Apple: Caught in the Catch-22

Apple is a very interesting company. Despite what they may be trying to everyone via their “Mac vs PC” campaign, they don’t want to take the top spot from Microsoft in the OS kingdom. Yes, they want you to swhich, they just don’t want that many of you to swhich.

Apple is in it’s current position now because it didn’t want to play well with others. Steve Jobs is a control freak and being a control freak didn’t want anybody buy him to mess with his computer. Originally they passed it off as that it’s both the hardware and software that make the computer, so it both should be from the same company, but as Jobs has shown as over the years is that he really is just a control freak.

Over time the control freak origins had been morphed into a “we’re different” mindset, going against the “man” or Bill Gates. This has a very profitable and hardcore, but relatively small fanbase. But as any business, Apple wants to get bigger. But it faces a problem, they can’t get too big.

The reasons are three-fold. First get too big and that hardcore fanbase of “different thinkers” will feel like Jobs and pals sold out and move on the next “different thing.” Seriously, people say that they like Mac’s GUI better, but it’s really because it’s not Windows and they’re too lazy to deal with Linux.

A second reason is Jobs really doesn’t want his software to be under the same magnifying glass that Windows is. Yeah, Vista has issues, but so does Mac OS X Leopard. But nobody hears about them because nobody really uses it. Everybody hears about Vista’s problems because everybody uses it.

The third and the most important one is that if they get too big Jobs won’t want the anti-trust people looking at him too hard.

Microsoft was ruled to be a monopoly because they included a web-browser with an operating system. How do you think anti-trust regulators would feel about Apple’s business model? Not only do they include the web-browser, but they also tell you what hardware you have to buy to get their software.

Granted, Apple will never get close to Microsoft marketshare on operating systems, simplely because they don’t play well with others, but they don’t have to get much bigger before the courts start looking at the legality of some of Apple’s practices.

It’s Been a Long Weekend

The Jackass has had a pretty busy weekend; so busy that I didn’t even touch a computer all weekend. It was actually quite refreshing not being dependent on technology to have a good time. But now it’s the recovery day and we’re all sitting around like a bunch of cult members that just drank special Kool-Aid.

On a side tangent, I wonder how the good people at Kool-Aid feel whenever another cult decides to use “Kool-Aid” as their preferred method of meeting the maker? I mean why is it always Kool-Aid? Kool-Aid isn’t the only powdered drink out there. It could it Gatorade, lemonade, some off-brand if the cult was a bunch of cheap-asses. No the media just calls it “Kool-Aid.”

Why Even Pay Tuition?

This semester I’m taking a Graphic Design class that is required by my major. To my horror the whole class is done on Macs. I hate Macs, I don’t even own an iPod, I have a Zune instead. You can’t right click with a Mac, and I love my right click.

To make matters worst, we have to pay a fee to be able to use the “Mac Lab” on top of the tuition I paid for the class so I old hack and tell things I already know. But of course I have to take the class because it is required and they don’t let you opt out. And we don’t know if we’ll be able to use the computers next class because they’re putting Leopard on all the Macs. All the PCs on campus are still perfectly function with XP!

Ah, college…

This Jackass is Drooling

Unless you live in a cave or don’t give a shit about cars, you know that 2008 Detroit Auto Show is going on now. At the show Ford unveiled the final of 3 Verve concepts, this one a sedan meant for the US. 2010 can’t come soon enough.

Car and Driver Video

Fellow Bloggers At Work

Here’s the video of the guys from Gizmondo’s prank at CES of turning off TVs with a TV B-Gon. As you can see it’s quite affective. I may have to get one.

Besides being funny as hell, the video points out one thing that had been bugging me. If you notice, the POWER bottom is in a pain is the ass shot to get to! Does it really kill the “coolness” of a flat-screen if you have one or two easy to get to buttons?!

Dr. Phil, you suck!

I’m so damn sick of Dr. Phil. He’s a hack yet for some reason people listen to him like he’s a god, of course those people are the same ones who love Oprah. I bet most people don’t even know that he no longer has a license to practice anymore, that’s right the world’s most famous shrink is barred from practicing. You you want more just Wikipedia the S.O.B.

Now he’s on a quest to save Britney Spears. Go luck there pal. You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl. It’s not Britney, its a family thing just look at her sister Jamie Lynn. C’mon the girl was bound to be messed up. Her parents named her after themselves and she has her dad’s name as her first name. So Doc if you are trying to help Brit maybe you should go look at the parents beforehand because they seem to be the source of the promblems, that or all the inbreeding…

HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, Who the F@ck Cares?

