Juan Peso

Can anyone give me this same comparison but instead of Surface vs. iPad, do Surface vs. iPad Mini?  I want to see if the difference is just as striking.  Email it to me. juanpeso@icloud.com  I’ll post it here.

Sorry for the lack of posts today. I’ve been helping my mother paint her place.  How about a run down of todays news with snark in it, and then a bounce back tomorrow? Good? Good.

Apple Sales Call

ZOMG! CALL 911. APPLE IS GOING DOWN THE TANK!!!! THEIR FIGURES THIS YEAR IN 3 QUARTERS EXCEED THE ENTIRE 4 QUARTERS FROM LAST YEAR THAT WERE ALL SO HORRIBLE! HOW WILL THEY SURVIVE WITHOUT TERMINATING EVERY EMPLOYEE AND LOCKING THE DOORS? Yeah… that’s you media. Take a look at yourself in the mirror and maybe wheeze your way through a run. You need it.  P.S. Random analysts are nobody. They don’t know shit. They just like money. If every fool with an opinion was right and worth money for their comments, I wouldn’t be writing on this Tumblr for free, now would I?

Microsoft’s Big Day

Surface, Windows 8. Yup. It’s here. I think Microsoft is on the right track, but I don’t picture any guys that aren’t bronies bragging to their friends about their great new tablet and its CHARMS.  Tim Cook thinks it’s a convoluted mess and we all know he’s no Steve Jobs, so it’s pretty sad that even he spots it. But who knows, maybe Microsoft will pull its head out of its ass and get rid of that shitty desktop app.  And by the way, people crying about it not having enough apps in the app store. Please, for the love of god shut the fuck up and wait.  There were no apps with push notification when it first came out on the iPhone and every cried foul and now every app has it even if it doesn’t need them. Same thing with Passbook. Shut the fuck up, wait patiently, and go suck on that $6 coffee that ALSO isn’t a necessity.

Android

I don’t think there was any news today, but speaking of convoluted shit, I’m not sifting through news unless it comes straight from Google about a system that everyone’s crappy mother, father, brother, and system is simply trying to make a fast (super fast) buck on.

Amazon

Posted bad numbers today. And these actually were bad numbers. Because a lesser gain is not a loss. A loss is. Maybe try selling those Kindle Fires at something other than a loss? Yeah? No? Well, do what you have to do. There comes a point where everyone has 50 Shades of Grey and you can’t keep making money off of that.

Facebook

Last week I deleted my personal Facebook finally. It felt great. Don’t expect any Facebook news or thoughts from me other than a completely biased “Facebook sucks” attitude. Facebook, you have been unfriended.

The Verge

Hey guys. Thanks for the heads up on the “I don’t like that you’re posting your shit to our site in our comment section for users so we’ll ban you soon” warning. In fairness, it might be the way I was going about it, so I’m going to do it ONE LAST time just with this post. Anyway, I appreciate the heads up. While Josh Topolsky is a tool, The Verge is great so you know, I guess I’ll stop. If you for some reason are reading this and don’t know what The Verge is. Stop being dumb. Go look at it. I’ll even make it simple.  Here’s a link. Spelled out. In Caps. WWW.THEVERGE.COM

So that’s it for todays snark. I’ll be back tomorrow with something a little more quality and not so profane. Be forewarned though. Sometime this weekend I am going to do a piece about how it pisses me off hearing the crybabies about the official Twitter app for iPad that was released a short time ago and how everyone thinks that is the spawn off the devil. Expect well reasoned arguments as to why they are full of shit and it works just fine. From a consumer perspective.

Until tomorrow homies!

It’s sinking.

This probably should have been the first sign.

This probably should have reaffirmed it.

While writing my summary of today’s keynote I found myself struggling to convey this thought I had about Apple treating the iPhone and iPad separately. Luckily while writing my 16:9 post better words came to mind. The great thing about todays keynote was that for the first time in the iPad’s short life, it felt like the terms iPhone and iPad weren’t interchangeable. To me it always felt like Apple made Macs, iPods, and iPhone/iPad. I still can’t pinpoint what it was today, but that keynote really just said to me at the end that the iPad was now functioning as a separate unite from the iPhone and while they all need to work together Apple doesn’t necessarily feel the need to refer back to one or the other when working on the products individually. I really felt a shift where Apple now makes Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. 

One thing I’m glad Apple chose to do today was allow the iPhone 5 to head in a new direction, but not allowing that to force the iPad family in the same direction. Of course by this I mean the 16:9 aspect ratio. While it is great for wide screen video and I think acceptable for the iPhone (especially when you consider the fact that they only had to stretch the phone vertically a little bit to get there), I don’t think 16:9 is a good idea for a tablet. Something about the 4:3 ratio just feels right. When you hold it in your hand the weight feels properly distributed. When you read a book on it (especially in landscape mode) it feels like a similar enough dimension to a physical book and the same with a magazine in portrait mod. Most websites are created with a 4:3 aspect ratio. I think the magic in it is that the iPad is large enough that when you are doing something on the screen that is meant to replicate a real world/tangible object (like holding a map for instance) you don’t even notice that it feels right, it feels like the iPad isn’t, but whatever is on the screen (contact book, book, magazine, webpage, etc.) simply is.  When you perform the same tasks on an iPhone you know and feel that you’re doing it on a phone, but something about the iPad makes it feels as familiar as the actual act of doing whatever you’re digitally doing. 4:3 is just right. It’s how we’ve always done it long before computers.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear what I think of the Microsoft Surface software, but I think the hardware is actually pretty damn nice.  But the 16:9 screen on it is a flaw. In my opinion it’s the only flaw (and hey, cut me some slack, not everything has to be exactly like the iPad to be well executed). But it is flaw enough for a device that has an experience that is completely centered on the display to keep me away from it for now. If it were a laptop I wouldn’t care, but I have one of those. It’s a tablet. Let me brain feel like it is.

