I’m a bloody Mac indeed. And, (just like me…), iMacs, and the Airport Extreme are perfect! Incapable of error and foolproof! Not.

As the impending self-destruct of a PC loomed, I decided to take the plunge and buy a Mac to replace it. A big, beautiful and very expensive (for a PC replacement) iMac Dual 2 Core machine. Why? Well, why not, and also as they run XP I wasn’t about to have to rebuy all my PC software, I could get a copy of XP and have that on there too. And it’s fast, with a big hard drive and, well, quite beautiful really.

Mostly my experiences with this iMac have been very good. but as a customer experience commentator in my day job, I also am very aware that only by delivering consistently good experiences can a company be ‘remarkable’. One bad and unforgivable experience and the ‘bloody mac’ posts start getting circulated. You may assume from the tone of this that I have had a bad experience, a significantly bad experience, and am posting accordingly. This is a ‘bloody mac’ post.

The issue is all about wireless connectivity. Sit an iMac next to a Vaio Laptop in a particular spot in my house and the Vaio sees 5 bars of signal, the iMac none. I have posted a video showing this for unbelievers. Apple support did good trying to help me out with this, but to no avail. After a day, though, and a chat with Simon (who wandered round the tote offices with his iBook), we realised that if you tip the screen of the iMac back and forward, the connectivity changes significantly. In my case all sorts of next-door networks started appearing if the screen was tipped back, and others if it was tipped forward. I begin to smell a rat. I shift the iMac 18 inches to the right, I get a bit of a signal…back to position, I get none.

So this is a hypersensitive beast this iMac. It has a single plane receiver, all around the screen. And anywhere that is less than a full-on signal just ain’t enough if the screen is pointing in the wrong direction. Great. My desk is in ‘the wrong direction’. (Shades of the old Brit train-is-late excuse, ‘the wrong kind of snow’!).

OK, so, on advice of my Apple Store Gurus, I decide to augment my trusty Netgear DG834G with a brand spanking new Airport Extreme N and a ground floor extender Airport Express. Nearly GBP200 of goodies! But it’s bound to work out of the box, isn’t it? Its a Mac! No.

To cut a very very tedious story short, the Airport Extreme N super-dooper-mac-whooper performed worse than the Netgear. And the extender appeared to have little impact. But the worst part of all was the interminable setup procedure. It took two days, two whole days, to configure the Airport Extreme and the Airport Express so that I got a good signal where I wanted it. And I’m sure that it could have been achieved with the Netgear device if I had spent as much time with it. FYI I ended up on channel 5 with no security set. The two devices did not work together with WEP, and the signal was too weak with WPA.

The worst bits of all of this are the assumptions of Mac:

• That Mac is ‘better’. Not in this case where design has compromised the wireless receiver effectiveness.
• That Mac is easier to set up. Not always - I tentatively propose that the Airport Extreme N has been released too soon with inadequate testing of its software utility. The configuration interaction with Airport Express is particularly poor.

So, am I a Mac or a PC? The jury’s out, but if my iMac was in an ad with my Vaio, then my iMac would be mute and the PC would have to tip the iMacs head back and forward to make it speak. Now that’d be almost as comic as having a camera taped to your head, don’t you think?

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