Having now used an iPad mini, I can honestly say...

I WANT ONE MORE THAN EVER.

>> ^spoco2:

@Sagemind Oh I'm so with you there. It's a pathetic way to get views, it shits me.
Why they can't just live on their own humour without pretending to be 'banned' is beyond me.


I think that's a bit of a stretch. I reckon they just wanted to brand these parody videos, so they called it "banned". Stupid name, still funny.

Fear is fear, whether it's of Hell or of prison, it's still fear. You need to teach with positive reinforcement, empathy, to instill in the kids a proper sense or right and wrong. The Bible has some good lessons, the Golden Rule is one of the best, Do unto others as you would have done unto you. I think just that act of projecting yourself unto others can give you the perspective to not be a dick all the time. At no point does God need to be involved, just an understanding and appreciation of your fellow man. Good and responsible behavior doesn't start and stop with religion, and I can't stand it when religions try and claim a monopoly on morality, because it just isn't true.

>> ^shinyblurry:

You're not going to stop kids from sinning by yelling at them. It's not the fear of going to prison which is going to stop them from screwing up, it's the fear of the Lord. If you raise your kids correctly, to honor and reverence Almighty God, using corporal punishment when appropriate, you will end up with a child of honor, who will respect other people, and want to contribute something good to society. Of course this also requires ample doses of unconditional love, and sensitivity to the needs of your child. It requires a total commitment to preparing a child for life in this world and giving him all the tools he needs to succeed. Discipline is a necessary component of this, one that is often missing in many homes. The scripture says if you don't discipline your child you hate him. Godly discipline, to note, is not to tear a child down in anger, but build a child up with love, and teach him how to take responsibility for his actions and own his mistakes instead of passing blame on to others.
If a bad product is coming out of a factory, then you need to check the assembly line. It's bad parenting which is creating these children. Parents who constantly coddle their children, try to be their friends and buy them off instead of discipline them. Parents who raise them on television and r rated movies and violent video games and all of this raw sewage of a corrupt and depraved culture being pumped into their fragile young minds. Parenting, just like everything else in life, is a garbage in garbage out principle. I just read a story about 4 eight year old kids performing sex acts on one another because they had figured out how to access internet porn on their ipads. This wouldn't happen if their parents actually knew or cared what was going on in their kids lives.
There used to be a moral standard in this country founded on the bible, but America has rebelled against God and rejected His laws, and now we are reaping the harvest of our rebellion. Our children are growing up without a moral compass or godly role models and you even cannot begin to count this cost. The only way this situation will change is if we fall on our faces and repent of our wickedness:
2 Chronicles 7:14
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

You're not going to stop kids from sinning by yelling at them. It's not the fear of going to prison which is going to stop them from screwing up, it's the fear of the Lord. If you raise your kids correctly, to honor and reverence Almighty God, using corporal punishment when appropriate, you will end up with a child of honor, who will respect other people, and want to contribute something good to society. Of course this also requires ample doses of unconditional love, and sensitivity to the needs of your child. It requires a total commitment to preparing a child for life in this world and giving him all the tools he needs to succeed. Discipline is a necessary component of this, one that is often missing in many homes. The scripture says if you don't discipline your child you hate him. Godly discipline, to note, is not to tear a child down in anger, but build a child up with love, and teach him how to take responsibility for his actions and own his mistakes instead of passing blame on to others.

If a bad product is coming out of a factory, then you need to check the assembly line. It's bad parenting which is creating these children. Parents who constantly coddle their children, try to be their friends and buy them off instead of discipline them. Parents who raise them on television and r rated movies and violent video games and all of this raw sewage of a corrupt and depraved culture being pumped into their fragile young minds. Parenting, just like everything else in life, is a garbage in garbage out principle. I just read a story about 4 eight year old kids performing sex acts on one another because they had figured out how to access internet porn on their ipads. This wouldn't happen if their parents actually knew or cared what was going on in their kids lives.

There used to be a moral standard in this country founded on the bible, but America has rebelled against God and rejected His laws, and now we are reaping the harvest of our rebellion. Our children are growing up without a moral compass or godly role models and you even cannot begin to count this cost. The only way this situation will change is if we fall on our faces and repent of our wickedness:

2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Where's their managers? It's easy to point the finger at the guy caught red-handed. But they appear to have picked Orlando because it's had a rash of these problems.

