My point is that this "reward" sounds a heck of a lot like the tail end of This STTOS series.

"Also some of the science and tech courses are very demanding but the teachers don't simplify it leading to many whooshing sounds for the student throughout the courses. Such courses could benefit from a simplified overview of the course material."

How many employers would like to hire people that can't understand the actual content and need "simplified overview" to get a grade? If you really don't grasp it to the point where you can actually apply the math for new, novel problems, then you don't actually know it, do you?

MOOCs have a serious credibility problem already. The very last thing they need is to dumb things down. If it becomes common knowledge that, say, an engineering MOOC graduate can't even handle a system of differential equations in an intelligent manner, or don't understand the implication of Green's function, then the credits will become truly worthless.

And apparently, keep doing it for 1.3 million years....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA78e7Vh_XE

You can't backup everything that's on the phone.

Your process sounds great to a technology-enabled person. But for mere humans?

They don't remember their Apple ID password.
They put in random answers to security questions for password recovery.
Their email address has changed, their computer has changed, etc.
They installed all that music, all those videos, and all those apps, like, a *year* ago or more. Who remembers how?

"Can't you just copy everything from my old phone over to my new phone?"

As you say, the process ends up being:

Initialize the phone as new, to their current computer.
Create a new Apple ID and sign them in.
Install and position all the apps one by one by looking at their old phone as you hold it.
Get ahold of all the music that they already bought in some other format so that they don't have to pay for it again.
Give them the bad news about what can't be tracked down/reinstalled (apps no longer in app store, music that can't be found elsewhere without re-buying, etc.)

I could have sworn that in a recent case, we lost all of SMS and she was upset about that, but may I'm remembering incorrectly. Still, the process is onerous.

It pisses people off—"You mean I can't just move all of *my* stuff from my old phone to my new phone? Why do they call it an *upgrade?*"

I'm not saying they're right. Sure, they should remember their passwords, take care of their online identities, etc.

But the fact is that you cannot simply do this:

1. Connect old iPhone to computer
2. Back up full contents
3. Connect new iPhone to computer
4. Restore full contents

I've been on to Apple a couple of times with people standing next to me while I try to act as an intermediary, and the people on the other end of the line end up just throwing their hands up, apologizing, and saying they can't help.

To be fair, this isn't exactly easy on Android either. But it's slightly easier. And both platforms need to seriously work on it.

if the computer + iTunes is newer than the phone. Try this:

-> Plug a full, everyday-used iPhone that was backed up or set up on an old computer
-> Into a new computer where it has never been backed up before

What you will get is an option to erase the phone and start over. You will not get the option to back up the phone, and Apple says that's by design—the licensed content on the phone is tied to the iTunes installation where it was set up, and the license can't be associated with a new iTunes.

Problem is that people that ask me for help have almost invariably either bought a new computer or reinstalled Windows since the time they set up their phone. So there is no way to create a backup—when you plug the phone in, you only get the option to erase the phone and set it up new.

seamlessly? I have family members asking me to help with their iPhones routinely, and this is always a nightmare.

Is it just a matter of your having one stable iTunes installation over the entire period? Because the problem that I run into over and over again is that iCloud is either partial in its backing up and/or doesn't have enough space and thus doesn't back everything up, and they have invariably got a computer that's newer than their iPhone. As a result, their iPhone has never been backed up to iTunes, and when they ask me to help with a transition, I can't help them—iTunes simply offers to erase the phone when you plug it in since the phone predates the iTunes installation.

So we end up having to do a phone side-by-side—check each item installed on the old phone, then install and position it again on the new phone, one-by-one. Takes hours, and some things (SMS messages) are just plain lost. I'd love to find a way to just migrate one iPhone to the next with a click, but so far I haven't found it—the only way to do this appears to be to have an iTunes installation that predates your original phone and to which the phone has been synchronized since it was new. Then you can restore the backup to the new phone. But if the iTunes installation is newer than old phone, as far as I can tell users are SOL for easy transitions.

And most everyone I've helped to upgrade simply doesn't have this. Most of them don't even use iTunes at all.

There is a correlation, it's just not a perfect one.

Dan Aris

Ummm...what?

That's generally brought up in the context of surveillance. Do you view reviews, by customers, of the products and/or services they've received from companies serving the public as being in the same category as overly broad and privacy-invading surveillance?

'Cause to me, that sounds like the kind of transparency a free market is built upon.

Dan Aris

It does depend on the size of the field as well, though, as well as the funding. I can well imagine astronomy having major problems; everybody has heard of astronomy, and lots of people dream of being astronomers.

A friend of mine is working in paleogeology. As you might imagine there's not a huge amount of money in the field. On the other hand, few people have heard of it either, and there aren't that many people dreaming of working there. There's no movies starring daring paleogeogists with hat and bullwhip in hand ducking poison arrows and swinging across pits of snakes in order to determine the local sea bed temperature during the cambrian. The end result is that funding is pretty stable and dependable. People that are qualified and willing find funding. I bet there's a fair amount of other obscure fields in a similar situation.

I'm sure that happens too! ^_~

Dan Aris

There is one sure way to reduce negative reviews: Make sure your product and/or service is good quality.

Nothing can entirely eliminate negative reviews, because sometimes people just get a lemon product, or the person giving them service was having a bad day, or they're just ornery people who can't be satisfied. But if you do your job right, monitor your employees to make sure they're not slacking off or mistreating your customers—and, of course, the best way to do this is to make sure they're satisfied with their jobs in the first place—and don't skimp monetarily on the quality of your product, service, or employees, then you're likely to get more good reviews than bad.

Dan Aris