Midnight Jolt Run

Posted by Fiss on January 30, 2010

By now the fanboys are rushing to the battlements, trying to prepare for the uncouth masses waking up from the last three months…no…the last several years of blind lust for Apple Computers Inc.  I can only imagine how it must feel to know you’re on the other side of the coin when the Second Coming turns out to be a sham, the Lotto ticket is a fake, or the Pregnancy Test and the Colon Cancer results got mixed up at the clinic.  But that’s exactly what happened here.  The company that “Revolutionized” the industry just fucked up their chance to continue to suck unquestioned and untold amounts from the collective credit-card teats of the Starbucks crowd.  Hallelujah.  At least…I hope they have.

Now, this post has a higher purpose than just Apple bashing, so let me get it out of the way that I admire what OSX does for portable devices, and think it’s an excellent match on the iBook and Powerbooks.  Even the iPhone is the best at what it does, and I cannot argue the iPod itself is single-handedly responsible for saving Apple’s ass from the late 90′s.  However, after listening to the last three months of meaningless, useless jabber from the professional computer industry about the iPad, and for a moment actually thinking that MAYBE Apple would create a product I’d be interested in, I feel fully justified in bringing the fire.  You fucked up, Apple. Your one chance to woo me outside of me getting bored enough to Hackintosh a HP Mini and you lost it.

About ten years ago, when I was discovering the absolute joy (and occasional frustration) of using a Palm Pilot Pro, I began to see the potential of devices that would collectively evolve into the world’s Smartphones of modern fame.  I loved it.  I used it every day.  And I was barely in my senior year of High School, but the rugged little black-and-white-and-green screen saved my ass with shitty maps, quick notes, and contacts to my friends and family than I’ll ever be able to count.  I even wrote on it.  Stories.  Plots.  Character ideas.  It was incredibly liberating to have an extension of your home computer with you in your pocket at all times!  Why bother getting a laptop (which weighed more than your lap at the time) when you could have a PDA!?

Then, a few years later, I got my first colourized Palm and a Wacom Tablet at around the same time.  It didn’t take long for me to combine the idea of a pen-based PDA and the incredibly amazing pressure sensitive drawing/sketching pad in my mind, and I came up with my ideal PDA in my mind.

• Essentially a black piece of glass about the size and shape of a modern day iPhone
• The Stylus would actually be a Wacom Pen and the screen a Wacom Digitizer
• Full colour, lots of memory, wifi, Bluetooth, etc
• Speakers, camera and maybe even open it up to reveal a keyboard or a keyboard projector

When the iPhone came out, I have to admit, it looked pretty damn close to my ideal device, but I had just purchased a cell that I was happy with, and had an amazing Dell Axim with a screen resolution and 3D playback that put even the iPhone’s to shame, so I ignored it.  Harder when the 3G came out, because it was now slim and sexy, but still, people began reporting problems.  No Flash?  No Multitasking?  No COPY OR PASTE? Seriously…what the shit?  You can’t Copy and Paste data?  Motherfucking DOS could do that between programs!

It was about then I realized I was seeing a lot of parallels between Apple and Sony.  And I fucking hate Sony.

Sony runs off of the idea that they can do no wrong.  That their products are God, and it is the privilege of the masses to line up, shell out the contents of their wallets, and worship the products like they are so rightful to worship.  Sony built a billion dollar empire (or is that trillion?) off of stylish, handy, well made products that most people could afford.  They then became elitist snobs who’s innovation and quality ratings tanked in comparing them to their competitors.  Instead of helping to propel standards and innovation, they threw blobs of money at any competitors to silence of absorb them.  I still take perverse pleasure in watching the sales data for the Playstation 3 VS the Wii show Nintendo using the dried out husks of Sony executives’ souls to print money on.  Ahh…good times.

But even Sony can do right.  Their e-ink Reader is one of the best uses of the new e-ink technology I’ve ever seen.  It was smacked by the Kindle in the sales arena, but it’s still something I could see myself reluctantly walking into a Sony Store for and picking up because it’s a superior, perfectly balanced product.  Just like I could see myself walking into an Apple store for a Powerbook if I somehow decided I needed some more OSX experience and was willing to shell out the extra 500 bucks for the Turtleneck Tax.

