Posts Tagged ‘tech’

Razer blueWhen it comes to keyboards, I am picky.  Very picky.  I learned to type on an IBM Selectric 2 in high school and that left me rather spoiled.  I also have had some wrist injuries, including some issues with repetitive strain.  When my old keyboard of nearly 8 years gave up the ghost, I decided to take a huge chance and go with the Razer BlackWidow Chroma.  After a week typing on it, I have been extremely pleased with the result.  This review is going to be a surprise to those that know me…  (more…)

More Apple News

Posted: July 7, 2015 in Tech
Tags: , , , , ,

Apple Watch sales bottoming out?  Well, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Market Watch is reporting:

Apple Watch May Not Be Ticking With Customers

I have yet to find a benefit of doubling the price of my phone for a piece of tech that will be obsolete in 6 months when the Apple Watch 2.0 comes out.

I’m still trying to figure out who the buyers for this are.  So far all I can come up with are the ridiculously rich, tech reviewers, patrons of the Church of Apple or “kids” who still have mom and dad paying their bills.

 

IPhone6_silver_frontfaceIf you use Apple’s Home Sharing do NOT upgrade to the latest iOS update (8.4).  Home sharing has been removed.  Your options now are to pay Apple for Match or pay for the family plan on the new Apple music service.  If you have the technical expertise and resources to set up something like a Plex server or move your library to OneDrive or GDrive, you can take those options, as well.

Fortunately for me, most of my music is ripped either lossless or at high nitrates from my extensive CD collection.  Even most of mp3’s come from private purchase and not iTunes.  Why in the world would I pay for Match?  It doesn’t give me anything I don’t already have.

Outside the home, I put what I want on my device at the time.  Most streaming is blocked at the office and why should I burn my data at work or in the car?  Beside, I’m rural enough that it’s not unusual to not have bandwidth available for effective streaming.

If you’re a kid that has mom and dad paying your bills, this might be good for you.  For many of the rest of us?  Not so much.

Apple has unveiled its new $9.99 per month streaming music service and a 24 hour online radio station called Beats One to take on Spotify and Tidal, Jay Z’s service.

Source: Apple unveils Music streaming service to take on Spotify and Tidal | Daily Mail Online

So we have what???

  • A music service that will have to compete with Spotify, Pandora and Apple’s own free iTunes radio, not to mention all the other online radio stations that are available like TuneIn, I <3 Radio and even YouTube.  All of which are free or have free options.  Oh, and also Amazon Prime’s rather impressive library, if you happen to have that service (which also includes free shipping and Prime Videos).
  • News sounds like Apple has finally decided Flipboard or Bing may be good ideas.
  • A pay service – Apple Pay – that hardly anybody is using here in the U.S.
  • Plus we get some OS updates that are finally *beginning* to catch up with Android and Windows 8.
  • About those billion Siri requests?  How many of those requests include the 2 or 3 times you ask something before giving up and typing it manually?  Or kids just asking silly questions to see what response is generated?

I hate to say this, because I love my iPhone 6, but I’m beginning to get some PalmOS deja vu.

This may be seen as more political than I normally allow The Christian Geek to be, however this is extremely relevant to the scope of the site.  It has huge implications to both religious speech and it is one of the top tech issues of the day.  You really need to read Mr. Crovitz article.  It puts the issue out very clearly.
L. Gordon Crovitz: From Internet to Obamanet – WSJ.

What you have to keep in mind here is that he mentions both critical impact areas of what he calls “Obamanet” (I like that phrase…)  The most important thing to take away is that these are regulations being passed to fix a problem that does not exist.

Everyone keeps focusing on the economics.   Yes, problems have threatened, but market pressures have prevented them from coming about.  Market forces have kept the internet working smoothly and more responsively than government could ever possibly do.  Yet this is not the real danger of the impending federal regulations.

The real danger of these regulations is (more…)