Earlier this week Warner Bros, the top studio in terms of home video sales, announced that they were dropping HD-DVD in favor of entirely Blu-Ray and many industry expect this is the end of HD-DVD. My question, who really cares?

The majority of TVs in the United States are still SDTV so most people therefore don’t have any use of any of the HD formats. Especially since the you can’t get a Blu-Ray player for less than $400 or a HD-DVD player for less than $200? And who really wants to pay $30 for a movie in HD when the DVD version is $10. It’s pretty obvious that neither is really taking off when both formats offer you 5 or more movies just for buying the player.

Myself, I’m happy with my $30 HD Upconverting DVD player on my 32″ flat screen waiting until one of these damn formats is the clear winner and the players cost less than $50.

So I’m not the Only One…

Looks like somebody read my post on the BCS. Cool, but the bastard didn’t give me any credit. I’m thinking of suing if this goes any farther.

The article states that there’s seems to be more support for a playoff system. Really?! Who would have thought that in a year that the “National Champion” is a 2 loss team that lost to an Arkansas team that got spanked by a Missouri team that beat a Kansas team (who by the way is the only 1-loss team in the top 10) that whipped Virginia Tech and who beat an Ohio State team that loss to an Illinois team that was tarred and feathered by an USC team that lost to a Stanford team that was beat by a god-awful Notre Dame team that also beat an UCLA team that beat an Oregon team that also beat USC.

It’s all so perfectly clear!

Stupid RIAA, I’ve got Your Problem Right Here

The RIAA has started up it’s latest round of lawsuits this time going after people who rip music that they legally purchased to their iPod. It’s obvious that the RIAA and it’s members aren’t doing to hot. The best selling album of 2007 was a Christmas album by Josh Groban with 3.6 million copies sold. A Christmas album! Gone are the days when pop princesses and boy bands had 3 or 4 diamond records(10 million+ sold) a year. Some say it’s illegal downloading and websites like iTunes are the cause and they are partially correct, but they were are created because of one reason: the ridiculous cost of CDs.

I realized this the other day when I was shopping. We’ve all noticed that the older the movie release, the cheaper it is. You can go to Target and get major-studio movies on DVD release in the past 3 years for as little as $5. But when was the last time you saw a CD on sale for $5? You don’t. Britney Spears’ first CD …Baby One More Time released in early 1999 still costs $12.99! I got the collector’s edition complete with special metal case of The Departed, last year’s Oscar winner of best picture for $7.99! Granted, movies can be very profitable before being released on DVD and the DVD sales are just icing on the cake, but what about the movies that are released direct-to-DVD? They are just as cheap as the theater-released movies and they must be profitable because they keep doing it. And I’m pretty damn sure that they made their money back and more on …Baby One More Time.

Another advantage movies have over CDs, is when you buy a movie, it’s because you like the movie, when you buy a CD, if your lucky you like half the songs on it. That’s why iTunes is so damn popular, you only have to buy the songs you like. When you can do that, why the hell would you buy the CD?

But why are CDs so expensive to began with? Easy, the music industry is a bloated monster weighted down by clinging to an outdated business model. It’s getting to the point where a band almost doesn’t need a record label. Technology has made it easy for bands to get their music out there on their own, but the record labels still insist on things like they did when they solely controlled the spread of music 20+ years ago.

Stupid RIAA.

Once Again, the BCS Shows It Sucks

With USC’s pounding of Illinois last night, the failings of the BCS showed themselves again. So I propose the following replacement:

There will be 6 bowls in a playoff form: Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange, Capital One (with the Citrus name restored), and the Cotton Bowls. The winners of the 6 major conferences will automatically win a berth to the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange Bowls with the Big 10 and Pac 10 Champs facing off in the Rose Bowl (I don’t really give a shit above who plays in the other ones). In addition, there will be 4 at-large bids, with those teams facing off in the Capital One and Cotton Bowls. The winners of those games will face the lowest ranked of the conference champs in the Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange Bowls.

From that point, it will follow a typical playoff format with the venues of the other 6 bowls rotating hosting the National Semis and the National Championchip Game.

All the other bowls will continue to be played as they are now.

Under this system, everyone wins. The NCAA gets to whore itself out even more to the highest bidder for the rights to televised the games. And ESPN gets to keep it’s cash cow of pointless bowls named after a pizza chain’s website.

Of course, the university presidents will oppose this because, “Students will miss too much class.” Bullshit. The “students” on the basketball teams involved with March Madness miss a whole month of class (assuming that they even go to class) and during finals time to less. Hell, bowls games are played while schools are on “Winter” break.

So there you have it, my alternative to the BCS.