wall and agreed, especially when they promised to have it done in a week. Five days passed and when she returned, they had "fixed" something else, but not the original issue, and when she asked why not, the only response was "oops." It should be noted that half the time she was being flagrantly hit on, and the other half they treated her like a five year old. Anyhow, when she asked when the actual repair would be done, another five days was casually quoted, and when she got upset, they immediately gave her an attitude. Essentially "well, that's tough shit, we already started working on your machine, so you can't take it back without us charging you for the original job." The only reason why they fixed it in two days was because I came in huffing and puffing on her behalf, as the boyfriend (thankfully, even though they were submitted late, it was just by two days and she was able to keep her job).

I have another friend who loves them to death because when she got her Mac back, she was happy to discover that all these applications that she has never installed were there. Over time, I began to learn exactly what they do, which related to my roommate's situation: they take Macs and often miss-diagnose problems so they can swap those Apple supplied parts with cheap third party accessories. Tekserve then sells those original parts, either back to Apple or to someone else, I dunno. From what I understand, it's somewhat of a common, dirty tactic. Apologizes if I'm stating some common thing, since I clearly am not involved in the business side of repairing computers. Maybe the Best Buy's Geek Squad does the same thing, I don't know.

Add in the fact that if you go to the back corner of the store, where one can witness the techs doing diagnostics on brought in machines, and its often a pow-wow of various employees sitting around, going through assorted personal files of that Mac's owner (I'm certain that this happens across the board, but to be so out in the open about is just plain retarded), and that place honestly amounts to gigantic pile of bullshit. BTW, how in the hell do they get away with it? Simple; their main clientele are artists and non-computer types, so they fall for whatever nonsense the average Tekserve employee spews out, since the aforementioned groups know nothing about computers (hey, I'm an artist and that's why I started off on Macs, cuz I was complete idiot when it comes to PCs, that's really the case for most of us… or at least used to be…. yes, things has somewhat changed in recent years) and because they're usually there because of an emergency, so they're just desperate for a solution, no matter what.

At least that's how it used to be, when they were the only game in town, but now that there's the Apple Stores, perhaps it's changed. Then again, people are intensely "loyal" to Teckserve, for whatever misguided reasons.

Oh, and for the record, I've told pals of mine who write for both the Village Voice and the New York Press about Tekserve's shady business tactics, and they both said "we're not touching that story with a ten foot pole" because they get so much money for ad revenue.
Have any of you folks actually played the game? It's a complete broken mess, even with the update.

iPhone, the ultimate mobile gaming platform my ass...
"I don't understand why having the Beatles on iTunes is some sort of meaningful threshold to be crossed. Who cares?"

The irony behind this statement literally makes my head hurt.
Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I'm in the market for a new phone and money isn't a limitation. I'm also not partial to any particular US carrier, but here are some of the features I'd like to have: WiFi, GPS, good coverage in lots of places, push Gmail (a must!), physical keyboard (a must!), a touchscreen, decent battery life and a relatively slim body. And please, nothing that has a fruit logo on it. No offense to the fruit fans, though. Thanks!"

Boss of the Year Entry Form

Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.