Sarcasm and vitriol wrapped in a twee bow.
iPhone debate: I’m a Mac vs. Bill Gates – 10 Zen Monkeys a webzine
A very, very nice fictional conversation between the guy who plays a mac on tv and Bill Gates.
I’m sick to death of people touting regional anomalies as some harbinger of the future. They should make an ad where there’s three actors representing devices — a Mac, a PC, and a teenaged Japanese girl representing the ability to send text messages on a Hello Kitty cellphone.
Universal and Sony prohibit Zune sharing for certain artists [via Engadget]
So, Microsoft keeps screwing over their customers to appease the major labels. After agreeing to pay Universal a bounty on each Zune sold (setting a chilling precident for the industry), and crippling their main differentiating feature (sharing music wirelessly) so much as to make it worthless, now they make the whole thing worse. Making your Zune lamer after you bought it. Now they are restricting which artists you can not-really-share.
and it doesn’t look good for the Bush Administration
Especially when the intro says:
“New evidence demonstrated in 2005 that torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism strategy, undermining the global defense of human rights.”
Mary Jo Foley sussed it out from a talk he gave at Wharton.
In the talk he’s asked about screwing over partners, and he basically says, “fuck ’em.” yeah, great idea Steve. What about fucking over your customers who bought music with Plays For Sure DRM or bought devices with it? Yeah, that is gonna encourage people to buy Zunes…
This is that stupid Visa commercial where everyone is moving smoothly, like the little cogs in the capatalist machine that they are, getting their food pellets and paying using their track-your-purchases-sell-your-data-while-opening-you-to -identity-theft-and-making-your-our-debt-slave-Visa card. Then some free thinker uses cash to pay and it gums up the whole thing. Anarchy is introduced until he moves along…
Beyond the whole socio-political bent above, the thing that actual bugs me is that it is complete bullshit. Paying with a card? You might as well pay with pennies and count them out. Everytime I’m getting coffee or a sandwich or something and someone pulls out a credit card for a $1.75 item, it makes me crazy while I sit and watch them run it through, wait for the stupid thing to print out, find a pen and then sign it. Meanwhile, everyone else in the line has their cash in hand, ready to pay, and the cashier can make change much, much faster.
is that I’m finding myself sympathising more with the parents in the teen movies. When Larry Miller say “You’re 18, you don’t know what you want. And you won’t know what you want ’til you’re 45, and even if you get it, you’ll be too old to use it.” in 10 things I hate about you, I’m thinking exactly the same thing. About the 18 part. The 45 year old part, that line is strictly for the kids.
this is funny. I can’t believe that he was able to make it look this good this quickly.
Live from Macworld 2007: Steve Jobs keynote – Engadget
Engadget always has my favorite Apple keynote coverage.
So, Apple TV has a hard drive. Ok, cool. $299, decent
So the iPhone is official! widescreen, touchscreen, 4 or 8GB of RAM, runs OS X, lives on Cingular. Do I want one? Absolutely. At $499 will I buy one? extremely doubtful
Where is the new iPod and new iLife? Where is the One more thing? Don’t hold out on us now!
CES, Mac Expo and NAMM. A tech and gear geek’s favorite month of the year!
Guess what? I’m not going to any of them (got some big deadlines coming up), but I am following all the action, ya know, remotely.
So here’s what I’ve found so far: