Lofty Goals

In the wake of World War 2 and the spread of globalization, New York City found itself with an excess of large, empty lofts meant for manufacturing work. As a result, they had to lease these places for dirt cheap. This attracted a number of artists from painters to sculptors and everything in between to set up shop. The understanding was that these facilities were not to be residences. To that end, anything like air conditioning, running water, and even electricity in some places had to be installed at the renter’s expense. As might be expected, these artists did in fact make homes of these lofts, the landlords simply looking the other way most of the time since they were getting paid and even having utilities installed at no cost to them. Eventually, these landlords started to get tired of being taken advantage of, so they moved to evict these artists from their spaces so they could renovate them into upscale apartments. Some lobbying and political dealings later and the Loft Act was introduced in 1982. Officially called Article 7-C of the New York Multiple Dwelling Law, the long and short of this new lease on life for the artists was that they were allowed to maintain their spaces with rent control in full effect on the condition that they were in fact full-time artists making a living from their art. You were a professional or you were out. That was the deal. Many of these artists are still working to this day in the same space they leased all those decades ago. It’s a charming little piece of history. 

In 2013, I self-published a novella. At least, I call it a novella. According to some guidelines I read here and there, what I actually produced should be called a novelette. Frankly, I think discussions of book length are the very picture of pedantic. Rendezvous with Rama clocks in at a little less than 260 pages and Atlas Shrugged is over 1200, yet no one bats an eye at calling either of them novels. Fun fact: L. Ron Hubbard's posthumously published Mission Earth was originally a single, million-plus word novel broken up into ten separate volumes between 1985 and 1987. At the end of the day, some stories take more telling than others and the rest is simply publishers making sure they get their money’s worth from your work. Anyway, for my self-publishing, I used a service called Smashwords. They took on the task of formatting my document into an ePub format and then distributing it to all the notable ebook sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books, to name a few. Originally I put the book out there with a price tag, but decided to make it free after about two years time. I even posted it to my DeviantART page. The price was more of a statement than anything else; It was to prove that I was serious about my work, even if the book is immensely silly. I mean, the chapter titles are quotes from Return of the Jedi. Despite having no science fiction elements at all beyond the occasional defiance of physics, I was indebted to two figures who helped bring a faraway galaxy to our theaters: George Lucas and Sir Alec Guinness. 

I took writing advice from both of them. Lucas set aside a block of time each day to sit at his desk and write away on his legal pads. The deal was he stayed there for the whole time no matter what, whether he wrote a little or wrote a lot. That was my schedule on the book from November through early the next year. I’d come home from work, and apart from bathroom breaks and dinner, I stayed at that keyboard whether I wrote a sentence, a paragraph, a whole chapter, or nothing at all. As for the late and great Sir Guinness, he once told Don Swaim of BookBeat that the best way to keep yourself motivated in writing is not to get up or stop or otherwise take a break unless you know what the next thing you’re going to put down is. In other words, don’t take a break when you get stuck. This has a few positive effects, but I think the most prominent one is that it helps keep your vision fresh in your mind. It’s like challenging yourself to memorize a long string of numbers. The brain is a muscle and the more you use it, the better you’ll be at keeping thoughts fresh in your mind. 

I may not be a professional writer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t take what I do as seriously as one. 

Then I got an email yesterday. 

A few years earlier, Smashwords had been acquired by another self-publishing/on-demand entity called Draft2Digital. Nothing really changed in that time except the layout of the website. However, with this email, they announced a rather drastic change to what exactly they expected from their writers. 

In short, if your book sales fell below 100USD in a 12-month period, you had to pay a 12USD annual maintenance fee. That is, if your books weren’t selling, and Draft2Digital wasn’t getting their cut of the sales, you had to pay the rent out of pocket for the honor of having your books listed on their site. 

Oh, how I wish my sales had exceeded a full Benjamin at any point. That’s not entirely true; like I said, it was more a matter of principle that I charged for the book at first. Still, you never know what’s going to blow up, so better to hedge your bets. I completely understand why Draft2Digital wants to go this route. Their revenue is made from book sales, and servers aren’t free. There’s a reason they call it a maintenance fee. Digital real estate is still real estate and not every company is Google and can therefore afford to float a few freeloaders. I mean, I haven’t paid for this blog. Google keeps Blogger around more or less out of the goodness of its heart. 

Frankly, I don’t like the idea of paying 12 bucks a year for every year I don’t make 100 or more in selling my silly little stories, so I made a decision. I delisted everything I’d put up there, and I’m in the process of closing my account. There wasn’t actually a way to do that on their site, so I had to email them, which was prefaced with a warning on the web page that there was a massive influx of inquiries and so it may take some time to receive a response. 

I think it’s fair to presume a number of other people aren’t too keen on the maintenance fee. 

Anyway, according to my account, my fee wouldn’t even be charged until March of next year, so I’m not at all flustered about the time it may take to receive a response about closing my account. Who knows, maybe they’ll even walk this back in a few days or weeks given the sheer volume of people jumping ship. 

As I said, I don’t blame them for this move and I do honestly wish them success going forward. I’m clearly not cut out to be on their platform and there’s no point in my taking up their server space. As a result, the only way to read the book now is on my DeviantART page, and that will be the case for at least the next two years. 2028 will make the book 15 years old. On that anniversary, my plan is to re-release it, maybe with an introduction or some additional material. I’ve had a sequel in mind for some time, but I have no timeframe for when that’s going to be made a reality, so you’ll just have to settle for the original. Back when I published the book in 2013, I think I originally wrote it in Evernote and then used some other application to convert it into a Word document. In the years since then, I’ve learned that Apple’s word processor, Pages, has a neat little pipeline baked into it that lets you send your manuscript straight through to Apple Books. One single application and no annual maintenance fees. I can still export to an ePub and have it made available through other stores like Kindle, but I don’t really care so much about reach. As a wise and disembodied voice once said, “If you build it, they will come.” 

New York built lofts, and along came the artists. 

Update: Received a reply from Draft2Digital and they clarified that the maintenance fee will only be charged to accounts with books listed. You do not need to delete your account if you don't want to. In fact, if you do delete your account and decide to open one later, you are charged a one-time activation fee. To review, if you delist your books, you are not charged the maintenance fee. Deactivating your account is not necessary to avoid the fee. 

Bleep You, Got Mine (and I'm sorry)

Probably the biggest mistake you can make when it comes to building a PC is believing it will save you money. Of course, there’s the obvious time sink of researching just what it is you’ll be doing in the first place, learning why some parts will or will not go together, sourcing all the parts in the first place, and the omnipresent possibility of something going horribly, horribly wrong and there being no recourse beyond opening your wallet again. What you might save in money, you’ll lose in time… and possibly a little sleep. 

I’ve built PCs, and I don’t miss it. At this point in my life, I’d rather pay for the peace of mind via professional assemblies than the satisfaction of building something with my own two hands (and having to be my own technical support). It was certainly a learning experience, and I’ll always be grateful for that. In terms of cost, I didn’t really pay as much attention as I should have, but I know at least once or twice I had to basically start over and source a new part because something was amiss, including swapping out an entire motherboard because I plugged something in wrong. To be fair, when I was assembling PCs, it was circa 2010-2015, which meant I had it easy. There’s no shortage of tutorials on PC assembly, and the way PCs are built in this era to begin with is a much different animal than it would have been 20 or even 10 years ago. To put it in perspective, I didn’t learn to solder until 2016 for my job. None of the PCs I built required any soldering, but this was most certainly not the case 20 or 30 years earlier. 

