Category Archives: Apple

Why hard copy rules

I mean, look at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I’m a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was — and is — huge, and vital. I can’t even count how many times I’ve gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I’d missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. (It’s part of a multigenerational tradition in my family — my mom’s father used to take her and her sibs down to Dragon Lady Comics on Queen Street in Toronto every weekend to swap their old comics for credit and get new ones).

via Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either) – Boing Boing.

There will never be an iPod for a book.  I do want a technology that allows me to read pdfs and other free stuff off the web while curled up on the couch.  But actually replacing books is out of the question.

Again, it worked with music because music always required a machine.  Books are not machines so the pros of using a machine are marginal.

And I never wanted an iPad either.  Honestly, these people make amazing desktops and laptops and need to find a way to brag about it every once in a while.  This flashy stuff seems distracting.

I’m not posting this so much to really take sides as to revel in the irony.

For, truly, the irony is deep enough to swim in.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/a40BQ8ThsTc” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

[link to video]

And, if you haven’t seen it already, don’t forget to read about the “blue box” industry that met a need in the AT&T monopoly era of 1971 on the Berkeley College Campus and provided investment capital to start Apple.

An ocean of irony!

PostScript

One More:

At the D Conference in May, 2006, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, explaining why Apple would not get into the handset business, famously denounced wireless carriers as “orifices” that choked the flow on choice and innovation. Yesterday, Apple completed its conversion into an orifice.

Steve Jobs is gifted, but I think he is going to make himself as hated as Apple is loved.  Given the importance of image to Apple’s prosperity, this will be a really bad thing, if one only wants to look at the economic consequences.

1-click purchasing in meatspace

Mike Hyatt writes:

Today I went to the local Apple Store. I needed to pick up a small adapter, so I could use my favorite head phones with my new iPhone. When I arrived, I was surprised by the crowd. The store was jammed with people. But I was almost immediately greeted by an Apple clerk, who asked if she could help me.

There were probably ten clerks in the store but only one was behind the counter. The rest were mingling with the “guests.” Each of them wore a lime green shirt and carried a handheld credit card processor.

My clerk led me to the item I wanted and asked if I needed anything else. I told her that I wanted to browse for a few minutes. She said, “Fine. Let me know if I can help you further.” A few moments later, I found another clerk on the floor and told him I was ready to check out. He swiped my card and asked if I wanted to have the receipt printed out or e-mailed to me. I said, “E-mail,” and since I had purchased using this credit card before, they already had my e-mail address in their system. I was done and on my way in less than a minute.

Maybe this is old news to some of you.  I don’t know since I don’t do much in Apple stores besides drool.  But this is probably a great example of the internet teaching better practices to other areas of life.  Of course, much of the improvement is due to the decreasing size and increasing portability of the technology.  But still, someone had to think of using it that way.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea didn’t originate from someone saying, “I wish real reality could be this fast.”

Small is stylish

Ever since coming back to Macs, I’ve started caring about what computers look like as well as what they can do (Those who know me will recognize this as my “Apple made me shallow” complaint).  I don’t think Mac are the only ones with this sort of appeal.  While posing it with the wine flute seems like overkill, this Sony Vaio is a thing of beauty.

Hopefully, as beauty becomes more and more a sought-after commodity, functionality will become a cheap baseline that more and more of us can afford.  I’ll be content to get my aesthetic fix from the Engadget galleries using anything that works well.