Stupid Hipster Doofus

Christopher Nolan’s latest mind-bending blockbuster Inception has sparked debates in theater lobbies and Internet discussion boards across the globe. Discussion ranges from the visual spectacles of the film, to the major plot points of the film, and even what happens in the last minute of the movie. I’m not here to write a plot analysis of the film, there’s already plenty of places on the Internet to read those. Instead, I’m writing an open plea to the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, to not make a sequel like many hope he will.

Inception has been likened to The Matrix which was released in 1999. I too agree with the assertion that Inception is this decade’s ‘Matrix.’ It is a blend of unique ideas and storytelling, combined with spectacular visuals which leaves the audience stunned the whole time.

Inception tells a story which is very unique, an uncommon occurrence in Hollywood today where sequels and remakes take a majority stake in theaters today. The magic that the audience experiences in Inception would simply be ruined if there were a sequel. I believe that if Inception 2 came along, it would have a similar backlash as the second and third Matrix films.

Another problem is that if a sequel were made, it would have to ruin the mystery that Inception ends in, a mystery I feel is best to left open for the viewers to answer. In my opinion, the world of Inception has told its story, and we should leave Cobbs in peace, wherever he is.

Today was Apple’s Press Conference regarding iPhone 4’s antenna problems. If you read frequently, you may have read the post I made yesterday where I made predictions about today’s conference. Here’s both a recap of what happened today, and a scorecard of what I predicted.

What Didn’t Happen

✖As predicted, there was no mention of a Verizon iPhone, although Verizon was mentioned during the Q&A at the end of the press conference. 

✖Similarly absent was the white iPhone. Steve said that the mystical device will ship at the end of July.

✖Apple also did not state that there was a newer version of the hardware in the works. Since Apple plans to continue the free cases until September, I think that it may be a while, if ever, until the iPhone 4 sees a hardware revision.

✖No iPhone 4 recall. Also something I assumed wouldn’t happen. Instead, Apple has waived the restocking fee to return the phone if you are not satisfied.

What Did Happen

✓Apple spoke about iPhone 4 being one of the best and most popular smartphones on the market. It also talked about how many iPhones were sold and how low the return rate/complaint rate are.

✓Apple demonstrated that the signal attenuation happens on several, if not all, smartphones on the market today.

✓Free bumpers (or cases) for all! This was predicted as it is the cheapest and easiest way for Apple to appease the majority of customers. Surprisingly however, Apple will be offering a variety of cases from different manufacturers for free.

So how did I do? I was pretty much spot one. The one mistake that I made was that I guessed Apple would announce the sale of the white iPhone.

Tomorrow, Friday the 16th of July, Apple will be holding a press conference abbot the iPhone 4. There has been much speculation about what will be announced, here are some of my responses to the speculation.

iPhone on Verizon

Every week another wild guess comes about that Apple will release a new Verizon iPhone in the coming weeks. But for me, the speculation is a nonstarter. The first reason that this issue is a nonstarter for me is the network that Verizon runs. Verizon uses CDMA technology to provide service to subscribers across the United States. While Verizon’s network is renowned for its stability across the country, CDMA has several disadvantages compared to GSM which is used in current iPhones which make it unlikely that a CDMA iPhone will be released. The first problem with CDMA is that, in its current form, cannot handle simultaneous data and voice connections. This limit severely lessens the capabilities of the iPhone, specifically features highlighted in existing iPhone commercials. Another limitation, although much less of an issue, is the fact that AT&T has a generally faster network across the country.

Another problem that I see with Apple launching a CDMA iPhone is that the technology is on the decline. Only two of the four major nationwide carriers in the United States, Sprint and Verizon, have CDMA networks. Both of them have committed to upgrading to their networks to new 4G technology. Sprint has already launched its 4G network in select cities and will continue to do so for the next few years. Verizon is a bit slower to start, but has committed to having sufficient 4G coverage in a few years. Even better, the 4G technology that Verizon is using is very similar to that which will be used by GSM carriers, meaning that the first 4G iPhone could potentially run on both networks. It just doesn’t make sense for Apple to commit time into developing an iPhone for Verizon’s current network.

