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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jun 12, 2010 23:28:26 GMT 12
From SFGate.comSex death apocalypse iPhone 4By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Friday, June 11, 2010There I was, calmly ogling Steve Jobs' shinyperfect new baby like a junkie rabbit at a carrot factory in SaladTown, happily swooning over its graceful industrial design and everstunned at the tiny slab's explicit lickability and amazing capabilities.
How easy to get caught up in the sheer madhouse magic of it all, the gyroscopes and voice activators, antennae and compasses, multiple cameras and 5,000 sensors designed to recognize when you might be hanging upside down from a banyan tree at midnight, suddenly needing to shoot high-definition video of a wild giraffe stampede whilst checking World Cup scores while live video-chatting with your wife in France while pricing out a flight to Singapore while doing, um, 2,000 other rather ridiculous things you could never have imagined in a million years back on the day you were born.
And I'm thinking, sweet insanity of life, what wonderful/nefarious creatures are we? How can we keep doing this in the face of all that? How is it that we can keep creating such beauty and cool wonder in the midst of meltdown and pain? What sort of desperate dance is this? Are we spinning faster and faster toward doom? Ecstasy? Both? Are they really the same thing? Aha.
I like cars. Particularly small European cars, particularly German ones, particularly those that are tight and refined and engineered like God's own Panerai, and in this personal fetish/incarnation I hungrily observe every new development in their technology, their engines, their design and capabilities and cockpits, especially all the astonishing concept cars that roll forth, how they keep getting better and weirder and wilder and usually somehow more gorgeous and fascinating, mostly.
Yet at the selfsame moment, as the best of the world's automotive tech evolves to new heights of power and sex, poetry and movement, the BP spill and global warming, Alberta's oilsands and various soul-crushing eco-disasters of the world scream louder and louder: Here is your price. Here is your deeper meaning. Are you sure you still like cars?
It's as though the further we push the edges of industrial beauty and refinement, invention and creation, the deeper we dive straight into hell, like a master chef creating the most delicious dish ever invented, using the last wild tuna on earth. Can this really be true? Is this our doomed equation?
I also like architecture. Modern, sleek, warm and open. I scan design blogs and sigh dreamily at countless mind-blowing heart-expanding creations all over the world, soaring spaces of light and wood, glass and steel; I'm ever incredulous at the artistry and technology of home building, the fit and finish, form and function, the extraordinary human ability to carve out space of every size and dimension, along with our remarkable power to bend the most reluctant materials of the world to our imaginative will.
And I think, how can this be? How can we steal such exquisiteness from empty space? Have these people not seen the slums in Mumbai? The homeless and their filthy shopping carts? How can we build such beguiling poetry and simplicity when a billion people have no plumbing? In short: How can the same weird little human creature contain such extremes? And are these extremes not getting ... extremer?
I get a little lost in the raging dichotomies, you might say. On the one hand, aswim like drunken angels in this, the wealthiest nation in the world, it becomes weirdly tempting to believe that much of what we are creating — not merely iPhones and Audis, but by extension modes of living, connecting, moving through — is getting better, easier, more highly designed, efficient and enjoyable.
Astonishing evolution is happening at astonishing speed, solar panels in your hand and a million songs in the space of a postage stamp, instant access to satellites delivering you information on the distance to the next coffee shop, your heart rate, your favorite entertainments, your friends and sincerest loves and a live videostream of your child's smiling face a thousand miles away.
There are moments when it becomes dangerously tempting to think: We're close, right? Surely with all this power and ease, we must have the major problems of the world almost licked? Energy, food production, pollution, disease? Look at all those insane inventions, all the brainiacs at work at MIT, the best and brightest tackling the toughest problems of the galaxy.
Any minute now, solar power and French fry grease, nanotechnology and organic microlending neurobiological hemp-powered oil-eating magic bacteria will take over and make it all better. Right?
And you slap yourself awake. You stab yourself in the soul with an ice pick of Now. And you remember.
We are nowhere near close. It takes no effort at all to flip the lens, to walk the street in fear, to observe, say, all the blood pouring through the streets of Mexico, the violent corruption in Africa, the drug-related shootings just down the street, the raging poverty and sickness, the wall of black death we have just unleashed into the ocean.
