Let me say up front that I am torn, like Natalie Imbruglia but without the naked floor writhing, by the new Verizon campaign for the Droid. Which is a phone that has long been sold exclusively to the moisture farmers of Tatooine. The campaign, which is meant to launch Motorola's latest handset, directly attacks Apple's iPhone. (The ads never actually use the word "iPhone," but you'd have to be a couple demographics north of the target market to miss the allusion.) Basically, Verizon is calling the iPhone a steaming pile of iJacksquat.
On the plus side, I like that Verizon is directly picking a fight with a competitor. Doing so goes against the current ad industry ethos of avoiding any hint of "negative advertising." Now, to normal people, a good example of negative advertising would be a political ad in which one candidate calls the other out for having been rejected by NAMBLA on the grounds of being "too dang creepy." But inside the ad world in which I toil daily, a negative ad is one that uses any non-positive word. Like "can't," "won't," "don't" or "shouldn't." This is why straightforward lines like "I don't have herpes anymore" become "I am a herpes survivor." Because clients think the word "don't" will subconsciously imply that their stanky ointment actually didn't get rid of the warts and turn off the consumer. Yes, dear client, it's the word "don't" that will turn off viewers, not the discussion of netherworldian lesions. I beg thy forgiveness.
So, kudos to Verizon for showing a bit of intestinal fortitude. Too bad the ads blow.
Yes, for all their bravado and derring-do, the Droid ads aren't very compelling. The points they chose to attack are fairly lame, and the ads' executions feel forced—like the Can You Hear Me Now guy is trying to be cool by swapping his jumpsuit for some Snorg tees. He might be able to put the shirt on, but he doesn't really rock that Q*Bert design.
First, let's take a look at a TV spot. Much of Verizon's print work mimics this spot, so we'll toss that into the discussion, too. Here you go:
I count five things wrong with this ad. Perhaps you'll find more.
1. It's in 4:3 and not 16:9. Given that every single shot is center-cut safe (meaning you could crop off the sides and not miss anything of importance), perhaps Verizon—a technology-based communications company—should've opted for an aspect ratio that wasn't approved when Eisenhower was in office.
2. iDon't like the iConvention. Apple wasn't the first company to stick an "i" in front a product to make it feel all teched out and internetty. But it was the company's iMac that made the naming scheme ubiquitous back in 1998. Eleven years later, we're still suffering the effects of iWhiplash. While using "iDon't" instantly communicates "hey, we're talking about the iPhone over here," it also says "this was the first thing we thought of and went with it."
3. Poor imitation is the sincerest form of CYA. If this ad were a parody on a Belushi-era SNL, well it wouldn't be nearly as funny as the little powdered donuts spot. Also, it could've directly ripped off Apple's look, e.g., fonts, music, etc. But since this is an ad, any such overt borrowing would be grounds for a lawsuit, and probably wouldn't get past the networks anyway (yes, you actually have to submit your spots to the networks for approval before they'll air them—it is not a hoot). So Verizon went with what looks a parody of what Microsoft would do if they tried to copy a Mac ad. Well, that's a bit harsh, since we all know that such a thing would yield results similar to this. It looks even worse in the print version, where you don't get the bonus of the reflective type or music. Oh wait, the music sounded more like Verizon was trying to lite rock us all afternoon long than the hep-for-a-moment-before-being-mainstream tracks Apple usually lays down. So if you're going to go after Apple and the iPhone, perhaps think of a more creative way of doing so.
4. When did this become a Halo ad? At the end of the spot, the vibe goes from all happy, fake-Apple sunlight to generic videogame Robotech grunge. I assume this is meant to tie with Motorola's own campaign for the phone, but it feels highly disconnected. And really, it's a phone. Unless it has a built-in BFG, chill out, yo.
