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Posts Tagged ‘apple’

Flash: I’m not dead yet!

1 May 2010

I’m getting a little tired of this topic. I was tired of it about a day after Steve Jobs first showed the iPad to the world, and the infamous blue LEGO appeared where a Flash plug-in should have been. It wasn’t really so much a shock to the world — Apple had been denying Flash applications on their iPod/iPhone platform all along. But this seemed to start off a little maelstrom the likes of which I haven’t read since people argued over on which end to start eating a hard-boiled egg.

The events of the last few weeks have been extremely tiresome to say the least. Far too many people and groups have been prognosticating the future of personal computing, and there’s been far too little in doses of reality. The future is coming, but it’s not coming nearly as quickly as everyone thinks it is, and rushing to meet the future will likely only harm the present. A little rational thought would be appreciated.

Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room, first. Steve Jobs hates Flash. There, I’ve said it. Now let’s move on.

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Greed kills innovation

24 Jan 2010

I was sitting at my kitchen table, poring over recommendations I’m writing for my client (partially communicative, partially CYA), when I had one of those sudden thoughts: I need tea. While I was drinking my tea — a pomegranate green tea, if you must know — I had one of those epiphanal moments when something becomes radically clear.

Greed kills innovation.

It’s short, it’s simple, it’s sure to raise the ire of a lot of people, but it’s also a major problem we’re seeing lately, especially in internet technologies. It’s a problem that’s dogged humanity for generations. And it’s getting worse.

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Dear Canada: I’m going to break the law

21 Sep 2008

Well, it would appear that short of an Act of God (or, heaven forbid, some actual common sense runs through Parliament), Bill C-61 will forever handcuff Canadians and prevent long-term technological evolution. It’s one of the worst-written pieces of legislation to hit Canadians in years, as it does not take real-world habits into account at all (short of the negative views, of course), and penalises everyone for something most of them haven’t done.

I’m going to get the Government in on a little secret. I’m breaking it. I refuse to let your ridiculous industry ass-kissing paperwork prevent me from moving with the evolutionary tide. I’m breaking the law and doing what I think is right.

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Steve Jobs blows it. Again.

10 Sep 2008

Sigh. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching Apple come so close to finally tying the knot, only to leave threads dangling.

I speak, of course, of yesterday’s Let’s Rock event where the apparently-not-dead (but much gaunter-looking) Steve Jobs talked at length about iTunes and iPods. And they played Jack Johnson, who is somehow the most popular male performer on iTunes to this point in history. (Yeah, I don’t get that either. Don’t get me wrong, Jack, you’re a great performer — just didn’t see that coming.)

But why — oh why! — does Apple have to continually deny us a complete entertainment experience?

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Web 2.0 Expo: Friday Keynote

25 Apr 2008

Maybe it’s just me, but running keynotes every single day of a conference seems really silly, and waters down the value of the concept of a keynote. But I digress. Either way, this morning features Tim O’Reilly (again), Jonathan Schwartz (Sun Microsystems), Fake Steve Jobs (aka Daniel Lyons), Matt Cutts (Google), and Matt Mullinweg (WordPress).
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To Mac or not to Mac?

28 Feb 2008

So recently, I went on a little experiment. I’m an Apple fan-boy, I admit it. I love Apple stuff. I want a Mac. I want to be one of those cool people. I have a Dell. It’s very business-oriented. It’s not fancy. It has no built-in camera or aluminium case.

And it runs Microsoft Windows.

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How to get good portability

16 Jan 2008

Yesterday, I drooled over the MacBook Air. At least until I found out that it has an integrated battery. Then I sulked in a corner.

I still have the fundamental problem: How do I get good portability? The answer still seems to be eluding me. Understand — this is more a question than anything else.

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Will Microsoft ever admit that Vista was a bad idea?

4 Oct 2007

It takes a big person to admit that they’ve made a mistake. Companies, regardless of how large they become, were reticent until recent years to come clean with their blunders.

Microsoft ain’t one of them. They still think Vista is good. And why not — they’ve sold 60 million licenses for it. But I’d be really curious to know how many of those people would have preferred Windows XP.

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Apple doesn’t hate Canada … Rogers, Bell, and Telus do

20 Sep 2007

Those of us who’ve paid not only close attention to the rollout of the much-anticipated Apple iPhone but also to the Canadian mobile market don’t find this surprising. But we’re in the minority. A significantly larger portion of the Canadian iPhone-hungry masses are incensed by Apple’s announcement of the iPhone’s release in the UK.

Why do you hate us Apple? Why do you not let us poor Canucks use your wonderful product?

Guess what, my fellow Hosers, it ain’t Apple. You want the culprit? Look at your cell phone for a hint.

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The iPhone is obsolete

18 Sep 2007

Unless you”ve been living in the middle of Mongolia for the last six months, you know that Apple”s iPhone is one of the hottest products of 2007. It”s heralding a new breed of mobile devices. It”s forcing dramatic changes in the wireless landscape. It”s expensive, but to almost everyone who uses one, it”s worth the cost. It”s generated at least one phone copy cat (and even a router).

It”s all that and a bag of chips.

Only one problem: it”s already obsolete. Gathering dust. Old news. How did it become passé so quickly? Because Steve Jobs said so.