Despite this, even then, I knew there was something there. Why? Because just like iTunes, Steam allowed its users to accomplish all the goals of piracy (save the cost), without the piracy: download and play right there, with even less hassle than piracy! Cool… I’d be willing to pay for that. And in a few years time we were all doing it!

Fast forward eight years and Steam is the most prevalent game distribution platform around, at least most certainly for PC gaming. After the port to Mac, Steam was actually pretty decent, slowly releasing Mac titles and offering cross-platform purchase translations. I loved it! All those games I had for Windows were suddenly available for Mac without paying a penny more. But despite all this work to transition Steam for Mac, they still somehow don’t quite get what Mac users like about having a Mac; it’s in the details, always has been, always will be. So where does Steam for Mac still go wrong?

Smooth Scrolling

You’re unlikely to be using a trackpad or MagicMouse for your gaming, but these days I find myself browsing steam for new deals at least once every few months, often just purchasing games for others. But browsing in Steam is like taking a step back to my PC days back in 2004. I constantly lose track of my position because every time I scroll it behaves like the second hand of a clock; chunking its way up or down in jarring intervals.

It’s a frustrating phenomenon when all of your devices are designed for the natural smooth progression in scrolling that the Mac experience typically offers.

Aqua Widgets

Mac OS X Lion has been out for four months now and was available for developers to play around with for many months before that. Despite this, the red, orange and green buttons for window management are all still presented in Leopard/Snow Leopard style. Because of the shrinkage that was applied to those widgets in every single other app I use, this makes Steam feel completely out of place. Valve! Update those widgets already!

Snow Leopard

Lion

Overall Layout

Although dozens of critics have hated on the Steam general UI, I’m not a hater. I like it because I like different designs. But I’m also happy to admit when I see something better and this tweaked design by Cocoia is gorgeous. It’s been around for a long time; too bad Valve hasn’t hired this guy.

Gift Certificates

This one isn’t a UI complaint, but one of missing functionality across all platforms. It’s way more fun to gift a particular game to someone, but sometimes your friends haven’t filled out their wishlist. Then what? How about offering gift certificates! I can’t think of a better store that desparately needs gift certificates than a completely online-distribution system. iTunes does it, Kobo does it, Amazon does it, Netflix does it, and just about every single digital distribution system in the world, except Steam.

Still Gaming?

I may not be gaming as much as I used to, and these UI annoyances aren’t enough to take all the blame for that, but they may make up a small portion of it. It would be nice to see Valve putting a bit more thought into the work they do to get the little things right. I have a lot of respect for app developers, but only when the quality of their applications are up to snuff.

When a developer has placed his or herself in the shoes of their users, you always notice these things because they make their app the way you would make it. I’m not talking about the coding per se, but the experience of using the app. Through a great, engaging experience, you can really appreciate the work they’ve put into their application. The next time you discover a new feature and it works in a brilliantly simple and elegant way, you notice. (E.g.: pull to refresh by Atebits found for the first time in the Tweetie Twitter client). When an update comes out, making things you do every day easier than ever, you notice (e.g.: Foursquare does this regularly. Facebook does not).

I want to be engaged by Steam, to keep me coming back to play more games, but it’s entirely up to the devs to put thought into the details to make that happen.

These are my options:

• Factory Unlocked – I can take it with me to Mexico and anywhere else in the world and use a local carrier for cheap. Great!
• $749 for the 32GB iPhone 4S – OUCH! That’s pricey.
• Only 1 year left on my contract with Rogers, then I’m free to re-negotiate and (probably) switch carriers

• Locked to Rogers for the full three (3!) years from today
• $269 $429 ($319 + $75 Hardware Upgrade fee + $35 Administration fee) for the 32GB iPhone 4S.
• Add another two years to my contract, putting me back to three years down the road until my next phone.

