iRex
January 28, 2010
“Rex, isn’t this supposed to be a Las Vegas Blog?”
My blogs are not traditional Vegas blogs.
I don’t try to be the Review Journal, nor do I try to report all the Vegas news that’s fit to print. You already have 500 places to go for that (I recommend typing “Las Vegas” into Google News for all the mainstream news you can handle).
Someone once called my blog “The VegasRex Show” and while it sounds narcissistic, it’s probably closer to accurate than calling it “The Great Magical I Love Everything About Las Vegas Click Here To Book Great Room Rates” Blog.
This is not so much a Las Vegas Blog as it is a blog written by a guy who lives in Las Vegas. I write about the things I see, hear, and read that interest me. Since I live smack between The Bellagio and Fremont Street, my observations usually involve Las Vegas, but believe it or not, I’m a little, uh, deeper than that. Kind of like your mother.
Were I to move to Boise, Idaho tomorrow, I would not skip a beat. I probably wouldn’t even miss a day. I would write about what I feel about writing about, and I would take copious amounts of photos, although they would probably have way more Boise content than they do now.
The blog is a personal thing, the town is incidental. I don’t interview people, and I don’t care what your favorite celebrity is doing here. I don’t necessarily cover stories, I am the story. The story is wherever I am, whatever I am doing, or whatever I think. This is what separates a blog from a newspaper, magazine, or gossip column.
A blog is a self-indulgent ego trip, as it should be. It’s an ongoing novel and diary that the author pens one day at a time.
I was in the “entertainment” industry for some time, and I suppose I spent the majority of my life in unusual and/or creative pursuits. Kind of like a bedheaded Mac user. When I got out of that realm and moved on with life, “blogging” became my own little personal creative outlet … for better or worse. Most would say for the worse, and I probably wouldn’t disagree.
Anyway, as a “blogger”, there is arguably nothing more important to me than technology. They are the tools of the trade, and technological developments, even minor ones, affect every facet of what I try to do. They are like pharmaceutical developments in the world of medicine.
The magical words, pictures and videos you see on these pages don’t appear on your screen by osmosis. Somebody has to get them from the streets and casinos of Vegas, and onto your monitor. This is done with a bevy of gadgets, devices, and a small army of personal computers.
Hell, not only do I use these tools for blogging, but I use them for pretty much everything. The only reason I even a have a guitar amplifier in my home is to serve as a preamp for one of my several computers. Gone are miles of cables and dozens of pedals. I do not own a book, I do not own a magazine … with the exception of the free porn in the back of the Las Vegas Weekly. The glossy strip club ads work in a masturbatory bind.
To look at me, or to see the car I drive (an 18 year old beat-up piece of shit that barely has a front end), you would think that I lived under a bridge and ate catfood … and I do, but that’s not the point.
I’m still arguably the most wired and technologically-obsessed person in Rexville. I’m the only person who stands in line at Luv-It Custard pecking away at a laptop keyboard.
Anyway …
Today is January 28, 2010.
Had you asked me three weeks ago what I would be doing today, I would have told you that I would be at an Apple Store replacing my netbook, or at least making plans to do so.
I thought that I was finally going to get the mobile computing experience I was looking for. The most convenient portable computer ever invented. I’m aware that Steve “Givesblo” Jobs is a one-man hype machine, but given the decade in which I live, the prevalence of tablet computers for the last five years, and Apple’s decent take on the laptop, I honestly thought that this was going to be a netbook-killer.
This being the case, I queued up on a variety of Apple Blogs at 10am yesterday like a kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for the iPad announcement.
I was finally going to know how I would blog Las Vegas going forward. I was going to bring the readers better stuff, faster stuff, more stuff.
As I sit here this morning, I have but one question.
What … the …. f**k happened?
After three years of eager anticipation, Apple released a 9″ iPod Touch.
It’s exactly like the regular iPod Touch, only far less convenient. If you ever lamented the fact that you could actually carry your iPhone in your pocket instead of being forced to carry a man purse … your wish has officially been granted.
The New Apple iWatch endorsed and worn by Flavor Flav
What next? A $500 iWatch that you hang around your neck like Flava Flav? A 400lb MacBook with trailer hitch sold separately?
The iPad has no camera, no USB port, and does not multi-task. You cannot run computer applications on the iPad, you can only run applets pre-approved by, and purchased from Apple. The battery life is no better than most existing netbooks. It is being touted as a “consumption device”, yet it does not run Flash … the most common method of multi-media distribution on the web. It allows people to run a cellphone browser on a laptop screen. It’s an iTunes portal that allows you to jump through all kinds of weird hoops to buy more content from Apple.
In short, it is arguably the single most self-serving, asinine piece of technology released within the last 10 years.
Since I was also following this development on the bastion of utter noise known as Twitter (#ff #twittertuesday RT @somecelebrity Food is tasty. RT I agree. RT Me too RT I like #food too. RT Does anyone else like #food? RT What kind of #food? RT I like #chocolate #food RT sup g I like gangsta food and all dat wit fries ftw RT I remember when I had self respect RT not me), I made a snide comment and referred to the device as “The iTampon”.
Within about an hour, it became a trending topic. I don’t know if I made the first mention of the phrase on the medium, but it was the first I had heard of it. I was horrified at first, thinking I started a goddamn twitter trend but in retrospect, I don’t mind. The name is deserved.
