All of these things are not like the others. Not one of these things really does belong.
To kick things off this week, we’ll look at two comparisons that are lost in time! Then another pundit doesn’t compare things at all—she just takes Apple in isolation. It’s easier to throw a fit that way. Finally, comparing XP to an easy-to-use tablet operating system? For real?
Fails in comparison
Writing for GottaBeMobile, Adam Mills knows just what to compare the just-released Galaxy S5 to. The iPhone 5s? No, no, no. Don’t be silly. He’s going to compare it to 2012’s iPhone 5.
“Samsung Galaxy S5 vs. iPhone 5: What Buyers Need to Know” (tip o’ the antlers to Brad Skimore).
Why? What? Who? Wha? Whur?
The iPhone 5 may no longer be sold through the Apple Store but it’s still in the hands of a number of consumers, many of whom will be coming off contract later this year. While many probably have their eyes on the iPhone 6, wise iPhone 5 owners will compare the device to as many flagships as they can, including the Samsung Galaxy S5, Samsung’s brand new Galaxy S.
The Macalope doesn’t know how Mills makes his buying decisions, but when the horny one decides to upgrade, he doesn’t compare one and only one device that’s available to the device he already has. What sense does that make? No, he compares all the currently available options. Yet, the most comparable iPhone to the Galaxy 5S, the currently available iPhone 5s, is not even mentioned until the 22nd paragraph which, unbelievably, is only about mid-way through this gigantic crime against common sense. And that is the only time the iPhone 5s is mentioned.
It is, however, mentioned over at the International Business Times, where Pavithra Rathinavel busts out his time machine to give us:
“Apple iPhone 5S vs. iPhone 6 – Specs And Price Comparison” (tip o’ the antlers to Rob Wensing).
In this post, we have compared the anticipated iPhone 6 with the already prominent and still-in-demand iPhone 5S with all the information available at our disposal.
By all rights then this post should be two sentences:
We know nothing about the iPhone 6. Heck, we don’t even know if that’s what it’s called!
However, here we are.
There is a massive improvement in the size and resolution of iPhone 6 …
FACT.
-icle.
Which is like a fact, but without the confirmation of it being at all true or not.
Rathinavel lists any number of fanciful features for this fictional phone, including wireless charging. That sounds terribly exciting, but be careful not to step in the beam.
Speculation about the iPhone 6 is all well and good, but smart shoppers will want to hold off for the iPhone 7. The Macalope doesn’t want to give away too much about it, as specs are still in flux, but he will say three words: 3D laser kittens.
Giving tantrums a bad name
Writing for Slate, Lisa Sanders may need a time out.
“Rotten Apple” (tip o’ the antlers to Shawn King):
I won’t buy another iPhone or Mac until the company pays its fair share of taxes. Care to join me?
In Trite-and-Inneffectual-Answers-To-Complicated-Problems Land?
No, thanks!
Apple, it’s over. I’m breaking up with you.
Ah, the old “breaking up with Apple” gag. See, it’s like a relationship because Apple is a part of your everyday life. It’s there when you wake up and it’s there when you go to sleep. It knows so much about you and you know it just by touch.
And then one day you wake up and write a passive/aggressive breakup note to it and get it published in Slate. Just like in a real relationship, right?
Who writes this stuff?
Oh, right, Lisa Sanders. And about a hundred other self-important fops.
Because of your tax-ducking ways, I won’t buy another phone or computer or tablet or even song from you.
Oh. Well, then, presumably we can assume Sanders won’t be buying gas or eating corn or using the products of any one of the thousands of companies that leverage the tax code because hahahahahaha no, no, no, no. Are you new to the world of meaningless, foot-stomping tantrums or something?
Let’s be clear about this: The system sucks. The Macalope filed his taxes this week, he gets it. Companies are showered in loopholes that ordinary citizens and mythical creatures (who are still, weirdly, required to file tax returns even though their existence is rather nebulous) will never get.
But, sadly, that’s the system. How exactly is this admittedly sometimes crappy system suddenly all Apple’s fault?
My very first computer was the desktop who shared my name: the Lisa.
Your deflectors can’t repel street cred of this magnitude!
