Many young fish have asked me if the 3GRS will be as airproof and gelatin-proof as it’s predecessor. There’s no denying that those weekend trips to Alpha Proxima were greatly facilitated by the aerophobic and geleophobic coatings Apple put on their iPhone flipper-held devices. But even with UniversCell technology, it seems that some calls were getting dropped in the outer reaches of the Oort cloud, where massive uncharted astral bodies could make it hard to get a signal. This of course explains the gelatin: anything submersed in gelatin has its signal strength boosted significantly, as you all know. this is why the Ensign, Gel-Class is such a coveted and enviable position on any starbus.

Well, the answer, my icthiods, is yes, the 3GRS retains the full body geleophobic coating that you have grown to love and trust in your flippertop app phone. Steve Cods assures us that the hypersolar market will be “the main audience” of all upcoming releases of the iPhone.

In other news, Microsoft doesn’t exist in this reality. But Linux lost another 2 percent of the shoal-top market, with Apple and BeOS picking up one percentage point apiece…

Look, I gotta stop there. I was told these guys were pretty similar to us, but BeOS picking up market share? That’s just too weird.

1. “RS” stands for “Really Speedy”

Anyway, here’s the clips:¹

[Laughter]

Q: Dude, everyone already knows that joke. It’s like, it’s a thousand years old.

Producer: Guys? We’re rolling.

Q: Crap! Right. Ahem. Hrm. Look, it’s a phone. It’s just a phone. What makes your [starts laughing] I just got it [laughs] He just BOUGHT that shirt!

Q: Oh, yeah, that new iOS. It’s based on OS sex right?

[Laughter from booth]

Q: Whoa, forgot, I’m on CANS, not CARS.

A: What cat is THAT named after?

A: The Retina Display has a surprisingly high pixel density, yes.

Q: …

A: Yes, very, very high.

Q: …

A: Lotsa pixels there.

Q: … Sorry, what? Oh yeah. It’s got glassy RAM or something, look, I was reading over next week’s script, and it got me all confused. Can we try again?

Q: Dork.

A: Nerd.

Q: Jerkface.

A: Monkeyhead.

Producer: Guys? Can… can we get back to the script?

Q: Just a second, we’re almost done here. Windows User.

A: OS/2 Aficionado.

A: Yep, it’s shtable, sholid, and hash more …. blerb bleoo bleh. Whoo! Let’s try that again.

[Laughter]

A: Need to warm up a bit. Blrblrblbrlblrb. “I saw a sheet a sheet I slit upon the slitted sheet I sit”² Okay, I’m good. Can we start again?

A: Oooooh, them’s fightin’ words, pal.

Q: You wascaly wabbit!

[Laughter]

A: Whal Tarnation! My Biscuits are burnin’!

A: Your Grandma.

Q: She runs Linux on a… dangit, what was it? A wolf pack? Something? Beowulf cluster? So it like, cuts the arms off of a WHOLE BUNCH of monsters? Okay, let’s go again. Sorry Grandma.

And there you have it! We hope you enjoyed this little glimpse at life inside the iFAQ studio.

1. in your brain, the Horizontal Rules should sound like “boop”
2. Pretty much the only thing I remember from Choir in High School. Yes I was in Choir in High School. Don’t judge me!

This week we answer the mysterious question: What the crap happened last week?

Q: So, what the crap did happen last week? You were all “I’m going to Cali, baby!” and nobody heard from you again.

A: Gaaah, I started that post like six times, but various computer glitches kept eating it, or scrambling the words, or some stupid thing. the most coherent thing to emerge from the wreckage was a comparison of my seat mate on the flight to a wildebeest.

Q: Weak. Sauce. Try. Harder.

A: Look, I’m not starting that post again, man. At one point the hard drive on my iMac self-destructed, and I had to take it into the shop for a new hard drive,¹ and when I rebuilt from my Time Machine backup my post was completely NOT on the backup.

Q: So those four of us who follow this blog are doomed to forever vaguely wonder if anything happened when you were in the home of the free Google Wi-fi?

A: Google Wi-fi rejected me. I wrote about that before the GREAT HARD DRIVE CRASH.

Q: So, you got anything for us?

A: Look, I feel bad, really I do, but writing about that trip is a curse. So instead I’ll just throw in something I wrote on that trip, that I was saving for your birthday.

Q: No, not gonna cut it.

Ngmoco Buys Freeverse

Q: And I get ignored again.

A: H2 tags can’t hear you. Now Shhhhh! the article’s starting.

We here at CANS HQ were distressed to learn that Freeverse, one of our favorite software vendors, from whom we have borrowed characters, is being purchased by Ngmoco, an iPhone game company. This news is odd, sad, and depressing, which is probably a good summation of the internet in general. But that’s beside the point.

Freeverse was our first introduction to mac games, with their Big Bang Board Games that shipped free on our iMac. The games were simple, but clean and Mac-like, with lots of polish and interaction. Over the years we found them to be equally excellent at other programs, from the actually useful Periscope² to the much needed port of Heroes of Might and Magic V to the Mac, we’ve relied on Freeverse to make easy-to-use, well designed software, and we’ve never been let down.

In recent years we’ve also done a very small amount of testing for Freeverse, and found their staff to be friendly, intelligent, and generous to a fault.

