Tag Archives: Apple

Learning to Code can sometimes be like learning to disarm nuclear weapons but harder

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A long time ago, I was learning the computer language COBOL. The first two books I went through were very simple. It was almost like learning to tie my shoes. And then the third book was like learning calculus right after learning subtraction. Nothing made sense. And everything before had almost no relevance to anything that came after.

I experienced that again today. I’ve been learning Objective C, Alice and XCode programming. It’s all been going well. As part of my learning, I’ve been following the Apple itunes demonstration lectures, and like COBOL, the first two were very simple, almost like learning how to plug in your computer. The third lecture started off with advanced algorithms that even Commander Data would have struggled with. And he went so fast, and the type was so small, and then out of the blue (due to time constraints) he decided to plug in predesigned code (to speed things up), and that’s right about the time I lost him (and it completely).

So I’m having to refigure where I am with this language, and now I’m discouraged. This happens a lot with computer languages. Something goes so easily, like they teach you how to program “Hello World” and then lesson two is how to break into the Pentagon and rewire their networks to get free HBO from the World Bank.

Having said that, I start teaching college classes again next week. I’ll try to make sure I don’t teach the same way I’ve been learning lately. I’d rather not have all of my students jumping off bridges.

Creating Apps, Programming and Just Plain Ole’ Creativity

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Recently, I mentioned that I had decided to start making apps. Originally, my thought was to program in Android, mainly because I wasn’t a fan of Apple’s nefarious walled garden. But then I started to realize that all of my Internet stuff was involved with Mac/Apple, including my iPhone and my iPad, so I ended up buying a MacBook Pro and downloading Xcode to start using Objective C to write iPhone and iPad apps. So here I am.

What I discovered is that getting started is never easy. I think this is why most app designers never end up actually designing any apps. The learning curve is freaking huge. But once you get past it, you actually start to get somewhere. But man, what a journey that learning curve has been. I could give you an Odyssey-like journey of a story, but I’ll save that for another time. I’d rather just talk about creativity and design today.

You see, I used to be a computer programmer back in the day when there weren’t a whole lot of different languages for programming. I learned BASIC and then went to school and learned FORTRAN. Right after that, I taught myself COBOL. Shortly after that, I designed my own word processor and then one of the very first databases (in the days before Filemaker and Access were even considerations). That first database housed the Asian threat assessment for the US Forces in Southeast Asia in the 1980s. People from all over the Asian allied forces visited my office during that time just amazed that I was able to take a paper filing system of known threats and turn it into something that people could use to compare cases they were working on. At the time, there was no such thing as an Internet linkage system, so if you wanted to access the database, you had to come to my office and enter the names yourself. Or they’d phone me and ask me over the phone; there was no thought of phone surveillance back then. We were really naive back then.

Anyway, I had designed this back when few people had personal computers. At the time, I used a Wang computer system. Personally, I coded on a supped up Radio Shack TRS-80 Model IV. Man, that thing was the shit back then. Now, it has less processing power than my $1.99 calculator I bought at Wal Mart.

But because I was in the military, the computer revolution quickly came and passed me by. I pretty much missed the whole thing. When I got out of the service, I had a few stints working for computer gaming companies like Maxis (working on Sim City and The Sims) and Electronic Arts, but it was pretty obvious that the programming world was changing quickly, and I was not keeping up with it.

For years, I kept telling myself I would get back into it. I created a bunch of games when I first started out, and I keep thinking that my way of coding is so much different than everyone else’s. I keep thinking I need to get back into it and develop something the way that only Duane might ever do. But I kept avoiding it and doing other things.

Then I decided to do the whole apps thing. And I’m learning. And right off the start, I’ve started to see a few things I would like to create that no one seems to be doing. And as I used to do back when I first started, I find myself wondering, why isn’t someone else coming up with these ideas, too? The self-indulgent part of me wants to say that I’m exceptional, but the cynic in me says that I’m not smarter or more innovative than anyone else. So why do I keep coming up with really bizarre ways to do things that other people aren’t? Some people look at Facebook and say, “wow, what a great idea. Wish I would have thought of that.” I looked at Facebook when I first saw it (and just a few minutes ago) and think: Why would they have stopped with that? There were so many other things they could have done with it, things that could have enhanced these social communities, but instead they created an interactive business card model that keeps you informed what other people might be doing, kind of like a boring stalker who has nothing better to do. Anyway.

