On the albums I’ve right-clicked -> Get Album Artwork, no artworks shows unless I hover over the icon with the mouse. Does this happen to you?

no hover

mouse hovered over icon (screen capture omits cursor)

I saw it yesterday (from a distance, no sound) on TV and thought man this is a long ad, what message could take that long?

I think it “plays” long because there’s too much going on. I worked at an ad agency for almost 4 years, and I know how these things work. If you don’t have one very powerful creative type running things, you get an ad created by too many people. Too many cooks spoil the soup. Everybody wants their “bit” in the spot, and in the absence of a strong leader, they get it. This affliction is rampant in US advertising.

I watched it again and I see Woof’s points.

I can close my eyes and see what happened here: one ad agency creative had to have his churros, another had to have the ID card, another had to have the shoe stiffness joke, another had to have his “you’re a 10″ joke. It adds up.

I think on a very intellectual level, to Seinfeld show lovers (10+ years ago now), it works. But to the other 85% of the country it’s a too-long, unfunny, muddled message head scratcher. And next to the simple, quick, biting Get a Mac Apple ads, it’s a clear loser.

But here’s the most important thing about it: when compared to the Apple ads, the ad mirrors exactly the much larger corporate themes. Apple and its products are focused and simple, and Microsoft is a disaster, both in products, message and corporate direction.

My MacBook battery went from an anemic 10-20 minute charge to no capacity at all. The charging icon in the menu bar simply says “Battery is not charging” or alarmingly, “No batteries available“. It’s way beyond calibration (AppleSwitcher.com) because it won’t charge to complete a charge/de-charge cycle which is a prerequisite for calibration (Apple.com).

So I did a Resetting an Apple portable’s System Management Controller (SMC) after finding that tip here. No help.

The MacBook I bought as a refurb a little less than two years ago.

http://www.99rental.com/ tells us what the 99¢ rental is each week, since Apple makes this nearly impossible to find.

For you alternative info-gathering types, the site publishes the sub-buck pick in RSS, Twitter, email and via Dashboard Widget(!).

To my surprise and delight I found my iPhone adds the requisite umlaut over the u in “Mötley Crüe“.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the o in “Mötley”, and the overall iPhone Umlaut Awareness Test(tm) result is a 1-for-2.