Beat me to it, drjohn

Yeah
But did Sound Jam sync and manage all your music to different devices and had apps , movies and and and and ? ?

They don't like iTunes because you can't buy a movie from there and play it on a zune 3 years down the road. The fact is, you aren't able to buy movies from ANY store and have them work everywhere. It's not Apple's fault that the content providers require DRM.

They also don't like the fact that you can't buy certain types of apps in the app store ...boo hoo. I can't go into Target and buy porn either. It's their store, they choose what they wish to carry.

No...but it had some neat skins available. And considering I have no other devices, apps, movies etc, what needs to be synced?

Well, we agree on a lot of stuff, well, except perhaps Apple's invulnerability. That stuff is never forever. No one has ever come close to the monopoly the East India Company (not to mention its global shadow-governments apparatus), yet now they're a podunk catalog company). International Harvester (ironic their scouts were a sort of progentor to SUVs) and their vast empire - They're not even a name anymore and haven't been for decades - They really disappeared into nothingness. RCA - Edison's company. Same with the old IBM, once invulnerable and almighty - Now they scratch with everybody else. Innumerable once-giants PC companies that were household names, now you can't even remember who they were before the Chinese took them over. Or even such weirdness as the VW shortseller Hell when Porsche's secret 74% stake pushed VW to the world's most valuable company long enough to cause a lot of parasites' suicides - Now, an Apple would really be subject to that sort of catastrophic weirdness.

That's just silly to think Apple's invulnerable, or anybody else, Google, Adobe, etc - Everybody is. Doesn't have to be so, but history hasn't been kind. Everybody digs their grave at some point.

The only question with Apple is where they're going to dig their grave.

Zwei's on the money with his observation about worthless free hippy nonsense - The only thing more pathetic than when some hippy squanders vast resources on some boneheaded marginal dysfunctional good or gain (loss) is when some conservative Sith does it , although on the other hand there is probably more amazing free stuff out there than free garbage. And Steve is some sort of hippy faerie gone Sith .

However, Apple's nonsense is inexcusable. They certainly don't need it. That Apple Unified User Experience stuff is a sweet magic bullet that works, and would work just as well electively as mandatorily - It's too bad they've chosen to sully that. Their nonsense is really silly and makes them look unnecessarily bad, as they really don't have to do all that stuff.

History always wins - It hasn't been kind to people that don't get it right.

Ed

A benevolent dictator's still a dictator. So, you play along, or revolt and gut him, or variations on that theme.

I like iTunes because I like Apple lossless, although I wish it would work in non-Apple stuff, like with AAC and MP3, although that's functionally irrelevant since I like Nanos (FM is nice, too) and stream my library through a premium MP3Tunes locker ( I don't care to share my personal music preferences as they're, well, personal ) to Mac computers ( well, I guess now an iPad, too ). The only AAC or MP3 stuff I buy is just for my kids' instant gratification, since their quality doesn't concern me ( and they obviously don't care, either, and quality really is a personal preference, not some Fascist thing - if they like junk audio, that's fine ). So, my personal stuff is ripped from disk, since that's the only way to get Apple lossless.

Movies, again, that doesn't interest me obsessively. I buy movies for my kids, and again, their constraints aren't my problem. Besides, I stream stuff, if even that, and have unwatched and unreturned Netflix disks from before the Christmas holidays still laying around ( although we have gone to cinema a lot and summers go the San Jose drive-in { pretty cool, they get movies the same time as the cines, and you can bring in your own better food, drink, comfy chairs, whatever, a lot more comfortable and civilized } ).

But, I suppose you're correct in your assessment of drone slave-wage Stepford consumer wonks, kids, whomever, braindead hippy developers, etc - They want all this garbage, but GIGO, garbage in garbage out. No free lunch. You get what you pay for. Stuff may want to be free, but making it costs money. GIGO.

However, it doesn't change that a benevolent dictator is still a frickin dictator.

It's a free country and its their store and they can do whatever they want.