So, I’m starting to think this is the direction I should have been going a long time ago. Currently, as I learn to code through Xcode, Alice and Objective-C, I keep coming up with grandiose ideas of things I would like to do. And I keep finding myself wondering, why isn’t someone else already doing this? I sometimes feel like Socrates responding to the Oracle of Delphi who claimed he was the smartest man alive, and Socrates spent the rest of his life trying to disprove the Oracle. Well, the difference is: The Oracle never said I was the smartest guy alive. As a matter of fact, the Oracle would have had no idea who I was and would have shrugged his shoulders if asked about me in the first place. At least I have an easy task ahead of me because I don’t have to disprove anyone of anything, and no government will force me to drink hemlock because I taught society’s kids to question authority. Nowadays, Socrates would have been unknown as well, competing against people like Kim Kardasian and Paris Hilton and the whole concept of being famous for being famous. But I’m kind of rambling now as this wasn’t really the topic I wanted to discuss.

So I’m making apps now. And I’m writing my first post on my iPad’s Word Press app. It might not even make it to the server. Hell, if I designed it, it would do all sorts of fun things, but knowing my attention to detail, “publish” would be the one thing I’d have forgotten, never thinking that was all that interesting to begin with. I guess there’s something to be said for practicalities. I hear they can be useful.

The Death of Amy Winehouse & the Problem with Santimonious People

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The singer Amy Winehouse died a few days ago in London. From my understanding, she suffered from alcohol abuse and had a difficult time breaking away from the addiction. In the end, she lost her battle, and the world lost a talented young musician. She, like a number of others before her, died at the early age of 27.

I’ll go out on a limb here. I’ve never heard any of her music before. I was not a fan. To be honest, I rarely even followed her antics, other than peripherally hearing about them much like I heard about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and various other celebrity names that had very little relevance on my normal, daily life. But I did hear about her, and secretly, it always bothered me that everything I heard about her indicated that this was a young woman constantly on a projectory towards where it eventually led her. Many others would point out that they saw it coming, but no one ever really “sees” it coming, and unfortunately, she’s lost, and her talent will never have a chance to create again.

So why am I writing about this? Well, the amount of chatter about her death has started to really bother me. The blogosphere, and the conversations that come from the usual suspects has really gotten on my nerves. People can’t be satisfied with pointing out that her life developed towards a tragic end and then move on from there. Instead, whenever I read about her and saw “common people” comment, I couldn’t help but read how some people can be so really mean towards another human being, even if they may have disapproved of her antics, her lifestyle and/or her way of handling her demons.

Part of the fame of Amy Winehouse involves a direct tie to her battle with alcoholism. There really can’t be any disputing that. She’s one of those artists who created while suffering, and I would argue that a lot of her creativity probably needed a touch of her suffering to make it work. It’s sad, but there have been great artists who needed that sort of connection to develop the work they did. Van Gogh was that type. I suspect so was Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, and Ernest Hemingway. She may or may not have her own place in artistic history, or she might not, but at the same time there are a lot of people who were touched by her music, and I think it does a horrible disservice to their memories for people to go on message boards ridiculing them, her and the music she created. There’s a lot of hatred in this world, and it really makes itself seen whenever an event like this takes place.

Part of the tragedy of Winehouse’s death is that it came at time where it cannot be examined without someone else believing it has to be compared to something else. Salon has a great article on this, where the author Mary Williams talks about how people have ridiculed her death by comparing the tragedy to horrific events in Somalia and even the recent horrible actions of some crazy right-winger in Norway. At what point did we make it so that people cannot mourn the losses they feel without having to be felt that their tragedy is not worthy?

One of the things that started bothering me about this incident was on the weekend when I heard about her death. I was on itunes, and I noticed that the service was trying to milk its customers by selling her most popular work, as if paying Apple money would be “honoring” the artist rather than helping executives at Apple profit from her demise. Then I found out that Amazon was doing something similar, and after awhile you just start to shake your head and realize that we live in a very greedy society that will do anything to make a buck. At some point I really should stop being surprised.

The biggest tragedy to me is that her music might have been great, and I never bothered to pay attention when she was still around. I kind of had that same feeling with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. I never got to know the music until after he died. Others, however, were big fans long before that happened.

