effing labs

TOLEDO ACADEMY = BITCHES + POSERS. SKANKS? SURE. LESBIANS? CONCEIVABLY. PROSTITUTES OPENLY ADMIT SHARING SLEEPING BAGS.

Vandalism seen at a cheerleading camp and a mnemonic for the ingredients in a Big Mac (two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, a sesame seed bun.).

(Via McSweeny’s)

I been thinking a lot lately about a particularly and characteristically douchey move: taking pride in the downsides of good things. Examples:

• “Sorry, I can’t play that song on my iPod— I only own it on vinyl.”
• “I’m so far ahead of everyone in that class, it’s just so boring.”
• “I can’t use that software because I only run completely free and open source software on my machine. That’s free as in libre.”
• “I was just so good at my job that they said I was overqualified and asked me to leave.”

There are few things that get under my skin quicker.

Because there haven’t been enough “my thoughts on the iPad” posts on the internet today.

I think Merlin Mann nailed it (as usual) on today’s Macbreak Weekly. I’ll put his point a little differently: criticizing the iPad because it doesn’t to everything we geeks want it to (multitasking, Flash*, etc.) is like criticizing an ice cream scoop because it doesn’t strain pasta. That’s not what or who it’s for.

For better or for worse, and I say for better, Apple** would rather cater to the majority of users who simply need to scoop ice cream and make a device that does just that insanely well than sacrifice one iota of that scooping experience to do these other things. They’re probably also betting that once we feel how awesomely the device scoops ice cream, we’ll realize we don’t really need it to strain pasta after all. (Don’t worry, the strained metaphor ends here. Pun intended.)

Cars, aside from but related to their specs and cosmetics, have a feel to using them, both in the haptic sense and others. I firmly believe that devices have the same thing both on a hardware and a software level. Furthermore, it seems uncontroversial that Apple believes the same and that this is everything to them. Yet the nerd/press hivemind (NPH— let the record show I coined it first) tends to completely undervalue the importance of this feel. They mistake it, and the reason people are drawn to Apple products, for cosmetics. But it’s so, so much more than that. It’s also far more important than any individual software or hardware feature.

As with cars, there will always be people who don’t really notice this feel or to whom it doesn’t matter. (Understandable— a Mustang probably looks better on paper than a 3-series and it’s sure a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to tinker with.) There will also be a small number of us who notice this feel and to whom it matters a lot. I would suggest, though, that most consumers fall into a third category: those to whom it does matter even though they don’t consciously realize it. These are the people who use an iPhone for 10 minutes and have no thoughts other than, “I have to have one.” This happens a lot for the iPhone. I bet it’ll happen for the iPad as well. I sincerely doubt it happens much for Mustangs or Andriod devices.

*Chairman Gruber has some interesting points on why Flash may not be a good idea on the iPhone.

**Read: Steve Jobs. I avoid using the name to as not to appear to metaphorically fellate the man.