Off topic: Subway jumper at 72 St/Broadway

Yesterday, October 11 at the uptown 1 platform at 72 st a young black man jumped in front of an oncoming 1 train.....I happened to be on the scene no more than 30 seconds after the accident.....I will keep the details short...I passed through the metrocard gate and immediately a dozen or so women are running towards the exit screaming to the MTA booth for help....."there is a man under the train!!!"

I go down the stairs and see the front of the train is in front of me, very few people stayed around to see what would unfold...no police at all on the scene for at least a minute...I could only see the feet of the body, they were still moving around. The consensus thus far is that the person died primarily by electrocution on the third rail.


This is where things start to be strange.....


-Absolutely ZERO media coverage of the accident
-After hearing a report from another witness, a bone chilling thought came to my mind....WHAT THE F**K IS GOING ON??? The witness was on the platform and saw the whole thing, she claims that there was a white man filming (with a professional video camera) the entire thing from the platform, from the time before the person jumped, until he was forced to leave, where he resumed filming the event from the opposing downtown platform. Here is the creepy part....I saw the same exact man filming...at the time I was in some shock and only thought to myself "he must be really fucking lucky to get this on tape"....after hearing that he recorded the entire thing something seems very, very wrong. Was this a staged suicide???? If so, who the f**k is this guy with the camera and why is there no media coverage???

RE: Apple.com Tributes Al Gore's Peace Prize Win

Listen, I am in full support of earth-friendly agendas and I think that Al Gore is doing (or attempting) something good with his time and money but this latest shit on Apple.com undid a few screws in my head. I never wanted to be the type of person that buys products based on a firm's politics but this garbage on apple.com really makes me question what the f**k I am doing supporting a company that so openly declares their political affiliation. I do not want this to be an argument about why i disagree with most liberal ideas (I said most because there are some liberal issues I support), I just felt the need to comment on Apple's recent homepage update. No legitimate, publicly-traded company in their right mind would post such a transparent message on behalf of a major figure like Mr. Gore without some type of financial arrangement. Remember, I said "in their right mind".....yea yea I know this is just a fucking rant but perhaps others out in cyberspace share the same sentiment.

Because the utility of the product is what drives me to my decision to purchase from a certain manufacturer, this will not likely stop me from supporting apple in the future; what WILL affect my future apple purchases (getting a little off topic) is their lack of a CONSISTENT quality control in China. I remember having the Original Macintosh and Macintosh II when I was young and first getting into computing and I CLEARLY can recall the EXCEPTIONAL build quality of the units. What is going on Apple??

Official 3rd Part iPhone apps??

According to an anonymous source at 9to5Mac.com, Apple and Electronics Arts (as well as other unnamed sources) are in the process of porting EA's line of iPod games to the iPhone. This latest speculation brings up a number of issues in my head.

When I look at the current lineup of EA iPod-based games (Solitare, Mahjong, Tetris, Bowling, etc) the controls for them are fairly simple, using just the iPod clickwheel and center button as the controls. I am a little skeptical about how fluid the controls will be for anything more complicated than card games and bowling. As we have seen with 3rd party games such as the NES emulator, it is possible to implement decent controls although they are not perfect. The problem is that major video game firms (with the exception of EA) would not dare enter into the iPhone-only game market for the reason that the margins are lousy. I will not pay any amount of money for ported iPod games to play on iPhone and I am positive that 99% of the people whos 3rd party apps were removed in the 1.1.1 update would agree with me. I WOULD pay for fresh, innovative, and more graphically enhanced games from companies other than EA...

Continuing with the official 3rd party app speculation, it is also being reported that Apple will be adopting T-Mobile's sidekick SDK and distribution models. To summarize, the Sidekick model involves 3rd party developers applying for a "key" from Apple, which essentially opens up the iPhone platform for app development, developers test and compile applications and submit only stable and functional concepts to Apple for for stability and compatibility testing. If Apple follows the T-Mobile model, they would at this point release the app for sale.

To me this could go either way for consumers in the sense that it could bring some first class applications to the iPhone and potentially iPod Touch platforms. The possible downside for consumers is that because Apple has the final word in what is released, we could see a slew of Stock and Weather-type iPhone widgets which are nice features, but are in essence more novelty than hardcore app.

All this means very little right now is it is pure speculation but lets just look at two different sides of this issue...

Consumers who have unofficial 3rd party apps (or who lost them in the latest update) will unlikely support anything related to this idea of buying additional apps from Apple. The general sentiment among iPhone customers is that Apple has become concerned only with money. As a side note, do all you people who believe this think that Apple Inc. is non-for-profit company??? I am not going to get into it in detail but Apple Inc. is in business for ONE SINGLE REASON....to produce the largest PROFITS possible for its SHAREHOLDERS. With that said, many people still feel hesitant about giving more money to the Cupertino-based firm with many even feeling betrayed or "gauged" by the price drop last month.

Other users who for whatever reason choose not to jailbreak and load 3rd party apps may be attracted to "official" applications. Although there are a myriad of programs that allow for simple jailbreaking, many do not feel like "de-flowering" their new devices. Still, with this target group, many will be weary of the applications....especially when you factor in that the numerous "hacking" groups will most likely release a hacked for-free version of the apps shortly after the "official" ones are released.

Truthfully...these rumors do not interest me in the LEAST....I personally have no desire to purchase games for iPhone, apps possibly, but not until they are proven to be worth the cost and more importantly if they provide me with some additionally utility that I need with my iPhone.

I am waiting until Apple releases its much delayed and highly anticipated Leopard OS which is reported to have many new UI and infrastructure updates/improvements, many of which are supposeded to be closely integrated with iPhone....

Just a thought

throwing around idea's for stories this morning with Peter, and a concept came up, which lead to a question.

...If Apple were to fire CEO Steve Jobs from the company, would that necessarily be the downfall of the company?...

Through our conversation I think we've come to some conclusions and also opened up some questions to be asked in the future.


Questions:
1. Considering the products currently being released where already in the pipes for the company. So has Steve really innovated anything at the company other then being one hell of a hype machine?

2. Once the product lines get elderly (seriously how long till one iMac just looks like the one next to it?) what new products short of a holographic display system will start the company anew

Who knows what the future holds for this company, i think that now more than ever we must hold some criticism for this company especially as it grows into the future

Conclusions:

Apple will probably do fine with the current market saturation and word of mouth dispersion that if Steve left nothing would change except the company would lose a mouthpiece

Product lines will be continue on track as they have been for the past couple of quarters (this is talking in the sense that Steve has already left) Johnathan Ives gets promoted to head of Product R&D industrial design, Phil Schiller takes over as the CEO of apple and its business as usual.