The iMaxi Pad: An iPad Case – With Wings!
To date there have been three main observations made about the Apple iPad:
- It's a life-affirming oversized iPhone that's so wonderful it also cures cancer
- It's bigger than a phone but less functional than a laptop, neatly filling the non-portable non-useful market niche
- It sounds like a high-tech feminine hygiene product, with a fresh fruit aroma
The last point has been taken to its bitter and mercilessly logical conclusion with the introduction of the iMaxi — an iPad case in the shape of a sanitary towel. The iMaxi's description is best left to Hip Handmaids, the talented housewives who make this must-have accessory:
With its durable vinyl outer layer and plush, quilted-cotton sleeve, the iMaxi helps keep your iPad clean and dry. Plus, the iMaxi's Velcro-latched, advanced wing design wraps snugly around your device, so your iPad always stays where it should. Best of all, it shields it from all those unsightly and embarrassing data leaks that would make any motherboard worry!
It's great that they went to the trouble of making this atrocity, but they should have just Photoshopped it — the only people conceited enough to buy one would probably want to pay for it with inside jokes and a cashier's cheque from the bank of Smugland.
Hip Handmaids' iMaxi
Apple Rejects iPhone App, Receives Chocolate Seals in Return
Put yourself in the shoes of Canadian software developer Matthew Smyth. For days you have slaved over a hot computer creating a new iPhone Application, and now it's ready for submission to Apple's official App Store. The App Store is the only outlet for iPhone applications, and has high standards for both programming and content.
So every line of code has been checked and rechecked, every pixel polished until it gleams. But your index finger hovers over the keyboard's enter key — there's something nagging at the back of your mind, something that might get picked up by Apple's notoriously high (and not always consistent) standards. You can't put your finger on the problem, and dismiss it. After all, you've had apps accepted before. Confidently you hit enter, and send the app in for approval. It's called iSealClub. What could possibly go wrong?
Not too surprisingly, this seal-clubbing app was rejected by Apple because of its objectionable content. Smyth took it to the computer press, asking why you can't club seals on the iPhone when you can hunt deer, kill Pygmies, steal cars and shoot innocent bystanders. A good point, but somehow it still doesn't make clubbing seals seem OK.
The final word was had by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) who thanked Apple CEO Steve Jobs for rejecting the app by sending him some chocolate seals. Made from vegan chocolate, of course.
I can't help feeling there's something a little incongruous going on... are chocolate seals the confectionery of choice for PETA staff? If so, what treats are being passed around at other charities? Are Barnardo's workers merrily tearing the heads off jelly babies? Perhaps anti-safari campaigners hide behind their Jeeps furtively scoffing Lion bars? Well, they have to cope somehow.
For the non-squeamish, and animal-rights activists who need a more direct release than eating tiny chocolate animal sculptures, here's a short video of the app:
More about iSealClub at www.isealclub.com
Apple Says “Don’t Surf and Smoke”
Be careful with your Apple, you don't know where it's been.
Let's introduce this with a few famous words from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Before he became the Governator, Arnie uttered some of the most memorable lines in movie history. I'll be back. Hasta la vista, baby. Don't drink and bake.
OK, so Arnold's culinary advice from Raw Deal isn't his best known quote. But it is a personal favourite and was brought to mind by Apple's treatment of two Mac owners who tried - and failed - to get their wonky computers repaired under the terms of their extended warranties.
So what's the connection? Well, Apple refused to fix these machines because they had been "contaminated". How could this happen? Nuclear fall out? Exotic diseases? Splashes of lead-based paint? Nope, it was something much more mundane: their owners were smokers and, ignorant of the dangers of passive smoking, had chuffed away merrily as they surfed the web. No doubt they groped the keyboard with their stinky paws, stubbed out ciggies on the LCD screens, and blew noxious fumes into the fragile little buggers' USB ports. Smokers are like that.
Not only had these computers been choked by second-hand smoke, but Apple was concerned about their employees' safety. As a responsible company, Apple wouldn't put its employees in contact with anything that's bad for their health. And, according to the American Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), nicotine is a hazardous substance. Separately, those are two perfectly sensible statements. But by a less-than-robust logical deduction, Apple has put the two together and fallen for the new phenomenon of third-hand smoke*.
With third-hand smoke not only is someone smoking nearby a danger, but so is coming into contact with an object which has previously had someone smoking nearby it. Doesn't that cover a lot of things? Surely most buildings and vehicles have housed a smoker at one time or another? While we are going down this road, it's probably best to steer clear of anything a leper - I mean smoker - has touched. Or looked at. Or thought about. And if you pass a smoker in the street, it's perfectly OK to punch them in the face. But put a glove on first.
* * * * *
The term "third-hand smoke" was in the news in January this year following a research study on the topic. Unsurprisingly the newspapers completely ignored the actual content of the study and merrily reported on the new dangers of third-hand smoke. The research was actually a survey of peoples' beliefs about third-hand smoke - it didn't assess the dangers at all. Well, they say never to let the facts get in the way of a good story. In Hollywood.
Thanks to:
The Consumerist and the NHS
Airport Worker Crushed Under 100 Foot Stack of Laptops
I'm sorry, I've misled you. You can allow yourself a sigh of relief (or a grunt of disappointment), because no-one has been flattened by a tower of computers. Curse my name, if it makes you feel better.
But it's a miracle that no-one really has been injured, because the lost property department at LAX (the main airport serving Los Angeles) deals with 1,200 misplaced laptops every week. If they are one inch thick on average, you get a pile 100 feet high. That's the height of a ten storey building. Amazing. Even more fantastic: ten times as many laptops are lost when you take all US airports into account.
Blimey.
...then dump your laptop and run away barefoot
Those statistics are in a recent report commissioned by Dell (PDF). But this report is fishier than Billingsgate. If visitors to LAX are really losing that many laptops — roughly one every eight minutes — I'm flying out there right now to pick up some freebies. Confused travellers must be running around like headless chickens, arms flapping wildly, as their precious computers are carelessly discarded on every available flat surface. Laptops left in the departure lounge, laptops balanced on toilet seats, laptops blocking every security checkpoint and gate. Laptops everywhere. They might as well glue them all together and use them as flooring — it will be easier and cheaper than storing them all in the lost property office, which by now must be the size of a hangar.
I'm not a scientist, so it would be foolish of me to criticise this study further. But I am foolish, so here goes. According to the report 40% of laptops are lost at security checkpoints, giving a monthly total of 20,000 that are somehow lost in the few seconds they spend inside an x-ray machine. Luckily, US airport security checkpoints are managed by a single organisation: the Transport Security Administration (TSA). A spokesman has stated that "On average, TSA receives approximately 75 lost or missing laptop claims each month, nationwide." That's 75 out of 20,000, apparently. So of all these travellers who nonchalantly dump their computers at security checkpoints, less than half of one percent of bother to try and get them back. Either that, or someone's numbers are looking a bit dodgy.
But let's be fair for a moment. Real airport security is fairly new to Americans; the TSA was only set up in response to 9/11. Before then, you could merrily dance through security checkpoints with pen knives, daggers and swords and the security personnel wouldn't bat an eyelid. Because they were asleep. And blind. And they passed away weeks ago. Hold baggage wasn't checked at all. Proper security checks make Americans nervous, and maybe, just maybe, they are so happy to get through them that the sacrifice of a laptop is a small price to pay.
Maybe.
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