I personally hope the iPad fails, and fails miserably.
I don’t want it to fail out of some vindictive spirit, I want it to fail to make the world a technologically better place.
Fanboys are great for corporations, but terrible for consumers. Fanboys enable, scratch that … fanboys actively encourage and reward mediocrity. If Givesblo can excrete a turd on the floor, and have 1,000,000 cult members dance around the turd, sniff it,and declare it divine … why on earth would he do anything other than take a massive shit on the floor?
Since Apple is the only commercial competitor to Windows on the desktop for the masses, the cult of Mac stifles PC innovation as well. Why bother making a great Linux tablet with exponentially greater features? There’s no point. No matter how great it is, it will never sell as well as whatever device Apple shoots out of its ass.
If bad products succeed, then companies will continue making bad products. Our only hope as consumers is to encourage people not to buy bad products. The sooner a bad product fails, the faster it can be replaced with a good product.
If people rush to buy crap, and support crap, then technology stagnates.
“But Rex, how can a bad product be so wildly popular? If it is not good, why would anyone buy it?”
As usual, the culprit is religion.
People are religious by nature. This is why there are so many religions. Patriotism and political party affiliation are every bit as much religions as is Catholicism. Religion provides group membership, acceptance, and a sense of superiority or “chosen-ness” (God loves America but not Ethiopia), while requiring the member to do nothing other than pledging their loyalty to the religion and paying their dues. Not only is thinking unnecessary, it is actively discouraged.
Religion is the cause of most societal ills, and technology is really no different. Nowhere is this more evident than at Apple.
This aspect of the company was not a mistake. At one point, the company had a position called “Chief Evangelist”. The company took queues from Scientology, and much like Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard, they learned to cultivate a church around their principal leader and product. Both religions prey on the exact same demographic … those with higher-than-normal levels of insecurity. Those who are conflicted about the world, and their place in it.
While Scientology and other religions sell salvation, Apple sells an image.
The image is that you are somehow more creative and free-thinking than the rest of the population. Walk into a Starbucks with a MacBook and $100 bedhead, and the world knows that you are way more creative than the guy with a $500 HP laptop and a $10 haircut.
Is this stereotype true, though? Are Mac folks really less conformists than anyone else?
Apple is a closed culture. It’s a walled-garden. It is a company which has to approve each and every program that you are allowed to run on your mobile device. If it’s offensive to Apple, you are not allowed to have it. This is ironic for a company who’s slogan was “Think Different”.
“Different and free-thinking” is the guy who sips coffee in McDonald’s with a five year old modded notebook running WindowMaker on Slackware with a custom-compiled realtime kernel. That guy thinks different. That guy is breaking societal norms. That guy can write or run whatever app he wants on his machine, and nobody can tell him otherwise. That guy would not pay twice as much to run pre-approved applets that attempt to mimic that of a real computer.
That guy thinks different. Either that, or he’s poor.
I guess, in the end, that is exactly why the iPad will sell, and sell well.
In an era of tight credit, high unemployment, home foreclosures, and drained retirement accounts, carrying the iPad will be a symbol. Like a fish decal on the rear windshield. Like a Star of David. Like a rainbow flag on the bumper. Like a dot on the forehead.
The iPad will be a signal. A method of belief identification. A technological gang sign.
When two iPad users spot each other across a crowded cafe, each with meticulously tussled hair, ironic horn-rimmed eyeglasses, sipping the most amazing mochaccino in the house, they will knowingly nod as if to say:
“I think different … just like you.”
And that, my friends, is the true genius of Apple.
Written by Train on January 28, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Rex, I don’t always agree with you, but AMEN BROTHER! I couldn’t agree more on everything you said, and I bet Jesus (baseball player) would too, if he were around to read it!
I will cop to owning an iPhone, but I grew tired of the iBullshit and jail-broke it 2 weeks after I bought it. It’s a shame that Apple forces people who simply want to use their quality hardware to resort to such tactics. For my needs (short e-mails/texts, light reading/internet browsing, and videos I rip from DVDs plus some casual gaming), my phone is great. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let AT&T arbitrarily handicap my Slingbox, and the multitasking works perfectly. I’m still baffled why they don’t allow that normally — there is plenty of horsepower for it.
Written by Rice on January 28, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Wait a second… I thought you drove a Porsche?
Written by Team Valtrex on January 29, 2010 at 5:01 am
I always wondered what a $500 etch-a-sketch would look like.
Written by VegasSam on January 29, 2010 at 10:27 am
Fantastic blog Rex. This was your best one yet.
Cheers!
Written by Limey on January 29, 2010 at 3:04 pm
You’ve lost me, I still use a slate and chalk….Limey
Written by Gary on January 31, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Apple is in the business to make money, They make money by selling their stuff. Even if they make turds, as long as a lot of people buy turds, Apple makes a lot of money. The iPad may be the next big turd and for a Kool-Aid drinking fanboy, like me and may be 10,000,000 others, you can always use a new turd; especially if you consider what the new turd MAY BE and are not fixated on what the new turd IS NOT
Written by zarray on February 5, 2010 at 5:24 am
Your talk of getting rid of bad products applies perfectly to GM. The way companies get lame overtime is what I refer to as the “bloat”.