The Wait That Never Ends

 

I wrote this after the lightening storm two weeks ago that wiped out my modem and Airport Extreme.  Everything’s finally up and running after two weeks.  This included:

1. Four hours with Verizon Tech Support over two days until I got hung up on (and not called back, despite the fact they asked for and received an alternate number).
2. Four trips to the Genius Bar twenty miles away where first genius replaced power supply without checking whether Airport Extreme still actually worked.  One trip where wife traded old power supply plus cord and was given back a power supply without a cord.  One trip to retrieve the cord.  And one trip to finally replace the entire Airport Extreme.

They say that computer intelligence will surpass human intelligence by 2040.

I can’t wait.

 

iThink Therefore iAm…

…iStuff.

Apple is the New Sears

I’ve never owned a PC.  Apple all the way since I bought a MacIIc in 1989 ($4500!).  For the most part, as a graphics person, Macs have been superior and worth the price premium.

I no longer think that’s the case.

A couple months ago I bought the latest MacBook Pro to replace my five year old MacBook.  It’s nice.  It’s shiny.  It works.  But it still crashes occasionally.  There’s some weird Lion bugs with Word and Photoshop.  It has some sort of crazy RAM allocation thing where 4 gigs of RAM somehow gets used up when it shouldn’t.  Blazing speed becomes pedestrian once three or four programs are open.  Safari and Flash have some sort of Celebrity Browser vs. Player Death Match going on.   And neither is winning.

I hate to admit it, but my new MacBook Pro is probably not worth the extra $800 or so over a similarly equipped PC.  My iPhone4 and my wife’s iPad2 are still worth the premium.  And that’s the problem.

Apple is the new Sears.

A million years ago Sears sold pretty much everything through its catalog.  You could order a house from Sears.  Sears never made houses.  They just made it relatively simpler to get a house.  Or a washtub.  Or long johns.  Or whatever.

Today, the iPad is the catalog.  The web is the US Postal Service.

Some of you might say, ‘No, Amazon is the new Sears.”  Yes, Amazon sells a wider variety of things, but Apple has the better catalog.  And Apple isn’t going to just stop with selling (or charging a toll) for media. Some day soon you’ll be able to by all the long johns you want at the iSears.

And it’s too bad.  Because in 15 or 20 years they’ll get bloated and slow and arrogant (more arrogant) and all Microsofted and some new, new thing will kick their ass.

Style matters.  Substance matters more. Owning the toll booth matters most.

Until someone finally builds my flying car.

 

Introducing the iHam

This is actually T’s rewrite of my original script (this time, we actually discussed it before he rewrote me).  My idea was for RJ to demonstrate an actual new fake iPad (empty frame).  T thought it better for RJ to come up with a new fake product (the iHam). The punch line is the same.

T was right.

Maybe if I continue to do a bad job I can get T to do all the writing.  Then I could just kick back and post to the blog, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Tumblr, and 16 other social media platforms where I desperately promote Over the Hedge to our rapidly fracturing super-nano-niche audience of several dozen (not including moms).

Never mind.

Lazy Beats Free Any Day

When they wire iTunes directly into our brains we’ll all get a personalized sound track to our lives.  Neural sensors will automatically trigger appropriate songs to dramatize our mundane existence.  The result will kill the entertainment industry.  Who needs a made up movie when you’ve got a pulsing Hans Zimmer theme to yawn by.  Picking your nose becomes an epic heroes journey when accompanied by James Horner’s soaring strings.  Proper dental hygiene will seem like attacking the Death Star while flossing to John Williams penetrating brass accents.

Over the Hedge:  Predicting our depressing future since 1995.

 

Welcome to the Jungle

Verne’s right (not that it matters much).   Illegal downloading is stealing.  There’s nothing morally ambiguous about taking someone’s intellectual property without compensating them.   The problem is that when there’s almost zero chance of getting caught one’s conscience tends to take a nap (see Napster).

But I think this problem is self-correcting as we speak.

For most folks downloading illegally is a real pain in the ass.  Torrents take time to set up and download.   You find one or a dozen and none of them work.  A full length film can take hours to download.  There are a zillion streaming sites, but I wouldn’t give my credit card number to any of them unless you want your next statement to show that you purchased a Big Mac in Latvia.   There are free live streaming sites, but the quality is absolute crap because they were filmed with a handheld and you’re missing half the dialogue because someone is yelling, “Shut the fuck up!” in Russian off screen.

Illegal downloading will end when the price of a legal downloaded film is less than the hassle of stealing it.   And that day is coming fast courtesy of Apple and iTunes.   Almost everyone will pay $2.99 to see a movie right away rather than get who knows what, who knows when for free.

The lesson here seems to be that morality is often governed by expediency.   That’s both sad and oddly comforting all at the same time.  Sad that human beings can’t or won’t make a conscious choice to be moral.  Comforting that even when they abdicate their moral choices, the power of  convenience makes the right choice for them.

I Can Hear You Now… that you’re dead

I have an iPhone.  It’s cool and all, but the reception does suck.   Too many streaming LOL Cat videos being pushed through too little bandwidth.  Works fine with wi-fi though.  Which at one point was where I thought mobile was headed.   Who needs cell towers or cell companies when you can bypass the whole mess with wi-fi?   Buy an iPod Touch, get Skype and make calls over wi-fi.  Works great.  If you have wi-fi.  But it’s not happening.   When AT&T got in bed with an exclusive deal with Apple it was the beginning of the end of the promise of a cheaper, better mobile experience.  Capitalism doesn’t work too well when companies collude to destroy competition.   Just saying.

Hamexander the Great

Stuff that made me smile this morning:

1.  Email spam from John Cleese promoting his one man show UK tour dates.  He suggests I might want to make sure he’s still alive before buying tickets.

2. Reading that Steve Jobs’ demonstration of the new iPhoneG4 was interrupted when he couldn’t get a wi-fi signal because of all the live-tweeter/bloggers hogging bandwidth.

3. And this old Committed cartoon from 1997:

How Steve Jobs Beat Cancer

A Death sock puppet is funny.   I’m just saying.

The One That’s Really Really Dated

I wrote this two weeks ago.  It was a lot funnier then.

I hate comic strip deadlines.