Which side is piling up faster, the beauties or the horrors? The refinements and miraculous advancements, or the massacres and planetary maulings? We've always existed in a constant flux of dualities and dichotomies, contrasts, pushpulls. This is nothing new. You could argue that it's within that frictive space that life happens. We contain multitudes, right? Either that, or it creates a chasm so vast and wide, we all eventually fall in and drown.
I try to piece it together. I try to remember what the wise ones and the ancients, the soul-seekers and Tantrikas tell us. The Source is always the same. The dark and the light coexist. The beauty and doom, the progress and the devastation, they only seem a million ideological light years apart; they are, in fact, co-creations, siblings, two faces of the same god.
Drill it down: The new iPhone, sultry and tactile tech marvel that it is, is born of the same forces as the BP spill. The slums and refined spaces, the sophisticated cars and breathtaking homes, the rage and the decay, all of the same divine floodstream. How can this be? It's both mandatory to remember, and nearly impossible to comprehend.
So what the hell do you do? You choose as best you can within that whipsaw spectrum, tread as lightly as you know how, celebrate the wild ride, perhaps try not to undermine every slice of newborn beauty by shuddering in paralyzing horror at the dark demons swimming just underneath. Simple, really. Now who wants an iPhone?______________________________________ Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.
Mark's column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.
This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/11/notes061110.DTL
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Post by obiwan27 on Jun 13, 2010 11:18:12 GMT 12
Nice article!! Here in New Zealand, especially on the Mainland, it's all beautiful ;-) Tech is only a tool, you only have to buy what you find is useful not the latest gadget e.g iPhone, 3D-TVs, Blu-ray DVDs etc etc the real beauty is in nature. Oh and Van Gogh's paintings totally buzz me out especially 'Starry night'. My 20 cents worth. (used to be 5 cents but I'm allowing for inflation) ;-)
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Post by Peter Lewis on Jun 21, 2010 19:20:59 GMT 12
As Bill Ralston has pointed out, if Apple unveiled the iFart the lemmings would rush to buy it.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jun 21, 2010 21:19:26 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jun 21, 2010 21:20:28 GMT 12
From SFGate.comOpen letter to the new Apple iTabletBy Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Friday, January 22, 2010What, you were expecting an actual photo of the iTablet/iPad? OK, imagine a delicate silvery thin gossamer electric wafer made of precious metals, flower spit, and the sweetest dreams of baby pandas. Then, strike yourself in the head with a large mallet exactly seven times. See it yet? — Photo: Apple.Dear imminent newborn world-altering Apple iWondergizmo, you who is right now being hyped to breathless orgasmic meganirvana by every tech columnist, gizmo blogger and swooning gadget pundit from here to Steve Jobs' personal foot masseuse:
If all excitable hints, whispers and established track records are to be believed, you're about to revolutionize the worlds of media, entertainment and finger-flicking, multi-tapping, picture-dancing habituality yet again, just as your creator's previous devices transformed the way we click on cute little pictures, compile eccentric dinner-party playlists, shake $300 chipsets to choose a local restaurant, and consistently misspell "agalmatophilia" in our hot sexting exchanges.
It has become apparent, dear Thing of the Future Now, that no one has the slightest clue just what the hell you're capable of. Indeed, the rumours regarding your potential feature set are rampant and giddy: Will you have this futuristic wireless acronym? Will you have that mind-melding throughputocity? Will you have this backlit bulbtuner or that supercompressed videogorithm? Who the hell knows?
And what of your appearance? Your materials? Will you be razor thin and gleaming like the mysteries of the fifth dimension? Made of rhodium, dark matter and the hymens of lost pagan goddesses? Will you smell like cake, feel like baby skin and taste like the hot roadkill of love? No one has a goddamn clue. Hence, the excitement, as they say, mounteth.
One thing we now know for sure: You will appear in a burst of dazzle in just a few short days at another special Apple media event, revealed in all your iWonderglory, ogled and cheered and turned over in the hand like an electric gemstone unearthed by trembling archaeologists who do not dress very well and seldom have sex.
So then. Before you are completely smothered in love and attention, criticism and resentment, I would like to make a humble request. I would like to add my own very late, exceedingly impossible list of demands for your imminent feature set, because those of us living in the modern era are nothing if not loaded with ridiculously high expectations for newfangled devices we suddenly cannot live without, even though we did for thousands of years prior.
Shall we, then?
