Insecurity complex
The Macalope looks at the results of the hilariously-named Pwn2Own contest (oh, you hackers!) in this week’s Macworld piece.
Familiar territory
iPad pre-orders, Windows Phone whatever and Tim Bray takedowns, all in this week’s Macworld piece.
A sad state of affair
The Macalope laments the current state of online journalism in this week’s Macworld piece which finds three particularly odious examples.
Fortune favors the foolish
By The Macalope and has 11 comments.
ONLY A FOOL WOULD PRE-ORDER AN IPAD!
Whatever, InfoWorld.
The Apple web world is rife today with people telling you which iPad they pre-ordered. If there’s a more disgusting display of first-world conspicuous consumption the horny one is fortunately not aware of it. Really. Sickening.
But anyway, here’s which one he’s getting!
16 GB WiFi only.
Whaaaaat?! Base model?! LAME. FAIL. LOL.
OK, here’s why.
3G – The Macalope struggled over the issue of 3G, but ultimately he thinks what he really wants is ubiquitous access on his MacBook Pro, not an iPad. If one uses the base amount of bandwidth, over the first 8 months the price per MB of adding WiFi to the iPad is about the same as buying a Virgin Mobile broadband card for a laptop and buying their al-la-carte service (after 8 months the Virgin Mobile is more expensive, because that’s the break even point for the additional $30 of adding WiFi to the iPad). The price points are different and Virgin quickly becomes more expensive the more bandwidth you consume (nothing beats a $30/month all-you-can-eat plan), but given the added flexibility it seems like a better option to the Macalope.
Size – When the iPhone first came out, the Macalope bought a 4 GB model and, while he had to make more conscious decisions about what to put on it, he didn’t regret that decision at all. It was fine and only in the last few months of its life cycle did he really feel constrained. Last summer when he upgraded to the 3GS, he bought the 32 GB model which is chock full of movies and TV shows that he never watches. If he ever gets stuck someplace he’ll probably be glad they’re on there, but so far the extra 16 GB has been a bust.
The difference with the iPad, of course, is that he’ll want the movies he’s ripped to be at a higher resolution than he might have on the iPhone and he expects that applications will also be larger. But, unlike the iPhone, there’s no plan to deal with here. If he decides to sell or gift his iPad in a year and upgrade, he can do that.
The combination of a bad economy with an uncertain job market as well is making him a little more cautious with his money.
As Marco Arment, who came to the same conclusion for slightly different reasons, says:
Obviously, your needs will vary from mine, so you might decide differently.
Critical thinking skills
This week’s Macworld piece looks at Rob Enderle’s, that of the critics of Apple’s lawsuit against HTC and Windows Phone 7 Series.
The root of all evil
One presumes that Don Tennant would conclude that Apple’s emphasis on maintaining high margins is the reason child labor has been found to have been used by the Chinese companies that supply it, Dell, HP, Lenovo and other computer makers.
Couldn’t be China’s fault.