While I'm ranting, let me ask you something, Randall. At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck Jr. - what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it's not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they'd say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people's fucking minds? They wouldn't have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up.

Yes, this is in the arrogant, blustery Fake Steve voice, but make no mistake: there's nothing sarcastic about the message or the content here. [Fake Steve Jobs]

When you buy a PC, the most important decision you make is selecting its OS. Do you want Windows 7, for a modern Windows machine-slash-media center? Are you a little more conservative, hanging back with Windows XP? Do you want a lightweight Linux OS on your netbook so you don't have to worry about viruses, or slowdown? Are you a Gentoo purist, building your OS flag by flag, penguin shirt moist from excitement? Or, god forbid, are you a hackintosher? Whatever choice you make, you're making a choice. You're selecting the interface with which you interact with your computer, and by extension, the entire digital world. This makes sense.

But this just isn't how things work in the mobile world. If you want Windows Mobile, you need to buy a Windows Phone, complete with a dedicated Start button. If you want Google's Android, you've got a narrow selection of handsets from a handful of manufacturers, many of which, at least for now, don't even support the same version of the OS. If you think webOS looks cool, buy a Pre. If you like Symbian, import a Nokia or settle for a Samsung. And most predictably, if you like the App Store, Apple—and only Apple—is ready to process your credit card. Like the Touch HD2's obscenely hot hardware, but don't care for Windows Mobile? Tough luck. Think the Droid is a perfect piece of machinery, but don't understand what all this Android hubbub is about? Shut up.

In the last half-decade, we've become acutely aware of what goes into our smartphones. New phones get a spec rundown that mirrors a PC's: Qualcomm processor X! RAM speed Y! Screen technology Z! It fosters a climate ripe for PC-style hardware wars, with new processor architectures competing head to head, an ongoing—and fruitful—resolution race, and each new phone edging out its predecessors with even more onboard storage, or support for a new input or output cable. It's fascinating to watch the competition unfold, but it's even more fascinating to see how tightly grouped development is. These are ARM-based phones, for the most part. They share memory types, display types, cameras, chipsets, processors and often, original device manufacturers. They're the same thing.

When you buy a smartphone, you're stuck with its OS. Your carrier might toss you a few software updates, and if you're particularly gutsy, you might install some custom-baked software of your own, though you're generally stuck with slight variations on and customizations of the handet's default OS. It's as if everyone in the mobile world is emulating what Apple does in the computer space, except worse: at least Macs have Boot Camp, for fuck's sake. (And before they did, they had the PowerPC excuse.)

I know something like this is miles over the horizon—you can't just will new hardware support into existence, and the entire industry is currently built around the bound relationship between software and hardware—and that some hardware (guess which!) is probably doomed to live out its entire life in a hollow monogamous relationship, but it's time for handset manufacturers, along with Google, Microsoft, the Symbian Foundation, and Palm, maybe, to start setting goals. Or at minimum, it's time for us to start asking them to.

For the companies, this would mean working on driver support for common componentry, opening up to the enthusiast communities who already do so much amazing software work on their own, and agreeing on some kind of common bootloader, from which users can choose to install their operating system.

For users, this would mean freedom. Going into 2010, our smartphones are more central to our lives than ever, and it's time to acknowledge that. Consumers treat smartphones like computers. The people who make them, though, treat them like dumbphones; prepackaged products, artificially limited for no good reason—at least, no good reason to the people who buy them.

On Adium, the AIM client I use, I put in aliases for everyone on my buddy list. How the hell am I supposed to remember everybody's ancient screennames that are references to something obscure from high school? Instead, they come up as, you know, their names.

On Xbox Live, I have literally no idea who some of my friends are. I have vague guesses based on their avatars, and I knew who they were when I added them, but everybody has such goddamned goofy usernames, it's impossible to keep track of them all.

Wouldn't it be easy to allow people to enter their real names as well and then give users a choice about which to display, the handle or the real name? Or allow people to create custom aliases for each person on their friends list? Because not knowing who your friends are kind of defeats the purpose of having a friends list in the first place, doesn't it?

We've told this story plenty of times before, but on the iPod's 8th birthday, I think it's time to think about administering the Last Rites. Three years ago, Charlie White wrote a piece about everything that was wrong with the iPod, and nearly everything that could be solved was. From 2006: There's no FM, too many scratches, short battery life, annoying DRM, janky iTunes, no Bluetooth, no widescreen, no Wi-Fi. Besides, it's a thief magnet and his kid wanted a new one every six months.

So many of these problems were fixed, but is that good news? Yes, for us, but not for the iPod.

