Zooey and Apple, Perfect Combination

After having seen those new iPhone ads featuring that knucklehead Zooey Deschanel dancing around and talking to Siri, I would have to say that those two are a perfect match.

Both are trying to come off as quirky underdogs to be appreciated by the unique free thinking people, when they are most definitely not these things.  Apple is huge, yet they still are represented as the artsy, creative type that ventures away from vanilla Microsoft, yet that company is making enough money to make CEO billionaires.  Someone will have to explain to me exactly why Apple products have such huge markups, because the 25 cents an hour we pay those Chinese slaves factory workers hardly justifies the $700 price tag on phones phones and the $2500 MacBook pricing when you get get similar spec’ed competitor equipment for less than half the price.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/27/foxconn-suicide-tenth-iphone-china

Deschanel is similar.  Not only was she not always the offbeat goofball that her latest appearances would have you believe, there was a time where she actually tried to be sexual!  I know that it’s hard to believe, but that time did in fact exist.

Yeah, that's a girl you would assume would have weird tastes and be awkward around guys.

 

Apple and Zooey, both household names.  Both overrated.  Both pretty annoying.  Both have incredible marketing.  Both apparently think Siri can do a lot more than it actually does.

I am feeling a little bit more generous toward Zooey after that picture, though, so I’ll leave her alone until people start killing themselves because of her.  Although she did recently divorce Ben Gibbard, and anyone who has ever heard a Death Cab For Cutie song knows that guy is constantly teetering on the verge of suicide.

Mash This Link, Please

What the hell is the deal with the word “mash”?  Mashed potatoes I get, apparently my great-great-great grandpa watched the show M.A.S.H., but when you click on a button on your phone, that is not the time to inform us of any “mashing”.

Sometimes when I’m sitting around at work on the phone, I’ll get a customer from a particularly entertaining part of the country, and some interesting words will come into play that I enjoy.  I love when customers tell me they’re “fixin'” to go to the store.  I laugh a little to myself with every “you best be” when they’re expressing the urgency with which I need to replace their device.  “Reckon” and “yonder” are a fond memory of those old westerns everyone has watched time to time, and our human period pieces are a friendly reminder of “simpler times”.

I don’t so much care for the fact that “iPhone” has become the new “Coke”.  Not every smartphone is an iPhone, you hillbilly knuckleheads.  It wasn’t even the first smartphone!  I know you people are old enough to even remember what a Blackberry is (not that I think anyone knows they still exist today).  Windows phones preceded them, even if they did do a sloppy, half-assed job.  And sure, I’ll give everyone a pass on the lesser known Nokias and Palms, especially when the sound of your grasp on technology leads me to believe you just recently migrated from a pair of tin cans and a string.

But most importantly, please stop using the word “mash”.  Oh, you just mashed the button I told you to touch so we could check your phone’s settings?  Well, guess what.  I just voided your warranty in the system.  No way could tapping on a capacitive touch screen take any amount of physical effort conveyed by the word “mash”.  I’m just going to assume you have now destroyed the device and move on with my day.

Now, while I can laugh at this in good fun, I sometimes wonder if these people ever become skilled professionals.  I just can’t imagine taking someone seriously as an engineer or technician while using “ain’t” or “y’all” in a sentence, let alone think of any medical professional getting within a good ol’ country mile of me if she wants to “mash” a needle in my arm, or if she “reckons” I need a strong prescription drug.  I will, however, let you know when a need a dead animal, or instructions on how to most effectively enjoy “goin’ muddin'”.

Sprint/iPhone

http://www.goinglte.com/sprints-share-rating-cut-because-of-its-lte-network/

Let that be a lesson as to the wake of destruction Apple leaves in it’s path (not that Sprint hasn’t brought this on themselves in other 4G ways).  Cripples AT&T, brings Sprint to the verge of bankruptcy, and smashes Verizon’s profit margin.  That’s what you get for catering to people that want an overpriced piece of plastic 3G garbage that has the standard Apple claim to fame of having fewer options and buttons because it has a name people recognize and some crappy gimmicks (aka, SIRI, the fancy version of just doing a Google voice search).  Apple, the company that is “safer and less prone to problems” due to the fact that you can’t do as much with it, and virus creators haven’t wasted time with it.

For everyone that thinks that iPhones really have a more stable UI/App selection (which SHOULD favor Apple, due to the fact that the iTunes market so closely regulated and marked up as opposed to an open sourced Android market that encourages developers to make and release applications without Android oversight, I have an interesting read for you –

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/02/02/does-ios-crash-more-than-android-a-data-dive/

And let’s just ignore the fact that the last three iPhone releases have been plagued with battery drain and antennae issues (see class action lawsuit recently settled).

So the next time people want to switch to Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T even just for an Android or Windows phone, let them know that they can enjoy the fact that either their new company is on the verge of bankruptcy, or they’ll be paying more per month than they should be to help offset the wonderfully insane subsidies those companies give off that overpriced, tiny screen 3G nightmare known as the iPhone in order to avoid losing the zero revenue market share iPhone users bring to the table.

Can anyone really tell me why an iPhone 4s retails for more than a Galaxy S2 besides the fact that Android runs a free operating system and Apple charges up the wazoo for theirs?  Same camera, slower processor, less powerful battery, screen size that’s less than 2/3rds of the square inch size, etc…  It makes no sense.  Not to mention you can actually buy more powerful, extended batteries for android phones that last over twice as long if you aren’t opposed to using the replacement cover they come with and dealing with a slight bit of additional phone thickness.  Or you could just get a second battery to switch out when you get low.  You can’t even open an iPhone to LOOK at its battery without a screwdriver and a voided warranty!  I guess Apple knows its target market, and realizes that if their customers are able to get a hold of the phone’s battery there’s not much that would stop them from trying to eat it, or drooling on it.

Thanks Apple, for being so horrible that you actually make life worse for the rest of smartphone users.  I’ll happily maintain service with a company that hasn’t sold its soul.  Way to distract me from what was supposed to be a simple rant against Sprint being run by kindergarteners (see WiMax disaster, see rewards discontinuation, see paying the better part of 20 billion for a phone two other major carriers are already bleeding themselves dry for).

-Apple’s #1 fan (most inspiring marketing team ever),
Dan (Apple Lover) Flood