The Weekly Round-Up: 12.10.07

McDonald's ongoing quest to improve its brand from beloved-of-chavs fast food chain to slightly less beloved-of-chavs fast food chain took a bold new step forward with the news that the company's outlets would soon feature wi-fi access to go with its new healthy salad range.

Fitter, healthier and more connected.

McDonald's is about to roll out a free wi-fi service across its 1,200 UK outlets (1,200!) and claims it will make the company the largest provider of free wireless internet access in the country.

This is surely one of the company's worst ideas. After all, can there be any place less inviting to get out your expensive laptop and browse the internet than sitting on a hard plastic chair in a brightly lit room uncomfortably close to a Formica table loaded with the greasy remnants of meat-based products and fizzy syrup-based drinks?

Maybe the Round-Up's missing something. Apparently in the 10 years since it last entered a McDonald's eating establishment the chain has upgraded its décor and instilled a little ambience.

Actually it has. Last year, the company commenced refurbishing 200 choice sites with a more muted green and yellow colour scheme, instead of the traditional red and yellow. The interiors were also upgraded with designer furnishings.

The company has also diversified and augmented its menu to include healthy options such as salads.

It may also pipe soft Schubert or possibly John Coltrane over the sound system. The Round-Up's guessing not though. McDonald's is trying to be the Starbucks of fast food, although it denies the aspiration strenuously.

In addition to attracting new customers, the chain is also hoping people will hang around longer - but this time inside its eateries, not outside throwing burgers at passers-by - possibly eating more fast food. So fatter, healthier and more connected.

"Expensive laptops surrounded by cola-wielding hyperactive kids. Interesting combination," muses silicon.com reader MusicFan in a Reader Comment.

This is the crux of it. It's the context that's relevant. Compare and contrast the company's initiative with Starbucks.

Laptops, coffee, muffins and light jazz. Laptops, fizzy drinks, cheeseburgers and a screaming party of kids at the next table.

Clean wooden tables, comfy sofas. Plastic chairs, plastic tables.

Cappuccino froth. Greasy meat juices and sugary drinks.

It's hardly conducive to encouraging a relaxing, web-browsing experience where you can whip out your £2,000 Vaio.

Another silicon.com reader, from Edinburgh, applauds the scheme and claims he's been taking advantage of the wi-fi in the McDonald's in Paris at the top of the Champs-Élysées for years.

The Round-Up has no reason to doubt him but questions the value judgements of someone who goes to the gastronomic capital of the world but eats at McDonald's. Or maybe he only pops in for the wi-fi? Still, each to his own.

Nonetheless, the McDonald's brand consultants aren't to be deterred, so free wi-fi for all it is.

The Round-Up will watch with interest, albeit from behind the plate glass windows and Egg McMuffin posters.

(And if you care to see the kind of territory the Round-Up would prefer when using a laptop then check out this week's Caption Competition - which shows a very pleasant workspace indeed, complete with the R-Up's sleek and svelte companion of choice.)

Ours is essentially an age of rampant consumerism and the latest must-have gadget for the self-respecting fashionista with more money than sense is the luxury mobile phone.

Like oh-so-many size-zero models parading the catwalks of Milan and Paris, the Round-Up was intrigued to see the new prêt-a-porter range in a silicon.com photo story this week.

Let's grab a front row seat among the simpering glitterati and the strobing flash guns to check out the looks we'll be seeing on the high street over the next year.

First up is an intriguing cross between a shoe-horn and R2D2. A bold new look that says although these aren't the droids you're looking for you could at least call someone who might know, while wearing well-fitting shoes.

Number two and three is a metallic slab from Porsche and Sagem that features bleak, industrial design married with a fingerprint reader. Its bleak finish gives way to a slightly more stylish inside. The phone is constructed in aluminium and glass, which suggests that environmentally speaking its credentials are good. Some redeeming features, then.

Number four is quite clearly a vibrating sex toy with a special bead attachment. The Round-Up doesn't know what the bead would be used for. Perhaps a reader could enlighten it. On second thoughts, perhaps not.

Number five is the same vibrator but in a different colour. The Round-Up should point out at this point that it is actually a phone and not a 'marital aid' - it just looks like one.

Number six is quite clearly a Transformer, possibly Optimus Prime himself, adopting a new disguise to combat those pesky Decepticons. With its sleek case and chiselled looks it is clearly positioning itself as a man's phone and tells the onlooker, I take my abs very seriously, even if no-one else does.

Number seven is a phone for the aspiring gimp. If you like being spanked by leather-clad moustachioed bikers (And who doesn't? Ed) and need to take that business call while retaining the mood of the moment then this is the leather-clad phone for you, you little tart.