Because the problems weren't fixed by the release of the perfect iPod, but a whole new species: The iPhone and its non-phone-y sidekick, the misnamed iPod Touch. (There's a good reason why many people prefer to call it an iTouch.) Apple themselves expects the iPod's trajectory to fall as iPhone sales rocket higher. And it's not because of these small fixes as much as the fact that while the iPhone and iPod Touch apps collections get bigger and more useful, there's been a quick shift from the regular iPod as a consolation prize in a time where if you don't have a network connected pocket computer, you've got a toy. A toy that is an island. Or something.

So yep, iPod, you're 8, your sales are in the toilet, your shrinking click-wheel has gone from genius to nuisance, your very existence robbed the Touch of a camera it deserves, and apparently nobody cares about hard drive players anymore, no matter how much they can hold.

You'll make it to year 10 and 11, and maybe beyond that. But you'll never be as important as you were. And so if you went away tomorrow we'd swipe a touchscreen in salute but without much remorse. [iPods on Gizmodo]

Verizon's got a new anti-iPhone tagline: "If the iDoesn't, What Does?" It's part of a new marketing ploy in which they plan to spell out the iPhone's weaknesses, only they're calling it the "iDevice" for some reason I don't really understand—people still know you're talking about the iPhone, Verizon, so what's the point? SanDisk did the same thing a couple years ago, trying to get people to buy their Sansa line of PMPs over the iPod, and ran a campaign called "iSheep." It blew, and SanDisk wisely cut the ads. It's a dumb idea, Big V: Old, unoriginal, and without perspective.

Anyway, there are certainly flaws with the iPhone, and we're sure Verizon will mention its superior network about a bazillion more times, but you know what the best argument would be? ACTUAL COMPETITIVE PHONES. Once Verizon's got the Palm Pre, HTC Hero and Motorola Droid, then you can talk some smartphone trash. Until then, iShut iIt.

You might someday send resumes or other important documents over Facebook and Twitter, but Email is never going to be "dead". In fact, with push email on your phone, it's basically as instant as any of the other networks.

Google Wave might also be pretty interesting when the people pimping it out call it what email would look like if it were invented today. It's too early to tell. But for it to be truly ubiquitous—and it has to be in order to replace email—it can't be hosted by just one company.

Think of it this way: if people are still using Fax machines—fucking FAX MACHINES—on a daily basis, there's no way that Email will be excised from our collective productivity streams. Not when it's this much more usable by the average person than faxes.

Lastly, how did they come up with the number of social network subscriptions being higher than email, when all social networks require you to sign up with an email account? [WSJ]

Danny touched on this earlier, but the logic here is blowing my mind. How little regard for your customers do you have to have to offer a product that fixes your own product for an additional fee every month? Seriously, somebody explain to me how this is going to fly.

AT&T is currently testing the MicroCell in North Carolina, charging up to $20 a month to people who want to fix the dead spot in their apartment by running their phone through the internet. And they're charging subscribers $150 for the box itself. It's all a trial, so any of these prices could change, but as it stands it's pretty ridiculous.

And AT&T is the last carrier to the femtocell party. Sprint charges $20 a month for its AiRave femtocell and Verizon charges $250 for its Network Extender box. T-Mobile charges $10 a month for its @Home service, which uses Wi-Fi instead of a cellular connection, but does the same thing. All of the carriers are ripping off their customers with these things, since all of the work is being put on your home internet connection, which you pay your broadband carrier for.

AT&T's new test of their MicroCell seems as egregious as any of the carriers, so let's use them as an example. Basically, AT&T didn't have a strong enough network to handle the iPhone. It still doesn't. Yet they still charge about $100 per month on average to iPhone customers, who have to deal with dropped calls, delayed voicemails and unreliable 3G speeds. If you are in a particularly bad spot, the 3G MicroCell will let you run your calls through your internet connection rather than over their shit network.

Where do they get off charging for this? Femtocells will actually reduce the load on their networks. It shifts the traffic over to the internet provider you're already paying for (which I'm sure ISPs will just love). How does this earn AT&T $20 per month, no matter how much you talk?

The way the iPhone performs on AT&T's network—or really, any dead spot for any carrier—they should be giving these out to people for free. In NYC and San Francisco, the service is near-unusable a good percentage of the time. AT&T is always talking about how they're increasing coverage, but it never seems to get better. In fact, the week after they claimed to have completed upgrades in New York, my experiences with their coverage got noticeably worse.

Imagine this was the case with any of your other monthly bills. Oh, sorry about the brownouts! The power company has had some troubles at the plant. I know it was inconvenient, but they'll fix it for you with a solar panel for an additional fee per month. As for your gym membership, sorry that it was closed four days a week last month! For an extra fee every month you can get a Bowflex so you can still work out whenever that happens.

