iCatalyst

TinyURL'd

You know what is more annoying than those Apple commercials?  Neither do I.  I know what they are doing, and I know that they are doing it well, but I still am hell-annoyed by them.  They talk more about how superior the Mac is to the PC, and the plethora of problems the PC has and completely leave out any information regarding the product of which they are advertising.  But then again, they do not even need to.  The culture of the Apple iPod is unsupported superiority.  I am serious here, the link was right there in the last sentence.

The Mac is in a very powerful situation.  Every aspect of North American culture these days leans towards how something looks, as opposed to how it performs.  I am not bashing the Mac here, what I mean to say is that part of the reason kids are buying Mac’s these days is just because it looks cool and is trendy.  Yes, they do have some performance benefits over the Windows OS, but they are not bothering to find even that.  They have a permanent grasp on the trend-whore-teenagers right now.

Microsoft and Apple are two very different companies, and they are competing for the same market.  Apple is, more than anything, a hardware company.  Any bit of hardware attached to their OSX is attached specifically for it.  This is why OSX has such great compatibility, compared to the issues with Windows (especially Vista).  As a Linux/ Windows user, I know a few dozen plethora’s of things no user on the Mac has even thought of doing.  Most of these are pointless, but that is not the point.  A majority of the hardware for the Mac is made by the same company who make PC parts - they have no reason to advertise against either side.  Microsoft cannot really advertise against it because Windows’ success depends a lot on the hardware, that they have no say over.

So why the title?  Thing is, the major demographic for any technology are the teenagers.  Teenagers and their parents that buy this stuff.  The Apple logo has become so big that is inspires/ forces companies to follow suit, the timeline goes a little something… like… this…

010 Steve Jobs gives a Macworld Keynote, shows off new iPod/ Apple computer

020 the select percentage of Apple fanboys buy the new device, no matter how minimal the change

030 increase in demand for the feature

040 companies start to mimic feature, end up doing it better than Apple

GOTO 010

… but it’s like that, and that’s the way it is…

You may not think this to be something positive.  But is is, even if you are not a fan of Apple or its iPod or it’s Macintosh computer.  Apple to computers is what Starbucks is to coffee, it may not be the best, but it made it more popular.  That popularity gave other, smaller businesses, more customers.  You may hate Apple, but it would be terribly ignorant to think that it had nothing to do with the evolution of the MP3 player.

Apple is in the middle of a giant, touch screen snowball.  Their marketing team knows this and Steve Jobs most definitely knows this as well.  Will this snowball end?  Possibly.  Will it turn into a bloody giant snow man and take over the world?  Yes, in negative 400 days.  And even still, Apple is seen as the sweet little brother to Windows.  But secretly, Windows is sleeping with Apple’s older, less attractive but more experienced older sister, UNIX…

Tags: Apple, computers, ipod

"Seven iPhone Disappointments"

TinyURL'd

The iPhone recently came out with its, incredibly anticipated, 3G networking upgrade, featuring GPS!  The price also dropped down to $199, which front up sounds a lot better than the previous price of $399.  It did not take long before people started crying about the apparently hidden fees in the AT&T, 3G price of $10 a month.  Since then there have been a plethora of rants, raves, Digg’s and Reddit’s about this subject.  I cannot claim to post brand new information on subjects of this matter, I am not America, nor am I an iPhone user.  That being said, this is my response to the list in the link shown above.

• The Cost: as said before, the customers are paying more because of an incredibly faster Internet service.  I do not see how this simple fact can be so blatantly ignored.  You flamers are so damn picky.
• No Flash: I am not extremely well versed in the ways of camera phones, but I did have a really nice BlackBerry Pearl.  There are much nicer cameras out there, but I really, really needed my camera flash.  It was a great picture if you had the right light.
• No Replaceable Batteries: this point surprises me in the sense that… well, it is an Apple product, they just don’t do batteries.  Apple claims the iPhone has 8 hours of Talk TIme.  Even if those numbers are false, that is not bad at all.  And with the popularity of the iPod/ iPhone, it would not be hard at all to buy a third party charger.  A battery would be nice, but… it aight.
• Video Recording: considering what most of the Macintosh computers are used for, video, it is surprising there is no iMovie integration in the phone.  The biggest surprise here is just that every damn phone has a video camera any ways… not quite generations ahead here, eh?
• No Cut-and-Paste: one of the best features of the Facebook app for the BlackBerry was the fact you could copy numbers straight from their profile.  I do not know if the iPhone is completely lacking all copy-and-paste function, but it helps a lot, especially when compiling an address book.
• No MMS: I am actually completely indifferent about this point, I have never seen a reason to use MMS.
• No Voice Dialing: I have not used much of this feature as well, but if I was using a touch-based phone (especially one with Apple’s fingerprint-bait-surfaces) I would, ironically, try to touch it as little as possible.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/06/20/iphone-disappointment-features-tech-wireless08-cx_bc_0620iphone.html

Tags: Apple, iphone