Unless Ramirez has more than just that Ipad in his house, then it's not just him at Orlando stealing shit and that means the managers and/or supervisors need to be fired.

What are their hiring practices? Where are the safeguards to ensure they're not coming home with more than what they brought with them. It's easy to blame the worker, but the supervisors aren't blameless either.

If the TSA are amassing this magnitude of complaints, that's not a worker problem, that's a management problem.

>> ^chilaxe:

As bad as it is, this video doesn't apply to normal passengers who keep even $500 of cash in their luggage.
"All the luggage made it past TSA safely."
It only applies to people who leave behind valuable items.


Incorrect. While this particular study was focused on whether TSA agents would be willing to steal items that were left behind, it did reveal dishonesty within TSA which applies to any situation where they are handling your property. There are documented cases of TSA agents stealing items from luggage, not just items that were left behind. Not sure what you're trying to do here - defend TSA? Say that it's ok to take an iPad now and then if someone leaves it behind?

>> ^Gethrj:

I get that he stole but the ripple of smugness about a man losing his job doesn't exactly make the reporter seem like a hero either.


Agreed, the smugness was a huge turnoff, but at the same time as bad as I felt about the guy losing his job, he did steal. It's a lose-lose story here.

>> ^messenger:

It's not enough they molest you, and look at your naked body in their scanners. Even more reason for me never to fly through America.


Now now, the massage is quite nice.

Whether or not somebody absentmindedly leaves something behind is irrelevant, the schmuck still stole someones property, and then tries to blame it on his wife when he gets caught red handed. I can only hope she divorces his ass after that.
>> ^chilaxe:

As bad as it is, this video doesn't apply to normal passengers who keep even $500 of cash in their luggage.
"All the luggage made it past TSA safely."
It only applies to people who leave behind valuable items.

What a shitty crowd. If thats the kinda waste of air that watches Conan I don't want to even bother with it. Worshipping fucking Steve Jobs. This is why when the Apple killing Chinese workers story came out, it was swept away faster than anything. You just know that Steve before he finally died was battering poor Chinese workers with iPads for fun, "Make it Heavier! I can't dent peoples skulls with this flimsy crap!"

>> ^dag:

@spoco2 - tablets are awesome mainly because of the form factor. The fact that you can be standing up in a bus and hold one like you would a book - makes them very versatile - and something you can't do with a laptop. Form factor use cases are hard to explain to people though until they experience it, and work them into their own lives.


Yeah, I get that people do use them. I have three different tablets sitting in my drawer beside me (for app development)... I could take them home and use them whenever I want... but I've never felt the need.

I think it's due to my hatred of typing on screens for anything more than a quick SMS. That's why I love the idea of the Surface, with the keyboard/mouse just built into the cover, and that it's running full windows so I can do real work on it, at real typing speeds if I want. But still use a tablet touch interface for all those things that it makes sense for.

For me, it's the first tablet I've seen the point in, but the market size and share of the iPad shows I'm in the minority!

Sorry, perhaps I should of worded that point differently, I meant that a ppi that allows for retina (android equiv) is sufficient, after this point we need to compare screens on more noticeable differences. The S3 and the iPhone5 are both at 306ppi, the differences is screen size/resolution, colour, rendering algorithms and screen tech (pentile vs IPS). Which is a preference, I have no problem with you liking larger phones, this is just not a point of advantage or disadvantage you can target as a phone fault, it is a user choice. Some people also prefer looking at over-saturated colours, they find them more "real" or "vivid" etc, that's all fine.

The other points I think we can leave as is.

Yes iTunes is a heaping pile of shit, I'm not about to defend it, I got my N7 with Jellybean and saw how refined the Play experience is, switching accounts on the fly, loads content for that account etc. It was simply put, light years ahead of the syncing bullshit that Apple puts me through. In fact the N7 is really the first Android device I've been actively recommending to people, it is undeniably a solid good product, I can not fault it (other than lacklustre 3rd party support but I won't be blaming Android for that).