5. Who's the target? The Tech Report's readers? Scan the list of what the spot says the iPhone doesn't do, and you may reasonably assume that Verizon is targeting the tech crowd and not the average phone user. No keyboard? Okay, some real folks care about that. No simultaneous apps? Yeah, that's still a bummer. But who wants a five-megapixel photo from a phone? And what does Verizon consider a widget, and how is it different from an app? The customization claim is iffy, and the ability to take photos in the dark sounds a touch creepy (Yay! Droid porn with C-3POMG!). And in a world of getting a new phone every two years, is the lack of an interchangeable battery really that important? I guess I'll find out if my 3GS goes dead in 18 months. Seriously, I have no problem with Verizon trying to point out the iPhone's flaws. It's just that they might've wanted to up the sexiness factor a bit for vast majority of folks out there who, let's be honest, just want something cool.
So, in the end I have to give a thumbs down to this campaign. Good initial strategy with a whole lot of poor follow-through.
But I mean that in the best, most positive way.
Later,
Fox
77 comments
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Last by paul343 at 7:01 PM on 11/14/09
Sorry, Mac fans and foes alike, but it looks like you'll have nothing to celebrate/desecrate until the clock strikes midnight on December 31 and finally rings in a decade without the ridiculous nomenclature of "The Aughts." A couple of things happened within the last week or so that tell me the nerds at Cupertino have gone all European on us and are taking the next couple of months off. Hopefully not wearing the man-capris so many mildly (or not so) corpulent Austrians seem to favor, but still—they've commenced phoning it in, even if it's from San Jose and not San Marcos Square.
First, Apple Senior Vice Poobah Phil Schiller declared to Gizmodo that Apple's "holiday lineup is set." So, well, there you go. No iTablet for you! Come back first quarter! Guess we'll all just have to cuddle close with our new touch-sensitive Magic Mouses and hope they don't end up infesting our Slankets. Although one could sell the resultant infestation on eBay for quite a chunk. Hmmmm.
Anyway, after a year of Unibodies, 3GSs, reappearing and disappearing FW400 ports, Final Cut Studio 3, OS 10.6 Blizzard Kitty, Mac Pros with the same skins but new guts, iMacs that finally feature desktop-class processors and a mouse that still probably won't usurp my aging Logitech MX700 (among other things), what more do you people want? A netbook? A tablet? A Snow Leopard Server in Mac mini form? Oh, wait, you got that one. Good for you.
Segue alert: How about a new Apple TV?
Yes, the real sign that Apple's calling it a year product-wise isn't that Phil the Pill said so; it's that Apple released a new software update for Apple TV. That's right: a software update. Because that's what Apple TV needed. Not a new processor to supplant the barely 1GHz Pentium M that Apple was forced to use because they finally ran out of old 68020s. Certainly not a new, read "current," hard drive interface like, gee willikers, SATA. Or increased storage space for something that's supposed to be a media hub. No, no. We're stuck with 720p as the max and having to add our own ATA hard drives. And yet another software update that adds a whole bunch of jack squat.
Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Apple TV 3.0.
As an Apple TV owner for the past 10 months I can say with no hint of deceit that the device has integrated itself into our monthly lives almost seamlessly. Sure, I asked for the thing for Christmas mainly so my wife and kids would have an easy way to look at photos and videos, as well as access to my iTunes library on the main stereophonic system in the living room. In that regard, the ATV works well. However, I was hoping for a little more geek juice under the hood. And after using a patchstick to install Boxee and XBMC and other hacks onto to it (as well as upgrading the hard drive, of course), I just had to say, "Wow, that's way too much effort to deal with on a regular basis." So I haven't.
But here comes Apple TV 3.0 to save the day. With such upgrades as compatibility with the new iTunes LPs and DVD extras. And streaming Internet radio. Zowie! I guess when Steve Jobs said the Apple TV was a hobby, he wasn't kidding. It's literally his own hobby. And he obviously ranks it somewhere below harvesting livers on his list of fun things to do over the weekend.
Oh, the Apple TV also got a UI update. Much nicer than before, but when your list of compatible video codecs won't max out the fingers on my hand (and I'm not the bastard love child of the Six-Fingered Man), a shiny new UI doesn't exactly cut it. Unless the "it" in question is "the cheese." Yes, I resorted to second grade taunting.
Maybe one day I'll have the time to delve into a more proper home media serving setup. Or I'll just get a mini and be done with it. Or, more than probable, by the time I have both the time and money to do this, Apple will have released a 65-inch iMac that's printed on OLED circuit paper and rolls up like an elementary school film screen of yore.
