July 24, 2008

anti-iPhone-DRM campaign

I'm a DefectiveByDesign subscriber, because I have a strong distaste for DRM.
Recently, DefectiveByDesign launched a campaign against iPhone, and generally, they fight against iPod and Apple products, because of the DRM employed in them.

Well.
You know what's sad?

Apple products rock. Seriously, they do. Did you ever hold an iPhone? Touched it? Typed on its wonderful multitouch-aware onscreen keyboard? That thing is damn sexy. And it Just Works (tm). And it's precise. There is no other device with the same degree of input precision on a touchscreen (yes, that is because of the multitouch capability, i.e. completely different principle of touch recognition), few devices with built-in gyrostat to detect device tilt, and none of them use it as well as iPhone does.
I mean, yes, there are "alternatives". They might be more powerful, more open, more compatible, better engineered or whatever.
And none of them holds a candle to iPhone's amazing usability and user experience. Plus, none of them can help you pick up chicks. iPhone can. Because iPhone is sexy.

I have a Cowon D2 player and i wouldn't trade it for an iPod. It has longer battery life, plays basically any format you throw at it, has a true DSP, works as mass storage, its firmware is updated regularly, blah, blah. Oh, and a touchscreen, of course. Yes, it outfeatures iPod in almost everything you can think of. But it's nowhere near as sexy.
And tell you what, average joe user does not give a rat's ass about features of D2. He has his Windows (or Mac) box with songs in mp3 format, and all he wants from a player is to actually play those songs. iPod does, and it does it sexy. Massively sexy.
I could go on for hours and hours about how Apple inovates while looking good. We all know it's true, even though some of us deny it. (Perhaps they are not Apple's original ideas, but it's Apple who shows them to the unwashed mass.)

The folks at DBD can bitch all they want, and they are right. The iPod and iPhone are bad, because they are all locked down and DRMed and stuff.
What is sad is that no other manufacturer takes on the challenge! Show me a single phone as cool as the iPhone. Show me a single player as cool as the iPod. Tell you what, there is none. iRiver Clix2 gets close, but not close enough.
DBD wants to pressure Apple into unlocking - "if you don't unlock, we'll go to the competition".
But the fact is that we won't, because iPhone is so damn cool.
Why, oh why, doesn't somebody pressure the competition into outsexying Apple?

July 12, 2008

f**king firefox 3

In case you wondered why, all of sudden, you can't use Home key to go to top of page, wonder no longer. There is a setting under preferences -> advanced -> general -> accessibility, called something along the lines of "use caret to move around the page" (Not sure about exact english variant, i have only czech translation. It's the first checkbox, anyway.)

For some f**ked up reason, this seems to be checked by defaut. At least on Linux, at least on imported pre-3 profiles.
Go ahead and uncheck the f**king thing for good! Bam there goes the caret, and your old & faithfull Home key brings you to the top of the page.
I can't believe how glad i am for having found this.