But if they get gutted and torn a new arsehole, that's just the free market working

Ed

Well, now that I think about it, the thing is free and open access to junk, drivel. That, pragmatically, as evidenced by history, is the important stuff, stretching back to antiquities, since junk collection is what survives, what gets squirreled away and coveted, the stuff that people make the most of, so through sheer numbers and luck it survives, it is through the museums of priceless vases (in their day, mere p!sspots), drivel populist plays, etc, that we think we know past societies and their cultures.

I like junk. It's very important stuff. It defines us. It provides many of us gainful employment.

Junk is so important. It should have free and open access. Apple certainly has it's share of drivel in the App store ( so much for the world's greatest user experience, yet strangely apt, since most user preference is about junk ), yet it is not a freely and openly accessible develoment medium.

Apple could outright buy Adobe altogether and still have plenty of money to spare.

I'm like you but my daughter wanted an iPhone so we got a used one to go with our T-Mobile account. No data plan so it didn't increase our monthly cost. Well, I liked it so much I broke down and found a 1st gen for $100 (cracked glass but not too distracting). They're incredibly easy to hack to get to work with other carriers. Being a tech support guy, learning about these would enable you to expand the services you offer. Just a thought.

The iPad was the first of their devices that I really was compelled to buy. The iPod Touch is too small for couch surfing, and without a camera I wasn't interested in keeping it in my pocket all the time. The iPhone is very expensive for what we need it for. Right now my wife and I both have prepaid phones. I pay $100 a year for mine, and she uses about $125-$150 …$0.25 a minute baby!

What I hope they come out with this fall is an iPod Touch with a camera, and 3g data options like the upcoming iPad. Holy crap I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

Yeah, I've got this strange theory that smartphones have the same power as low-def low-rez television ( remember the old days when half the neighborhood would huddle for hours watching test patterns, when there wasn't a lot of programming? ). In this context, I suppose terms like immersion/immersiveness have to be contextual, as low rez is more immersive, requiring participant/recipient fill-in, so as, for example, with low-rez television, the recipient becomes the picture tube; whereas with say a high-rez medium like cinema, it is so rich and detailed and enveloping that the recipient doesn't have to do much other than just be there, so it's magic works differently, polar opposite of low-def television.

With high-rez, the medium is the projector, with low-rez, the recipient is the projector, therein the magic of these basically inferior low-rez devices, the smartphones. High-rez pushes out, low-rez sucks you in.

With phones, they've always been low-rez, therefore their engaging power, and now with smartphones they have multi-faceted low-rez, except for perhaps a more resolution-independent GPS turn-by-turn navigation etc (and that's probably why people can 'take it or leave it' that feature).

So now, with HD television penetration and saturation, I think we can expect eventual total network programming bankruptcy, and these dorks will think it's about content or lack of, delivery methods, or whatever else excuse/misconception/whatever, when it will be about the fundamental underlying technological differences of a medium.

First we shape our tools, thereafter they shape us.

Ed

Jee, an interesting thing. I got a bus to drive kids around in (legally, I might add, as I'd previously obtained a class B license for single-axles, originally for hauling home-rolled pre-fabbed sections down to the Sea of Cortez), then one day snapped off all but the first foot of roof antenna on one of those overhanging tree branches that overgrow on untrimmed nonpriority roads.

Well, that little stub of antenna is substantially less than 1/4 wavelength, so signal basically wasn't happening but of course a lot of unbearable (or so I'd thought) noise and static. I've been to lazy to just get a ladder and duct tape up some coat hangar, but should to get these kids off that low-rez sedation.

Anywya, I can't listen to noise and static, but darned kids clamor for music despite the static. I turn it on, you basically can't hear any music, just a lot of noise and static, yet the kids are just mellowly happy as clams with it. It's like they don't notice it. Weird stuff. And it's not white/grid noise sedation either - You can hear this junk.

Anyway, that's how smartphones work.

The iPad of course is a different animal. It doesn't suck you in, you don't project into it - It pushes out high-rez, it projects to you.

That's my story and I'm stickin to it