In food terms, you’re assembling a sandwich. The bread is the case, the lettuce is the motherboard, the pickles are the RAM, the meat is the CPU, the mayo is the thermal paste… it’s not a perfect metaphor, but you get the idea. You’ve got individual components that just snap together to eventually form a fully working personal computer workstation. In other words, in terms of time, I actually had it pretty easy. 

Now, about those pickles…

Without getting into a long-winded rundown of just what RAM (Random Access Memory) is, think of it this way: The hard drive is your long term memory. It’s your name, your family’s faces, the streets you grew up on, and anything else you don’t want to forget. The more of it you have, the more you can remember without having to forget something first. RAM is your short term memory plus your ability to multitask. The more of it you have, the more you can do at once. It’s also probably the simplest and most straightforward upgrade you can perform on your computer. I like to tell people that if you can change a diaper, you are overqualified to swap out the RAM in a computer. Even if you need someone to talk you through it the first time, after your first go, you’ll be showing it off at parties.

In my personal experience, RAM has always been very costly. I’ve easily spent more on RAM than I have on motherboards (spontaneous failures notwithstanding). There have been many reasons for this. Games tend to be a bit RAM hungry, especially considering online games in which you’re often running at least two or three other applications at the same time, one of which is doubtless a web browser with two-dozen tabs open. During the pandemic, when we were all stuck at home and relying on our computers to check in at work, start that live-streaming channel, or virtually send our kids to school, RAM prices went up. That old desktop you bought a few years earlier wasn’t going to cut it, but you couldn’t afford to replace the whole thing, so you swapped out a few parts. 

I’m sorry to tell you, but you were over a barrel. We all were. 

There was a demand, so the cost of the supply went up. It’s simple economics. Ironically, something that should have been the cheapest upgrade (sticks of RAM don’t nearly have nearly as much meat on their bones as a motherboard, a CPU, or a hard drive) became a hot commodity. 

One company has understood this better than anybody: Apple. Actually, that’s a slight lie; Apple understands the economics, but ultimately plays by its own rules. As a rule, once you’ve purchased an Apple product like a MacBook or an iMac, you cannot swap out or upgrade the RAM, no matter how many diapers you’ve changed nor how much sleep you're willing to lose. When you make that purchase, you’d better be thinking of how it will impact the next seven generations. Otherwise, you’re going to be left wanting down the road. So, do you splurge now and hopefully be content for the next few years, or do you settle and upgrade more often? Apple technically wins in either case. 

I talked before about the pandemic driving up the price of RAM. Well, now the newest plague to befall mankind is artificial intelligence. 

Without getting into a long-winded rundown of Generative AI and Large Language Models, the important thing to understand is that these chatbots and image generators need a lot of processing power and a lot of short term memory. The tech companies behind these AI tools are building more and larger data centers all over the country and even around the world. The demand for RAM is so out of control that Micron, one of the largest manufacturers of RAM decided to no longer sell to consumers and focus on its corporate clients, the ones building the datacenters.

What this means for consumers is that if you thought the RAM prices during the pandemic were bad (and possibly before that) then you haven’t seen anything yet, and the only thing that’s going to stop it is this whole AI bubble finally collapsing on itself because no amount of Sam Altman saying, “Trust me, Bro!” Is going to make this so-called business model sustainable.

This is the part where I humbly brag. As an actor friend of mine once said, “Save your rotten fruit for the parking lot. I’ll have more places to hide.” 

Back in 2020, shortly after I bought my house at the start of the lockdowns, I purchased a Mac mini as a housewarming gift to myself. I’d wanted one since they debuted back around 2005, but the planets never quite aligned just right for me to make the decision. 15 years later, the alignment netted me a 2018 Intel-based model with 8 Gigabytes of RAM. I could have sworn I opted for 16, but I think I talked myself down since I was going to use it mostly for writing, drawing, and at most some 3D modeling in SketchUp. Anyway, despite the low hardware specs, the little gray box I nicknamed Gray Rock served me very well for the next five years. Even after Apple changed their processors from Intel to a homegrown lineup known as Apple Silicon, the little Gray Rock that could was holding up just fine and dandy. 

I knew I couldn’t keep this up forever, though. While the hardware would probably last many more years, software is another problem. With the change in processors, applications were leaving the old processing architecture behind and were being optimized for the new kid on the block. This sort of hardware upgrade/software optimization leap frog happens regardless of paradigm shifts in processor types, but Apple’s new in-house strategy lit a fire under developers to get with the times. 

There was, of course, a new version of the Mac mini, but I have to say I wasn’t too impressed with it. I mean, sure, it’s nice and compact, but it presented a problem for me. While I like Apple’s hardware offerings such as the Mac mini and the iPads, I’m less keen on Apple’s accessories. I don’t like their keyboards, I don’t like their mice, and while their monitors are nice, you can do a lot better for a lot less. As for the mice and keyboards, Apple cares more about form than function in this regard, and that means favoring wireless over having cables crisscrossing what’s supposed to be a sleek, minimalist setup. In other words, my mouse and keyboard needed to be plugged in, and the new Mac mini would have required me to use an adapter. This is a pain, so I searched other options. I guess I’d simply turned into too much of a Prosumer for the Mac mini’s casual demographic. This led me to the Mac Studio, a higher-end desktop with a similar-ish form factor to Gray Rock, the notable difference being the Studio’s doubled height to accommodate a massive heatsink and cooling fan. Needless to say, it had a lot more horses under the bonnet than my model that rolled off the assembly line 7 years ago. It also had more RAM out of the gate, with the minimum being 36 gigabytes. This was starting to look like the perfect upgrade; it had over 4 times the RAM, a new processor, and I could plug in all my favorite accessories without some clumsy adapter. Throw in a special discount that doubled the hard drive space for the same price, and I took it as a sign.

In the first week of August of this year, my new Mac Studio arrived and Gray Rock was shipped back to be recycled. In its honor, the new Studio was given a similar nickname Grimlock (after a Transformer), and it’s been a great upgrade for only taking up so much more room than its predecessor. I may not be pushing its specs with my typical workload, but I’m going for a slow burn rather than anything fast and furious. Even when I’m using a 3D modeling program like Blender, I’m only really using it to make perspective and shadow reference models for drawing. 

I’ve been thinking about the timing of my purchase in relation to the spikes in RAM prices. I was under the impression, since Apple’s processors were being made in-house and their RAM works a little differently from the Intel-based models, that Apple was safe from the increased demand. After all, they already charge a premium for RAM when you’re configuring your initial purchase, so I was kind of ahead of the game in that regard. At least, I thought that was the case. Turns out Apple does still rely on these RAM manufacturers for their own machines, and it’s only a matter of time before the price spikes affect Apple’s own price tags (which already have a reputation). 