Can you tell why I refuse to renew my contract? Before I get into the details of my comparison, let me first say that I paid $199 for my iPhone 3GS two years ago and that my 3GS is unbearably slow to the extent that I am unable to do most of my work on my phone. The 4S will resolve this problem.

If I were in the US, my contract would be done and I wouldn’t be paying any penalties – I would be free and clear to pay the regular $299 for the 32GB iPhone 4S and enter into a new 2-year contract. Yes it would be $30 more in the US – $30 more for 1 less year on contract? I’ll take it! Oh wait, I can’t; not an option in the great white north. 2 years is reasonable, 3 is not. As of 5 years ago, three year contracts made sense since phone technology was advancing at a roughly equivalent pace. Every three years a new slew of phones would tide you over until three years after that. But it’s a new decade: phone technology is advancing so fast that 3 years is pretty much two lifetimes for a cellphone. 3 year contracts simply don’t make any sense anymore.

Wait, why is it so much more expensive than the new contract price of $269?

Good question. I filled out a bunch of inormation on Rogers’ website and it came back with the magic number of $429. Which means it’s marked up 63% above the normal 3-year contract price even though I’m getting exactly the same thing a brand new customer of Rogers would get. AND the phone remains locked.

For an additional $320 I get the wonderful ability to renegotiate my contract in a year (or change providers) and the ability to head anywhere in the world and make use of my phone at a decent rate. By the time I’m paying $429, what’s another $320?

The results of this analysis are that Rogers is failing to recognize a few key facts:

1. 3-year contracts no longer match with the pace of innovation in the mobile device market
2. I’m more than willing to pay a reasonable premium to do an early hardware upgrade. $160 on top of the regular price for the phone is not reasonable.
3. When your upgrade premium brings the price of the phone to more than 50% of the outright purchase price, it begins to tilt the scales in favour of buying outright. This is especially true because there are two major benefits to buying outright: factory unlocked condition and the ability to negotiate a new contract with retentions (or simply walk away).

Rogers should be doing a better job keeping their customers around. It’s in their best interest to keep you upgrading your phone and renewing your contract, yet these new upgrade policies are not accomplishing that. How can they do this? Here’s a few ways.

1. Come up with a better hardware upgrade policy – especially for those at the two year mark. I would be willing to pay $50 to do the upgrade a year early. Maybe as much as $75 – but no more than that. You’ll note that $75 brings the price to only 46% of the outright purchase price – keeping the balance below that precious 50% mark.
2. Do what they did a few years ago when the iPhone 3GS came out a year after the 3G. Upgrading to the 3GS (2 years early no less) from the 3G cost only $100 on top of the phone price. That also falls perfectly into line with my $50 at year 2 suggestion above ($50 / year early).
3. Reduce the benefits of buying outright. Allow customers to unlock their phones after a few months of their contract (or immediately after the return policy is over). If I didn’t have to wait until the end of the 3 year contract to unlock my phone, I would absolutely lock-in for another 3 year contract with Rogers and save the $320.

Short Introduction to the Google+ Launch

For those who have not had a chance to try out Google+, its greatest functionality essentially boils down to a mixture of the public nature of Twitter and the real-time conversations of Facebook. There’s also a great underlying layer of privacy control in the form of a fun-to-use interface that you’ve probably heard about called circles. The reason why circles isn’t really much to talk about anymore is because once you’ve got your big chunk of initial contacts within circles, you rarely see that interface again. You kind-of forget about it.

If you already had a Google account (read a Gmail account), then you didn’t really need to do much to get signed up except agree to their terms of services and start throwing contacts in circles. The barrier to entry is so small that millions of users signed up in the first month. This bodes well for Google because what’s a social network without users? You can post all you want, but without your friends, family, persons of interest and acquaintances, you’re not following or talking to anybody that is important to you. Since Twitter and Facebook cover persons of interest and friends, family and acquaintances already, if these folks don’t make their way to Google+ (at least a large portion of them), then why would you? Thankfully large numbers of them came in droves to test out Google+ and that first couple of weeks was alight with activity.

