Some months ago some guru decided it was time to bombard the world with a new piece of hardware and make our bank account a little lighter. Much lighter. We had to do it, especially Mactards fanboys that we be… but I didn’t.
I was tempted and almost raving about the new device and without having held it in my hands I wrote a glorified review 7 Reasons Why Bloggers Should Buy An iPad.

But I didn’t.

Now times have changed and I’m ready to splurge the cash. Not because I want another dust catcher on my coffee table or a portable device which does not fit in any pair of khakis I own, but because I *need one*.
Yes, you read that right, I am among the few ones who do *need* an iPad. Not because of any impairment or because I have this burning desire to splash money but because we are soon going to release an iPad application for an upcoming project and might even plan a Splashpress Media application. The doubts persist though and I fail to decide and order my share of magicness.

I Need Your Help

So for once I am going to rely on the voice of the masses and ask you to convince me to send more money to Stevo. First though there’s some things you might want to know, mainly about how I use mobility.

I often am on the road and almost always carry my 13″ MacBook with me. It’s the perfect size for me and justifies to carry a daypack with me. Also when at home, I am always online and no matter where, my MB seems to accompany like a little me dog.
The main thing what sold me on my MacBook was its size and the high quality screen. It’s just perfect

Now, I can see advantages in having an iPad. Of course there are the apps we want to release and testing an app without touch does not bring the complete experience. There’s the lighter device, and probably most brilliant remote control for the Mac Mini HTPC. Lastly there’s the option to use the iPad as a second ‘computer’ and as PIM next to the MacBook. To waste time on social networks and Twitter but mainly to check email and the calendar/schedule.

I’m not sure though this justifies the rather heavy expense of €600, which is what the 16GB iPad costs in my neck of the woods. But that would of course not be the only expense: there’s the almost obligatory case, the the best iPad case, probably a keyboard and dock and last but not least the cost to get a US IP so I can watch Hulu Plus on the ‘Pad, albeit not in Web 720p quality. Luckily there’s thousands of quality free iPad apps available.

Please help me and let me know how you would decide: pro or contra the iPad. iPad or a rocking amplifier with subwoofer glueing me to the wall when watching Iron Man 2?

Why does London want to give the world night terrors? What did we ever do to Great Britain?

The official mascot of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Wenlock, is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen. I think they tried to appeal to us geeks by tech-ing it up, but it just looks like the angry love child of Leela from Futurama and the liquid metal Terminator. I think he’s about to shoot a beam of energy out of that great big evil eye and make me melt like that Nazi guy in Raiders. I keep hoping it will point that eye someplace else, but it follows me wherever I go and I don’t understand what I did to make it so mad!

The story goes, as written by children’s lit author Michael Morpurgo, that Wenlock and his Paralympic mascot brother Mandeville were born from two drops of a batch of liquid metal that was poured to become the last beam used to construct the new Olympic Stadium. Wenlock sports a camera for his lone, cyclops eye, a taxi headlight above his head (for no obvious reason), and the five Olympic rings are around his wrists, worn as friendship bracelets.

As if this wasn’t enough to make all your cutesy/sickening Teletubby/Rainbow Bright nightmares come true, now you can own very your own Wenlock as a plush toy. Or actually, you can’t, because they only made 2,012 of them (get it?) and it’s already sold out. I bet an evil scientist bought them all and anytime now he’ll be sending his little army out to lay waste to us human cows.

This is hardly the first time that Olympic mascots turned out weird. You’d almost think there’s a rule in the Olympic bylaws that state all mascots must be as bizarre as possible. Remember Izzy, that reject from an 80s cartoon that served as mascot for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics? Or those goofy little Friendlies from the Beijing Olympics that looked like anime troll dolls? And don’t even get me started about Munich’s weiner dog…

The ball is in your court, Rio. Please give us a decent mascot that’s fun and memorable and won’t make us wet the bed.

I was born in Canada, as were my parents. My deepest apologies. Anyways, that meant that I was raised to be super polite. I remember very specifically going to Toys R Us one day, and walking inside the store while my mother waited at the door. I got about 15 feet past the entrance before I noticed my mom was nowhere to be found, so I walked back to her. “Kevin, you open the door for a lady,” my mother said. I argued – something totally convincing from a 7 year old, I’m sure – and she said, “Well I’m not going in until you open the door for me, and that means you’re not getting anything.” She had a point there, so I opened the door for her. To this day, I open the door for my wife, I walk on the outside of the street from her, and I chew with my mouth closed. Just kinda stuck.

