Euphemisms

June 4th, 2009, by The Angry Drunk

As I read the Palm Pre review at Engadget, I’m laugh­ing my ass off at the lin­guis­tic con­tor­tions they go through to make sure they always write “web stan­dards” when they really mean “Javascript and CSS.”

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  • http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK GreyAreaUK

    Thing that gets me is that world+dog is still tout­ing the Pre — sorry, the Pré — as an “iPhone killer”. Given that the thing has a FUCKING KEYBOARD it’s much more likely to be going head-to-head with the var­i­ous Crackberries than the iPhone. Anyone who cares about a key­board hasn’t bought an iPhone and won’t be buy­ing an iPhone any time soon.

    It also seems to me that no mat­ter how good the HTML+Javascript+CSS is, it’s still not going to be as good as a full Obj-C pro­gram­ming envi­ron­ment. If the Pré can run Java apps then that will make a dif­fer­ence, of course. I don’t know if it can or not.

    Still — any­thing that stops Apple from being com­pla­cent is a Good Thing™.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    I’ve beaten this deceased equine into a thin smear of tis­sue, both here and on the AMB pod­cast, but I have to keep point­ing it out. There is some­thing about the geek mind that refuses to con­sider the pos­si­bil­ity of mul­ti­ple prod­ucts com­pet­ing in a mar­ket with­out one “killing” the com­pe­ti­tion.

    I agree that, from what I’ve seen so far, the Pré doesn’t have any­thing going for it that would make me switch from my iPhone. On the other hand I’m per­fectly happy with the idea that the Pré may be the per­fect phone for some­one else. All of us in the mar­ket for smart phones can only ben­e­fit from a robust, com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place.

    The geek pun­dit class needs to stop think­ing that Highlander is a metaphor for how to run a market.

  • http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK GreyAreaUK

    My orig­i­nal com­ment didn’t make it very clear, but I agree com­pletely — the smart-phone mar­ket is huge and you don’t have to destroy Apple/Blackberry/WindowsMobile to sur­vive or even flourish[0]. Competition is a good thing. And from what I’ve read so far the WebOS is actu­ally very capa­ble, and this is only ver­sion 1. Like you, it wouldn’t make me change from an iPhone (or in my case alter my deci­sion to buy an iPhone) but we all need to remem­ber that (a) as I’ve said, it’s only ver­sion 1, and (b) it isn’t even actu­ally out yet.

    As an aside, I really wish peo­ple would stop call­ing Apple’s myth­i­cal tablet device a ‘Media Pad’, because that makes it sound like a san­i­tary towel designed for TV pre­sen­ters.

    Oh, and Highlander? There should have been only one!




    [0] although there’s a small, nasty part of me that does want to see Windows Mobile die the swift, painful death it deserves,

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    I knew you were agree­ing. I just really like beat­ing on that horse.

  • http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK GreyAreaUK

    It does make a rather sat­is­fy­ing ‘thwud’ noise.

  • http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK GreyAreaUK

    It does make a rather sat­is­fy­ing ‘thwud’ noise.