Last month I told you about my horrendous experience with Alienware and my switch to Apple. The Alienware laptop literally fell apart within a year: the hard drive crashed, the display's hinges busted off, and it lasted 30 minutes on battery life. In this follow-up to my first post, I'll tell you a little more about how and why I became a "switcher."

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My Alienware laptop left me bruised and battered, and when its time finally came, I was down for the count. I had homework to finish, freelance projects to close, and Internets to surf. I needed a new laptop and I took what happened with the Alienware as a learning experience.

Apple wasn't the only option I considered when I went looking for my new laptop. Anything was up for grabs at that point, save Alienware. Having endured that experience once already, I made a list of must-haves in a new laptop:

1. Weigh less than 7lbs (half that of the Alienware)
2. Well designed and durable to last throughout its lifetime
3. An extensive warranty that would include free parts and labor
4. Customer support that I can get face-to-face
5. Prolific performance with long-lasting hardware and software

Each list item was something I learned from the Alienware. I needed a lighter, faster machine that would last well into the next few years with customer support I could love and trust. I needed a platform for my work that wouldn't crash every chance it got. After I wasted nearly $3,000 on the Alienware, I needed a good great buying decision.

Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others had some affordable laptops, but all of them felt awkward and poorly designed. Coming from a profession where great design, functionality, and aesthetics are very important, none of those companies' laptops could satisfy my must-have list. With Apple, however, design, function, and aesthetics were not an issue. The MacBook Pro, a sleek powerhouse of a laptop, offered all that and more. I had found the laptop that satisfied my list.

I had read all sorts of reviews, following Apple rumor sites for news on their aluminum beauties. Even with a few loose ends to tie up after their initial launch, Apple's levelheaded strategy of addressing those problems (through free repairs and replacements) left me grinning like an idiot. I found a company that heard customer perils and addressed them reasonably.

With quality assurance and a product that was just too good looking to pass up, I purchased a 15" MacBook Pro. Sure I had to give up my ritual hardware upgrades, numerous blue screens, and poor customer support, but it was a step I was ready to make.

As it turns out, that step was one of the best decisions I'd made in a long time. Apple was everything I thought it would be and more. From the fantastic customer support I've received since then to the handful of products I purchased after the MacBook Pro, I'm a happy customer.

Apple was able to effectively turn my bad experience with a competitor into a great one with them. As a result, I became a repeat customer, eventually succumbing to the Apple Kool-Aid and becoming an Apple evangelist.

What if you reached for the light switch and ended up turning on your faucet instead? That's what reaching for the Firefox 2 back button is like. Going back one page is not an action a user should think about, yet Firefox 2 does make us stop and think about it–a lot.

The Firefox 2.0 back button is split in two—the arrow is another action that gets in the way.

In Firefox 2, the history button keeps getting in the way of our click back. It frustratingly takes up space in front of the back button. Browser history is a useful feature for jumping back several steps, but pales compared to the mighty back button. As Mozilla designer Alex Faaborg mentions, a web browser would function just fine for most people if it only had a back button and URL field. These are the two most important features users need in order to interact with the web. A usable web browser interface should work within this constraint.

Firefox 2's interface missed this ball by trying to inject an extra feature too close to a critical one. The effect is jarring – you expect one thing and you feel interrupted by another.

Now in Firefox 3.0 beta, Mozilla's design team responded to this problem and even found fresh opportunity. Faaborg, User Experience Designer on the 3.0 project, wrote an extensive piece in November documenting their design thinking early on. He presents some clever design work here and shares several of the visuals the team worked with. Their justification for the back button change was twofold:

1. The back button is "a really important button" that should be easier to see and hit with your cursor.

2. They wanted to create a unique visual identity for the application, something 'iconic' like Mickey Mouse or the iPod.

It's fascinating that Mozilla would try to use a design element they neglected in their previous release to distinguish their product's brand moving forward. Whether or not they're successful in this second goal, theirs is an example of how putting users' needs first can not only solve a problem, but improve upon what went wrong and open up new opportunity for a business.

They listened to their users. They didn't need an exciting new feature, but refined a boring old one that happens to be core to any good web browsing experience.

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References:

• Firefox 3 beta is available to download
• Alex Faaborg's article on the Firefox 3 design thinking

Suffering from poor search engine ranking, bad code, or anything in between? Well, then today's your lucky day. The SEO Rapper himself (aka Chuck of Pop Labs) is here to rap his way into your SEO and Web design efforts and get you back on track.

Design Coding, by The SEO Rapper

As a self-confessed Internet junky, Chuck's passion lies in SEO and social media, he also has some mean skills as a rapper—an SEO rapper, that is. He brings a fun, educational, and light-hearted approach to the entire SEO movement. I'll give anyone who can chop up my SEO while throwing down a rap and mad beats a big thumbs up.

I appreciate how the internet has made it possible to do basically anything you want to. That's the reason I not only spend lots of time online but specialize in SEO, SEM and Social Media. If people can't find you online, then you can't really benefit from being online.

—from Chuck's YouTube profile

You have to love the execution, taking something as niche as SEO and Web design and turning them into full-length raps that anyone can enjoy. It looks like he's got some real chops, in both rhyme and code.