So I was at lunch the other day with my old boss, and we both sat down at the table with our phones on the tables. I turned mine on vibrate so that it wouldn’t interrupt the conversation, and then he did the same. Not 5 minutes later, his phone starts blinking. Mid sentence, he stops, looks through the phone for a second, then starts right back up like nothing ever happened. He did this easily 10 times during our hour-long lunch, which pissed me off pretty good. His focus was obviously split between me and that mystery person on the other end. How could someone be so rude while we’re trying to have a conversation?

Well, I’ve been guilty of it before, and it gets me thinking back to that time in front of Toys R Us. Fact is, we’re now in an “always connected” society. Between mobile e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, texting and cell phones in general, it’s almost difficult to get away from communication. You almost have to make a conscious effort to put away your devices to stay out of the loop, and that in itself can be difficult. Ever left the house without your cell phone? I don’t know about you, but I always feel like I’m lost without it.

It can get dangerous, too. There’s been a lot of talk about texting while driving – which in some states is becoming illegal – but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. I’ve been guilty of checking my Facebook status at a street light or pulling up my e-mail while going down the road. The problem is that it’s addicting – you feel like you’re missing something if you don’t get that text right now or check an e-mail right away. Further compounding that are the people on the other end who expect responses right away. I once lost a job opportunity because I didn’t respond to a Twitter mention within 24 hours.

So what’s the fix? How do we stay in constant contact yet still be polite to the real people in front of you? I’m not really sure, honestly. In my personal life, I try as best as possible to focus on the person I’m with in that moment, but I’ve been known to tear away if I’m expecting an important e-mail or call. I think that eventually this will be figured out by someone like Martha Stewart or another etiquette expert, but until that happens, the only thing I can suggest is this: Keep the phone in your pocket while driving or with a friend, and try to value those in-face interactions. E-mails can be deleted, but those face-to face interactions turn into memories which can last forever.

I work freelance at home and have twitter running in the back, it only takes a tweet from “Lebkov” about starting the day with a nice cup of coffee and next I know I’m craving a sandwich and coffee and have decided to get my lunch there. Each week they have a special sandwich that isn’t on the menu and recently they added one of those specials that I liked to their regular menu. As soon as they tweeted about it I had planned when I would drop by to get a sandwich. So I can state those tweets do have an influence on me.

This is a great way to stimulate their business and build client relationships. We had a very snowy holiday here in the Netherlands, which the country couldn’t handle and it was nice that they tweeted if they where open and till how late. The bookshop also kept customers up to date by tweeting opening days and hours. Saves you from the disappointment of encountering a closed store.

And I don’t know about you but I find a twitter message to pass along info nicer then receiving a newsletter. I associate newsletter emails with annoyance while a nice and short tweet as something great and hip.

I want to know what would happen if they tweeted something like “10% discount to first 5 followers to come in withing half an hour”. I’m geek enough that I check twitter on my iPhone as soon as I find myself waiting somewhere. So who knows I might be close by in case of such a tweet.

It won’t be long before I become Sheldon Cooper, saying

You keep in mind that my sharply-worded comments on yelp.com recently took down a muffin store.

Instead of Yelp it will be Twitter. And instead of menacing the company I would be praising having had a nice lunch and/or coffee. I’m going up a level of geek, get my food because of twitter, take a snap shot of said food with iPhone, posting said shot on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook boring my followers with what I had for lunch.

Claims about Steve Jobs’ health and the decision of the shareholders to re-elect the Apple Board throw a weird shadow on new releases and their _special_ features such as yesterday’s iPod Shuffle update.

With every new release it seems as if the actual Apple team decides to develop less and less for Joe Average but once more opts for their own little nice, a nice of hardcore fanboys and adepts.
The iPod Shuffle headphones conundrum and choice for the glass screen for the MacBook, as well as the decision to drop FireWire on the MacBook and the solitary position of the 17″ MacBookPro seem a clear message to its userbase.

Could it be that Steve Jobs has accepted that his days as CEO are counted but wants to leave Apple, Inc. leaving a battlefield behind: at one side the shareholders who obviously expect that Apple tackles the larger market now and from the other side, the products Steve Jobs and his team want to develop.
Why would Apple decide to launch the new iMac with the small keyboard and lock itself out of the corporate culture, the world of spreadsheets?

Will the new, planned, joint single Blu-ray license be the next step of separation? Can we expect an update to the MB and MBP or will only the MBP receive a BD-RW update after summer?

Their is no doubt that the corporate structure of AAPL split is at this moment. Shareholders obviously want the company to grow, continue it’s market share growth, but does Steve Jobs have the same aim? Does Jobs want to become the next Dell, biggest computer manufacturer and seller, or continue to develop high quality niche market products for a small group of users?

