Jonesing for a new iPhone

... or as an alternate heading:

Now before you think this could possibly be about me, for shame. I would never shackle my wrists within the confines of an iPhone but, rather, I thought I would provide a little commentary on why my staunch iPhone-loving girlfriend has decided to turn toward the light and decide not to get a new Apple product. 

For those of you able to follow my train of thought so far, yes, you are correct; it's all about the Benjamins (yo). She presently owns a paleolithic iPhone 6 and wanted to move to the last model with a headphone jack, which turns out to be the iPhone 8. Note that said iPhone 8 is now two generations out-of-date and is already viewed by most as obsolete - and yet Apple still thinks that they should be charging around $700 for the privilege. Say what now? How does that compute? You would think that they would be doing a little more (considering a quickly receding market share through a complete lack of innovation or respect for their fanatical supporters) to retain your patronage. Retrospectively who thought it was a good idea to charge over a grand for the latest incarnation - and still think it would be successful?

Needless to say my GF's not in a position to throw down a gorilla on her replacement and so has been cajoled into giving android a go - all for $280 for kick-ass hardware (well, by Android standards) and she also gets to keep her old phone for things like facetime and (shudder) iTunes. I think I can make a case for her complete conversion such that perhaps she won't go back to overpriced hardware for her next upgrade.

I guess the conclusion that I really should put forward is not that she saved over $300 on a comparable smart phone experience but rather why she's paying almost $300 on a device which will inevitably be made obsolete. I sometimes long for a time when smart phones were not a thing; where we no longer chase the next iteration of what is basically the same dang thing. Honestly who needs a folding phone? All we are doing is simply moving the target - in the end we will never get to that finish line if we keep our focus on what isn't really all that important. Sometimes the best thing we can do is not play the game at all and be content in living our lives amongst our friends and family.

Thank goodness for Apple

I'm not one to go about expounding the virtues of Apple or their products ... although I do like their engineering. The reason that I am giving them a standing ovation is for their retina display technology. What is retina display, do you ask? Well, put simply, it's a very high pixel-density screen. This might not sound like much to you but means everything to me. The iPhone 4 manages to cram a 960x640 resolution in 3.5" of screen. The new iPad continues this tradition with a resolution of 2048x1536 in a 9.7" screen.

old vs new

On the PC side, we are on bread and water. There has been a rash (some would say an influx of STD's) of laptops that are sold with 'high definition' displays, although I'm not sure how they come up with HD when a 15" screen usually involves a resolution of only 1366x768. My first PC twenty-two years ago was 1024x768. If we were to project the resolution on the iPhone to a 15" screen, you would have a resolution nine times higher (or seven times for the new iPad). With murmurings that the new Macbooks will be utilising retina display screens, the pressure on the PC industry to follow suit will be palpable and I will welcome this 'revolution' with open arms.

I am a developer by trade and when the only way to see a complete page is by being forced to scale a document to 60% of its actual size (while hiding the space-hogging ribbon on office) is annoying to say the least. Considering I had a higher resolution screen about fourteen years ago on my desktop is a joke (1920x1080, followed by 2048x1536 about twelve years ago).

So, in conclusion, I am not heralding Apple for being innovative but rather applauding them for being willing to point out the hilarity of today's modern age.

UPDATE: It seems that the new macbooks have a resolution of 2880x1800. All I can say is YES!

Taking a slug to the slogan

American company slogans.

You either love them or hate them. I generally hate them, but 300 million Americans can't all be wrong.There was a time when slogans were intelligent; made by intelligent companies with a view to promote intelligent thoughts or positive views towards their product or service.

GOOD

'Fly the friendly skies'

Brilliant, but United Airlines went bust so maybe not the best example of a success story.

 'Gripping Stuff' 

For Dunlop tyres. Not much more you need to say.

AVERAGE

'Put a tiger in your tank'

By Shell. Pretty stupid, as Tigers are almost extinct. Maybe they're inferring to us that the millions of tigers that have been killed were then distilled into petroleum and that gives your engine some extra pep? Well, alrighty, then. Sign me up for some tiger juice.

ASININE

This category is dedicated to the late Steve Jobs: Steve, I salute you for opening the door wide open to asinine slogans.

Yes. You thought so differently that you created a whole new form of English. I tried to rationalise this but failed. Is Apple asking you to think about the word 'different'. Are they motivating you to think about why this is a poorly-formed sentence? Or maybe it's that they're thinking about being different but haven't quite got around to it yet? I don't know. All I know is this: Genius, my ass. The worst part is this pile of crud was given an Emmy award for advertising. Celebrating mediocrity and illiteracy, yes.

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Subway, not to be outdone, created their own slogan. Hey, if you have to create something, why not model it after a company that's worth Billions of dollars?

'Eat Fresh'

Yep. It looks like you've got a verb and an adjective, there. Maybe you should think about creating a sentence out of that, like, 'Eat a fresh sandwich today.' If you try to make sense of the slogan as it is your brain will start to hurt. It's not as if you can eat 'fresh' -  'fresh' is not something you can consume. The fact my brain has contemplated the meaning of this slogan is why it needs to die.

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There was an ad for some men's hair colouring - so you can dupe women with poor eyesight into believing you're not some decrepit 40+ year-old man (with a 20-year-old delinquent son) who only gets frisky unless they pop a pill half an hour before. Their mind-numbing slogan for this gray-covering concoction is:

'Live forward'

Gah. Note the verb plus adjective: damn you, Jobs. I am not sure how you can 'live forwards'. First of all, I didn't know life had a direction. Why is it that you can't live life to the left, or live life while going backwards. Does that mean every time you're reversing, you're doing something wrong? Are you not "living life forwards"? The fact that some marketing company probably got, as a bare minimum, $500,000 for putting a verb in front of an adjective is just the icing on the cake.

Welcome to my world. My brain hurts so I'll end the post.

Truly visionary

This is the vision of future productivity from a company devoid of any:

Microsoft's 'vision' is of a future that is ruled by iPads and iPods and iDontCares.  Their only innovation in 30 years has been an ability to react to the vision of others. This certainly isn't my vision; it looks to me like an exercise in annoyance.  Unlike a lot of you, I see little attraction to a world of finger painting.  I'd much rather have a world where you're jacked in, similar to the Matrix.  That way we're not limited to a world where you're forced to interact with Kinect-like awkwardness.  Using the bluntness of a sausage as the sole source of interaction is my vision of hell.

I work in IT but I hate smart phones.  I'm a luddite when it comes to things that pinch or swipe.  My idea of an interface worth building is something that gives you instant access to what you want, without silly transitions, fade-ins and fade-outs.  All that crud just gets in the way of me getting where I need to go.  I think as a minor diversion they're fine but, for anything that demands a degree of productivity, I'd rather go back to a lump of coal and a rock wall than sit there drawing pictures for mummy and daddy.

My preferred method of interaction for productivity-based work is a keyboard.  I'm a 'keyboard guy,' which means that the majority of my interaction is preferably done with something that gives me near-instant response.  Having to drag an animated cursor across a screen with a mouse is just irritating when a single key press can do the same thing with an infinite degree more accuracy, speed and tactile response.

I think the future is something that works directly with your cortex.  Something that understands your thoughts and line of sight automatically so it works at the speed of a synapse.  Nanoseconds vs seconds.  It definitely should not be finger painting, although I doubt that my vision will be the future, given the short-sighted nature of this 'visionary look into the future.'