• Apple movie rentals/purchase are now available in Canada! [Press] Yay!
  I still prefer to buy my movies on disc (for the time being anyway: no special features, not even near DVD, even less HD quality, for the downloads) but for the rental, it’s a great deal I think. Here’s a summary in Canadian dollars:    

  	Buy	Rent	Rent (HD)
  “Catalog title”	9.99	3.99	4.99
  “Recent releases”	14.99
  “New releases”	19.99	4.99	5.99

• Detroit gagne la coupe. Mais me semble que c’est assez poche de pas gagner la coupe chez vous. Les joueurs se font interviewer sur la patinoire mais il n’y a personne dans les estrades en arrière-plan.. 

Ça se plaint qu’il manque des ports et un lecteur optique, que la batterie est intégrée et non-amovible, que la RAM ne peux être accédée.. MAIS ça se plaint PAS que c’est la plus merveilleuse ingénierie au monde — HEY! la batterie est plus grosse que le logic board! — que c’est un ordinateur portable de la mort en terme de performance, avec une épaisseur qui va de 0.16″ à 0.76″ pour 1.3 kg par exemple!

Mise en situation:

Steve Jobs: We have for you the new MacBook Air! It’s 1″ thin, with a removable battery, an optical drive, 5 USB 2.0 ports! Oh also no solid state memory option, it’s got a big nice ol’ notebook hard drive! Amazing!

Tout le monde: Ah ben là! C’est ça qui appellent un sub-notebook? C’est même pas mince s’t'affaire-là! Ils auraient pu ôter des ports, ou peut-être même le lecteur optique! Y’ont tu pensé à une batterie intégrée? Yé pas vraiment léger aussi, ‘Air’ mon oeil!

Arrêtez donc d’être jamais content.

More than ever with the release of Leopard and my deep annoyance of Windows (in general but mainly Vista) have I wanted to write a short article on what I find that is so wrong with Microsoft right now. Luckily for me, some people share my exact view on the mater and how it can’t go on forever.

C|Net blogger Don Reisinger writes an excellent article about the 3 majors facts Microsoft is not going the right way. Although I don’t agree with everything he writes, the three reasons follow my train of thought and here’s my own view on them.

• Reason1: The Vista debacle

Computer makers have been asking Microsoft the right to continue bundling Windows XP with their hardware because some believe that Vista has slowed down sales. I’d like to add the fact that I know one single person who loves Vista very much, and he admitted to me yesterday he was coming from XP Home and that he never actually used or seen Mac OS X. Vista annoys the hell out of everyone and from everything with security pop-ups. Haven’t they heard of the fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf? Microsoft is only training its users to mindlessly click “Allow” on all those scary security threads (such as changing the date and time), until a real security breach occurs, which will of course get the standard “Allow” treatment. This is 1. Annoying 2. Ineffective 3. Not user-friendly (from Microsoft, surprise surprise). One could go endlessly here about Vista (DRM anyone?) …

• Reason2: Google envy

This is one of my favorite argument against how bad Microsoft has become. First, Microsoft is losing focus (mainly in online advertisement) so it can try to catch up to Google. The Search Giant buys DoubleClick: Microsoft buys a random advertisement firm for $6 billions. And this doesn’t only apply to Google. Second, Microsoft aims at beating others, unlike others who try to beat themselves first, which subsequently allows them to beat others. All that Microsoft does is trying to go against others to annoy them: when Google bought this 1.6% stake into Facebook, it did only because Google was also after it.

All of this from the company who’s CEO once said: “I’m going to fucking bury that guy [Eric Schmidt], I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to fucking kill Google”. Ahh! What an exemplary well tempered and rational chief executive officer.

I’m sorry but no one can keep up with such a business model forever. Having a truckload of money and a complete monopoly on the corporate world (read: sign deals with key upper-management people who have zero clue about technology and/or when huge bonuses are involved) only postpones their fate.

• Reseaon3: It’s beyond Microsoft’s control

Basically, Microsoft doesn’t drive innovation (oh really!). Not a single Microsoft product was meant to innovate (even Microsoft Surface, which we have been seeing for a few years at MIT’s Media Lab). Luckily, the guys at the Microsoft Research Centers come save the day on this one.

It’s a sad thing innovation only comes from a handful of players. If they were to disappear (say for example if Microsoft assimilates them), I don’t want to imagine what would happen to the tech world.

Hmm.
Am I sure I want to open this application?
(Well I obviously am, because that’s what I’m using right now since Safari still doesn’t play nice with TinyMCE used as the WYSIWYG WordPress editor. Oh snap!)

Still this is a nice addition to OS security!

Unlike Microsoft’s approach to ’security’ with Windows Vista, which literally alerts you every minute of a possible security breach, from every s-i-n-g-l-e action you take on your computer.

Never an OS made me want to jump out of the Window[s] (oh Ha Ha) more than Windows Vista. What a horrible OS.

… ou le backup initial avec Time Machine dure une éternité! Ça fait une heure qu’il travaille sur le 1er Gb de backup!