Another reason that we will not see a Verizon iPhone tomorrow is that it has been less than 30 days since the iPhone 4 launched. Both Apple and AT&T have return policies that extend 30 days from purchase. If a Verizon phone was announced tomorrow, people could return their existing hardware and close their contracts with AT&T without facing any penalties, something which could cost Apple and AT&T thousands of dollars.

iPhone Hardware Problems Acknowledged

This is rather likely, as close to a sure thing as the new iPhone being announced at WWDC was. Apple knows that the longer it waits to formally announce their stance on the hardware problems, the more sales they possibly lose and the more it will cost to fix the problem if they choose to do so. What they say about the problem is more of a mystery though, will they admit that there is a serious problem or just continue with the story that problems are being blown out of proportion. The following speculation points are all related to the hardware problems experience by users, including the “Death Grip” and proximity sensor problems.

New iPhone Design

I think that Steve Jobs, or whoever leads the conference, will announce a new design for the phone. I think that the phone will be cosmetically indistinguishable from the current hardware that was released on June 24th. In the past week, shipments for the iPhone have slipped multiple weeks and there are unconfirmed reports that customers are able to exchange their iPhone 4 in-store for a new model. Both of these events seem to indicate that something has changed in iPhone manufacturing. One blog has even noted that there may have been some subtle difference in iPhones. From the photos posted, it is difficult to see any differences, however I have been unable to see any slot for the proximity sensor on my device.

White iPhone Release Date Announced

This is another theory that I think will likely happen tomorrow. When people were dismayed that they wouldn’t be able to buy a white iPhone on day one, Apple promised they would be available the second half of July; well, July 16th is the second half of July. Who knows, maybe the delay was so they could implement a new design.

Free Bumpers for All

Hours after users noticed that holding the iPhone in your left hand could cause it to drop calls, someone noticed that using a case, or Apple’s Bumpers, essentially stopped all the signal loss problems. This works because human skin is conductive and can cause problems when bridging the gap between iPhone 4’s antennas.I really don’t think that we can expect Apple’s answer to the problem to be free bumpers for all. My reasoning behind this is that it ruins the aesthetics of the device and, for a company like Apple, design is everything. Steve Jobs took so much pride in the work of beauty that is iPhone 4, I find it hard to believe that their answer would be to cover the device up.

Complete iPhone 4 Recall

Analysts have speculated since release whether Apple would have a total recall of the iPhone 4. I don’t think that this will happen. One reason is, people are still waiting to get their first iPhone 4. Apple is still shipping iPhones today and Apple couldn’t possibly have the reserve to replace every device it has sold so far. Instead, I think that Apple will issue either an extended warranty or optional recall. In both cases, users that are experiencing problems can take the iPhone to any Apple Store, or ship it in, and exchange it for a new model where they have fixed the problems. This is a similar approach to what Microsoft did with the Xbox 360 and its “Red Ring of Death” problem. This makes sense because some users, like myself, have had no problems with their iPhones.

Conclusion

All of the above is wild speculation about speculation. I have no insider knowledge, or any information that can’t be gleamed from reading blogs and using common sense. What do I think will happen tomorrow? I think that the presenter, Steve Jobs or otherwise, will hold a demonstration using several top-selling smart phones that shows they all suffer from signal loss when held a specific way. After the comparison, or even during, he will talk about the 4.01 software update that was released today which Apple claims will fix most of the issues, despite reports otherwise. After this demo, he will talk about how engineers have fixed the problem and made the phone even better. He will state that the problem isn’t widespread or big enough to justify a recall, but if customers wish, they may exchange their device and all future purchasers will have the fixed device. I’m interested to see what will happen at tomorrows conference as I have not had a single problem with my iPhone and nobody I know personally has either, I will follow this post with a full report tomorrow after the press conference.