Notifications and the iPhone app

After a while, though, the pitfalls begin to stand out. You forget to continue visiting the website and realize that your only form of notifications is their constantly annoying emails. So you turn them off. Then you really forget to visit the website. Thankfully Google did one more thing right – they released the Google Plus app for Android and iPhone. My notifications started coming through and that initial hump was overcome. But the app (at least the iPhone one) isn’t perfect. And just like with the web service, the shortcomings of the app start showing as well.

The first big problem is the way notifications work on the iPhone app. When someone sends you a message the notification shows up in the messages area, but after you’ve read it, the notification remains. To clear it, you have to not only read the message, but also visit the notifications pane and refresh all the notifications. This is a few steps too many and most certainly gets frustrating when you’re getting dozens of messages (if not more) each day.

Huddle

Huddle is Google’s response to SMS replacement messengers like BlackBerry Messenger, Kik, Whatsapp, and the myriad of equivalents. When I first got the iPhone app, I was all for Huddle, it was faster to load than all of the other messengers and had roughly the same features. I was hooked. But as with everything else related to Google+ I began to get discouraged from using it due to the unfortunate behaviour of the application. The first problem was the notifications issue I mentioned above. The second issue is that everywhere I went that had low signal (whether wifi or 3G), my messages would start refusing to send. The annoying part is that it tells me they sent, then later on they’ll show me there was actually an error. I get the option to resend, but the resend button doesn’t do that! It brings the text of the message back to the text input box and I have to click send again – why make it two steps when it could easily be one? It’s not even close to the expected behaviour compared to all other apps that do the same thing. Clearly Google didn’t actually do their homework and use any of the other applications.

The most serious problem with Huddle is in the entire concept of how Huddle works. Huddle is only available in the mobile iPhone or Android application. You cannot use Huddle from the web interface even though the web interface already has a messenger application included! Google Plus web edition has Google Talk integrated in the same way Gmail does. People love Google Talk. So why in the world would Google make Huddle completely separate?! The worst part about all of this is that Facebook absolutely destroyed them on this very point.

During the launch of Google+, Facebook developers were hard at work integrating Facebook messages with Facebook chat. Just a few weeks after the launch of Google+, out came the new Facebook messaging platform – an integration of everything to do with private messaging through Facebook. From the email-like messages to the in-browser Facebook chat to Facebook chat on mobile devices, everything remains tightly integrated and in one combined messaging system. While I have my own tiny little personal issues with the new Facebook Messaging, overall it is extremely well done and absolutely destroys Google+ and their horribly fragmented chat and messaging systems. It sets the example for what should have happened with Huddle and Google Talk – they should have been one combined service. Had they done that, they would have beat Facebook to the punch and provided all first-mover Google+ users a good solid reason to stay with Google+. No such luck.

The non-existent API

I know what you’re thinking. “Why does anyone excluding developers care about an API?” Because they do, they just don’t know it yet. The existence of an API allows just about anyone to hook in to Google+ and make apps that take advantage of it. If Google had created an Google+ API right off the bat, what kinds of features could we all be taking advantage of? The biggest ones I was craving in those first few weeks are:

1. Notifications. Yep they came on the iPhone, but I also spend my time on my iPad and MacBook – no such luck there! I am a huge fan of the beautiful Boxcar app for notifications on my iPad and MacBook, but I can’t use Boxcar for Google+ notifications because Google+ provides no way for them to hook in to do so. Damn, too bad there’s not an API for that.
2. Automatic status updating. I already enjoy updating Facebook and Twitter. I do not want to update three or more services – that’s pretty damn time consuming. Dozens of applications already allow updating Facebook via Twitter and vice versa, but despite there being a demand for it, they cannot update Google+ because there’s no API.

