Let’s face it, Apple has always been obsessed with being as sleek as possible when it comes to their hardware and providing as much eyecandy as possible when it comes to their software. They have a knack for introducing products that will Wow the public while making Mac lovers drool over the most recently overpriced product they released.
Thus, it was hardly surprising when Apple purchased Coverflow from an independent artist back in 2006. Coverflow was originally an additional plugin to iTunes, which did exactly the same thing it does today: showcase your album art in a very stylish and sleek form, precisely what Apple loves. When Apple first bought it, all they initially did was make it a default feature in iTunes, but as time went by, they tried to introduce Coverflow to anything and everything.
Everytime I watched Steve Jobs introduce a new product or iPod at keynotes in recent years, he’d always reach the part where he shows off Coverflow for the umpteenth time. Everytime he tries to wow everyone with it, I’m busy cringing in front of my computer screen going, “Not this stupid thing again…”
The truth of the matter is that Coverflow is nothing more than a gimmick. I use it for like 5 seconds now and then just to scroll through all my album art really really fast, because it really does seem cool! For literally 5 seconds that is, after which I imeediately switch back to the much more functional list view.
And now, with the latest beta version of Safari, Apple’s default web browser for the Mac, they’ve done the unthinkable: shoehorning Coverflow into a web browser.
This really is the last straw.
Does Apple REALLY expect people to use it to browse through the history of the sites they’ve browsed? Personally, I almost never look at my history, except when I need to go back to a site whose URL I forgot on the rare occasion, I’ll do a quick search and be done with it.
What does Apple expect us to do? Get bored with web surfing and so we turn to surfing through our history for the fun of it?
Get real. Practically no one uses Coverflow on their iPods or iTunes, where we actually get to see some pretty cool album art fly by. But honestly? Watching snapshots of websites fly by? Nu-uh, not for me.
A few weeks or so ago, Facebook suddenly decided to update, or rather revise, their Terms of Service. I won’t bother to copy what they added here, since it’s written in lengthy, complicated, and downright anal terms-of-use-language (ie. they use 3 sentences to reiterate the same thing and 10 different “synonyms” of sorts to make sure they cover every single aspect they want to). Basically, they added a few paragraphs which explicitly stated that Facebook owned whatever content you uploaded (pictures, videos, etc.) and could do whatever they wanted to do with it (which was where they had to use 10+ words to describe what they could do with it), even if you deleted your account!!!
Back in the day even before Gmail came along, (then) Hotmail was probably the most popular email solution for home users and basically anyone who wanted a free email account. Then Gmail came along and messed everything up for them. Thus, since 2005, Microsoft has been busy trying to revamp Hotmail, for example through things like more disk space. It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when Hotmail users had 25mb while Gmail users had 1GB, but that was the case when Gmail was first introduced.
We’ve always had parodies for all forms of media, for example the Scary Movie series for horror movies, the terribly awful Meet the Spartans is another example for movies, plus the thousands and thousands of videos on YouTube that parody everything from movie scenes, to music videos to commercials. Yet while people have been doing parodies of movies and music for ages, for some strange reason no one ever thought of parodying games. With the long list of interesting, quirky and downright stupid facts that have been rapidly growing ever since the age of Pong and Pac man, it would almost seem like a no brainer to create a game which parodies other games.
Since it was first created in 2001, Wikipedia has become one of the Internet’s most popular website, receiving over 750 million views a month. Wikipedia has quickly become one of the most popular destinations for people to go to in all the research for information about practically any subject in the world. It’s easily the world’s most popular encyclopaedia, and with good reason: any single person in the world can edit any single article or entry within Wikipedia. What results is what is probably the world’s most up-to-date encyclopaedia.
As the season to be giving approaches and as everyone rushes to stores to buy presents for loved ones, we tend to forget that there are others that deserve our gifts as much as everyone else. Especially if it’s someone who you probably go to time and time again for help, whom millions of other people turn to, and yet he never asks for anything in return.
Ever since the Rubik’s cube was invented and first sold decades ago, it has spread worldwide like wildfire, till the stage where it’s now even considered an icon of pop culture. No matter if you know how to solve it or not, every single person instantly recognises this unassuming little cube.
Memory cards