Although I'm betting they still won't have solved the jackassery UI changes to QuickTime X. But that's another issue.
So there you go. Apple is finished for the calendar year. Time spend, spend, spend this holiday season and keep the coffers full at One Infinite Loop. Otherwise, Apple TV 4.0 may not arrive with the long-desired ability to actually turn off.
Sorry, Apple, but this update does not make my HDTV "everything it should be." Unless you think it should be turned off more. Hippies.
Later,
Fox
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Last by d0g_p00p at 9:32 PM on 11/16/09
This week, The MacHole is going international. No, not to the House of Pancakes, but to Vancouver, British Columbia. Which is neither part of Britain or Columbia, but is instead located in America's main source for sketch comedians and semi-punk pop stars, Canada.
And it's flippin' beautiful here. Let's just hope it stays that way.
I am not currently sitting in the Loden hotel in downtown Vancouver pecking out this blather on the dime of the Tech Report. Herr Damage knows better than to let me fritter away Toonies on McKenzie Brothers bobble heads. I'm here on official business for my employer, helping to produce two television commercials for Interstate Batteries. Yes, I wrote them. Yes, they shall rock. But only partly because I wrote them. Mainly because we have a ton of people working on them who all know what they're doing. And as those of you who go to an office every day know, that's very rarely the case.
Since I've been in the Land o' Hockey Hair for a few days now, I missed all of the hullabaloo over AT&T finally activating MMS for the iPhone. I realize the excitement of seven-year-old technology finally reaching the iPhone is something not to be ignored, like a retrospective on the films of Jan-Michael Vincent, but well, I am ignoring it. Yes, I duly updated my carrier file and noticed the "add pic" icon in the iPhone's messaging app. Woo. Hoo. I'm sure I'll use it at some point, but not whilst AT&T wants to ding me $19.95 for every half a kilo of data I send while I'm on a walkabout. Sorry, wrong country. While wearing flannel, eh.
Anyway, back to me. Over the next week, we'll be shooting two spots. Both outdoors, hence the need for continued nice weather. Once spot is actually being shot over two nights, even though it has nothing to do with a rave, vampires, or Taco Bell drive-thrus. And every single part of the spot is being created on a Mac. Except for most of it.
I wrote the spots on my trusty, if slightly creaky in a Steven Seagal kind of way, MacBook Pro. After that, I'm not really sure of the Mac's involvement in things. The spots will be edited on an Avid system that may or may not use Macs as the host machines. Visual effects will be done on Autodesk Flame and Inferno systems running out of Linux. Audio will more than likely be done on a ProTools rig that's powered by a Mac, but again, I don't know for sure.
Why don't I know? Because I don't care.
Out in the real world where real money is spent by real clients who want real results for trusting you with their buckets of ducats, you don't really care what people use to get the job done—you just care that they get it done and do it well. Sure, I'll ask what an editor or post house is using, but that's because I'm gear dork. In my already-too-many years in the business, I think I've run into one person who was such a gear snob that he wouldn't work somewhere over platform issues.
Dumb.
When it comes to what I use, give me a Mac. When it comes to what you use, you can bust out the abacus if it delivers the goods. In other words: talent talks, fanboy jackassery walks.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have an Alex Trebek's moustache fan-club meeting to crash.
Later,
Fox
33 comments
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Last by fdman at 12:51 PM on 11/13/09
So here's what usually goes down in my adhole (that would be my office) on the day of an Official Apple Event Sponsored by Apple and Brought to You by Apple in Cooperation with Steve Jobs and His Amazing Technicolor Imagineered Liver of Doom: I bring my lunch, fire up an appropriate live event-tracking site at noon Central Standard or Daylight Time, and hit the refresh button on Safari even though the site pleads with not to do so. (The reasons for the latter are numerous and involve complex psychological issues, including my inability to stop petitioning NBC for an "Automan" reboot.)
If one of my Cult o' the Mac buddies is on IM, we'll even provide running commentary to each other. I realize this is sad, but it beats another lunch at Chipotle. But not Chick-Fil-A. Mmmmm, waffle fries.