It's ludicrous. If their network was solid, these MicroCells wouldn't even need to exist. AT&T is cutting off your arm and then trying to sell you some bandages. Hey, AT&T: people are already paying you for cell service. You can't charge them again for the same service. Fix your fucking network.

Let me get started by comparing my personal experiences to Corliss's: I have used Netflix for more than six years, both in major cities (Brooklyn, San Francisco, Chicago) and small suburbs (the Pennsylvania Main Line). I've also used two of Netflix's competitors, Blockbuster and Canadian Netflix rip-off Zip.ca, not to mention scores of independent and corporate brick-and-mortar video stores. Netflix is the absolute best of the bunch, no question, and Corliss seems to be missing the forest for a bunch of trees that, on close examination, don't even exist.

Corliss complains that his shipping times are interminably long. Rent a movie on Friday, he claims, and it'll be there Tuesday at the earliest! I think he means "latest" rather than "earliest," because in my experience, even out in the 'burbs, shipping takes exactly one day each way. And I'm sorry that the USPS doesn't deliver on Sunday so Corliss could get Moulin Rouge (which, flying in the face of all other respected critics, he loved, because it may be a turd of a movie but it sure is shiny!) a day earlier, but that's really not Netflix's fault. Blockbuster was consistently a day or two longer on each end, and Zip.ca had to fight with Canadapost just to get me a DVD within a month (I exaggerate this last point, technically, but it really was slow as molasses).

His other factually questionable complaint, in which he implies that some large percentage of Netflix's films are only available after a "long" or "very long wait," doesn't square with my experiences either. Those messages are quite rare for me—in my current queue of over 50 very diverse films (old, new, studio, independent, domestic, foreign, television), exactly none are unavailable right now. Corliss also totally ignores the growing catalog of films and shows available for instant streaming, calling it "imminent" instead of, well, available, right now. "You'll be what the online corporate culture wants you to be: a passive, inert receptacle for its products," lectures Corliss, as he writes for a massive online corporate publication. How, exactly, does watching a movie you rented online make you less "passive" or "inert" than if you walked two blocks to your local poorly-stocked Blockbuster? That four-second exchange of money you share with a surly teenage clerk?

But Corliss's most sneering and difficult-to-swallow complaint is that Netflix is emblematic of a move toward a world where we become like Larry David's agent in Wall-E: Fat, lazy, and fed a stream of data on our computer screens, losing touch with our fellow humans. And why wouldn't we want to spend time with our fellow film-loving humans, like those jerks at the "alternative" movie store who look with contempt at us when we rent Caddyshack for the fourth time this year? It's a variation on the complaint we see from those so out of touch with reality they actually believe anybody uses Facebook as a replacement for friendship, or that Twitter is one of the biblical plagues: The world is going to hell, and it's technology's fault.

Really, this article smacks of the same pointless, cheap contention as Slate's insane attack on fireworks this July 4th: Let's take something everybody either likes or is indifferent to, and bash it. Netflix is, in my experience, the best film distribution service ever made. They've got the largest catalog I've ever seen, and that sure as hell includes any brick-and-mortar store; they fund and distribute amazing low-budget fare like the Comedians of Comedy series; their prices are rock-bottom low; and they're quick to adapt to or push new technologies, from Blu-Ray to streaming. They're also still independent; they invented the mail-order setup and they'll almost certainly be major players when streamed video fully takes over from physical media. To announce that Netflix, a homegrown company with fresh and innovative ideas that achieved remarkable success, "stinks" because there's no know-it-all clerk to talk to, is ridiculous.

Pogue's mainly concerned with the silly fees levied on consumers for certain actions despite said actions not costing carriers hardly any money at all (text messaging, we're looking at you). One that we didn't even realize is the sneaky tactic of keeping users on the line for extra time to hear inane instructions like "When you're done recording your message, you may hang up." If you're out of minutes, your carrier is actually going to charge you to listen to those! That's worthy of a good fist-shake, or better yet, some Congressional intervention. [New York Times]

I know, I've been rude. I've checked email at places like dinner, bars, at morning in bed, while we're in the car, and when people around us start talking about boring things like politics and taxes and religion. I do it when we're skiing on the chair lift. I do it when I'm peeing, when I'm pooing, when I'm walking the dogs and when we go shopping. And when we watch TV or movies at home. Not every minute, but I sneak in a looksie here and there.

