I don't cry easily. I am not supposed to, being a guy. But, like its inmates, The Magdelene Laundries moved me to tears.

Just got an e-mail from Apple:

"Dear Valued Apple Customer,
We appreciate your recent Apple Store Order
Due to an unexpected supply delay, we are unable to ship the following item(s) by the date that you were originally quoted:
P9245LL/A, PERSONALIZED IPOD 40GB-USA
will now ship on or before 09/19/2003
Please note that product availability can change rapidly, and it is possible that your order may ship much sooner than we anticipate. You may even receive a shipment confirmation between the time we send this email and the time that you read it.
If you prefer, you may change or cancel your order anytime before it is shipped, and receive a prompt refund, by calling us at 800-676-2775 ext-56500 Mon-Fri 8am-9pm, Sat-Sun 9am-6pm (Central).
If we do not hear from you, we will continue processing your order. You will receive an email notification once your order has been shipped.
We encourage you to visit http://www.apple.com/orderstatus or http://store.apple.com/ and click the "Your Account" button to view the status of your order.
We appreciate your business and apologize for any inconvenience this delay may have caused you. Thank you for shopping at the Apple Store!"

Now, I've already received the accessories that I ordered with the iPod, i.e. an "incase Music Belt" and a "Belkin Auto Kit for iPod w/ Dock Connector". I've even received the hp printer, which I wasn't expecting until next week, with all its accessories.

Come on, Apple. Shape up.

We have a new set of houseguests now. Funny how having people you know stay with you is totally different from meeting them. Even meeting them a thousand times. You're somehow getting 'more' of them. Which I guess could be a bad thing. But these people are just so sweet. It's simply great to have them. The only downside is, that they are leaving in a week.

I wish I had a really, really large house, where my friends could have their own rooms, and come and stay as they pleased.

Bought an iPod yesterday at the online Apple Store. I've been on my way to get one for years, and now they just upped the capacity to 40Gb, so I just couldn't resist.

Being the obsessive madman that I am, I immediatly started trying to track the shipment. But, lo and behold, my account status soon showed an error message, "Action required". So I click on that. "APPLE IS NOT ABLE TO SHIP TO A P.O. BOX. PLEASE CONTACT 800-676-2775 EXT-55200, SO WE MAY ARRANGE FOR A DIFFERENT DELIVERY ADDRESS." A sidenote: Why does everything slightly relating to legal matters require CAPITAL LETTERS HERE IN THE UNITED STATES? IS IT BECAUSE NOBODY WANTS TO LISTEN TO LAWYERS, SO THEY THEREFORE NEED TO YELL? OR ARE THEY JUST SO STUPID THAT THEY DON'T NOTICE THAT THE CAPS LOCK IS ALWAYS ON? I start trying to find out why there is a P.O.Box number on my order, since I specifically remember not putting that on there. Discover that the reason is that the Apple browser (probably like all other browsers nowadays) has used some sort of auto-completion feature to put more information, into the fields of my order, than I put in there. Including my P.O.Box. But here is the insiduous thing: The Address 1 field on the ordering page is only one line, but the auto-completion mechanism added a line break after my address, and put that P.O.Box in a separate line, which I couldn't see on the screen. Sigh.

Anyway, like a good customer, I call the 800 number, hear a welcome message and get an error when I try to enter the extension number provided: "Please listen to the menu options again." So I wait for the machine to bid me welcome to the Apple Store. Again. Then wait for the explanation of the menu options. Pick a menu option. Wait. Get greeted to the Apple Store. Yet again. Wait for the explanation of the menu options. Pick a menu option. Wait. Yet another greeting. Finally get to input the blessed extension number.

The pleasant machine now tells me I need to wait on the phone. For approximately fifteen minutes! Jeez! So I begin to wait, and discover at the same time that you can't change the address on an existing order online, even though it's there that the problem lies. You can only change the address on <>future<> orders! I'm starting to feel like I'm in Dell country by now. Next, the pleasant machine tells me that, if I would like, I could leave a message, instead of waiting online. Great! I choose that option, am immediately told by another pleasant machine that the message box is full, and am promptly disconnected!

Arrrgghh!

I call again. A servant to dumb macines with pleasant voices. Am greeted to the Apple Store again. Several times. At the same time, try to cancel the stopped order online. No luck there, of course. Where is the intelligence in this system: Here is an order, stopped and going nowhere. Online, where the order was made, you can neither correct the problem (deleting the P.O.Box) nor cancel the order. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Who is running this company?

