Category: Uncategorized

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It’s called Public Shaming. It’s where I’m going to point out horrible, egregious behavior displayed in public.

This woman was putting on nail polish and stinking up Starbucks. Nail Polish.

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I would pay to see these two go at it.

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I don’t know what I could add to this (emphasis mine)…

From Rusty Rants:

My first Apple product was an iPod Mini. I still vividly remember being hooked by the design and functionality of such a tiny, sexy device. My next Apple product was a Powerbook G4. Those two products started a long journey of buying and loving Apple products. iPhoto. iPhone. iPad. iWork. I bought them all, and I loved them all. One phrase always kept me coming back for more: “It just works”. After coming from devices that always felt buggy and half-finished it really did feel just like that. Everything, well, just worked.

Fast forward to today, 2014. Zoom in to me. I’m typing this on a Macbook Pro. In my pocket is the iPhone 6. Three metres away sits a Mac Mini. On the surface, nothing has changed. The problem is, it feels like everything has changed. In short while Apple’s hardware continues to impress me, their software has gone downhill at a rapid pace. iPhoto is an unusable mess with the volume of photos I now have. Aperture has been discontinued and is badly lagging behind in terms of both performance and features. iTunes takes forever to launch, and is bloated mess of way too many features and functions. iCloud is still a mess that I wouldn’t dream of storing my important data in. iOS 7 crashed so often that I became intimately familiar with the Apple logo that appeared every time it did. iOS 8 fixed the crashing, but introduced thousands of little paper cut like bugs. I used to install updates from Apple the second they came out, now I wait a few days to see if they are actually any good.

If you think this is just my experience, let’s take a quick recap of the last few weeks of Apple news:

• iOS 8.0.1 was released, with bugs that prevented iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners from connecting to the cell network, and using Touch ID.
• Users trying to fix iOS bugs, reset the settings on their devices. This had the fun, unexpected consequence of wiping their iCloud documents, and syncing those deletions to all their other devices.
• Apple released HealthKit as part of iOS 8, only to pull it, and any apps that supported it due to bugs.
• Apple ‘fixed’ HealthKit as part of iOS 8.0.2, but my Twitter timeline is still full of people complaining about bugs. By all accounts, and going by the iOS 8.1 change log released today, it’s nowhere near ready for prime time.

On the developer front recently:

• iTunes Connect is still amazingly buggy, and Apple managed to make it more so while developers were submitting their iOS 8 updates. I saw so many automated rejections, upload errors and bugs fill my timeline.
• Xcode still crashes for me, at least once or twice a day.
• Apple bought TestFlight, much to our delight, only to reveal that their answer to ‘beta testing’ is to let us distribute to 25 people that have administration rights over our apps. Do you want your beta testers to be able to change your app prices, descriptions, screenshots and to be able to pull apps from the store? Yeah me neither. The alternative is to submit your app for app review, before you’re allowed to distribute it to beta testers. Really Apple? Did I mention that the review queue is currently 9 days long and growing? Thank Thor that HockeyApp still exists.
• Size classes, Apple’s answer to ‘how on earth are we going to deal with the new screen sizes’ lack even the most basic functionality required to do that. The iPhone 6 Plus has it’s own size class, in landscape, but in portrait orientation? Every single iPhone ever made is treated the same way. That’s right, you can’t lay out a different UI for the 3.5″ iPhone in portrait than you can for the 5.5″ monstrosity of a 6 Plus. How Apple missed this basic developer requirement is baffling to me.
• Swift, the language we were all amazed by in June, has turned out to be a bag of hurt for anyone that jumped into it headfirst. It’s clear that it too wasn’t ready for prime time. I would have happily waited another year or two, especially if Apple built some major apps using it first. As it is we’re beta testing it for them, even after the 1.0 release.

Tim Cook keeps telling us that ‘Only Apple’ could do the amazing things it does. I just wish that Apple would slow down their breakneck pace and spend the time required to build stable software that their hardware so desperately needs. The yearly release cycles of OS X, iOS, iPhone & iPad are resulting in too many things seeing the light of day that aren’t finished yet. Perhaps the world wouldn’t let them, perhaps the expectations are now too high, but I’d kill for Snow iOS 8 and Snow Yosemite next year. I’m fairly confident I’m not alone in that feeling.

All that being said, at this point you’ll still have to pry my Apple devices from my cold, dead, hands.

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But damn if I wouldn’t pay to see these two go at it.

And the whole homoerotic undertone to their on-screen relationship doesn’t help matters either…

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So that’s what that divot is for. Yeehaw!

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Via Daring Fireball:

The Washington Post:

FBI Director James B. Comey sharply criticized Apple and Google on Thursday for developing forms of smartphone encryption so secure that law enforcement officials cannot easily gain access to information stored on the devices — even when they have valid search warrants.

I can’t think of a better endorsement of Apple and iOS.

“Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile,” said John J. Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicago’s police department. ‘The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone.”

Well, that didn’t take long. An even stronger endorsement. The pedophile card is pretty much the last resort for these law enforcement types who feel entitled to the content of our digital devices. Fear mongering with bogeymen and an appeal to base emotions.

