<blockquote>
I’m no Apple hater, and I welcome an Apple device to the (don’t call it a) netbook market, but I’ve got to think this device would be a flop. This concept is such a train wreck from start to finish that I don’t know where to begin.
</blockquote>
…
<blockquote>
Since a tablet is designed for lying flat, you have to be looking straight down to view the computer. Actually, that makes it suck for most things. I guess Apple could build in some sort of stand, but that detracts away from the sort of sexy minimalism that it is famous for.
</blockquote>
…
<blockquote>
While the iPhone OS might seem like an obvious choice due to its small footprint and contribution toward long battery life, it has glaring limitations on a larger device. A huge audience for a tablet is the artist community, and they need full-fledged OS X to run the apps they’re accustomed to. While Apple certainly has reason to want to build on the success of its App Store, those apps are designed to run on a 3.5-inch screen and most won’t translate very well to something larger.
</blockquote>
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I’m glad we found out that the Apple Tablet was going to be such a train wreck before it WASN’T. This is just so full of fail it’s almost awesome, and certainly comical.
<hr>
UPDATE: From some feedback I got, it appeared to be unclear that this is follow-up to PC World “Claim Chowder.” This article I linked to and quoted by PC World was published on July 27, 2009. Apple announced the iPad at a special event on January 27, 2010. They began selling iPads on April 3 2010.
You can note in the categories below that this item is filed in Claim Chowder Follow Up. This means that I’m likely linking to an old item, or missed prediction of some kind and poking major fun at them. And very likely it is or will be because they were calling doom for Apple.

PCWorld

PC World Calls Apple Tablet a Train Wreck

<blockquote>
Good characters, good effects, relentless pacing, and a nice sense of continuity with the movies that came before it. In a word: it was fun. And: it was funny.
</blockquote>
I loved it as well and agree wholeheartedly.

John Gruber

Gruber on The Avengers

<blockquote>
And none of those people said, “Hold on, this is a hideous piece of ****. No. We can’t launch this, or Yahoo will look like a bunch of amateurs.”
Does no one at Yahoo have the power to say that? Really?
</blockquote>
Apparently, no one over there does. Or more likely weren’t even smart enough to realize they needed to.
Also, as mentioned at the very end of the linked article, have a look at the <a href="http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/axis/en-us/">Terms &#x26; Conditions page</a>. Talk about embarrassing on launch. I’m sure they will correct is soon (wait, am I sure?) so I captured a screenshot:
<a href="http://appleuserpro.com/assets/uploads/axis-terms-conditions-full.jpg"><img src="http://appleuserpro.com/assets/uploads/axis-terms-conditions-560.jpg" alt="Axis terms conditions 560" title="axis-terms-conditions-560.jpg"></a>
Boy they sure got there act together for this launch. The attention to detail is astounding.

Dustin Curtis

Just Say No

<blockquote>
The command that had been run was most likely ‘rm -r -f *’, which—roughly speaking—commands the system to begin removing every file below the current directory. This is commonly used to clear out a subset of unwanted files. Unfortunately, someone on the system had run the command at the root level of the Toy Story 2 project and the system was recursively tracking down through the file structure and deleting its way out like a worm eating its way out from the core of an apple.
</blockquote>
…
<blockquote>
Jacob can’t recall who on the executive staff was on staff the day that the backups were being restored, but he says that whoever was there, Steve Jobs, founder Ed Catmull and the rest of the executive staff were very supportive of the restoral efforts, rather than focusing on slashing and burning staff over the error. They bought the team Pizza that weekend, got them anything they wanted and were generally supportive.
</blockquote>
…
<blockquote>
In the Christmas of ’98, after the release of A Bug’s Life and the promotional tour was done, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter and legendary story man Joe Ranft all came to the production team to take a look at Toy Story 2.
It was not a good film.
</blockquote>
Quite a story. It’s truly amazing that we got a Toy Story 2, and more amazing is that, if anything, it was a better film than Toy Story. It does seem like all great stuff has some sort of horror story somewhere to tell, and this is a big one. And of course then to have to re-do the film after having lost it, recovered it, and worked on it some more. Just amazing.
And I’ve gotta tell you, the “rm” command strikes fear into my heart every time I use it (and I only ever use it over SSH to my server). Things can get really bad really fast if you “rm” the wrong thing.