Addendums:

Apple Insider reports that 4.01 was a quick patch fix and that, although it lessened the problem, a more robust software update is in the works.

I have been lucky enough to use the new digg.com which is right now in alpha. This redesign has been a long time coming, it has been years since any features have been added; in fact, Digg last saw a major overhaul in 2006. The overhaul is the result of Digg founder Kevin Rose returning to having a major role in the startup-turned-internet phenomenon. For those of you that don’t know, Kevin began playing a smaller and smaller role until a few months ago when he was asked to succeed Jay Adelson as CEO. Upon his return, one of Rose’s first moves was to redefine Digg.com. Rose has been making the internet television circuit promoting the new Digg and I was excited to try it out. Much to my dismay however, playing with the new Digg made me lose all hope in the company.

I started using Digg a few months after it launched, I loved having a central hub to find out what was going on in the tech community. I no longer had to check a handful of blogs or dig through the depths of the internet to find something interesting. The same was true, times 100 when Digg expanded to more general areas like politics and world events. I thought Digg would take over the world, like slashdot had done before it for the geek community.

Then I met Reddit. I had several problems with Digg during the time I was an active user. One of my biggest peeves was that it was nearly impossible to get anything I submitted seen. Digg is notorious for how much power its top ten submitters are, users like “Mr. Babyman” account for at least 90% of the stories that make the front page; and in the Digg world, if it’s not on the front page, it doesn’t exist. Another problem that I had was that there was no sort of “subscription” system. Aside from a handful of generic topics, there was no community feel to the site, stories were thrown into a basket, each with their own front page, the top of which appeared on THE front page. I couldn’t care less about some of the topics, and the categories that Digg defined were far too vague. Reddit seemed to solve all of these problems.

Reddit is a site similar on paper to Digg. A website where users submit articles, pictures, videos, in reality anything, which then are aggregated to produce a front page of popular stories. Unlike Digg however, Reddit which started as the underdog, has innovated for the past few years while Digg remained stagnant. Reddit went open source, which meant that many applications are available, like Alien Blue on iPhone, and other features have been built by the community. Furthermore, Reddit is composed of “subreddits” which are each their own communities. Unlike the categories on Digg, users can subscribe or unsubscribe to subreddits, creating a perfectly tailored experience for the user. Also, unlike Digg, Reddit doesn’t appear to suffer from the same power-user problem which allows any good story to be seen.

Digg will soon be pushing the alpha release into the forefront, and I think it will cause many users to leave the site. Kevin Rose touts the user experience as something between the old Digg and Twitter. Users subscribe to or “follow” other accounts and are automatically updated to what those accounts submit or “digg”. This new paradigm seemingly goes against the whole reason that Digg was started. When Rose first started Digg, he said it was a way for the people, not content editors, to decide how news is seen.

As what can only be seen as a complete change of face, the “New Digg” is based on making it easy for content editors to push their own content to you, the user. If you run a blog, or in the case of companies like Gawker, a fleet of blogs, the new Digg allows you as the author to set your RSS feed to automatically post to Digg. The new Digg feels much more like an RSS reader, similar to Google Reader, than a social bookmarking website where only good stories are promoted. Even more annoying, and proof that Digg is no longer about the user, is how the user is presented to the new Digg experience. When I signed in for the first time to the new Digg, I was presented with a list of accounts that were suggested subscriptions. I do not recall many of them being actual people, save for Leo Laporte, who I would no more consider a real person than the Huffington Post. It was quite obvious from the list of suggestions, which ranged from bbcnews, to forbes, to collegehumor (all formatted lowercase like shown), that Digg was absolutely no more for the user as it was ABOUT the user. About how many stories could be shown to the user by the new version of power accounts. Digg solved the power user problem by masking it as a feature. Instead of addressing power users and the inability to custom fit the experience to each account, the new Digg marries the problems together and calls them features.