Anyway, that's the standard operating procedure in my odd little world when Apple decides to bless the masses with some sort of keynote address or media circus event. But not this time. No, this past Wednesday (September 9, 2009, for you time-skipping cyborgs out there), I fled the office and ingested some form of value-priced processed food item. Perhaps it was my Spidey Sense or the Denorex I forgot to rinse out (let alone repeat), but I somehow knew that Apple's "It's Only Rock and Roll, But We Like It" event would be a big ol' steaming pile of meh.
The interboobs were, of course, awash with rumors in the weeks prior to the event. And while I was secretly hoping that Jobs would return from the near-dead as Steven the White, ready to the lead the hobbit-like Jonathan Ive in his quest to defeat... aw screw it, the metaphor's falling apart.
So here's what we ended up with.
Steve Jobs returned to prime time. Yes, the man still needs to down a few buckets of fried cheese curds to get back to peak underling-throttling weight, but whatever. His return meant one important thing—less Phil Schiller. Schiller's fine and possibly dandy (I'd rather not know much about his dandiness, to be honest), and I'm sure he's had a strong hand in Apple's current success. But a riveting public speaker he is not. Nor am I. Which is why I'm writing this.
iPhone software update 3.1 arrived and promptly broke Exchange support. Or didn't. I may never know or care. The update also brought iTunes-like Genius recommendations to your apps, support for Genius Mixes, new syncing options, and the ability to organize your apps from within iTunes. The last feature seems especially half-hearted. I mean, it's easier than doing it on the iPhone itself, but I'd love to have a simple "cleanup" command that auto-filled my screens with as many apps as they'll hold.
And get this: with 3.1, you can actually use a Bluetooth headset with Voice Control on the 3GS. Because, well, duh. That should've been a .0 feature. Some other random bits and bugs have been squished or inflicted. Mess with your own phone and see what's what.
Version 9.0 of iTunes also popped out the development chute with the aforementioned Genius Mixes leading the charge—at least according to Steve. Jobs likened Genius Mixes, which uses the same creepy technology Apple employs to turn normal geeks into arrogant bastardos at their retail Genius Bars, to having Samantha Ronson spinning personal faves you didn't even know you dug while LiLo firebombs your Porsche. Sweet.
Home Sharing seems to be the most promising feature of iTunes 9, but it's crippled out of the gate. Home Sharing lets you sync selected (including all) iTunes content between five authorized computers on your home network. Cool. Except said content has to have been purchased from the iTunes Store. Not cool. Without this egregious bit of skullduggery being remedied in 9.1, I don't see much point for it.
Speaking of the iTunes Store, it got a new look with pull-down menus and, umm, rearranged page layouts. Two possibly cool enhancements are the new iTunes LP and iTunes Extra features, which let you view liner notes and album art (among other things) for music, and DVD/Blu-ray extras for movies. Not sure if I'll ever feel like paying for these things, but they are at least nice to have available. Never know when I might long to discover just how the screenwriter and director decided which choice Sophie would ultimately make. Pardon me whilst I fetch a tissue.
Apple also busted forth some new iPod models on Wednesday. And arguable the biggest news was what didn't happen: no camera in the iPod touch. Instead, Apple stuck a video camera on the nano and called it a day. Our friend Phil later claimed that Apple wants to continue positioning the touch as a gaming machine and that adding a camera would just add confusion to the feature set. I declare shenanigans. We already know that the leaked photos of the new touch that showed a camera were indeed accurate. I, and many others, suspect some technical glitch occurred that forced Apple to remove the camera. Or maybe they just like making people pick between a tiny iPod with a fairly sad VGA video camera—that's right, no stills!—and an iPod that does everything but take pictures or video. Either way, dumb.
Apple also claimed that the newish shuffle is still cool even with its lack of on-player controls. Consider that Kool-Aid spat.
Also, the Beatles catalog—which was released in remastered form on CD the very same day, along with a Beatles version of Rock Band—kept its streak of avoiding iTunes. This is after Yoko Ono herself leaked (probably) that such announcement would be made. People, it's been 39 years since the woman busted up the band that's the World's Best unless you happen to like the Rolling Stones or U2 better (sit down, Tull fans)—why would you start trusting her now?