For me, I’ll probably start listening to her work to see if I can ascertain the message she was trying to deliver. She was an artist, and for me it’s important to try to find out what the artist was trying to share. Sometimes, the message is brilliant, and trascends time and space. Other times, the artist just wanted to make you snap your fingers and maybe tap your foot to the beat. And sometimes, we forget that that is important, too. I’ll listen and try to figure it out. If her message is knowledge, I’ll try to discover it. If it was just to make me sway with the rhythmn, that’s okay, too. The tragedy is in never bothering to listen in the first place.

Patent Trolls Not Content Hiding Under Bridges

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One of the things that constantly hinders creativity is the ability of lazy people to jump on an idea and try to leech off its creators until there’s nothing left of the innovation but a bunch of pissed off designers who figure it’s probably not worth it to continue. That’s going on right now in technology. A long time ago, US companies were innovative with some great ideas that pushed ideas into manufacturing. For years, the USA was known for quality products that you really couldn’t find anywhere else. And then a bunch of leeches started copying everything these companies were doing and distributing almost the same product but cheaper (and not as well made). This caused US companies to have to compromise on standards, and then the race downhill began. Now, if you go to buy some product in the US, it’s almost guaranteed to be somewhat crappy made, and the company that sells it to you will try to get you to pay for an extended warranty because they know you know that your product isn’t going to last long without it. Quality got traded for cheap and quick. We’ve never really recovered.

Well, now we have a new problem. And that’s the problem of patent trolls. Someone comes up with an idea, patents it, and then all innovation in that direction is forever hindered by some bottom-feeding company that doesn’t manufacture anything itself but sues companies for making products. A company named Lodsys is suing a whole bunch of companies that have done nothing other than make apps for smartphones. Claiming that they invented some obscure technology that they never produced, Lodsys has now gone out of its way to sue pretty much any company that dares to make an app for the Android and Apple app markets. Apple jumped in and decided to respond as a plaintiff on the side of the people being sued, but it hasn’t stopped this company from continuing to go after any company it thinks it can get to settle for some cash. As it doesn’t produce any products other than lawsuits (to anyone’s knowledge), they really don’t have anything to lose. Recently, they decided to sue the makers of Angry Birds, which means they see big dollar signs, and they’re not afraid to go after it.

The problem with this is that it sets up a chilling effect in the design marketplace. As someone who will be making Apple apps myself, I see this as a real problem because who in his right mind would want to create anything for a platform that is guaranteeing a lawsuit the second you actually start to make any money? If Apple and Android don’t get Lodsys to cease and desist, it’s going to seriously hinder the marketplace.

That’s what patent trolls do. They make it so that people don’t want to develop anything because what’s the purpose when some bottom-feeder is going to try to steal your money anyway? It’s a lot like the movie industry today. I have a friend of mine who makes independent films. He doesn’t make a lot of money from it because everyone in this industry is practically a bottom-feeder, from the people who do the color correction, the people who adjust the sound, the people who manufacture the commercial dvds, the agents who promise great things but really don’t do anything other than promise great things and the many “producers” who take money but don’t do anything other than promise great results before stating “Man, it’s a tough market. Perhaps if you ponied up another $16,000, I might be able to do something”, the people actually making products have less and less incentive to do so when all of the money happens to be in the peripheral service industry that doesn’t actually create anything.

Unfortunately, the solution to this situation isn’t ever going to happen because the ones who benefit from the problem is a band of lawyers who speak the same language as the people who need to be fixing this situation. Politicians and lawyers work hand in hand so that the people who create things, the designers, the movie-makers, the writers and the manufacturers, have no say so in the outcome but remain at the mercy of people who historically don’t understand the very nature of the word.

My Ipad Makes All Other Devices Obsolete

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I’ve had my Ipad 2 for a few weeks now, and let’s just say that every other device I bought before it has turned out to be useless in comparison. For the longest time, I was convinced that I would find no use for an Ipad, figuring that it was one of those devices that doesn’t really do anything I need. Boy, was I wrong. Let me explain the features that have made this device my daily technology “thing”.

1. Email. I can check both my regular email and my work email on the same device. In addition to this, it also updates my calendar with my work calendar, so that I am always able to check my schedule and not have to rely on my office computer to do so. That’s really nice.

2. News. I used to use a Kindle to read the Washington Post. Now, I read the Washington Post on the Ipad. It also means not having to lug around the Kindle every day. Even my Kindle books can be read on the Ipad, using the Kindle app (at least for now until Apple decides it no longer likes Amazon).