But really, these days, you can ignore iTunes and I'm guessing a lot of people do or are content with what it does. To stick with my mum, her iPad has never plugged in to a PC (except when she couldn't do OTA updates but she didn't have to deal with that), she does everything on the device. In fact, she wouldn't go near a computer, Apple or otherwise, she has absolutely no interest in them fullstop. My mother-in-law is the same, it took me about a year to convince her to pick-up an iPad, now she does her shopping online, uses email etc but she has no desire to touch anything else and still won't step out of the apps she knows. These two weren't a market just a few years ago, you wouldn't even dream of bothering with them.

I don't know what it is that makes it so appealing but Apple seems to and they focus all their attention on it. I know also this is anecdotal (but you don't have to look far to see more). Everything you see isn't aimed at us, I find most Apple's marketing over the top and cheesy, this is why I can find this video funny even if I do prefer Apple products, it just isn't for us. The "lens...cover" line had me in tears.

I know we like to think we can understand how non-tech people work but we simply don't, I have been teaching the basics to people for a long time and I'll still freely admit I'm still bewildered by how little people actually understand. They're not stupid people, we just take it all for granted, it is a different mindset entirely and is why the tech world has such a hard time understanding Apple. For instance, do you know how useful iOS is to the accessibly challenged? It is light years ahead of Android or any body else, it isn't even a choice for this market, no matter what the other phones offer. iOS is the only realistic option.

I've probably gone a tangent here but it all comes back to why Apple is what it is and why I try to defend against attacks that compare it at a tech race level. I don't want the world to go back to what it was, there is room in the market for the needs of everyone to be met.

>> ^spoco2:

@yellowc A fine rebuttal sir, except lacking in a great deal of thinking things through.
First you say the screen on the phone is the best due to colour, ppi and fonts, and then say that ppi doesn't matter. (Higher resolution in a smaller screen = higher ppi) Personally? I think this pixel density bullshit is some finely crafted bullshit by Apple to create a metric that no-one cared about before, and really kind of shouldn't, but they tout it because they like to make sure they win it... so, their 4" screen with its weird 1136 x 640 resolution is apparently better than a 4.64" screen with 1280x720 (so native 720p HD)? I too wasn't sold on larger screens. My last phone was 3.5" just like the current iPhone, and I thought I wouldn't want a phone with a larger screen as then it wouldn't fit in my pocket, and would be a pain in the butt. Then I tried on the Galaxy Nexus in store and found it fit in my pocket better (by being thinner) and was soooo much nicer for viewing content on than 3.5"
I said myself that I'd only ever used NFC once, don't much care about it. Can see that it could be cool having stickers/pads in your car and on your bedside table to automatically put your phone into various modes based on what you're doing, but I've cared so little I haven't ordered the tags to try it.
Video calling... who actually uses it? As I said, we've had it here in Australia for 9 years. Most feature and smart phones have supported it. I've been able to do it for years. Have I once felt the need? Nope.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with iOS as an operating system, what I'm saying is that it LOOKS amazingly old, feels really quite antiquated. I look forward to Apple redesigning it and making it fresh again. Without being an Android fanboy, I find the look and design of ICS and Jellybean Android to be so much more fresh than iOS. This is nothing to do with functionality, just look, something which Apple could change so easily, it's odd that they are letting it get so stale.
In terms of Apple 'understanding' the regular Joe... what I don't get is how such a large number of my friends have ended up completely wiping their entire iTunes library because of the insanely stupid way in which iTunes handles moving your device between computers and how it handles syncing them. That is not user friendly, has been going on for years, and yet never addressed.
Horses for courses. Look, there are plenty of reasons to go with an iDevice... but the ever burgeoning market share of Android (now more than Apple) demonstrates that not everyone wants to be locked into the Apple ecosphere.

4" - So they're supposed to not bother because you've already seen it before? It IS cutting edge, it's still the best screen/OS on the market in terms of colour, ppi and font rendering, you're only using one factor to determine what's the "best". It's also completely a user preference, some of us don't want 5" screens in our pockets, I don't even want the iPhone5 screen, I prefer the old size but market pressure is forcing us all in to these stupid sizes.

resolution - ppi is more important at these sizes, cramming higher resolutions in to screens this small achieves little. If a phone has the ppi to use retina (or xtra-high density for Android) resources for its size, that is all that is required.

nfc - I feel like people want Apple to include this so it actually gets any traction in the real world because right now, the only people who give a shit or even know of it, are Android tech enthusiasts. That's not a problem, I'm glad you like tech but reality is that this is not in anyway an important feature. It'll be in the 5S probably and it'll get popular and then you'll probably hate Apple for copying or something. Or scoff that you've had it for X years except that your phone had no influence to change the retail sector.