Oh, and Norah Jones played.
All in all, not a particularly exciting event. Not there's anything, okay, much wrong with what was unveiled, it just wasn't that big of a deal. I realize the Apple faithful have become a bit spoiled by "one more thing" moments, but Apple needs to realize that not everything they do requires a media event. Just because they traditionally have pressed to release new iPods in September doesn't mean they have to do it every frickin' year. I know, I know—they do it to get the ball rolling on the Christmas season. Whatever.
I was just happy with my waffle fries.
Later,
Fox
40 comments
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Last by Rakhmaninov3 at 9:23 PM on 10/01/09
So, yeah. I've been living with Mac OS X 10.6—aka Snow Leopard—for a week now. The short review is this: If you're not reviewing (or quasi-kinda-sorta-reviewing) operating systems for publication on the interlubes or in glossy rags that people read at Borders but don't actually buy anymore, then feel free to wait until 10.6.1. "Double duh, Turdlock Gnomes," I hear you say, "that's a given." Well, elementary as that conclusion may sound, it's not always true. Usually true, yes, but not always. I thought Leopard (10.5) offered enough new features to wade through the initial teething issues of the .0 release. Was I high at the time? Only my manager, agent, union rep and Roger Goodell know for sure.
And now for the long review. Or, Where a Small-Yet-Vocal Cadre of PC Trolls Will Proclaim to Have Known That Snow Leopard Would Blow All Along and, by the Way, I'm Steve Jobs' Cabana Boy Toy. Good times.
Let's retrace a few of our steps from last week:
OS X is now completely, more or less, 64-bit. I'll have to take Apple's word for it on this one. While some things do seem marginally quicker, others actually feel more sluggish. I'm looking at you, Mail. And it took several days for the system to crunch through and/or rebuild cache files and what not. I know the whole 64-bit goodtime funscapades will happen in later iterations of both the OS and third party programs, so it's an important thing. It's just not something you need to jump on right this very second unless you know how to spell "nerd" in binary.
Grand Central Dispatch makes multicore processors useful for all. Again, something that will have an impact over time. Just probably not over Labor Day weekend.
OpenCL lets idle GPUs shoulder some computational burdens. Ask me about this again when I have a real GPU and not a couple of nanoferrets calculating vertices by paw.
QuickTime X makes QT useful for the masses again. Ha! Not quite. As I found out after posting my preview, QT X actually makes the most public side of QuickTime—QT Player—less robust. How so? A supreme lack of export options and reduced editing functionality. Fortunately, Snow Leopard keeps QT 7 Player on your system, so you can use it. I will give QT X props for smoother playback of HD content, although I'm not entirely sure if folks with more recent machines than mine will notice.
Stacks will no longer anger me. True. While I don't know if Stacks and I will ever become best buds, buy a pair of motorcycles and put "Jon" and "Ponch" on their license plates, I do find the functionality at least useful. Amazing what a slider bar can do. Hint: It's not the Watusi.
Trash goes back to OS 9. Trash does indeed have a resurrected "Put Back" function. I have not needed this yet, but I'm glad it's there. Because it's only a matter of time before, in a fit of hard drive cleaning mania, I delete something 16 subfolders deep that I actually need. Like your credit card info.
Time Machine won't force you to use a time machine to complete your backup. Time Machine is noticeably quicker, and the less-vague status messages are nice. I'd still like a hint as to how long "Finishing" will take, though. Even if it, like most progress bar-related numbers, is a complete lie.
Wake from sleep and shutting down are now faster. Boy howdy, are they. Nice work.
Super cool Chinese character input will help me prepare for the impending Communist takeover. I'm almost ready to be part of the ruling class.
Built-in Microsoft Exchange support. N/A. Although I did have to exchange some MS Word time for OpenOffice when Snow Leopard broke Word's ability to import graphics. Which is something I rarely do, but, naturally, had to last week.
