-
Great story. And it’s not Comcast… my experiences with Time Warner techs are roughly equivalent (if not as amusing)
-
His first answer is truly the best quip I’ve read in a long, long time
Page 69 of 129
PLAYERS: Seated from left, wife, advertising producer, pop-culture aficionado; mother; and sister-in-law, Love and Sex editor for a major media website.
SCENE: Mom and Dad’s fortieth anniversary dinner at Provence in Soho. “Josie” is playing on the house stereo.
SISTER-IN-LAW: This song is called “Josie!” It’s a Steely Dan song about a prostitute.
WIFE: So I just found out what a Steely Dan is!
MOTHER: Yeah? What is it?
WIFE pauses, considers, then explains: It’s—a vibrator. Or a dildo.
MOTHER turns, points at SISTER-IN-LAW. That’s something you’re supposed to know!
(see also)
-
The best and most fondly memorable flights I’ve taken have all–all–been on Virgin Atlantic. Looking forward to expanded domestic service
-
A great, geeky read on the new highway fontography
-
I am okay with this (if a bit jealous)
-
I’m teaching a class in October. Sign up today! Full post on the Ideapad to follow
The paper felt light this morning, as it often does on a Monday in August, only more so. The columns on the right-hand side of the front page looked a little narrower than usual, and I didn’t know why.
Then I looked to the left and saw the note: today the New York Times switched to its smaller sheet size.
Unsurprisingly, I hate it. It lacks the impact, the heft, the ability to convey significant information on a single page. The accordion fold on the subway creates a meek, finished-too-fast column of text. It makes the paper feel less significant, less worth the cover price, less important.
Of course, the Times’s news coverage hasn’t dropped; some of it has simply gotten shorter or moved online. But–and I say this fully aware of the irony–I don’t really want to go to a website for continuations of content I’m reading offline. Despite my thorough online lifestyle, I am resolutely committed to reading the printed newspaper every day. I look forward to it. I have nothing to gain by reading most of the paper, I want to read all of it, and to use nytimes.com for its blogs and for sharing items with friends, not to get extra scoops or a handful of letters to the editor that I used to be able to read in print. I also find it mildly hypocritical that the Times cites rising costs in its resizing decision, when it raised the newsstand price a full 25 percent just weeks earlier.
I know that newsprint is increasingly expensive, and that readership of the print edition is down, and that my desire for the old-fashioned edition makes me something of a fuddy-duddy and a nimbyist. At some point I’m sure I’ll get used to it, just as people always adapt to change. But the new style of the New York Times, by being 11% smaller, is, for the time being, making the Times itself feel 11% lesser.
I walk into the Banana Republic Men on 17th and 5th and notice my shoe is untied. I stop near the entrance and lean over to tie it. Elapsed time in store: five seconds.
As I am bent over, a sales clerk swiftly approaches me, and asks: “Are you finding everything okay?”
-
These are great
-
Britain’s new PM addresses our nation… a worthwhile read
-
mmmm… bacon and salt
-
Josey now has two blogs
-
A must-buy! And it will keep me from X-Acto knifing the connector on my E3cs
-
This will prove very useful
To answer the question I hear most about it: yes, I love my iPhone. It is every bit the gee-whiz, fun-to-use, eye-candy-rich, conversation-starting geek toy I expected when I bought it. It does so many things so well and has fast become an indispensible tool. It also simplified my life: I have shed my pocket day planner, streamlined my contacts list, and I no longer lug my laptop away from my desk, since I can just whip out the iPhone for the majority of what I want to do online.
What’s great about it is that so many of the “wow” features in the iPhone are actually practical. Pinching and spreading to zoom in and out: wonderful. Scrolling around a screen by dragging displays with one finger: so great I keep wishing my computer supported the same function. The touch screen is an easy, intuitive way to do, well, everything, and the relatively transparent access to the Internet (even on AT&T’s network) turns the iPhone into an iAnything. Web browsing is great. The iPod is great. Google Maps is phenomenal. The weather pane seemed like a throw-in when I got the phone, until I found myself checking it a few times a day, and now I can’t live without it.
That pretty much sums up the whole user experience: once you have an iPhone, you immediately find it useful and pleasant, and everything else pales in comparison. In a word, terrific.
Alongside my praise, I am not afraid to admit it’s not a “perfect” device, in the sense that all of its capabilities are not pinnacles of joy and ease-of-use. I will defer to the many, many reviews of the iPhone elsewhere online for a reasoned critique, but here’s what I personally am crinkling my nose at:
~ The vertical keyboard layout is mediocre. I might enjoy it more in horizontal web layout, but since it’s not available anywhere else, I just do all my typing upright, and three weeks in, I’m still tapping words with my index finger. Yeah, it works, but BlackBerry and Treo users (including myself) will feel slowed down by its interface. It does trump T9 on a phone, but that’s not enough.
~ Neat, look at the wheelie calendar scheduling interface! I use this all the time to show off how nifty the iPhone is. But as an actual scheduler, it’s pretty damn annoying. If I used my Mac to book appointments I’d be in good shape, but I generally plug them straight into my iPhone, and man, wouldn’t it be nice to have a 10-key number pad for dates and times.
~ Holding the device steady enough to tap the touch-screen camera shutter is a challenge. I could probably learn to juggle on a unicycle in the time it will take me to learn how to never blur my photos.
~ I worry endlessly that the spam-filter-less mail function and the fun but error-prone slide-to-delete finger stroke in it are exposing my email address to happy spammers around the world.
~ I’ve noticed that the side of my thumb is not a sufficient surface for the screen to pick up on tapping. This might just be my freak thumbs, but whatever the reason, it’s annoying.
So, no, it’s not perfect. I’m looking forward to firmware updates that continue to improve the UI, although I’m expecting them not to address all my concerns. The iPhone simultaneously reminds me of why I continually buy Apple products… and why I don’t use the applications in OS X outside of iLife.
All this said, the iPhone is still a fascinating device and a complete game-changer in the world of consumer electronics. I am gleefully obsessed with it and proud to own it.