Obligatory iPad 2 Commentary

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As any­one with a func­tion­ing pulse knows, Apple revealed the iPad 2 on Wednesday of this week. I won’t reit­er­ate the stats and fea­tures, there’s plenty of places on the web where you can find them.


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The Incredibly Credulous Tech Press

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Yesterday I spec­u­lated that it would take less than 24 hours for this spec­u­la­tion from Apple pun­dit extra­or­di­naire John Gruber to be accepted as gospel truth by the tech press. Apparently I need to re-calibrate my already abysmal expec­ta­tion of the media; because no more than 3 hours after mak­ing that pre­dic­tion I walked into my local bar and was inun­dated with pan­icky fear that the next iPad was being delayed until Fall. Keep in mind that I’m talk­ing about nor­mal peo­ple here, peo­ple who think that “Gruber” is the bad guy from Die Hard.


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WWDC 2010 Roundup

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Well, there you have it. The WWDC 2010 Keynote has come and gone. The big news, of course, was the new iPhone 4. Additionally Steve Jobs talked about the newly renamed iOS 4 and minor updates to iBooks on the iPad. I’m not going to bother run­ning down the fea­tures of the new OS, Apple cov­ered that dur­ing the spe­cial event ear­lier this year. Nor am I going to go through a detailed list of the specs of the new iPhone. You can get a good run-down of that at Ars Technica. What I do want to talk about are my impres­sions of some of the announce­ments, and in par­tic­u­lar, the reac­tions to them.


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One Week With the iPad

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I’ve been using my iPad for a lit­tle over a week now, so it’s time for some impres­sions. Before read­ing onward, it might be a good idea to read a pre­vi­ous post of mine where I laid out my poten­tial use cases for an iPad. Much has been writ­ten con­cern­ing the pros and cons of the var­i­ous iPad con­fig­u­ra­tions. Ultimately I ended up pre-ordering a 32 GB WiFi+3G model.


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Adobe’s Messed Up Metaphors

I ran across this arti­cle on TechCrunch by M.G. Seigler regard­ing a recent state­ment made by Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch. Regarding, what else, the iPhone and Apple’s refusal to allow appli­ca­tions built using Flash on the plat­form. Kevin’s full remarks are avail­able here, but here is the part that M.G. focuses on, and that I want to address:

But look at the iPhone heli­copter we just saw — why should I only be able to use an iPhone for that? Why can’t you do that with any phone? If you look at what’s going on now, it’s like rail­roads in the 1800’s. People were using dif­fer­ent gauged rails. Your cars would lit­er­ally not run on those rails. That’s counter to the web. The ‘rails’ now are com­pa­nies forc­ing peo­ple to write for a par­tic­u­lar OS, which has a high cost to switch

M.G. does an ade­quate job of demon­strat­ing why Lynch is wrong by delv­ing into the his­tory of the U.S. rail­road sys­tem and by look­ing at the Japanese model, but he makes the mis­take of accept­ing the metaphor in the first place.

Lynch is craft­ing a metaphor where the devel­op­ment envi­ron­ment used to pro­duce smart — phone

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Dave Winer Is Terminally Confused

While I grind out the soul crush­ing weeks until I can actu­ally have my iPad I’ve been wait­ing for that one spe­cial iPad arti­cle that would unleash my cre­ative rage. The blog post with that cer­tain some­thing that would push it above the gen­eral morass of inanity that we’ll be scream­ing about on Ye Olde Angry Mac Bastards pod­cast this week. Thank Satan for that cranky old fuck­wit Dave Winer for step­ping up to the plate for me. The head­line is: Is iPad a game-changer?

Of course, with that head­line you know you’re in for a world of stu­pid. First we have the clas­sic troll method of pre­sent­ing your the­sis in the form of the neg­a­tive response to the ques­tion you’ve posed. Of course Dave Winer doesn’t think that the iPad is a game changer, only a drool­ing fool would ever expect that. Also, side note to Dave: “is the iPad a game changer?” Fuck man, arti­cles aren’t just the things that you pre­tend to read Playboy for! Second, who gives a monkey’s fuck if the iPad is a “game-changer”? What the fuck is a “game-changer” any­way. Try eval­u­at­ing the iPad based on some­thing other than straw­man arguments

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Six Signs That the iPad Review You’re Reading Is Crap

The fol­low­ing is a list of signs that the iPad review that you’re read­ing was writ­ten by a tool, or an igno­ra­mus, pos­si­bly both. I’m not refer­ring to any spe­cific reviews, but to gen­eral trends of ass­hat­tery. Disclaimer: I do not yet have an iPad to per­form my own crit­i­cal analy­sis. Mine is still wait­ing in FCC approval limbo.

1. Any ref­er­ence to Apple’s Draconian Control™. Really, we get it you fuck­ing free­tards, Apple is the new big bad evil empire. Go buy a fuck­ing Android device along with the rest of the dirt eaters.

2. Complaints that the iPad screen is a “smudge mag­net.” Piss off you greasy-fingered fuck. Name me one glass sur­faced dis­play that doesn’t gather smudges like Richard Stallman gath­ers toe-jam. Wash your hands and quit your bitchin’.

3. Complaints that the iPad is “heavy for an eReader.” Hey lack­wit, show me where Apple is mar­ket­ing the iPad as an “eReader.” You know what the iPad is light for? It’s light for a fuck­ing lap­top alter­na­tive. Do some curls and build up the strength in your arms you pansies.

4. Complaints about “glare.” I’m almost sym­pa­thetic to the peo­ple who com­plain about glare when using Apple

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iPad

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To answer the inevitable ques­tion, yes, I pre-ordered an iPad. Specifically the 32GB WIFI+3G model. My wal­let hates you Steve Jobs!

Joe Wilcox: Lunatic

We fea­ture the work of Joe Wilcox at Betanews fairly fre­quently on Ye Olde Angry Mac Bastards pod­cast, mainly because he’s a rav­ing lunatic, but the fes­ter­ing turd that he pub­lished yes­ter­day forced me to take direct action. The head­line reads Apple should ban free­bees from the iPad App Store and that essen­tially sums up the arti­cle. Joe argues that, in order to dis­tin­guish the iPad from the iPod Touch and the iPhone, Apple should set a pol­icy that no free appli­ca­tions can be offered via the iPad App Store.

Apple shouldn’t treat iPad like iPhone or iPod touch. The iPad App Store should be stocked full of pre­mium con­tent, mean­ing no free­bees. It’s the right way to help estab­lish iPad as a pre­mium prod­uct, as some­thing spe­cial like the Macintosh. Unfortunately, Apple has lit­tle incen­tive to take this right approach ben­e­fit­ing its devel­op­ers (because they make more money), cus­tomers (because they get bet­ter qual­ity apps) and the iPad brand (because it comes be to viewed as a more pre­mium product).

Ok, excuse me for a sec­ond while I go stick my cock in a light socket. I need to reboot my brain.

All right

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Fixing the App Store

I began work­ing on this arti­cle sev­eral months ago, but other things took pri­or­ity and I pretty much for­got about it. The recent bout of blo­g­or­rhea over Apple and its DRACONIAN CONROL!! of the App Store prompted me to dust it off. For the record, I am in agree­ment with those who argue that there are prob­lems with the App Store. Months ago I wrote that I thought the entire process was being mis­man­aged. On the other hand, I have yet to hear a pro­posal to “fix” the App Store that I think would actu­ally work. So, since I’m just arro­gant enough to think that I can do bet­ter, read on to hear my pro­posal for cor­rect­ing the issues with the App Store…if you dare.


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