3. Web surfing. Yeah, that rocks on the Ipad. It rocks on my computer, too, but when you can do it all on one device, it’s great.

4. Movies/TV/Music. All of it is on my Ipad. I can watch or listen to anything I want. Some movies I couldn’t watch on the Ipad because they weren’t in Itunes. Well, I bought a program that converts them. We’re fine with that now, too.

5. Comic Books. I can actually read DC and Marvel comics on the Ipad using their subsequent apps. The price of the comics is a bit expensive, but it’s possible to do so, and one day I might just start buying them that way. Not sure yet, though.

6. Pages/Numbers and Powerpoint-like software. I’ll be able to put all of my school-teaching powerpoint slides onto the Ipad and bring it into school to do my lessons. It may takes some configuring, but I suspect it will make life much easier than trying to maintain other devices and flash drives and all that crap.

7. Apps Galore. There are many games, productivity software and so much more that are available for the Ipad. I found a drawing program that I’m starting to use to draw my Stickman comics. It’s making it so that I can do a lot of things I couldn’t do before, without having to be tied down to a computer.

Negatives:

1. It’s not my main computer. It’s not as powerful as my main computer. It’s not in a Windows environment, and yes, I hate all things Mac. I’m not one of the fanboys of Apple at all, so this part of the equation does not make me happy.

2. Can’t play WoW on it. Even though World of Warcraft is designed to practically play on an Etch-A-Sketch with such low requirements the game has, it still can’t be played on an Ipad. Nor do I think it ever will be. This means that I have to still use my main computer to play the game. Which is fine because even if the Ipad could play it, I doubt I’d get the processing power my PC gets when playing the game.

3. Apple makes the thing. Yes, that’s a negative. Apple still has its walled garden, and I fear that it’s going to end up blocking off something I like to do because Apple tends to be moronic when it comes to things like that. They’re having a fight right now with Amazon, which means I may lose my Kindle ability on the Ipad eventually. It has problems with Google, which may mean loss of access to that environment. Apple has that “can’t play well with others” problem, and because of that I’m always fearing that my device is going to be as useless as my Motorola Xoom. What a mistaken purchase THAT was.

Exploring the Ipad 2 & the desire to own every new piece of technology

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I finally broke down and bought an Ipad 2. I had bought a Motorola Xoom some months ago, and I had been very disappointed in that product, mainly because it has turned into a glorified doorstop. I’m often the victim of techno hype, in that too many reviewers acted like it was the great alternative to the ipad, but then when I finally got it, I discovered it wasn’t ready, nor was it really as compatible as it should have been with the things that I wanted to use. I could never get any of my music to be recognized by its music reader (people told me to download a different music player than the one installed), the books really sucked, as google books was never the solution to the e-reader issue (people told me to download another book reader), the movie player didn’t play ANYTHING (people told me to find another video player, which I did, and I never did succeed at getting a decent enough one that really worked on the Xoom). Basically, everything I did on the Xoom was subpar and not up to speed. Great doorstop. Or great e-mail reader, if you have wi fi only.

So, I went to the Apple store and they finally had iPads in. I bought the AT&T 3G version, which so far is great, although I suspect the 3G aspect of it is massively overpriced no matter what model you buy. That’s one thing NONE of the cellular companies have figured out in the United States. It’s like we’re in the Middle Ages here, and no one will do anything to make it better.

But my problem is really that I tend to buy whatever new technology thing comes out as soon as it does, and I sometimes pay the consequence for doing so. I bought a Nook Color when they came out, and I was severely underwhelmed by it. They’ve made great innovations with their current ones, but because I bought the first rendition of the Nook Color, I’m left with yet another very expensive doorstop that people tell me is so much better in a later edition. One of my other failings is that when I’ve been screwed once, I don’t give the company a second chance. So I won’t be buying a new Nook. Sorry. Once bitten and all that.

