Re-run Sunday: The i's of my Apples

I'm looking forward to the new Steve Jobs movie and eager to see confirmed he was as big a jerk as I’ve always suspected. But today let’s talk about all the i’s in our Apples. What does the i in iPad mean? Or iPhone? I liked this one from April ’12. I hope you enjoy it today.

Tomorrow I’ll be writing about what a tour de force the Pope’s visit was and wondering why America can’t have a pope of our very own.

Does anyone know what the “i” in iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. means because iDon’t.

We have Apple to thank for making the language sound more selfish than anytime in spoken history.

It’s iThis and iThat. iMean -- Aye! Yi! Yi! Yi! Yi! Me thinks it’s too much.

iThought about writing this a couple of months ago, but kept putting it off. Then today, of course, when iStarted digging around to see what the now ubiquitous “i” means iFound iMissed the boat.

Paul Aertker beat me to it. He wrote this fun Yahoo story that appeared way back in September.

Aerkter writes: “Like everyone, I have run out of words to describe the awesomeness of Apple’s iProducts. iMean who doesn't love their iPod, iPad, iMovie, iMac, iPhone, iCal, iCloud, or even iPO?

iDo.

Standing in a sea of iShoppers, it hit me, really hit me. Everything was named, iSomething.

Why?

Before 2001, there was no iPod; there was no iAnything. In 1998, the iMac started the iEverything movement. Before that, Everything actually started with an 'e'.”

I’m generous in my attributions to Aerkter here because iWouldn’t want anyone to infer iStole his idea, an act that would lead them to justifiably conclude iSuck.

In fact, iCulture has even shifted the very definition of “iSuck.”

According to UrbanDictionary.com, iSuck is more noun than verb and a catch-all pejorative for any Apple product. From the site:

“iSuck -- Any Apple product that starts with an ‘i.’ Mostly derived from conversations about the iPod: ‘Wow, I can buy an iSuck for $260 on woot.com!’ (said with a hint of sarcasm).”

George Orwell wrote of a day when an all-seeing Big Brother would watch everything everyone was doing, but iDoubt even he could conceive a day when we’d be seeing i’s instead of eyes.

There’s iThinkInc.com, an online marketing research firm, and iDrink, an on-line mixology site. And the delightful and profane iQuit’s worth a look.

The now-reeling Pittsburgh Penguins feature a team of young lovelies who clean the ice between action. They’re called the Ice Crew, but if I understand sports marketing -- and iDo -- then it’s a deliberate corruption of an innocuous term to provoke men into thinking about sex (iScrew) when they should be thinking about sloppy goaltending.

Works for me.

Some i’s pre-date Apple’s iMania and lack conventional iSpelling. There’s IAM, a French hip hop band whose name means in French ‘Invasion Arrivee de Mars,” (Invasion from Mars, Mars being a metaphor for Marseille).

Stock car race fans know IROC, the International Race of Champions, the oval-track competition that in 1985 became the inspiration for the popular Camaro IROC-Z.

Ido has been around since 1907. It’s a form of communication that aspires to become a universal second language for the linguistically diverse. The Ido Wikipedia entry says there are about 100 to 200 people on the planet who are fluent in Ido, which makes it iRrelevant.

Then there’s “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,” from “Mama Mia.”

But iDigress.

I found a blog that seemed to have all the answers. It’s called “What does iPod Stand For?”

And you thought a blog named “Eight Days to Amish” takes narrow aim.

The site says:

“The iMac was the first Apple product to feature the leading “i” in its brand name. It was marketed as “The Ultimate Internet Appliance.”

And iApologize for all the iTalics. Hope they haven’t made you see-sick.

The “i”, it says, morphed into being more personal and self-centered, to me a sign of our increasing cultural iSolation.

Of course, that’s just me, one guy railing against the monoliths shackling the language.

iCan’t help it. To paraphrase an iConic thinker, “iYam what iYam.”

Besides the people have spoken. The i’s have it.

That’s enough for now.

I’m going to grab some breakfast to try and clear my mind.

All of a sudden I’m thinking IHOP.

Avoid unnecessary upgrades! Smart phones smart enough

(685 words)

I’m surprised the rascals promoting booming gun sales have yet to resort to the most surefire way to increase revenue -- and I apologize to those of you reflexively groaning at my use of “booming” and “surefire” in connection with gun sales.

