Apple's brand new thing, probably a tablet Mac, a piece of hardware that has already been around since Windows XP, but it is an Apple product so clearly only they can draw this much attention to it, is being announced today. Yes this does sound like a *sarcasm* great new age of computing *end sarcasm* but sounds like the same old Apple "magic."
The iPod has revolutionized the mp3 player. Every company out there tries to emulate what they have done. But they were far from the first, just the first to make it super easy to do. But I have no problem with it. I have had many of them, I have loved every one that I have bought or received as a gift, and I think it is a great piece of hardware. Also the iTunes software to go along with the iPod makes it a great one-two punch for them, and I good way to start making money again, and everyone needs to admit they didn't start making money until the iPod became compatible with Windows. But then there are the other things that Apple does that bothers me.
The first thing is the attitude that Apple seems to carry with it, or at least the fanboys out there. This is extremely pertinent to the announcement that is coming later today. If you look over any tech blog or website the past few weeks there has been massive speculation over what Apple is going to announce. All signs are pointing towards a tablet. Now when Dell, Acer, or Gateway came out with tablets years ago it wasn't the biggest thing in the world but it caused a bit of a stir. But now that Apple is releasing one, the entire tech community has come to a standstill waiting for Apple. It took them at least 6 years to come out with a tablet machine, and from what ever mockups I can see it doesn't have a hard keyboard, so that will be stuck onscreen, isn't the biggest gripe on the iPhone the LACK of any hard buttons? That it all depends if you can navigate a touch screen that even the most tech savvy people can have troubles with? (I concede the biggest gripe was the lack of copy and paste but they fixed that...3 years later) But it doesn't start with table, or iSlate, iTablet, whatever they call it, it starts a few years before.
Anyone remember the Macbook Air? Yea that is what I thought, you don't really, but it is there in the back of your mind. It was lauded as a great machine before it was released to the public. It was light, it was thin, it was fast...ish, the next big thing. Too bad for Apple it didn't revolutionize the world like they thought it would, or even just the laptop market. The connections weren't laid out very well, you couldn't charge it on a flat surface, and it was before digital distribution really took off so you need to buy an external optical drive to install anything. It just didn't live up to expectations.
The iPhone was the next big thing to come out from Apple. Again I have to give Apple credit, they have designed a great product, but it is far from a new idea. It is just they were able to sit back, wait for others to try and make a phone/media player, and then take the best attributes from all that are out there and throw it into one sleek looking package. It just really frustrates me when Apple doesn't even acknowledge that it isn't a new idea. If you look at other phone makers, they all say, Phone A did something great that we are trying to incorporate, and Phone B had a nice keyboard and we are trying to improve upon it, Apple just thumbs their nose at anything else that could have been an inspiration.
To be honest though, it does really boil down to the annoyance that Apple fanboys emanate. That Apple is the be all end all product. If it isn't apple, it sucks, truthfully. Worked with a co-worker, good guy, smart, funny, like him as a person, but he just couldn't stop showing what Apple did better than Windows. One main point he had was the lack of malware for the Mac. I agree it doesn't have malware, but it is the fastest machine hacked at major hacking conventions. There have been viruses before for the machine, it is just the market share isn't enough for hackers. If someone is going to write a worm, they want it to affect the most people possible. So if Mac even has a 10% market share of all computers in the world, why would you only want to affect 10% when there are 9 times more people out there you can annoy?
OK you can go back to your iPhones and iPods and walk on your merry way now. But just remember that Apple is a niche. It has a price premium, cheapest laptop is 1000$, you can get a good windows laptop for half that. So before you try and show the world how Macs are better and push it on people, most people don't want to spend the money. And even if it is a tablet that is coming out, it will be overpriced for what it can do, and it has been done before, except with a full OS that you can use...rant over.
27.1.10
12.1.10
Some odds and ends before my Birthday
It is kind of strange to "celebrate" New Years, I was playing Modern Warfare 2 and when midnight hit told Whit Happy New Years...then went to bed, and then two weeks later have a birthday. Still can't be as bad as being a Christmas baby, or anything within a week of any major holiday. But I am going to take this time to write about some things I want to either close up on and/or start anew. First off, my closing comments about the Twilight "Saga."
In the past I have bashed this series, my wife and anyone who reads this blog knows this. But I do have a couple things that make me interested in the whole thing. First off the Eclipse has the potential for me to actually like it. With the first two movies I didn't like them, but then again I didn't hate them, so I am pretty neutral. But the third one has some intrigue, we actually get to see werewolves and vampires fight. I mean how often do you get to see that? Part of the main draw of the Underworld series was this and man those were some awesome fights. I understand that the gore level will have to be toned down a bit from those scenes but the still can make for some interesting movie making. Next up I am extremely interested in the character Jasper. To me he has the most interesting back story for all the characters, well Carlisle has a good one too but we are talking about Jasper here. He was created to be part of a vampire army, a frickin army of super strong vampires. In the Twilight canon newborns are stronger than almost any other vampire they come up against, and they have a severe bloodlust, i still have problems with Bella not having to deal with it. He was then turned into a general of sorts in this army and turned many of his "troops." Just imagine how awesome it would be to either read about or watch anything that has to deal with that time period with Jasper. Blood would be everywhere and then it would close with him meeting Alice and she helps him walk away from all the destruction...hmmm I'm getting too excited about this, subject change.
