“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.

On Monday night I was lined up for the midnight release of Starcraft 2. I thought I’d beat everyone to the punch and show up at 8pm but it seemed like the Koreans were devoted to being the first ones to get the game. However I was in really stupid point of the line where every passerby on the street was asking me what this line was for. When I answered it was for a game I could hear them laughing at us. Laugh all you will, but I actually left my house and was in public, can’t call me that big of a loser. Eventually I got angry and started answering that we’re waiting for Twilight or the new Justin Bieber album.

But in reality how pathetic is it to wait in line for a video game? Well video games fall into my interests so it’s not like I’m wasting my time. I line up for concerts in order to be at the front, I line up at Wonderland in order to ride some 30 second ride, and I line up at Tim Hortons in order to get my morning coffee. What’s another line going to hurt me?

Now if you excuse me, I’m going to line up for the iPhone 4.

The other day I came across some photos on Flickr about some high school girl trying to be artistic and show how stereotypes aren’t real. Shocking isn’t it? It’s a concept that never was done before… UNTIL NOW. As I was looking through them I got more and more angry. Eventually my rage built up enough to bother writing an article about this chick.

Elizabeth Grace is a student living in Atlanta, Georgia (and I know who you are, because I backtraced it). She is a self thought photographer and fucking philosopher.

“I’m emo, so I must cut my wrists
Anyone can self harm & depending on the circumstances some feel like they have a legit reason for doing so. It’s a common misconception to believe that all emo people cut themselves, when really the meaning of “emo” just means emotional. “Emo” is a stereotype. Not all people who are “emo” slit their wrists. Self injury is a sign of a deeper psychological problem. This can range from depression to attention seeking.”

This is where she is wrong, emo isn’t short for emotional. It’s short for “emotionally hardcore” which is based on a musical genre and its cult. By definition every human is “emotional” we are all capable of feeling love, hate, anger, pride, and jealousy. We aren’t mechanical. We all feel, though some of us can’t express our feelings without going to the extremes. As such, we have the “hardcore” individuals who believe that physical pain will solve their emotional pain. There was a rule back when I was in high school, “scene kids are just like emos, except they don’t cut themselves.” And so, all emo kids cut themselves, the ones that don’t are scene.

“I’m religious, so I must shove my beliefs down your throat
People often view religious people as “overpowering” or think of them as “they make themselves look better than others.” People also try and stay away from religious people due to the stereotype of “they think the religious person will try and make them believe in something your not sure about.” When in all reality, they are just faithful people.”

I’m not sure if you know this, but in order to be seen as a true follower by the church one must convert as much people as possible. How many times have you had Jehovahs come up to your door and talk to you about the “good word of god.” They don’t do this for shits and giggles, their church tells them to do it. Likewise with Roman Catholics, I’ve had neighbours coming to my door and asking me about my faith. Religion is mostly about getting more numbers, Roman Catholics are supposed to have like 14 kids. I could go into a bigger rant about religion, but this is not the time.

“I speak my mind, so I must be a bitch
Many people get stereotyped as rude or mean due to the fact they speak the truth. Honesty is looked up to by many people, but others strongly disagree.”

Pardon me, but if you go up to someone and call him ugly or fat then yes, you are a bitch. Honesty is a good virtue to have. But there is an appropriate time for positive criticism. Say you’re walking behind some old person with a cane, out of politeness you won’t yell “get out of my way you slow old guy” to them. Also, you’re*.

“I’m a female gamer, so I must be tomboy
We all know that girls play games. They play “hardcore” games, “casual” games, strategy games, adventure games, fighting games, all the time every day. Can we stop with the “girl gamer” nonsense? Girls shouldn’t be stereotyped as tomboys for their love for video games.”

I personally never heard the “tomboy” stereotype. However I did hear about the “girl gamers play casual” and “are attention whores.” I wrote about these quite a while ago and Elizabeth here has proved both stereotypes exist and are in fact true. She plays games like Petz Dogz 2, Hanna Montana, and NCAA Football. She doesn’t seem like much of a gamer judging by these pictures. You would think that she could have at least shown Halo or Call of Duty to emphasize her point. Nope. If girls were really gamers they would just play, and not say “OMG LOOK AT ME, I LIKE PLAYING GAMES, I’M SINGLE BOYS ;-)”

“I’m a cheerleader, so I must be a whore
It’s actions, not clothing, that makes someone a slut/whore. Stereotyping a female who simply loves the sport and does it for fun, as one who sleeps around, isn’t right.”

Quite provocative does Elizabeth look in this picture, don’t you think? It seems that she is looking for something. Could it be attention? Yup. There is a great comment on this picture already. It’s a reference to a Dave Chappelle skit, where he talks about being dressed as a police officer. Some girl asks him for help and he says “Oh no, I’m not a police officer, I’m just dressed this way.” It’s true, dressing a certain way doesn’t automatically make you a whore. But you have to realize that people can be mistaken, especially when 90% of your breasts are exposed. Men are stupid, stop trying to trick them.