fillet-of-who?

I always meant to write a better goodbye, let’s give this a shot. Better Nate than lever, no?

It’s hard to believe, but now that I don’t write two or three times a week, I.. I… I kinda miss it.

I know I know… “Impossible!” you say.

“All that work that you guys put in with little readership and no pay! How could that have been satisfying?”

Think of it this way:

Think back to college. That philosophy paper? The one due at 8am tomorrow? You stay up late, writing like a frenzied chimpanzee. (That is to say, somewhat incoherent and generally sloppy, much like your college love life.)

It’s now 5 am. You’ve finished your philosophical masterpiece: What Would Jesus Smoke. Better save that to your flash drive.

Even though your printer is out of color ink, you somehow manage to get the damn thing to spit our your 5 pages of awesome. That wasn’t so hard, it only took two and a half hours. Might as well just go to class at this point.

Your peers trickle in. The professor shows up right on schedule and launches straight into the lecture. He never collects the paper. There was no assignment.

In essence, writing a post for Obscure was much the same. We’d make up some shit and hand it in right before the deadline. Our friends (sometimes) enjoyed what we wrote, but in the end, nobody asked for The Ten Suggestions. Nor did anyone ask us to supplant words in Star Wars quotes with the word, “underpants”. It might have been work at times, and it is possible that we didn’t always put in 100%. Very possible. But the fact is, we did it.

You’re welcome. And thank you, dear readers, for your insidious comments and heckling. You’re a wonderful crowd. We sure had a blast.

<3 The Obscure Inq. Team XOXO

I know I’ve been quick to berate Apple, makers of the iPod, on more than one occasion. But in all honesty, I really don’t feel that bad about it. There is a reason for their arrogance, and again I hate to admit it, but they almost have the right to be arrogant. They are true innovators. Not only do they think outside the box, but their tightly integrated user model makes for solid user experience and allows for greater control and restrictions over the user in the same stroke.

Apples’ greatest strength is their process. I do not believe there to be another company out there that as competently and completely looks at the intended use of a product form a users point of view. From the near over-simplification of the control interface on the iPod to the ease of application installation in OSX, most things really are easier on a Mac.

This setup does have it’s drawbacks. In many cases it assumes a low level of user competency. All of the decisions about nearly everything are made for you. Perfect right? Well no if you want to do something not allowed by their software, such as drag and drop file transfer to an iPod. In this instance, Apple assumes that you will use their iTunes software to organize your music as you are, ostensibly, a disorganized clot who has a mess of improperly labeled and tagged MP3’s in one giant folder. Making this assumption limits the user that does not fit under the middle of the bell curve. The number of this type of user is so limited, however, that they simply aren’t taken into account in the development of the software and hardware.

That being said, having the guts to put out users in and not try to cater to everyone is what makes their products innovative. The blind can’t use visual voice mail, nor can one efficiently dial an iPhone one handed unless you suffer from giantism. However, these caveats are minor in regards to the overall outcome. Another caveat; cost. Apple products are know to be more expensive than a lot of their competitors. The reason should be obvious; it costs money to innovate. Accelerometers and touch screens aren’t cheap, but the outcome of the blended ingredients is always better, just like cooking with fresh ingredients over frozen.

In the end, I respect apple for their forward thinking, audacity and commitment to the user experience.

But that doesn’t mean I like them.

*Disclaimer: My therapist told me I had to say something nice about Apple before I was allowed to be mean and angsty again.*