Friday, July 28, 2006

I Mean, Really…

OK, Apple, I swear if you don’t morph QuickTime Pro into just plain ol’ QuickTime and make its features a part of the basic OS out of the box, why, I’m gonna....

I don’t know what I’m gonna do. But I sure am going to be annoyed by it.

Here’s my deal (and I’m going to stay in the Mac Universe for the time being)

You buy a Mac. It’s lovely. Sleek, svelte and all kinds of other “good-ly” adjectives. Even if it’s “just” a laptop (laptops all kind of look the same to me, sacrilege, I know), it’s a mighty pretty thing sitting on your desk/lap/tentacles/paws. You fire the bad boy up and even the registration and set up screens are kind of nice. (Am I the only one who digs the music for Tiger’s set up?)

Minor nit pick: Apple, my friends, you could also calm down on trying to push .Mac down my throat as well. This is a minor thing, really, but when I say, “No, I don’t want .Mac right now” I didn’t make a mistake and I really did mean that. “No means NO” and is not an invitation to ask me again.

Anyway, you use the thing for a bit and everything goes swimmingly and then you go to watch a movie trailer or try and re-save out a video file.

Yes, there it is. You want to watch the full screen vid, but you are thwarted because in order to watch full screen QuickTime, you must shell out $29.95 for a QuickTime Pro license. Worse, the program bugs you EVERY TIME you fire up the Player with its little software hand stuck out, begging you to upgrade to Pro.

This is the kind of thing that happens all the time in the Windows world, mind you. I bought Reha a Dell laptop (don’t look at me like that!) and WordPerfect (just the word processor, mind you) and it wants someone to fork over cash for the whole Suite upgrade EVERY TIME you open the program. I could also point to a half dozen other Windows apps that do the same thing. Quicken, for example. Ugh, don’t get me started on how much I loathe Quicken for Windows. Plus, think about all the insane CRAP software that comes on your average PC and you’ll get where I’m coming from. Half of it seems to be crippleware or ads for AOL.

My thing is this. You bought a Mac. You paid a bit extra for it already. Some may say A LOT extra, but these people are dumb, so I ignore them. The price difference borders on negligible to me once you throw in iLife, easy of use, the machine “just working,” no virii (for now) and all that jazz, etc. But granted, you did probably pay a bit more for the gleaming box you have your appendages wrapped around.

SO APPLE, DON’T ASK FOR THIRTY MORE DOLLARS FOR SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE BUILT INTO THE OS!

Whew! Do I feel better now!

Now it’s a debatable point as to whether QT Pro’s capabilities are such that they are a “value-added” proposition. I think they are and I go ahead and pay for the capabilities and not at all because I like to watch movie trailers full screen. (I don’t really). I think Apple has for the past few years tried to make themselves into a “it’s your media, do what you want with it” type of company. Pimping iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and iTunes are obvious steps in that direction. And it works. People do stuff in iMovie and parents make DVDs for grandparents. My kids use GarageBand to practice the piano. But in order to really “do stuff” you end up needing QT Pro. It’s massively useful on that front and you really can’t do anything even “semi-pro” without QT Pro. And we’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid, my fruity friends, we’ll be buying sleek, svelte and sexy hardware forever as long as we still have the use of our tentacles to whip out our credit cards at the nearest Apple Store.

So just bite the bullet and include it on every Mac.

Please.

Until then, know that I bought the thing a while ago and I’m still bugged.

And on the Windows front, go ahead and bug them all you want for $30 donations. Seems to me that they are used to it. Plus, putting QT Pro into the OS would be one more thing to differentiate better the Mac platform from Windows. A license for QT Pro in every pot! Unless you were dumb, thought you’d save some cash and bought a Windows box. You have to pay $30 in order to be able to watch the full screen trailer for Mission Impossible III.

And see:

Happy now?

Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Lucas Our Very Own Little Wicked Boy

Time was when it was easy to embarrass one's children. Like going to the elementary school play and giving a standing ovation when your very own little turnip makes his/her entrance. Or when they are in junior high, merely dropping them off in front of the school will do the trick. When they are in high school and you go to Geometry class with them to make sure they turn in their homework on time. Simpler times.

