Apple - Good, Bad & Ugly...

Thu, Aug. 21 2008

The honeymoon is over.

I'm looking at my iPhone in the harsh light of day now and it's not perfect.

Just today I had a client contact me because she was having trouble with email on her iPhone.

She was suddenly unable to send email from her phone and the phone even accused her of having an invalid sender address.

She also got the reverse - accusing her of trying to send mail to an invalid recipient address.

I explained to her, this is not an email problem - it's an Apple data network problem.

I know, I experienced it right out of the box and it nearly drove me to smash my new iPhone into a million little sleek and sexy pieces.

I felt suddenly transported to a time when computers were not so easy and I realized how far we've come and how much we take for granted.

Thanks to Apple we expect things to just work.

And we expect them to look good while they're working.

I was at the playground yesterday and I whipped out my iPhone to snap a picture of my toddler son and nephew as they were playing.

A group of slightly older kids stopped in their tracks - "what's that?" they asked, as I aimed my phone at my boys.

A shaggy-haired kid stood out from the pack - "it's an iPhone" he said smartly.

"Is that a 3G?" he asked me.

"Yes." I replied.

"Cool" he said, obviously feeling bold to be so much further ahead of the curve than his friends.

"All I have is an LG" he confessed.

And I felt bad for him.

Partly, because kids should be playing, not drooling over iPhones.

And partly because he was stuck with a crappy LG phone just like me before I got my iPhone.

Hey, it works most of the time.

APPL - 174.29

Retraction - sort of...

Wed, Aug. 13 2008

I'm not too big to man-up when it comes to apologies, so here goes...

I'm sorry, Peter Gabriel.

When Peter Gabriel launched his new multimedia site, The Filter, I said he should stick to his day job.

First of all, it wasn't working when I checked in on the big launch day.

And second, I don't see the need for another multimedia site that tailors music, movies, and web offerings according to tastes.

Then Lis was telling me yesterday that Peter Gabriel had revolutionized a way to sell music online by giving it away for free.

That's right - totally free.

Well, free as long as you're willing to listen to a bit of attached advertising for a month before it dissolves and then you've got your music in the clear.

The site is in Beta now, and it's called We7.

Check it out - Pete may just be on to something:

We7.com

Ahead of the Curve...

Tue, Jul. 22 2008

Well, I finally got my iPhone, thanks to my lovely wife who surprised me last week.

And I saw "The Dark Night" yesterday at an Imax theater.

I think I'm all caught-up with the rest of the world for a brief moment.

"The Dark Knight" is an awesome film and Imax is the way to go.

It's not without its flaws and it stops short of transcending the genre but it's easily a best of breed winner.

Forget Jack, Heath is the Joker.

But let's not get carried away - as good as Heath is, he's not Jack in "The Shining."

The iPhone has made me forget why I was bitching about Apple - it's really a work of art.

Of course my wife's first generation iPhone is having problems since the software update but that's another story.

Apple scrubbing the bowl today...

APPL - 152.88

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