Well I don't think the problem is about wether it's seller or customer friendly but how the cost is distributed between the customers. If the warranty is high, the additional support costs will added to the product price, such that the support penalty is effectively shared between the customers. On the other side, if the warranty period is short, the product price will be lower, but a small number of customers must pay a lot to repair their devices out of warranty. Then one needs to take into consideration that there are many ways to break a device by being "sloppy" but not fall outside warranty constrains. I try to be careful with the devices I own and in the first case I would have to pay for the carelessness of other people and I don't like that. On the other side high repair cost can be a large burden to single individuals, which is when it is reasonable to share risks in the community (see, e.g., medical costs).
This is why I guess the European law is basically about getting a working device in the first place and not about how repair costs are being distributed, which is non-obvious to decide.
I worked for a German retailer for a while and we had a lot of problems with customers not understanding the difference between the warranty the manufacturer gives and the "warranty" required by European law.
The first difference is who is liable. In the first case it is the manufacturer, in the second case the seller of the product.
The second distinction is to when it applies. In the first case Apple will repair anything that breaks during coverage, unless the damage is caused by carelessness. In the second case the "warranty" only applies to what is alredy broken when the seller gives you the device. Examples where this warranty does not hold, is when your hard drive breaks after 8 month or some connections ports stop working after 14 months although they once worked.
In summary the European warranty reduces to a protection for the customer, that the seller doesn't deliver a broken product. So in principle a manufacturer doesn't need to give any warranty at all, but the sellers would not be comfortable with that as in the first 6 months, they have to prove to the customer that the product was working at delivery, which is arguably impossible.
The only case where the European law results in additional coverage for the customer compared to the year apple gives, is when a defect was present at delivery and the customer only noticed it after one year and is able to prove that the defect was there at the beginning. I would like to see someone trying to prove that there was a manufacturing defect causing a connection port to disconnect from the motherboard after 14 month (or did you yank on that cord to much?...).
if you have to have a big warning sign just for a cookie that will remember you for purely convenience so that it keeps you logged in. The user wont read that detail – they will just think your a privacy nightmare and wont sign up
The only times lay surfers have heard about cookies is in the news when severe privacy invasions have occurred. To those that have never heard of it, it is new, so they are cautious. Some parts of the industry have misused that technology and now the whole industry is called to gain back the users trust.
The EU law's intention is to shift the responsibility from the companies to the user, i.e. they will be the ones to decide weather they want to use cookies or not. To make that decision they need to be informed about it's positive and negative sides.
Regarding opt-out models, how many people will know about that? So if I'm not aware of opting-out, is it my fault if some company goes berserk with my privacy rights?
have global menus (who really wants that with todays screen resolutions and two monitors?
I never had a problem with that. With a 13" device it's possible to have 2 to 4 windows open at the same time, since the windows themselves use space efficiently. So at best this argument is subjective to the user.
needs the worlds best trackpads because their laptop keyboards have misplaced ctrl and their default keybindings are so inconsistent that users would be lost without a good pointing device
Not being accustomed to the keyboard layout is rather an excuse than an argument. Also my impression of the key bindings is that they are well done and consistent. Do you have examples to prove your case?
forces developers to use the fn key to reach the function keys, but even then, maps some of the F-keys to operating system functions.
As an developer you should be able to tackle more difficult tasks than finding out that the custom fn keys can be disabled in the system preferences->keyboard pane(if it is important enough for you to write about publicly).
doesn't get multiple desktops? Don't ask me why they ship them, because their window management is so broken that multiple desktops just doesn't work, at least not for me
Window management is a problem for me too. Tools like Shiftit make it easier, but it does't feel like THE solution. I'm curious though if that problem is considered solved on any other platform. The last times I used Windows (XP to 7) it did not do any better.
Try have someone who doesn't know iTunes burn a cd
At some point it was easier to do that(e.g. dedicated button), but given that disc-drives are on the leave in PCs, burning is of less importance to users (at least I can't remember someone burning cd's recently). As one of the most used peaces of software iTunes has a pretty good help documentation, which describes how to burn a cd nicely. The procedure is also quite reasonable, introducing few concepts apart from standard procedures(creating a playlist).
"He said the company’s engineering driven culture is also responsible, explaining that the engineers at the company see the design of the software on a mobile phone as secondary to the guts of the device"
The conflict is not between technology and marketing, but between hardware and software. The NYT columnist is using the term engineering in a manufacturing rather than intellectual sense.
First of all you have to define what "using it" means. I would define it as a program is running and/or music is playing. So in those cases automated syncing wouldn't start, such that you can continue to do whatever you were doing and the device just charges.
With such a system you would add a lot of complexity to the system. How many people will be frustrated to see their devices not automatically syncing because the wouldn't know about all this technical nuances or they forgot that they still had an app running.
Another option would be to continue the audio process after syncing the device. Since syncing can take quite a lot of time. Users would be annoyed to see their devices start playing music without apparent reason. I mean how many would sit there with their earbuds, waiting for sound to continue. Admittedly audiobook/podcast listeners would more likely do so than music listeners.
So what are your current options without requesting those cans of worms? Canceling the sync on the device, which would still stop the audio process or disabling auto sync to not be bothered by it while listening to audiobooks, but be bothered to hit sync while updating podcasts.