Oh…oh yes.

The Turtleneck tax.  That’s what I call the mark-up Apple puts on their products VS equal or superior PC equipment.  Steve Jobs has to pay for those turtlenecks somehow.  I figure they’re actually expensive, and made out of the harvested pubic hair of a million frappachino-guzzling iDorks that picked up the iPhone 3GS less than a week after maxing out their credit card buying the iPhone 3G.

Anyway…back to my unbridled rage.

Sony, Apple, and a hundred companies these days (some to lesser extents) are all guilty of buying into their own hype.  They sell themselves as the product, and their products as the leftovers.  While I have no problem buying into an image, or a theme, it is the blind, rampant customer loyalty that pisses me off to no end.  It becomes dangerous when you start seeing it in corporations like Toyota, who have just recently had to recall hundred of thousands of vehicles because they began ignoring things like “making the gas peddle not stick to the floor” in their effort to channel more money to their “most reliable and safe” advertising campaigns (and their executives who are of course patting themselves on the back with eachother’s cocks every time their stocks jump a point).

The idea that one should “vote with their money” and “perform market or product research” is rarely ever used anymore.  People find it much easier just to go with Dell because they’ve had a Dell in the past.  Or order a Big Mac because that’s what they usually get.  Everyone’s guilty of it.  It took 4 failed motherboards and 3 hard drives for me to start actually investigating my computer part purchases instead of just grabbing the nearest ASUS or Maxtor.  And while I’ve returned to ASUS for a grand number of things, it’s never blindly…always do I check their product reviews.

This blindness isn’t just a corporate thing, though.  It’s also seen in a lesser extent in non-companies, so that puts the blame on us, the consumer.  Take Linux and the Open Source Movement for example.  One day, while chatting with my buddy online and telling him I was using Microsoft Word 2003 and enjoying it, he began to lay the smack down, shouting how I was supporting evil and that Open Office was free and how dare I as a geek not use it?!?

I told him:  Because Word actually does what I want it to.

I’ve got nothing against Linux and Open Office, and I regularly use three or four major Open Source projects every day, not the least of which is my beloved Firefox, but it is due to my experience, extended use, and troubleshooting abilities with the product, as well as my enjoyment of its features and style that all contribute to me choosing it.  This is why I bought Windows Vista, but mostly ignored Ubuntu 9:  Because Windows did what I wanted it to, didn’t cost an unreasonable amount, and my experience with the platform allowed me to tweak it the way I wanted to (more or less).  And while I loathe Vista compared to Windows 7, I’d still go back to Vista versus using Ubuntu for my personal computer because I could make it work just fine after whipping it like a naughty puppy who pooped on the rug in the corner.   Every company makes a stinker once in a while.  Communities make mistakes and avoid tackling issues.  Fans and consumers rely on what they know to help guide their future decisions.  This is simply fact…and I have no problem with any of it.  Hell, now that Sony dropped the PS3′s price and has Uncharted 2 as a title, it may actually one day be on my shopping list.

But Apple?

This is what bothers me so much about companies like Apple:  They pump out some good products, but now they believe themselves to be unable to do wrong because their wallets are fat and they aren’t starving anymore.  They’re getting lazy, and it’s only going to get worse because we’re helping them become lazy! This isn’t a one-time mistake either.  They have consistently been releasing *nothing* of any innovation for years now.  The last item of innovation they released was the Macbook Air (if you can call that innovative) and the iMac Mini.  Everything else has been recycled, slowly upgraded with off-the-shelf crap, and predictable beyond the belief of everyone but the poor bastards who kick themselves for not waiting for the next 6 month product refresh.  The iPod Nano with Video?  Are you fucking serious?  You’re adding a shit cell-phone camera to your MP3 player and selling it with a moronic commercial that would better sell shades of paint, and you dare still use “Think Different”? Apparently, after you’ve thought different once, you can stop, and just masturbate to that one new idea over and over.  Normally I wouldn’t care what idiots do with their money, but at this level, it should be labelled as customer abuse.

Back to the latest crapfest, though, the iPad.

