This column originally appeared in the July issue of About This Particular Macintosh.
In what may be a sign of an impending midlife crisis, I find myself, more and more, beginning sentences with the phrase, “When I was your age…” or some variation thereof. Maybe it’s because I’m the father of two young boys. Maybe it’s the past five years spent around high schoolers and college guys and gals through Bible studies I’ve led for a local church. Maybe it’s just that I’m forty and I’ve seen enough in my life now to see large distinctions.
In seventh grade, we spent about half a semester learning BASIC on the venerable TRS-80 computer. Then we switched to Turbo Pascal on Apple ][s. (See what I did there with the ASCII symbols in place of capitalized Is for the Roman numerals? That’s called “old school”.) When we finished our assignments, we could play Lemonade Stand or Oregon Trail. I died many a death of dysentery.
And if we weren’t playing games, we were taking what we’d learned and started working on our own text-based games.
The first computer to make its way into the household I grew up in was an Apple ][e, purchased used from one of my high school teachers. He’d bought a new computer from the same fruit company called a “Mac”. I still have a sharp memory of seeing the little all-in-one Mac running on the teacher’s desk at his home when we went to pick up the ][e.
That ][e was responsible for every essay paper my last year of high school and four years of college. Another vivid memory I have is printing out a paper on Salvadoran death squads for Dr. Mokeba’s poli sci class. (Dr. Mokeba was from Cameroon and immensely proud of their 1990 World Cup bid.)
I moved to a DOS-based machine, then Windows 3.1, then Windows 95, before coming back to the Apple fold in 1994 with the purchase of a Performa 6115CD. And I’ve never looked back.
What’s the point of this stroll down memory lane? So you have context for “When I was your age, we didn’t have touchscreen smartphones, iPads, or solid-state hard drives. We computed by swapping out floppy disks, and I mean floppy disks, not those hard, little three-and-half-inch jobs. And you could screw all your data by bending one of those big floppies between some textbooks in your backpack.”
In other words: the only constants in life are death and change. And if you keep your hand in the technology game, you know change happens quickly.
Arguably, the biggest news out of the tech sector last month [June 2011 –R] was what was revealed to developers at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5 look to be the best versions yet of those respective operating systems. Apple’s iPad is the tablet computing market right now. No other company is even close, mainly because no other company gets it. (HP seems like they have taken a cue from Apple’s playbook; the new WebOS-based TouchPad is likely the best bet from any manufacturer to take on the iPad’s dominance. This is because HP, like Apple, is controlling both the hardware and software experience.)
It’s not just other companies that don’t get it. One thing that hasn’t changed since I got into the tech game is that Wall Street know-it-alls still don’t understand Apple.
“They’re making the same mistake with the iPod as they did with the Mac.”
“They’re making the same mistake with the iPhone as they did with the Mac.”
“They’re making the same mistake with the iPad as they did with the Mac.”
Look at how there are more Android phones out there than iPhones. Sure, but how many different versions of the Android OS are scattered about through those phones? How many of those Android phone users can update to the latest version of the OS? (Not many.) User experience matters, and the iPhone’s is the best because Apple controls the entire experience, not just part of it.
Look at how there are more Android tablets out there than…oh. Wait. That one’s not holding up so well at the moment, is it? No to mention that a tablet is a vastly different type of device than a smartphone. Apple gets this. Manufacturers relying on Android don’t.
And where are those Android or other OS MP3 players, dominating the iPod? Oh. Right.
Apple hasn’t blown by both Microsoft and Intel in the stock market by being dominated, by responding to the whims of stock analysts, or chasing other companies. Apple sets its own agenda, pursues it, and pursues it as close to the perfection of its vision as is humanly possible. And it reaps the rewards.
I look forward to the continued change our favorite fruit company offers users, and the day when I can say, “When I was your age, we had to use our fingers to control our iPhone. We didn’t have any of these fancy eye- or brain-controls you kids have now…”
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It’s A Lap!!!…Dance.. by Pedro Vezini on Flickr.
I have no words. Only laughter. Much, much laughter.
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Media guide arrived today. 31 days until kick-off! (Taken with picplz.)
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Not sure I could feel more elitist at this moment. (Taken with picplz.)
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You may not be able to hear it, but there was music they were dancing to.
Alas, seconds later Davis would accidentally smack Sam’s head on the table and the evening went rapidly downhill.
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Checking out a graphic novel at the library. (Taken with picplz.)
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Minor Ikea hack: two Trofast storage units bolted together. (Taken with picplz.)
Used three flat brackets in the rear to bind the two units to one another, and then affix it to a stud in the wall.
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Mile 529: Having breakfast for dinner, like his old man. (Taken with picplz.)
Brother Jim was a biker who’d done time. He was in charge of Savio cabin, which meant scaring the shit out of any Magone kids who tried to pick on Savio kids. There was a rumor he had a switchblade on him.
Brother Jim loved to talk about how Jesus wasn’t a pussy.
“You see the guy crucified up there?” he yelled. “You see him? Are his hands closed? NO! Is he making a fist? NO! What does that mean to you?”
We sat there, cowering.
