Q&A: Storm brewing over Starbucks disc surprises Moore
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In an interview published recently  in Pitchfork, Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore mentioned  that the band needed to record a new song for a Starbucks  compilation. Within minutes of his remarks hitting the  Internet, chat rooms and the band&#39;s fan sites were awash in  cries of &quot;foul&quot; and &quot;sellouts.&quot;
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The big money behind big medicine prepares to battle Michael Moore
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SEATTLE -- Starbucks has lost its soul and does not know where to find it.
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Steve Moore says he has been forever changed by Todd Bertuzzi&#39;s blind-sided punch to his head in an NHL game last season. He is still feeling the effects from the March 8 attack when Moore and the Colorado
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When I got back from Europe my black MacBook wouldn't boot, it just sat there with a disk icon and a flashing question mark. So I made an appointment at the Apple store in Emeryville to have it looked at. When I got there, there was no wait, they were calling my name. The repair guy opened the Mac, took out the disk, went into the back room, and came back saying the disk was bad, I'd need a new one. How much? $160. How large? 80GB. I've been buying disks lately, I bought a 500GB disk for $150 a few weeks ago, and just bought a 1TB disk for $280. So I knew that $160 for 80GB, even in a portable form factor, was probably a ripoff, but I figured here I am now, I can get the computer working, so I said OK and shrugged it off. The new disk went in, I signed a form, and was about to leave and asked for the old disk and the clerk said it was his not mine. They were going to send it back to the manufacturer. I figured it would be refurbished and sold cheap to someone in a third world country. Little did I suspect.  He got his supervisor. She insisted that the drive belonged to Apple, even though I had paid an inflated price to buy a new one. She showed me the language on the reverse side of the form I signed. It was even worse than she had said. There was no guarantee that the drive they had just put in my Mac was new! It might have been someone else's defective drive. I said it was outrageous. I grabbed a copy of the agreement and left.  I scanned the agreement, highlighting section 4, the part the store manager cited. Now there are a lot of speeches I could give. Here are a few. 1. I buy Macs knowing they're more expensive, but I expect to be treated better. I drive a BMW for the same reason. Luckily there's Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, et al to keep BMW customer service in top form (which it has been so far, I'm on my fourth BMW). I always say this -- Apple service is outstanding when you buy something, but it falls down, often, when you need it fixed. Not always, but often. 2. There are consumer protection laws that require auto repair shops to offer you the old parts. Why doesn't that apply to computer repairs? Or maybe it does. 3. Apple prices are ripoffs, but this is an unusually heinous ripoff. To charge such inflated prices for used parts, they should have some shame. 4. They don't seem to have any fallback when there's a dissatisfied customer. As an Apple shareholder, I think it would work better if store personnel felt they were guardians of the company's reputation. Consider for a moment that you are ripping off the customer. What tools can you offer the sales person to make good with the customer? Could you let the customers who object take their drives home? Could you offer a discount coupon on the next purchase, or free premium support for a year? That they let me walk out of the store, a person who spends thousands of dollars with Apple, feeling like I had been abused, says they haven't got all the glitches out of their retail process.  5. Falling back on the fine print is really lame. I think they should tell you up front, before they do the work, that you're not getting the old drive back. What if the data on the drive can be recovered? What if there are credit card numbers and other personal information on the drive? Source code? Trade secrets? Does Apple really want to treat their customers privacy so shabbily? For what? Don't they already make enough money off the $160 price for the new disk? It's amazing that a company can make it this far, having such special customers, and rarely if ever acknowledging it.
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Tycho:  It took three separate discs and two consoles to finally work out the Goddamn kinks, but we were able to play almost the entire Eternal Sonata demo.  Almost!  I wasn't aware people were still boiling discs, presumably in black iron cauldrons where carrots bob, but I don't want to live a life where boiling discs is normal.
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SEATTLE, United States : Coffee shop giant Starbucks said it was launching the first of its &quot;music bars&quot; where customers can listen to digital recordings and burn their own CDs.
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Starbucks Corp. , facing  stepped-up competition from rivals and slower sales growth at  established stores, is making an aggressive push this fall to  remind consumers who is king when it comes to coffee.
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A customer filed a $54 million lawsuit against Best Buy for losing an $1100 laptop she took in for service. The reason, exposure to identity theft.  It's about time vendors were forced to recognize the value of customers' data. I recall how the chief genius at the Apple store in Emeryville complained that they would have to eat the cost of the drive in a deal they made with the manufacturer. Someday they'll have a clue that the data on most drives is worth far more than the hardware, and that their potential liability, if the data ends up in the hands of an identity thief, is also much greater.
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Starbucks Corp.  is opposing  Indian entrepreneur Shahnaz Husain's plans to start a chain of  coffee shops called Starstrucks, the Mint business paper  reported.
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The EU Commission could fine Microsoft up to 5 percent of its daily turnover if things don't change. Also: Ford recalls almost 800,000 cars that spontaneously burst into flames & hellip;.  The money is rolling in on cell sales & hellip;. and more.
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Think there are too many Starbucks in the world? The coffee retailer apparently doesn&#39;t think there are enough. Starbucks yesterday expanded its estimate of outlets that it eventually plans to open worldwide to 30,000, up from 25,000.
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Just when you thought Starbucks could go anywhere -- think again.
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Starbucks (SBUX), the coffee juggernaut that created an empire by convincing consumers that drinking specialty coffee is an experience worth $3 a cup, will announce today that
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Watch out Starbucks. British beermakers are wooing the caffeine-crazed with a new beer made from fair-trade coffee beans, to be launched on Friday.
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A big U.K. retail chain drops the 3.5-inch disk for good. How long until the United States follows? Plus: Tell us about your bizarre ringtones. In Gadget Lab.
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Here's why even mobile users who don't drink coffee should care about Starbucks' decision to switch Wi-Fi access providers.