I used the new Digg for a few weeks before writing this article, hoping that I just got the wrong first impression. After using it for a while however, and not without breaking quite a few times during normal use, I have concluded that Digg has simply become an RSS reader. It is unfortunate, when Digg was started, it was one of my favorite sites on the net, now it has succumb to the same process it tried to fight, editorial capitalism. Despite all of the friction between the Digg and Reddit communities, I managed to be a user of both; however, unless there are some drastic changes to the new Digg, which I doubt will happen, Digg will no longer be one of my top-trafficed sites.

When LOST’s final episode had been aired, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I sat contemplating whether it was an epic ending to an epic show, or if the writers had copped out by giving us the ending that they did. After I let it sit, the ending grew on me and I now accept it as THE ending. I’m not here to start a conversation about whether or not Damon Lindelof or Calrton Cuse knew what they were doing when they started out. (Yet, for the record, I think that most of the major story points were thought out early on.) Instead, I’m writing a piece about why people who didn’t watch LOST week-by-week like lots of us did, have missed out on the best part of the series — watching it together.

A week after the series finale, I finally managed to coax my father into committing his time to watching the series he had heard so much about. Two day, about eight episodes, in however, I realized I had made a mistake. I asked him at that time how he was feeling about the show, his reply was somewhere along the lines of “I’m not really feeling it, but I’ll wait until we are through the first season.” I knew that the first episodes should have hooked him if he liked the show, and that if he wasn’t loving it by the end of the first episode, it would be an uphill battle through the second and third seasons. I have many a friend that stopped watching LOST sometime during the second and third seasons, most of who returned when they heard of the antics in the fourth and fifth. My father however, would not bare witness to the waterhole discussions of the latest episodes like my friends or I had. As luck would have it however, at the end of the season, he wanted to continue the story and see how it ended. I was relieved, while I had committed to re-watching LOST, my father made it quite clear that he may leave at any time. This is where I finally make my point, LOST was just as much about the weekly pacing as it was about the story shown on the screen.

One of the best things about LOST were the weekly discussions following the new episode. I loved having a small group of friends who would try to figure out where the story was going and come up with theories about what was happening and why; this is something that people who are watching the show for the first time, like my father, will never have. He had nowhere to discuss the mystery, not that there was any time to. We would sit and watch anywhere from one to four episodes in a sitting, something which is both a luxury and a way to dilute the experience. One thing I learned from watching the show with my father, a LOST first-timer, was that watching the show so quickly meant that he didn’t pick up on many of the nuances of the show. Episodes of great significance, like “Walkabout” from season one or “Ab Aeterno” from season six, were immediately lost on him, no pun intended. He didn’t have a week to contemplate episodes, anything that wasn’t explicitly spelled out he missed for the most part, unless I suggested it. Much worse were season finales and cliff-hangers. Reveals that were meant to frustrate viewers for the week were reduced to thirty seconds of wonder as we switched to the next episode from the Netflix Instant Queue. One final side effect was how many plot twists were not all that surprising when you compress four months of television into four days. One example is the situation with Rose and Bernard, they had been on quite a long hiatus on the show, unseen for about twenty episodes. When they reappeared in “The End,” my father had no nostalgia for them, nor for Vincent, or any other character for that matter.

LOST became popular not solely because of the story it told, but because of the experiences it allowed. The fact is, the six days between episodes, and the months between the first and last episodes of each season, added to the suspense of the show. The discussions that friends had between episodes only added to the allure of the show. I cannot remember another non-reality show that had so many different people talking about it simultaneously. As the writers said, LOST is a show about characters; but I think it was much more than just the characters of the show, but the characters that we, the viewers, became. Step back for a moment and look at our lives after LOST. What other show has people weekly playing the same numbers in the lottery (See 4th paragraph), a fan restaurant of ridiculous scale, and even a whole wiki dedicated to it? These elements all add to the LOST experience, one that will forever be unique to those that watched the show as it happened. As Jacob said, “It only ends once. Everything that comes before is just progress,” and we have seen the end, as well as been there to witness the progress, something that newcomers will not be able to do.