720 iPitch

720 iPitch

We all want iPhones. Or at least most of us do. These smart phones are smarter than the average smart phone. They can do zillions of things like check your e-mail, surf the web. track your investments and thousands and thousands of other things. GPS, movies, radio, on and on. The iPhone does everything brilliantly -- except make and receive phone calls. Guy next door has one. Our houses are attached. In order to have a phone conversation he has to be outside on the porch.

The iPad is similar, except no phone and it's bigger. The iPod, Pad, Phone, all have one thing in common: the iPitch. No one but no one on the internet or in the computer business can push ads -- mostly self ads -- into your eyeballs. Everything comes with an iPitch. We all know the internet is one big sales tool, decorated with most of the world's knowledge, speculation, unedited news and edited news, videos, porn and propaganda as decoration. We live with the ads because the decoration is so useful.

Apple knows how to maintain the "cool" factor. All their stuff is the very definition of the word. But as soon as you buy the latest cool tool, you get inundated with stuff they want you to do -- because they profit from it. "Garage Band?" "iWorks?" "Safari?" Extraneous stuff that ties you to the company. As soon as you've spent the rent on "apps," and such, they come out with a new version, which they then iPitch to you.

So, what do you do if you want a small, portable, internet ready computer? An iPad? Or are you better off with the more standard mini computers from companies like HP or Asus or Acer or Toshiba or Dell? Consumer tip: if you go for any of these minis, buy one that DOESN'T have Windows 7 "Starter Edition." All that it starts is the Microsoft version of the iPitch, which is "UPGRADE NOW OR I WILL KILL THIS PUPPY!"

But that iPad is soooo coooool. Maybe it's worth the iPitch to have one. Or not.

Shrapnel:

--Father's Day Goofiness: "Hello Dad, the people at Hallmark insist that I call you today." It's a good thing Hallmark doesn't tell this obedient fellow to jump off the roof.

--Father's day started in 1909 or so as kind of "counterprogramming" to Mother's Day. Mother's Day is an offshoot of the British "Mothering Day." But neither would still be with us today without, um... Hallmark.

--Was it Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy or "Love Lucy that did a funny bit about vacuum cleaner salesmen damaging things while demonstrating his machine in someone's house? Anyway, life imitates art in Syracuse, NY. There, two salesmen are charged with some crime or other for wrecking a $1300 mattress while demonstrating THEIR machine, but cops aren't saying exactly what damage was done.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010