An empirical investigation into the comparative advantages of purchasing from Ford and Upgrading from Apple 24 Jun 2010 I carried out a controlled experiment yesterday. I started my iPhone upgrade to iOS4. I then went and bought a new car from Ford. It took me less time to do that than to upgrade the iOS, at a ratio of 3:1. It took me 4.5–5 hours to upgrade the iOS, and 90 minutes to buy a new car… The Discussion section of the paper on this experiment may not get past the reviewers, on account of snark… Humor
Humor Begging that damned question 26 May 201426 May 2014 Something that bugs the hell out of me, literally, is the misuse of English. Of course, I was trained as a subeditor in the days when such things mattered even to journalists, so I am a fossilised dinosaur in this respect. I even try to use adverbs correctly. One thing… Read More
Administrative Home, tired, and amused 10 Nov 2009 I arrived after a not-too-shabby flight on a Qantas A388. The American couple next to me couldn’t believe it was built by the French; I pointed out that a few other European countries also contributed. I actually slept for a while. Anyway, nothing sensible is going to come from me… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity Modelling and ecological niches 2 Jul 2009 Overlooked due to the orang paper in the Journal of Biogeography is a simulation of the effects of global warming on Bigfoot distributions. It turns out that Sasquatch will become more widespread due to global warming… Late note: John Dennehy also has a nice piece on this paper. Read More
I upgraded to IOS 4 yeterday too. I started at 4 pm, at work, and I left the office at 4.50. I didn’t buy a car – perhaps there is some kind of interaction between them?
Congratulations on the 90 minute record! I lease my cars so we go through the renewal process every two years. What we do is decide on which car to buy – that usually takes about two months of sporadic discussions (sometime vehement!). Then we visit three dealerships in our area and ask for their very best price. When the bids are in, we phone the winning salesperson and ask them to draw up to contract and we’ll be in to sign it and arrange delivery. That last part should only take a few minutes, right? Wrong. Every single time we’ve leased a car, the salesperson fails to have a contract ready to sign. They always have to fill out the form in front of us and try to sell us a bunch of “extras.” Then they have to clear everything with the sales manager while we sit in the office playing games on our upgraded iPhone. This can take over two hours. That’s why we will always do the upgrade *before* getting a new car.
I think that they are in a rather competitive market right now and it is the EOFY sale. It might not work so well at other times…
Every single time we’ve leased a car, the salesperson fails to have a contract ready to sign. Why don’t you make winning the bid contingent on having the contract ready? If the contract is not ready when you walk in the door…auto-fail!