Found a great blurb for the back of the Hypercritical boxed set:”You’ll break an optic nerve rolling your eyes” —Adam Hyland

— John Siracusa (@siracusa) January 27, 2012

From L-R: Brett Kelly1, Stephen Hackett, Ben Brooks, and Shawn Blanc

It’s cool to match names with faces, even if it is through a video. Ben’s height makes me jealous.

(via Ben Brooks)

Newsflash: everyone is biased. The people who try to hide that bias are the ones you really have to worry about. I’ve never shied away my Apple bias.

The important part is that it’s justified. I’m biased towards the company for the right reasons. It’s because I’m biased towards great products. I’m biased against shitty ones. If Apple started making shitty products, I wouldn’t like the company. In fact, I didn’t like the company in the 1990s.

I got the usual eye-roll from my Android friend who commented on my last post after it showed up on my Facebook. He said he doesn’t care about Microsoft’s, Google’s, or Apple’s profits. Then he went on about market share – Android is killing iOS, ya know — and said that much of Apple’s success is, in fact, due in large part to bullshit marketing. (The latter is the crux of his anti-Apple sentiments.)

Now, I realize he and I will never agree on this topic, but he entirely missed my point.

It’s not about caring about how much money Apple makes;  truth be told, I don’t really care that much either. The point is I don’t like Apple haters (not just my Android friend, but I use him as reference) always aiming to put down Apple and their products by attributing their successes to a gargantuan hype machine. That Apple’s products aren’t really very good at all, but the commercialism herds the sheep, which implies that Apple lovers (myself included) are brainless, easily-led automatons who’ll buy anything with an Apple logo on it because we don’t know any better. This is bullshit logic, in my opinion, not to mention disingenuous and naive to truly believe $97.6B is a direct byproduct of Phil Schiller’s genius.

This is where Siegler’s quote becomes relevant. The bolded parts hit the nail on the head. Everyone is biased toward something, and it just so happens I — along with Siegler, Gruber, and millions others — are positively biased towards Apple. I believe Mac OS X is better than Windows, iOS better than Android and the rest, and that the iPad is redefining personal computing. Many will disagree, but I don’t give a shit. All I ask is you not turn me/us into the lowest common denominator1.

How much of their $97.6 billion war chest is due to bullshit marketing to mindless drones?

I think about this every time Apple has an earnings call. I wonder how the “other” fanboys and analysts of the tech world will try to spin this good fortune — pun intended — into nothing more than a tired Jonestown metaphor. I completely get that Apple products aren’t going to be for everybody¹, but it bugs the shit out of me when haters try to reduce the company’s success down to some magical, unicorn-y, cult-like voodoo spell. It’s troublesome because what these people are essentially doing is saying Macs, iPhones, and iPads have no inherent greatness about them. That is to say, the products in and of themselves are inferior “toys”, so the only reasons they’re so hot is because of cutesy ads like this one and there’s an Apple logo on the back of everything. I don’t get it. It’s as if Apple fanboys are the only fanboys in the universe!

In addition, haters love the make the argument that, well, profits only matter to shareholders. That’s certainly true to a degree, but such a statement is still just another way of poo-pooing Apple’s successes. As I’ve written before, making money is the name of the game in a capitalist economy, and Apple’s clearly dominating in that sense. Yet never mind that the iPhone accounted for 4.2 of Verizon’s 7.7M smartphones sold last quarter or that 15 million iPads helped Cupertino achieve the second-most profitable quarter in any company’s history, it still all boils down to clever marketing and industrial-sized gallons of Kool-Aid.

Right.

As I said earlier, Apple gear isn’t for everyone, but I think the haters of the world need to get their head out of the sand (or their ass) and show the company some respect. They make some great stuff that people want to buy. Period. I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand for a lot of people.

From the aforelinked article:

“The amount of chefs that would have come forward with public statements of support and sympathy would have been overwhelming if it wasn’t for the fact that Paula hid her diagnosis for three years,” a top food publicist tells me. “To only tell the truth when you have locked in a paid spokesperson deal for a non-insulin medication is just too toxic for anyone to want to be involved with.”

Ouch. What’s worse, even the network had no clue about Deen’s condition until her reveal:

The news not only surprised Deen’s fans and colleagues, it also surprised her own network, which had no knowledge of her disease prior to the public announcement.

“You have heard correctly, Food Network learned last week about Paula’s diagnosis,” the network’s Vice President of Communications, Irika Slavin, tells me in an email.

This whole thing is even more fucked up than I thought. The shit just keeps on flying.

And, judging by the information in this piece, nobody feels sorry for Paula. (And rightfully so.)

(via Tom Philpott)

I hate them because 1) they’re intrusive; and 2) I find it funny that developers ask people to rate their app under the assumption the user(s) are going to give them a positive review. It’s pretentious and self-serving. In my entire iTunes-using existence, I have not once left a review for anything, be it an album, song, or app. I’m fully aware that I’m capable and allowed to rate something; I just choose not to. Reviewing things just isn’t something I’m interested in doing1, so I don’t partake in it. And I don’t like developers soliciting me for them. It’s really fucking annoying and very discourteous.