LTE - Yes finally and with some good international support.

video calls over network - Yes, never was a lack of capability, it was network enforced to disallow it. It is nice to finally have it natively supported.

Panorama - Yeah I got nothing on this one, I couldn't give a flying fuck but hey, not like I couldn't give you an equally stupid list of features from any manufacture about all their "awesome exclusive" features. It's called marketing, no need to cry over it.

iOS is hardly stale, it is just not what YOU want out of it, it has been faithful to me for many long years and iOS 6 while boring in new features, is the smoothest it has ever run. I don't think it is a crime to like stability in your OS. Also people always like to call the general public stupid but they're really not, my mum doesn't like her iPhone/iPad for no reason, she likes them because they're the first product EVER to understand her needs. It is a common story, you'll hear it time and time again, Apple understands the needs of regular people, not necessarily tech junkies. The regular people market is MUCH bigger, hence Apple dominance, it ain't rocket science.

On a side note, this parody was pretty funny

>> ^spoco2:

Pretty much my thoughts on the iPhone5... a big ol' pile of 'meh'.
Oooh, a 4" display, that's... um... smaller than my hardly cutting edge Galaxy Nexus
Aaah, a lower resolution screen too.
Eeeeeh, no NFC (Not that I particularly care being that I've used it all but once)
Eeerrrr, LTE... finally
Iiieeeee, video calling over the mobile network. Hello there 9 years ago!
Ughghghuhuhuh, Panarama photos... oh, gee... wizzo, sure can't do that on my current phone.
I'm sure it's well built, I'm sure it works well but:
iOS looks REALLY dated and old now, it seriously needs a new look, it feels antiquated.
You're forced to use iTunes, which is a loathsome piece of software
It doesn't stop people climbing over the top of each other to get them, doesn't stop people who have no idea about tech at all thinking that there is none better than the iPhone5. Doesn't stop Apple's continued market dominance.
But still... Such a huge pile of 'meh'.

>> ^TheJehosephat:
I don't like the idea of a product with hammers hitting my device...
Neither do I. Hey, mind if I borrow your iPad? No reason.

What if I said that much of what we consider advanced human society is simply a network of selfish people individually interested in maximizing pleasure and avoiding displeasure?

What if I said that, other than hugely displeasurable experiences (disease, war, famine, etc., all displeasure) there are few other driving factors to advance modern human society outside of selfish desire for more pleasure?

The success of capitalism is the recognition that a society can be built around this with some rules that keep everyone from trampling everyone else.

We exist in a society built upon selfishness, where products beget products in an endless stream. Have you seen the new 'retina display' ipads? And the new Batman movie? And the new coffee brand that the local store is carrying that you heard is good? And the new treatment for that disorder you have? This is the current state of human society. Bernays and others recognized that tweaking things here and there for their own selfish gain was not only successful, but successful beyond their expectations. Bernays and people like him don't see themselves as 'taking advantage of' or 'cheating' others, though they will readily admit that marketing is manipulation.

Many of us look around now and say, 'this marketing and consumerism has gone to far!'. Why? I suggest this is because aggressive, constant barrages of these marketing tactics is leading your typical person to feel displeasure due to constantly being pitched to, and displeasure at recognizing the unending attempts at manipulation. This displeasure is outweighing the pleasure of participating in some areas of our society.

What will this lead to? Maybe a happy medium, maybe a swing the other direction, maybe an incredible swing to a 'matrix'-like dystopia where we are happily asleep in our minds, maximally pleased with the state of things.

>> ^Dread:

I'm of the opinion that these methods of massive crowd manipulation are unfortunately a blight... I do instead see a few very wealthy individuals throughout society whom most assuredly endorse and utilize these systems... I wonder if they are truly happy?