Crazy Apple News Site

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we bid a loving farewell to Apple’s venerable “desktop” operating system, OSX.

Q: Desktop? What’s a desktop?

A: Well, you see, back before there were iPhones and iPads, even before the ancient MacBook Air first crawled out of the primordial ooze, there was a thing called a “desktop computer”. It was kind of like an iPad, except for less portable.

Q: What do you mean?

A: Well, desktop computers didn’t have batteries, you see, so they had to stay in one place all the time

Q: Barbaric!

A: And they didn’t have touch screens, so you used a physical keyboard and a “mouse” to move the cursor around on the screen.

Q: I’m not okay with the rodent metaphor.

A: Many people weren’t. So that’s why Apple in their wisdom freed us from the scourge of non-portable computing.

Q: Were there any good things about these monstrosities?

A: Oh sure! Like, you could get apps from anywhere, even from stores not owned by Apple!

Q: No such thing!

A: And you could have screens of up to 30″ inches across, sometimes even two of them! But even the most humble of these gentle giants had at least 17″ of screen space.

Q: What would anyone do with that much space?

A: Well, remember those programs you could get from anywhere? You could run a WHOLE BUNCH of them at once, and Apple’s operating system for the desktop machines would let you switch between them, or even have two of them up on the screen at the same time.

Q: It’s like the future happened in the past!

A: There were many things in that era that are lost to us now, like the secret of Exposè, or devices that could be upgraded without being totally replaced. But Apple knows better for us now. They have declared that we must all compute on smaller screens that go with us everywhere, and blessed are we that follow in that righteous path.

Q: Amen.

A: Yet here is irony: those that create apps for us to use on our devices must still use those ancient beasts.

Q: What? How can this be?

A: Indeed, the desktop is not yet fully removed from Apple’s eye. The all-powerful XCode, that which generates the apps of the iPad and iPhone, does not run on our liberated devices. Indeed, it only runs on OSX, that most graceful of past OS’es.

Q: There is some serenity in that thought.

A: Yes, there is hope. The stationary ones may rise again; indeed Apple may yet release a new version of OSX. We can but wait. And hope.

Much has been said about the iPad’s large display, attractive design, and custom silicon. These features are well known and well documented. However, there is another element to the iPad that has yet to be thoroughly explored.

Until now.

“We had suspected that there was a significant gain in this area,” said Dr. E. Gobost, “but it wasn’t until we ran the actual tests that we realized exactly how significant Apple’s achievement was.”

“We feel the boost is due in part to the large Apple logo on the back of the iPad,” he continued. “The Apple logo on the iPhone was depressingly small, and was often covered by the user’s hand. This made it harder to show off the fact that you were using a top-of-the-line Apple product, and thus reduced the pretentiousness of the device. Apple has completely solved that in the design of the iPad.”

“It’s true,” verified Abus Ryder, iPad owner and pretentious snob. “With my iPod touch I had be really obvious that I was using a multi-touch device to properly impress the other passengers on my commute to work every day. Now the big glossy Apple logo lets everyone know that even though I’m riding the bus to work, It’s not because I’m a loser who makes very little money. It’s because I’m choosing to do so, you know, for the environment. So it’s a double score for me! Score! Score!”

“The iPad was designed to improve owners’ lives by being an excellent touch screen computer that allows you to effortlessly do all the things you love without being tied to a desk or a keyboard,” said a faceless Apple PR spokesperson¹ . “Any increase in ego or pretentiousness is merely a side effect of owning a well-designed device, and wasn’t included by design.”

Dr. Gobost finds this hard to believe.

“I find that hard to believe. I mean look at these numbers,” he said, opening a Numbers Spreadsheet on his iPad and showing us a graph. He then decided that the graph wasn’t pretty enough in Numbers and re-created it in Keynote. “See how easy that was? That kind of simple, swipe-tap-drag simplicity is just for making life more fun for users. Tap! Swipe! Double-tap! Two-finger-tap! Done! That’s pure showmanship, friends.” Gobost did not explain the measurements used in his chart, other than to note that the values were in “SPUs”² .

He may just have a point.

“He may have a point,” conceded Punny Name, a person. “With the iMac, or the Power Mac, or even the Mac mini you have to get the person to come to your actual desk to show off your Apple awesomeness. The MacBook Pros are portable, sure, but hard to really show off in settings like the bus, the train, or standing in line at a fashionable whole foods store. The iPhones and iPods are easy to use anywhere, but showing them off is a challenge. Apple has finally hit that sweet spot: Big enough to show off, small enough to show off anywhere.”