Even though you will see a thousand solid reasons and negative reviews against the iPad, you’ll still be beset upon all sides by the corporate shills who scream how beautiful that slim chunk of aluminium is and how much it will enhance the very core of their being when they scramble along the waiting lines and finally obtain their very own overpriced LCD toy before any of their other friends.   It isn’t even fucking OUT yet and you have everybody talking about it because the few people not blind still need to make a buck off of it by reporting about it.   A week ago, it wasn’t even PRESS-RELEASED yet and everybody was saying how it would make every other computer device useless and archaic!  Jesus fucking Christ people, get some Goddamn perspective!   Apple doesn’t sell Consumer Electronics.  They sell the idea that you will be a better person by having their products.   Steve Jobs once said that Apple’s purpose wasn’t to make Computers, it was to change the world for the better.  That’s wonderful and beautiful.  But somehow, between that ideal and the reality of it, you have Apple selling the idea that you can be a Super Hero for $599 with free shipping on orders over $50, and the iPad only drives home the point that they don’t even have to deliver on anything anymore for their consumers just to suck it all up.

They’ll even swallow without being asked.

You’ll have graphics designers toting how this will revolutionize their jobs and sex lives and how nobody has ever thought to be as awesome as Apple, while forgetting that their Wacom Cintiq can blow it out of the water and can actually get work DONE.  All the Vista haters will forget how Microsoft is beating Apple at their own multi-touch game by introducing the MS Surface concept and the Courier designs. Gadget websites will be too busy covering the iPad and iPad killers instead of  remembering that MSI and HP will have their tablet-PCs (and they’ll be REAL Personal Computers with Multitasking, Flash support, and COPY/PASTE) out before Apple even ships their 3G model to market.

And Apple will still rake in money by the butt-load, even though any Apple-fans with half a brain will wait till the iPad Generation 2 (likely due a year from now to help slumping sales).

This isn’t to say the iPad won’t be useful in some segments of the market.  A reliable, portable screen running one or two useful iPhone apps for under a grand will likely make quite a few people happy and may actually do a lot of good in filling in the tiny sliver of need between netbook or mobile screen applications and a PDA-like device.  But this isn’t what Apple is selling.  It wasn’t what the hype was about.  It most certainly isn’t the iJesus the Applefags were hoping it was.  Not that it will matter much…

It’s absolutely incredible to me that we love the hype so much that it can skew consumer hearts to buy something that nobody needs, few people even wanted, and everyone was expecting more from.  Instead of wowing us, revolutionizing the world, and using their name to further the industry in general, Apple has pumped out another useless iToy for the masses.  No matter how many of the above uses it will grow to inhabit, the iPad was supposed to be  a revolution, not a limited tool.  Too big to be portable, too weak to be useful, and too stylish for their owners to risk in any actual hard work, the iPad will indeed be the Paris Hilton of the Netbook Industry.  And just as the rich little cunt is still making more money in a year than I’ll ever see in my life, I’m sure Steve Jobs doesn’t care at all.  He’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, followed by the Exotic Turtlenecks R Us store that’s been built by his mansion.

And the worst of this all is I wasn’t even hoping the iPad, iSlate or iBrick would fail…I wanted it to succeed! I really wanted the iPad to be something useful.  Something that was better.  Something worthy of all the hype and expectation.  Something justifiable for owning, instead of just prancing around like a dork.  Something that may have made me want one.  Something that could have saved Apple from falling into a decade of Sony-like arrogance.  But alas, I still have my wits about me.  I want the next 600 bucks I spend to actually do something my Smartphone can’t do better.  You know…like read newspapers, books and websites and support thousands of apps.  At least my phone has a bloody keyboard and a  speaker phone built in.  And it can multi-task.   And use Flash.  And fit in my pocket.

To console myself, I guess I’ll simply stick to my gaming-capable Netbook which is the exact same size as the iPad.  I’m extremely glad it’s a little rugged.  I anticipate I will be using it to bash in the skulls of Apple fanboys once they start showing off their iPads to me, which they will have to because they’re too fucking big to put into their pockets.  I’ll just point off into the distance and shout “Oh look!  Is that the new iPad Pro being announced a month after iPad’s launch?” and they’ll probably beg me to kill them.

At least the smart ones will.

Posted under Manifestoes