And I think these are all great times to check email. Because my job is demanding and if I don't check email all the time in public the only other alternative is to check email all the time from my computer. And really, the alternative reality to me being rude is a life where when shit happens while I'm away from the house, and I have to go running back to a terminal where I can write or edit posts every time something happens. Every time. It would be hell. And so I can live with rude.

Times are changing and the reality is that the social conventions that define when its appropriate to use gadgets in person are going to change, too. But for now there are nay sayers. To them, I'd say that I see these glimpses of work and fun intermingling as a gift; a chance to cheat a job where where work never really stops. So: Even if 5% of my idle clock cycles go to the internet, sapping something from real life experiences everywhere I go, I think it's silly to take the other 95% they've allowed because of wireless access, for granted. I'm never going to stop. And the world will catch up.

[image by Beschizza industries]

I'll keep the spoilery bits to the minimum.

The two shots here with Marcus are snagged from the trailer. They're from the most ludicrous scene in the movie—which is ludicrous for many, many reasons—where Marcus strolls into the central Skynet control center. The white, glossy room—the standard motif for the heart of the machine—hosts a computer system with an advanced user interface (a lot like Iron Man's) displayed on massive glass monitors. Which makes no sense whatsoever.

Why the hell would Skynet's control room be designed with an ultra-polished user interface for people to use? Or have a comfy chair for Marcus to hurl at the computer? They're machines! Even though some of them are built to mimic poeple, they don't need multi-touch, superslick graphics, floating heads to explain the entire plot or monitors the size of a wall like meatbag people do. They can just plug in, or as seen in the movie, sync via the optical terminal Marcus and other terminators use, which actually makes sense. Or communicate wirelessly. In binary. Or whatever.

You could argue, I suppose, that the entire setup was constructed just for Marcus—it has to have been built after Judgment Day, since the rest of the city is ruins—but even the prison blocks are designed with interfaces for humans to interact with. Wouldn't Skynet want to make it as hard as possible for people to figure out how talk to machines, so John Connor can't hack them in 30 seconds with his Sony Vaio?

Skynet's not as advanced as The Matrix, sure, but you'd think it'd realize designing and building things around people paradigms is pointless and inefficient, since um, there shouldn't be any people around. That's one thing The Matrix gets more right than Salvation: The machine world, architected and built by machines—who are slavishly devoted to logic and efficiency—would be just for machines. Not people.

I know on one level it's stupid to complain about things that don't make sense in a science fiction movie, but added on top of everything else going on in Terminator: Salvation, it's one of the major points that shit all over my suspension of disbelief. [Giz's Terminator: Salavation Review]

This Gear Diary diary on the Keyport brought back feelings of anger and frustration. If you don't remember, the Keyport was a device that took in six of your keys—custom made—and allowed you to individually *snickt* them out like a switchblade or Swiss Army Knife. Fantastic idea; shit execution.

The company's been showing off their "product" since 2007, and even showed pictures and video of the manufacturing process—a process that's so sophisticated they're able to charge $300 for a set. What did they do with all those $300 pre-orders? Not delivering a product, that's what. In fact, they refunded people's money in 2008, but then didn't get around to returning their keys. Why? We have no idea. After Gear Diary's post went up, a Keyport rep got ahold of him and promised that his keys would be returned and that actual products would be shipping some time between now and the heat death of the universe. Sounds doubtful.

But that's not the only disappointment we've had in the last few years. There was the Palm Foleo, which was actually an interesting idea (an Netbook-like device that connected to your Palm) that may have been slightly too early for its time. It came before the Netbook craze, and died an unseemly death from people who wanted no part of it and shamed Palm into ditching its development. But what of the people who did? The Pre doesn't have enough drying power to soak up those tears, but might be a better choice, market-wise, in the end.

Then there are the things that have been vaporware so much that people stopped caring. Was anybody actually surprised that Duke Nukem Forever was canned because the company ran out of money before their employees were able to switch rendering engines yet another time? Saddened, yes, but surprised? And how about the Phantom game console? They finally managed to deliver the keyboard + mouse part of their product, and even that was like pushing a mattress through a moonroof.

Are we conditioned, as tech lovers, to be accustomed to being let down? Did we care that the $10 Indian laptop turned out to be just something stupid? Or that the $100 laptop idea brought up years ago still hasn't materialized? Or how about a decently-powered laptop that will let you get eight hours of work done? Where's that?

I think we're just so used to our gadgets disappointing us that we'll take what we can get. We don't really care that Microsoft hasn't gotten around to placing all those promised features of Longhorn—which was stripped down to become Vista—into Windows 7. We're just happy they're getting the OS delivered on time. On time! We're grading one of the world's largest software companies on a scale we use to grade Kindergarteners.

