COS News Bites: Apple calls consumer reports seriously flawed

Consumer Reports and Apple exchange words

Early this week Consumer Reports issued a report stating that the new Apple iPhone is 'seriously flawed'. Apple blasted back that Consumer Reports is 'unimaginative' and 'looks like something straight out of the 15th century'. Adding, "they are still using a printing press, shaa!" "We will bury them".

COS News Bites: Apple CEO Jobs on stage, reveals... Lemur?

Apple chief executive, Steve Jobs, has again unveiled something new from Apple. He said it was a "revolutionary" product.

Transcript

STEVE JOBS: In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks. They're going to have to be far better at doing some really important things—better than the laptop, better than the smartphone. What kind of tasks? Well, things like making you smile without you needing to do anything at all. That's a pretty tall order. This device needs to be able to do entirely new kinds of things. Digging in the earth. Enjoying and sharing grubs. Predators—watching for predators. Enjoying the hot sun on a Saturday afternoon. Playing games. Frolicking. If there's going to be a third category of device, it's going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone, otherwise it has no reason for being. Now, some people have thought that's a Guinea Pig. The problem is Guinea Pigs aren't better at anything. They … they're slow, they have low quality demeanors, and they really don’t do much at all. So, they're not better than an iPad at anything—they're just cheaper. They're just cheap animals. And we don't think they're a third category of animal that will be ignored by your children after the first week. But we think we've got something that is, and we'd like to show it to you today for the first time. And we call it the Lemur. So, let me show it to you now. This is what it looks like. I happen to have one, right here. That's what it looks like. Very thin—looks just like this. So, just give you a little overview. It's very thin, and when it gets a little bigger you can put shirts on it and so forth to personalize it any way you want. People will take their family photos with it, I'm sure, but we ship a few and you can do anything you want with it.

COS News Bites: Govt. App

U.S. Government Sets up Online 'App Store'?

It was announced yesterday that the US government is planning to move to cloud computing and set up an app store. The app store could contain games and social networking applications to keep government workers entertained during long sessions of debate in congress. However, the government would like to have some more useful apps as well such as: the Calculate My Budget Shortfall App, Random Unverified Statistics App, David Letterman Scheduler App, Where in the World is Bin Ladin App, Predator Drone App, Tap Tap Revenge, and of course….Flashlight. There is almost an App for everything.

COS News Bites: Telekinetic Search

Microsoft Claims Telekinesis With Bing

Microsoft says telekinetic search will be rolled into Bing over the next few weeks, with some customers seeing it before others. ;-) Specifically Microsoft believes it can magically influence some people to switch to its 2nd best search engine, from Google, simply by waving its fingers and making stuff up.

Friends of COS: West, "I didn't mean to slight the HRIS group"

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Story Highlights:

• West eager for incident to be "teaching moment" to improve HRIS reports everywhere 
• West's fiance says West has no immediate plans to quit the profession
• Sensitive HR people everywhere asked West to apologize to "all HRIS personnel" offended 

WASHINGTON (COS) – Business Analyst Mike West said Friday he spoke with the HRIS group who flubbed his data report and told the group he did not mean to malign the entire HRIS group when he said they acted stupidly.

Mr. West acknowledged that his words "helped to contribute to ratcheting" up the situation when he criticized the manner in which the HRIS group constructed the report.

"I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the HRIS group or even any one person specifically," West told reporters. "I could have calibrated those words differently, and I told this to the general GHRIS report email box." "Clearly I don't have all the facts, I don't even know who those people are back there", West admitted.

West spoke about two hours after HRIS groups everywhere called on him to apologize. He did not apologize for his remark but repeated that he believed his choice of words was unfortunate.

He reiterated his assertion that he believes the report was bad, but said I "probably overreacted as well."

"My sense is you have got one person, an HRIS group, and a poorly constructed enterprise system in a circumstance in which none of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved," he said.

West also looked briefly at the report again, which was a termination report, AnotherPharma reported. Despite the missing data, he and the report were able to make a positive contribution to humanity on Thursday afternoon, AnotherPharma said. West also plans to use the report again in the near future."

"I am eager for this incident to be used as a teaching moment in America," said the e-mail. "This is certainly not about me."

His fiance, Lisa Bambauer, told others that she applauds West’s magnanimity and "I look forward to working this out with all parties amicably… especially with the wedding approaching"

Asked if he plans to file a revised "report request ticket”, West said, "It depends on the response from everyone involved as to how we'll proceed."

Earlier Friday, West’s manager said West should apologize to members of the HRIS group for saying they acted stupidly, the president of on unaffiliated employee network group said.

Sunil Chandra, president of Google’s HRIS group, also took aim at AnotherPharma's HRIS group, who reportedly has characterized the groups HRIS system as "every analysts nightmare and an unfortunte reality for HR groups everywhere."

Still, echoing the words of lots of other people he said he was dismayed that West would opine on the report without all the details of why it was so messed up.

"It's noteworthy that West did qualify his statements by saying he did not have all the facts," O'Connor said as members of his and another HRIS group stood behind him. "Usually, when one hears those words, one would expect the next words to be 'so I cannot comment.' Instead, West, admittedly stand-offish to offshoots of system’s created in the stone age, proceeded to insult the handling of his report."

O'Connor said the entire HRIS group resent the implication they purposefully allowed the report to go out with a lot of missing data.

"We hope that West will reflect upon his past comments and apologize to the men and women of the HRIS department," some other person said.

Michael DeAngelo, vice president of HR for Quaker Oats, also called on West to apologize to "all HRIS groups throughout the entire country that took offense to this."

West said earlier he was "surprised by the controversy surrounding" his comments.

"I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably shouldn’t send out a report with over 4000 missing details, particularly if you know why they are missing and how to correct it.”

When West waded into the issue by firing off multiple clearly not thought out emails on Wednesday, he admitted that he "may be a little biased" because he has been suffering with data problems since joining AnotherPharma.

"I don't know all the facts," he also conceded.