Reviews, Rumors, Ravings..
In June of 2003 I bought a 3rd generation iPod (when they still had buttons!) and my interest in Apple Computers was born. After playing with the office iMac at work, I bought a 12" powerbook on ebay and I was officially a mac guy. Today I still use my PC for games, a macbook pro for travel, and my iPhone is always by my side.
Ok quick rant about the iPhone 4!
It’s new and shiny and people can’t stop talking about it! Literally, this is all that is on the news. Apparently if you hold the bottom of the phone a certain way, it loses signal and can even drop the call! People are so worked up about this that there is even a class action lawsuit starting against Apple over this! You bought a phone you had never seen or touched before and it didn’t live up to your expectations. Someone call a lawyer. You deserve all of Steve Jobs’ millions of dollars for this outrage! If you don’t like it, then you can fucking return it. You can hold it a different way, you could even buy a case for it. You could use your iphone 3Gs. No one forced you to buy an iPhone 4. Sometimes things just don’t quite work as well as you’d like.
Here is a “funny” video poking fun at iphone 4 fanboys (or fangirls in this case). It’s always easy to kick around the fanboys for a few good laughs, but of course the shopkeeper fails to bring up any of the features the iphone 4 IS actually better at, such as the high resolution retina display, the new gyroscope, the fact that it works with their numerous iphone ready accessories, and the big one: It syncs with their iTunes.
Actually, there is really nothing revolutionary about the iPhone 4. What is revolutionary is still the iPhone. Apple already has the music player market cornered with their iPods and iTunes, and when a phone was added to that: BOOM revolution in smart phones. People like the iPhone because it’s easy. Because it really does just work for them. Other phones might let you install whatever app you want or have a slightly bigger screen, but until you can make the experience easier than the iPhone + iTunes, people will still want the iPhone because that’s what their smartphone experience is built around now. If anyone wants to compete, they will have to tear customers away from their already established investment in iTunes. It can be done, but you’ll need a prettier phone/mp3 player than even Apple can make. Good luck.
For that reason, I still prefer my original iPhone to any of the new phones out today. The iPhone 4 isn’t any more another revolution than a droid or evo or hero or any other iPhone killer. But if someone wants to spend the extra money for the new iPhone 4, let them. It doesn’t automatically make them a fanboy. It just means they will be the first to find these issues and let the rest of us know. That’s the risk you take with a pre-order.
Extra Bonus Rant:
It’s just a phone! Who cares!?
First impressions are just like the apple store. It’s amazing to browse the web like this. It’s going to be awesome to have this around the house. Still feels a little bit heavy but i can rest it on my leg when I sit on the couch so it’s not a big deal. I got the WiFi only version because I don’t want to take it everywhere, I don’t need to take it everywhere, and I don’t want to pay for it. Anywhere I want to use the iPad should have wifi too. Apps look great. My iPhone now looks so small…
I actually left with the intention of buying a 30” Cinema Display but I couldn’t bring myself to spend that kind of money. I’ll keep my eye on craigslist for the display. A good one pops up now and again and I can have both it and the ipad for the cost of a new display.
A real post with updated house pictures comes soon.
First image is a play off this pic from a 2003 codexlan.
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The iPad is supposed to revolutionize the computing industry. It’s a giant iPod touch, we know that. But the fact that it’s a giant iPod touch means every app goes through the App Store, and every App should therefore be safe to run. It shouldn’t be prone to viruses and crashing like normal computers. Despite the fact that Apple is now the oppressive totalitarian regime it once threw a hammer at, it will just work. You give up your access and freedom to do it. Apple people love it because it’s apple, Windows people love it because they love their iPhone and are afraid to get a mac. |
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People who don’t care if their computers work can fix problems by themselves, enjoy hacking/tinkering with their tech, or stopped caring about computers because they bought an xbox. They couldn’t care less about the tablet because they already have a nintendo DS and a cheap computer running Windows or maybe some sort of Linux. |
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In the middle are the Apple users and the Windows users. Apple users want their computer to work so they love the stability of unix, but are drawn to the shininess of the OS and computers themselves.