But now I’m done. I don’t know what the next technology I’ll buy for myself and my family will be …
Oh, surely it’ll come from the magical fairy company that pays more taxes than it is required to pay, has all of its devices made in the United States by well-compensated workers in safe environments working 40-hour work weeks, and whose only environmental side effect is organic cotton candy and whipping cream.
So, nice cop out there, Lisa.
Plenty of companies do their utmost to find tax loopholes. But Apple stands out as the biggest company in the world.
And all of our problems would be solved if Apple paid more in taxes but nobody else did, The End.
I understand that this is all perfectly legal.
Scandalous, isn’t it?
Sanders notes that Starbucks was shamed into paying more taxes by protests. But it’s easier to stop drinking Starbucks coffee—you can make your own coffee at home with this one weird trick!—than it is to not use a smartphone. Unless you’re going back to a landline, you’re simply trading evils. That stinks, but that’s the truth.
I wish the privileges that corporations got with their Supreme Court upgrade to personhood were matched by the obligations that we, the actual people, have.
So does the Macalope, frankly. But the last time he checked, Apple didn’t appoint people to the Supreme Court. Unless you’re suggesting that Tim Cook is one of the Illuminati or part of the Star Chamber, and that’s preposterous.
Because the Macalope’s never seen him at any of the meetings.
[rimshot]
Until something gives, I’m launching a boycott of one. No more Apple products for me.
Who are you going to buy from instead? Samsung? The company that keeps a slush fund for bribing politicians and whose workers are dying from cancer?
How is that better?
If you don’t like how the sausage is made, don’t blame the people eating the sausage. Blame the people who made it.
Ctrl-alt-del
Sometimes it seems like there’s a contest going on over at the Boy Genius [sic] Report between Zach Epstein and Brad Reed, over who can make the most ridiculous statement. This time Reed’s the winner, hands down:
“Why Windows XP might have been Microsoft’s best blueprint for a tablet OS”
Yes, that’s right, the operating system still powering dentists’ offices, ATMs and, god help us, voting booths across the country should have been the model for Microsoft’s next-generation platform for touch devices. There certainly is nothing rational about this statement. Looks like Zach owes you a steak dinner, Brad.
In an obituary for XP written by PCWorld’s Mark Hachman, Hachman asks his father why he’s refusing to upgrade to Windows 7 or 8, and Reed finds his answer “fascinating”:
“For what we wanted, it’s been absolutely perfect,” Mr. Hachman told his son. “It’s been very easy to use. We’ve had no problems with it. It’s been very user friendly, from what I can see … we just use it for very basic Internet use.”
You know what else is easy to use? The iPad.
But, OK, if you’re happy with what you’ve got, there’s no real reason to upgrade. Well, except for security concerns. Good thing there have never been any security concerns about XP.
Let’s think about this for a second: An intuitive, user-friendly platform that’s perfect for basic Internet use and other fairly uncomplicated applications … why, that sounds a lot like what Microsoft was trying to accomplish with the much-hated Metro display on Windows 8!
Wow. There are no amount of exclamation marks that can make this an OK thing to write. For starters, Microsoft did put XP on tablets. Like three times. And it was a miserable failure every single time. Now, why is that? Well, you won’t hear it from Reed, who seems to think that simple for one platform must translate to simple for another, but it’s because XP wasn’t a touch-optimized operating system. It was a mouse- and keyboard- and middle-managers-named-Larry-optimized system.
If anything, Microsoft’s failure with Windows 8—despite your colleague’s gushing over it—was keeping the desktop and not going full Metro.
Is there no part of history that the writers of The Boy Genius Report cannot get completely backwards?
There’s a great deal of irony to this. Microsoft decided to build a completely new touch interface from the ground up with Windows 8 to make the OS more friendly to casual PC users.
Instead it should have slapped XP onto tablets. Which it did.
Uhhhhhhhhh … is anyone else lost here? Other than Reed, the Macalope means?
However, it already had the blueprint for a simple and intuitive OS that worked well for basic PC functions in the form of Windows XP.
Yeah, and was completely unusable in touch environments.
Is something wrong at home, Brad? Do you need a safe place?
This looks like a situation where Microsoft may not have realized just how valuable Windows XP could have been as a starting building block for a future tablet OS.
Or a situation where the facilities staff at The Boy Genius Report hasn’t checked the water pipes for lead yet.