For whatever it’s worth to you out there thinking of buying a new PC or taking on the risk of building one, I absolutely hate that this is happening. There is no smug look on my face as I sit at my Studio typing this out. I hate the reason for it happening most of all. I hate this far off pipe dream of promise of some kind of computer generated hive mind and all we need for it is to build more power- and water-hungry data centers and for you to keep asking Gemini to make you images of Mickey Mouse cleaning an assault rifle while writing your college term papers for you. 

Apple Intelligence is available on both Grimlock and Sapphire (my iPad). It has not been enabled. I have no desire to enable it. Few things in this universe would please me more than for the parts of their processors dedicated to AI features to be used for something else.

The Great UnGoogling: The Sign

I genuinely once wrote a blog entry using the browser of a PSP while sitting outside a library after hours to use their Wi-Fi. That was many years ago, and I have a lot less patience for when things don’t work. I’ve had my Blogger account for longer than any other platform, with the possible exception of DeviantART. It’s been far from perfect overall, but I’ve stuck with it. I’ve tolerated the occasional workarounds, to say nothing of the site’s frankly dated interface. If anyone were to ask me where to go for a blogging service, my knee-jerk is pretty much WordPress. For all the issues I have with them putting features behind paywalls after previously offering them for no charge (as well as their domain name services, which are downright scummy), WordPress offers the single best WYSIWYG interface for making media-rich text. Everything is laid out nice and neat, I can move things around with ease, and post settings are straightforward and intuitive.

My point is the problem with WordPress is more with me than anything they do. I suppose it’s fair to say that Blogger spoiled me. Everything Blogger offers is free (unless you want a domain name) because Google is a big evil monolith of a company that gets their money by other means (in my case, cloud storage). WordPress is not Google. At least, they’re nowhere near the size of Google and have fewer means at their disposal to keep the lights on.

Recently, I’ve encountered an issue with Blogger using my browser of choice, Safari. It acted like I wasn’t logged in, even though I was. This problem’s worst aspect was being unable to upload or otherwise post any images. After a tedious back-and-forth with Google’s worthless support, I eventually figured out the issue is with WebKit, a toolkit at the very heart of both Safari and my other browser of DuckDuckGo. I waited for a few updates to my OS and had better luck, but as of this writing I’m still not able to post images. That’s a slight lie; I can post images but I have to use another browser that doesn’t rely on WebKit, such as Edge or Firefox. I don’t want to do that. I know this sounds like being stubborn, but I’m just tired of workarounds. Updates always cause certain pieces of software to break, that’s unavoidable. What’s frustrating however is how long an issue can persist. In a time of software-as-a-service, I don’t think there’s any excuse for a known issue; You’ve got the revenue, you’ve got the personnel, fix it… and no pizza or energy drinks until you do.

This all coincides with a recent change I’ve been making over the course of the past year to UnGoogle my life. It started with no longer relying on Google for logins, password management, or two-factor authentication. That was a very big step and so far it’s had no downsides. I do still have a Google account overall, including a Gmail and cloud storage. Gmail is the best email service I’ve ever used and the cloud storage is really just a backup for other storage services I have, including some good old-fashioned physical drives I have to plug in to my desktop. Blogger is my biggest anchor, the most important reason I haven’t abandoned Google entirely. The recent WebKit fiasco, however, has given me pause. Couple that with the promo pricing offers that WordPress likes to email me, and I can’t help but see it as a sign to jump ship and go all in on WordPress for my blogging needs going forward.

So, given the scope of this endeavor as well as my reservations, I consulted my decision matrix. The decision matrix is a spreadsheet that catalogs the results of three virtual assistants asked to flip a coin. At the risk of sounding spiritual, I concentrate on the question while each coin is being flipped. Heads means to go for it. Tails means don’t do it. The result is a two out of three. The assistants are Siri, Alexa, and Google. Siri said to go for it while Alexa and Google said not to. The only time I’ve ever vetoed the decision matrix was when I upgraded my phone from a 12 mini to a 15. I’d held on to the 12 for a long time, even replacing the battery at one point, and the price on the 15 was pretty hard to beat since it was on the way out. As for WordPress, there exists a possibility of being vetoed and I go all in, but don’t hold your breath. Besides, the deal would only last for three years, and then I’d have to pay closer to full price again. I just don’t feel like it’s worth it right now.

I did decide on changing the theme for my other WordPress site for the umpteenth time. I was going to go for a rather bland but practical number creatively called Twenty Twenty-Five. My only real beef with it was putting color customization behind a paywall. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the futility of the situation. For as much as I love dark mode (give me light text on a dark background or give me death), not everyone consumes blogs the same way, and that's completely fine. You've doubtless got a "reader mode" on your browser of choice and can therefore render any theme on any blog obsolete. If you want black on white, white on black, yellow on navy, orange on gray, maroon on pink, I cannot stop you and I wouldn't want the power to do so anyway. Please, by all means, go bananas with my blessing. 

The Great UnGoogling: First Steps

Google pays Apple around 18 Billion every year for their search engine to be the default in the Safari browser. For perspective, that’s roughly NASA’s annual budget. Bear in mind, this isn’t some exclusivity deal. You can change the default search engine in Safari with just a little spelunking into the menu system. Like most things with Apple, the solution is simple, just not obvious.

If you’re on an iPhone:
Go to Settings. 

Scroll down to Apps.
Find Safari.
You’ll see an option for Search Engine.
Tapping on it reveals a list of options with Google at the top.
Take your pick.
You’re all clear, Kid. Now let’s blow this thing and go home.

The desktop environment has fewer steps, but works much the same way; it’s neatly tucked away in settings, far from hidden, but not calling attention to itself. Like I said, simple, not obvious. As for that list of options, it may seem like slim pickings, and it kind of is. Once upon a time, it was kind of the Wild West. There was Yahoo! and Google, of course, but there was also the likes of Excite and Lycos. Those two are still technically around, but they’re very much shadows of their former selves and not selectable on Safari’s shortlist. In fact, the only search engine I know of that came on the scene with a lot of hype and died almost as quickly was Cuil (pronounced “cool”), lasting only from 2008 to 2010. As to how we came to have one big slice with many rail-thin slices that would blow away in a gentle breeze if you tried to serve them on a plate, that’s a discussion people have earned degrees investigating. So, let’s just call it (Un)Natural Selection Meets The Law of Averages and carry on.

Touching back on those thin slices, they all stand a very good chance of becoming bigger pieces of the pie with the recent backlash Google has gotten for failing to uphold their founding mantra of “don’t be evil”. There’s been too many issues to cover in great detail here, from exploiting behavioral economics to legal troubles to policy changes contrary to earlier promises. Speaking only for myself, I’ve been making moves since the start of the year to slowly but surely de-Google my life, a kind of unintentional New Year’s Resolution. I don’t plan on quitting Google entirely, mostly because of my blog here as well as my YouTube channel, Gmail, and maybe Google Drive (which I'm considering moving to an external drive). My first real step in this direction was eliminating instances wherein I use my Google account to log in to a service. That took a very long time, but was ultimately painless and now I log in to those services through other means.

My next step was choosing a new default search engine, which brings us to that list of options. Yahoo! was an outright no from me. I closed my email account there some time ago and the only real attachment I have to them is Flickr, which I almost never use, at best serving as a plan B if I decide to give up on Instagram. Bing is okay; it’s by Microsoft, a company I have very mixed feelings about, but overall it’s a perfectly competent search engine. I don’t know a lot about Ecosia, except that it’s some kind of nonprofit that plants trees. I simply don’t see a gimmick like that being sustainable, which makes me sad as it’s a very noble cause.

