apple

The Motorola Droid – Punching Apple in the Mouth

Jeromey Balderrama

By now you may have seen the new commercials for the Motorola Droid, which looks to be the next competitor to the iPhone.  What makes this viable is the fact that a phone with a nice form factor and runs Google Android is now on the Verizon Network.  This first ad takes a shot at the iPhone – right in the mouth.

The iPhone looks great, but the experiences that my friends have with the AT&T Network has deferred me from  getting an iPhone.  I own the Verizon xv6800 (which is basically a rebranded HTC Titan), which I have been mostly happy with.  However, Windows Mobile drives me crazy.  The fact that Microsoft doesn’t seem to put any serious development into the Windows Mobile roadmap really leaves me wondering if I’m riding on a sinking ship.  The fact the Microsoft has taken this long simply  to release Windows Mobile 6.5 – let alone 7.0 – is pretty appalling.

At the end of the day: It’s the Apps, stupid.  iPhone has all of these great apps that you read and hear about, that are capturing the attention of the Smartphone consumers market.  Android looks to have a promising app ecosystem, especially with the fact that they have a free SDK and an open platform.  Now, if they can continue to build up their compelling App inventory, we may have a viable competitor.

The key to this whole thing is Verizon.  Verizon, which is notorious for crippling their devices, will need to let Android to have free reign over the hardware to make this successful.  They have the strongest network by far, which has been the compelling reason for keeping me as a customer.  If I can have a phone that has access to the GPS, allows tethering and lets me do all that my hardware is capable of – Verizon and Motorola will have hit one out of the park.

Now I’m simply left to wonder if this will be my next phone.  I’m up for a renewal discount next month, maybe this will be it.

New MacBook Wheel

Jeromey Balderrama

With the Apple Keynote at MacWorld this week everyone is going gaga over the DRM removal from the iTunes music store (even though they are now going to be raising prices on a good amount of popular music), as well as the Macbook Pro that doesn’t have a removable battery (WTF?) – but people may have missed this announcement as well:

I love this, characterizes how Apple repackages limitations as “features”.  The last line about people using Macs in the work place is the best line in the video.  Classic!

Why fanboys hurt Apple

Jeromey Balderrama

I ran across a blog posting that was reacting to another blog posting (as that’s what we blogs do best) that classically sums up effects of the cult-like fanaticism of Apple fans, and how their attitudes actually deter typical tech people from buying Apple products.

Best statement from Kevin Maney:

Here’s something I know from experience: Dis Apple or Steve Jobs publicly, even in a mild way, and the Apple Cultists descend on you like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead. Or maybe the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz. You get the picture. Nail Apple in a public forum, and you can depend on your in box filling with nasty-grams from dot-mac addresses.

Followed by a classic story via The Marketing Ninja:

An example: one of my college friends was among the first group of people to get an iPhone, and he has not stopped talking about the iPhone since. Every single meeting with him means that I have to spend at least 5 minutes watching him perform some mundane task on his iPhone or watch some lame YouTube video on his tiny screen.

Within a few weeks of owning an iPhone he started to make fun of his other friends and I for using Razors, Treos, and so forth. Nothing, however, topped my his attempt to pick up girls at bars by showing them his iPhone; a few of my other friends and I stood back and watched, all of us thinking “an iPhone would be cool were it not adopted by people like who think that an iPod with a touch screen and 2g wireless will get girls into the sack.”

Apple’s not an innocent bystander in all of this.  People around me will tell you how much I groan whenever the “I’m a Mac” ads come on, where Apple sets up their PC straw man, beating him with a flaming 2×4.  Rather than tout the Mac’s features, they are more interested in portraying PC’s as lame.  You’ve definitely seen this smugness transcend from Apple Marketing to the fanatic consumers.

I admit: Apple makes beautiful products which become trend-setters throughout their product line (Ipod, iPhone, etc), there’s no excuse for the elitism adopted by people who own these products – to the point where they need to ridicule people who don’t own these products.