Dan from Netflap.com has an article describing a problem that he calls the “related blame syndrome.” I think the problem can be best explained by an example. The other day, I helped someone import their photos into iPhoto. A few days later, the person I helped says, “you helped me with iPhoto but you broke my Internet Connection!” Dan says,

Why is it that when it comes to computers and technology, people want to immediately relate one problem with another. Even if there is virtually no correlation, users decide to create one.

He goes on to posit that there is some strange aspect of technology that causes people to make correlations between unrelated problems, driving “computer experts” nuts.

While I’m glad to see I’m not the only person who’s noticed related-blame syndrome, I disagree with the idea that it is a mysterious affliction limited to technical problems. Read More »

It appears that my wife purchased a MacBook with the dreaded random shutoff problem. The other night, I was trying to figure out why Safari mis-renders the heading of this blog (the i and Morphous should appear on the same line, but don’t in Safari), when suddenly, the MacBook just turned off. I quickly checked the Magsafe connector and the battery. Connected, and the battery showed a full charge (via the nifty little battery test button on the bottom of the laptop). My heart sank. I gulped, and pressed the power button to restart the Mac, but to no avail. The computer spun up the hard disk but before it could power on the screen, it shut itself off. There I was holding a useless MacBook that wouldn’t turn on, just after I had posted an article on how Apple was one of few manufacturers that could compete with IBM’s Thinkpad in terms of quality and that I was going to switch. After reading posts by other users with this problem, I feared that my wife would be without her machine for weeks. Would Apple and Apple Support let us down like it had the others who posted their stories online?

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