1. It was really creepy. I had to look away [↩]
2. Standard Pretentiousness Units [↩]

Every now and again we answer really, really inFrequently Asked Questions to help those of you with no moral compasses deal with the zephyr-like and ephemeral changes in Basic Decency.

Q: So, I found this guy, and he found this thing, right? And it’s kinda not a thing that people are supposed to see yet, okay?

A: Give it back to the rightful owner.

Q: But, well, you see, I feel like I have a duty to the faceless crowds of people who visit my site on a daily basis. I mean, they deserve to know what’s coming, right?

A: Do you get paid per click?

Q: Well, kinda per pageview.

A: Give it back to the rightful owner, and give them all the money you made off of exploiting their trade secrets.

Q: Well, but what harm does it actually do? It’s not like anyone was surprised by what they saw, right? It’s kinda helping them in a way, be–because now people can plan for the future, and decide that they’ll want to buy the thing, when, you know, when it’s actually released.

A: Give it back, give them all the money you made, and apologize.

Q: What? Why? Why should I apologize for a mistake that someone on their side made? I mean, that guy, who found the thing? He tried to give it back!

A: Uh huh. But you sure didn’t.

Q: Well, we had to know if the thing belonged to…the company to whom we thought it might have belonged… Because, you know, maybe it didn’t.

A: Maybe. But you can sure get knock-off “things” a lot cheaper than $5,000-$10,000.

Q: Well, we thought it might have been real…

A: And instead of confirming it and giving it back to the original owner, you took it apart, put pictures of it all over the internet, drove unprecedented numbers of viewers to your site, made up flimsy cover stories for how you got the thing, possibly cost an engineer his job, and even if he stays employed you’ve disgraced him to his company.

Q: Well, we needed to tell the public–

A: No, you really didn’t. There’s all kinds of laws about that sort of thing, and even without the laws there are conventions, manners, social norms and basic human decency that should have told you that what you did is slimy and unpleasant.

Q: Look, it’s my job–

A: No, you look. This sort of thing is beyond the pale, alright? It’s things like this, and the people who take advantage of things like this, that give “new media” a bad name. I feel dirty just being an author of a HUMOR site about rumors about the company that made the thing. You could have played it cool. You could have reviewed the thing, taken your own internal pictures, learned a bit about it, quietly returned it, and have been really really accurate with your predictions on this one. You could have used it to take Gruber down a peg by being more right than him for a while. But now he looks like the good guy. And that annoys me. It annoys me enough to set you up as a straw man in an article where I actually used italics and bold typefaces without irony. Guessing what’s coming, finding “well placed sources” who give us tantalizing hints of what’s next, that’s what we do.¹ Paying for possibly stolen or lost property hoping that it is stolen or lost property? I call foul. That’s not just sneaking a peek at the secret stash of Christmas presents, that’s taking your webcam into the secret stash and posting what everyone’s getting on Facebook on November 30th.

Q:…

A: But it’s more than that. I thought you were some of the good guys. You do the best event coverage of any of the sites, and you have some of the best reviews on up and coming shiny toys out there. But you work for a slimeball and decided to play like slimeballs. That’s your choice, and I realize that refusal could have cost you your careers. I realize it’s insanely unlikely that I’ll ever be in the position you were put in when you were offered the shot at a once-in-a-lifetime news story. But if I am I hope nobody has cause to write an article like this about me.

1. well, it’s what the real rumors sites do. I just make fun of them [↩]

You may have been wondering what happened to me over the past two weeks that nothing has been posted. Yes, an occasional twitter update, but not much beyond that. And it would be totally in keeping with this site’s mandate to assert that I had been left in a bar by an Apple engineer who’d had one too many German beers. Or I could say I was too German for Apple, and thus left in an iPhone by a Barrister. It would not be stretching my credibility too far to even suggest that I was barred from Germans by two left Apple beers.