In the end, I chose DuckDuckGo, and I’ve been using it for a few weeks now. It is partly built on Bing and primarily emphasizes privacy. What this means is that when you search something, DuckDuckGo doesn’t keep track of where you’ve been and what you’ve searched for, and does not use this data to target ads to you or otherwise tailor your search results to consider your browsing habits. I’ve never used Google without logging in to my Google account, so I don’t know what the search experience is like for everyone else. The consensus of late is that the search results feel fundamentally broken as they push AI features that are hit or miss at best as well as giving special favor to companies that buy advertising space on the platform rather than emphasizing relevance. Few things in this world irk me more than someone saying, “Just Google it!” as it exposes their ignorance to just how Google works. Put simply, my search results are not going to look like yours because of our different browsing habits. Google tracks what you look for and tries to find results that fit, often creating a kind of echo chamber.

One of the criticisms of DuckDuckGo and to a similar extent Bing is that the search results aren’t as “good” as Google. What is meant by this is that the results are less tailored and require a little more heavy lifting on your part. This isn’t the best example, but you’ll get the idea: when I put “flip a coin” into Google, it loads an applet that flips a virtual coin. When I put “flip a coin” into DuckDuckGo, I don’t get an applet. Instead, I get a list of websites that offer random number generators with coin-flipping options, along with articles detailing the history of the coin flip as well as the mathematical probabilities of using different currencies in the flipping. In other words, it’s not flipping the coin for me, it’s directing me to where I can get help with flipping a coin as I don’t have one on me and need to decide where I’m going to go for lunch. DuckDuckGo isn’t trying to be the answer. It knows it’s a directory. Google is trying to be the answer, at least for simple things like flipping coins or telling me the current temperature in Madagascar or the results of an election. At least, they started with simple things. Now, they’re trying to get AI to deliver more concise answers to more complex questions. I once asked Google which finger types the 6 on a keyboard. The first result was an AI summary that insisted it was the ring finger on the right hand. Needless to say, this is very wrong*. I tried again with different wording, thinking maybe I confused it. The result was the same. Sometime later, when I asked the same question, it did away with the AI summary and gave me a list of websites about learning to type.

To be fair, DuckDuckGo does have some AI features and will occasionally feature a summary at the top, but this is actually a pretty rare occurrence, even when I ask a direct question rather than inputting a string of keywords. Sometimes, the AI summary will only show a blank bar with an option for me to generate the summary. Other times, it’s placed far down the list, sometime after the 5th or 6th result. The point is that DuckDuckGo isn’t trying to force it on me, and I appreciate that. It’s still interested in the technology and wants it to be better, but it knows to make it more or less “opt-in” compared to Google. 

DuckDuckGo also offers itself as a full-fledged web browser. I have it on my phone, but I don't really use it for anything. It doesn't even have a Reader View like Safari, so it's not very practical right now and I don't expect new features to roll out any time soon. It's a small company with few employees that operates under a very utilitarian and minimalist philosophy. Much as I think a Reader View would be a given for a utilitarian and minimalist philosophy, I can still respect their barebones approach to what the browser offers. They also offer this subscription service that includes a VPN, identity theft protection, and a personal data removal service**. It’s about 100 a year, and while I don’t have any real need at the moment for what’s on offer, I am considering it as a way to support the cause. I like what DuckDuckGo is doing and I hope they become a substantially bigger slice of the pie. 

I’ll have further entries on my UnGoogling progress, but I wanted to start it off light and simple, something that most people can do without having to make any serious commitments or disrupt any routines.

* On reflection, I think the problem was that Google was assuming I wanted to use the number pad to the right of the keyboard rather than the number row along the top. After all, if you rest your right hand on the number pad, your middle finger falls on the five, putting the 6 right under your ring finger.

** Basically, they put in requests to data brokers to remove your personal information from their records, kind of like a digital "do not call list". I'd previously tried a service called Incogni to see if it would cut down on the damned robocalls. The results have been mixed, but given the majority of these robocalls are from scam artists, I don't expect them to play nice and uphold their part of the Geneva Convention. Needless to say, if I ever find any of these scum piles in the wild or locate their call centers, I will not abide by the Convention, either. 

The First Byte Is With The i

People have probably earned Master’s degrees analyzing Apple’s classic rainbow logo. The apple represents knowledge and the rainbow represents order—oh, but there’s a catch; there’s a bite taken out of the apple and the colors are all out of order, representing disruption, a rebellious upset of the status quo. It’s hard to imagine now for most people, but once upon a time Apple was the scrappy underdog upstart that relied on its fans for its marketing as much as anything by a professional advertising agency.

Supposedly, the colored bands across the apple presented a challenge as far as making the badges, especially considering every machine was going to have one somewhere on its casing. It was costly and tedious, but the company knew what it wanted. The rainbow would eventually fade in favor of a single color depending on which of their iMacs and/or iBooks you purchased. Following that, they stuck with a flat monochrome, though the rainbow does technically live on in their new range of iMacs echoing their classic predecessors from the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

What’s unique about Apple’s branding is that tech companies, as a rule, shy away from anything flashy or colorful.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Microsoft’s Windows has had a similar trajectory in terms of branding, trading its colorful, curvy squares and swish for a flat and sober arrangement of squares. Of course, outside of Microsoft’s Surface lineup, you don’t really see their logo on the machines that carry their operating system, except maybe for a small foil sticker somewhere on the casing, typically next to the one for the processor and the one for the graphics card. 

Then there’s ViewSonic, which doesn’t know what it wants in terms of branding.

I’ve used ViewSonic monitors for years and they’ve never let me down. They’re reasonably priced, they have a wide selection, and they offer a high quality image. That said, they frustrate and disappoint me in a way only the decisions of a large tech company can.

Before I made the leap from a large Android phone from Sony to an iPad for my drawing, I poked around the Android market to see what would meet my needs. Unfortunately for me, most of the Android tablet offerings didn’t really have creative productivity in mind. Their target audience was people who just wanted to read a book, browse the web, or watch a streaming service. Even the few that tried to appeal to the artist crowd usually came up short and asked a pretty high price, so high that you might as well have saved yourself some money and just gotten a damn iPad, which I did.

Android tablets are slim pickings these days, dominated by only half a handful of companies, namely Amazon and Samsung. To the latter’s credit, they’ve made a pretty good go of giving the iPad a run for its money with creative professionals. Before that, though, it seemed all the major players wanted a piece of the Apple-dominated pie. I even remember Toshiba offering a line of fairly reasonably priced tablets. They had terrible displays, but that was really where a lot of these companies cut the most corners. So, when I saw that ViewSonic was making Android tablets, I was elated. 

ViewSonic has a logo that stands out among the other tech companies, even giving Apple some stiff competition, albeit it’s a little anemic on the academic analysis front. It’s three Gouldian finches huddled together in a neat little row, their feathers a vibrant mix of yellows, blues, purples, and a touch of red around the eyes of the outer two. It is really less of a logo and more of a promotional illustration, not unlike Apple’s original woodblock logo of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under a tree (before they “got to the point” and went with the apple itself).