And now they’re being purchased by a company that formed, like, what? Three weeks ago? A company whose empire is based on Rolando: the story of a cartoon ball. This is kind of like some kid who just won a huge cash prize in a Risk tournament buying General Patton.

The question is: will they continue to make Mac games and programs? It seems unlikely. the iPhone/iPad platform is easier to write for, and has a huge base of people just waiting to devour your latest creation with minimal advertising. So desktop games and apps lose again on the mac and more people start to wonder if Windows is really all that bad.

Or maybe we’re blowing the whole thing out of proportion. (We are) so we’ll stop now. It’s not much, but we just wanted to thank Freeverse for the excellent games and wish them well in their new adventures. May the monkey ever be on your back.

Q: Did you want to borrow some black nail polish emo-boy? Whiny. that’s what it was. Whiny.

A: Whatever man. That’s David Pogue level Pulitzer material.³

Q: So, what we get from your trip to California is NOT EVEN a stupid T-Shirt, but a stupid article.

A: Okay, well, maybe you’ll like this post:

MacHeist Mails it In

Three months after the expected beginning of MacHeist, we get, not a new heist full of interest and prizes, but a cheap bundle of good but ininspiring software. Well, we here at CANS arent’ going to stand for it. I mean, yes we’ll buy the bundle, heck, we already have. But we’re not going to like it–

Q: Nope! Not interested.

A: Hey! Stop that!

Q: Alright look, you had a hard week, got it. I’m gonna go hang out with the Macalope for a while. Come back when you got something interesting to say.

1. this actually happened. On the plus side my iMac now has a 1.5 TB hard drive
2. which I used as a security camera in my room in California
3. I put that in just so David Pogue would read this and get mad at me again. Hey, negative attention is still attention! Ask any three-year-old!

http://laurasteelmusic.com/

1. but not uncommented upon

It compliments for idea of the site. Also we are lovers of the trekking. Why we don’t organize an encounter of gotten passionate for of the excursions together? Even not more than 6-8 in all? A salute.

I think it works out to a compliment. Or an invitation to a crazy fling in Italy² with, er, 6-8 trekkies. Either way, It’s at least kinda complimentary. And kinda creepy.

1. courtesy of the nearly-useless Translation Widget. Dashboard: occasionally slightly easier than using the Web.
2. the comment was originally in Italian.

Book is going well, I should finish well before the end of the month. I’m talking, I’ll have hours to spare. Thank you both (okay, thanks to all the lurkers as well) for your patience.

The problem with stealing someone’s thunder is this: You’ve been walking down the street and saw the thunder laying there on the dining room table, nobody in sight, and thought, “I can use that!” So you sneak in, pick up the thunder, and just as you are sneaking back out of the house, Someone comes home and sees you walking off with their thunder.

There are two things you can do at this point: You can try to hold on to the thunder and hope nobody notices that it’s actually Someone’s and not yours. Or you can drop the thunder and run like a scared rabbit.

The problem with holding on to the thunder is that you’ll always be getting questions like “Isn’t that Someone’s thunder? What are you doing with it?” Or, “How pathetic are you that you couldn’t get your own thunder?” Add that to the fact that Someone is far better at using their thunder than you are, because they’ve had it for a while and you haven’t, and it can make for an embarrassing situation.

On the other hand, dropping the thunder and running doesn’t exactly cover one in glory either. It’s easy to say things like “All I wanted to do was make sure the world had thunder, so it doesn’t matter to me if I bring it to them or if Someone does,” but that’s a complete lie. One doesn’t go into the thunder business without a certain amount of hubris. I mean come on, Prometheus could have just waited for the gods to give everyone fire, but he didn’t. The fact that he got his liver pecked out every day for millennia does give one pause, however.

So you eventually have three options:

• Try to hold on to the thunder and realize that you will be living in the shadow of Someone and his much greater mastery of the thunder
• Drop the thunder and run back to your comfortable home
• Give up on an increasingly strained metaphor

Yes, CARS is back in action with a completely new WordPress theme, a new podcast, and a call for advertising. Which leaves me in a precarious position. I mean, according to all my analytics Ninjas, I’ve got about 15 people who have visited this site more than twice. CARS got that many visits in twenty minutes even when they hadn’t posted anything in over two months. So it’s an uphill battle, if battle it is. It’s entirely possible that the Apple world can handle two comedy blogging sites, but my choice of name makes me a very obvious “me too” underdog. Also, I like CARS. I wouldn’t have started a site called CANS if I didn’t. Moltz is funny and has been for a long time. I have occasional bursts of humor, but it’ll take me some time to find a real groove, my own voice, my own je ne sais quoi, if you will. On the one hand, I’ll look kinda pathetic for a while if I keep it up. On the other hand, it’s a big internet, and there’s room for more Apple jokes out there. On the third hand (don’t ask) I don’t know if I’ll have time to keep writing CANS what with all the really really long CARS podcasts out there that need listened to.

So, not that you care all that much, but CANS will stay on the air (I’m writing this post over a wireless connection) for now. I’ve still got a few good ideas knocking around. Thanks for stopping by. Don’t worry the next post will have more funny and less emo in it. (That should be our new tag line: Now with 20% less emo! And 100% less Elmo!)