Adam's Blog

Apple needs to stop dicking around with these updates. Stop adding in things that are completely superfluous, and focus on the core functions: phone, SMS, email. Give us individual SMS timestamps and deleting, a unified email inbox, lock screen email notifications, more reliable email fetch, user profiles (for sounds and network settings), etc.

CrzyCanuck72, on forums.macrumors.com, discussing iPhone firmware version 2.2

Today is NOT my day when it comes to Apple products. I bought Mobile Me, the ridciulously overpriced service Apple offers, specificaly for its photo album capabilities, but I cannot activate it. Although I am logged into iTunes using my AppleID, and I am registered with my iPhone, AppleTV, etc, for me.com, it says there is no such user. So I figured that I could very quickly get this fixed by calling 1-800-MY-APPLE. But Apple offers no phone support for MobileMe. When you dial and tell the comoputer you want to discuss "Mobile Me", it says "Our support is now available online at me.com/help. Thank you. Goodbye." Then it promptly hangs up on you. Fail. My solution? Call and just ram through any menu prompt until I get to an operator and force them to help me. Apple support is generally pretty decent, but aside from the fact that Mobile Me is priced about 5 times too high, they have the audacity to provide no real manner of support other than the massively un-realtime web. Boo, Apple, boo! You've let me down a lot recently. I hope my new iMac makes me happy, or it may be my last Apple...

Note to self: I want to make homemade butter.

I posted an article recently called "Apple's Jobs Gives iPhone Customers What They Don't Want" that discussed the upcoming 2.2 firmware and its new features. iPhone firmware appears to give us Google Maps' "Street view" and several other "features." It does not, however, make available any of the most requested features: MMS, copy & paste, Flash, voice dialing, bluetooth/wifi syncing, A2DP (stero bluetooth), landscape Mail view, video recording, text-message forwarding, or any of the over 1800 issues listed over at pleasefixtheiphone.com. So what gives? Why is Apple not giving us these things? I should start by saying that MMS, or lack thereof, is the one things that bugs the crap out of me on the iPhone. I've detailed before how useless and silly viewmymessage.com is. I can't believe it's not even something that can be accessed via a clicked URL. But I don't think the iPhone will ever have true MMS. If Steve Jobs wanted MMS on the iPhone, it would be here by now. No, they are phasing it out, which is arguably good in the long run, but at the expense of its usefulness today. I don't mind paying the extra few pennies each month for MMS. Even...

Tell me, little bunny... is there anything a good oatmeal cookie can't cure?

My friend and I recently discussed election bumper sticker and lawn sign "rules" we'd like to see made into law. Our proposal goes as follows: If your candidate wins, you are alloted 60 days or until the next major holiday to leave a bumper sticker on your car. You are allowed 5 days for lawn signs. If you candidate loses, you are permitted a mere 48 hours to get the signs out of the ground, and just a scad longer at 72 hours to get the bumper stickers off, unless it's a weekend sooner, in which case, by Saturday. I think you look like an idiot with campaign stickers on your car any more than 3 months after an election. I still see people with "W 04" stickers on their car. Aside from the fact that I can't believe there are actually people who think that this country is better off than in 2004, I think it looks so tacky to leave them on your auto. I saw a car the other day that had a "Clinton/Gore '96" sticker on it - I swear. I couldn't believe it. So, please, do us all a favor: if you've got lawn signs...

Last night, I watched as America overwhelmingly put their confidence in Barack Obama, electing him the 44th president of the United States of America. Now, I could carry on for some time about what that means to me, as I've done before, I could celebrate the victory, as I'm tempted to do, I could make Sarah Palin jokes, at which I've been all too eager to laugh. But I won't. Because, as I listened to Obama's victory speech last night, I was called to duty as an American to be above that. I was called to duty to put that aside and focus on uniting. I was reminded of how I was moved in Feburary of this year. And then I had a very literal moment of pause as I was suddenly overcome by what we witnessed yesterday. President Elect Obama America chose HOPE over HATE. As rabid Sarah Palin supporters chanted "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!", Obama calming chided us to be above the name calling. As Obama painted a picture of peace, neighborly goodwill, and hope, the opposing candidates painted a picture of war, terror, hate, and fear. They spoke about Obama instead of what their actual plan was....

Seriously, what the hell is going on here? Old car. Outdated siding. Blue Poncho. Cat's ass. Eating something crunchy enough to require the first bite to be via molars. And someone thinking "this would make a good picture." I LOVE it.

I've been running Windows Vista at work for about a year now. I've blogged about Windows Vista before, and I've been mostly let down by it. But I'm here to confess today that Vista has overtaken XP for me. Yep, it's true. I kinda dig Vista. If you perouse the internet, you'll see - pretty much everywhere - that Vista sucks. You'll also see a super harsh, super successful Mac compaign aimied squarely at the PC and Vista, and you'll see Microsoft abandoning the name "Vista" in their marketing initiatives in favor of their new "Windows, not Walls" slogan. Lastly, you'll see Steve Ballmer telling you that waiting for Windows 7 is okay by him. So Vista, by pretty much all accounts, is a flop. When I first began using Vista in February of this year, it was killing me. Application after application wouldn't install. UAC prompts were bombarding me faster than I could "ok" them. The system couldn't copy across the network faster than I could retype my documents (it seemed, at least). It was absolutely unusable. Almost a year later, I have to say, I'm really at home in Vista. I've only ever seen 1 blue screen event,...