As everyone knows I am a huger gamer. I play a little thing called World of Warcraft. I have even gone so far as to buying an authenticator for it to make sure my account doesn't get hacked, Whit uses one to check on the bank account. At first I wasn't interested in the Warcraft movie coming up because there wasn't a director their wasn't a writer, I was afraid it was going to go by the way of the Halo movie. But recent developments have me super excited. Sam Raimi is the director, when given the reins to a movie he does very well, Robert Rodat is the writer, he was a writer on Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot, and now neither of them have anything to do right now. Spider Man 4 has been canned and Sam said that he would move on from Spider Man to Warcraft. So I have deduced that Sam should be moving directly to the Warcraft project and things can start to move, casting, scripts, storyboards, all that good stuff. Here's hoping it DOESN'T end up like the Halo project.
And my lol moment of the week, a 42 year old mother of 4 from Texas, met up with a 16 year old boy, sorry neither a guy nor a man yet, in Canada for a rendezvous. They met through Wow, but can we please not blame Wow in this. Yes Wow was the medium in which they met, but it did not tell them, "It is a good idea for us to do this. You should leave your family behind to go meet some teenager." /facepalm
And last but not least, I'm gonna miss EVZ. Even though last week I went by myself, Whit was sick, tired, physically and mentally, I still loved the game. Everyone is into it, the "student sections" are amazing, the game is a pleasure to watch, and where else can you get a brat in one hand and a dinner roll in the other? Also it could be I just like hockey and not being able to go every week is going to be a little bit of a downer. It is a different game here than in the US. It is really tough to explain though. They don't drag on for 4 hours but that is due to the lack of TV breaks. But then that is offset by the amount of adverts on the ice and on the players themselves. The purists would say that all the ads destroy the integrity of the game, but how does stopping for 5 minutes every 5 minutes of game time not destroy the integrity of the game? Anyway they also don't hit as much, which is a bit disappointing but keeps the puck moving and stops the trap game that teams in the NHL use. They also seem to be more stick happy because of it, they whack on players, try little hooks, more poke checks, it just keeps the play moving. Plus the rinks are wider but shorter, so it is harder to try and trap the puck when the walls aren't so close together. Anyway I love it, can't wait for Friday.
That is it for now, I am sure something else will grab my attention within the week and expect me to write about it, good or bad.
In the past I have bashed this series, my wife and anyone who reads this blog knows this. But I do have a couple things that make me interested in the whole thing. First off the Eclipse has the potential for me to actually like it. With the first two movies I didn't like them, but then again I didn't hate them, so I am pretty neutral. But the third one has some intrigue, we actually get to see werewolves and vampires fight. I mean how often do you get to see that? Part of the main draw of the Underworld series was this and man those were some awesome fights. I understand that the gore level will have to be toned down a bit from those scenes but the still can make for some interesting movie making. Next up I am extremely interested in the character Jasper. To me he has the most interesting back story for all the characters, well Carlisle has a good one too but we are talking about Jasper here. He was created to be part of a vampire army, a frickin army of super strong vampires. In the Twilight canon newborns are stronger than almost any other vampire they come up against, and they have a severe bloodlust, i still have problems with Bella not having to deal with it. He was then turned into a general of sorts in this army and turned many of his "troops." Just imagine how awesome it would be to either read about or watch anything that has to deal with that time period with Jasper. Blood would be everywhere and then it would close with him meeting Alice and she helps him walk away from all the destruction...hmmm I'm getting too excited about this, subject change.
As everyone knows I am a huger gamer. I play a little thing called World of Warcraft. I have even gone so far as to buying an authenticator for it to make sure my account doesn't get hacked, Whit uses one to check on the bank account. At first I wasn't interested in the Warcraft movie coming up because there wasn't a director their wasn't a writer, I was afraid it was going to go by the way of the Halo movie. But recent developments have me super excited. Sam Raimi is the director, when given the reins to a movie he does very well, Robert Rodat is the writer, he was a writer on Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot, and now neither of them have anything to do right now. Spider Man 4 has been canned and Sam said that he would move on from Spider Man to Warcraft. So I have deduced that Sam should be moving directly to the Warcraft project and things can start to move, casting, scripts, storyboards, all that good stuff. Here's hoping it DOESN'T end up like the Halo project.