But so far, I love the ipad. I haven’t gone all crazy with it yet, but I’m slowly moving towards getting rid of my Washington Post subscription on the Kindle and choosing alternatives on the iPad. It’s so mucy nicer carrying that thing around (it’s a lot lighter and easier to carry than the Kindle). So far, I haven’t turned on my Kindle once since buying the Ipad. The only thing is: I have no intentions of buying books on the Ipad because their selection is horrid, and their prices, like most Apple offerings, are atrociously way too high. The only advantage I’ve seen so far with the Kindle offering of the Washington Post is that you download the whole thing at once and then don’t have to have a connection to read it. With the iPad, every time I read something, it seems to want to have a connection to the server in order to turn the page. Tried reading the Washington Post on it, and again was seriously underwhelmed. I’ve also noticed that with the Kindle I would read an entire article because you scrolled through them one by one. With the iPad, I scan articles and read very little, kind of like the old way I used to read a newspaper, and that’s definitely not something I like, and it’s a hard habit to break when met with the opportunity.

I’ll let you know further how I do with the Ipad. I’m trying to use the wifi more often than the cellular connection because after the third day, I checked my usage, and man, I was not impressed with how quickly I am using up my monthly amount. Again, while this is more a complaint against AT&T and Verizon, that’s something they need to fix, or they’re going to price themselves out of the cellular market. I think they believe they’ll continue to win because they’re the only game on the block, but what’s going to happen is that someone is going to invent something that circumvents the need for them, and people will jump ship really freaking fast, eliminating them overnight. It’s what normally happens with business and economics; they just don’t seem to believe it’s right around the corner, a lot like Comcast doesn’t realize it’s on its death bed because of how shitty it treated its customers over the years.

Anyway, haven’t posted much lately, mainly because I’ve had very little to say. My writing career has somewhat sucked, and as that was pretty much all I had in my corner, I find myself not very happy these days.

Drowning in Misleading Information About Technology

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About six months ago, I decided to give up my iPhone for an Android phone. I’ve never been a real fan of Apple, the company, although I have somewhat been on the sidelines for Apple, the technology. The iPhone was definitely one of their best products ever, and I bought one when they first emerged. Then I upgraded to the second generation of the phone, which I believe was the 3G or 3GS (I get them confused). One of the things I really liked about the cell phone (my first real smart phone) was its long battery life. There were times when I went several days before recharging it.

One of the problems with the original iPhone was that you had to go through AT&T. That’s another one of those companies that I’ve learned to live to love and hate, sometimes in the same sentence. Their customer service is atrocious, no matter how hard their PR people try to make it seem otherwise. And sometimes dealing with them as a customer can be a freaking nightmare. But when you don’t have to deal with that side of the house, they do what they need to do, and things generally go smoothly. Not exactly a five-star endorsement, but you take what you can get, I guess.

Well, I discovered at one point that I couldn’t block calls on my iPhone no matter what I did. I was getting nonstop calls from telemarketers and bill collectors (most not even for me), and it was becoming really frustrating. So I looked to Apple to see if there was an app to fix this. There’s not. Apple doesn’t like you to block things, and if Steve Jobs doesn’t like something, that’s just the way every customer will experience the customer experience. Also, AT&T sucks in this area, as they couldn’t figure out a way to stop this other than to block a call (each one), to which they would charge me a nominal ($10) price to do so EACH TIME. That wasn’t a solution.

So, I bought a Sprint Samsung Epic phone (after trying out a few crappy Sprint phones). So far, I’ve been massively disappointed in Sprint. I mean MASSIVELY. They drop calls constantly, and they have finally acknowledged that there’s something wrong in Grand Rapids, although they can’t figure out what it is, but they’re not willing to really do anything to make the experience better other than to offer a different phone (on the same crappy service, which is actually the problem).

And the smart phone isn’t really that smart. In so many ways, Android fails. Miserably. I use Touchdown to link my work email, and whenever I have an appointment on my calendar, any change to the at calender appointment adds a brand new apointment (AND) leaves the old one in place, so that even though I’ve changed my appointment, my phone constantly wants to remind me at the old time that there’s an appointment, even if there no longer is one. When you work in a place where people are changing their appointments all of the time, this makes your calendar somewhat useless. Again, failure of miserable proportions.

The other day, my phone stopped working. For no reason. And then the next day, it started working again. No explanation. Meanwhile, two people phoned me and kept getting voicemail, which they left messages. No messages, of course, ever went through because, well, Sprint sucks.

So I contacted AT&T again, trying to figure out if there’s some way to get the new iPhone 4, and it turns out that I’m in my upgrade range now. What I didn’t know, until I asked a few colleagues who had iPhone 4s on both AT&T and Verizon, that the battery life of the iPhone 4 is no better than my crappy Samsung epic. For some reason, Apple made a brand new phone that is worse than the previous version. My 3G goes for days; the iPhone 4 doesn’t go longer than a half of a day, which seems to be the life span (battery wise) of almost all smart phones these days. That’s just crappy.