What does the gun industry need to do to increase sales?

Sell colored guns!

Yes, at the risk of sounding blatantly self-serving, it’s time Smith, Wesson and the rest of the ballistic bunch begin to “Use All The Crayons!” on all their hand cannons.

See, guns are almost uniformly gun colored. They’re all indistinguishable shades of gray, silver or black. It’s almost as boring as what Henry Ford in 1909 said about his Model T: “Any customer can have any color that he wants -- so long as it is black.”

Today everyone knows color -- not safety or mileage -- is the main deciding factor with any vehicle purchase.

Henry Ford has gone down in history as one of America’s greatest innovators, but Steve Jobs and his gang make him look like a piker.

Behold! I present to you the new iPhone 5c -- now available in lime! Blue! Red! Yellow! Orange and more!

Guns are bound to soon follow suit.

I may be the only person on the planet who thinks handguns and smart phones are practical twin products.

I do this because I’m visionary.

See, the trajectory of the device-devouring smart phone means logically that one day it will eliminate the need to carry anything else in your pockets -- keys, ID, money, pistols, etc. Thus, you’ll have guns that will be able to snap pictures and play songs and smart phones that’ll be able to ventilate would-be felons or suspicious Girl Scouts.

The Apple cultists will be lined up around the block for weeks.

Of course, careless function swappers might inadvertently stumble onto a prominent glitch and literally shoot their mouths off, but that will be a small price to pay for the the prestige of dying by status.

I’m spending an unwelcome amount of time thinking of new smart phones because there’s a new commercial nagging that two years is too long to wait for an upgrade.

<<Let me interrupt this post to check mine for a more family-friendly word for “bullcrap.”>>

That’s, uh . . . hooey! Piffle! Gobbledygook! Codswallop!

This marketing assault is coinciding with the pleadings of our 13-year-old daughter who is desperate to get her first smart phone. Why now?

Because now they come in colors!

It’s given me an opportunity to explain to her how the insidious theories of planned obsolescence work on the sucker public.

See, I contend Apple, for the good of humanity, should have stopped making new iPhones right after they perfected my 4-year-old iPhone 3g.

The smart phone achieved perfection when it came packed with the ability to take pictures, text, secure proper directions, surf the web, check e-mails and minute-by-minute monitor the Facebook relationship status of all those Kardashian kids.

Sure, there are nifty apps for people who enjoy games and artistic endeavors, but unless you’re a NASA engineer required to take time out from weekend tailgate   activities to maneuver the International Space Station, most of us don’t need faster, bigger or more memory.

When reality show hillbillies have in their pockets the latest and greatest innovations it means we’ve reached product saturation.

That Apple is resorting to snazzy new colors as the primary sales tool means even they recognize the useful idea well is running dry.

So I’m urging you to, like me, resist the commercial pressures to upgrade your smart phone every two years. 

Declining sales will force Apple to look for new places to innovate. As I’ve said, I’d like to see them devote just one year to making an iMotor, an internal combustion engine that doesn’t rely on antique 18th century technology.

Of course it’s only a theory. You’re welcome to shoot holes in it.

I only ask that if you do, you do so soon, before the geniuses at Apple offer less rhetorical options to do the shooting.

Related . . .

Steve Jobs: American iCon

The i’s of my Apples

Smart phones, stupid people

Farewell, Sarah, America's flirt

I’ve spent the morning hearing moving tributes to Steve Jobs and am disappointed no one’s mentioned what will surely be his last great contribution to mankind.

News of his death bumped Sarah Palin right off the front pages, clear back to page A-10 in my morning paper.

Any minute I expect to read she’s tweeted a foot-stomping cry for attention blaming Obama for the loss of Jobs, Steve.

I wouldn’t want to be Todd today.

Let me clarify: I’d never want to be Todd. It seems like a lot of work.

Like most every man who puts his libido above petty politics, I remember the Alaska governor making a terrific first impression.

Great hair, flirty expressions, curves in all the places shallow men like me like to see them -- she looked nothing like Dick Thornburgh, Milton Shapp or any of my Pennsylvania governors.