Machines Behaving Deadly: A week exploring the sometimes difficult relationship between man and technology.

You have ridiculous cases like the Trolley driver rear ending another train because he was texting his girlfriend, and train conductors causing a 25-fatality crash because he was texting teenage boys telling them that they're "gonna run the locomotive."

There's two commonalities to these accidents. First is that texting while you're supposed to be paying attention and in charge of other people's lives is a bad idea. Second, guys seem to be intent on texting people, no matter how inappropriate the time, if it's going to get them laid.

But there's nothing better than an anecdotal account of how bad texting while driving is, courtesy of reader Trevor, who has been rear ended three times this year by people texting on their phones.

Anyways, I live in Idaho. And everyone who lives in this state FUCKING SUCKS at driving. The last thing we need is people using their cell phones simultaneously, but of course I see everyone from the 15 year old girls to 50 year old guys typing out emails on their Blackberries. It sucks ass to have to deal with these fucking morons on a daily basis.

Anyways, on to the first incidence of getting hit:
I was driving through stop and go traffic outside of a high school moment after they got out of school, and I am completely stopped when I see a brand new Hummer H2 coming up on my ass at ferocious speed. I knew I was going to get hit, and right before he made contact, I was able to discern a fucking cell phone in his hands through my rear view mirror. The officer on the scene estimated he hit me going roughly 30mph, and had not even applied the brakes before hitting me. Completely totaled my beloved Toyota Tacoma, and gave me a wicked case of whiplash. By the way it was a roughly 17 year old guy driving his parents Hummer to school. Spoiled prick...

Second time was just 6 months later in the winter. It was a touch icy on the roads and I was stopped to make a left turn onto a side street and I look in my rear view mirror (after the Hummer incident I have been made paranoid about being hit), and see a little Dodge Neon moving way too fast towards me and start sliding sideways right into the back of my new truck. I jumped out and asked if she was ok, and the first thing she says to me is "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I was texting and didn't even see you there until it was too late." This time the damage wasn't too bad, but I ended up being without my vehicle for 2 weeks, during which I had a shitty little rental car, so it still was quite the inconvenience.

Third time was about 3 weeks ago and I'm still feeling sore from it. I was sitting at a stop light and a big Ford F-350 with a huge trailer full of lawn mowing equipment plowed into me at about 25mph, once again totalling my vehicle, and absolutely wrecking my back. I felt like I got hit my a freight train this time. I had my foot on the brake, and he made my car skid forward so hard that I pushed the car in front of me into the car in front of him. An eyewitness to the accident said that the man in the truck was using a phone when he hit me, and it was just verified to me the other day that his phone record shows that he sent a text message seconds before the accident occured. At least this guy was able to apply a little bit of brakes before making contact, but still, I got hit really hard. I'm going to have to see a chiropractor, and I now am searching for another vehicle.

So yeah. That's my record for getting hit. It really sucks. I can't quite say I would mind the banning of texting while driving after all of this as I'm 100% sure at least somebody has lost their life in an accident caused by texting while driving. Hell, I used to do it before I got the iPhone which is fucking impossible to do without looking, but after seeing how poorly most others handle it, I can definitely understand why people are wanting this kind of a ban.

I don't know what we need to do about this, and encoding restrictions on devices themselves to not allow texting while moving is not the solution. I don't know what is.

Thanks Trevor!

The app was rejected for risque content, which turned out to be "The Downward Spiral", a song that was available in the app, sort of, as part of a podcast. Trent's NSFW take:

You can buy The Downward Fucking Spiral on iTunes, but you can't allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says FUCK or CUNT? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about fucking hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone!

A good point, and one that he elaborates on at length. But then, he quickly softens, and goes all TUAW on everyone:

Everyone - let me be clear. I love Apple products and as goofy and out-of-touch as their app approval process / policy is, I will still use them because they work 1000X better than the competition. This is not a debate, it's a fact. The iPhone is THE most elegant, modern smartphone at this point in time and it's perfect for what we want to do with the NIN app - except for the ludicrous approval process, and that's what I want to draw attention to. Android is cool, but nobody has an Android phone. Blackberry is OK but the hardware is inconsistent and WinMo straight-up sucks balls. If Apple doesn't get it together, we will most certainly make it available to the jailbreak community. I didn't invest in this app to see it languish on the sidelines from an idiotic policy while this tour is in full swing.

Surprise fanboyism aside, his points on censorship are solid: assuming the presence of other apps—Safari, Mail, Twitter, whatever—that provide access to uncensored material, banning one app that provides access to the same objectionable content is kind of pointless. [Trent Reznor via Crunchgear]

Thanks Ray!