So yet again we have an Apple press conference. I have talked about Apple press conferences before: here, here, and here. Now the media has a thing for blowing this shit out of proportion, making a big deal about every minor thing that Apple releases. I guess I do too.

First came the iPod Shuffle. After the last shuffle which was the size of a quarter. It seemed Apple did some market research and learned that people actually want buttons on the device. What a shocker! So the current Shuffle is practically the same as the one we had 2 years ago. Great! It’s a nice device for anyone who just wants a cheap device to load up with songs. It does not need a screen, it does not need wifi. It’s just a simple-ass music player. Adding to the controls, Apple also added an additional 5 hours of battery life. Fuck yeah.

Following that we had a dramatic change to the iPod Nano. While the Shuffle got controls, the Nano lost them. The Nano is now an 1.5 inch square screen that plays music. Not the change I hoped for but at least they got rid of that pointless camera on the back of it. Apple boasts to have multitouch on the device which leads me to my next question. Why the hell is multitouch important on a 1.5 inch screen? I don’t think that an 1.5 inch canvas is enough to do any gestures. Another thing that pisses me off is the clip. It’s basically an iPod Shuffle, with a screen.

Next comes a device that I actually want: the iPod Touch. Take the iPhone 4 and take out the phone (and LED flash) and you’re left with the iPod Touch. It’s fairly impressive: you have the retina display, you have the 1ghz processor, and you have the dual cameras capable of recording 720p. All is good, but the price of it sheds some light on how over priced the iPhone 4 is.

The 32GB iPod Touch is 320CND.
The 32GB iPhone 4 is 780CND.

That’s a difference of 460CND.

The 32GB iPad is 650CND.
While the 3G version is 780CND.

That’s a difference of 130CND.

So what’s the deal with the other 330 dollars? Okay, so add in the cost of the GSM antenna and LED flash. That’s nowhere near 330 dollars.

Apple also announced some bullshit social networking service aimed at music loves. Totally ignoring the fact that Myspace exists, Apple decided to show their spin on it. I guess it’s kind of a neat idea, if it wasn’t run by Apple. This whole service is just a way they can push you to download more music. Joe Biden likes “Love Game” by Lady Gaga, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY IT RIGHT NOW FOR 99 cents? A friend of mine mentioned a great idea: what if you could share your music with a friend kind of like what the Zune had? You can share the song with a friend and he can listen to it a limited amount of times before the song expires. Brilliant! But instead you are force to buy it.

But the worst of the worst has to be the new Apple TV. They took the current device, and just gutted it. They removed the ability to watch 1080p, they removed the hard drive, they removed all the syncing and other “complicated” bullshit. You are left with a device that can only steam movies and TV shows. You no longer “own” any content. Watched a good episode of Glee and want to show it to your friends? Well, you’re going to have to re-buy it. Sounds great no? They did drop the price of it to 120CND, but that makes me wonder, what made the old one ~$250 anyways?

Also, Apple showed no love for the iPod Classic and continues to sell it for $270. That’s an incredible price point by today’s standards. If they dropped the price of it to 199 that would be great! Hard drives aren’t that expensive anymore, are they?

“Why do other companies bother making phones, the iPhone is the easiest one to use.”

That’s something I heard the other day, and I did not take too kindly to it. It came from some person who probably never used any other phone for an extended period of time. Agreed, the iPhone is pretty easy to use. All I do is go to the app store, download an app, it shows up on my home screen and tap it to open it. But last time I checked, I can do the same thing on my Windows Mobile, or Android. Making phone calls and changing settings are all pretty much similar as well. So what does it make this guy think that the iPhone so superior?

To answer that question let me quote Microsoft “the computer that’s easiest to use is typically the one you already know how to use.” Which is totally true: If you use an iPhone all your life then using some other phone will be some strange and unfamiliar experience. There are some differences between the phones, but by no means does it make the phone confusing and stupid. Whenever you move from one thing you’re accustomed to, to another things might be a little off, but better. Say you’re moving up from a Honda Civic to some Ford Mustang, you’re going to have to get used to the changes, but once you do you can enjoy the full benefits the other product offers.

Even if you love your iPhone, you have to admire other companies. Competition drives innovation and helps advance technology. Do you really think that the iPhone would have copy and paste, MMS, LED flash, and a high resolution screen if it wasn’t for other phones? No competition also means that companies can charge whatever the hell they want. This makes it worse for the consumer, why the hell would you want a monopoly? It’s bad for everyone except the company itself.