I’m sure there are dozens of other great ways an API could benefit Google+. Too bad they weren’t on the ball here either.

How else should Google have integrated services? Does anyone remember their last ‘failed’ social media attempt? Google Buzz integrated your Facebook, Twitter and other services into one simple stream. So why aren’t Google Plus and Google Buzz integrated in any way? This one truly baffles me. If Google Buzz were integrated with my timeline in G+, my friends that prefer to update their Facebook status wouldn’t be a problem! I would then see their status updates in my Google Plus timeline. Those who prefer Google+ could then easily stick with it without the requirement to fall back on their Facebook timeline. Survey says: not happening.

Improvements Lacking

Here we are roughly 1.5 months later. Google has updated its iPhone Huddle app once and I discovered none of my only annoyances fixed. You might be thinking, give them time! But yet in this 1.5 month period Facebook has made massive changes to their messaging system to blow Google+ away (including the addition of video chat). In today’s world of connected apps, one week is a long time, and so when roughly seven of them pass without any major improvements, I (and I’m sure many others) begin to lose interest and faith that Google has the ability to improve the platform in a decent timeframe.

Google has historically been known to be way too slow to make changes. From what I’ve read, they have a problem when it comes to snap judgements and instead choose to launch multi-month studies to make their decisions. When you’ve got time to do this, that’s a fantastic approach. When your competitors are iterating faster than you, it’s time to wise-up and change your decision making methods in order to keep pace. I have yet to see this from Google+ and my hesitation towards the service grows ever stronger.

So, how do you one up this toilet paper roll menace? By taking out a new roll and leaving it on the counter. I just don’t understand it. By the time you’ve delved under the sink, ripped the roll out of its packaging and placed it on the counter, why not replace the old one too? You’ve already completed more than half the work!

So now you know. To one up the empty toilet paper roll and simultaneously defy all rationality, take out a new roll and leave it directly beside the old one.

My friend and colleague went on vacation in Florida with his Bell Canada locked iPhone. A few days in he discovered that he had been charged $0.75 for every text message in and out, and due to his obsession for text messaging, this added up to around the $200 mark. This is unfortunate, but certainly not Bell’s problem that my friend had forgotten to obtain an appropriate roaming plan for texting in the US.

After realizing his mistake, he called Bell and spoke to a representative to arrange having a roaming package added to his account. The package details were $30 for the month to make his text messages $0.20 per text rather than $0.75. My friend expected this would take effect for the remainder of his time in Florida and was pleasantly surprised when the Bell rep informed him that he could retroactively apply the package to all previous text message charges incurred in Florida, thus negating the excessive charges on his account. Thanks to the excellent support provided by the Bell Canada representative, my friend was satisfied and hung up a happy man.

Two days later his phone was disabled.

Upon return home from Florida, with a nearly useless cellphone because Bell’s automated system had disabled it for being over a predetermined limit on the account (about $300), my friend called Bell to inquire as to what had gone wrong. Since the only way for that amount to accumulate on his account is if the rep didn’t apply the package correctly, one would assume that Bell would take care of this by fixing up the account (applying the package) and re-enabling his phone. Nope. Not even close. Here’s what really happened.

Another call to Bell revealed the following key points:

1. They have all of the notes in their system showing what the first representative had done – you know, the guy who provided excellent customer service.
2. The Bell rep and about three supervisors all claim that the notes are invalid because the rep was wrong about being able to do everything he said he could do and thus the charges are valid.
3. Although the phone being disabled was entirely the result of a poorly trained representative of Bell (in other words, Bell’s fault), nobody at Bell can re-enable his phone because the balance has not yet been paid

This leaves us with a completely ridiculous situation. To re-active the phone, my friend must pay $300+ which he should never have owed to begin with, then make a claim against Bell to have them refund the amount he shouldn’t be paying because of their error. Why would Bell ever agree to pay him back any of that money? If they’re refusing to admit that he shouldn’t owe it now, then why would they change their mind and pay it back to him after the fact? That’s just asking to get robbed.

