Question:
As an Apple customer, I'd like to see Apple Computer direct as much of their ingenuity and creative resources as possible toward making superior hardware and software for the following types of activities:

Choices:
Music Listening and Music buying
Other

 

I chose “other” because I think Apple needs to come up with a really good iPorn application. This is one major area of DigiKid-dom that has been overlooked. I want the app to be able to scan my collection and automatically sort it into ass shots, breasts, legs, lez, etc. If I click on one of the images it will then launch the PornStore where I can just whip out my (what were you thinking?) credit card and have an online chat with the pictured girl.

Oh, and I want crisp fonts too, of course.

LMAO!
Hahahahahaha!!!

Yeah, no kidding. We need a place to view, sort,and categorize our iJobs and crapshots.

Well, if you're going to DO DigiKid then stop with the half measures. Go all out and do it right. Hell, we don't need AlGore on the board we need Bob Guccione.

There's a large subclass of digkids for whom ALL non-vocational activity is play, of a sort. Driving, bar-hopping, exercise are all embraced with a videogamelike winner-takes-all vengeance.

In further support of this subclass, I propose a line of Extreme Macs, possibly based on a revival of the clamshell iBook form factor but done up in a SportsWalkman theme of rubberized yellow and black.

We could call it the iTarzan...shock-resistant, heat-resistant, and submersible to 200 meters for those who just have to check their email while playing cat and mouse with the Great White off the Barrier Reef...

With built-in GPS, heart monitor and Breathalyzer, the iTarzan would focus the eyeballs of the Short Attention Span Generation with a revolutionary VLN (Virtual Liquid Neon) display capable of cutting through the murk of the ocean depths, the fog of a five Martini dinner at the Cigar Bar, or the teary eyes induced by the freezing headwind encountered while plummeting toward earth at 110 mph in freefall.

OS X 10.4 "Roger" would utilize Quartz Extreme Extreme and the GWhiz processor's Breakneck Velocity Engine to render the new HyperGraphics GUI, in which all icons would bounce in sympathetic animation with the iTarzan itself to facilitate coherence under conditions of extreme vibration.

The iTarzan would not be bootable at 0 mph on a flat, stable surface.

[This message was edited by 9point5man on Tue May 27 2003 at 09:25 PM.]

Perfect! But is there a Kung Fu grip? I need my Kung Fu grip.

I'm thinking that all of the icons on the desktop should follow the user's dilated pupils around the screen like so many sheep. You look up...they herd there. You look left....

Roll around on the floor and look at the screen and you get a hurricane of icons. All with surround-sound hooves trampling here.

Trampling there.

<edited to ad important paragraph break or two>

i chose "music listening and music buying" 'cause i want to skew the results, declare the election a fraud, and take over the country.

quote:

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brother Harv said:
I'm thinking that all of the icons on the desktop should follow the user's dilated pupils around the screen like so many sheep. You look up...they herd there. You look left....

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LMAO. That's thinking like a true marketeer. When everything in the interface is competing for the user's attention, what do you get? Right, the web. Pretty soon every click will be greeted by popup windows, it'll be recorded in the deepest corners of a unix system log, for later behavioral analysis by future Apple interface specialists ("we have determined that users--female, ages 12-17, after bootup, clicked first on the pink polka-dotted Justin Timberlake daisyboy icon for the application 'iLoves-me, iLoves-me-not.'")

What happens when we have to buy every click? When everything we do pops up a window or shows up in a dock menu something to the effect of: "There is a new version of this application available!! It's even better and more stable than the one we released yesterday!! If you continue to use the old version, we cannot guarantee the normally rock-solid system stability!! Click here to download and charge the unbelievably low upgrade price of $9.99 to your one-click Apple account." We're pretty much already there.

Speaking of dialated pupils, my favorite scene in the movie "Minority Report" is when Tom Cruise is walking around the lobby of some building, and the walls come alive with cheezy personalized/cutomized advertising, calling him by name... mentioning past purchases. That was one of the most scarily, soberingly potentially true moments in a sci-fi movie.

When you preserve geek aristocracies, you set yourself up for stuff like this. We WILL become sheep. And our technological shepherds are going to be able to milk us a nickel and a dime at a time. Because of this current interface situation, and Apple's soul-selling, I've seen the future. The iTunes music store is just the beginning. It's not just the move to passive, consumable entertainment that alarms me, it's not just blurring the idea of application and commerce. What really has me shaking my head in disgust, is that we're one small step from using the OS and interface as a constant fleecing mechanism. The Age of the Work In Progress, plus the way to keep people on the hook.

Apple's strategy is becoming clear. Give people a digital hub, but give it to them in a way where you can skim your cut off of every outcome, every activity. Charge for .Mac, sell photo prints, sell MP3s. Get into bed with every industry that you possibly can, and make computer use a pay-as-you-go scam.