I didn’t think, hey, she’ll probably make a competent vice president. No, I remember thinking, man, I’ll bet it would be fun spending a steamy afternoon melting the walls of the old igloo with Sarah.

It was an utterly alien political sort of thought. I’ve never once felt similar yearnings about Dick Cheney or Joe Liebermann when they were running for vice president.

It was a welcome distraction. For much of the past 10 years it’s been much more fun thinking about screwing our politicians than realizing how they’ve all been screwing us.

But then Sarah made an critical mistake.

She began to speak. Her voice had a nasally, shrieky quality to it that had me instinctively reaching for the WD-40.

She’s spent the last three years reminding me of what it’s like to sit right in front of a woman who talks the whole way through a movie that’s about three years too long. She just doesn’t know when to shut the hell up.

I don’t know any serious political commentators who in the past two years felt she was going to run for president. In fact, I think she achieved her ambition after quitting her governorship to star in her own reality show where she could determine every aspect that was seen and heard.

She has no interest performing in a venue where she can’t control the content.

It’s like all those come-on winks were really just a big tease. No one was ever going to get what they wanted from Sarah.

So what’s next?

Her scorched supporters, those who poured so much devotion and belief into her, will now turn elsewhere. That’s just what they do.

I don’t understand why so many people who so loudly claim to love one savior are always so restlessly seeking another.

Sarah will continue to write books, support fringe candidates and make shrill statements to keep reminding us she’s way up there in Alaska with that extended family that more and more reminds me of uproarious episodes of “My Name is Earl.”

And what about Todd? What’s next for him?

I haven’t seen a man on television that looked that unhappy since Kate Gosselin’s shrewish behavior forced her dumpy husband Jon into a mid-life crisis that happened about two decades too soon.

He’s surly. He growls at photographers. He looks miserable. It’s like he’s spent the last three years auditioning to be Tiger Woods’s next caddie.

Maybe I’ve got him all wrong. Now that the pressure to be perfect is reduced, maybe he’ll emerge from his shell and let the world know he’s a bright and witty guy.

Maybe he’ll open up in an interview and let us all know there’s an unseen side to Todd. Maybe the first words to emerge from his mouth will be welcome wisdom.

Of course, that’s when it all started going south with Sarah.

And that’s the direction from Wasilla from which I hope she never again ventures.

Steve Jobs: American iCon

The still-glowing reaction to the retirement of Steve Jobs highlights what’s wrong with American entrepreneurship these days. Everyone said he’s a genius, our most creative thinker, a brilliant tactical leader.

What went unmentioned is Jobs should go down as one of America’s most colossal disappointments.

And that’s by even his own standard.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak: “He was always thinking about those great people that drove humanity to a higher level. People like Shakespeare, you know, like Isaac Newton.”

Sorry. His contributions are more in line with the recently deceased Elliot Handler who died July 21 in Los Angeles. He was 95.

Never heard of him? He was the founder of Mattel who invented Barbie, Ken and Hot Wheels.

He was a toymaker.

That’s all Jobs is.

He devoted much of the last 15 years figuring out nifty ways we could increase the number of songs we carry around in our pockets.

Just about every word I’ve written since 1998 has been on a Mac computer. I love Apple. I love my iPod. I’ve had an iPhone for less than a year and whenever I have any problem my first thought is, “How can what’s in my pocket solve this?”

Much of the world shares my mania for this. That’s why Apple now has more money in the bank ($75 billion) than the U.S. federal government, ($73 billion).

That’s why for the last 10 years I kept thinking, “Okay, now’s the time to take some of that money and some of that genius, put away the toys, and go to work on solving some of the world’s most pressing problems.”

A man like Jobs and his team -- and they all call themselves “geniuses” and have the t-shirts to back the boast -- shouldn’t be devoting their lives to improving the interface for games like Angry Birds.

If he truly aspired to greatness, he could have walked into a board meeting and said, “Okay, the technology behind the internal combustion engine is 160 years old, it consumes dirty fossil fuels that cost nearly $4 a gallon. We’re taking the next six months to invent a green iEngine that converts leaves and weeds into ozone that’ll float up into the atmosphere where it belongs. I want 10 ideas on my desk by noon tomorrow.”

He’d make a tidy profit on that, for sure. Or he could act like a truly great man and give it away for free.