Let’s go back and examine the real problem(s) here and see how a rational supervisor or manager might resolve this. Firstly, the Travel USA Text bundle does exist – the rep could not have been wrong about that. You can see it right here on Bell’s website with all the details as described above ($30 for $0.20 texts and 150 included for free). Thus it seems likely that the wrongdoing on the original Bell rep’s part came in the form of backdating the plan – it’s likely that this is not actually possible and that it would only apply to all text messages following the date my friend called to add the plan. Although it is certainly a problem that the rep thought he could do this, let’s say there’s absolutely no way to ever backdate a plan, such that Bell assumes my friend is lying, even though he is not. Then my friend is still on the hook for the original $200 applied up until the day that he called. What he should have absolutely no claim to pay is any fees above $0.20 per text beyond the first 150 from the day he called. Yet his bill is $100 higher only a few days later because Bell did not actually apply the plan.

The solution is simple then. Bell admits that they have terrible training issues that result in ridiculous overcharges that they refuse to take care of for their customers, re-enables the phone and removes all charges above and beyond the $200 initial charges + fair rates for all other text messages based on the Travel US roaming plan. This is the perfect compromise scenario.

Bell’s Solution

Rather than the compromise I described, Bell takes the road of incompetence. “Sorry, we don’t have the ability to re-enable your account until you pay your $300 bill”

And that’s that. Apparently they really don’t have the ability to do anything – nobody at Bell has the ability to re-enable cell phones. Nobody.

Conclusions

1. Nobody – including supervisors and managers – has control over Bell’s software system, and thus no employee is empowered to actually accomplish anything, leading to terrible customer support.
2. Supervisors at bell have no comprehension of conflict resolution, let alone the compromises that are required for this to occur.
3. Staff at Bell are not properly trained on how their software works and what they are capable of doing (and of course what they are not capable of doing).
4. My friend should stop texting so much.

Despite my distaste for Rogers’ handling of unlocking iPhones, I have, overall, had great experiences with them. Not once have I encountered a situation that their telephone reps were not empowered to do regarding my own personal account and iPhone (albeit with a few transfers to higher departments here and there). Even when I posted about my confusion and frustration regarding unlocking my Mother’s iPhone, I was met with a response providing clarity on their policies and, although I didn’t agree with one of them, I was told it would be forwarded on to the higher-ups. This may not be true, but at least they tried to help me out. I am appalled that any customer service oriented company (really that’s all cellular service is) could have such a lack of empowered employees. Clearly I will never be using a Bell service in the future, and any sane person reading this should follow suit.

It starts with a jailbreak, needed in order to obtain access to the internals of the iPhone operating system. Once there, hackers need to find bugs to exploit in the iPhone’s cellular firmware in order to free your phone from its carrier. Why isn’t this easier? Because Apple’s agreement with the carriers mean they can keep your phone locked until the carrier allows you to unlock it. And although they do allow you unlock it, their unlocking services come with extremely ridiculous and complicated requirements.

Note: If you’re looking for specific information on the policy and do not wish to read my story, feel free to skip to the summary at the very bottom of the article.

Background

My Mother obtained an iPhone 3GS that is locked to Rogers Wireless from a friend in Canada. Her friend has since upgraded to the iPhone 4 by buying out the 3GS contract and signing a new one for the iPhone 4. This means the 3GS is no longer under contract – it is free and clear. My Mother lives in Mexico, so having a phone locked to a Canadian carrier is next to useless unless she only intended to use it as an iPod – she did not.

