Personal Information Security and Genius Bar

Today I'm more ranting than telling anything worth while. Well I guess it could be worth while to some. I'll be speaking of two of my favorite topics, one is email consolidation and the Genius Bar at Apple stores.

Facebook Messaging

As I'm sure many of you have heard, Facebook is putting in place a system that consolidates all your email, Instant Message and status updates in one place. I currently do this on my own, well it's in two places, my Email client (which is the default Apple mail) and Adium messaging. Those two can handle everything for me (to be honest I also use a Twitter client, Echofon, and Facebook on the web).

The problems I have with this consolidation are two fold. One is that Facebook will be able to see into your emails, they'll leverage this information for the purposes of selling adds (just as Google does), hmmm I wonder if this will hurt Google's net worth, not that Facebook is replacing Google, but that Facebook will be getting similar analytical and profile information for their advertising platform. The other problem I have is what happens when EVERYONE tries to hit Facebook (or any other consolidating system) at the same time, they'll either crash it or bring it to a crawl (we've ALL seen this before). It's happened to Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Google, etc.... I'm not sure if it's happened recently to Microsoft, but to be honest having a hotmail or MSN email address is just about as sexy as having an AOL email address (that's a bit of sarcasm for you that aren't sarcastic). My suggestion is to keep things segregated on different platforms, when one crashes, you'll have others to fall back on.

Genius Bar

The Apple Genius Bar almost has me converting back to Microsoft Products. As much as people dislike Microsoft at least they don't have a store stocked with "Genius'" who are rude to you and talk down to you. I felt this just might be my local Apple store, but it's not, most of the Apple stores I've been to have had very condescending employees who don't understand technology that well (at least outside of Apple's domain) and lie when presented with questions. One example is when I asked a Genius about my iPad's wifi issues. He explained to me that he hadn't heard about that (the issue was 2 weeks old at the time), I looked at him with amazement at the brazen lie he just told me, I'm assuming he's lying because he is a "Genius" after all and a "Genius" you'd think would keep track of the platforms they are supporting. The latest issue was in taking an iPhone that was losing power back. They told me the phone was fine and that losing power was to be expected, the phone was going flat in 6 hours, this is expected? Again is the Genius lying or actually an idiot.

I feel this term "Genius" is a bad one. I've debated on my future trips to the Apple Store that I sign in as Wiley Coyote, since we all know he was a "Super Genius" (even though that damn Road Runner was clever). For those Apple readers out there that hate this term, I dare you to sign in to the Apple Store as "Wiley Coyote".