Mathew Panzarino on The Next Web

rm -r -f *

<blockquote>
I got threatened by a lawyer this morning for breach of contract because Instapaper now requires iOS 5 and doesn’t work on his iPhone 3G.
</blockquote>
Wow… I have no words…

Marco Arment

Marco Threatened

<blockquote>
But forget the features and capabilities and touch-based UI design for the moment, and let’s just celebrate what, to me, is the best name for an iPad app ever.
</blockquote>
Yes I agree, I love the name!
<a href="http://panic.com/dietcoda/">learn more about Diet Coda here</a>

Of Diet Coda

<blockquote>
<blockquote>
Marco is actually a part of the Apple cult along with Gruber and the rest of them. These guys have no idea what actual software development is actually like. For this you truly need to look beyond the closed box that is Objective-C, Cocoa, and look out into the world of real languages. These guys won’t have the mindset to code natively in C/C++, for widely adopted frameworks such as .NET, utilizing modern languages like C#. They will not be able to write cross platform code using Java, and hence their inherent hate for Android (of course that is just a side reason for hating, we all know what the real reasons are).
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
Uhh, yeah whatever.
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
Due to this lack of ability to comprehend development at a mature level they will onot be able to really do any web development using things such as PHP …
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
I love that this comment reveals how ignorant the commenter really is since much of Instapaper’s service is built with PHP.
Here’s Marco:
<blockquote>
I’ve never visited the Core Data hand-holding playground, but it sounds fun. Instead, the Instapaper app’s database layer is written directly against SQLite’s C API. The server-side code is all in PHP, and before moving to the sugar coated painted kingdom, I spent 4 years writing the PHP back-end code to a <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/">little site</a> to handle thousands of dynamic requests per second.
</blockquote>
Tumblr is such a little site.
I’m not sure what world the commenter that Marco linked to is living in where developing for iOS is not “writing for real life daily use platforms, who develop functionality for the user” but I hope he likes it in that strange world. The rest of us in the real world will enjoy Instapaper.
Marco, if you read this (which I doubt), you were obviously a little bothered by this guy since you linked to him. Well, ignore him. I love Instapaper. So do a lot of other people. Pay no attention to this troll. Keep developing the awesome Instapaper app/service. I’ll keep paying for it and enjoying it.

Comments are so awesome… Uh, what?

YouTube

Ridiculous Slow Mo

And a few that didn’t make the list.

The Macalope

Junior Varsity Fools

Such a great list. Fairly comprehensive.

The Macalope Weekly Special Edition: Fools of the Year


Fools of the Year

<blockquote>
I’ve already discussed how I’m not a huge fan of the various modifications made to the original Star Wars trilogy, so it’s reasonable to assume I’m not a big fan of the prequel trilogy either. There are many people who dislike the prequel trilogy so much that they don’t even consider watching them. On bad days, I’m one of those people, but on good days I see some value in the prequel trilogy, even though I consider them inferior in virtually every way.
</blockquote>
…
<blockquote>
<h3>Introducing: Machete Order</h3>
Now I’d like to modify this into what I’ve named Machete Order on the off chance that this catches on because I’m a vain *******.
Next time you want to introduce someone to Star Wars for the first time, watch the films with them in this order: IV, V, II, III, VI
Notice something? Yeah, Episode I is gone.
Episodes II and III aren’t exactly Shakespeare, but standing next to the complete and utter trainwreck that is Episode I, they sure look like it. At least, III does anyway.
</blockquote>
…
<blockquote>
<h3>What Gets Removed?</h3>
Here’s some stuff that you no longer have to see as part of your Star Wars viewing experience, thanks to skipping Episode I.
<ul>
<li>Virtually no Jar-Jar. Jar-Jar has about 5 lines in Episode II, and zero in Episode III.</li>
<li>No midichlorians. There is only one reference to midichlorians after Episode I, and in the context it appears to mean something as benign as “DNA.”</li>
<li>No Jake Lloyd. Sorry Jake, your acting is terrible and I never really wanted to see Darth Vader as a little boy.</li>
<li>No confusing Padme/Queen switcheroo. The whole subplot with Padme and her decoy makes absolutely no sense. It’s clear that this was just so people could interact with Padme without knowing she was the Queen, but it’s incredibly convoluted and pointless.</li>
<li>Less confusing master/apprentice relationships. Darth Sidious is training Count Dooku, Obi-Wan is training Anakin. No other trainer/trainee relationships exist to confuse the backstory. Fewer characters to learn about, so the story is more focused.</li>
<li>Nothing about trade disputes. The “problem” as of Episode II is that a group of systems want to leave the Republic. This is much easier to understand for a kid than trade disputes.</li>
<li>No pod racing. Seriously, who gives a shit? An action sequence for the sake of an action sequence and it goes on forever. A huge number of plot holes surrounding gambling and the subsequent freeing of Anakin are removed as well.</li>
<li>No virgin birth. We simply don’t know or care who Anakin’s father is, and the subtle implication that it’s Palpatine is gone.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
Love it!

Rod Hilton

Star Wars: Machete Order


<blockquote>
<img src="/images/blog/2012/03/27/twister.jpg" alt="Twister smaller">
Yes, Leslie’s cartoon is a joke. But it hits the truth of what’s going on in the current smartphone arms race. With each new smartphone, companies like HTC, Samsung, Sony, and Motorola raise the bar by upping the screen size. The thinking that a 4.3inch screen is better than a 3.7inch screen is flawed, because it means each screen that is bigger, is better. It’s not.
</blockquote>
Yep.

Posts tagged “Fun” from the blog