While visiting my Mother in Mexico, I figured I would take it upon myself to get her new phone unlocked, after all, why not use it to its full potential? I had recently heard about Rogers unlocking iPhones for a fee [Electronista] once the contract on the phone is completed. Although I could (somewhat) easily soft-unlock the phone using the complex method I described above, this isn’t optimal, since then I have to warn my Mother to avoid software updates and it would also create other minor annoyances, such as possibly broken GPS (at the time of writing this article). Therefore, a carrier-level unlock would be much simpler for her. This makes paying the $50 that Rogers is asking for the unlock a reasonable investment. So I called Rogers.

The Ridiculousness of the Rogers Unlock Program

The conversation starts off pretty well, with the first contact representative having heard of the unlock program and transferring me to the correct department. From here things go downhill. I described the situation, how I obtained a phone off-contract and that I’d like to pay the fee to get it unlocked. Unlocking the phone is something you would think Rogers would be happy to do since the phone is no longer on contract, they are receiving $0 from the device at this time (phones on contract pay them a certain amount every month as part of the plan). Handing over $50 for something that costs them nothing, aside from negligible phone operator costs, is a nice small profit for them. Sure I’m just one guy for now, but many people are likely to want to unlock their off-contract phones in the coming years as iPhone 3G and 3GS device contracts come to a close. Their unlocking service should add up to a good little profit over time.

I clearly described to the operator that the phone is not tied to a contract and asked her to look up the serial number so she could verify this. She refused. I asked her what is required, if not the serial number of the phone, in order to unlock the iPhone. Her response? She wants my account information. I told her that the phone I’m looking to unlock has nothing to do with my own Rogers account, but when she wouldn’t continue the conversation until I gave her the info, I relented. Her having that info shouldn’t do any harm anyway. She looked on my account and found my own 3GS (with a different serial number) and the contract on it that has about another two years left. Paraphrasing her response: “I can only unlock phones for people that have no contract on their account.” This apparently is true even if it can be proven that the phone being unlocked has absolutely nothing to do with the account in question. In other words, if you once had an iPhone 3GS and have since completed a hardware upgrade with Rogers to a BlackBerry, Android phone or a new iphone 4, you still cannot unlock your old iPhone. Even though it has been paid off entirely.

What does this mean?

For me and my Mother, this meant I simply had to soft-unlock the phone after all. It also meant Rogers didn’t obtain another penny for the iPhone 3GS in question, which is a puzzling business decision.

For others with iPhones, it means that if you do a hardware upgrade you will never be able to legitimately unlock the older hardware until three years after your ‘last’ device purchase; if you want to unlock, you cannot get a new phone. Even though you have paid for the older phone in its entirety, you are unable to unlock it. How absurd is that? I can walk into an Apple store and buy an iPhone 4 for about $750 factory unlocked. But after I’ve paid $1,440-2,160 (~$60 [conservative estimate] per month for 2 or 3 years) I’m forced to keep the phone locked to Rogers? Even when they have the ability to unlock it AND I’m willing to pay additional fees to do so?

Now that is ridiculous.

Why would they do this? There is only one reason that makes any sense. If the hoops you have to jump through to get your phone unlocked means that more phones remained locked to Rogers, then whomever you sell or give your iPhone to will have to sign up for a new plan with Rogers. It’s the opposite of loyalty, they are actually forcing people to use their service when they should be using their marketing and customer service to attract customers and create real loyalty instead.

[UPDATE] Elise from Rogers was kind enough to clarify on this point in the comments below. Apparently the rep I spoke to was misinformed on this particular topic. Although it is true that I could not unlock that iPhone because it was never under my account (an aggravating policy), the original owner in Toronto supposedly could call up and have it unlocked even though he has a new iPhone 4. In other words, hardware upgrades supposedly do not negate the ability to unlock the original handset.

Conclusion

You can bet that the next iPhone I buy will be factory unlocked and that, because of this experience, Rogers may very well lose me as a customer. This negative attitude I have towards Rogers is in stark contrast to my former attitude; up until this point, I have enjoyed their service and promoted Rogers everywhere I could. The new attitude boils down to a simple economic decision that is so poorly thought out that it makes almost no sense: Because Rogers refused to accept my $50, over a policy that sounds as ridiculous as what is coming out of the CRTC these days [Financial Post], I am no longer comfortable entrusting my account with the company.