I thought, “Can you imagine how cool that would be to be rocking a tablet with those three birds where anyone else would expect to see an Apple logo!?” Between that and ViewSonic offering quality monitors, it seemed like a no-brainer. Then, I browsed the selection and saw no trace whatsoever of the finches. Not even the bezel on the front had them like they do for some of their monitors. All they had was the ViewSonic name embossed on the back. I was furious, that special kind of furious you reserve for the most first world of first world problems, the one that has you toppling a chair as you storm out of the room before marching back in to continue hurling abuse at the screen.

“AND ANOTHER THING…!”

Seriously… you idiots! You had a Gouldian opportunity to show up Apple and make a name for yourself in the tablet space, and you blew it. It didn’t help they also weren’t offering any better resolution or image quality than their competition, indicating they simply put their name on something so they could say, “Yeah, we tried the tablet thing, but it didn’t work out. Let’s go back to making monitors.” The lineup did not last and the Android tablet market would implode practically overnight following that saturation of everything except colored logos.

I bring this all up because I was considering upgrading my monitor to an ultra wide (the 21:9 ratio instead of the typical 16:9). I found a model that seemed to tick all the boxes except having the finches on them. That’s not really a dealbreaker for me, just disappointing. When I looked at the monitor’s specifications, something caught my attention. It’s not uncommon for monitors to have built-in USB hubs to help with cable management. It’s actually pretty smart. You’ve typically got your PC tower on the floor under your desk, so rather than get extension cables for all of your peripherals, you plug one long cable from the PC to the monitor, and then plug all of your peripherals into the monitor.

However, this particular model had only one USB port, but proudly proclaimed: 

“Connect your compatible computer through the dual HDMI 2.0 and one DisplayPort inputs. A USB-A 2.0 port allows you to connect peripherals such as a wireless keyboard and mouse adapter through the monitor.”

I was very puzzled by this. How can you plug a mouse and keyboard into the monitor and then somehow get them to connect to your computer? Is there some obscure feature to the HDMI or DisplayPort connection that I don’t know about? I mean, both HDMI and DisplayPort carry audio information, maybe there’s another channel in the mix for other purposes. I decided to get some clarification and try my luck with the Q&A section of the B&H listing where I was originally browsing. A staff member got back to me within about 24ish hours and clarified that the USB port on the monitor is to plug in a USB thumb drive for the sole purpose of upgrading the monitor’s firmware.

As of this writing, the B&H page for the monitor is unchanged, still claiming that the USB port on the monitor is for computer peripherals. I don’t blame B&H for that; they’re getting their sales blurb directly from ViewSonic. So, I went to the source and found this: 

“Two HDMI (v2.0) inputs, one DisplayPort (v1.4) input, and one USB-A (v2.0) input offer flexible connectivity so you can directly connect your keyboard, mouse and other peripherals.

Change the way you work and play with the VX3418-2K monitor today.

*165Hz refresh rate with DisplayPort only”

Now I was really puzzled. This is the source. This is the company making the thing. Do they know something I don’t? I found their sales support email and wrote them to get some clarification on the listing. Like B&H, they were very prompt in their response: 

Thank you for contacting ViewSonic!

Taking a look at the VX3418-2K, I can confirm that the USB-A is only for updating the monitors firmware. I have included an image of the user guide that explicitly states it.

Not too sure why it is marketed in this manner, but this is something we can take a look at and correct. Thank you for pointing this out.

So, they did… sort of… clumsily... and hastily: 

“Two HDMI (v2.0) inputs, one DisplayPort (v1.4) input, and one USB-A (v2.0) input** offer flexible connectivity so you can directly connect your keyboard, mouse and other peripherals.

Change the way you work and play with the VX3418-2K monitor today.

*165Hz refresh rate with DisplayPort only

**For firmware updgrade (sic) use only”

I hear LG monitors are pretty good.

Mac mini-er

OR:

Pint-Sized Port Problems 

I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t think I ever have been. Something I did learn recently from YouTuber and podcaster CGPGrey was that instead of a specific goal, try having a theme for the year. For this year, I decided it would be the year of upgrades. It sounds like an excuse to spend money, but bear in mind I make a very strong distinciton between a purchase and an investment. After all, the keyword is “upgrade.” For starters, I upgraded my iPad because I wanted more storage. I bought a new bed. I got some furniture. The biggest investment has been a water softener. I also had to get a new toilet, but that was more spur of the moment, though nonetheless qualifies as an investment. 
Now, I’m debating how much farther to take my upgrades. Specifically, I’m looking down from the monitor and right above my keyboard to the very device I’m using to write this. I have a 2018 Intel-based Mac mini that I bought as a housewarming gift to myself in April of 2020. It only began showing its age this year while I was working on Inktober. I decided to work entirely in SketchUp for this year, work on my shot composition and 3D modeling skills rather than ink and paper. During that time, I realized just how slow and cumbersome a task as simple as rotating the camera can be for the little gray box. Simply put, six years is a lifetime for a desktop in this climate, especially considering the massive paradigm shift Apple took by abandoning Intel processors in favor of something homegrown. That homegrown solution is now on its 4th iteration with the M4 processor. 

My first Apple Silicon device was my new iPad Air, which features an M1 processor. Even though it’s an Air and not a Pro, it runs circles around my old 10.5-inch Pro’s A10X Fusion chip, so I’m very interested to see what it’s like on a desktop. 
I wasn’t expecting Apple to announce a new Mac mini anytime soon. I’d already scoped out a new mini and even a Studio in case I was really dead-set on future-proofing myself. It’s about a thousand dollar difference between the two and double the RAM (the mini caps out at 32GB while the Studio has 64). 

As for the new M4-based Mac mini, I find myself rather ambivalent. For perspective, I’ve been an unapologetic fanboy of the mini ever since its debut in 2005. The only reason I didn’t get one is because I had it in my head that I wanted to play some PC games, so I settled for a Compaq Presario. Comparing the two, the mini looked positively space-aged. It was hard to believe a full desktop was in that little 7.7”x7.7” chassis. Sure, small form factor PC’s weren’t especially rare, but they were typically marketed towards business applications, not general consumers. It’s puzzling to me how much criticism the mini would get in later iterations for not making very many drastic hardware changes. On the whole, before the M1-based minis, the biggest shift in hardware specs came with the removal of the optical disc drive. Even with the Apple Silicon upgrade, it was still the same 7.7 inch square. For my money, I was still impressed. 

Speaking of removing hardware, I should get to what’s got me so ambivalent about the newest M4 Mac mini. In reducing the chassis size from 7.7 inches to 5, a few notable compromises had to be made. Key among these is the complete and utter absence of USB-A ports. The classic, bulky rectangle that had exploded onto the scene in the early 2000’s has now been completely replaced by USB-C. I’m bothered by this because my keyboard and mouse setup is still firmly in camp USB-A. Technically, Apple has only gotten rid of one port, as the M4 mini has 3 USB-C ports in the back and 2 in the front. Previous models had 4 USB-C ports and 2 USB-A ports in the back. 