Of your unforced beauty and sleekness, no one has any doubts. But will you be helpful in the ways that truly matter? Can you, say, crawl suggestively across the room on all fours in silver boy shorts whilst mixing the perfect rye Manhattan and reciting Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium"? It is unlikely that you can. But I thought it worthy of a request, because I find such talents sorely lacking in the modern era. A guy's gotta have his standards.
Speaking of anatomy, a rather inane debate has recently been renewed about the existence of the mythological G-spot in the equally mythological female sexual anatomy. British researchers are claiming the luscious bump of cervical goodness doesn't really exist. Of course, being British, anything they say about sex must be instantly disregarded, if not automatically reversed. Can you do something about the British? Perhaps a special app?
On the topic of health and happiness, it would be tremendously helpful if I could, say, hold a given food item in front of your gleaming screen and have you instantly reveal, via an intricate array of special sensors, the exact nutrient value, fat quotient, caloric assessment, global carbon footprint, potential colonic damage and overall dietary necessity of said comestible, along with exactly how amped or sluggish, healthy or regretful I will feel for the next three days if I consume it. Also, please perform the same function for potential girlfriends. Sexual playthings. Children. Pets. Politicians. Religions. Vitamins. Illegal drugs. Grand unification theories. Sunshine.
Meantime, I would like you to thoroughly organize my 8,000+ song library, my 20,000+ photo library, along with all article clippings, porn collections, shopping habits, grocery lists, cocktail recipes, address books, mailing lists, fond memories, future plans, unicorn-adorned dream journalings, sleep mutterings, in-shower brainstorms, post-coital poetics, childhood traumas, spiritual longings and nagging subconscious lifelong anxieties that are now manifesting as mysterious pains in my kidneys.
Please sync it all with my Vedic astrological chart, my delta sleep cycles and my yoga teaching schedule, cross reference it with my various moods and meditative temperaments, and then automatically play the exact song/photo/article/whatever my deepest soul was hoping to experience at the exact moment I was wishing to experience it, so as to alleviate all personal sadness, fears, doubts and suffering for all time. Or at least while I'm in the tub.
You are not perfect. I forgive you for this in advance. Nevertheless, when you freeze up, crash, accidentally erase a brilliant brainstorm for a new book, or fail to sufficiently scour my Facebook fan page for mentions of free foot massages, oral sex or complimentary flights to/guest rooms in Paris or Thailand, I would like to be able to hurl you against the wall in a sudden vent of frustration, only to have you bounce tenderly off said wall and float back to me as gentle as a summer's breath, as soft as a fistful of feathers thrown by nubile wood nymphs, as you forgive me all my pathetic human flaws and temperamental foibles. This might require some special engineering?
You are reportedly a Kindle-killer, a device that will instantly put an end to the timid and blessedly short reign of Amazon's bland, beige slice of ugly. Thank you for doing this. Can you also put an end to, say, Pizza Hut? North Korea? The NRA? Saudi Arabia? Soccer hooliganism? HFCS? Comic Sans? "Twilight" tattoos? Jay Leno? Thank you.
Your manufacturer is reportedly winning accolades for its green initiatives, eliminating harmful gasses and plastics, improving recycling, and so on. Even so, you are assembled in a giant factory in China, a country where fully half of your astonishing features are completely illegal, a place where your very freedom-loving existence poses a dire threat to the stability of the oppressive oligarchy. Please reconcile.
Did I fail to mention the basics? Locate lost keys? Identify mysterious rashes? Reveal the World Bank to be run by superintelligent lizards? Provide the extra vote so we can have even modest and hugely flawed goddamn health care reform in this country? Explain how the same species can possibly be responsible for something like the Large Hadron Collider and the Creationist Museum in Kentucky? Is that asking too much? I really don't think it is.
What about the ability to remotely start my car? Why, sure. Also, please move it across the street to a pre-determined spot during Tuesday/Thursday morning street cleaning, maybe have it washed, shake out the floor mats, protect it against drunk cyclists, wayward maniacs and incessant bumper acne.
Of course, I would like to be reading a book while this happens. At home. In a hot tub. A printed book, by the way, without you getting all jealous and stuff. Can you get me a great deal on a hot tub? And a cool house to put it in? And that silver hot pants thing? Because that would be really great.
Look forward to meeting you. Don't disappoint me, OK?______________________________________ Mark Morford's column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate. Contact him here.
To get on the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing.
