Month: January 2011

Why is Apple hiring for the “Apple Travel Team”? What is that?

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Maybe I am really ignorant, but this is the first time I have ever heard of the “Apple Travel Team”.

Apple is currently hiring for the following positions in the “Apple Travel Team”;

i. Travel Counselor

ii. Operations Manager

iii. Operations Supervisor

For example, the Apple Travel Counselor position lists;

The Apple Travel Team in Singapore is seeking Travel Counselors who will be responsible for providing outstanding service and professionalism to travelers, make accurate and timely travel reservations, and maintain high levels of productivity in our fast pace Regional Service Center (RSC). This is an exciting position for an individual that is extremely customer focused and has a passion to provide service excellence to customers. The right individual must have a thorough knowledge of the travel industry, travel reservation systems, pricing, and international markets.

The successful candidate will:

•Professionally interact with travelers to respond to all travel inquiries including reservations, price quotations, and customer service issues

•Ensure optimum customer service through effective use of phone system, e-mail and positive telephone service techniques

•Achieve individual and team service level goals related to telephone, quality, accuracy and productivity

•Knows and properly uses airline terminology, codes, fare basis, airline rules and tariffs, resource guides, books, and industry contacts

•Maintaining a favorable company image when interfacing with outside resources

•Effectively work in a team environment supporting management and staff, follows policies, providing feedback, assisting in special projects, and taking on additional responsibility

•Outstanding organizational skills that result in high productivity

•Efficiently and effectively respond to customer service issues

•Must work weekends, may require night shift..

All these positions have been posted a few days ago. No one seems to have reported anything strange, which is why I am skeptical of this being something interesting. But never before have I seen the words “Apple Travel” on the Apple jobs site in all my lousy attempts at applying for a job at Apple.

It’s no secret that a large part of Apple’s call centre services for their Online Stores and sales is located in the Singapore campus, but I have never heard of Apple providing “outstanding service and professionalism to travelers, make accurate and timely travel reservations, and maintain high levels of productivity in our(Apple’s) fast pace Regional Service Center (RSC)”.

Pardon me but that totally sounds like the work of a TRAVEL AGENT.

And since when is Apple a travel agent?

Is Apple providing a new service? Maybe this has something to do with their purchase of some company providing mapping solutions a while back? Or to do with the Tim Cook visit to the Singapore campus a while back?

Or am I just plain dumb (well there’s a big chance) to the obvious presence of a “Apple Travel Team” in Apple Singapore all these years?

Anyone in the inside mind dropping me a PM? LOL.

Interesting.

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Google Nexus S unboxing

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Okay well I did the unboxing days ago, but so what? This phone is Google’s iPhone. It is exactly what Google will and did make if there are no manufacturer’s input involved in the whole dumb Android ecosystem. Google’s finest, you may say. It is therefore the perfect target for attacks on all the bad points of Android, which in this phone cannot be blamed on manufacturers’ software mods, there isn’t any.

Nevertheless it’s a pretty nice phone. Software is fast, much faster than the crappy XT720 in my family. The phone is really light, probably as a result of being made from really cheap-arse plastic. The curved glass on the screen is a total gimmick. The thing just made it a lot more difficult to make proper screen protectors for it, since many won’t stick properly due to the curving of the glass. And I’ve heard, the curving of the glass is exactly why the glass is NOT Gorilla Glass, despite the Galaxy S having those, due to the simple fact that the costs for curved Gorilla Glass, if it’s even possible, will be much higher. And the reason why girls and fashionable guys will never be spotted using this phone? There are simply no decent accessories for it. Have been trying for weeks and still haven’t come across a half decent case for the phone. Anyone with a source for decent cases let me know in the comments? Thanks.

Will eventually do an in-depth write-up on the phone, but right now the well-known Android faults are very obvious – nonsensical lack of decent battery life, lousy browsers, etc, as well as some of the pros of the OS, like the ability to have the HTC weather/clock-lookalike widget on my phone.

Read the rest of the article for the other unboxing pics.

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What will happen after Oracle wins the Android suit against Google

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A pretty detailed explanation of the current situation and what will happen if the judge does find (and will) Google guilty is already given by Engadget’s Nilay Patel, who happens to be a copyrights lawyer previously;

Link: Android source code, Java, and copyright infringement: what’s going on?

His view: Google is in trouble.

Oracle will charge Google and probably all the handset manufacturers a licensing fee for every Android handset shipped.

Which I will argue, will be actually a good thing for Android lovers.

Making Android into a product that actually costs money will probably result in the following situations;

a. Android will probably become as expensive an mobile OS as Windows 7 is, and manufacturers will no longer stuff Android onto handsets with shitty hardware that are not capable enough to support the OS anymore, simply because they will have to pay for it. Android will only be reserved for higher end handsets that can support it, and justify paying the licensing fees for that particular handset by the manufacturer. Better hardware on Android means a much better Android experience for all Android lovers.

b. It will paint a much clearer picture of how influential Android support by consumers are. Right now the majority of Android market share is probably made up by the millions of cheap arse 0-dollar handsets whose owners know nothing about the OS that runs inside of these devices. If Android is strictly a smartphone OS, that ensures only people who understand what Android is will be buying Android devices for use.

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iPad 2 to have a pixel-doubled screen resolution upgrade after all?

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If this is to be believed, the next iPad must have seriously powerful graphics hardware, stuff that can power resolutions almost as high as that of Apple’s 27 inch Cinema Display.

Stuff that will Kill all the current iPad Killer-wannabes like the next generation Galaxy Tab and the Motorola Xoom even before they come to market.

I have always doubt the possibility of the next iPad debuting with a retina display (aka. original resolution “pixel-doubled”) due to simply the kind of hardware and processing power involved in supporting such a high resolution display, not to mention the negative impact it will have on battery life. But rumors of recent weeks have been more detailed than the usual speculation, and it’s hard to ignore them now.

Link: iPad 2 Likely to Have 2048×1536 Screen Resolution

On the whole Google Chrome dropping H.264 support to start another format war fiasco

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I wanted to write something myself but this article seems to sum it up pretty well.

Google, H.264 and Video on the Web

Fact to remember – Chrome is an insignificant browser in terms of market share, Safari and Internet Explorer have way bigger market share on mobile and desktop. However, if Google pulls H.264 support from Youtube, this means you can no longer watch Youtube videos on your current iOS AND ANDROID devices (at least not without sacrificing a crazy amount of battery life. Android devices probably won’t even last an hour with its poor battery life management).

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Why iOS 4.3 will bring Mobile Hotspot to the majority of iPhone owners before Android does to its minions

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So I posted a tweeted the other day declaring that the majority of current Android phone owners will never see their phones ever getting the Mobile Hotspot feature despite Android announcing the feature first in Froyo, Android 2.2, which was released in May 2010.

Why did I say that?

It’s very simple. The majority of Android handsets simply do not qualify for Froyo updates, usually because the carrier can’t be bothered or they just want to push sales of their newer handsets that come with Froyo installed, like the hundreds of new handsets slated for release in the next six months in a world when Gingerbread already exists.

Some guy replied to my tweet, stating,”I don’t think that applies to SG. I’ve been able to tether internet access from my HTC Desire for months now.”

Right.

And the majority of Android-using Singaporeans are using the presumably fugly HTC desire as their phone.

That is simply not true.

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On the whole iPad and iPhone losing their physical home buttons rumor….

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This whole rumor was probably triggered by the fact that iOS 4.3 beta 1 for iPad comes with multitouch gesture controls for changing applications (by swiping multiple fingers horizontally, like on the Mac for changing pages), returning to home screen (by the 5-finger pinch), etc. These gestures definitely will be familiar to current Mac users who already have similar multitouch gestures, and will no doubt will work on the big and nice 9.7-inch iPad screen.

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