[UPDATE] Elise – a Rogers representative – has responded in the comments below. Keep reading for further details and hopefully further clarifications regarding the policies in place for unlocking your iPhone with Rogers.

======== Appended Aug 16, 2011 ========

[UPDATE] Since this article is #1 on Google.ca for ‘Rogers iPhone unlock’, I think it’s in everyone’s best interests to have a simple summary with a clear description of how their program works based on the information provided by the Rogers rep I talked to on the phone and by @RogersElise in the comments below.

Summary of The Unlock Policy

1. To unlock your iPhone you MUST have an active Rogers account in good standing. Despite what the Rogers rep on the telephone told me, @RogersElise clarified that you can have an iPhone or other device on contract as long as the iPhone you are unlocking is currently not under contractual obligations.
2. If you have purchased the phone from someone else who did not unlock it, you will be unable to unlock the phone through Rogers
3. You are required to pay $50 CAD to unlock the phone. I assume that is before tax.
4. While I appreciate @RogersElise’s personal response on the matter, and believe that it is great that they’re reaching out to people to help clarify their policies, I believe this particular policy is not well thought out.

It is my belief that verifying (via Serial Number or IMEI – both unique identifiers for the phone) that the iPhone is not under contractual obligations or reported stolen by the original owner should be enough verification for the phone to be unlocked. In other words, account information should not be required. Why do I believe this? Because there are multiple cases where someone without a Rogers account would be willing to Pay Rogers to unlock their phone and should be granted that right as the full-owner of the phone. One example is my Mother, discussed above, who lives in Mexico and was given the phone as a gift. Another example is someone who sells their phone on eBay, Craig’s List, Kijiji or elsewhere without realizing they need to unlock it. The buyer, as the current owner of the phone, should be able to unlock it to work on their carrier of choice.

A counter-argument to this is suggested in the comments below by someone named Matt. He believes they require a valid account for security reasons. My response to that can also be found below, but the general idea is that by the time the phone is off-contract Rogers shouldn’t be imposing any further security upon your phone at all – that should be considered an invasion of privacy, even if it is supposedly to protect you. In other words, although I am open to good arguments in favour of the current Rogers policy, I do not accept Matt’s argument as anything but a weak rationalization.

Why are they doing this to us?

Because it saves the manufacturers money. They figured out at some point that it was getting costly having to ship French Canadian keyboards to Quebec and US keyboards to the rest of Canada, so to save some cash and simplify shipping, they all started shipping with French Canadian keyboards – regardless of the destination.

Why do I care?

I care because every time I type on one of these extremely annoying French Canadian keyboards, I’m reminded how horribly laid out they are for anyone trying to type in plain old English. If you are a hunt-and-peck typist, then you probably won’t care, but if you have been trained in proper touch typing at any point, then these keyboards will drive you mad.

What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that the left shift key is split in two; the left side is normal shift and the right side becomes a slash. When touch typing, it is not only convenient, but simply more comfortable (and probably better ergonomically) to curl your left pinky down a row and SHIFT away. When the key is split so that its ‘sweet-spot’ is no longer actually a shift action, your typing becomes a myriad of slashes in places you certainly did not intend.

What’s more, the enter key is also broken. Typically an enter key is reached by the right pinky finger directly beyond the apostrophe. However with these ridiculously designed keyboards, reaching for that spot actually writes some other unwanted character.

Conclusion

Well… I can’t change it, but I sure as hell am not going to like it. At least I don’t have to own one! In all honesty, I think the manufacturers should allow free keyboard swaps to those who request it, without the owner having to pay for a new US-style keyboard layout. It’s not the customer’s fault that the manufacturers are opting for laziness and cost savings over their satisfaction.