Dear Steve Jobs: Its time to retire.

Steve Jobs will turn 56 next month, and people are starting to wonder if his time at Apple should be over. He sent out a note to his staff this morning saying he was taking a medical leave for an unknown period of time. As per normal, Tim Cook will be taking over day-to-day Apple activities, but still keeping Steve in the loop. Most people who've had the level of success that Steve has had have moved on to better things, leaving the computer world to new up and comers. 

The Woz (Steve Wozniack) was Apple Employee #2 and he's been out of the business for years now, using his money to fund other crazy projects and help people. Bill Gates retired about 5 years ago now, and has been spending his VAST fortune helping ...pretty much everyone. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has an endowment of 33.5 Billion, and is the largest privately run charity, and does actual good work to help people.

20 Years ago, Steve Jobs said to John Scully (President of PepsiCola)  "Do you want to sell sugar water for the the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?" You've changed the world Steve. Now Do you want to keep selling crappy phones? Or change the world for the better? Enjoy your retirement, and do some good with the mountains of gold you're sitting on.

What sort of Madness!! Wireless Video Cards??

We've had wireless Mice and keyboards for about 8 years now. When they came out, they were revolutionary. They sucked batteries like crazy, but my god, they were awesome. Then we had Wireless Speakers, great for the home theater where running wires isnt an option. Wireless Headsets for gaming? Sure why not. Wireless for transferring data to your BlackBerry? Again, great idea.  But what about Wireless HD Video?

Galaxy started smoking crack cocaine last year, and decided everyones life would be MUCH better if we could just hook up our video signal wirelessly. And hell, while we're at it, lets give this monster 5 antenna. And have a range of 100 feet!! In all seriousness, I have no idea what they were thinking, or who their target market was. Its a nice midrange video card (The GTX460 1GB model) so it will game quite well.... But I dont know any gamers who have said to me "You know what I need? I need my PC to be in a different room as my monitor"

But what do I know? I just write about this stuff....

Dear BlackBerry, thank you for being awesome.

      So many people know my hatred for Apple iPhone. I hate the OS, and I hate the traction it gained in the market so soon. It became "The Dumbphone" to own, because almost no one uses this phone as a smartphone, they just see it as a cool and trendy phone. I've been upset at the lack of BlackBerry answers to the iPhone, the Storm was decent at best, and until the Torch 9800 came out, we BlackBerry fans had nothing to really compare the iPhone to.

     But then numbers came out today from CES (the Computer Electronics Show) thats reminded me of something. BlackBerry has 40% of the market share in smartphones. Android has 15% and Apple has 23%. These numbers make me happy to some extent, it reminds me that people still buy BlackBerry almost twice as often as they buy an iPhone. However, RIM is actually down from 44% last year, meaning we're still seeing a net-down for them.

    So what is it going to take for the biggest selling smart-phone company to work on retaining their market? A few things need to be done - 

• Recapture your key audience. And make sure they stay happy. BlackBerry has always been the          phone of the professional businessman. Someone who needs a real keyboard and an "always on" connection to his company.
• New Operating System. OS6 is very nice, but really, it needs to be on everyones BlackBerry, not just certain carriers. I should'nt have to 'hack' my 6 month old Bold2 to run the latest software. Its not user friendly.
• Appstore. Yea, you have App World, but it sucks. Give your developers a REASON to design a good program for you. Pay them 20 dollars or something for any quality submissions, just to kickstart it.
• Finally, STOP letting your carriers Bash your phones. Rogers, Bell, Fido, they ALL push iPhone. If I log into my Rogers account, I get a message asking me to upgrade my BlackBerry to an iPhone. Seriously, stop that crap now. Every time I pull my Nissan into the garage for an oil change, I dont want my mechanic asking me if I want to trade into a Toyota. Its just bad for business.

If you can get all these things running, you'll have no problem getting new people coming back home to the phones they've loved for years.

An interesting move by ATi

Most geeks have heard of Moores Law. It basically states that every 2 years, processors will be twice as fast, or half as cheap. This happens when you see the 499.99 dollar laptops that are faster than 799.99 laptops from last christmas, and when 1000GB hard drives are cheaper than 500GB hard drives from just 6 months ago.

ATi has decided to use that to their advantage and once again gain an edge on nVidia. They launched their 6870 and 6850 series video cards today, shipping in Canada from ncix.com and newegg.ca for as low as 169.99 for the lower end model. When I first looked into the reviews, I was shocked, and frankly upset. In some places, the ATi 5870 from a year ago did better than the 6870 from 3 days ago. But then I looked at the price point. The ATi 5870 today sell for 429.99 from any online reseller. The loaded full blown 6870 sells for 299.99. Its hard to pass up 130 dollars in savings, and they boast new features, such as 5 video out ports for the Cinematic HD Surround View and much lower power modes.