So go ahead, love your iPhone. But don’t hate competition, they’re your best friend.

So… iPhone 4 hit up Canada. Yeah, I picked one up. It’s a nice little device  and I’m having a blast with it but there is just one problem… Getting it was a pain in the fucking ass. I have waited in lines before and quite frequently they are painless. In fact, most lines are better than they actually appear to be. “Your wait time from this point is 60 minutes” says the sign at Canada’s Wonderland, yet 20 minutes later we are somehow on the ride. On hold for the credit card company and it says estimated wait time if 45 minutes, and eight minutes later I’m on the phone with someone I can hardly understand bitching about my statement. It’s beautiful because you are getting more than what you expected, you are actually pleased…

But what about the Apple line. Showing up early as fuck in the morning to get the jump on the line was apparently an idea shared by many. Estimates put about anywhere from 400 to 500 people in front of us at the most. You figure you have most of the store trying to sell this product, you could easily move through this line in a couple of hours. Oh, but this is using common sense. What ended up happening was a horror story.

Before the mall opened, the line was humming along at a snails pace. Slow, but we were making progress. Everyone started making introducing ourselves. Laptops were in abundance and Youtube’s data traffic was never higher. It was the greatest part of any line. Eventually the line stopped. It stopped period. It was not moving at all.

I went to see what was up, and asked the Apple rep what was going on. The Rogers servers were down, which is understandable due to the nature of the day. “But Nick, why was the line not moving if Bell and Telus were still able to activate phones?” Great fucking question, and it is one I asked. I was told that it was unfair to the Rogers customers if anyone else could get a phone while they were waiting, so in the spirit of fairness  we must all wait for our turn. It was at this time everyone was pissed, so free water was given out.

At this point of the line, most peoples laptops had already died out, so human interaction was necessary to fight off insanity. Problem is a bunch of fat Apple loving nerds arn’t the best company to keep for long durations, so people started taking breaks away from the line. Going off at 30 minutes or so at a time to get food. I heard a group of guys actually went off and saw a movie while a friend held their spots. How this sort of thing could happen, well, when a line doesn’t move for two and a half hours at a time people can go dick around forever and come back like nothing happened.

Rogers would constantly go down throughout the day, and line’s would stop. People would crowd around the front of the store, yelling for a solution. The most common, and sensible solution, was to give out a voucher to the Rogers people, guaranteeing them a phone but telling them to come the fuck back when the servers arn’t corked. An Apple employee actually said this was “illegal” due to “copyright law” and that if we were unhappy with it we should “contact our MP.” People were pretty pissed off.

Now, about 15 hours in we were told the store was closing, and they were handing out vouchers for people to come back the next day. What the FUCK?! We were not just told that it was illegal to do this, and in fact this solution would have solved all the problems. We went back the next day and walked out with a phone in ten minutes. Why? People could come at their leisure instead of waiting the hell in line to get their phone, thus no need to line up to guarantee themselves a fucking phone.

The whole experience sucked fucking dick. 15 hours for a piece of paper telling us to dick off cause the management couldn’t handle basic human beings properly. In my picture I show a picture of the line breaking off in weird, convoluted ways. That is exactly what the fuck happened. At one point we were standing IN FRONT of the Apple store walking AWAY from it to get closer to our phones. Then we stopped for three hours cause Rogers shat the bed. Why the fuck are activations, a process which takes significantly longer than buying a piece of hardware, in the same line as anyone else. Could you imagine going to fill up your tank of gas, and having to wait while people get their engines services? It would be complete horseshit. Yet 30 minute credit check and activations are piled in with hardware sales because they perceived it to be the same. It’s not the fucking same, it’s a piece of technology compared to negotiating a contract. A FUCKING CONTRACT.

What sucks is while we were all waiting in line for the iPhone and getting fucked over, normal customers were going in and walking out with Mac’s and iPods. Apparently, when the store “opened” they only had three people dealing with phones and the rest of the Macsperts were standing around looking important or helping give tutorials on how to Google on Safari.

I don’t know what blows more, the fact that a high tech, top end consumer and business electronics company can’t simply manage a line of people on their fourth iteration of the product, or that I was in line and wasted a fucking day of my life being angry with other angry people. Sure, it was nice to get off my fat ass and feel like I belong to some sort of community, but lets be honest, it was a waste of everyones time. I’m just shocked at the whole event.

