Random thoughts

• Yesterday I experienced something unique. I was driving down 37, heading to volleyball, when I pulled up at a stoplight next to a car that was blasting Aerosmith. I flipped through my stations, and hey! The same song was on XM 46.
  
  Yes, that's unique. I have never, in all the years I've subscribed (almost four), heard the same channel in another car. (I have walked into BWW once or twice when they've had their music on the same station.) And what's funny about this time is that somehow we were off by a second or so; my music switched and then hers followed, kind of like the delay you get when one TV is watching the HD feed and one is watching the SD feed. (And yes, that still happens in bars.)
  
  It's sad. XM and Sirius really screwed that up, didn't they?
• I just remembered one reason why I really don't use my iPod Touch that much any more. I connected it to sync and recharge today, and of course there was a software update waiting for me. I let iTunes try to install it, and naturally it didn't work and so we have to go through the whole factory-settings and restore-from-backup crap again.
  
  You know what? Apple is exactly like Microsoft. They always have been. It just looked different in the PC market after Apple screwed themselves out of a decent share with the "no-clones" philosophy, but in every instance where Apple is the dominant company, they have no problems doing the exact same stuff that Microsoft does. (Priced any e-books lately?)
  
  The idea behind the iPod is that it's supposed to be an easy-to-use music player, but Apple still hasn't figured out that the one-button scheme is and always has been stupid (which is easier to use, an iPod Touch or a non-Apple touch-screen phone?), and when even simple upgrade processes don't work smoothly, well, Apple should be thankful that their competitors have been forced out of the market for the most part. (Some did it to themselves. Zune?)
• Football woo! The Big Ten is splitting into divisions that will actually preserve the Michigan-Ohio State end-of-season rivalry. Amazingly, it took an electronic campaign by fans to make that happen. (Yes, even Delany admitted it had an effect.) Yeah, people believe some really stupid stuff in meetings like that, I guess. (Anybody looking forward to Florida State-Miami in early October? What's the opposite of woo?) It'll be interesting to see how the divisions play out next year ... and also interesting to see how NCAA handles it. Guess what, EA? You've got some changes to make! I know, you can't just push out the same game you did last year ... oh wait, that's Madden. Right. NCAA actually does improve occasionally.
  
  but woo football! (Even though the Lions, Purdue, Michigan, and Portland State will probably all suck.)

Here's a footnote to my iPod experience: after all that crap, I had app updates, so I went to install them, but you have to "purchase" them even though the updates are free, and the terms of the agreement had changed, so I had to read those first, and iTunes is remarkably unresponsive when it brings up forms and such, so that took forever, and then after agreeing to the new terms, I had to go back and get the apps again because HORRORS! if it actually did what I asked it to after I agreed to the new terms.

iTunes could be less user-friendly, but I'm not sure how.

Steve Jobs does too know what century this is

Friendly advocate blog Consumerist tells us that Apple has apparently had an epiphany: ceaselessly mocking customers you'd like to win over is not a good thing. Yes, the obnoxious "I'm a Mac" ads are finally dead, hopefully being replaced by something that actually tells you why you should buy a Mac.

Next thing you know, Apple will do something else crazy, like make an iPhone that lets you replace the battery.

Of course it's not all fun and smart moves in the Apple world, at least not for their partners. AT&T had the great idea to increase their early termination fees for iPhones (and apparently all other phones). To clarify, by "great" I mean "great if your ultimate goal is to make sure Congress feasts on your stupidity next."

In related news, Verizon and Sprint execs could not be reached for comment ... apparently they're off in the Bahamas figuring out how they're going to spend all the money they'll be getting from pissed-off AT&T customers. (Nobody caught the Verizon guy in time to tell him that his ETFs are still astronomical, but it doesn't matter that much. Anger at AT&T has been building from the moment they overcommitted to the iPhone.)

Random thoughts

Apparently the channel formerly known as SciFi will soon have its own cooking show that has nothing to do with science or fiction. (The channel's name was changed because it wasn't dumb enough, and it needed to be dumb to match the new programming they're showing now.)

Don't watch Syfy? Don't worry, pretty much no one does any more. This show won't help.

The NCAA tournament is expanding, but to 68 rather than 80 or 96. The AP reports that the NCAA hopes to "eliminate the stigma of a what outsiders have dubbed the tourney's 'play-in' game".

News flash: having eight 16-seeded teams playing instead of two is not going to remove the stigma. Nice try. (At least they didn't screw up the whole thing.) Also, all games will be televised at once (as opposed to only one per area). Yes, it took CBS about 25 years to figure out you should televise every game. Why does the NCAA continue to waste time with over-the-air networks? Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what this does to DirecTV's March Madness package. If you get the four networks showing games, in theory you wouldn't need a pay package ...

Remember back when Apple was the little guy and Microsoft was the big bad wolf? Yeah, Microsoft still is the big bad wolf, but there are probably plenty of you out there who don't remember when Apple really was The Little Company That Could. (Of course, technically this was before Microsoft was big ...) Those days are long, long gone, as Steve Jobs is so happy to prove on a regular basis.

Why can't you use Flash on Apple portable devices? Because he says so. Of course, everything he says is partly or totally wrong, and as Lifehacker points out, most of it is true of Apple as well. Yeah, if you were one of those people in the '80s saying "If Apple were ever that big, they'd NEVER do anything like that!", well ... you're wrong too.