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This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/01/22/notes012210.DTL
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jun 21, 2010 21:21:06 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jun 21, 2010 21:21:50 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jun 21, 2010 21:22:22 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jun 21, 2010 21:22:58 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jul 10, 2010 15:39:07 GMT 12
From SFGate.comYour momma sucks iPadBy Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, July 07, 2010 LEFT: Another landfill ready hunk of tech uselessness taking us further away from God, or a world-altering mind-boggling hunk of soul candy gifted to us directly *from* God? Yes. — Photo: Manu Fernandez/Associated Press. RIGHT: See? Look how happy is Rita Schena, 78, of Menlo Park, California. Schena said she is very excited to have this device and feels its perfect for seniors on the go. — Photo: Mike Kepka/The Chronicle.S0 there I was, giving my wonderful but happily technologically unconcerned septuagenarian mother her 147th semi-repeated lesson on how to do various relatively simple tasks on her beloved MacBook, because as default Apple tech support for my whole family, that's just how I roll.
It was another lesson on everything from what a "file" is and where attachments go when they die, to what an "operating system" is and what the little swirly button on the toolbar means, along with a quick overview of how it all works, more or less, because there's only so much you can say about these things before all eyes glaze over and it becomes ridiculous and needlessly annoying, and we decide to forget about it and pour more wine.
And of course she dutifully took notes (longhand, on a notepad) also for the 147th time, carefully listing out the steps to each task, how many mouse moves,menu pull-downs and multiple clicks, and which program does what thing, before smiling and sighing and saying, "That's enough, I can't remember any more" and shutting it all off and going back to reading her Kindle.
Which she only sort of likes, by the way (her Kindle that is), because while the thing is fairly easy to read in daylight and makes it relatively effortless to flip through "pages," Amazon's little lump of technological mediocrity is also a hideous mess of lousy interfaces and clunky aesthetics, a beige slab hocked up by 1987's worst design ethos, all of it about as enjoyable to use as a food processor designed by encephalitic monkeys, especially considering all the beauty and deep pleasure it imparts — which is to say, absolutely zilch.
Every time I give such a refresher lesson, I'm hit by the stark realization that, despite how far we've come, despite Apple's legendary user interfaces and elegant operating systems, computers remain simply awful hellbeasts of needlessly confusing geekdom, ridiculous, jargon-filled chunks of chipsets and wires that, for the general population, remain endlessly loathsome and confusing, akin to forcing everyone to understand compression ratios, fuel grades and rubber degradation rates in their cars just so they can drive to the Thai restaurant.
This is, of course, all about to change. Or rather, revolutionize. Like millions of others, I have now purchased, for my mother, for her birthday, an iPad, AKA the computer that's finally not actually a computer, the gizmo that removes all the annoying gizmology from the experience, the singular thing that will make it all better, smoother, easier, even more intuitive, the way it should've been when PCs were first designed 40 years ago, and the way it will be, into the future, from now on.
And I'm here to tell you, it's about damn time.
Sweet Jesus in minimalist design heaven, the iPad. No mouse, no extra cables, no mandatory hookups, no startup times, installation DVDs, RAM guides, accelerators, system folders, font drivers, extensions, launch daemons, Kerberos plug-ins, jpg helpers or compression schemes, no diphthong upslingers pongo hurling goober kerfuffling flipblasters.
Just a devastatingly simple, utterly gorgeous sheet of glass and aluminum that does almost everything your average computer user needs it to do, with a couple finger taps and a happy sigh, sans roughly 500 of the usual steps, clicks, guides, installations, file extensions and so on. It's understandable at a glance, intuitive as candy, enjoyable as a porn star in summertime. You know, just like the Mac has always been, except not really.
Using the iPad is obvious in that "well now this makes perfect sense" sort of way. Use it for five minutes and you'll have what's known as the Apple Epiphany, that thought that says, "Holy hell, why can't every user experience/consumer product be like this?"