So, it looks like I may end up staying with my old iPhone 3G because it’s still the best phone on the market. It doesn’t matter that we’re already into an iPhone 4, and probably moving to an iPhone 5. I doubt it’s going to be much better itself. And every Android phone made is massively dysfunctional, yet it’s branded as the “thing to beat Apple”. If that’s the case, then we’re still a few years away from ever getting something decent out on the market that fills the need of the rest of us.

And that sucks.

The Real Reason No One Can Beat the Ipad 2: Everyone Else is a Moron

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Believe it or not, this isn’t a rant against the Ipad 2, or even for it. It’s a rant against everyone who keeps trying to “beat” the Ipad with their crappy knock offs. Let me explain.

The Xoom. Okay, this should be the best thing since sliced bread to beat the Ipad. It’s an Android tablet. But what’s the first thing they do? They overprice it. Where they could have sold a gazillion of them, they decided they had to make as much money on each one, so now it’s just a slight alternative, which most people will look at and say, “well, no thanks. An Ipad is still a bit cheaper and a better product.” And it is.

Then there came Samsung. Their Galaxy tab seemed like it would be the thing to really do it. It even advertised at a pretty nice competing price. But what does Samsung do? Rather than just let the thing speak for itself, they do the next worst thing. They speak for it, and pretend it’s speaking for itself. What am I talking about? Samsung decided that they would post a lot of on the street interviews about their tablet, but they’re not really on the street people who are who they claim to be. They’re ALL actors, paid by Samsung to say exactly what Samsung wants you to hear.

Now, everyone is laughing at Samsung, and the Galaxy tab is a joke on itself. Great job, Samsung. And I was actually pulling for you until this crap.

Bah, Samsung!

The Illustrious iPad 2

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Yesterday, Apple did its big announcement of the Ipad 2. Basically, after all is said and done, it’s the original iPad with a few extra bells and whistles. Or the same bells and whistles, but they made the bells chime longer and the whistles a little louder. What was probably more interesting was the fact that Apple is so paranoid about the people that will be replacing Steve Jobs when he retires/dies that they brought Jobs out of sick leave to make his usual announcement. This does not bode well for the future of Apple if they can’t even let the man rest long enough and let his successors actually try to succeed.

Having said all of that, I thought I would then address the Ipad 2 itself. Without getting into the details of the device, like it has the whole camera thing, supposedly a better screen (that might not be immediately available) and, well, nothing else that makes me want to go out and buy one. What is significant about the Ipad itself is that nothing announced so far has me anxious to want to go out and buy one. Yeah, I’ve been in Best Buy a few times where I’ve played with one to see how cool it is, but after I’m done playing with it, I realize that it doesn’t do anything that I don’t already have covered. And unlike my iPhone, it doesn’t combine enough OTHER things that I might want to add it to my toys to replace stuff that has become too encompassing.

And that is definitely the problem of the Ipad. There’s nothing about it that causes me to think it’s worth buying an actual tablet computer. And that’s the problem that Apple is facing in the long haul. Right now, it owns the tablet market, but it is still trying to build a “need” rather than a curiosity for that market. In olden days, when every house has an oven, there was this new device called the microwave oven. And it took a lot of convincing to “convince” housewives that they needed the gadget because an oven was capable of doing everything the new device could do. However, a media campaign that could have riveled the attack at D-Day managed to convince the average American that it was now a need, not a curiosity, or something for the rich only.

That is what the tablet still has to do, and it’s not succeeding. Sure, Apple is selling a lot, but Apple sells a lot of a lot of things that don’t become household givens. Until tablet companies do something that convinces the average person, like me, that we should want and need one of these gadgets, most of us are going to be sitting on the sidelines laughing at the people who bought one but still have no major need for one.

That is the press conference that Apple needs to succeed at. So far, they haven’t done it. As a matter of fact, Apple has recently done everything possible to destroy its own little niche market by trying to own that market completely through draconian rules and charges that benefit Apple only, cutting out other companies from investing in the Apple dynasty. As long as that keeps happening, you’re going to have a lot of people thinking, well maybe I don’t need the Apple one, so they’ll look at the other companies and then suddenly realize they don’t need a tablet at all. So far, the tablet hasn’t been the success that spin doctors really want you to think it is. The majority of Americans haven’t bought into it. A lot of people have, but a lot of people doesn’t translate to market saturation or even market itemization. It’s a gimmick right now, and as long as it remains in that category, it’s going to stay a gimmick.