Sound farfetched? Too socialistic?

Jonas Salk (1914-1995) devoted years of his life to creating a vaccine to wipe out polio, the most terrifying disease known to man. It could have made him a spectacular fortune. Instead, he gave it away.

For free.

“There is no patent,” he said in response to a question at a nationally televised press conference. “Could you patent the sun?”

Now, that’s a truly great man. A Pittsburgher, too. Like me.

Jobs’s health is a mysterious but clearly difficult situation for him. Certainly, he’s already faced thoughts of his own mortality.

Great men at the end think they haven’t done nearly enough.

It happens to famous artists, philosophers, scientists, musicians, architects, inventors and to the magnificent Renaissance man who was all those things rolled into one.

“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”

Those were the last words of Leonard da Vinci.

To me the most compelling example of this poignancy was detailed in Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 film, “Schindler’s List.” It’s almost too heartbreaking for me to watch again.

Oskar Schindler risked his life to deceive the Nazis that Jews at his factory were essential to the war effort. He saved over 1,100 innocents from certain doom.

Yet, at the end the film shows him wallowing in despair over what he did not do. His wristwatch, he said, could have spared two more; his car perhaps a dozen.

These were great men with humanity’s best interests in their hearts.

Do not dare include Jobs among that list.

He was smart guy who made a lot of money giving us the moronic diversions we crave.

The world’s going to hell.

Thanks to Steve Jobs, at least we’ll all be groovin’ when we get there.

Tech problems inflict Biblical torments

I always tell prospective authors that being a freelance writer is like being adrift in a rubber raft far out at sea. And that being a freelance writer with technical problems is like being in that rubber raft and hearing an urgent hiss.

My rickety little raft began to hiss on Wednesday and I’ve been sinking ever since.

It occurred to me while on one of the numerous multi-hour tech talks to Apple that I ask more concerned and pointed questions about how these self-proclaimed “geniuses” were going fix my computer than I did to the docs who were going to deliver our children.

It makes sense, really. One earns money. The other spends it.

Of course, it hasn’t been earning me much lately. But I still look at my $1,700 MacBook Pro like it is a magic genie. If I rub it just the right way it’ll make my fondest dreams come true.

Inside its cool chrome exterior are four non-fiction book proposals, a completed novel and the stark rejections from -- who knows? – maybe 1,000 agents and publishers who think I suck.

It’s no stretch to say that my relationship to my computer is like my marriage. I love it wholeheartedly and try and nurture it. If it’s sick, I fret about its well-being and have trouble sleeping.

I wonder what will happen to me if we part ways and I have to start all over.

This is being written on my wife’s shiny and pretty Toshiba and it feels like I’m committing an infidelity. I’m doing the same things with it that I do with my own computer, but it feels different to my fingers. It gives me strange warnings and nags me in ways I’m not used to being nagged. I touch some things expecting one reaction and I get another unsettling one.

My own computer has already suffered the technological equivalent of castration. I with a stroke of my own hand wiped out its hard drive. This, I was told, would fix the problems and allow me to re-install with a backup hard drive that I faithfully apply.

I’d only lose about two days of work and, I swear, I’ve convinced myself that during those two days I’d composed some of the greatest thoughts ever conjured. Those words are now gone.

So is my faith in backups. One genius darkly hinted that the problem could actually stem from the backup.

Now I’m contemplating getting an entire harem of illicit backups. My trust’s been shattered.

I’m ashamed to admit this, but as all the fixes were failing me I thought of turning to the omnipotent deity to whom we all look to for hope and fulfillment.

And I’m not talking about Steve Jobs.

Nope, I’m talking about the guy who Biblically bystands when another of his faithful sons, Job v.1.0 (no relation) endures a torment that had nothing to do with corrupt hard drives and invalid node structures.

In the book of Job, the Lord’s most faithful servant is bedeviled by Satan -- and bedevilment doesn’t get any more pure than that.

And the Lord lets it all happen as Job wonders wounded why.

During a dark time yesterday, I felt a kinship with Job. I wondered if prayer might help.

Then I thought that there was, for sure, some dying father trapped in the rubble down in Haiti saying prayers that needed hearing more than mine. I’d feel small if my prayer took priority.