In other news, I suspected several of my third-party extensions would be busted in Snow Leopard. Sadly, I was right. While I can live without most of them until updates arrive, a couple are fairly integral to my everyday productivity. You've already read my carping (on more than one occasion) about a lack of windowshading in OS X. To fix this egregious omission, I use Unsanity's WindowShadeX. Well, I did. Because just like 10.5 did before it, 10.6 broke WindowShadeX again. I wouldn't be overly concerned except Unsanity took for-freakin'-ever to make the program Leopard compatible, and their customer communication skills are about as polished as a DMV clerk's. At least I can now set windows to minimize to their app icon in the Dock instead of littering it with 15 tiny windows.
Another broken add-on is MiniMail by OliveToast Software. MiniMail acts as a preview pane for Mail, letting you flip through messages from any mailbox or mailbox folder you choose to monitor without having to open Mail's main Message Viewer. It's darn handy. Luckily, the folks at OliveToast think they're have a fix by the end of September. Of this year. Sweet.
Seriously, though, Snow Leopard is not an update that the masses need to rush out and buy. It adds lot of nice UI things, like Dock-activated Expose, for example. And it actually lists hard drive space using math that regular people use. Not that that nets you any more actual space, but it will stop your mom from calling and asking why the 500GB drive you put in her iMac only shows 478Mb available. Also, I made that number up, as well as the idea that your mom would actually notice hard drive free space numbers. However, I suspect the switch to this numbering system may have jacked up my Mozy configuration, as it now wants to re-upload all 150 gigs of my backup set. Stay tuned for how this plays out, because I am not doing that again.
Would I buy Snow Leopard again knowing what I know now? Sure. I'd just wait until some tool on some blog posted all the shortcomings and their appropriate workarounds. And if you think I'll be that tool for you, well, you haven't been reading the MacHole for very long.
Later,
Fox
64 comments
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Last by Nitrodist at 12:27 PM on 10/16/09
As I clickety-click-clack out this blog post, I am only a scant 48 hours away from receiving a shiny new box from the FedEx man. This box will contain Macintosh OS X version 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, aka Barry. Anticipation for Barry the Snow Leopard runs high throughout the Mac community. Normally, this wouldn't be an odd thing. We Macheads tend to get hopped up on anticipatory goofballs for any new OS X release. But Barry is different. Barry is, for all intents and purposes, a maintenance release.
That's right. At first blush, Barry is akin to a Windows Service Pack. Except it'll actually work and add some cool stuff. Probably.
And we're all a-twitterpated as if entranced by the Hypnocat.
Barry the Ice Kitty, for those of you who are either just trolling the MacHole or actually have been staring at the Hypnocat for the last year, is supposed to be less about new features and more about under-the-hood performance. (It's also only going to cost $29, or 100 bones less than a typical OS X upgrade.) But let's face it, any enhancement that makes a noticeable improvement to the user experience is going to feel like a new (or at least vastly upgraded) feature. So let's just poke around Apple's Barry page and find out just how totally gnarly my almost three-year-old MacBook Pro is going to be once I install Ice Ice Barry.
OS X is now completely, more or less, 64-bit. Which means I can finally access those 16 terabytes of RAM that have taking up space under the bed. Additionally, all OS X programs (Mail, QuickTime, Safari) have been rewritten as 64-bit apps. So they should open more quickly and spend only half as much time giving me the Spinning Beach Ball of Doom. Also, I think the move to 64-bit will let me play eight separate games of the original Super Mario Bros. At once. Suh-weet.
Grand Central Dispatch makes multi-core processors useful for all. Under non-Barry editions of OS X, if you wanted a program to take real advantage of the multiple cores in your processors, said program had to be specifically coded to do so. Of course, most programs didn't bother jumping through these hoops. Mainly because their developers had better things to do like code Hypnocat. With Grand Central Dispatch, the OS takes care of divvying up the processes between the cores. So instead of figuring out the best way to slice and dice threads, manage overhead, etc., developers just use the GCD APIs included in Xcode and be done with it. I'm hoping Final Cut Studio 3 is already written with GCD in mind (and it would be dumb if it weren't), so I can see a decent boost on my paltry dual-core system.
OpenCL lets idle GPUs shoulder some computational burdens. While I trundle along with an ATI Radeon X1600 with a whopping 128MB of VRAM, a lot of folks out there have graphics cards with actual muscle. Muscle that, not unlike my oddly over-developed middle toe, usually goes to waste. With OpenCL, your graphics card will be used for general computation when it's not busy jacking up the frame rates on your porn. I mean, Halo.
