My MacBook needed a bit of a spring clean, so I decided to wipe it, reinstall Mac OS, and then re-install all my apps. Rather than just restoring apps from a backup I wanted fresh installations of all of them – easy enough for things like Firefox and Skype that […]
Tag: Consumer rights
Brits going to Spain at May bank holiday: you’re probably paying too much for car hire
As regular readers of this blog are surely now aware, I have become quite fascinated by the tricks used by car hire companies to wring more money out of their customers. I first reported on this in summer 2014, and revisited the example in early February 2015. I have since […]
Apple building barriers in the EU Single Market
Back in October 2011, when I still lived in London, I bought two pieces of software for my Macs in the Mac App Store – BBEdit, then priced at £34.99, and Pixelmator, then priced at £20.99*. Those apps have been upgrading happily enough through the App Store system until today. […]
Vacuum cleaners: EU law to solve a market failure so as to use less energy. What’s wrong with that?
So the British tabloids, and plenty of folks on Twitter, have been having a rant about vacuum cleaners, and the EU EcoDesign rules that came into force this week banning the sale of vacuum cleaners rated at more than 1600W. A further round of changes will come into force in […]
Persistence, EU law, and friendly Apple Store staff to get a new iPhone
My 16 month old iPhone 4S had a hardware fault – the power button on the top of the phone would not press properly – it was partially stuck. You had to push the button with all your might to get the thing to turn off, or just to turn […]