📱 The $17,000 iPhone and more - This Geek in Review for 2021-10-29
By goz
In 2008, at the height of the housing crisis and a recession, Apple become the largest company in the world selling a product that no one needs. It amazes me on how many people will buy the top of the line iPhone when I see the same people using it to scroll through social media and take a view pictures. The New York Times looks into the true cost of upgrading your phone.
The numbers don’t surprise me, and maybe I’m a little jealous of those that can look past the numbers. My phone is over two years old now, and I’m looking at getting through one more year before upgrading.
Social media didn’t create the monsters, they were already among us
New research shows that people have always been jerks and social media only announced their jerkiness to the world. I’ve found that staying away from Facebook is a good start. If you must be on FB, then unfollow everyone from your feed. That helps a lot.
Twentieth anniversary of the iPod
This past week was the 20th anniversary of the Apple iPod. Although it’s faded from relevance, its release is one of the greatest consumer products of humanity. I rank it up there with the Atari 2600 and the VCR. It’s surprising how little coverage of this anniversary there has been out on the internets, except for the story of the prototype iPd.
The iPod took the idea of portable music to a whole new level. Sure, there were limited players at the time, such as Creative’s huge Nomad or the RIO mp3 players. If you wanted to look cool, you would have a pair of the iPod white earbuds on when you were out and about.
Besides opening up the idea that you could carry thousands of songs with you at anytime the iPod was instrumental in idea that you could purchase individual songs. Anyone growing up in the 80s remembers that most albums had one or two good songs on them and then filler. Well, except for anything put out by Huey Lewis and the News.
Apple used the iPod to leverage their entry into the smartphone market, and we see how that turned out.
Internet Travels
Retro
- Little project I’ve been working on, Atari 400 custom mechanical keyboard : atari8bit
- Introducing Unijoysticle 2+ – RETRO.MOE
- The Electric Company debuted 50 years ago with entertainment intended to educate : NPR
Geek
- Marvel Character or Font? • Quiz - Yeah, I did NOT do well at this.
- Tabletop RPG Workers Say Their Jobs Are No Fantasy | WIRED
- Home Movie of a Dungeons and Dragons Gaming Session from 1981 - Retroist
Technology
- Audio Tape Interface Revives Microcassettes As Storage Medium | Hackaday
- How mobile devices can be tracked via Bluetooth analysis • The Register
- Smart alarm clocks from Amazon and Google are missing this key feature - The Verge
- macOS 12 Monterey: The Ars Technica review | Ars Technica - Seems like an incremental upgrade for macOS 11, although I’m excited for the Airplay to Mac feature.
- Facebook sues Ukrainian who scraped the data of 178 million users - The Record by Recorded Future
Pop Culture
- The Story Behind Mariah Carey’s Secret ’90s Alt-Rock Album
- All of the fake books from The Simpsons
- Home Alone is now a $250 Lego set, and it might be the most impressive fan-inspired model yet - The Verge - I’m torn by the idea of these Lego sets. When we got new Lego sets growing up, we would build what’s on the box once. After that the bricks all go together into a big pile and we would build tons of other things.
- In a Galaxy Far, Far Away, I Was Almost Anakin Skywalker. Both a blessing and a curse.
Upcoming movies
- UNCHARTED - Official Trailer (HD) - YouTube - I know nothing about the game, let me know if you’re excited about this one.
Business
Science
- The moon is leaving us - It’s not me, it’s you.