Now, I know there are people reading this who are thinking, “hey, I bought one and I love it.” That’s fine, but you’re the outliers right now who Apple and tablet companies want to use to convince everyone else that their product is relevant. So, you need to start doing that and earning your pay you’re not receiving from a company that wants to get as much money out of you as possible by limiting your options in getting the best bang from your product. So do their dirty work for them. That’s kind of how the game works. For them. Be the tool they need you to be.

Time for Another Round of Current Events and Happenings

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1. The Assassination Attempt in Arizona. Okay, there’s really no way of walking around this topic without having to address it head-on. It’s pretty much the main story of what’s going on in the country, and like most current events, it’s yet another one of those that seems to be so out of context practically everywhere it gets reported. What everyone can agree on is that it was a tragic event, and most of us wish such a thing had never happened. However, I suspect that it’s only been a matter of time because there are a lot of crazy people out there, and if John Lennon’s death wasn’t a warning decades ago, we really should have been paying a lot more attention.

You see, there are a lot of people who are not playing with a full deck out there. We run across them each and every day. If you live in a big city, you can’t step over enough of them without running into another. Some are homeless, who stand on the street corners and do all sorts of bizarre behavioral activities, like yell at you, try to pee on you, beg from you, and pretty much anything else you can and cannot imagine. We had to be nuts ourselves if we honestly thought that they’d stick to their little corners and not start to bother the rest of us. I teach at a community college, and in the years that I’ve been teaching, you run across a lot of people who sometimes don’t seem like they’re all there. And you get really worried and concerned. But for the most part, no one really cares, because as long as it doesn’t affect them, why should they care?

The event turned into a bit of a surreal experience when suddenly people thought it was supposed to be a wake-up moment for the problems that have been occurring in our society. There’s a lot of anger and hate speech going back and forth between the different sides of the political spectrum, and for some bizarre reason people actually thought that this event might lead people to talk about these problems and do something about it. Not going to happen because no one wants to admit there’s anything wrong. Well, at least not with themselves. They’ll point fingers and say something’s wrong with YOU or someone else, but never with themselves. But that’s been the problem from the start, and as long as we’re never going to engage that, we’re never going to change the hostile discourse happening in this country.

Sure, it’s easy to blame Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or (pick any politician or pundit), but the odds of actually opening up a real dialogue so that people actually listen to each other is practically impossible. It’s a nice pipe dream, but pipe dreams are just that. Dreams.

2. Verizon is Getting an Iphone. Good for them. I had one with AT&T and I’ve been very upset with AT&T and Apple for awhile now because of the fact that I can’t stop people from calling me, especially when they’re people I don’t want calling me. Neither Apple nor AT&T were very helpful here. So I left and joined Sprint, adding on a Samsung Epic phone instead. Pretty happy with it. Be happier if it had a battery life like the iPhone, but you take what you can get. Now that Verizon has an iPhone, I don’t really care. It’s still a phone from Apple, and Apple requires that it maintain control over its walled garden. Not a selling point for me.

3. Golden voice Ted Williams. I saw this coming a million miles away. The media jumped on this rags to riches to rags to riches story and thought he was the next best thing to sliced butter. Well, I kept wondering, “when is the other shoe going to drop” meaning when is the media going to turn against him? Well, now he’s kind of gone of the deep end because of personal problems, which no one could have ever expected would happen with a guy who has been living on the streets after throwing away his previous life. I mean, who would have thought something like that could happen? Anyway, sarcasm aside, he’s now heading to rehab and was arrested in Los Angeles. We’ll see how this story plays out, but I’m not expecting a lot of happy endings.