Seriously, how do you fuck up a line?

There seems to be a lot of magic in the air. By which I mean the Apple Magic Trackpad that has been released recently. Apple is no stranger in the touch interface world: the iPhone and iPad has made them millions!

But it seems that Apple has been whoring out the technology. Last year we saw the release of the Magic Mouse, being both a mouse and a miniature trackpad. Now Apple has made a giant laptop trackpad calling it “the first one ever for OSX” even though Wacom has been making the Bamboo tablets for a while now.

Regardless of whatever Apple releases you have thousands of fanboys run out and buy everything that’s made by Apple. There’s no exception this time, these Macfags boast how much better than a mouse it is. Newsflash Macfags, there’s a reason why most people plug a mouse into their laptop instead of using the track pad. The mouse is faster, has more precision, and has more freedom – your canvas is as big as your desk – so why would anyone use a trackpad. In all honesty, it’s fun. Zooming in with your fingers can be quite nice, you can slide a window by sliding your finger, but god knows it can’t replace everything.

I’m really surprised Apple hasn’t released a touchscreen version of the iMac or Macbook yet. That way you can directly touch the screen instead of moving a cursor.

Also, learn to embrace pen input.

After falling behind the evolving technology, Apple has finally announced a phone that gives current devices a run for their money. Yes, this phone is exactly what Gizmodo revealed in the leak but Apple still had some tricks up its sleeve. Sure, I’m not going to buy the phone, but it’s really interesting to see how HTC or Motorola is going to combat this new phone. But what is exactly to make of all this Apple hype? In short, it’s all bullshit.

One thing is insanely awesome that can’t be matched: the screen, oh yes the resolution is fucking beautiful. This is the biggest improvement in the iPhone 4 in my opinion. Though, that’s mostly because the previous iPhones had horrible resolutions. Needless to say, this resolution can’t even be matched by the HTC Evo. However, Apple is marketing this as being 4 times better than the 3GS, which is true. However I can easily say my phone is 4 times better than the iPhone as well. Hell, my XPERIA has over 300 DPI as well, thoughthats because the screen and resolution are smaller.

Apple finally jumped onto the video conferencing bandwagon as well. They’re not the first, though they are trying to act like they are. Followers of Apple were quick to say that Apple is the first company to do it correctly. I’m sorry, but how is restricting it over WiFi “doing it correctly?” Say you want to make a video call, you have to notify the person you are calling “hey man, I’m gonna videocall you, can you get on your WiFi?” That is just one inconvenient step, adding to the fact that you can only call iPhone to iPhone using the FaceTime software. Back on my XPERIA, I’m able to make a video call to anyone else that has a video camera on their phone. Asians and Europeans have been doing this for ages, why is America falling behind on this?

Apple also introduced a LED flash on the back of the camera, giving some reason that it’s awesome for low lighting. Newsflash Apple, phones have had this for ages. Just because you finally have it doesn’t make it a revolutionary new feature. Want something revolutionary? The Nokia N8 has a fucking 12 megapixel camera with a Xeon flash. It’s really something. Apple demoed how you can edit the video taken by the camera using an app called iMovie (which is not actually included with the iPhone and you have to pay $5 to get it. Apparently this is supposed to give you a rich experience in editing movies. What I say is, just plug the phone in and edit the videos with the desktop version of iMovie. The mouse will really help.

Apple had some problems with Cisco before for using their name for “iPhone” and now Apple borrowed from Cisco again by using iOS. That’s not the only problem Apple had with naming issues. Apple had to purchase “FaceTime” as well. In my opinion, the name FaceTime is stupid. Why would Apple go out of their way to acquire the name? Would a simple name like “Video Call” be good enough? It seems pretty inconsistent to have FaceTime as the video call but not have AudioTime as the regular calling name.

There were some laughs to be had during the press conference. During the keynote Steve Jobs had problems connecting to the WiFi on the new phone. He asked everyone to turn off the WiFi in their laptops. I found it pretty funny. When he still couldn’t get it to work, he asked for suggestions and some guy yelled out “VERIZON!” This was a very awesome moment in the press conference.

But I’m going to admit, this is a pretty fancy phone and it’s bound to bring in some great competition. It just frustrates me how Macfags try to ignore how the iPhone didn’t have the features for the last couple of years while other phones did and now that they do then the phone is the greatest thing ever. But whether you love or hate Apple we can come to the conclusion that Farmville sucks.

Also, fuck MicroSIM.