These days however, we have the power of the Intarweb and we, well I, at least, can embarrass my children potentially millions of times in a year. Like merely being their Dad wasn't enough.

That's Lucas from a couple years ago. Wasn't he just the C-U-T-E-S-T dang thing you've ever seen? As he's so getting into the groove. :-]

Yes, he will kill me for this. But it's worth it, don't you think?

Direct link to the video.

Andy Warhol Was Right

So my fifteen minutes of fame are apparently officially over. In the latest Google Dance, I’ve been knocked out of the top spot. Well, the rather horrific picture of me that you’d find if you searched for “lortab” on Google’s Image Search no longer appears on the first page. And as near as I can tell, the image has been purged from Google’s index. Like their bot suddenly became ashamed that it had ever found the picture in the first place and was now atoning for its past sin.

Not sure whether to be relieved or depressed.

See? Not a great look for me.

Taken way back in October when I had my eye muscle surgery. My eyes are watering now, just thinking about it. It was incredibly difficult to even open my eyes for a day or so. Ugh. Blessed opiates!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Twain Shall Never Meet

If you are a geek/nerd type person you ususally fall into one of two categories: Star Wars Geek or Star Trek Nerd. This is of course a gross over statement, but go with it for a moment, please.

And then there are Babylon 5 dweebs, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing, right there, OK?

Anyway, found this on fark and felt that I must share:





Whoever did the writing for Shatner in this is a genius.

And seriously, you can almost feel the geek/nerd/dork tension in the air when Shatner’s name is annouced and he prances out on stage. Mark Hamill’s reaction just says it all right there.

Genius.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

La Cittá di Dork

(Dork City)

OK, so I was fooling around with Garage Band and my iTunes library and in honor of my finding my cell phone (yes, it was lost, AGAIN!), I give you this:

The ring tone I “made” for my razr.

anthem

Anyway, it’s super easy to make your own ringtones out of music that you already own. Make a copy of the track (assuming it’s an MP3 or unprotected AAC), drop it into GarageBand, cut and paste the part you want, re-import the cut down version back into iTunes, re-sample the thing down to 64 kbps MP3 file, download the “song” to your bluetooth enabled phone and tell your phone to use that as the ring tone. Easy-peasy!

(OK, maybe that’s a whole lot of steps and maybe it is kind of complicated, but it’s not really that hard, trust me.)

The notion that T-mobile (or any ol’ cell network provider) is really going to make much money off ring tones is pretty silly. I know that they want me to download exclusives tracks and ring tones and what not to my phone, but it’s just never going to fly with someone like me. For one thing, I’m too savvy about such things, frankly and will just make my own (as clumsily attempted above). Second, I’m cheap and paying $1.99 for DRM locked (way more locked up than iTunes Music Store muzak), it’s just silly. Plus, iTMS tracks only cost .99¢ and they are better quality and all that. T-mobile really just wants me to burn minutes and use their network for, like everything. Just be a phone company, please. And stop dropping my calls at the east end of 45th South here in Salt Lake and I’ll be happy, OK? That’s a dead spot and it’s been a dead spot going on FOREVER!

Proximus

 

Favorite Entries

If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

• Partners
• Correspondence
• Help Wanted
• From the Office of Mis-directed Email
• A Word from the Small Person in the House
• RNT Product Review: Chocolate Mix Skittles Left Me Sterile!
• Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago
• Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:
• A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations
• We Regret the Error
• Letters from a Homeowner to His General Contractor
• What I Did There
• Hermaphrodite Administrative Assistants and Receptionists Need Not Apply
• Giving Me an IM Account Was Obviously a Huge Mistake
• Official Ransom Note Typography Vista vs. Mac OS X Shootout
• I Need a Real Hobby
• Beat Down
• Big Fat Lies
• True Love
• Now MY Ovaries Hurt
• Don’t Get Her Started
• Disturbing Trend
• Had to do it
• Mooshy stuff
• Ransom Note Typography End User License Agreement “EULA”
• Diva-licious!
• Just so we’re clear
• PETA may have a point

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2010 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.