I think they soon will be. Just look at the iPhone. Do you have one? Doesn't matter. Love it or not, it changed the cellphone game forever. Every manufacturer in the world is now putting the exact same iPhone-inspired touch screen/flip-fingered interface on their smart phones. Why look at you with your shiny new HTC Nexus One, with its giant glass touch screen with a nifty row of four icons across the bottom! Look at your Android, with its App Store, landscape mode and proximity sensors! How innovative and original! Or, um, not.Shiny! Pretty! Your mom will love it. — Photo: Paul Sakuma/Associated Press.I fondly remember when Steve Jobs took to the Macworld stage way back in 1998, after re-taking the helm of the long-suffering, nearly dead company and setting it back on track. During that world-altering speech, Jobs announced, with much fanfare, Apple's return to profitability, saying the company made a cute little $47 million in profits for the first time in years. How very quaint. Apple now has $40 billion in cash just lying around the campus in nice, perfectly designed piles. What a ride.
On that fateful day, Jobs also announced (pre-turtleneck, pre-Levis, wearing an actual suit) employing what would become his trademark "one more thing" grand unveiling technique, the very first iMac.
Do you remember? It was the first Apple product to have a little ‘i’ in front of it, the one that set the course for everything revolutionary that's come from Apple since. It was a stunning piece of gizmongery, as brilliant as the iPod for its time, a translucent blue, all-in-one computer with a hockey puck mouse and a built-in handle on top. It was genius. It was also Apple's first smash megahit since the original Mac, a wild success in what was to become a whole slew of smash successes.
But here's the amazing thing: It was such a landmark development that almost instantly every industrial product, from printers to staplers, tape dispensers to vibrators, soon came in translucent plastic colors. Suddenly, the consumer world was looking to Apple for design cues, for the direction of the tech culture. And they have ever since. Praise Jesus.
And here we are. With every major innovation Apple introduces, so goes the rest of the tech. This is a wonderful and good thing, primarily because Apple's industrial designers are goddamn genius demigods of perfect, gorgeous minimalist functionality.
And now, with the iPad, my mother will be a trendsetter. She will be on the forefront of the revolution. There have already been articles about how older folks love the iPad. Tap, you get email. Tap, you browse the Web. Works everywhere. Amazing screen. Read books at night. And so on. Great.
But what I look forward to most of all isn't even the iPad itself, but how the damnable thing will influence design everywhere, how its innovations and style will trickle down (or up, or sideways) into my car, into stereo equipment, into coffeemakers and cameras and buildings.
Sure, my mother will probably still have plenty of questions. There's still a bit of a learning curve. At least it's a pleasurable one. Try saying that about most things in this happily lumpy, clunky, tech-drunk life.______________________________________ Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.
Mark's column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.
This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/07/07/notes070710.DTL
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Post by corsair67 on Jul 10, 2010 16:15:33 GMT 12
A friend of mine bought one several weeks ago, and all it has done is reinforce my view that the iPad is just another useless, gimmicky tool for people with more money than sense. Sure, it looks "snazzy" and the graphics on it are pretty good; but as far as I can see, it doesn't really do much more than what a good quality laptop can do anyway. Of course, it has some really 'useful' applications that you can download onto it - like a fart generator, a burp generator, and a pond full of Pirahnas that go into a frenzy and attack your finger when you touch the screen......
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jul 12, 2010 1:29:32 GMT 12
iPhone outcast's rebel yell in the face of mass i-dentity crisisBy FINLAY MACDONALD - Sunday Star Times | 5:00AM - Sunday, 11 July 2010I HAD AN "i" moment the other day. Sitting at a cheap and cheerful food-court table with friends and family, it suddenly struck me that every other adult there has just plonked down an iPhone amid the clutter of glasses and plates. All identical — should that be i-dentical? — yet all apparently so vital to their respective owner's i-dentity. I was moved to observe half-jokingly that I appeared to be the last person in New Zealand without one.
The advent of the iPhone 4G — available soon in New Zealand, start a queue now! — will only exacerbate this trend. Those already hooked will upgrade, new converts will flock to the new generation phone's updated features, eventually those of us without an "i" in front of our phones will become pariahs, outcasts, micro-serfs in a new class system, untouchables in a touch-screen culture.
Yes, I exaggerate. But not much. For some time I had been aware of this phenomenon — the viral adoption of these sleek, seductive handpieces by virtually all of my acquaintances and colleagues. It had got to the stage where if someone pulled out a BlackBerry or some ordinary old Nokia it was cause for comment: haven't seen one of those for a while!
Actually, I'm never in a hurry to draw attention to my own mobile. After my previous one was stolen, I made the decision to never again be emotionally or financially attached to a personal communication device. I bought the cheapest, least interesting and most anonymous model I could find. It's a very boring phone, devoid of any redeeming coolness, but I've yet to care enough to change it.