Buy a first person shooter game? Great, play-per-view online with your fellow suckers. One click will buy you new game skins, better guns, the ability to customize your body armor.

Make a home digital movie? You rock! Apple will host it for you so you can show your friends. Click here. And click here to buy even cooler transitions and montage effects for iMovie 2Screw.

Coordinate your cellphone with bluetooth devices and your Mac, with one push of a button... charges will appear on your Phone bill as "Apple Computer."

And for you developers out there, we have iDevelop. A mind-metal catalog of all our cool Aqua and Quartz routines... choose the unix command line command in column A, then choose your interface element in column B! It's as easy as ordering chinese food. With a few clicks, you can build a Mac App for the age of the digital hub!! And not only that, but the program is linked to our online distribution network. For a small fee, we'll...

And on and on.

This isn't a brave new world anymore, sorry to break the news. It's a friggin' PANDORAS BOX. Just like cable TV news opened the eye candy/crawl/scroll/logo/happy horsesh*t pandora's box... where all kinds of garbage compete with the whole damn REASON for the program, so too is Apple obscurring and dumbing down and heaping on the nonsense.

Don't get me wrong, I think the iTunes music store is a wonderful idea in many ways. Just the kind of shot in the arm the music industry needed. But that's me admiring it as a web designer, not a computer user. They're charging us now for their advertising. Building it in to our applications.

I'm half italian. I've always loved the way, in italian delis, you can go in there and get a slice of sopressata or provolone or an olive, or whatever the hell... in a kind of "taste before you buy" arrangement. But it would SUCK if I got charged a quarter for everything I tasted. When demo software starts building its own commercial viability into the very character of its demo-ness, when they can make money off of something by virtue of it being a work in progress... when they can charge for potential transactions, and never have to deliver the goods in any resolved way, uh, sorry, but that scares the piss out of me.

Building movie trailers into QuickTime is next, with online ticket buying, or movie merchandising. But I ask you again, Mac Faithful, where oh where is the check and or balance that will make Apple deliver QUALITY software for creative professionals? Is the reason Apple's abandoning its traditional core user base, because they know that we, like them, have a bottom line? Is it because we, being in the business of selling visually, are more likely to see through the scam?

This is a pivot, my brothers and sisters. A bona-fide important moment in personal computer history that is gonna change everything. It's in our lap what we are willing to let Apple get away with. And it's all about holding them to standards of quality. About where they figure the end user on the food chain. Is he or she a mark? Or a valued customer who needs to get work done without a lot of hassle and distraction? You decide.

Thalo, I could easily dismiss your little diatribe if it wasn't for one thing: Much of this Aqua interface is hard-wired with no way to turn it off. Why would it matter to anyone at Apple if we could click a radio button that said "Turn off every last god damn bit of anti-aliasing"? Who would it harm if I could choose the font that *I* prefer in the Finder? Who would it harm if I could turn off transparency and stripes? There has to be a reason for this enforced interface. Hell, even Windows lets you escape Luna if you prefer. Windows lets you turn off about as much as the stuff as you'd like. I thought those Windows guys were the bad em-effers?

To me this really does show the beginnings of a new paradigm in the Mac universe, or at least a change of attitude: You are to be milked and manipulated, not uplifted and respected. Whether your scenario plays out or not, thalo, I don't know, but the signs hardly point to the Mac being the last bastion of freedom, common sense and user choice.

quote:

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That's thinking like a true marketeer.

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From today's Apple eNews:

"Back home, US carmakers hope to beam ads to drivers via onboard Java-equipped GPS navigation systems."

To which I reply:

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Additional information:

"I'd rather break my front teeth off with a pair of rusty pliers than own a vehicle equipped with on-star."

quote:

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brother Harv said:

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Thalo my friend, I have enough brothers.

Enough brothers are plenty too much.

Thanks anyway.

quote:

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Thalo my friend, I have enough brothers.

Enough brothers are plenty too much.

Thanks anyway.

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I guess that makes you a brother chucker.

No extra charge, thalo, for the comedy bits.

quote:

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Thalo my friend, I have enough brothers. Enough brothers are plenty too much.
Thanks anyway.

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You're welcome, brother Harv!

I think you'll find in the THALO.net brotherhood a markedly different meaning of the word "brother" than what you are now--I assume-- associating with your real-world sibs. And while I am tempted to back. slowly. away. from this issue about your real brothers, well, we all know that I won't.

We may tease, but we don't sit on your head and fart... or take your stuff... or tell your parents on you. Consequently, there can't be too many of us.

But hey, maybe you are a monk, like a Franciscan friar... hanging out in a monastery somewhere, beered up and tonsured in an itchy burlap robe. In that case, you probably DO understand my usage of the word, and you WOULD be within your rights to be a brother chucker.

Likewise, if you're already a member of a street gang, giving the ubiquitous punch-handshake to your homeys as you pass them... you probably understand the THALO.net usage of the appellation "brother."