Some of you may be saying, “but they make adapters” and that’s where I have to give Apple a lot of credit for how they implemented the new ports. They're vertical instead of horizontal. On my current mini, virtually every port is occupied, including all four USB-C ports. The last USB-C port, though, is a bit of an odd duck because of a convoluted workaround needed to let me use one of my favorite peripherals. My 3D mouse that I use to move the camera in SketchUp has a wireless dongle. It’s USB-A. As there are only 2 USB-A ports on the mini and both are occupied by a keyboard and mouse, I had to get an adapter to let me plug it into a USB-C port. You’d think, “Okay, problem solved. What’s wrong?” What’s wrong is that the adapter is too wide to actually fit on the back of the mini thanks to the other devices plugged into them. This led me to kill two birds with one stone. I bought a hub that rests under my mini, plugs into that last USB-C port, and gives me 4 USB-A ports, 1 USB-C port, and two memory card slots. The 3D mouse’s dongle is plugged into the adapter and into that one USB-C port.

“Okay…” You’re starting to ask, “If it’s got four USB-A ports, why not plug the dongle into one of those?” And that’s a good question. I tried doing that at first, but my 3D mouse has a problem. Sometimes, the mini forgets that it’s plugged in and if I start up SketchUp, it doesn’t wake up and give me a leg up on my 3D modeling game. So, I have to unplug the dongle and plug it back in berfore I can use it. Unfortunately, Satechi, the company that made the USB hub, made the USB-A ports really, really tight, so un/plugging it requires a very firm commitment from the user. Meanwhile, un/plugging the USB-C port is super easy. 

Speaking of Satechi, I guess I’m waiting to see how they handle the new mini’s design. If they make a hub that works like my current one, I may go for the new mini after all. They’ve got their work cut out for them. For one, on the old Mac minis, the only vent is on the back. The new mini has a vent on the bottom, so any hub would have to work around them. Additionally, instead of the power button being on the back right corner of the chassis, it’s on the bottom left rear corner. 

Without a hub, I'll just have to take stock of exactly what I need to keep plugged in. Maybe that can be part of next year's theme. 

Amp Up Your Dental Game

I got a new toothbrush, and I really like it, but it has a design choice I feel very conflicted about. It’s rechargeable, which is a step up from my previous one that used a AAA battery (though you easily got more than 6 months of life out of it), but it charges through USB. Not only that, they didn’t bother including a wall adapter.

Here’s what you need to understand about USB: the only consistent standard across all USB ports is that they deliver 5 volts of power. If you know anything about electricity, you know that’s only a third of the equation. Amperage is another third and arguably the most important. You’ll see it on your wall adapters, in that really small print that’s only one shade lighter or darker than the rest of the housing. How they list it may be a little hard to decipher, but you’ll generally see something along the lines of “5V/1.0A.”

Before we move on to explain amperage, let me give you a more real world scenario involving batteries. You’ve probably only had to replace the batteries in your TV remote every few years, and chances are you’re using something like Rayovac, a brand that’s not exactly known for high use applications compared to the Coke and Pepsi of the battery world, Energizer and Duracell. If you’re old enough to remember portable CD players, you know those things went through AA batteries before the end of the week. Obviously, a portable CD player is a very different device than a TV remote, which is practically an overengineered flashlight. It’s not constantly running while you’re watching TV. Both devices can run on a pair of AA batteries, but the CD player uses more amps than the remote.

Needless to say, an electric toothbrush is not a portable CD player. It’s not power hungry, hence a AAA battery lasting several months in my old toothbrush. Even the rechargeable cell in the new one isn’t exactly a hog. In the case of rechargeables, amperage is an indicator of how quickly something can be charged. You might be thinking, “What’s the big deal? It charges faster, so get a wall adapter with a higher amperage.” However, as an old fable once told us, slow and steady wins the race. The race, in this case, is the overall life and longevity of the battery. Without getting into the chemistry of Lithium-Ion celled batteries like those in your smartphone, the first 80% or so of your battery being charged seems to happen pretty fast, even with a fairly slow charger like one rated to 1A. That last 20% though is often going to be a bit slow by comparison and that’s also when you’re probably going to notice your phone getting a little hot. When you pour water out into an empty glass, you slow down and ease off the pour as you get near the top of the glass in order to avoid spilling. That’s more or less what’s happening in that battery when it’s charging.

Now, here’s the problem, the faster you charge your battery, the more strain you put on the whole system because you’re more likely to “spill”. For a time, I was using a wireless charging pad for my iPhone 12 mini. Wireless charging pads, in my view and with the benefit of hindsight, are terrible devices that nobody should ever use ever and you’re an awful person for insisting otherwise. It takes a lot of energy to transmit the electricity wirelessly than through a simple cable, and a lot of that energy is wasted in the process. Despite this inefficiency, this particular wireless charging pad was charging my phone really quickly. Between this and an issue with an app running in the background when it wasn’t supposed to, my battery’s health began declining and my phone wasn’t lasting through the day. It would literally drain in about 4-5 hours of moderate use. Even setting it down on a table overnight would leave it dead by morning. I hadn’t had the phone for very long, so upgrading through my cell carrier was out of the question. I was outside my warranty window as well, so I couldn’t rely on that. I had to pay out of pocket and take my phone to an Apple Store (because mailing it in would have taken weeks) to have the battery replaced. Really, taking it there was the bigger hassle than the 40 dollar cost for the procedure. Since then, the battery health is declining again from routine use, and all despite charging it the old fashioned way with a 5V/1A charger, the little white cube that came with one of my older iPhones. Apple doesn’t make this little cube anymore, and now all of their chargers list the wattage, leaving you to figure out the amperage. To be fair, newer iPhones have more sophisticated charging circuitry in them and can handle faster charging operations if one so desires.

Put simply, if you’re the sort of power user who upgrades their phones every 18 months or whatever your carrier offers, the life and longevity of your battery probably isn’t going to crop up until you’re in the market for a new one anyway. So, for these people, faster charging methods may be more practical. If, however, you’re a moderate user and/or the kind who likes to hold onto their phones until the duct tape holding the glass back together rots away, the two most important numbers you need to know are 5 and 1, which are voltage and amperage, respectively.

So, back to my toothbrush*. It’s using the slowest charger I have, which is going to be fine for it. As for my iPhone 12 mini, I’m just going to start charging it by plugging it into my Mac.

*I should mention in the interest of full disclosure that this toothbrush utilizes wireless charging. That is to say, wireless charging isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but coupling it with fast charging is an utter waste of energy on a phone or comparable device. It’s certainly a waste on an electric toothbrush, hence going the slow and steady route.

Everything Pro is New Again

Top: iPhone charger. Left: iPad Pro 10.5" (2nd Gen.) charger. Right: iPad Air (5th Gen.) charger.

After much shopping around and even deeper thought, I decided a few days ago to upgrade the iPad Pro I've had since late 2017 early instead of waiting until after October. This was when B&H (where I was getting the iPad from) was closed for Passover and Apple had just announced its upcoming iPad event on the 7th of May. 

I had my sights on an iPad Pro, my thought process being that after Apple would announce its new range of allegedly expensive iPad Pros, people would be snatching up existing models like it was a run on the bank. Granted, this iPad Pro, with its full terabyte hard drive, was going to carry a significant cost. Put simply, though, if the rumors are true, this terabyte model would have cost the same as a baseline new iPad Pro with maybe 128GB of storage. 