Occasionally displayed unwittingly on a table or bar top amid the assembled iPhones — what do you call a group of iPhones? iPod appears to be taken — my charmless brick looks almost absurd — primitive, crude, a child's thing. It suits me, particularly by having no email or other advanced connectivity functions. I don't want my email following me around. No news is good news.
Some will accuse me of reverse snobbery, no doubt. They'll dismiss this as another of those tiresome exercises in contrived technophobia designed to make the writer seem somehow above the fray, immune to the herd-like consumerism of the mob. Any moment, by this reckoning, I'll launch into one of those downloadable riffs about the stupidity and futility of Apple's "killer apps", about how we're wasting our lives and destroying our souls making our phone screens behave like glasses of beer or guitar fret boards.
But it's not that, honest. I'm as susceptible to slick design and functionality as the next human interface. Indeed, I'm writing this on possibly my favourite material possession, an iMac. It's simple to use — perfect for the simple user. So you can't even lump me in with that other fashionable branch of geekdom, the Apple-haters.
According to this febrile club, with its own Facebook page (naturally) and uncountable discussion forums all over the bloody internet, Apple loyalists are sad, deluded fools who've been suckered by marketing and maybe the hypnotic brainwaves of Steve Jobs into ignoring the self-evident superiority of other brands of hardware.
When Apple's market capitalisation overtook Microsoft's this year, along with allegations of sweatshop manufacturing, its detractors must have felt almost vindicated: Big Oil, Big Pharma, now Big Mac.
Apple-heads are no better, I'm sure. The accusations of snobbery and wilful blindness to their beloved brand's shortcomings will have some basis in truth. But both sides remind me of the kind of people who indulge in Ford versus Holden arguments – though they'd never care to admit it, they've got more in common with each other than with the rest of us, for whom corporate brand allegiance isn't a defining personal characteristic.
I know, for some people the iPhone is now an indispensable tool. Having an iPhone means never being without something to do with your hands — if they set Mad Men today, the iPhone would replace the cigarette as primary cultural leitmotif.
That would be me, then, in the back of scene. Not smoking. Ostracised.www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/opinion/3906531/iPhone-outcasts-rebel-yell-in-the-face-of-mass-i-dentity-crisis
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Post by timmo on Jul 12, 2010 11:24:49 GMT 12
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Post by corsair67 on Jul 31, 2010 14:49:50 GMT 12
There is justice in this world after all! ;D I really do worry about people who will queue up for hours, or even days, ahead of a launch like this. Are their lives really so dull and meaningless that they need a new toy as soon as it is made available? Kiwi iPhone launch labelled 'epic fail'From: AFP July 30, 2010 8:17PM HUNDREDS of New Zealand customers were turned away empty-handed today as the second phase of the Apple iPhone 4's global launch in Asian and European nations got off to a "nightmare" start. The iconic US company has sold more than three million of the advanced smartphones since it was launched a month ago in the US and other top markets - but it has also been besieged by complaints over poor reception. Sales were officially expanding on Friday to Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. But in New Zealand, Apple fans waiting outside shops, some since dawn, were left frustrated when the launch was mysteriously pushed back until the afternoon. Customers formed new queues several hours later, but were told that only Vodafone account-holders could buy the smartphone due to a lack of availability. One prospective buyer called the launch an "epic fail", while another described it as a "nightmare". "It's been terribly handled. Vodafone is blaming Apple, Apple is blaming Vodafone. No one seems to know what is going on,'' Jacob Creech, from Wellington, told stuff.co.nz. "I'm going to get my phone and then terminate the contract straight away." It is the second hiccup for Apple in New Zealand after the launch of its iPad, when the company was criticised for refusing to reveal where the tablet computer would be available. Computer science student Sam Dunster, 19, waited outside one outlet from 2am on Thursday, while other diehard fans huddled outside the nearby Apple store overnight for its 8am opening. Heavy rain also failed to discourage customers in Sweden, where the phone went on sale at midnight local time. Hundreds queued outside shops in Gothenburg, while in the southeastern town of Boraas two people had been in line since Wednesday, waiting for 37 hours on chairs that they had brought. In Vienna, around 200 people queued from midnight in front of the T-Mobile shop in the centre of the Austrian capital, with a few having arrived 12 hours before. The operator said its entire stock had already sold out, while Orange, the only other company to offer the new gadget in Austria, had only a few on sale with 4000 people having already ordered online. The phone has already caused problems for Apple because of problems with its antenna which causes reception problems when held a certain way, dubbed the "death grip". Apple has offered free cases to fix the issue. Details of the device - which boasts video chat, high-definition video and sharper screen resolution - were leaked before the initial launch after technology website Gizmodo claimed an Apple employee left a prototype at a bar. The original iPhone launched in 2007 brought smartphones to the masses. Apple has sold more than 50 million of the handsets in the past three years. And despite a more crowded market, the latest version has already sold robustly since the initial launch in Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the US late last month. The new iPhone and iPad propelled California-based Apple to a record profit of 3.25 billion US dollars in the June quarter, a rise of 78 per cent.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jul 31, 2010 19:32:03 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jul 31, 2010 20:28:31 GMT 12
Your smartphone is watching youBy BEN GRUBB - Sydney Morning Herald with Associated Press | 7:51PM - Thursday, 29 July 2010SECURITY EXPERTS, consumer advocates and privacy campaigners have sounded the alarm over the hundreds of thousands of free smartphone applications that spy on their users.
