Pineapple

I hate Apple. Have you ever seen a nice sports car like an S2K or Skyline driven by someone with the driving style of a grandma? You know what I mean, going 55 mph on an interstate late at night, dropping speed drastically before turns, etc. That's how I feel about Apple. I recognize that they have made revolutionary strides when it comes to technological design and innovation and have made the realm of technology attractive and accessible for mainstream consumers. But they are capable of so much more. They could quite possibly assist in making the greatest strides in lifestyle improvement in recent memory with their products, but since they continue to think with their pocketbooks rather than the possibilities, Apple will never cease to amaze me in the ways they hold back from their consumers.

ITunes: one example is the walled garden approach Apple has taken with iTunes. Admittedly, iTunes is a very effect desktop media manager application. But Apple will not allow any other device to use iTunes as media sync other than its own devices. This wasn't much of an issue initially, as Apple's iPods were the de facto mp3 player; there were no other viable alternatives that could compete with the iPod. Recently, Palm came out with its Pre, which competed with the iPhone. The Pre was designed to sync with iTunes for media and backup purposes. But Apple blocked this feature in its most recent iTunes update – 8.2.1, essentially solely for the purposes of blocking this syncing capability. This is unfortunate because Apple was in a position to make iTunes the premier media application on all computers. Instead, consumers are left with an ever messier plethora of various applications like Windows Media Player, VLC, etc. Not to mention the fact that more will be coming, as Palm and RIM (Blackberry) will eventually have to release their own media managers since Apple won't let them use iTunes – very user unfriendly, especially since many Pre or Blackberry owners are in the upper class and likely own iPods, like the iPod touch.

App Store: The app store is another idea with great potential, but one which is severely limited by Apple. Yes, there are over 50,000 apps, a marvel by itself. But once you take out the fart apps, quiz apps and beer apps, you're left with only a handful of innovative ones. And the best ones are forbidden from even entering the app store. Google Voice put out a native app for its service, which was already approved by the Android Marketplace and the Blackberry app store. But Apple rejected it. It also rejected a Google Latitude app, for no reasonable explanation. I can understand policing apps due to malicious software or misleading descriptions, but not for actually attempting to benefit consumers. Apple is afraid of competition – and is willing to be a jerk to do so.

I could go on about overpricing its products and how brain washed their fan boys are, but the tune is overplayed. I know I may sound hypocritical as an iPhone owner and all, but if it's any consolation, jailbreaking, unlocking and cracking app store apps to get them for free on the iPhone is a major middle finger to Apple; one that I proudly throw up to the best of my abilities to express my frustration with Apple.

The iPhone growing in popularity and quickly becoming the next Motorola Razr, but if it continues these antics, remember these words: it won't be long before Google's Android takes the lead as market leader – maybe in a couple years once its kinks are ironed out.

Technology, like any other facet of life such as relationships and politics, requires transparency and collaboration – principles Apple shuns to increase revenue and can only get away with because of their brilliant engineers and visionary leader. Apple may be the darling of society today, but if it continues its close-minded behavior, it won't remain so for long.

Walls

Facebook Added the option to comment on wall posts a few months ago. A cool idea, but some people don't understand it's purpose.

Here's what commenting on an wall post was intended for:
Joe writes on bob's wall: "Dude, I hope you had fun at the movie last night with Diana!" Jennie sees this and comments on the post saying: "Who is this Diana? I've never heard about her!"
In the past, Jennie would have had to make a new wall post, causing confusion and starting seemingly a new conversation, when really, she wanted to add to Joe's comments.

Instead, some people have been using it as a way to carry out extensive conversations like an AIM or facebook chat session.

Here's why using wall commenting is inefficient:
1) once someone has gone past 5 notifications, it doesn't show up anymore on the bottom of the screen. So if you respond to their post by commenting on it rather than a wall-to-wall, there is a high chance they won't ever know that you've responded, since not everyone stays up to date with their notifications. But everyone checks their profile once in a while, so you can be assured they'll get it.

2) as you accumulate posting from apps and wall posts, the conversation will drop lower on your page, making it hard to see if the other person has responded. Using wall-to-wall keeps everything at the top.

3) Mobile versions of facebook, like the facebook iPhone app, do not support wall post comments (and the "Like" button). So people who use any version of facebook outside of a browser will never be able to read or respond to your wall post comment until they get to a computer.

I know this might sound anal and all, but have you ever seen crazy lane changers on the freeway or guys who rapidly press the elevator button? They're technically not doing anything wrong, but it doesn't save them any additional time, and it's kind of annoying. It's kind of like that.

