I'm 4 weeks into my Grand Apple Experiment, and I've had to officially visit the Genius Bar.  Yuck.  One of my early concerns with getting into this with Apple is that they provide no onsite support for business customers.  If issues like this keep continuing, Apple won't get any of my company's future business, despite their good hardware.

My company makes money directly by billing hours to my clients.  If I'm not working, I'm not making money, simple as that.  When my MacBook Pro started making a horrifying grinding noise, I was worried.  Not a little worried, as this wasn't a "little" noise, but a lot worried.  I was able to reproduce the noise on multiple occasions, so off to the Genius Bar I go. 

Bad fans, it turns out, and I believe it's either a bad bearing or some missing piece that is causing the fan to get out of alignment.  This is not a sound I want my 4 week-old computer making, and it's very likely that a bad fan will cause early failure of other hardware.

The nearest Genius Bar is a 25 minute drive from anywhere.  That plus the wait plus the diagnosis plus the drive back easily puts me at 2 hours of lost work.  The new fans came in within a week, so off to Apple I go again, (25x2 + 2 hour bench time) for another 3 hours of lost work.  That's 5 hours.  Gone.  Not good.

The Genius Bar did a fine job and my computer no longer makes unexplainable noises.  That said, Apple really needs to provide on-site service to business clients for me to consider more hardware from them in the future.

Again, I apologize for my absence of late.  A wonderful week-long vacation in Southern California which provided my body much needed outdoor time left me renewed and ready to code.

Just before leaving, I began the switch in my company from Dell hardware to Apple hardware.  This was a decision I really labored over.  All of my pro's and con's could be distilled into the following list:

• (Con) I really don't know UNIX, and maintaining a hetrogenous set of OSes in my network scares me more than a little
  
• (Pro) The MacBook Pro is the fastest laptop running Vista on the market
• (Con) Entourage is no substitute for Outlook, which is my Killer App
• (Pro) I can not only develop Windows-based apps, but Mac and iPhone apps too
• (Con) I'm an old dog
• (Pro) I like learning new tricks

So there you have it, it's tied.  Well, actually not so much; to conserve cash, I like to lease my computers.  Sure, it may cost a bit more in the long run, but in the short term I don't have to lay out $1-2k per seat, but rather ~$70 per month per seat.  So when I started looking into Apple's corporate financing, I was confused.  Although I eventually got it worked out, Apple's online information proved to be out of date and just plain wrong.  (Specifically?  Don't click on the link to fill out a lease application online.)  Hmmm... not a good way to start out a B2B relationship.

My other fear is Apple's pure lack of on-site support.  I'm coming from years of owning Dell hardware, and say what you will about their offshore call center, every time I've really needed assistance, Dell's been there and provided me top-notch service.  Apple on the other hand makes me go to them.  Again, not a great model for B2B and only passable for consumers.

Why switch?  Simply this: the iPhone.  No, no, I don't have one, but it's arguable that the iPhone is the greatest tech consumer appliance in the marketplace.  If Apple gets Exhcange integration right, it really could be The Killer Device for all corporate types, and that's impressive.  So, if I ever dream of even touching a line of code for the iPhone, a Windows-only box simply won't do.  In short, Apple hardware provides me flexibility that a Windows-only box can't.

So this is the start of the Grand Experiment.

There's much rumbling going on in the internets this morning due to the story about the MacBook Air being the computer to be compromised (hacked) during the PWN2OWN contest being held at the CanSecWest conference this week. 

The rules were fairly simple; the first to hack a machine would win the hacked computer and $20,000 if done via a network, $10,000 if done via the internet (via a browser), or $5,000 if accomplished via an installed program.  The interesting sub-topic of this is that Vista's IE7 was not the first of the three machines being bombarded.  The third computer is running Ubuntu.

I expect Vista's IE7 to fall soon, but the fact that Safari was the first, and possibly the easiest gateway to gain access has caused much gnashing of teeth and redirection of the facts of the case.  In my reading, Apple lost this round; plain and simple.  Have no fear, Vista will get it's share sooner or later.

What's interesting is the reaction from the pro-Apple crowd.  The fanboys are not used to this kind of disappointment:

"...but has anyone even bothered to try the other two computers... [or] are the two other computers Dells and nobody wants them?"

"Big deal."

"...if the same interest and effort are put to exploit Vista... that would have already happened."

"Let's face it: if the prize is the laptop you hack then everyone would be trying to hack the Mac: who the [expletive] wants the shame of walking away with a Dell under their arm?"

Everyone needs to calm down and recognize what happened today:  Holding all other things equal, modern operating systems are pretty secure (borne out by the fact that nobody took home the $20,000 prize) and on any day you can be hacked if you're not careful, regardless of your computer and operating system.  In short, be careful on the internet.  There are people who pay money to gain ownership of computers, and yours can be owned unless you take care, patch often, and keep anti-virus programs up to date.

More reading:

• http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/28/macbook-air-compromised-in-2-minutes-for-10000
• http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/0126221
• http://security.itworld.com/5013/mac-hacked-first-in-contest-080327/page_1.html