A Truck Ran Over an iPhone...

It's 25 degrees outside, and the unemployment rate here in Michigan is 15 percent. Great job at economic recovery, Washington.

Being that Apple Inc. introduced a new product whose name reminded me of the 35 years of feminine protection in my life, I decided to look at this thing as a diversion from the rotten economy here in the Rust Belt.

The iPad, which also could have been the iTablet or the best name, the iSlate, is supposed to be released in March and April. There are a billion tech columnists and probably a couple hundred Mac blogs/pages (ironic for those who are still about only 8 percent of the world's computers), and they already summarized the iPad's specs -- read books, listen to music, surf the Web, write a document, email something, etc.

When I first saw Steven Paul Jobs fondling the thing (right), I really thought he was next going to kiss it with the passion that a man would do for something that will generate a mountain of moolah. Which will happen, due to his company cult and society's endless materialism.

My reaction is, as the Biggest Apple Hater in my state, that criminy, here comes another product to cause mass hysteria in people, those humongous lines at the stores, etc. Fact is, it does look like a Freightliner flattened out an iPhone. Same bezel, same silver band around the edges, same "home" button, same little icons.

My rabid Mac fan-girl neighbor, "Cross-Eyed Julie" Novak, said she wasn't getting one, even though it seems she has every product that the Fruit Co. ever released in her ranch house next door.

That surprised me, but Julie says she can do everything on her Mac or iPhony that the iPad can do. She brags that her MacBook Pro weighs just 4 pounds and isn't that hard to carry or stow. A few of her friends, she says, scoffed at her when she said this, crying out that they'll be in line at our area's two closest Fruit Stores, in Troy and Clinton Township, to get their fix. Oh, just lovely.

That is the pattern that Apple has set. Months or years of rumors. A press conference with such phrases as "a magical and revolutionary device" (magic -- did Apple or TBWA Chiat Day borrow Disney copywriters for this?). Official sale date announcement. Huge lines as they used to have in the golden days of rock concerts in the 1970s. People coming out of the stores, raising their precious cargo aloft, and exhibiting the level of hysteria usually found at pentecostal revivals after finding the Lord. (Which in turn may be why idiots call these things "Jesus phone/tablet?)

It's been five days since the "press event," as Apple calls their announcements, and already the iPad is appearing in pop culture. Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central appeared to have a real one to read off Grammy nominees last night. He took it out, and the screen started whipping around wildly to try and orient itself correctly, just as you'd see on an iPhony if you turn that pitiful thing about rather quickly.

Then there was Pee-wee Herman. In what I first thought was a digital manipulation of old 1980s show footage in a sketch on Funny or Die, the man-child in the gray flannel suit was back in his Playhouse with Chairy, Globey, Conky and the rest showing off his own iPad. However, it didn't appear real, just a mockup, because the picture onscreen never moved. Pee-wee's friends quickly ripped the thing's benefits to shreds, such as the inability to run two apps at once, as pointed out by Globey. He showed how he could do things at once, singing The Beach Boys' "Kokomo" and showing exactly where "Aruba...Jamaica...Bermuda..." were located. Magic Screen was more than happy to read Green Eggs and Ham aloud.

This little video, however, is brand new, something comic Paul Reubens did on a reconstruction of the show's set currently being used in a live show at Club Nokia in Los Angeles.

But it reflects exactly the shortcomings the tech crowd has listed for this thing, which indeed could evolve over the next couple years while at the same time drop in price. Someone's suggestion that it could be used for college textbooks could be possible, as there are multiple universities that use podcasts and iPhonys in their classes.

But for now, another Apple product that, in the words of the Valley Girls of yesterday, "gags me with a spoon." Useless technology in a pretty package, the kind of stuff only for those who want the latest gizmos, or those Apple "completists" who have to buy every piece of nonsense their company puts out.

Album Mix(ups)

My neighbor across the street, "Cross Eyed Julie" Nowak, asked about borrowing my blog. It seems her phone's music player goes haywire. But what do you expect? She has an iPhone 3G.

She insists about writing about it on my blog, so below follows her account of this, which may change after she downloads iPhony OS 3.1 -- or maybe not. I wouldn't count on it, but here is her guest post.

Hello, I'm Julie Nowak, known as Cross Eyed Julie by my own choice, since my eyes do go that way when I take my glasses off.

Unlike Delia Jean, I love Apple and own two Macs, three iPods and an iPhone 3G. Now, usually I love music and love all my Apple products, but I cannot figure out why my phone's iPod app does the things it does (kind of a Temptations way of saying it?).

For example, it keeps crashing, over and over and over again. I looked online for advice, and I followed what others did: I've turned the iPhone off and back on again, and did the "hard reset," which is holding down the sleep/power button on the top and the home button on the front.

But still the silly thing still crashes. And crashes. And crashes. I even restored the iPhone, erasing everything on it, and reloaded the operating system, but it still crashes. Since everything else works fine on the phone, I decided not to go to my AT&T store or the Genius Bar at the Apple Store.

