By The Angry Drunk
I’m not going to go into specifics about what happened, or the timeline of events. If you follow Mac news you know what I’m talking about, if you don’t then here is a quick rundown. Jizzmodo (I hereby refuse to ever type Gizmodo again) posted a story with details and pictures of a purported prototype next-generation iPhone. It was then revealed that Jizzmodo paid an unnamed party who had stolen (yes, stolen) the phone from an Apple engineer for the device. Jizzmodo then felt compelled to publicly humiliate the poor bastard who had the phone stolen from him.
Jizzmodo’s behavior in this matter has been reprehensible, and throughout has been laden with the douchebag attitude that they seem to think passes for wit. And let’s be absolutely clear here. This isn’t an “Apple’s tyrannical secrecy” issue here. It could be any company’s product and I would feel the same way about the shit-smears at Jizz. Because, in the end, it’s not about the leak. I mean, whoop-ti-fucking-do, we now have “confirmation” of a feature set that anyone with a halfway functioning pre-frontal cortex could have predicted. And if you think that the case is something that Jonny Ive would
Continue reading Fuck Jizzmodo
By The Angry Drunk
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
Continue reading Dave Winer Is Terminally Confused
By The Angry Drunk
Sweet merciful Allah! This post (and the related comments) on Prince McDildo’s Roughly Drafted site is the perfect storm of dipshittery. It’s got it all: conspiracy, technical inaccuracy, religious fundamentalism, global climate change denial and creationism. It’s like a rift opened between our universe and a universe of pure stupid.
By The Angry Drunk
It’s no stunning revelation to regular readers that I think that there is an appalling lack of critical thinking skills amongst the so-called “experts” who make up the tech press. With very few exceptions the default process for the tech media seems to be to run stories without the slightest hint of investigation, verification, or even independent thought. Case in point, a story that began making the rounds last week about Apple exerting it’s DRACONIAN CONTROL to remove all WiFi “sniffer” applications. A typically craptacular example of the “reporting” surrounding the issue can be found in this article at the Cult of Mac blog. To quote:
Apple sent a note to the developer of WiFi-Where on Wednesday saying their app has been removed because it uses “a private framework to access wifi information.”
What this private framework is, neither Apple nor the developer explain.
The problem is the second sentence. Apple, of course isn’t explaining what the “private framework” is, because Apple hasn’t offered any fucking comment on this situation. Nor should they. Apple rejects hundreds of applications a week. They owe explanations to the developers, but not to random bloggers and journalists. More importantly though, Apple
Continue reading Occam’s Razor Is Rusty
By The Angry Drunk
As anyone reading this blog is almost certainly aware, Apple announced the long-awaited iPad last week; and the tech world collectively lost their fucking minds. As I’ve already opined, I think that Fraser Speirs has written the best analysis of the collective pants-shitting and I would highly recommend reading Fraser’s article if you haven’t already. Flying somewhat under the radar during all this babble was another phenomenon which I think provides an interesting parallel to some of the ideas that Fraser articulates so well.
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed references to something called “Letters.app.” For those unaware, here is some background. Earlier this month developer Brent Simmons put out a call-to-arms for the development of a new email client to fit the needs of “developers and power-users.” The argument being that all extant instances of email clients (specifically for the Mac OS, but presumably for all platforms) are lacking in some way that makes them unsuitable for “developers and power-users.” The goal of the project, soon dubbed Letters.app was to harness the skills and creativity of the indie Mac development community to build the perfect beast. Shortly afterwards, the project completely and very
Continue reading iPad, Letters.app and Nerd Myopia
By The Angry Drunk
Inevitably, amongst the rest of the inane wailing about the iPad in the last 48 hours, the old “closed system” meme has reared its tired head. The particular form of that meme that I want to focus on is a particularly annoying variant and one that is best expressed by Alex Payne in his blog post On the iPad. In yonder post Alex makes the assertion:
The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today. I’d never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write. I wouldn’t have been able to fire up ResEdit and edit out the Mac startup sound so I could tinker on the computer at all hours without waking my parents. The iPad may be a boon to traditional eduction, insofar as it allows for multimedia textbooks and such, but in its current form, it’s a detriment to the sort of hacker culture that has propelled the digital economy.
Perhaps, but let me counter with a bit of my own history. My
Continue reading iPads, “Hackers” And the Death of Computing
By The Angry Drunk
Well, my lovelies, tomorrow all will be revealed. I’m about to ensconce myself within the meditation chamber of the Fortress of Disquietude until the magic hour is upon us. See you on the other side.
By The Angry Drunk
…courtesy of Scoble. Short version: I’ve been to China twice in my lifetime. Now let me spend 1150 words pontificating about how business is done there. Oh, and my commenters are sycophantic dipshits.
By The Angry Drunk
As if to taunt me, TUAW just ran another article from prognosticator extraordinaire Erica Sadun that boggles the mind: Enough already with the draconian NDAs, Apple. This time, instead of consulting her crystal ball about the mythical iTablet, Erica takes time out of her busy schedule of huffing glue to complain about the NDA that Apple has slapped on on the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK. You know, the SDK that doesn’t fucking exist yet.
Enough of this crap. Speculation about a product that Apple almost certainly will introduce in the next month is one thing, but this blatant link-baiting is ridiculous.
By The Angry Drunk
Supposedly Erica Sadun is some sort of high potentate of the iPhone development community, which I guess explains why publications like The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) go to her for commentary. But, given the fact that she has the logical skills of a young-earth creationist, they should really stop. Case in point: an article posted today on TUAW titled App Store approvals and the tablet: why it matters. That’s right kiddies, it’s another article about unicorns.
Erica starts out with an observation:
When iTunes Connect returned after its Christmas break, developers noticed that things had changed quite a bit on the App Store approval front. Applications that had formerly taken ten to fourteen days to work through review were now getting processed in a couple of days or less. The upshot? Happier developers, better bug releases for users, and a healthier App Store ecosystem.
Good so far, this is factual and draws a conclusion that follows logically from the premise. The rail-jumping begins immediately after:
There’s another consequence of the new, speedier approvals: the tablet. With the device due to ship March/April (late Q1, early Q2), and no announced 4.0 SDK, developers were left wondering how they’d
Continue reading Erica Sadun: Nostradumbass
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Brother, can you spare a dime?
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