Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

I was browsing CNN this afternoon and I saw the following:

Oh my God! Apple may make the insane decision to phase out a tremendously successful and profitable product? They virtually control the music player hardware and download business and, if CNN is to be believed, some crack-smoking executive at Apple has decided to call it quits? What the hell? This is awful! I better check it out.

At risk! This really is terrible! Oh, wait… hmmm… so Apple may phase out it’s single high-end model in favor of a new model. (Even though, technically, there is no such thing as a “Video iPod”.) Ok, that makes circumstances different than the headline on the front page, which strongly implied the entire iPod line was going away. Further investigation reveals that the “at risk” label is an Apple designation which means this model of device may be replaced by an update. It’s not any kind of indicator that an entire product line is in any danger of disappearing. Nobody at Apple has made a dumb decision.

I’m shocked! This turns out to be a sensational headline and tilt on the story that has very little resemblance to reality. I can’t believe the mainstream (drive-by) media would do such a thing! I wonder if the real, important news contains any such inaccuracies and sensationalism?

If the headline would have been written by the increasingly awful Mac press, it would have contained the obligatory ? at the end (”Analyst: Apple’s iPod may be phased out?”), because as we know, adding a ? to the end of any sentence immediately turns it into a question, whatever the structure of the sentence may be. For some reason every headline must be a question.

Ugh.

We have now had more snow during the first 24 hours of spring than we did the entire winter.

This is Rob Wahl. You may recognize him from such conspicuous entertainment as HGTV’s All Lit Up, a recent Febreze commercial, and as Genevieve Gorder’s ultra-dumb, remote control-fondling sidekick in an ad for Sofa Express. It was that ad, in fact, that caused me to give Rob a call this afternoon, and the resulting inanity of the conversation mandated that I post it here.

About seven years ago, I worked with Rob at a television station in Columbus, Ohio, with the call letters WWHO. It was all fun and games except for the fact that the VP of the place hated me because I didn’t feel the compulsion to kiss his ass. It was probably the funnest job I’ve ever had, and I didn’t really want to leave it, but circumstances pushed me back to Dayton for the better. Rob was a hoot, and as the graphics artist, he was my first real-world exposure to the Mac. He borrowed my suit to wear to a shoot for some newspaper in Lexington, and I seem to remember something about how he smeared a soggy Oreo cookie across his front teeth and talked like a hillbilly. He autographed a picture for me before I left town, and he hoped to never hear from me again. (I know that for a fact.)

Last night I was watching Law & Order and saw him on a sofa next to Geneneivenevienve Gorder playing the “Dumber” to her “Dumb”, so I called him today. We had a cursory discussion about semi-pseudo-fame since we’ve both racked up some TV time, and then we made as much chit-chat as two people who haven’t spoken for seven years could. And that was that.

There’s no point here, I’m just relating an experience.

Take a look at this wallpaper posted on MacDesktops.net:

Can you spot the horrible grammatical error any second grader should be able to correct? The creator’s inability to understand even the most basic usage of the language he speaks and writes (?) every day severely damages his credibility. I find it impossible to take his opinion seriously.

Check out the opening line to this Reuters article about the iTunes subscription content Apple released today:

Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes music and video store on Wednesday took its first step toward a monthly subscription model with a new service called Multi-Pass that lets users buy TV shows on a monthly basis.

“First step”? I sincerely doubt Reuters knows something about Apple we don’t know, inasmuch as Apple’s ultimate goal is to establish some kind of subscription-based service. I dunno if this is bad writing, agenda-pushing, or wishful thinking. In any case, it’s idiocy.

This follows later:

Apple has so far resisted calls from media companies and competitors to adopt a monthly subscription fee favored by the likes of Napster and Real Networks Inc.’s Rhapsody, preferring an a la carte download model where music tracks cost 99 cents and videos $1.99.

And they should resist those calls. Why would Apple want to do what its competitors call for anyway? The subscription-based services are getting their ass kicked by iTunes. The reality is very simple: Content that updates frequently fits a subscription model, and static content fits a purchase model. “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are updated frequently, 16 times per month according to the article, so a subscription makes sense. The soundtrack to “The Producers” that I bought a few months ago will never change, so I want to buy it once and have it forever.

My kingdom for competent tech writers.