Since I downloaded the new 3.0 operating system in July, the iPod app has gotten even weirder, as my photos below show. It still crashes regularly, and it can't seem to match up the right album art! It either loses the covers or puts the wrong ones in! I show ample evidence below, if you please...
























The song and artist are Sheryl Crow, yet the iPhone displays the artwork for KISS's 1976 album Rock and Roll Over. But when you turn the phone horizontally...

















The right cover appears! I Googled about this and looked over forums and advice columns, which suggested that I delete the songs from the iPhone and then reload and resync. They claimed this would fix the problem, except...
























It keeps on doing it. iPod app thinks that The Rosebuds, a current indie pop group from Raleigh, N.C., is the old 60s garage rockers The Electric Prunes!

























The app also can't keep its legendary female rockers straight, either! Here it gives me Patti Smith's Wave (1979) as the album, when it's really a Christmas song by The Pretenders off Learning to Crawl (1984).

I find the one below the weirdest. For the album The Silver Strut, by jazz saxophonist Rickey Woodard, iPod chooses artwork for the Stone Temple Pilots' 2001 album Shangri-La Dee Da.

























Turn my little baby sideways, though, and it shows the right art.


















Oh, please, Apple, won't you fix this? I love my iPhone 3G and would like it to play 10 songs without crashing. And show the right album art. And not shuffle songs when I don't want it to. Oh, wait. I can shut that feature, Shake to Shuffle, off. Just go to System Preferences and turn it off. Or else when I step down a curb, the iPhone makes this odd electronic bloo-doonk sound and jumps to another song!

Well, there ya have it. My friend Cross Eyed Julie and her messed-up iPhony. I let her have the floor a bit because she is very shy and doesn't want to have her own blog. We're good friends, as long as we don't get into too much discussion over Apple and their dorko products. Will Apple fix this problem? Do dogs meow? Is Steve Jobs humble?

Well, you can probably guess what I think.

Number 9, Number 9...

Random stuff...

"It was 40 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper told the band to no longer play..."

Well, bad rephrasing of Beatles lyrics, but it's been that long since the Fab Four broke apart. And today is a big time day for fans of this Group That Never Seems to Go Away. All their albums have been remastered and are being reissued once again on CD, either individually or in this big honkin' box set. I figure 09-09-09 was picked as the date to tie in with that block of noise that is a particular cut on The White Album (number 9....).



Also EA/MTV Games' Rock Band has its Beatles edition released today. Rock Band and Guitar Hero (by Activision) of course are the two competitors in the Living Room Rock Star Sweepstakes. Guitar Hero 5 came out about a week ago.

It's all funny to me, because rock 'n' roll itself may be dead, after a 50-year run as the dominant music of youth. Music has been so fragmented into multiple types, that any games or album re-releases or popular music themed restaurants 'n' T-shirt stands seem to be Baby Boomer tactics to keep their music alive and to recruit their children and grandchildren. It seems to be working, too, 'cause Guitar Hero already hit $1 billion in revenues by January 2008. Rock Band hit $1 billion in 2008 but profits for both games have dropped as the recession continues in the U.S. Rock Band was predicted to lose $400 million for EA in 2009.

The Beatles are expected to top the charts with their remastered package, a fact not surprisingly marked by media in their home country, such as this article.

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This special date, 09-09-09, is also a media and new release day for my Least Favorite Company, Apple Inc. They have an event going on 10 a.m. PDT or 1 p.m. my time (Eastern Daylight). They're supposed announce some new iPods and iTunes 9. They probably still don't have The Beatles on iTunes, though, because the event's theme is "It's only rock 'n' roll, but we like it," a redoing of a Rolling Stones favorite.

Yesterday I stumbled across yet another goofball pursuit of Mac fans while trolling the net. This one is taking pictures of Steve Jobs' Mercedes Benz, which doesn' t have any license plates and is often parked in a handicapped space, even though he has no disability that I know of, though he did have a liver transplant and probably is still healing up even as he returned to work at the Fruit Co. Thing is, "Jobso" has been parking in handicapped spaces since the 1980s, when he was in his 20s and in robust health. And the guy can't park a $150,000 Benz worth a damn, as seen below in an image by brianamerige. The car is a Mercedes SL55 AMG.



Just for the hell of it, I am also posting a picture of my car. This is how the other half lives -- no frills, just basic wheels! The lot is at the store where I work, which is old, pockmarked asphalt and not some sleek northern California computer headquarters. My car is a 2002 Chevrolet Malibu, which was a year old when I bought it from a dealer in Sterling Heights, Michigan. It has the proper Michigan license plate, with up-to-date year tag. (California requires plates front and back, but Michigan just the back plate.)



If my car were in excellent condition, the Kelley Blue Book retail value would be about $4,900. Since part of the front bumper is broken in half (because I once accidentally drove over a concrete parking barrier in front of space), and there is a weird circular scratch on the trunk lid, I don't think I could get that much. But two things -- I try to park as straight as possible, and I never park in handicapped spaces anywhere. Around Detroit you will get ticketed for that if you don't have the permit, and since I don't know any judges or have millions to pay off tickets, and am not an arrogant Silicon Valley dickweed, I just use the regular spaces.