C’est sûrement dû au fait que Java 6 n’est pas inclu dans Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, hmm Apple…? (Je suis au courant que ça n’a pas vraiment rapport mais j’aime dénoncer cette calamité)

Using slogans such as “The best devices have no limits” and “Phones should be open to anything”, Nokia clearly points its position on mobile device openness in this new ad campaign. [Photo credits macrumors forum user mcdj]

This comes just when Apple releases iPhone software update 1.1.1 which rendered unusable any user-installed application and relocking the unlocked devices, while also completely disabling the said phones in an effort to keep its platform closed.

This is a sad thing to behold. An Apple-designed phone user interface sleekness was very welcomed in a world were phone interfaces offer nothing to be proud of, where Palm OS is slowly dying on the account of the exceptionally atrocious Windows Mobile, or where Symbian which even while having a rock solid core, is usually garmented with poor user interfaces. The difference is that all those platforms are known for all the applications you can get for them.

Apple had a slew of developers at its knees, begging for an iPhone software development kit. They were offering Apple the biggest gift of all: propelling the platform higher and further. The Web apps are great but they aren’t only what its all about. If Apple so believes in this, I ask why didn’t they make all their own included applications work this way as well?

On the other hand, I can live without added applications. I must assert that I have faith in Apple’s capability of delivering an amazing user-experience through its own applications. But I still can’t imagine owning a $400 phone locked to one single carrier. That sure is a definite no-go.

[Note: Ce texte à débuté comme simple réaction à l’article Le coté obscure du hype de l'Étudiant alpha, mais a rapidement pris l’ampleur d’un simili-essai sur ma conception de la relation entre le hype envers un produit et les interfaces utilisateur que ce dernier offre. Je fais tout de même référence à l’article d’Étudiant alpha, ceci étant à l’origine ma réplique.]

Je dois applaudir le département marketing d’Apple pour le iPhone. Jamais les méthodes d’Apple n’ont été aussi agressives pour la mise en marché d’un de leur produit. Apple a su construire une hype tellement puissante et forte autour de l’iPhone, comme il ne l’avait jamais fait avec aucun autre produit, si ce n’est peut-être pour l’introduction du Macintosh en 1984.

C’est tout de même brillant d’un point de vue publicitaire. Et ça semble avoir fonctionné.

Il ne faut pas oublier que le hype est uniquement un véhicule, pour faire jaser et faire désirer. Mais si ce produit tant convoité est vraiment merdique (ou comme diraient les analystes financiers « it failed to impress »), ça ne fait que de l’argent jeté par les fenêtres pour la compagnie (et donc les actionnaires) en coûts de marketing, en plus de donner (et ça c’est plus grave) à cet échec un retentissant éclat, d’une amplitude digne du hype original et dont le grand public prends plaisir à se remémorer.

Et ça prends quoi pour qu’un produit ne soit pas merdique? Il doit venir combler un besoin bien-sûr. Cependant ce n’est pas tant ce que le produit peut faire selon moi, mais comment il le fait, au niveau de l’interface homme-machine, de sa facilité d’utilisation. C’est de là que vient souvent l’élément déclencheur. Il peut y avoir une hype sans cet élément, mais l’engouement ne subsistera pas si longtemps. J’ai acheté un iPod en 2002, quand ce nom ne disait rien à personne (c’était uniquement pour Mac/FireWire). J’ai choisit ce lecteur-là car Apple sait faire des interfaces utilisateur. C’est tout.

[Read more from this topic...]

• iPod touch more and more desirable. Some people at Yulblog aren’t helping me trying to resist getting it. And now this.
  iPod Touch Can Run All Apple and Third-Parties’ iPhone App
• Mail-in rebates have always been sketchy anyway.
  1,300 Unopened Rebate Applications Found In Dumpster
• She is new to the blogosphere and Yulblog, she loves shoes, she blogs in class instead of listening and it’ll be worse once she gets an iPod touch.
  Blonde et addicted to shoes
  

Before the iPod nano, the Creative ZEN nano was pretty much the de facto meaning when you referred to “a nano”. Then came Apple’s. Furious, Creative tried to sue the Mac giant to get its name (read: SI prefix denoting a factor of 10⁻⁹) back to no avail. The iPod brand was too strong against the ZEN.

Today Apple introduced iPod touch. Let me remind you that Creative had a player called ZEN Touch since 2004. Déjà vu? How will the Singapore-based SoundBlaster guys respond? More at 11.

Gizmodo reports:

A Volkswagen spokesperson told German magazine Capital that an iCar may be on the way. Steve Jobs and VW Chairman Martin Winterkorn got together in California a few days ago to “plan an intensive co-operation with the building of vehicles.” It might even be called an iCar

This would be the perfect April Fool’s joke. But we’re in August.
In other words: Wow.

Let’s see how this develops (it is still unconfirmed, after all). I’m curious to see how deep a car could get Apple-ized (i.e. not simply some iPhone like device on the dashboard..) I can only begin to imagine what Apple could do to a whole car.

It is probably only some sort of technology integration agreement (like what Apple did for the iPod with auto makers).