So I’ll soldier on through my moral mess on my own. Today I’ll endure another marathon of ear-squashing tech advice, dashed hopes and, perhaps, a resolution that’ll allow me to come home to my computer.

And when it’s over, I’ll return to my little rubber raft and the currents will sweep me far, far out to sea.

Maybe someday my tech torments will end and I'll board a ship with a smart crew that'll free me from concerns that have nothing to do with the act of writing.

But that won’t happen until I can look myself in the mirror and make a career sea change.

I'll have to quit freelancing. I'll have to take this Job and shove it.

Introducing my new computer!

Is this best sentence I’ve ever written?

Does it shimmer before your eyes? Is it grammatically flawless? Does it possess a stylistic elegance that makes you want to read on and on and on?

Because, by God and Steve Jobs, it had better. I just dinged my Discover card for $1700.79 for a computer that I’ll use mostly the way my dear mother used an old Royal typewriter when she worked nearly 40 years ago as a receptionist for a local coal company.

I don’t use my computer for games, to edit or view movies or even for indulging in the American pastime of downloading cheap porn while the boss is sexually harassing his shapely secretary.

No, all I want is the computer equivalent of a mule. I want a working class animal that’ll allow me to hammer out story after story and zip them onto the internet where they’ll either soar or sink.

Yet yesterday I cheerfully agreed to purchase a computer that in the proper hands could probably be used to safely land a Space Shuttle. It can let be a rock star, movie director, financial wizard and inhabit a host of other roles I’d fail at all on my own.

I wish I was immune to the euphoric jolt we get from spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need, but it cannot be denied. As the friendly salesman was showing me the touchpad tricks and the hidden camera functions I found myself being drawn to the fabulous MacBook Pro when I’m sure I could probably get by with one of the $400 netbook’s that are sweeping the tech world.

And all the while as I’m being distracted by the unnecessary ornaments they’ve dangled off my sturdy little tree, somebody’s grandmother is sipping coffee on her porch and scratching out a story on a dog-eared yellow legal pad

She laughs when her grandchildren urge her to get a computer. She doesn’t need a computer, she says, to tell her stories.

Who are you rooting for in this David vs. Goliath match? Me and my MacBook or the old babe and her trusty little pencil?

Of course, you’re rooting for her. Who wouldn’t?

I always tell students who pay thousands of dollars to learn from me about how to be a writer (talk about your misspent fortunes) that the writing profession is the only one where rank amateurs can outperform reliable veterans.

You could study diligently at the best schools, glean insights from accomplished writers and that little old grandmother could wake up one morning and be struck with an inspiration to write a great book.

And she could do it.

There are mountains of practical obstacles that prevent her from even considering being a doctor, a lawyer or, really, a school crossing guard. But if she wants to become the world’s greatest writer, all she needs is a compelling idea, a lively voice and a sharp pencil.

One of the first e-mails I received on my new computer was from a prestigious agent who’d previously asked to review the full manuscript of my novel. This was the kind of news that had me doing a mental jigs all day as I imagined him sitting there laughing and weeping at all the right parts.

But he did not. His rejection was cushioned with much flattery, but it is a rejection none-the-less. He believes a key element of the book is unnecessary and distracts from the main premise.

He is wrong.

Still, today I’m going to load that manuscript into its cushy new home and give that son of a bitch a vigorous work out till its muscles shine with sweat. I’ll give it a massage, a shower, put a nice shirt on it -- I’m telling you this computer can do it all -- and send it out to another dozen agents.

And somewhere a little old grandmother will stick a stamp on an envelope addressed to that same prestigious agent who may one day give her the good news that for now continues to elude me.

Well, cinch up your bloomers granny because here I come.

I’m taking my manuscript and my stories and am going to run you down with 2 gigs of 1066 MegaHerz DDR3 SDRAM, a 160 gig hard drive, a 13.3-inch LED backlit display with 1280 x 800 pixels all driven by a sassy 2.26 Intel Core Duo processor.

Together we’re going to grind you and your stubby little pencil into sawdust.

Don’t feel bad for the old girl.

I’m sure my spiffy new MacBook has a feature that can mend the bones of broken grannies.

I think I’ll stop writing for now and spend the rest of the day toying with how to use it.