Blogging Pubbitch

What a great level of customer service is it that I can log a bug with Apple about the UI of OS X and have a response sitting in my inbox the next day? Okay, it asked for more information, but within 20 minutes of sending that information a real human had read it and "forwarded it on to the appropriate engineering team" (as well as getting an automated response too) All I ever get from MS are slow (if any) responses and endless spammed questionnaires asking if their service was okay. Ditto Oracle and Weblogic, but they approach me through lackies and salesmen. The Apple response is more like one of the better Open Source mailing lists (Hibernate's, for example)

Frankly, I'm impressed with the way that Apple are starting to focus on providing a better service to their customers. Not only are the Apple guys on the mailing lists I'm on unfailingly polite, but they're also helpful (which I suppose they should be, but not entering flame wars or rising to some of the baiting is a Good Thing)

They've also got some bright souls working for them, who are dedicated to what they do (Dave Hyatt springs to mind straight away) and they make some of the most desirable computer kit on the planet.

So a public "pat on the back" for Apple, then. Now, all they need to do is get JDK 1.4.1 out to an eagerly waiting public (I've got the developer preview, but it's just not the same as an official version)