Apparently someone "lost" one of the new new iPhones (still in testing, not ready for release), and of course Apple fumbled that one as well. Not that it takes much to get lambasted by Jon Stewart, but still ...

And of course you already know that Apple will reject some apps for the App Store just because they want to. Steve Jobs saying anything about a "closed system" ... whoa, I nearly got hit by an irony train. Yeah, they're willing to reverse themselves when publicly embarrassed, but only after that point.

And that's really why Jobs won't allow Flash on the iPad. Because he can make that decision. Apple is big enough now to make stupid, unilateral decisions that are difficult to reverse, and they still have enough brand loyalty that most people won't question them publicly or consistently. But the mistakes they're making are bigger, costlier, and more visible ... when something happens to the iPad, whether it's sudden, sweeping changes to the App Store, incompatibility with popular websites, or some other issue that is bound to pop up, expect the same thing to happen in Cupertino. Apple will deny all responsibility until their face is rubbed in the problem.

No, they wouldn't be just like Microsoft. They're worse, because for a long time, they were fighting Microsoft, and they should know better.

iPad?

iGuess.

Read this and this, and you'll get a pretty good idea of what I'm thinking. (Maybe it will be great for old people. You know, the ones that actually have a 401(k) left and will spend money from it on technology.)

Applesoft

I disabled automatic updates in iTunes because a) I don't care to have iTunes merrily hogging my bandwidth just because there might be a new version, x.y.z.a.b+1, that allows me to get recommendations on one more thing I don't use on my iPod, and b) see a).

Of course, what that means is that when there is an update for the iPod, you can't sync any more, and you have to wipe your iPod and restore it to download the update, because it would be too easy to let you simply turn automatic updates back on. (And to prove a) and b), the iPod update is taking 10 minutes to download.)

Let there be no doubt: if the market positions were reversed so that Microsoft was struggling to keep the foothold Windows had eked out and Apple could make a profit simply by releasing a new OS, Apple would jerk people around exactly like Microsoft does, and anything i-related is proof of this. I don't have a jailbroken iPod, I want to control how it is updated so that it doesn't command my computer when it's synched (as iTunes tends to do ... funny how it reacts like programs did in the days of total system control). I do not need to restore 10 GB of music just because some jackass doesn't know how to distribute OS updates.

Update: As a bonus, now I'm in an endless restore cycle. Awesome. Naturally the support article that talks about restoring your iPod doesn't say boo about what to do when it doesn't work. Another one that talks about how to troubleshoot the restore process is the same blah-blah-blah as Microsoft's stuff: it's your fault, not ours, check all your own stuff first, can't be our fault. w.

Update: Hey, it was their fault. They gave me a restore file that wouldn't work. How would I know that? Well, I wouldn't. Why did it happen? Who knows? But that's okay, now my iPod is back exactly the way it was two days ago. Sorry about the track history for the three hours in the car in the mountains, and those saved games in Slay and AcidSolitaire. (Thank goodness I didn't have a saved game in Civ Rev.)

I guess I should be synching it more often. Oh right, I couldn't, because you can't do that if you've disabled automatic updates, but it won't tell you that. Ha. Very nice.

P.S. 10 GB of music back on the iPod. Wake me up when it's done. No, not literally. I have to catch up on my sleep.

Apple = fail

What's the difference between Apple and Microsoft?

Apple doesn't think they do that stuff.

So now iPhone software 2.1 has been released, supposedly fixing issues with dropped calls and stuff like that (oh sure, I believe that) ... but of course you can't just update your phone, you have to update iTunes, and of course this is now a new version, so all of this other stuff changes and iTunes has to help you out with all that, and naturally it takes the focus and locks out other applications and wants you to close this app and that app and wants you to restart your computer even though this is XP and you aren't supposed to need to do that ...

and then after you get through all of that, you have to download and install the software for the phone. And then sync it. And all that.

This is progress? This is the stuck-up jackass on TV who smirks at you every time you think about buying a PC, because obviously anything made by Apple is so much better?

I'll tell you what. As soon as the ETF is out of the way, I'm gone. Not getting another iPhone, not using AT&T. This is crap.

Apple ~= Microsoft

Oh yes they are.

This is how the iTunes update process works now ... if you let iTunes do it, it tries to force Safari on you (pre-checked, but no thanks, already got Firefox, move along, please), makes you shut down all your "QuickTime" apps (I've played a QuickTime movie maybe once ever), hides the setup file someplace you can't find in case you aren't ready to shut down yet so you have to download it all over again, blah blah blah.

Of course, if you have an iPhone, you have to do all that before you can even consider updating it. (Not syncing, updating.)

not fun.

Never mind that my iPhone is mysteriously neither charging well nor holding a charge well.

At least Apple's customer service is still (mostly) good. If there were a Microsoft Store in town, I would take in my mPhone, and they would agree that it wasn't working, but point out how wonderful the new mPhone Vista was, and wouldn't I like to upgrade to that instead? (They can even get me the upgrade price!)

EDIT: Oh yeah, one more thing: apparently it installs Bonjour as well, whether you want it or not.

I don't, especially because no one even asked me if I wanted it. (At least QuickTime is labeled as part of the installation.) Thankfully, my firewall dutifully asked me if it should let Bonjour do its thing, and I said no. I'm a little touchy about unknown applications trying to access things on my network.