Allora, numero otto is the Giorgio Armani phone for people who simply want to say 'ciao'. For people who care about surface values and have less interest in what lies beneath the Armani-emblazoned hood.

At nine is the Prada phone which is allegedly the true inspiration for the iPhone. Possibly but only in the same way that a couple of frantic groping chavs on a park bench could have been the inspiration for Rodin's 'The Kiss'.

(Hm, perhaps the Round-Up's being too harsh, perhaps not.. )

And finally at 10, there's the iPhone, the Round-Up's runaway favourite. Oh yes. Stylish, sleek and expensive but rather temperamental, it might look good but it'll only look good alongside other stuff that Apple approves of. Don't try and mix and match with non-sanctioned items or networks or it will freeze up and die.

All these technological treats are either available now or in the next month or so, just in time for Christmas and probably at astronomical prices.

Personally, the Round-Up, possessing as it does an ageing Nokia, likes to think that it is constantly at the vanguard of mobile handset design. Bluetooth? Of course. GPRS. In principle. Picture messaging. Theoretically but no.

What's interesting is that, possibly emboldened by Apple's recent diversification into the mobile arena, the list is filled with less familiar mobile manufacturers and non-mobile brands, including Giorgio Armani, Levi's and the magnificently named Mandarina Duck, which apparently is an Italian design company with a track record of designing handbags and manbags - the next big challenge for device convergence?

Sticking with personal connectivity, it is an increasingly evident truism that mobile technology is both a boon and a curse.

A report out at the end of last week - the Round-Up would have got to this tit-bit sooner but has a stringent policy of taking no hardware on holiday and that includes weekends - states that those people working in the financial services industries are taking their laptops and BlackBerrys on holiday with them, completely missing the point of going away in the first place.

As financiers put in longer and longer hours in today's turbulent markets - going on holiday without a laptop can be "agony". Seriously, that's what the report says. At what point did our commitment to our careers overtake our responsibilities as human beings?

The survey into their high-pressure jobs from Tokyo and Hong Kong to London and New York showed what workaholics they can be, unable to relax unless they are in touch with the office.

The chances of getting executives to relax on vacation are pretty slim, according to the survey, unless your idea of relaxation now includes checking the performance of bonds and stocks on a little plastic device while your kids play in the hotel pool.

Clearly, the report claims, they consider themselves indispensable and cannot believe that the office could possibly function without them.

Almost 40 per cent of the financial professionals questioned admitted they take their laptop or BlackBerry on holiday. Another 14 per confessed they are incapable of relaxing unless they stay in touch with the office.

It seems that working "nine to five" is a distant memory, though sadly the Dolly Parton film is not.

What the financial services industry really needs is a sense of perspective.

Down time, family time, quality time, whatever you want to call it - while the global money machine is just that, a machine, its cogs and operators are not. Turn the BlackBerry off people, toss it into the swimming pool and reach for the pina colada.

You'd never find that sort of behaviour in the technology world.

Silly bankers...

And finally news this week that demonstrates Mac users either have the greatest brand loyalty of any computer owner or are complete fruit loops.

A blogger in the US reported that while lying in bed one night he heard a fizzing sound and a faint smell of burning.

After a hasty investigation the origin of the "FFFFFffffffff!" noise and the burning, acrid smell were discovered coming from a smoking Mac laptop under his bed.

The fire brigade is called, the battery is disposed of and the chap was forced to spend a night in a hotel before returning the next day to clean his apartment and dispose of his charred carpet.

Upon calling Apple the man reported a positive customer support experience with an Apple representative called Geoff. All very well, so what next?

Does he threaten legal action? No. Does he switch to a computer manufacturer that produces computers which don't burst into flames? No - after the massive Sony laptop battery recall programme there really aren't that many of them around anyway.

Instead he waxes lyrical about his affiliation with all things Apple and how the experience has brought him closer to the company.

The blogger concludes: "The funny thing is, a Mac almost killed me, and I came out of the whole experience feeling more strongly about Apple as a company."

As Nietzsche once wrote: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." This cautionary tale speaks volumes to the Round-Up about the importance of good customer support in the quest to maintain brand loyalty.

Equally, it says as much about a segment of computer users who, despite almost being burned to death by their laptops, love the manufacturer even more because of their experience with people called Geoff…

Clearly it's possible to love something too much.

So that's it for another week - but don't forget to feast your eyes on this week's Caption Competition (if you haven't already) - and your ears on this week's podcast.

Ciao!