[Palm Springs, tough place to go for work, I know.]Anyway, the topic today is Apple. They've been the bane of my existence lately. I'd wish a pox upon Steve Jobs, but, you know, he kinda already died from one.
1. Everything on my iPhone got erased. I was upgrading the OS to the latest version through iTunes, and I received a message telling me an error had occurred -- no further explanation just "An error occurred during process [random number]". I clicked OK (my only option, if there was a "Fix Everything" button, trust me, I would've clicked it), and then it just continued with whatever process it was doing. I thought to myself "huh, this probably isn't good", but didn't know what to do, so I just let it finish. After it was done, I had the new OS, but nothing was backed up on iTunes. (I'm guessing that's where the error occurred.) So, all my apps, all my settings, all my contacts, all gone. It's like I just bought a new phone. Now, I'm probably one of the better people for this to happen to, because I try to keep things simply, I don't like having a bunch of shit on my phone with all these notifications and all that (it drives me crazy to see all those little numbers all over my phone), so I only had about five apps. Plus, only about three people ever call or text me with any regularity, so not a huge loss in the contacts department either, but still it's annoying.
2. I've decided to teach myself how to program apps, and setting everything up is turning out to be a colossal pain. I'm good with computers when it comes to programming algorithms. That's basically what I do for a living: derive, implement, and debug algorithms. But, that's more about being good at math and logic than it is about being good with computers. I'm not super knowledgeable about using computers. When it comes to programming, I want somebody else to set up the workspace application, and the compiler, and the linker and all that -- just show me where to type the code and what button to press to execute it, and I'll be off and running.
But, of course, I don't have somebody like that. I'm trying to do this myself. So, I buy a book for about $20 that starts at the very beginning of app making, and I start going through it page by page. First, I have to pay $99 to be part for of the Apple Development Team, kinda Apple proprietary BS, but whatever. Next, I have to buy Lion OS for S's computer (she has the Mac, I'm "borrowing" it) for $30, so I do that. Then I realize that the book I bought is outdated. It's only two years old, but already Apple has changed some things. I try to use it anyway, but it's basically unusable -- the screen shots are different, things are in different places on Apple's website than it says in the book, there's a new version of the development software, and so on. They're all subtle changes that somebody who knew what they were doing a little bit could probably easily navigate around, but that's the whole point, I don't know what I'm doing, at all. So, I break down and buy the latest edition of the book. I get it on my Kindle, so it's only $10. I download the development software I supposedly need, and then quit because I spend the whole day doing everything else, and now I'm burned out. I do plan on resuming things when I get back, though. I'm already $160 into it, and I really enjoy banging my head against a wall and feeling stupid, so why not?
3. I feel somewhat conflicted morally about owning Apple products. They are produced in China in work conditions that we would not deem acceptable in the U.S. Now, sweatshops are a bit of a sticky wicket, because although they seem abhorrent to us, they actually do provide an upgrade in salary and standard of life for people in developing countries, and over time they push up wages to something approaching U.S. standards. (Really, Paul Krugman says so.) With that said, Apple has so much money they literally don't know what to do with it. I'm sure they could champion a U.S. manufacturing movement if they wanted to. It's just not that important to them. And why should it be? It's, frankly, not that important to us, we buy their products anyway.
As I alluded to in my last entry, This American Life recently did a piece on working conditions in Apple supply factors in China. They then retracted it. It turns out the man who gave them the information, Mike Daisey, made up a great deal of it to make his stage monologue more dramatic. I recommend checking out the story. It's pretty interesting.
Alright, off to bed, it's a work night. Until next time...
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