What follows is a rant against the current culture of complaining about a gadget but then buying it all together. Brought on by the release of the iPad and the recent leak of the iPhone 4G. Basically all Apple products.

The biggest consequence of Apple becoming mainstream is the mindless bitching by users about every little and not so little thing. Apple is becoming Microsoft in that aspect, complains and more complains. While some are funded the ones getting the most attention are the mindless ones.

The iPad

For years users had wanted an tablet from Apple, meanwhile other manufacturers haven’t done much if anything either about tablets. HP very conveniently waited for Apple to release before them.

So the most awaited tablet since Mozes came down the mountain with the 10 commandments tablet is presented. It is received with delight worldwide, till some facts drop, like no flash support. There was so many weblog, articles and tweets complaining about this fact it was like people getting angry because Windows doesn’t ship with IE 6 anymore. And all I keep thinking is why such a drama?

I don’t know about you but flash annoys the hell out of me, except when it’s my WordPress media up-loader. Do you know how many flash banners pop up on my screen every day, most are badly coded so they are stuck on the content. Other sites are so full of it I want to recommend the hospital to replace EEG tests with just showing people some badly coded flash filled websites.

So understandably I could not feel for people getting angry and having countless discussion why it’s wrong for Apple to ignore flash. Then came the day iPad went for sale, 300.000 iPads where sold as of April 4th. I guess the lack of flash wasn’t that an issue after all, huh?

Then Gizmodo had to spoil Christmas

Yes I get it, getting your hands on a prototype for the most awaited product is jackpot. I mean they are running a business that depends on viewership, no site would let this chance pass. But it does make me as an Apple fan girl a bit disappointed.

I’m looking forward for the release of the iPhone 4G, I loved reading everyday speculations of what news it might bring. Getting excited, just like Christmas, you see all those gifts under the tree and your imagination runs wild. Well Christmas was just spoiled, we know for the most part what the iPhone 4G will bring unless Apple makes some last minute changes to it. And when Steve Jobs walks on stage to present the next generation iPhone the fun of that is also gone.

And of course the users opinion gate has opened again; “The iPhone 4G is ugly”, “I hope it has a decent camera” and “I rather have an aluminum back”. You see how we keep going round like that with the last comment. Everyone forgetting the keyword here, prototype, a product that is not yet final and might change before final product.

I guess these are the facts of a commercial world, the most wanted products are held at high expectations. The more users you get the more negative comments you have to expect. Leaks will always be a realistic risk for any company producing a much wanted product. All part of the game.

But a part of me feels we take thing too seriously, if you really don’t like that flash is missing or that the design is not rounded enough, don’t buy it. No company will be able to meet all users demand in one product.

As a geek and gadget lover I have my negative comments too about what is lacking or could be better in a gadget. But I don’t stop the press, rant about it everywhere and then proudly show off the newly bought said gadget.

Side note: about Gizmodo leaking the iPhone 4G I can’t judge them because I don’t know if I would say no to such an opportunity. But to publicly humiliate the guy who lost the phone? Not cool, not cool at all. Brad Colbow made an excellent comic about that.

You see, even I’m writing about it, and I stopped following Stephen Fry’s Twitter account months ago.

He didn’t notice, because I didn’t bother to slag him off and test his incredibly thin skin.

I’m quite surprised that Stephen, who at least gives the impression of being super-intelligent, didn’t realise that building a huge following on the Internet had significant potential for being criticised.

Some people are even nasty.

It’s something that bloggers learned right from the start. Unlike traditional journalists who were fairly exempt from written criticism — most people’s anger burned out once they had to find some paper, a pen, an envelope, a stamp, and the postal address, and then realised that it would take anywhere from a day to a week for the letter to arrive, which might not even be read or reacted to — bloggers have been dealing with trolls, haters, and (gasp) genuine critique for years.

You can develop a thick skin, wimp out and turn comments off, or get out of the blogging game.

You’re even more vulnerable on the takes-three-seconds-to-post-an-insult world of Twitter, except you don’t have to read your @replies.

What my bugbear is: at least in the UK, Stephen Fry seems to have become some kind of celebrity tech god.

He landed the number 4 position in this year’s T3 most influential people in tech list.

Having your photo taken with a new Nokia handset, and being able to boast that you’ve used a lot of PDAs and cellphones in your time, doesn’t really make you an expert.

And anyone can say that they’re annoyed at a web service (Plaxo) after they’ve forgotten to set their privacy controls correctly.

Number FOUR, and you’ve buggered your privacy settings?

I can see the hate email coming now. Fry is a national institution. I just wonder why, when it comes to tech, some people hang on his views. That’s like paying John and Edward to give singing lessons.

One apology: to our international readers who have no idea who these people are.

First lets put things straight: these tattoos look rather cute. BUT, no tattoo artist should accept to make facial body art on an barely major person. 18 _IS_ too young to make that kind of decision.
Now the story.

Belgian girl Kimberley Vlaminck, 18, is suing Rouslan Tourmaniantz to make him pay for removal of the 53 tattoos on her face. No one knows why/how she fell asleep at the parlour, but she only requested three little stars. Drug allegations are obvious but the artists denies having doped or hypnotized Kimberley.

“I think he didn’t understand what I wanted,” the teenager complained to the UK Sun. “He spoke only fractured English and French, but I explicitly said in my native tongue, French, that I wanted three little stars only near my left eye.” (The French words for three (“trois”) and 56 (“cinqueante et six”) sound nothing alike. Maybe go with hand gestures next time.)

Still I think the tats look kinda curte.

Update: After sueing the tattooist for deliberate assault and battery, they have now come to an agreement. The tattooist will pay for half of the expenses of having the tattoos removed by laser. The estimated cost of this is €10 000, but he says he doesn’t want the girl to be unhappy or feel scarred for the rest of her life.

Update 2: Kimberley has admitted that she asked for all 56 stars. Aaawwwwww…

Tomorrow, June 17th 2009, Apple servers will probably crumble under the huge amount of downloads when the iPhone 3.0 OS release is published. The hype around the new operating system for Apple’s Jesus phone is big. For the first time since the iPhone was released the phone will offer more standard features, features as we know them from competitor phones. Basic features such as BlueTooth and MMS.

I have been playing with OS 3.0 GM since almost a week now and must say that I enjoy the update. Sadly Apple’s phone will continue to be a crippled device and make my colleagues laugh at me whenever they want to share pictures or multimedia files with me.

Apple, get your act together and offer me decent, fully compatible BlueTooth features!

Unlike many you will not hear me complain about the update prices, I do tend to use my phones longer than only 12 months. I still am bound to a contract and to be honest it makes more sense to me to wait some more months than to upgrade immediately. If I buy a car now and the manufacturer updates the model next year, I will not buy the new one the day it comes out either.

What I do expect from my Jesus phone is to finally be able to connect to other phones and share files. I am aware of the possibility to send photos via email, or MMS at final last, but I also want to be able to finally send/share my music library. I did understand why BlueTooth was no option as long iTunes DRM’ed was, but now iTunes is DRM free. And many of us paid to upgrade our media to DRM free format.

I really wonder if these basic features are asked too much, especially now the new model, iPhone 3GS with video camera comes and even a compass on board has! I do not really care about a compass or voice control, what I want is fully fledged BlueTooth, FFS!