Commenting on a wall post as a response to one is fine I guess, just not really what the feature is for. Just my 2 cents.


-- Post From My iPhone

Generosity

Recently, I had an opportunity to do a small community service project with the Washington State University Hawaii Club. The purpose of the event was to raise money and awareness for the Christmas Wish Program of Hawaii
by holding signs and collecting donations via fishnets while standing on the side of the road. The organization itself is relatively small, so despite raising a relatively low per-an-hour-rate of contributions and helping for a few hours, I believe that we made a notable difference for the organization, its staff and eventually, the children.

However, I'm not writing to advertise for the non-profit or the Hawaii Club of WSU. Rather, I wish to express and expand upon a disturbing observation I made while participating in the project. It can be summarized like this: the poor give, and the rich do not.

The ones who took the initiative to give were the ones driving old, beat up cars from a decade or two ago with humbles brands like Toyota, Honda and GMC. The nice cars like Lexus and Acura with middle aged couple drivers almost never gave, with one caveat: they would give only when they saw someone else giving first – but they would only consistently give around a dollar. On the other hand, the less fortunate by appearance gave freely. A couple dollars, five dollars, even twelve or twenty after pooling together what everyone else in the car had.

This is sad on many levels. The wealthy are the ones who have the power and ability to effectively make an impact and difference in this world, but oftentimes they do not. Since I originate from the lower-middle class, it is difficult for me to understand the mindset of the affluent, but I can speculate since I am better off than others in this world. And sadly, I believe the rich hoard because they are greedy and seek only to increase their wealth, status and influence. On the other hand, the poor give because they understand the futility of the pursuit of money and relate more to the struggles of the less fortunate. The rich and elite are only interested in one thing: remaining rich and elite; helping the lower class hurts this objective, so they do not donate in a method which does not benefit them. That's why they'll only give when there's something in it for them: a receipt so they can write it off on their taxes or if an audience is watching so they'll gain the admiration of others.

I could end here, but I want to expand this idea to the controversial realm of politics. Please stop reading at this point if you're uncomfortable with slightly liberal views.

I hate the majority of Republicans. I really do. In case you were wondering, the Republican Party is controlled by the wealthiest and most greedy people of this country. Granted, they are in the minority, so they created an alter-ego and presented an image of socially conservative, traditionally Christian views to lure in a far larger portion of the country into their party. But make no mistake; the Republicans do not have the interests of the middle and lower class in mind as they make their policy decisions.

The United States remains one of the only industrialized nations in the world without national healthcare. Why? Because the rich republicans do not want to foot the bill for the poor as they have the resources to provide for their family and they make a large amount of money from health insurance companies. Furthermore, they stunt technological advancement and overall economic improvement with their insistence on maintaining the status quo. They killed the electric car over a decade ago as California moved towards them because it threatened oil companies. They orchestrate senseless and unnecessary wars which cost the lives of friends and family from people like you and me while they sit pretty with their loved ones in gated communities for personal monetary gain.

I could go on, but it would likely be meaningless as you likely have your opinions set in one direction or are entirely apathetic toward the whole discussion.

Although we cannot control the generosity levels of others, we can assist in dictating the generosity level of the government by opening the political discussion and ignoring society's taboo on the subject while educating others on the facts of each party. Once the facts are laid out, it would be unfathomable for any family under the income threshold of about $250k and individual under around $100k to support the GOP since the Democratic Party actually seeks to assist and help those under these income brackets through tax cuts and federal assistance programs while increasing the taxes for those above these levels.

Finally, we can also control our own actions. While success is achieved through hard work and dedication, there is no denying that the circumstances we are born into play a huge role in determining the ease for us to achieve a certain level of success. Therefore, by helping those less fortunate than us, we provide them an opportunity to fend for themselves and to contribute in our society; something nearly individual would love to do, but many poor regrettably never get the chance to do so. By helping them, you inevitably and inexpiably oftentimes end up helping yourself.

iPhone vs. Android

I was going to switch to android for my next phone this summer.

It seemed like the iPhone community was growing weaker. Newer iPhone models were harder to unlock. Less developers were willing to produce apps as a hobby and instead wanted to monetize their product. App store apps began developing crack checks.

More importantly, Apple was beginning to crack down on jailbreaking and tmobile appeared to get rid of their nicely priced data plans.

In the end, I'm glad I stuck with the iPhone as many of these fears were unfounded. The 3gs was jailbroken and unlocked less than 2 weeks after release and developers are working harder than ever to develop innovative apps and crack app store apps.

Rumor has it that the next iPhone will be unjailbreakable (new word!). Let's hope not!

Viva la iPhone! :)


-- Post From My iPhone