QuickTime X makes QT useful for the masses again. Okay, I've never stopped using QuickTime, but I've always had a QT Pro license thanks to being a Final Cut user. The new QT is a massive overall that does away with the Standard/Pro designation and offers all of the former Pro features to everyone. The new player is also optimized for smoother HD playback, and QT streaming can be done from any server. Even those at Denny's.
Stacks will no longer anger me. Stacks now include, wait for it, scroll bars. Now my Downloads folder won't try showing all 326 files at once.
Trash goes back to OS 9. Back in the day, if you stuck a file in Trash, you could click on that file and select a handy menu item that returned said file to its original location. Quite handy. OS X did away with this behavior for reasons that are best called dumb. Barry's bringin' it back. If only the same could be said for window-shading.
Time Machine won't force you to use a time machine to complete your backup. Apple claims the Barrified version of Time Machine will be up to 80% faster at backing up than the current version. I hope so. I've actually been late to work (okay, that's not a big deal really) waiting for TM to finish up. This alone might be worth the $29 Barry is costing me.
Wake from sleep and shutting down are now faster. Because, honestly, could shutting down really take any longer than it already does? I don't know what exactly goes on with all the system cleanup at shut down, but apparently it's done by a lethargic septuagenarian with a limp.
Super cool Chinese character input will help me prepare for the impending Communist takeover. Enough said, comrade.
Built-in Microsoft Exchange support. If you're excited about this, keep it to yourself.
This isn't the complete list of updates, additions and general mucking around that Apple is set to unleash with Barry the Chilly Cub, but it's all I care to write about. Here's hoping none of us regret not waiting for the dot-one release.
Later,
Fox
54 comments
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Last by ThorAxe at 7:09 AM on 08/31/09
A lot of people ask me, "Jason, how do you stay so OMG sexy?" And while I usually just demurely deflect such comments with a sheepish "pshaw" or "phhttp," I must admit to you loyal readers that maintaining the sensual allure of an Oscar Mayer Gherkin does present certain challenges. Like the bi-annual pec implant rotations or finding a laser hair removal clinic that uses 100% frickin' laser sharks, looking this good is no mean feat. Which reminds me that I'm due for a mani/pedi.
Face it. It's hard to stay hot, even when you're haute. How many celebrities truly age gracefully? Sophia Loren and Jack Klugman, sure. But others? Simmer down, Mickey Rooney. Even my plan to continue buying whatever the Gap mannequins are wearing each season will undoubtedly start failing me around 2003.
Oh. Bummer.
Anyway, promoting a consistently stylish image is difficult enough for humans, let alone products. But I was recently (as in this morning) reminded of design's impact on products by a T-shirt. Worn by a young hipster of an art director on my creative team, it simply stated, "Design elevates experience." You may have heard this phrase before. Like in this post's title.
Design does indeed make experience better. Even (most) people who value form over function would, given items of equal functionality, chose the one with the better form. Granted, in the case of products, form is often part of the functionality. How much a thing weighs, how smoothly its buttons/keys/drawers operate, how thin/wide/bright/matte, etc. are all functional design elements. I know this. You know this. Some manufactures know this. But even when you know it, executing it is a different matter entirely.
Apple has always had a penchant for good design. Many of their machines, even from the early days, displayed an aesthetic most other PC makers either ignored, scoffed at or tried in vain to copy. Leaving aside the user interface-designs through the years, I'd like to highlight some of my favorite (and one less-so) bits of Apple hardware through the years. Presented in chronological order.
The Original Macintosh (1984) – Small footprint, built-in display, internal floppy drive, external keyboard and mouse. Cool. Kept the IIe's "Ode to a 1974 Frigidaire" beige awesomeness. Not so cool. Then again, an attractive color may have pushed it too far into the "cute" range. And we all know how well that worked out for Brian Bonsall. An icon version of this machine used to be the startup image on every Mac until yahoo decided that OS X 10.2 was just too rad to keep it around. So I use BootXChanger to put my Happy Mac back cuz I likes to keeps it realz the Susan Kare way. Peace.
