Posts Tagged ‘apple’

I don’t want to meet Steve Jobs

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Steve JobsI’m a Mac convert. Their products are beautiful, somewhat top-of-the-line (at least upper quarter) and expensive. It took me years to buy my MBP and I’m in like with it. Still, Mr. Jobs is a dick.

You can all look back on all the finer points of his large security entourage, his staged conversations with other demigods and that he wears turtlenecks. (Only turtlenecks.)

I don’t need all that. I just need this one answer to a question from the recent OS 4 keynote.

Q: How do you close applications when multitasking?

Scott Forstall (Senior VP): You don’t have to. The user just uses things and doesn’t ever have to worry about it.

The Holy One: It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager… they blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.

To elaborate: the OS actually has a task manager (so his developers “blew it”).

“You click, hold the icon and quickly delete. It’s as simple as any other part of the interface. You don’t have to think about it.” This, an answer that promotes the product and doesn’t vaguely paint everyone else as an idiot.

Can you imagine a conversation with He Who Knows? I don’t even use half the hyperbole in a typical month Our Savior lays down in five minutes (and I’ve tried… hard). The Great One’s iPad, a tablet based on years of systematic improvements to the iPhone, is “magical.” Really? (::facepalm::)

I will piss off a dozen Macheads out there but I don’t want to meet I Am. He’s just an IRL Gregory House, a toolbox tolerated for his brilliance. (Which in his case is still debatable.)

That said, if Gregory House ran Apple I’d have bought my MBP a hundred years ago. (See what I did there?)

Note: This was written on the ninth; I totally forgot about it. I’m so good at this. Hope you enjoyed the pointed commentary related to something nearly a month old.

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the ideal i[Tab] user

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Friday I mentioned a reason I’m not getting an i[Tab].* I’ve had some time to think about it and am still not in the market for such things. Instead, I’ll explain who is in the market for such things. The ideal people that will buy an i[Tab]…

… have never learned to type.
Hunt-peck is all you need and all you’d want with a keyboard that’s ergonomically useless. In fact, better they’ve never used a keyboard. They’ll be impressed with the non-responsiveness of it.

… haven’t bought a television in three… err, seven years (let’s be safe).
Any more recent and they’ll have seen widescreen format. Those familiar black bars at the top and bottom will remind them of home no matter where they are.

Aside: Why not make it widescreen in landscape mode? Disable the touch on the sides and dim those portions to black when in portrait mode. Apps could still develop for the fullscreen format but why not cater to those that want a sweet as video player? Disappointed!

… love iTunes.
For as much as you have to use iTunes to maintain any media on the i[Tab], they’ll have to be über fans. Maybe to the point they feed their kids with it.

And finally, they have to be old enough, mature enough or dim enough not to comprehend the glaring double meaning in the under-thought name. I mean, the jokes are endless. (Thus excluding anyone on Twitter.)

Essentially, I’m describing your grandmother. Yes, the i[Tab] is cool and will be popular but only because of the idea of it. In reality it does quite a few things adequately but nothing well.

It’s a cumbersome music player, a poorly designed video player (widescreen!), an unfortunate book reader and an unintuitive (zoom much?) browsing machine. But, it will sell because Apple aims for the market that should exist, not the one that does.

It paves the way for a future of “automatic” computing but that’s not the market I fall into. My parents had the desktop and I have a notebook; maybe this is the next stage of computation but it’ll take a minute for me to jump on board.

* I refuse, at least digitally, to refer to this thing with the absurd, marketing misstep name Apple provides.

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friday free for all

Friday, January 29th, 2010

… As of yesterday, I’ve been working as a contractor for seven weeks. By Monday afternoon, I will have moved into three different cubes; spent about fifty hours on-bus; worked past 8p twice, on three different computers and three sites; and haven’t been paid. (You read that correctly.)

After a particularly long (cou*12 hour*gh) day, I received a pitch about the many benefits and great things about signing up full-time. I was not impressed and, as my newfound stability isn’t all that stable, am still unimpressed. (I’m scheduled for a check on the 15th, as their accounting system defaults to a 60 day wait.)

… (Speaking of unimpressed.) The Apple i[Tab] (what an incredibly terrible name) was introduced Wednesday and will ship in two months. Some people will find a use for it but until I can justify paying for books instead of the library (on top of some UX choices), I’m out. My next Mac will be the Mini that runs my television after the move.

… Yesterday was my sister’s twenty-second birthday. We went to the restaurant she suggested and had a pretty great time. Afterward, Girlfriend, two friend and I went to a show. After a drink or two and waiting in line for about fifteen minutes, the power went out.

About a half-hour later someone told us they were getting information for refunds; thirty seconds after that the lights went back on. Roma di Luna‘s (if you’re not listening to them, you should be) set was cut short for time and we left before the headlining act. I’m fully exhausted today.

… and finally:
This is the first FFFA since a month and a half after I was unceremoniously and involuntarily removed from my former place of employment. Since has been a whirlwind. I very much enjoyed my summer but didn’t enjoy the finance-related stress.

I’m now actively looking for work in Chicago and if any of the threes of you dear readers know of anyone that could help, please let me know. I’d love to find a local job board or hear about some specific places looking to hire.

Thanks in advance. You’re all glorious beacons of light in this dark, dark world. Well, most of you.

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proprietary pomposity

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Why is it I can’t resist the urge to alliterate? Ridiculous.

Microsoft is impressively stupid. Back in the day they were kicking ass and taking names. Everyone had to be on a MS platform to do anything. Then Apple started gaining market share and MS shat a few mouse trails. (Launched an error-laden OS; spent millions on un-aired ads.)

As I sling interweb code for a living (theoretically) my relations with MS have been more uncomfortable. Their browser (set as default and installed with their OSs) is terrible. It’s a one-legged, fat guy trying to keep up in a pick-up game of 3-on-3 with off-season NBA rookies.

More stretched analogies: It reads CSS like a cranky, dyslexic toddler with only one eye. It complies to standards like Jeffrey Dahmer complied to social norms (too soon?). It creates beautiful web pages like this creates great portraits.

MS is coming out with a new OS that’s supposed to fix their Vista problem. I’m sure it comes with a browser trying hard to be dismal. I’ve heard mixed reviews (read: bad) and then there’s a post from Ken Sipe.

Apparently, MS is making it difficult to download the beta version of Windows 7. Instead of trying to infiltrate other markets they seem to be trying to hold onto as many already-users as possible. (Which, I assume, is 93.75% businesses too terrified to ditch their Outlook and Office Suite.)

Like Facebook, they seem to be trying their hardest to alienate customers while being profitable. (Or, in FB’s case, popular with the venture capital crowd.) Smart move, morons.

Interactives out there, do you still design/program for IE6? Why? Do you still use the 800×600 model? Reasons for doing so? Reasons to move past it?

I, personally, want to let IE6 die a slow, overdue death. @ECaron agrees. Like Wal-Mart using hybrid trucks, he considers Google paying people to leave IE6 to be a matter of corporate responsibility.

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