NUMBERS

Numbers are still amazing and still climbing. Next.

iBooks

Check back. I don’t have a copy yet. Continuous scrolling is looking reeeeaaaally nice though. iBooks Author 1.0 made me wish I was back in school, 2.0 seems like it’s going to magnify that feeling. (Update) My iPad is en route from the repair facility, but having used iBooks on my iPhone I like the update. Scrolling mode works way better for the iPhone than book mode although that is purely based on preference. What really made me happy was that I could share. To me that’s the point of reading a good book. Read it, learn from it, and then share it. You can share highlights and quotes or the iBookstore link. It’s great. The one thing I don’t like is the purchased collection. I keep my books and collections well organized and I hate having a useless collection that I can’t remove. If I want a book back, I’ll retrieve it from the purchased section in the iBookstore and place it in whatever collection I want it in. Luckily this can be turned off though in the iBooks settings. Lastly, I’m really happy that I can FINALLY rename PDFs right from within iBooks.

13-inch Retina MacBook Pro

Same jazz that went into the 15-inch. Progress is a never ending march forward. I feel like the MacBook Air days of not being Retina are obviously numbered and it’s only a matter of time before we see a wipeout of the current MacBook Pros that don’t have Retina.

Mac Mini

I think they should drop the mini part of the Mac Mini name. The only thing mini about it is the machines physical footprint. This thing can take 16GB of RAM. The PowerBook G4 I purchased only 6 years ago could only support 2GB and that was a significant amount for a Mac at that time. This machine in my mind went from being a machine that Mac lovers would tell their friends “Macs aren’t that expensive. You can buy one for just $500,” to a serious machine that is significantly above and beyond anything a first time or low experience computer user would need and problem even some midlevel users.

iMac

To be honest this is what blew me away the most today. I feel like the thinest edge of the computer itself is thinner than the stand it’s on. I know the majority of the tech writers and heavy tech enthusiasts will bemoan the fusion drive, but let’s face the reality that the average person had no idea this already existed elsewhere or even really understand what it means. All they know is it’s some new/fancy/shiny, and will mean better performance, and of course will feel faster than any machine they were currently using because when doesn’t a new machine feel fresh and super fast? Lastly, I loved that they junked the optical drive in this thing. On the laptops it’s one thing, but I waited for the iMac to lose the optical drive before acknowledging that it’s official and all Macs with an exception to the Mac Pro (and who knows there) are loosing the optical drive and they aren’t coming back.

4th Generation iPad

A nice incremental upgrade. Amazing processor in this thing. That’s about it. Good times. I think it was interesting though that when the iPad first came out, every new release was treated like a brand new iPhone with lines and fanfare and critics panned it as just a large iPod Touch. Apple seems to have treated this 4th generation iPad update as an incremental update similar to an incremental Mac update. It made me feel like Apple is now treating the iPad 9.7-inch more like a Mac (professional, business, content creation, no sacrifices) and the new 7.9-inch, while still being as serious, more of a consuming/mobile device similar to an iPhone.

iPad Mini

So I botched the whole let’s-not-call-it-a-mini-thing, but who cares. A great new smaller iPad to add some depth to the category. No Retina screen, but we all know Apple will get to it. Price a little high, but you know this damn thing is going to sell like crazy. I’m kind of iPad Mini’d out to the point where, again, the iMac was what blew my mind today. I think this will be a great category for Apple that they will continue to improve and I’m sure the price will go down over time. Cool Smart Cover Mini by the way. I know I use my full size Smart Cover all the time.

iTunes 11

What the hell Apple? Just release it already.

Overall

The future is clear. Education is going to become a clearer focus than it already has been. The iPad family has welcomed a new member. Retina is coming to everything and it’s only a matter of time. Someone start digging the grave for the optical drive right next to the grave for the floppy disk. Hard drives aren’t disappearing to the cloud. The Macs aren’t just side products to experiment with. Event presentations are getting stale and repetitive, but the company and the products are not.

Question Mark

I love how with the 9.7-inch iPad was advertised as a great product for lounging and relaxing, but in the 7.9-inch iPad video they are showing people walking and moving. The dynamic is changing. We have officially gone from lounge and consume to move and create. I wish I had a clip of Ballmer laughing to embed here.

Four words. New iMac.

Calling it now. There is going to be a giant crap about this laptop too amongst the media, EPEAT, and Apple.