4. Unemployment has gone up again. Of course it has. And last month, it went down. The month before, I think it went up. We need to stop reporting these numbers and then providing commentary after it. Each time they do it, some pundit makes an argument that fits his world view of what he thinks should happen, rather than what is really happening. We’re in a recession right now. The market is going to be flying all over the place on a month to month basis. Stop trying to figure out long term strategies based off of short term notifications. It never works. Which brings me to my next one:

5. The Stock Market Fluxuates. Yes, it does. But one thing that needs to be constantly brought up, and it never is, is that the stock market really has very little connection to what’s really going on. It’s the Las Vegas for rich people. People buy based on speculation, and they think they have an idea of how the market is going to change in the short term. NONE OF THESE FIGURES has anything to do with what’s really going on. Companies are selling products, people are working for these companies and get paid whatever wage they normally get paid, and then some people buy some of these products. But because the stock market price of a company went up or down does not always reflect what’s going on in the real world of that particular company. Quite often, these fluxuations come because some executive did something stupid, like embezzled money, or had dinner with a celebrity. If the stock market goes south over the span of a week, it may not really mean anything to the real world as an implication. It may just mean a whole bunch of people panicked because they stopped living in the real world and see the market as the real world. Man, I hate the stock market.

6. Middle East Talks Aren’t Going Well. They never are. The two sides of that conflict are probably NEVER going to get along. Each new administration comes to the table convinced it’s going to make a difference but rarely ever does. That’s because the two sides hate each other. They have no incentive to be friendly to each other. Each side wants the other dead. That’s their international policy towards the other side. And it’s been that way for so long now that generations of their people grow up hating people they may never have met. If you want to fix the problems there, you have to do it generationally, and you have to do it by a completely different set of characteristics than our current process of diplomacy allows. Tit for tat and carrot diplomacy does not work on countries that live their entire lives to kill each other as their one foundational value. I could go at length on what would work, but NO ONE CARES OR LISTENS, so I’m going to stop caring, too.

7. Tablets Are the New In Thing. I’ve said this before, but it requires repeating. Tablets aren’t new. When the iPad was announced, suddenly a whole bunch of people who never wanted a tablet suddenly thought they needed one. We were like Eskimos being told we needed freezers and refrigerators by Don Draper and whatever fictional agency he might be working at. But shortly before this announcement, tablets were already out there trying to get us to buy them. And we didn’t. Why not? Because we didn’t need them, and they seemed kind of stupid to have. Well, now we all need them because Don Draper Steve Jobs told us we needed one. So now every other company under the sun is now releasing their tablet computer to compete with the Ipad. And I won’t be surprised if we start buying them this time around. We’re such sheep.

8. Myspace laid off half its staff. So what? Myspace has been irrelevant for years now. It used to be the “in” thing, and then Facebook came along and turned Myspace into an ugly sister of the hot cheerleader. Ever since Facebook, Myspace has been struggling to appear relevant. But its not. There’s nothing about Myspace that causes people to care. When it was told to sit at the kiddie table of technology, they tried to appear relevant again by pretending that it was the place to go for music. But Facebook was already there doing that, so Myspace continued to become even more irrelevant. At one point, I thought I might use it to hype my writing, but then realized that they were really only interested in doing so if I was already big time famous, which I wasn’t. So it wasn’t useful to me. And then I figured that if I was already big time famous, I probably wouldn’t need them. I’d just have a million facebook friends instead. Then, add to the mix that no one seems to be using Myspace anymore, and you realize why it’s probably going to be sold one of these days to someone like Murdoch who keeps buying up properties that are already irrelvant and trying to somehow make it seem like he bought a very relevant purchase.

9. Seth Rogen is Upset About the Hate Towards his Green Hornet Movie. So what? It’s a movie, not anything relevant. Make a really good movie that causes people to take notice, and maybe it won’t get the hate. Just saying. Then again, no one’s actually seen the movie, so perhaps the condemnations are a bit early.

10. Two of my novels are now on Kindle and the Nook. Innocent Until Proven Guilty, my first novel, is available on the Kindle.  Thompson’s Bounty, which is a science fiction, time-travel novel I wrote involving pirates, is available on the Barnes and Noble Nook, and it is available on the Kindle as well. I would not be very upset if you chose to read my novels. Really.

11. The people of Haiti still seem to be suffering, even though most of the world has left this area because it’s not a photo op any more. Just saying. Some people gave up on it because they don’t like how the Haitians are continuing to follow corrupt leaders who continue to cheat them out of international aid. Some people gave up on it because they only have the capacity to handle concern for a certain amount of time (usually the time between football season and American Idol finalist run-offs). And then some people just don’t care.

That’s all I have for today. My stuffed animal Brucoe thinks people should do more to care about other people, but he’s just a stuffed animal, and what does he know?