Redswish - carefully crafted banter

iTunes support

I don’t mean to sound like an Apple fanboy but once again they’ve managed to surpass my expectations and slap big fat smile on my face. A couple of nights ago, in the early hours of the morning whilst very tired and in desperate need of sleep for work the next day, I decided to download the iPhone app ‘Bloom’ by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers. Which, by the way, is fantastic. But somewhere along the line I successfully managed to clear off all the apps on my iPhone, and I was not happy.

I’m not one for customer service emails or calls, I have no faith in that system. If something breaks, I throw it away and buy it again. But I decided to give iTunes the benefit of the doubt. I sent a rather rude, demanding email that was very unlike me and can only be put down to how tired and annoyed I was at the time.

Less than 4 hours later, which didn’t bother me as I was in bed, I received this response:

Dear Nathan,

This is Sasha with iTunes Customer Support. I would first like to thank you for inquiring about the App Store. I understand you are concerned that you lost your App Store purchases. I will be happy to help.

App Store purchases may be downloaded again at no charge, either from your device or using iTunes on your computer. Be sure that you are signed in to the same iTunes Store account that you used to shop from the App Store, and follow the steps to purchase any missing content again. You will be notified that you have already purchased the App and can download each missing item again for free.

For more information, please visit:

App Store FAQ
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ApplicationsFAQPage

If you have difficulty downloading any applications, please reply to let me know or consult this article:

Troubleshooting applications purchased from the App Store
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1702

Sincerely,

Sasha
iTunes Store Customer Support

Which is fair enough. A straightforward reply in a professional yet friendly and personal tone. I liked that. So I deided to email back and apologise for my initial arsey email, only to receive another response from Sasha only minutes later:

Dear Nathan,

You’re very welcome. No need to apologize. I know how frustrating these kinds of issues can be. I’m just so glad to hear that you were able to get your purchases back.

Nothing makes Apple happier than to hear that we have pleased our customers. I hope that you continue to enjoy the iTunes Store.

Remember, if you have any further questions or concerns please let me know and I will be more than happy to further assist you.

Have a wonderful day!

That really pleased me.

Why is this such a big deal? Because in this fast-paced world where huge companies spare no time for individual customers willing to dish out £1000’s on their products and services, the fact that someone in a service center on the other side of the world took the time out to craft a dedicated, friendly response goes a long way.

And personally, I feel it’s these touches that put Apple ahead of the rest of the game.

• Read more...

Dug up

A few of my posts from the Flame blog archives from last year. Possibly worth a gander:

Books or online tutorials

A discussion on the benefits of books or online learning, the clue’s in the title!

There has been mild debate in the office recently over whether we prefer online tutorials or the traditional printed word. This has been sparked by a recent subscription to Lynda.com, an online resource of video tutorials.

It seems that Lynda hasn’t been used as much as hoped or expected. But alas, this is not because we’re all too lazy to learn, on the contrary we’ve all been too busy to participate in 8 hour tutorials on designing fonts, modeling gorillas in 3DS Max or building a spaceship using only PHP and a dashing of AJAX (yeh I have no idea how you’d do that either)…

Read more…

Does anybody care what you have to say?

A muse about the value of blogging today and just how important is your voice?

Blogging has evolved, transformed and broadened massively over the years. I wouldn’t like to say ’since it was invented’ because, well it was never ‘invented’, it has just ‘become’, biologically… like a living entity. Anyway, enough semantics.

The origins of blogging have long since been lost in the mists of time, it is maintained that only scholars know the true reasoning behind the now extremely popular web activity and in some cases – business. I personally have only been blogging since January this year, and am constantly learning new tricks, styles and trends…

Read more…

Navigating large blogs

Some advice for designers on how to make large blogs more usable and easy-to-navigate.

With the exception of news-exclusive blogs, pretty much the entirety of blogs on the net feature topical or thematic content that can be useful and informative not only at the time it’s written, but for many months or even years down the line.

So when a blog grows and expands, it’s easy for older posts to get lost and unseen. Sure they’re still there, archived or categorized, but once your post count starts to rise above the lofty heights of 100 posts… chances are your old work, regardless of how well-written or useful, is going to attract less traffic from either external or internal sources.

The importance of internal blog navigation cannot be underestimated. It may seem obvious but a lack of categorization, clear navigation and tidy layout can have massive negative implications on a site’s usability, and therefore readership.

Read more…

The little things that matter

Considering how essential to the overall design even the smallest elements are, and how they should never be overlooked.

Sometimes it seems all too easy to simply throw up a contact form or a standard menu layout because at the end of the day – everyone knows how these things work, as long as they do their job, they don’t require much attention.

Oh how wrong that is. A recent string of articles from Smashing Magazine regarding Web Form Design Patterns emphasises the importance of the smallest design aspects, such as the placement of labels next to input boxes, wording, use of colour, shape, size and position and much more.

Read more…

• Read more...

A thought on the recession

Pfff… this crunchy credit’s getting a bit hard to swallow, I might have to cancel my numerous magazine subscriptions and cut back on my capitalist ritualistic Cafe Nero coffee drinking… sure.

You see, in the UK and pretty much around the whole world there’s this ‘recession’ thing. What, you didn’t know about that? I say the whole world, but you can only really have a recession if there was some previous economic growth, so third-world countries – I’m afriad you’re out of the game!

So in the UK there’s a recession, but there isn’t really a recession, but of course there is. Quite why we’re in this ‘current economic climate’ no-one knows, and to be honest absolutely no-one knows. Gordon Brown thinks he knows, he doesn’t know. Whoah I’m getting all political on a web design blog! I’m really sorry, but this is my blog so I retain artistic license.

• Read more...