I could also go on a long rant about Gizmodo being a bunch of money-grubbing lowlifes, and strongly avow a desire to see them get hung out to dry in court. But I’m not going to do that either. Truth is, I think Gizmodo is a great site and sincerely hope that they continue to make millions of dollars, and then use those millions to get absurdly low prices on ill-gotten hardware prototypes. Also, good luck to Brian Lam and Jason Chen when they try to get into the next event at Moscone West!¹

Or I could wax lyrical about my iPad and the way it has filled a niche in my life, changed how I work and play, and made me a better and more well rounded person. I could discuss the amazing touch screen, the simple beauty of the Numbers app, which I have been using the heck out of; or fondly discuss the time I’ve spent reading in iBooks and the awesomeness of being able to touch a word and instantly access it’s definition in a dictionary, or look it up in the book and on Wikipedia. I could get misty-eyed relating the joy of streaming MST3K via Netflix to my couch in the middle of the night.

But I’m not going to do that. The reality is that I have been involved in Very Serious Things of a Positive Nature that have taken Considerable Time². As you can tell, I’ve also been putting in some time with Winnie-the -Pooh on the iPad with my kids.

But that sort of thing does not good blogging make. So instead I’ll offer to make it up to you with not one but two iFAQ’s this week, as well as an investigative report the likes of which we haven’t featured since the early days of CANS. Stay tuned to this channel!

1. But I’m sure they can buy passes from someone who “found them in a bar” [↩]
2. Real estate, ya’ll [↩]

So, after staining in line for an hour in the cold mountain air, I got my iPad and have come to some completely un-startling conclusions:

- The iPad is pretty big.
- It really is very fast, which shouldn’t be a surprise, because everything it’s running was designed for it.
- The multitouch and the keyboard are fine. I’m typing this on the new WordPad app for iPad.
- People who just dropped hundreds of dollars for a device rarely complain about said device.
- Stephen Fry was right: Douglas Adams would have loved this thing.

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we hop right up on that bandwagon and take your questions about the not-actually-released-to-the-general-public iPad!

Q: So how do you like it so far?

A: I’m sorry?

Q: Your review iPad? How is it?

A: Oh, right, the…the review iPad that Apple sent me. Yeah. It’s great stuff. I mean, it’s all… all shiny, and…full of features…¹

Q: You don’t have a review iPad, do you?

A: No, I totally do! It’s right here! In…in fact, I’m writing these responses on it right now!

Q: Why don’t you have a review unit? I mean, Pogue does, that one really hard to spell guy does, Gruber probably has four, heck, even Stephen Fry got one. But they just skipped right over you, huh?

A: I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m using that iPad all day every day!

Q: I mean, Pogue, of course. And Mossberg, sure. Even Gruber’s a given, because he’d whine really really loud if they didn’t give him one to play with. But then there’s you. Left out. In the cold.

A: I know! What’s up with that? Of all those guys, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who has been Apple Product Professional Platinum Certified from 2005-2009 continuously² Mossberg wouldn’t know how to strategically position the value of MobileMe if he had Nimitz, Sherman and Patton helping him! If anyone could help them move ‘Pads, it’s me. But no. Just give ‘em to the noisy guys. Hmph.

Q: You wanna talk about it?

A: No. I’ma go sulk until I get in line to buy an iPad tomorrow. Like all the normal people.

Q: All the “normal people” with $500-$800 to chuck at a new toy.

A: Dude, these are Apple people.

Q: Right, right. Sorry. Forgot there for a second.

A: Well, you’re new. It’s forgivable. This time.

1. Except for the features that Ive thinks would have detracted from the experience. [↩]
2. No, really, I have. Every year. [↩]

Look, when humor sites do April Fool’s Day things it’s just stupid, right? I mean, parodying your parody site puts you dangerously close to the Alfred Newman/Dr. Demento/Gallagher level of humor, where you start relying on wolf whistles and watermelons and opaque catchphrases.¹

So instead of doing any of that we’re presenting a post that was scheduled to auto-appear on April 3rd at 7:00 am. It’s all about me not going to stand in line because my iPad was going to be delivered, and was written before I decided I’d rather go stand in line. So without further ado, we present: Saturday Morning.

Saturday Morning

UnAssociated Press–SALT LAKE CITY Something big is happening today. Crowds are gathered downtown, lining up, hours early, waiting. Many of these people have travelled from neighboring states to be here. Most, if not all, have dressed up for the event, even. Laughing, talking, happy. Sure, here and there is someone who doesn’t seem to be part of the scene, perhaps a bit annoyed by having to get past all these other people, but for the most part everyone here seems to be looking forward to one thing.
I’m referring, of course, to the 180th Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and event that has been tying up SLC traffic for well over 160 years now.