This month Bryan and I had the chance to speak on a panel at SXSW along with Christina Wodke of LinkedIn and Luke Wroblewski of Yahoo!. Armed with an inflammatory title, "Logos: Why They're Irrelevant and Can Actually Hurt Your Business," we went head-to-head in the same time slot with keynote speaker Mark Zuckerberg and managed to get a full house into Room 10 of the Austin Convention Center.

"Man, what a title! I just heard 3 designers pass out across the hall. But now that I've read it in its entirety, I think I can hear those same designers pulling themselves up off the floor and nodding their agreement with you." — Comment by Will from an article by Virginia Ingram reviewing the panel

Our panel started with a very brief history of the logo that set some context for web startups. Over a hundred years ago the logo emerged with a purpose: companies needed a way to differentiate their products from the 'generic' brands crowding the limited shelf space of local markets. Logos were about maintaining a trustworthy identity in markets where a company wasn't physically present to represent itself. The logo attached to the product gave companies a way to be recognized and remembered.

Today the web has reversed this trend. The URL is the great localizer, pointing everybody to the same destination online. Every site becomes its own corner store, leaving logos with less of a role, whereas the URL has taken center stage.

Phishing was one of the more dramatic examples to come up during discussion. Spam email can contain the logo of a reputable company like PayPal or eBay, but you have to pause and verify that the company speaking is in fact who we think. Will I take the action the email asks me to? First, I'll check the URL. If I don't recognize the URL, I don't trust the message.

The panel aso considered how syndication and digital distribution of content alter the importance of logos. When I can access a web site from my phone or read a blog from a web application, I lose touch with the logo as an identifier. I may not even encounter so much as a favicon, that vestigial remnant of the logo, during these experiences. With Twitter, for example, I have the text message number '40404' as an identifying mark. With a blog on Google Reader all I have is a byline and a link. The logo is not central to these experiences and yet I can still identify these positively with Twitter or the blog authors I read using Google.

One last key point is that in early stage Web startups, a logo is not central to success. Getting your product to market fast has to be your goal. Working with over 75 startups, it's been ZURB's experience that spending time on a logo early on is usually a waste of valuable time and a potential momentum killer. Instead of a logo, focus on your company's positioning statement, get your team on board with that goal, and then get your product in front of customers as fast as possible.

We think we're seeing some evidence that companies understand this today. A quick look at a lot of web startup logos reveals a lot of logotypes, essentially just font treatments with Photoshop embellishments. The logo isn't the focus of these companies, their product or service is their focus. Succeed or fail, they are in the market having conversations with customers, adjusting to the opportunities as they play out each day. Most successful companies, even ones with big, recognizable logos, have evolved this way. Yours can too.

Here in the first of two articles, we'll address the problems that set me up for the switch I never saw coming. In part two next time, we'll come back and look at exactly how Apple was able to make me not only switch, but become the diehard level-headed fanboy I am today.

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Two and a half years ago, I hated Apple. With an undying passion, I pined for the day they would go belly up and Microsoft would buy them out—but something happened. As Apple began to roll out their new MacBook Pros (MBPs), my beloved Alienware laptop bit the big one, and I had a problem: what now?

I've been designing on the Web for over seven years and before that I was putting together my own Window-based computers with my dad and brothers. We always had the latest hardware and the baddest rigs—top of the line video cards, gigs of RAM, 17-inch flat panels. We loved to game on the side, playing anything from Unreal Tournament to Age of Mythology. It was always tons of fun, but it meant tinkering with hardware and continuous maintenance.

I had become accustomed to the nature of a Windows machine. Sure, I could have bought a Dell and simplified things, but I needed that new piece of hardware to satisfy myself. I was knee deep in spare parts and cables, lost to the ritual of Constant Upgrade. I was too busy to acknowledge anything Apple was doing.

That might be an understatement: I didn't care what Apple was doing. For whatever reason, I hated Apple. It could have been the fruit colored iBooks, the boat-anchor iMacs, or the fact that I just loved working on my computer. I can't really say. When the time came for a new laptop for school and my side gigs, I opted for an Alienware Area-51m 7700. Weighing in at 13 pounds, this thing was made to replace just about any desktop. It wasn't a laptop, it was a "portable" desktop PC. It turned out to be the worst purchase of my entire life.

The Alienware would end up dying just a year after I purchased it, but its death was not quick. No, that laptop had a long, slow, painful death over the course of several months. It was pathetic, really. The hard drive failed, the hinges for the display broke, and blue screens and memory dumps became a regular part of my ritual. Alienware's customer support was unhelpful, greedy, and, even worse, outsourced. I had a 13 pound brick in my room. And yet, just as hope was walking out my front door, it came running in through the back, and I was in love.

As Apple was rolling out the new MBPs, the beautifully powerful machines that any Web professional and student would kill to have, I began to take notice of everything else Apple was up to. I had never been in the Apple Store at my local mall, and had never paid attention to the Powerbooks or much other Apple hardware, believing that all Macs should just die. But something was different about both the timing of the MBPs and my Alienware's demise—it was almost too good to be true.

I read the reviews, I heard about the performance, and I scoped out Apple.com for as much information as I could find. Even though I heard that some things were still being ironed out with the switch to Intel, I knew that Apple was the place to buy my new computer and solve all my problems. Nearly overnight, I went from Apple hater to Apple fanboy.

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Be sure to check out the second and final part to this article where I'll come back around and explain just how Apple was able to make a fanboy out of me through innovation, customer service, and marketing.