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Last weekend Ben and I flew down to Phoenix for our very belated wedding reception. Since we got married under the friends/family radar a year ago, we both thought some sort of celebration is due—not only for ourselves, but also for those same friends and family.

Since the vast majority of the people we wanted to share in our special day lived in Arizona, we decided that Macayo’s in Phoenix would be our venue. Since we haven’t had really good Mexican food since we moved to Denver, this was a no-brainer.

Obviously, we went for a Doctor Who theme, but only the die-hard fans got the fez…

I think everyone had a good time…

We had to run a few errands the next day before we left…

And of course we had to visit one of our old (and hopefully future, in 2-3 years) stomping grounds…

Then we met a few of our friends at Lolo’s Chicken & Waffles for brunch before heading to the airport. Absolute heaven…

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…or are you just glad to see me?

Move over Jon Hamm, there’s a new trouser snake in town.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Jennifer Aniston is a very lucky woman.

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Could’ve fooled me.

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I know I’m a little late to the blogging party on this one, but much like Robin Williams’ passing, this one really hurt. I mean, I didn’t know the woman personally, but her humor and outrageousness has been a part of my life since I first heard What Becomes a Legend Most back in 1980. I don’t remember now if I’d heard of Rivers prior to this or not, but once I heard that recording I was hooked.

As the years progressed and her very vocal LGBT advocacy became more and more pronounced, culminating with her famous, “Oh grow up!” line in the midst of the AIDS crisis, she endeared herself to my soul. I still have a copy of her “Can We Talk?” AIDS pamphlet somewhere.

While her humor in these later years at times seemed more pointed, nasty and some may even say—tired—than in the past, I remained a fan. Yes, there were times when I turned off Fashion Police simply because the manufactured venom (obviously jokes written for her, not by her at that point) crossed the line even for my libertine sensibilities, but I never stopped respecting her for all she’d done for the gay community.

You are missed, Joan and gone too soon.

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I know it’s a problem worthy of a degree in rocket science, but a solid line on the pavement means DO NOT CROSS OVER. It does not mean DO NOT CROSS OVER…unless you’re in a hurry, or DO NOT CROSS OVER…unless you have to get in traffic ahead of someone else, or DO NOT CROSS OVER…unless you weren’t paying attention and need to get off now, or DO NOT CROSS OVER…unless you’re high and don’t even know what the fuck you’re doing.

It means DO NOT CROSS OVER. Period.

Thank you.

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Call me a glutton for punishment.

After my initial foray into beta testing Yosemite and having too many issues with the mouse dropping its connection, I returned to Mavericks a couple weeks ago. Yeah, Mavericks was stable, but having seen the beautiful new future Apple was teasing us with, I reloaded the Yosemite Beta, ran the updates and have been using it since. I have to say that the latest release has cleared up most of the problems I was having. I say most because occasionally the bluetooth will still just say, “No, no, no…” and the mouse will disappear, but nowhere near as often as it had been happening previously. Also, the myriad other little bugs I had reported over the course of my testing seem to have been squashed up by the folks at Apple.

An endless source of amusement for me during all this has been the OS X 10.10 forum at MacRumors. Folks are falling into two camps: Yosemite is beautiful, and Yosemite is UGLY.

Personally, I think it’s stunning—and it was the main reason I couldn’t stay away. By comparison, Mavericks now looks old and dated to me.

The ones calling it ugly seem to have no good reason other than the user interface has changed from what it was. But it’s not like Jony Ive took a steamroller, wholesale, to their beloved skeumorphism; there are still plenty of three-dimensional, real-world icons throughout the OS. And ironically, the same ones who are decrying the loss of dimensionality are the same ones who are bitching about the new translucency of certain windows. The ones I really like are the folks who say, “If this is Apple’s view of the future I’m going to Windows!”

Buh-Bye. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.

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I used to have hundreds…

 

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“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.” ~ Meryl Streep

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…that I’ve been quiet of late. Not to worry. Ben and I have just moved to new digs and I’ve been too exhausted to even think about posting anything, but regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.

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So much for my mouse problems disappearing. There are dangers to being an early adopter.

I considered myself lucky that I hadn’t suffered any of the truly horrendous game over problems being reported by other Yosemite Beta testers in the MacRumors Forums, but the mouse issue I’d previously reported had become intolerable. It had reached the point that not only would it spontaneously disconnect, it was often taking two or three reboots to get it to reattach itself. Way too much trouble.

Time to abandon Yosemite in its current state and revert back to Mavericks.

The reversal process wasn’t a walk in the park. Even though I’d dutifully backed up my Mavericks installation to Time Machine before I loaded the Beta, for some reason after wiping Yosemite and reinstalling Mavericks from scratch, Migration Assistant couldn’t actually use the backup. “No valid volumes found.”

Ugh.

Thankfully I’d used Carbon Copy Cloner to create an image of the entire Mavericks drive around the first of July and was able to successfully restore from that. As for data that’s changed since then, I was able to manually transfer everything back from my latest Yosemite Time Machine backup.

I’ve learned my lesson. I can wait for the general release. October isn’t that far away.

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