Windows Users want their computers to just work also, but not enough to get a mac. They shy away from the shiny but pretend Windows Vista looks just as good. |
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If you don’t want your computer to work, but you’re still a fanboy (eccentric), you are running linux. You passionately rebel against anything M$ and you hate all other fanboys, especially Apple’s. After you’ve recompiled your OS for the 4th time today, you’ll start a flamewar at a mac site about how Apple controls everything and that everyone who buys one is a sheep. Then your computer will kernel panic and you’ll have to…no….you GET to recompile it again |
| In the middle are the total geeks who own all three types of the major OS’s. They already have a netbook and might trade it for an iPad depending if they have an iPhone, or not if they have an Android. | ||
| On the bottom are the fanboys. They don’t care if it works. They don’t care if it doesn’t work. They will defend it to the grave. They will attack anything else. |
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They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be ignored. Be afraid, be very afraid. |
Alison got me one of the new "Magic Mouse" mice from Apple for Christmas, although I just got it yesterday. They were readily available for about a week after they were announced, and then they were gone. It's taken forever to find one actually in stock. It's the first time I've actually been excited about a mouse from Apple. Always trying to reinvent it with each iteration, it's always seemed like a better idea just to buy a $10 usb mouse and sell the ones they come with for profit. So I was pretty skeptical when the Magic Mouse was released. Apple is all about the multi-touch tech these days and it surprisingly kicks a lot of ass. Like its predecessors, its "virtual buttons" make it not ideal for gaming but most of the time my Macbook Pro sits in the corner of my desk, and having a nice bluetooth mouse will make casual web browsing and OS use easier.
Like all Apple mice, it gets a lot of hate from people who haven't used it or are using it wrong, so I thought I'd take some pictures of its proper use. There are two types of mice it seems: the big "palm" mice like the microsoft intellimouse of a few years ago, and "finger" mice like my favorite Razer Copperhead. With palm mice, you rest your hand over the mouse and move your arm at the shoulder to move the mouse around. Finger mice are for those who keep their arm stationary and move the mouse with wrist movements. I'd definately put myself in the finger mouse camp. I hate big mice. So if you're like me, you'd probably like the Magic Mouse too.
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Here's a view of the Magic Mouse surrounded by my other two mice, the Logitech G5 (left) and the Razer Copperhead (Right). As you can see, the mouse is a little smaller than the other two, but not by much. The whole surface of the mouse is like a giant touchpad, and simply moving your finger up and down the mouse acts like a scroll wheel. I had to put them on a box since my desk is black and so are the other mice :D |
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It's hard to show just how thin the Magic Mouse is. Pic on the left is the MM in front of my old Razer Copperhead. The MM is about half the height of my already thin finger mouse. The G5 is more of a palm mouse so it's bigger, and the picture on the right shows the MM about 1/3 the height. The MM is wide and thin, made well of aluminum with a plastic top. Feels nice and sturdy. Not too heavy to move around, yet it stays in place when gliding your finger(s) over the surface. | |
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Here's me holding the Magic Mouse incorrectly, like a palm mouse. When you hold it this way, your fingers don't have any room to scroll up or down, and the bottom corners of the mouse dig into your palm a little. So when you hear people complain about its sharpness, you know they are holding it wrong. |
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Here's how you actually hold it, thumb and ring finger on the middle of the mouse, where it's tallest. Your index finger should be right in the middle of the mouse and free to move all the way up or down, making scrolling a dream. It's so much nicer than a scroll wheel, and if you like the two finger scrolling features macs have, this feels just like it, and maybe a touch better. | |
People are actually paying attention to CES now, since so far there have been no Apple announcements to overshadow it. Of course, the mere rumor of the new Newton device, “iSlate?” is what everyone there is talking about anyways. What I’m really interested in is updated macbook pros, since I’ve been thinking about going down to the 13” size. I think I can get around $750 for the 15 inch mbp I have now, so it’d only be 500ish to upgrade. It feels wrong to buy a laptop without true dedicated graphics, but I honestly only use them for the Ohio LANs where we just end up playing Quake anyways. However, with the tablet right around the corner - one must pause a moment and consider it. The 15” could last a bit longer if the tablet is priced right - which it won’t be (this is apple). But I’m sure there will be something that will make it stand out from the rest of the last decade’s tablet PCs. I didn’t think apple could make a decent phone, yet now I swear by mine. And it was so far off predictions that now I don’t pay as much attention to rumors as I used to. But in place of that, I know that it’ll be something more than just an iPhone with a huge screen. And it’s worth waiting to see just what it is they have up their sleeve. You know what that means - July release date…
What’s also cool at the CES show is the Boxee Box, which is a dedicated little computer running Boxee as its Operating System. Boxee has always been a good idea and I tried it out briefly on my AppleTV, but the AppleTV was just too slow to run the software. What I like about the Boxee Box is that it’s a real competitor to the AppleTV, and probably packs more than a Celeron processor. Hopefully it can do real HDTV. I want Apple to finally update their crippled AppleTV and make it really HD-Capable. What’s not good about it is the actual design of the box. I get that it’s supposed to be hip and cool, but it looks like it wouldn’t even fit in my TV stand. I think it’s a pretty small device which means it could probably fit even with its corners poking out, but “If it doesn’t look right, it doesn’t fly right”. I hope Boxee got hulu back, or else there’s no real point to getting one. The PS3 and Xbox can do everything else like streaming divx, so why waste the money? Of course if you have iTunes content, you need the AppleTV and then you might as well hack it and run Boxee. I want the Boxee Box to do well, because I want Apple to have a reason to give a damn about the AppleTV again.
Boxee Box!