Apple IIc (1984) – Introduced in early 1984 as a portable version of the Apple IIe, the IIc was the first computer I remember seeing that seemed small without also appearing cheap (I'm looking at you, Timex Sinclair). Weighing in a svelte 7.5 pounds, the IIc was Apple's first attempt at creating a portable computer. I can only assume Apple thought people kept a quiver of monitors strewn about town so they wouldn't have to tote along a two-ton, 80-column display. Or maybe they meant "portable" as in "easier to move for dusting." I cannot say, and everyone who worked on the IIc is now dead, so I can't ask them. The IIc also marked Apple's first move away from the II and IIe's poo-based color scheme and into the world of honky-based design motifs. There is no truth to the rumor that David Duke used the IIc to promote his white power philosophy. He used an Atari ST.
20th Anniversary Mac (1997) – Okay, the Twentieth Anniversary Mac (TAM) is almost exclusively about design. Sure, the LCD screen was cool for a desktop in 97 (even though it was lifted from a PowerBook), and the custom Bose speakers pretty trick if you didn't encounter the dreaded buzz that afflicted more than a few units. Leather palm rests on the keyboard? Very comfy, I'm sure. Granted, the thing cost $7,499 while spec'ing out about the same as a $2,999 Power Mac 6500. Still, the TAM looks like what Bang & Olufsen would produce if they jumped into the computer biz and decided to junk their own speakers for Bose. Which they would not.
PowerBook G3 "Wallstreet" (1998) – With a big-honkin' screen (14.1") and a chassis that was more APC than Bradley Fighting Vehicle, this PowerBook used its mildly curvy goodness to stand out from the pack despite wearing the standard-issue laptop shade of black.
Original iMac (1998) – Some would argue that Apple really moved to the forefront of functional design since the introduction of the original "Bondi blue" iMac. With all due respect to Jonathan Ive, blech. I didn't like the translucent plastic at 11 years ago. I didn't like all the copycat products it inspired—especially in non-tech areas (sadly, the intertubes have apparently been expunged of iEpilators). Sure, they looked better than PCs, but how hard was that to pull off? I realize this model "saved Apple" and I should be grateful for that, but the fact that I can still find a few hockey-puck mice in the Random Cables drawer at work just keeps picking at that design scab. Also, I blame Jeff Goldblum.
Power Mac G4 Cube (2000) – Still infinitely cooler than the Mini, even with the bothersome mold lines in the plastic case. Too expensive to be a sales champ, the Cube at least showed that power could come in a tidy package (simmer down again, Mickey Rooney). A cult following still exists for this model, for which numerous upgrades have been released. Of course, many cults still follow the Dark Lord Englebert Humperdink, so let's not use that as a argument for the model's worth.
PowerBook G4 / MacBook Pro (2001) – While this model has evolved through various materials, processors, hinge designs, port placement schemes, etc., its overall aesthetic has remained the same. And that aesthetic is instantly recognizable and desirable eight years after its introduction. Minimalist without being boring. Strong (at last) without adding weight. Now powerful enough to truly act as a desktop replacement. It could survive on looks alone, but the subtle touches like a thin bezel, magnetic latch, built-in iSight camera and glass trackpad (how I long for one) help make it a pleasure to use. If Ferris Bueller had a laptop, it would be this, for it is both so choice and highly fitting for the Sausage King of Chicago.
iMac G4 (2002) – Pixar's Luxo, Jr. come to life. If they sold this today with quad-core Xeon, eight gigs of RAM and a 24-inch screen, I'd buy one. Elegant. Friendly. Simple. Ahhhh.
Power Mac G5 / Mac Pro (2003) – Another design that should feel long in the tooth by now, the G5/Mac Pro case still looks contemporary, billet-like and, let's be honest, ginormous. Open the case up, and be amazed at the logical layout and ease with which one can upgrade hard drives, video cards and other things. We won't mention the failed liquid-cooling experiment.
There you go. A walk down design memory lane. I'm sure you have your favorites, too. And I'm pretty sure the LC 520 isn't one of them.
Later,
Fox
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Last by way2strong at 2:55 AM on 08/28/09