So I wait. On the phone. Like I'm ordering something from SEARS twenty years ago. I have my "Web Order Number" ready to go. Finally, yet another pleasant voice. This one real: "Hi, my name is Christian. Can I have your Sales Order Number, please?" Eh, Sales Order Number? I fumble around. I only have the Web Order Number. I quickly scan through the confirmation e-mail again. No Sales Order Number, just the Web Order Number. I mumble something to keep Cristian from hanging up on me, while I log in to store.apple.com to check the Apple Order Status. Sure enough, right beneath the Web Order Number, I find the prescious Sales Order Number.

I explain my ordeal. Cristian is calm. I guess he's heard it all before. He deletes the P.O.Box from my order. Does he need anything else? Nope. Should I have able to do that myself? Yup. He apologizes. Even says he'll point out the problem to someone else. I thank him, it's not his fault, and hang up.

Granted, this wasn't a Mac I was buying. Buying a Mac has always been a joyous experience for me. Not only because of my excitement over getting every one of them. But the sales people have also kind of been in a celebratory mood. Here you go, sir! Enjoy! And, perhaps most importantly, the system has always worked, more or less. At least I haven't had to deal with the same kind of stupidity that you encounter every day when dealing with other companies. Like *shivers* hp, from whom I am currently trying to buy a printer.

Maybe it was because it was an iPod, and not a Mac. But it is still an Apple. So the buying experience should be just as good. Right? But it wasn't. And that turned me off.

I don't usually talk about work here. Neither do I have often the inclination, or the energy, to spill that world into this arena, nor do I think you would be particularily interested in what I'm dealing with on a daily basis.

However...

I thought I'd make an exception today. Just to give you an insight into my day. Or to bore the hell out of you. You decide.

I was asked this morning about my opinion of the use of biometrics – in a cafèteria. Biometrics is a technical way to identify people by their physical characteristics. Like the shape of their face. Patterns in their retinas. Or their fingerprints. That is, incidentally, the type of biometric technology which is being used in this case: To pay for his or her food, a customer presses his thumb on a sensor, which is connected to a computer, which in turn recognizes said thumb and debits the customer's account with the cafèteria.

So what makes this interesting? Well, the cafèteria is in a school, and the customers are children.

As I see it, we have a few, rather distinct issues to deal with here:

• Firstly, there is the issue of consent. Consent is required from a kid's parents, and himself or herself, prior to the scanning of his or her fingerprints. Supposedly, the technology and uses for the data are explained to the parents/kids in advance. Ergo: This does not appear to be a real problem.
  
• Secondly, there is the real concern for misuse. What if the cops want the cafèteria's fingerprint database? Now, here the devil really proves to be in the details. You see, "fingerprints" are not the same as "fingerprints". Although police authorities do use fingerprints, extensively, to identify people, they need actual fingerprints for that purpose. Or at least a fairly good representation of fingerprints. In some form. The "fingerprint" system at the school, on the other hand, does not actually record the fingerprints. It merely uses a limited number of reference points in the print to distinguish it comfortably from other customers of the cafèteria. (are you bored yet?) This data is not complete enough to give a definite representation of the fingerprint in question, and is therefore not of practical value to police authorites. So proliferation does not seem to be a real problem here. Actually, you might even ask what the problem is with the police getting such access, since you shouldn't have anything to hide, etc. But that's another debate all together.
  
• Thirdly, it could be suggested that the biometrics-for-donuts is an overkill. More fundamentally, perhaps there is something objectionable to the spread of technology, previously reserved for 'serious' applications, like fingerprinting police arrestees, into more benign fields of application, like retail shopping? Technology is, however, bound to find new applications al the time, as prices drop and methods evolve. So maybe we really haven't got anything here either?
  
• Finally, and here we might be getting to the core of the matter, is the question of culture and upbringing. Is it OK for us to bring our kids up in the belief that they should be 'fingerprinted' for something as unimportant as buying a glass of milk? Should we be imprinting into our young a healthy vigilance when it comes to their civil rights? Or, on the other hand, would we perhaps fair better if the next generation, the one that understands technology much better then we do anyway, and is therefore not afraid of it, is brought up without 'irrational' emphasis on privacy? We do live in a post-9/11 world, don't we?
  

Just another day at the farm...