Lookout, a smartphone security firm based in San Francisco, scanned nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple's iPhone and phones built around Google's Android software. It found that many of them secretly pull sensitive data off users' phones and ship them off to third parties without notification.
That's a major concern that has been bubbling up in privacy and security circles.
The data can include full details about users' contacts, their pictures, text messages and internet and search histories. The third parties can include advertisers and companies that analyse data on users.
The information is used by companies to target ads and learn more about their users. The danger, though, is that the data can become vulnerable to hacking and used in identity theft if the third party isn't careful about securing the information.
Lookout found that nearly a quarter of the iPhone apps and almost half the Android apps contained software code that contained those capabilities.
The code had been written by the third parties and inserted into the applications by the developers, usually for a specific purpose, such as allowing the applications to run ads. But the code winds up forcing the application to collect more data on users than even the developers may realise, Lookout executives said.
"We found that, not only users, but developers as well, don't know what's happening in their apps, even in their own apps, which is fascinating," said John Hering, chief executive of Lookout.
Part of the problem is that smartphones don't alert users to all the different types of data the applications running on them are collecting. iPhones only alert users when applications want to use their locations.
And, while Android phones offer robust warnings when applications are first installed, many people breeze through the warnings for the gratification of using the apps quickly.I SPY: Your smart phone applications are watching you — much more closely than you might like. — Photo: REUTERS.Australian online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia spokesman Colin Jacobs said the issue of applications spying on their users "was something that everybody needs to be aware of".
Jacobs said that many did not think of their phone as a computer.
"Mobiles contain as much personal information as people’s everyday computers do," he said.
"Ironically, Apple's model of a very locked down app store which has caused a lot of controversy may provide more protection to users because each application is so carefully reviewed, but it has its downsides as well."
Intelligent Business Research Services analyst Joe Sweeney said that many users had installed firewalls on their PCs, but weren't doing so on their mobiles.
In many cases this is because they can't. Apple, for example, doesn't offer a firewall product on its iPhone.
"If the numbers in this report are correct, then obviously this is an issue," Sweeney said.
"We may need to see firewall-type software on phones."
However, he said that education of users had to come first.
"There are other ways of addressing this issue that doesn't require a firewall."
Sweeney said network providers, such as Telstra and Optus, could help out. Apple could as well, he said.
Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn questioned whether some of the apps using the code broke Australian privacy laws.
"One would ask whether it is a possible breach of some of our privacy laws," Zinn said.
He said that, although Apple and some of the apps might stipulate in their contracts that they collect data and send it to third parties, "How many of us actually read the contracts and the small print that come with them?
"We know that people don't read them. You just press OK," he said.
"We know that, especially with Apple contracts — they're so long — nobody reads them; you probably need a law degree to understand them."
Zinn said that if something as significant as some of the data that was revealed in the report was being sent to a third party, it "shouldn’t be in small print".
It should be something that a user has to consent to and be in "big print", Zinn said.