But just under one mile away, almost due east, there’s another crowd. Not as large as the first, perhaps, but they too are lining up for something big. Something new is coming, and they are here to be among the first to see it. A few of them are in suits and ties or dresses, suggesting that they’re ready to move from one crowd to the other as soon as they’re done here. Here, too, there is an air of excitement, here, too, are a few people annoyed at the crowd, but overall a feeling of expectation.
I’m referring, of course, to the official launch of the iPad.

A few miles south and west, there’s a house. That’s where I am. Since it’s only about 7am on a Saturday, I’m still asleep, mumbling something about video drivers into my pillow.² I’ll be taking part of both activities today, but from the comfort of my own house. My iPad will be here soon, so says UPS’s tracking website. I can watch conference on the internet, as I’ve done for a few years running now. Unfortunately, I have a duty to perform: I must make up stories about the people who wait in line for a new Apple product. Blearily I stumble out of bed and start pretending to be somewhere I’m not³ Here, then, is the official live coverage of the iPad launch event.

The mood is festive here at the Apple Store, with people lining up, sitting down and waiting for the launch of the decade⁴ I approached with caution, my experiences with the MobileMe and iPhone OS 3.0 launches having left me wary and skittish, like a cat that’s been around two too many two-year-olds.

Still, the crowd here seemed, well, normal. People were wearing real pants and shirts, and there wasn’t a single tatoo’ed Apple product on display anywhere. Some people were on their phones, some were watching movies on their iPods, some were just…having conversations. In person. It was kind of like opening the door into the sub-basement after coming down a flight of damp and creaky stairs and finding a well-lit, clean and aired out sitting room with comfy chairs. One couldn’t shake the feeling that it wouldn’t be long before the other shoe was dropped and a huge monster with big slimy claws slithered out from behind a dust ruffle and ate a minor character. Still, such is the life of a pretend journalist, so I waded in and actually spoke with some people.

“I want an iPad so I can watch movies on the train,” said the first man I approached. Before I’d even asked him, as a matter of fact. “Because I like watching movies, and I hate sitting on the train for 45 minutes a day, looking at the wall. I mean, who wants to do that? Not me. Not Marvin Q. Peacock.” He looked at me expectantly, but what exactly it was he was expecting was opaque to me. Then he started offering to sell me low-cost vacations and generic medicines. That’s when I remembered where I’d heard his name before. He was a spammer.

“I think the iPad will be a great help to me in my work,” said a young lady who apparently decided I was a real journalist. “It’s got all the features I’m always looking for in a communication device. It’s portable, instant-on and instant-off, with a good battery life and rock-solid connectivity. Furthermore, the built-in screen and speakers make it a perfect addition to my one-woman shows against apartheid. I can use it as a prop or as a music player. that way I’ll really be able to get people to pay attention to the rights of downtrodden, masses of ants. Would you like to see a scene? It’s called ‘The Shoe That Stomped Me’.”

She then launched into a three-minute diatribe against what she referred to as “that infernal Nike”.

The next person I saw was Chandler Bing, from the TV show Friends. Not Matthew Perry, the actor who portrayed him, but the acutal fictional character Chandler Bing. “Could I be any less real?” he asked. “And hey, why am I in line to buy an iPad? They didn’t exist when I was on the air! I have no way of knowing about them! I gotta go find Joey.”

Past him were three men in dark coats, collars turned up, hats down low on their heads. I informed them that they were several months ahead of schedule and in the wrong state to boot. They left hurredly and without comment.

At length the doors opened and everyone flooded into the Apple store to buy their iPads. As I headed home to await the arrival of mine, I couldn’t help but feel just a little let down. Sure, people being weird at launches is kinda scary, but it’s also a lot of fun. everyone at this launch was so,so…well, normal. Oh well. Next maybe next time.

1. Fun game! Try to think up a catch phrase more banal than “What, me worry?” ! (Hint: this isn’t possible.) [↩]
2. That’s the benefit of writing your articles two weeks early. I should remember that. [↩]
3. well, not really. See, this is still all written two weeks before the actual fact. But let’s pretend. Which would be easier if I stopped knocking holes in this here fourth wall. [↩]
4. a decade which is only four months old, I’ll grant you. [↩]