The more I thought about it, though, and the more I looked around at other iPad models, I came to the realization it may not be as good of an investment as I was previously thinking. My current iPad Pro has 64GB of storage, and in the 7 or so years I've and it, I've taken up 41GB of it. Most of this consists of drawing applications. I have a few games, but I think the largest file size on any of them is 2GB (and there's less than a half-dozen in total). Overall, I'm very deliberate and intentional with how I use my iPad. It's a drawing device, not a communication device like my iPhone, and not a multimedia workhorse like my Mac mini. I don't like having all my eggs in one basket, another reason I decided against splurging on a higher-end iPad Pro. If I really needed something for, say, editing videos or 3D modeling, I'd just upgrade my Mac mini, which I may well do at the end of this year depending on how I feel when the time comes. I prefer a mouse to a stylus when it comes to 3D modeling, anyway. 

Then there's how the iPad range has evolved from 2017 when my second generation iPad Pro was the fresh face in the crowd. At that time, only the Pro series offered support for the Apple Pencil. After using a number of third party styluses over the years, I can say with certainty that the Pencil is the best of them, and it made the iPad Pro worth its asking price. Now, all of the iPads offer Pencil support. I'm still waiting for, at the very least, Pencil support on an iPhone Pro model, but that may well never happen. I wouldn't want a Pro line iPhone anyway. Pro has become a very flimsy word with Apple. When the iPad Pros were new, you got Pro features, such as the aforementioned Pencil. Nowadays, a Pro iPad still has a number of "exclusive" features, but one of those features is storage space, which makes the whole offering feel a little bit... unbecoming, for lack of a more tactful term. Like I said, my iPad Pro is 64GB, which was the lowest amount of storage available at that time. I wasn't bothered by this as it not only kept the price down, but I was only going to be using it for drawing anyway, and as a rule, drawing apps aren't very resource intensive. However, even being careful with what I put on the tablet, I knew this wasn't going to be sustainable, that I'd eventually run out of space. 

With my iPhones, I have a rule to double my storage with each upgrade, as I'm way less choosy about does or doesn't get installed on it. My current iPhone, a 12 mini, has 256GB of storage (I don't remember my previous iPhone 7's storage. I only think it was 128). Many iPhones go higher than that (512GB) before we have to start adding Pro or Max to their numbers. As for iPads, any model that's not a Pro only has 2 sizes available, 64GB and 256GB. I was worried this would fill up quickly, but then I remembered those posts on social media that compare just how much a billion is compared to even a million. They usually use grains of rice or counting seconds, but you get the idea. 

Taking that as a starting point, I made a graph to put into perspective just how much 256GB is compared to my current 64GB, and how much my 41GB after 7 years to build up actually was in the grand scheme of things. 

The iPad Air is a strange entry in the iPad series. I'm not even sure Apple knows exactly what it's supposed to represent. When it first launched, its claim to fame was being thinner and lighter and more powerful than other models of iPad. This was long before the Pro series came out and the price of the standard, adjective-less iPad was going down into the budget-friendly range. Against its more premium Pro compatriots, I suppose you could say it's the premium device without the premium price. It still has Pencil support and the display is actually slightly bigger than my 10.5" Pro model. Supposedly it's not as bright, but it's by a factor so small and in a unit of measure so poorly understood, I wouldn't have known if it hadn't told me. Speaking of the display, the other trade-off is that it's not as smooth and flowing as a Pro model. I'll save you the block of technobabble and just say that the screen of an iPad Pro refreshes at a rate of 120hz (pictures a second) and so animations look smoother than a typical refresh rate of 60hz, which is what other iPads and most displays you've seen in the wild have on offer. 

To put this in perspective, and at the risk of gushing about iPads, even the very worst iPad screen is better than most high-end premium Android-based tablets. Samsung has some models that come close, and the Surface lineup from Microsoft is a damn good competitor, but dollar for dollar, the displays on iPads are leagues above everyone else. Android tablets can be had for pretty cheap, but the display is always the biggest corner that gets cut, especially in the overall resolution. 

For perspective on that, a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite has a total resolution of 2000 by 1200 pixels and goes for about 250USD. A current (10th generation), adjective-less iPad has a total resolution of 2360 by 1640 in roughly the same size screen as the Galaxy tablet, and starts at around 330USD. That's fairly close and it's taken a long time to get to this point. There's other differences to consider, and I don't pretend for an instant this is a perfect 1:1 comparison, so take the numbers with a grain of salt. The point is, in terms of a digital drawing experience, there's fewer compromises on the iPad and you do get your money's worth if you're willing to pay that little bit extra. 

I've only had my iPad Air for a day as of this writing, and I honestly can't tell the difference in displays between it and my old Pro. I wouldn't care anyway. Similarly, I don't care that the camera's not as good as a current Pro offering because I don't take pictures or shoot video with my tablet anyway, except maybe to snag a quick reference for while I'm drawing, and I'm just as likely to grab my phone and use Airdrop to send it over. 

As for the 7th, I'll certainly watch and see what Apple's got on offer. I'm bound to use up 256GB eventually. 

Keeping Watch in the Walled Garden

Full disclosure: I'm writing this on a Mac mini while my iPhone 12 mini charges and before I do a little drawing on my iPad Pro later. 

Officially, I identify as platform agnostic. I don't care what operating system I have to use; I will make it work. I grew up on classic MacOS, I switched over to Windows XP shortly after college, I was a Linux user for a while, and my phone choices have been equally all over the map. I'm far from an early adopter, but you name it, I've probably tried it. Ever heard of Maemo? Symbian? 

For my money, Apple makes exactly two good products, the Mac mini and the iPad Pro. I often joke to people, "I don't have an iPhone. I have an iPad... Oh, by the way, did you know Apple makes a camera? It takes calls too for some reason." Also in the interest of full disclosure, I have a smartwatch from Fossil that works well enough with my iPhone. I have no desire to buy an Apple Watch. For perspective, my favorite feature about my Fossil is that it doesn't have a screen. It's got a plain, ordinary watch face (which I think is called a complication if you're in the know) and the hands occasionally move to different positions based on what notifications I've set it to. In recent months, however, this has stopped working. It's a little irritating, but I don't miss it. It certainly doesn't make me want to buy an Apple Watch. Those could well be famous last words, but on the whole, the only Watch feature that had my attention was using it as a painter's palette for Procreate, and I don't even think that feature is supported anymore. As for my Fossil, I've actually stopped wearing it altogether. I simply don't need a watch that much, and its use as a pedometer and sleep tracker are simply no longer part of my daily habit. 

As of this writing, the Department of Justice has taken Apple to court over its monopolistic practices, particularly in the smartphone market. Among its talking points was the fact the Apple Watch currently only works with iPhones. Android users are simply out of luck and have to settle for a Garmin, a Fossil, a Fitbit.... 