So will it be faster that the 5870 you have now? Nope. Will you upgrade your current 57xx or 58xx? Nope. But if you've got anything from the 4000 or below, or are building a new system, ATi is SURE to have your business with these amazing cards for under 300 dollars.

Apple Netbooks....... Screw You Steve Jobs!

So some of you remember, back in 2008, Steve Jobs said "Apple will never make a netbook, there is no market, and Apple would not make such a piece of junk"  And really, who could blame them? The netbook market is tight, with most selling under 300 dollars, and made from cheap 3 year old parts. 

In the mean time Apple gave us the Macbook Air. It was a 13 inch screen, crappy little Core2 processor, and more heat we could shake a stick at. OH, I forgot, no DVD drive.... and no network port.... And 1 USB port. So a 13 inch netbook. Yipee. But it found a home with people who love all things Apple and its had a 3 year life.

And then Steve comes out yesterday, and releases the 11 inch Macbook Air. Dont be confused, its not a netbook. It has no optical, no network, and still only 1 USB port. It has an old Core2 processor and a 64GB non-replaceable SSD drive. This looks like a 3 year old netbook honestly, and I'm not sure who would ever buy this crippled product.

OH right..... Apple Fanboys

Need a Western Digital Hard drive? Just take one.

     So you're not too ready to pay 150 bucks for a 2TB Western Digital hard drive? Thats cool, just steal them. Hell, just steal 10800 them. According to the  New Straits Times, a group of ballsy thieves walked up to the airport, and drove a way a truck with 542 cases of hard drives. Grand total according to WD? 1.7 Million dollars in drives.

The police are questioning these men.

     The best part of this heist? The drivers came in through the Police door into the airport. Because it was unlocked. And they took the truck. Which magically had the keys in it. And security didn't stop them, because security was amazingly missing..... And it turns out 3 years ago, someone stole almost 10 million dollars of LCD monitors from the SAME airport..... Police think this is an inside job. REALLLY???

In other news, Tigerdirect.com should have cheap WD drives starting next month.

....well..... I should have listened to the Open Source guys... WTF ADOBE

    So, my biggest rant today comes from the Adobe camp. Ever since the switch to Flash Player 9, they always prompt you to install the "Adobe DLM" or Download Manager to magically "help" you install the Flash plugin for IE or Firefox (Because its a complicated process) However, Adobe has always had their software available as an actual program you could download and install manually .... Until recently.

 

    Now Adobe has totally removed this feature, and the only way to install the Flash plugin is to install the Adobe DLM software, and use THAT application to install Flash. There are SEVERAL issues with this

1. The DLM software is 2.8mb (no big deal) but the actual Flash Player installer? Its only 1.4mb Not like I care about 1.4mb, but it just SEEMS inefficient and sloppy
2. If you use Firefox, it means you've got to do at least 2, possibly 3 browser restarts before you're looking at that youtube video. By comparison, Microsoft Silverlight requires refreshing the webpage you're on.
3. They install crap you DONT ask for, and oftentimes DONT want. I somehow ended up with a link to the Times Online on my desktop. I thought maybe I hadn't unchecked a box, or skipped the step in the install. So being the geek that I am, I reinstalled Windows XP on a spare PC. Then I watched very carefully, and there was no option to change a Times Online webpage link.

     So what does all this really mean? At any time, Adobe can push down whatever they want to your PC. If they bring on Norton Internet Security as a partner, they can push the Demo of this software without your consent. Also, they can update other things, like Adobe Reader, or Adobe CS4/5 Suite. And really, I don't WANT the updates. There was an update 2 months ago that broke Adobe 9 Reader functions, and it took a week to get it fixed.
      But one of the REAL issues for this is the following: At any time, Adobe can do whatever they want with their software. They could make you pay for it. They could decide that they want to pull ALL your data to determine what porn you watch online.
     Normally in times like this, I switch to an Open Source program. When Adobe Reader 8 came out, I switched to Foxit PDF Viewer, and loved it, because it was tiny and lightweight. When Internet Explorer 5 started to suck, I switched to Mozilla (later FireFox) and when my MSN Messenger client started to suck, I moved to GAIM and Pidgn. But the problem is, there are NO good Flash alternatives, because Flash is very closed source. No one can reverse engineer it apparently, and no one makes a program that can hook in to flash only websites to do the same thing..... So what happens if Flash starts charging? Or starts installing Malware like Norton Internet Security? Or what if they magically go out of business.....

.... That was a rhetorical question. I guess we'd all be screwed...