One is sure, Apple lately has decided to take things in own hands again and continue to force the user to be restricted, and _follow_ as Christopher Breen notes

But I’m not the target buyer for this device. If you walk along any city street, ride a subway or bus, or wander through the local gym, you’ll see that nearly everyone uses the stock Apple earbuds. It’s not that their ears are any more ideal for these things than mine, it’s just that most people don’t care or know any better. This is what I got, this is what I’ll use.

And what they get is what Apple decides they get, is what Steve Jobs decides you get. Get on with it.

Until the re-election of the Board.

I don’t particularly follow the mobile phone market unless they are made of Lego blocks, but yesterday I followed the releases over at MWC. Mainly to see what Windows 6.5 would look like and in the hope of more information around the Palm Pre.

For once I must admit that the Redmonders finally got something right with WM6.5. The honeycomb setup for the phone’s homepage looks attractive and most of all usable. That must be a first for Microsoft!
Even though the background of choice too dark is and Windows Mobile still fugly looks with the humongous status bar and its icons, it certainly looks thousand times better than any open source attempt, because no matter whether as full blown distro or on a phone, Tux products always manage to look horrible thanks to their love for thick borders/line on everything.

Obviously nothing beats the looks of today’s most popular and loved phone.

Much has been said about the 7 different editions Windows 7 will be released in. As usual this was a typical example of bloggers complaining just to complain. Things actually are much simpler and we here at Forever Geek will simplify the choice for you and explain why Windows 7 needs different editions.

There are only 3 versions that matter for the consumer

And one probable nuisance for most bloggers.

The most important editions are Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Home Professional. Microsoft has decided to drop the Business label for the XP-known Professional label in a try to simplify the choice for the customer. Differences between both editions are almost the same as in the XP era with Professional having all the features from the Home edition, plus network capacities (join a Windows domain), group policy based management tools, Remote Desktop host capabilities, network-based backup features, and support for the Encrypting file system.

As with XP you will decide for any of those depending on if you run a small network or not. These two editions will be the ones you find on the shelf (in the Western world) and more than 90% of the users will opt for any of those. It’s that simple.

Home Premium edition will be installed on almost all of the PCs you buy at the retailer. I certainly hope that thanks to the Windows Anytime Upgrade program there will be the option to buy your PC with Home Premium or Professional for a supplementary fee. I can perfectly imagine a first login screen with ‘Did you purchase the Professional upgrade? Enter your key here‘ option.
That probably just is wishful thinking from my part.

As with Windows Vista there will be an Ultimate edition. This version is only available on the OEM market or as an upgrade and is nothing more than the Enterprise edition (mainly better encryption options) for the home or small business user.

These are basically the only versions which the regular user will have to work with, chose between. If it weren’t for one edition which will be pushed on users with netbooks.

Windows Starter. Windows starter is restricted to the OEM market and comes with features such as missing Aero UI tweaks and limited to 3 simultaneous applications. For most netbooks users this will be enough because most of time all they need is their web browser, Outlook in the background and maybe an Office program or a media program. But bloggers will grab the occasion to complain about the restriction to 3 programs and the incompatibility with our NADD. Still I think for a majority of the netbook market this edition will be good enough and will have to be good enough as it will come with almost every netbook with Windows.

The last two editions are actually of very little concern for the Western market as they won’t be available to the consumer. Windows 7 Home Basic will only be available to emerging markets and Windows 7 Enterprise is only available for volume license customers. One surprise with the Enterprise edition is that it contains all the features of the Professional version, even the Media Center. As a former system administrator in a building with more than 3000 network clients I certainly wished Enterprise came without Media center, just like Vista Enterprise, because most employee procrastinate too much already. *big grin*

So is this line-up that difficult? Maybe if you can’t decide between these 3 versions, yes Home Premium is what you need or just stay away from the computer.

Should Windows 7 have gone the same way as Mac OS X, only 1 version?

Maybe, although I think there should be a difference between the enterprise and home market (see above). We have seen the disaster with Windows Vista and ‘Vista Capable’.
There is no doubt that for many older computers Vista Basic was the ‘saviour’.
In the era of multiple computers at home there should have been no Home edition and it is perfectly imaginable that the installation process has a built-in feature-checker, installing the appropriate version. But imagine the bitching! Mac users (and I have become one of those) are a special breed and they have a much bigger tolerance to errors than most other users. And I still want to see the first Mac network with 3+k network clients.

When I think of my own PC habits, rarely ever do I use less than 1.2GB of RAM in Vista (Enterprise). So yes it would be sensible for me to feature restrictions when on less powerful machines.
Actually I think there should be one more edition: Starter Professional. A Windows 7 version for netbooks without the 3 simultaneous programs restriction and with network capabilities, but without Aero and without Media Center. The perfect option to give to any employee, whether on a netbook or on their desktop PC.