I'm not saying the DOJ doesn't have some kind of a case against Apple. What I am saying is that their angle of attack speaks more to their lack of knowledge not only of the technology, but of the market itself. This isn't like 20 years ago when Microsoft was under the microscope for their own monopolistic practices, but this is far from apples to apples (no pun intended). That's why I brought up all the other smartwatch brands, smartwatch brands that work with both Apple and Android devices. Moreover, I'm a little confused by this talking point. The DOJ is saying Apple has too much of the smartwatch marketshare with their watch which is exclusive to Apple products. So, what happens if they add Android support? Wouldn't that give them a bigger piece of the pie they allegedly already have too much of? Won't that just land them back in court for the exact same offense but now with slightly different wording? Wouldn't that make any ruling on the matter tantamount to self-incrimination? 

Personally, I don't know anyone who wants an Apple Watch so badly they're willing to give up their Android phone to get one. That's simply not the market we live in. Once upon a time, I worked for a cell carrier that did not earn the iPhone's exclusivity contract with AT&T. Needless to say, this led to a deluge of calls about when the iPhone was coming to our neck of the woods and what hoops would have to be jumped through to make it happen. A workaround did emerge at one point. The iPhone's exclusivity was limited to the United States, so it was possible to use the phone on our network... in Germany. That means you'd have to import a German iPhone, and use a German SIM card, which meant all of your calls would be international ones. Would you believe someone I spoke with still wanted one after all that was explained to them, that it would literally cost them more to use the phone in a month than to buy the thing outright because all of their calls would be for a German number on a North American network? I have no idea if this person went through with their plan, though I like to think he got as far as putting in a bid on an eBay listing before losing it and taking it as a sign to simply wait for the iPhone to be available on other networks. He didn't have to wait long and, frankly, those early iterations of the iPhone are among the many reasons I'm not an early adopter. My first iPhone was a 5c, which was only supposed to be a temporary device while my Sony Xperia phone was getting its battery replaced. None of my iPhones have been the newest model. 

There was likely a certain time in my life when I suffered from the dreaded Fear of Missing Out, but I was a kid, and like all kids, I grew up. So, when I see people lining up to buy a phone or a game console on launch day, I don't envy them. In fact, I only sort of feel bad for them. Do you know who was the first person in North America to own a Nintendo 64? Neither do I. I don't think anyone knows. Even with social media, I don't think we could ever know for certain the name and face of the first person to own a Playstation 5. I'm sure it was a big deal to them, whoever they are, but let's not pretend that this FOMO business is anything to give in to or follow like a cartoon character floating toward a pie cooling on a windowsill. 

I think the DOJ is misunderstanding FOMO, treating it like some perfectly rational mindset in a consumer-driven economy regulated (loosely) by a democratic republic. Someone really wanting an Apple Watch does not make the niche Apple has carved out for itself a monopoly, even if that niche is worth several billion dollars. 

"What do you mean this person has to get a new phone for their watch to work!? This is an injustice!" 

Seriously, where is this attitude when it comes to big Pharma or the oil companies? 

That'$ only a $lightly rhetorical que$tion. 

My point is that the monopoly Apple has allegedly made for itself is nothing like the one that Microsoft got called out on 20-some years ago or the one AT&T was broken up over however long before that. I can't run MacOS on a Microsoft Surface tablet. I can't play Nintendo Switch games on my iPhone. I can't use a BMW part in my Honda. The list goes on. If Apple wants to paint themselves into a corner by playing their cards close to the chest, let them and most importantly let the market decide whether that's playing fair in the game of capitalism. 

A Prime Example

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Amazon slave. I've been a Prime Member for years, I have several Alexa smart speakers, I use Subscribe & Save, I use Kindle and Audible, and I even watch Prime Video (mostly for the Grand Tour or anything the old Top Gear crew is attached to). I know the company is evil, they treat their workers (especially their drivers) like garbage, their returns are a joke, and Jeff Bezos is dumping tons of methane into the atmosphere with his phallus rockets, to say nothing of that stupid yacht he tried to have a bridge disassembled over. 

Yet... I'm still paying. I can only offer so much in my defense. There's still plenty of small and local businesses I support, and there's certain items that I simply will not buy from Amazon if I can avoid it. If I can get it straight from the manufacturer, I'll go that route (especially if they let me check out with PayPal because that's just as convenient as Amazon). To me, Amazon offers a way to eliminate tedium. I don't have to haul bags of cat food, kitty litter, and sparkling water around in a cart, into my car, out of my car, and into my house. Now, all but that last step has been eliminated. It's one less thing I have to deal with. It's cruise control, not fully autonomous driving, if you follow. The point is if it all went away tomorrow, I'd be only a little bit bummed... for about five minutes, and then I'd move on to something else. 

Is it really an addiction if you're in control of it? 

Anyway, there's still the dilemma of supporting a terrible company, but the awful truth to that matter is that voting with your wallet is kind of a hollow promise. After all, there's no "vote against" just voting for something, and not voting at all. Moreover, if you know anything about how the company is structured, their main money maker is not their retail branch. It's all their web hosting. That's where this gets really scary. I heard once that all of Netflix's servers are owned by Amazon. That may seem like a massive conflict of interest, but it's actually good business. There's a similar sort of relationship between Apple and Samsung. Yes, they're rivals in the smartphone space, but if you were to open up your iPhone, you'd find Samsung's name on more than a few components. In fact, the iPhone camera is actually a Sony component. I find that funny because the camera on my old Xperia phone wasn't all that great, but the little iPhone 5c I got to replace it took damn fine pictures right out of the box. 

I decided to write this entry after receiving an email from Amazon that some of you may have read yourselves or at least heard about on social media. Ads are coming to Prime Video. Although they insist there will be overall fewer ads than television, it's more than a little disheartening that this is what they resorted to in terms of expanding their market share in the streaming space. 

Rather than create a new, lower-priced, ad-supported tier and bring in new customers, they'd rather punish loyal customers who have been paying for Prime for years (seriously, whatever happened to grandfathering?). Instead, they now offer an ad-free version of Prime for an additional fee. Obviously, this is about Amazon making more money. They chose this strategy because simply raising the rates would have deterred many from renewing, so they decide to raise the proverbial temperature of the pot of water instead of dunking us in straight away. As I said, I think they could have done more to draw in new customers than try to tiptoe around existing ones. 

As for what I'm going to do about it... very little. Ironically, most of what I've been watching on Prime Video of late has been through their subsidiary FreeVee, which is ad-supported anyway. There's also that practice of advertising their other shows before the ones I'm already watching. It's frustrating that this is happening, but I'm more mad at myself for not being more bothered. I feel like I should be cancelling my Prime membership as a statement, but I know it's not going to change anything and despite what I said about what I'd do if this all went away, I don't want to be the one to pull the plug. Given the scale, it would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. Then again, we're also living in a time when a comedy about Wile E. Coyote suing Acme was brought back from a fate worse than death for media. 

Maybe we're reaching a point where it's more than just the bottom line that a business can pay attention to. Yes, Coyote Vs. Acme got a big boost from a number of meetings being canceled, as well as the potential threat of Capitol Hill getting involved (one congressman compared the move to committing arson and insurance fraud), but it's still notable how much of a public outcry got heard. Hell, remember when the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie got delayed because of backlash against the early trailer? No calls for boycotts there, just plain, "Dear God, what is that thing!?" from a few thousand voices on Twitter. Yes, there was still a bottom line ultimately being threatened, but we didn't have to wait until opening weekend for the change to occur.