And my lol moment of the week, a 42 year old mother of 4 from Texas, met up with a 16 year old boy, sorry neither a guy nor a man yet, in Canada for a rendezvous. They met through Wow, but can we please not blame Wow in this. Yes Wow was the medium in which they met, but it did not tell them, "It is a good idea for us to do this. You should leave your family behind to go meet some teenager." /facepalm
And last but not least, I'm gonna miss EVZ. Even though last week I went by myself, Whit was sick, tired, physically and mentally, I still loved the game. Everyone is into it, the "student sections" are amazing, the game is a pleasure to watch, and where else can you get a brat in one hand and a dinner roll in the other? Also it could be I just like hockey and not being able to go every week is going to be a little bit of a downer. It is a different game here than in the US. It is really tough to explain though. They don't drag on for 4 hours but that is due to the lack of TV breaks. But then that is offset by the amount of adverts on the ice and on the players themselves. The purists would say that all the ads destroy the integrity of the game, but how does stopping for 5 minutes every 5 minutes of game time not destroy the integrity of the game? Anyway they also don't hit as much, which is a bit disappointing but keeps the puck moving and stops the trap game that teams in the NHL use. They also seem to be more stick happy because of it, they whack on players, try little hooks, more poke checks, it just keeps the play moving. Plus the rinks are wider but shorter, so it is harder to try and trap the puck when the walls aren't so close together. Anyway I love it, can't wait for Friday.
That is it for now, I am sure something else will grab my attention within the week and expect me to write about it, good or bad.
3.1.10
When do things change?
Recently Whitney has started watching Sex and the City. And when I say watching, I mean going through seasons 1-6 straight through. I was a little surprised that I actually started liking the show, but then again it has its charms and very strong characters, something that has been missing lately. Watching one of the episodes something popped into my head, when do guys need to stop being guys and be men?
Oh no something deep, is what you are thinking. But seriously how are we supposed to know when to flip that switch? And how do we know when we are ready to flip that switch? Of course with becoming married there is a part of me that is already there. I was ready to make a commitment to stay with Whit forever. We bought a house, we have talked about kids, that we aren't having one for a while so calm down Nia. But I made the decision to marry Whit while I was still a guy. I didn't know what that exactly meant. I wasn't worried about 401(k)s, car insurance, house depreciation, or career paths. I was more worried about where the TV was gonna go and that I was moving further away from Nebraska. But now I feel like I am stuck between who I am and who I'm going/need to be.
I still like, OK love, playing video games. I still like to sit around and watch sports. I still like reading swords and sorcery fantasy novels. I want to eat a Jack's frozen pizza with some extra cheese on top. When does that change? I know I will probably never stop playing video games or watching sports, to Whit's displeasure. But when do I stop craving frozen pizza and want...I dunno something else? When do I start reading something else? Or are those things that I don't need to worry about changing?
But how do you turn a guy into a man? Is it taking away his frozen pizza and video games? Or are the little things that need to change? Like my inability to actually make a strong decision. As in what to do on the weekend here. We have lived in Europe for 6 months and haven't left Switzerland. To get up and get a new door on the front door until some other man had to do it. So when do things change? When does the switch flip? Or are these one of those 1.1 Gigawatt power switches that need two keys to turn? Or is a switch the wrong metaphor? I am starting to think that this is not something that can be instantly turned on and off.
Typing this out I realize that it isn't something that is instantaneous. So it has to start somewhere and maybe it is seeing that things really need to change. So I have to start here, in a country where I don't understand the locals and they don't understand me. But like I said I have to start somewhere so it might as well be now.
Oh no something deep, is what you are thinking. But seriously how are we supposed to know when to flip that switch? And how do we know when we are ready to flip that switch? Of course with becoming married there is a part of me that is already there. I was ready to make a commitment to stay with Whit forever. We bought a house, we have talked about kids, that we aren't having one for a while so calm down Nia. But I made the decision to marry Whit while I was still a guy. I didn't know what that exactly meant. I wasn't worried about 401(k)s, car insurance, house depreciation, or career paths. I was more worried about where the TV was gonna go and that I was moving further away from Nebraska. But now I feel like I am stuck between who I am and who I'm going/need to be.
I still like, OK love, playing video games. I still like to sit around and watch sports. I still like reading swords and sorcery fantasy novels. I want to eat a Jack's frozen pizza with some extra cheese on top. When does that change? I know I will probably never stop playing video games or watching sports, to Whit's displeasure. But when do I stop craving frozen pizza and want...I dunno something else? When do I start reading something else? Or are those things that I don't need to worry about changing?
But how do you turn a guy into a man? Is it taking away his frozen pizza and video games? Or are the little things that need to change? Like my inability to actually make a strong decision. As in what to do on the weekend here. We have lived in Europe for 6 months and haven't left Switzerland. To get up and get a new door on the front door until some other man had to do it. So when do things change? When does the switch flip? Or are these one of those 1.1 Gigawatt power switches that need two keys to turn? Or is a switch the wrong metaphor? I am starting to think that this is not something that can be instantly turned on and off.
Typing this out I realize that it isn't something that is instantaneous. So it has to start somewhere and maybe it is seeing that things really need to change. So I have to start here, in a country where I don't understand the locals and they don't understand me. But like I said I have to start somewhere so it might as well be now.
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