iPad strikes back.

with christmas looming on the horizon, the ipad 2 rumor mill is circulating at full speed (http://www.cio.com/article/638215/Apple_Readies_IPad_2_Report_Says?source=rss_news). of course, this usually is just the collaboration of some macgeeks, but having sat through this cycle before, i realize there's probably some truth to the rumors.

let me explain. in high school i was adamantly opposed to really using a computer for anything more than school work. video games, these were the things for consoles. then a friend taught me how to build my own computer and i fell in love with it. like the majority of guys my age, i killed so much time playing counterstrike, or anything else valve made. and that's when i fell into the big false dichotomy of the tech world - i disliked mac. yes, arrogantly enough i had a thorough distaste for mac, sight unseen...until the great revelation. about one year into college, i realized i needed a laptop, so on a great circuitous road trip to california, i decided to get a powerbook, you know before it was the cool thing to do on a college campus (seriously, they're everywhere and many people don't know how to properly use a mac these days).

so i had converted (there was initial flirtation when i bought my first ipod a year before), even at the price of losing the ability to play video games (at this point, apple was still rocking the ibm processor), but gained the ability to really enjoy a mac. it felt lighter, easier to use, and allowed me to explore my artistic side with the aid of a computer (i had been playing music, writing, and photographing for years and still do). in short, things like iLife, proTools, and photoshopCS/iPhoto, become part of my active vocabulary.

but there's a serious flaw to apple's strategy, and it undermines the enjoyment of the brand. for nearly 6 months after i got the computer, apple announced the introduction of the new intel chip project (the brand's current processor). and here's where it all ties together -

apple has an utterly horrible habit of routinely pumping out products with minimal updating.

yes, like the frenzy around the Madden/NCAA Football franchise, it seems that every year, apple has something new. but it's not always valuable. i'd be willing to bet you couldn't find one person in 100 who could tell me the new features of the past five consecutive ipod models. but yet, we keep buying; after all, apple is trendy, hip, chic even. and of course, the american public is averse to thought/cognizance/etc. someone yells BIG SHINY NEW and we run to buy it, as a halfhearted attempt to define ourselves by consumerism.

but is this what the market needs?

really, was it urgent that the last ipod nano get a camera on the back?

finally, and to bring it all back together, do we need a new ipad? probably not. of course, someone will piss and moan about the need for ipad facetime, but to be honest, i felt like the ipad was rushed in the first place. as if some intern at apple read the news release about the sony ereader or the amazon kindle, and thought "fuck, we're behind the times. gotta pump out an equivalent fast." the ipad, as much as i've enjoyed trying out e-readers lately, is trying to expand the genre, and for that, mac deserves some applause. but it becomes obvious over time that the industry will more than likely trend towards touch screen computing (ed. note - you read it here first, but i believe that over the next ten years, the new laptop will be a dual touchscreen clamshell design), so why pump out another model so quickly, when you have so much to improve on?

the last model was great in differentiating itself from the field with all the apps and whatnot, but why not try to bolster the product? you know, a little more power under the hood. or be able to run more than one app/program at a time (one of the biggest complaints with ipad users so far). but no, apple will slap some marginal technology into it (read: a camera for facetime), place the pretty $500 price tag on it and ship it off. i think that while this strategy underlies apple's production system, this will ultimately need to be changed as apple becomes a much larger percentage of the market, less customer disenchantment ensue.

The legal consequences of hacking celebrity accounts

Today, the 20 year old college student who hacked Sarah Palin's Yahoo account on the 2008 election trail was given a sentence of 366 days in federal prison. Having a background in law, I can only assume such an egregious penalty was given as the result of his malicious nature - he admits he was looking for evidence to smear her image as she approached the presidential election as the republican VP candidate. however, I still feel the penalty is a bit much, as he did not actually do anything to her account; this is more than likely a federal judge's attempt at "making a statement" towards the hacker community.

the disconnect between the federal authorities and hacking subculture is not unheard of. frequently, the federal government's computer scientists/engineers who are trained to hack have neither the width nor depth of the hacking skills of the private community, which more often than not encompasses 16-24 white males. actually, in a rolling stone magazine a few years back, it was discussed that the feds send an agent/delegate every year to one of the major hacker conventions in Las Vegas in hopes of recruiting them to work for the government to bolster united states' computing security. this agent is usually rebuffed by the majority of attendees; the rolling stone article goes on to mention that the majority of the federal security agents are gathered by being arrested for an internet/hacking crime, and then, upon facing jail time, being offered to work for the federal government; thus, it's a bit of the "rock or a hard place" scenario for a member of one of the most anti-authoritative countercultures.

now, do i think this gentleman refused such an offer? probably not, as the article mentions that he guessed his way into the account. however, the vital component (at least, imo) was the fact that he posted the information on 4chan. for those who don't know, 4chan is a message board, frequented by hackers and their subculture. they have pulled off a variety of computer and software/information system-based pranks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Media_attention), some being hilarious and some being scarily informative of how much we rely on technology as a culture. as a matter of fact, this message board weilds so much power that the main poster and arguably the ringleader is a young man who goes by the handle of "Moot," who despite being unable to confirm his actual existence for a while, Time magazine placed him on the 2009 100 most important people list.

in the end, i think the sentence is disproportionately heavy for the crime, but the judge here is advocating a heavier penalty in order to design a public policy that encourages hackers to stay out of the digital private property of other individuals, especially when said individual is a high profile person and the hacking moves from disruptive to a dangerous nature. honestly, he will probably be let out early on good behavior; though i feel that our government, as well as any government, should have no ability to regulate the movement of things in the cybersphere - it was designed as an alternate universe, and there is no legitimate, encompassing legal framework to regulate its behavior, ergo government is intruding on our rights as private individuals.

4g not as clear as it seems

As CIO reported, none of the companies currently claiming to offer 4G connectivity in the cell phone market actually have the quality of technology sufficient to call "4G"; in reality, one spokesman said that the company was using the term to denote advancement beyond traditional 3G technology.

The problem with this is that it allows for loopholes in advertising, whereby any company can bend the truth to their liking and make competitive advancements over competitors while lacking the actual resources to back the claim. This will pose an interesting problem, as many states have adjudicated their own tenets of contract law, such that a prospective customer could likely sue the company for the false advertising. Moreover, what happened to responsibility in marketing?

I pose this question as a Sprint customer, one who, although loyal for preferential treatment in a quid-pro-quo situation of maintaining the same account for years, enjoys the occasional "4G" speeds in New Orleans (Baton Rouge is not set up for it, although the rumor is that will happen before March 2011) and has from time to time seen the difference between my phone's internet speed and other brands. However, if I don't truly have 4G in my hands, 1) when will I get it? 2) why lie?

While it's usually ok to fib a little in advertising, the problem here hinges on the speed with which technology advances. As a member of the generation Y, I can remember growing up when a cellphone itself was incredible, not to mention having to suffer through the agonizingly slow speed of the first internet-capable cell phone. Why are we not at 4G yet? Has the industry (i.e. cell phone technology) decided to benchmark itself at a higher rate than technology is actually evolving? Or perhaps our growth in the technology sector is just slowing at a rate we didn't anticipate? Placing this chicken or egg question aside for one minute, later in the article it mentions we will be getting this technology soon enough (from the end of this year on one type of technology to roughly about a year from december on the other); I still save a cynicism towards and slight fear of the slippery slope of falsities in advertising - in the end, what if this spreads to something also heavily advertised but more critical to our health or safety? What if the next time, a manufacturer gently fibs about a heart medication, or the crash rating on an automobile?