Marco Arment sums up my feelings about this perfectly:

People who feel that great about having bought the app are the ones who tell their friends, or the internet public, to go buy it for themselves. And that’s far better for my sales than any App Store review will ever be. If you’re searching for the app by name because you heard it was great, you’re probably already going to buy it, and it doesn’t really matter what someone says below the screenshots.

Tweetbot is a prime example of this. I first heard about the app through John Gruber’s endorsement of it on Daring Fireball2. I trust Gruber’s opinions, so seeing that he so heartily recommended the app, I had no qualms about paying my $2 for it. And his praise of it was right on: I fell in love with it, and I think it’s without question the best Twitter client for iOS. Still, despite these glowing words of admiration, I have not once in the 9 months I’ve used the app, felt compelled to rate it in iTunes. (And I’m especially cognizant and grateful of the fact Tapbots hasn’t once asked for one either.) The fact is, most iTunes app reviews are shit anyway — bitching because whatever app breaks on a jailbroken device, for instance. In other words, while app reviews can and should be helpful, the vast majority of them aren’t. So why bother?

I don’t, and won’t any time soon.

Here, Deen isn’t making a private decision on how to treat an ailment; she’s turning her ailment into a quite-public revenue stream. And she’s broadcasting a clear message to her legion of fans: Eat all the junkie food you want, and don’t worry, because the pharmaceutical industry will bail you out.

I’m late in hearing about this story, but two things stick out in my mind:

1. The fact that Deen’s known about her condition for three years, yet she only comes out now.
2. That she is diabetic should come as a surprise to no one. Just look at how much butter, etc, she uses. The woman’s a cardiologist’s worst nightmare.

Here’s the thing: nobody forces one to become a spokesperson for anything. Deen knew exactly what she was getting into when she signed her name on the dotted line. She’s getting paid a pretty penny by some big-wig pharmaceutical company to hawk a drug that just so happens to “combat” the disease that she’s so suddenly revealed as having. What’s worse, she seems almost defiant in not changing the way she cooks, and shirking her responsibility to her viewers by saying her shows are “for entertainment” and “I’m your cook, not your doctor”. This is fucked up all the way around. I wonder if we’ll see a dip in her show’s ratings as a result.

When the iPhone 4S launched in October, I decided two things:

1. I wanted the 64GB model (on AT&T, of course); and
2. I wanted it in white.

My iPhone 4 is black. My iPad 1 is black. The unibody MacBook I’m typing this post on has the black bezel that’s been part of the MacBook/MacBook Pros since 2008. Black looks great, it’s functional1, but I thought with the 4S, I should “think different” and go for the white model, if only to break myself from the color monotony. It was a good move.

I like the white because:

• it reminds me of the original iPod, in a retro-modern sort of way
• it’s much better at hiding fingerprints
• it’s “different”, insofar as 99.9% of smartphones are black
• it’s easier to spot in the dark
• it just looks cool, especially with my translucent case

In fact, I tweeted last week that it was really cool to see more white than black iPhones out in the wild.2 I’ve always wanted a white iPhone, but “settled” for the black because, well, I had no other choice. But the white really does look great,and I don’t regret my decision one iota. (It helps to see a white 4 at your local Apple Store.) I’ve read various things online that say black is for guys, white for girls, but that’s bullshit. Which color one gets is entirely a matter of personal preference, not a referendum on their sexuality. C’mon, people — this is 2012. No more perpetuating gender-based stereotypes!

All this said, I do admit to having a few gripes about the white iPhone. Among them:

• having the front-facing camera and one of the sensors3 visible lessens the aesthetic
• the two-tone “panda” look when the phone is asleep/off isn’t the most attractive look either
• it’s not color-coordinated with my new alarm clock/radio/dock

These gripes are, obviously, pretty minor. They’re annoying sometimes, but not so much so that I’m overwhelmed with buyer’s remorse and feel like rushing out to get a black model instead.4

Black, white. They’re both gorgeous, but white works for me. Just not on the iPad.

Cook is the go-to man, considering Steve Jobs’ recommendation, and that’s unlikely to be changing any time soon. It could be years, or even decades, before Cook moves on. How we’re already talking about CEO succession plans for Cook is beyond me at this point. It hasn’t even been six months since Cook was appointed CEO. Let’s see how the next year plays out before we all start wondering what the next move at Apple may be heading forward. We haven’t even finished the first-inning yet, why are we getting ready for a seventh-inning stretch already?

Schnell nails it. While Scott Forstall may very well be Cook’s successor, now is not the time to ponder this.

(via Stephen Hackett)

And I’m dreading this week’s expected rainfall — snow would be much worse for me.

On the bright side, though, this is a great shot.

(via Stephen Hackett)