Apple and Google did not respond to requests from the Associated Press for comment on Lookout's research.www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3972405/Your-smartphone-is-watching-you
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Aug 2, 2010 21:14:35 GMT 12
Beware of frothing power-hungry Apple fansBy LINLEY BONIFACE - The Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Monday, 02 August 2010A BOTTLE OF CHILL PILLS, please, to all the Apple obsessives who queued up at stores in Wellington hoping to buy the latest Apple iPhone last Friday and discovered, to their apoplectic fury, it hadn't arrived.
"There are a lot of disappointed people around the country; angry that we were not notified by Vodafone or Apple of any changes to the release that was supposed to happen today," raged one, adding that the managers of the stores he'd been to had "claimed ignorance" about the delay.
Adding to the conspiracy, the Stuff website reported New Zealand had been "mysteriously" left out of Friday's launch, but that a photo posted on a technology forum "allegedly" showed a shop sign blaming the delay on a shipping problem.
While there were rumours that one retailer might be selling stock from noon, this would be no consolation for fans queuing since 1.30am. Almost 11 hours without the latest phone! You can imagine the shame.
By the time you read this, I expect everyone responsible for the bungled New Zealand launch will have been ritually beaten with data cables and then forced to march, naked, through Courtenay Place while frothing Apple fans pelt them with unwanted headsets and outdated Nokias.
Given that our current favourite national sport is finding things Australia does better than us, I'm happy to report that the Sydney launch went off without a hitch.
The vast crowds queuing to buy a phone were treated to pork belly, apple crumble and a special appearance by former Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland before MasterChef judge Matt Preston lifted the lid on a silver cloche to reveal the first handset.
It could not have been madder, or more hallucinogenic, if the iPhone 4 had been flown into Sydney by a fleet of silver unicorns towing behind them a massive candy floss effigy of Steve Jobs.
Hyperbole, thy name is Apple. The iPhone 4 was launched with the slogan "This changes everything. Again". When iTunes was launched, Mr Jobs modestly claimed the day would "go down in history as the turning point for the music industry".
Apple produced no less than 11 guided video tours to introduce the iPad, which it describes as "a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price".
Magical? As far as I'm aware, the iPad is a combination of a phone and a laptop: it cannot cure cancer, bring peace to the Middle East, sew me a pair of jeans that don't make my butt look fat, or prevent the All Blacks from choking during the next Rugby World Cup.
The only thing about the iPad that is remotely supernatural is its spooky ability to turn perfectly normal, marginally geeky men and women into the kind of smug technotossers who ought to be driven from cafes, airport lounges and hotel foyers with a horsewhip.
Don't just take my word for it: a new survey of 20,000 consumers by opinion profile company MyType has found that iPad users are best described as a "selfish elite".
They are six times more likely than everyone else to be "wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30 to 50-year-olds".
iPad owners are, according to the survey, self-centred workaholics who care mainly about business and finance, are obsessed with power and achievement, and would not lift a finger to help others. There's a hint of this in a line on Apple's website:
"You make choices every day, from the clothes you wear to the music you play."
Never mind our decisions on what we do with our lives, how we treat others, where we live or what we stand for: according to Apple, the most significant choices we make relate to the stuff we buy. We're consumers, nothing more.
Who can we blame for this assumption that the highlight of our lives should be buying the latest technological innovation?
Let's start with Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the phone, whose early experiments with sound in the 1860s began with teaching his terrier to growl continuously and then manipulating its lips so it appeared to be saying: "How are you, Grandma?"
Bell went on to work with deaf and blind Helen Keller, who later wrote that he dedicated his life to ending "the inhuman silence which separates and estranges".
Fair enough in the 1800s: now, I reckon it's the noise that's inhuman.www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/3981428/Beware-of-frothing-power-hungry-Apple-fans
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Apr 1, 2011 11:26:35 GMT 12
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Post by Officer Crabtree on Apr 1, 2011 18:14:33 GMT 12
I am constantly in fear of only one thing-the iJet.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Oct 6, 2011 12:24:00 GMT 12
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs diesRadio New Zealand News | 12:50PM - Thursday, 06 October 2011APPLE co-founder and former chief executive Steve Jobs has died, the company has announced.
Mr Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56, after a years-long and highly public battle with cancer and other health issues.
The Silicon Valley icon who gave the world the iPod and the iPhone resigned as chief executive of the world's largest technology corporation in August, handing the reins to current chief executive Tim Cook.
He had contracted a rare form of pancreatic cancer.www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/87576/apple-co-founder-steve-jobs-dies
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