“It means something to me.”
More cowering.
“It means he could have just gotten down off the cross anytime he liked, and come down and WASTED all those Roman gladiator motherfuckers. But he kept his hands OPEN! He let it go! For YOU! And you sit here and look at that dead guy up there and you don’t even notice!”
Brother Jim was seriously cool.
Rob Sheffield, Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time
I wonder if Brother Jim was a prototype for Mark Driscoll.
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“Timelapse - The City Limits” by Dominic Boudrealt
Good musical choice by Dominic. “Time” by Hans Zimmer. Great editing.
Daniel Silva’s latest Gabriel Allon thriller, Portrait of a Spy, dropped today. As always, Silva is tuned in to the real goings-on of the world, where his fiction tap-dances on the edge of:
Another article of faith lay in tatters that November—the belief that Europe could absorb an endless tide of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies while preserving its culture and basic way of life. What had started as a temporary program to relieve a postwar labor shortage had now permanently altered the face of an entire continent. Restive Muslim suburbs ringed nearly every city, and several countries appeared demographically fated to Muslim majorities before the end of the century. No one in a position of power had bothered to consult the native population of Europe before throwing open the doors, and now, after years of relative passivity, the natives were beginning to push back. Denmark had imposed draconian restrictions on immigrant marriages. France had banned the wearing of the full facial veil in public. And the Swiss, who barely tolerated one another, had decided they wanted to keep their tidy little cities and towns free of unsightly minarets. The leaders of Britain and Germany had declared multiculturalism, the virtual religion of post-Christian Europe, a dead letter. No longer would the majority bend to the will of the minority, they declared. Nor would it turn a blind eye to the extremism that flourished within its midst. Europe’s age-old contest with Islam, it seemed, had entered a new and potentially dangerous phase. There were many who feared it would be an uneven fight. One side was old, tired, and largely content with itself. The other could be driven into a murderous frenzy by a doodle in a Danish newspaper.
Nowhere were the problems facing Europe on clearer display than in Clichy-sous-Bois, the volatile Arab banlieue located just outside Paris. The flashpoint for the deadly riots that swept France in 2005, the suburb had one of the country’s highest unemployment rates, along with one of the highest rates of violent crime. So dangerous was Clichy-sous-Bois that even the French police refrained from entering its seething public housing estates…
Silva’s Gabriel Allon series is one of the best in the modern thriller class, and I encourage readers of the genre to check his work out.
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About those good friends who take care of me…Thanks, @pbur! (Taken with picplz.)
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Mile #212: “The Keeeeeeyyyyyyy!!!!” (Taken with picplz.)
These are big times. The expansion of freedom in the digital world will lead to the expansion of freedom in the real world.The people of the United States, with its First Amendment, are leading the way in combining free speech and technology. Just as Western rock and roll helped bring down the Eastern Bloc in the latter half of the twentieth century, the Internet is going to provide a similar impetus to the people of the world to grasp the possibilities of freedom.
In the entire history of the world, these are the most exciting times to live in.
Make no mistake: America is in a media war. It is an extension of the Cold War that never ended but shifted to an electronic front. The war between freedom and statism ended geographically when the Berlin Wall fell. But the existential battle never ceased.
Yet there has never been any nation even remotely similar to America. Here’s why. Most revolutions seek to destroy the existing class order and use all-powerful government to mandate an equality of result rather than of opportunity — in the manner of the French Revolution’s slogan of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” or the Russian Revolution’s “peace, land, and bread.”In contrast, our revolutionaries shouted “Don’t tread on me!” and “Give me liberty or give me death!” The Founders were convinced that constitutionally protected freedom would allow the individual to create wealth apart from government. Such enlightened self-interest would then enrich society at large far more effectively that could an all-powerful state.
Such constitutionally protected private property, free enterprise, and market capitalism explain why the United States — with only about 4.5 percent of the world’s population — even today, in an intensely competitive global economy, still produces a quarter of the world’s goods and services. To make America unexceptional, inept government overseers, as elsewhere in the world, would determine the conditions — where, when, how and by whom — under which businesses operate.
Individual freedom in America manifests itself in ways most of the world can hardly fathom — whether our unique tradition of the right to gun ownership, the near impossibility of proving libel in American courts, or the singular custom of multimillion-dollar philanthropic institutions, foundations, and private endowments. Herding, silencing, or enfeebling Americans is almost impossible — and will remain so as long as well-protected citizens can say what they want and do as they please with their hard-earned money.
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Davis, and his friend Jacob, with LEGO Dirk. (Taken with picplz.)
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“The Good”
Toy Story’s Woody gets the Sergio Leone treatment by Deviant Art user kizer180.
Redesigning the Boarding Pass - Journal - Boarding Pass / Fail
After becoming thoroughly disgusted, visually speaking, with the design of his Delta Airlines boarding pass, Tyler Thompson seeks to reinvent it. Then other designers join in, and Tyler updates his post with their contributions.
Really interesting stuff, and every design submitted is better than what Delta’s providing.
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They are obsessed with Hungry Hungry Hippos. Obsessed, I tell you. (Taken with picplz.)