Last year, when Barnes & Noble announced their new eBook reader, the Nook, I was immediately interested.  This did not feel like early adoption to me.  The Kindle has been floating around for years, but I never felt any great need to have one.  I know this is silly, particularly considering the recent tax bill the state of Texas sent them, but Amazon still feels like an abstract to me, an intangible.  Amazon, as a concept, feels flimsy.  I hooked onto the Nook because I liked that I could buy a book reader, and the books to read on it, from an honest to James Joyce bookstore.  I’ve taken a lot of joy from bookstores over the years, and from Barnes and Noble in particular.  I don’t mind showing a little loyalty to a retailer, even a big one, that I think has treated me well.

My wife got me a Nook for Christmas… well, I didn’t get it until nearly Martin Luther King Day, but I opened the “handsomely printed” IOU from Barnes & Noble on Christmas morning.  Upon seeing it, I felt both excitement and trepidation.  The rumors about an Apple tablet started to spread between the time I mentioned to my wife that I might like a Nook and the time I actually got one.  No one knew what it was yet, no one I knew anyway, but the buzz was that it would be market changing.  For once, the buzz was right.

This morning, not nine months after I first powered on my Nook, I opened up my email to find an advertisement for the new Nook color, effectively making my Nook an avocado colored refrigerator. Nook color is a Nook with a full color touch screen.  No more of that silly electronic paper that was going to change the world.  Eyestrain be damned, here’s the Barnes & Noble iPad lite.  It is described in the ad as “The Ultimate Reading Experience.”

How much time has passed, do you imagine, since the last time someone invented a new, more efficient spoke for the wagon wheel?  I imagine it will be about that long before I get another software update for my NINE MONTH OLD Nook.

How much is an iPad?

I’m at the end of a business trip (already this has stretched into fiction).  I’m packed and ready to go home, but I have half an hour to kill before the taxi comes to take me to the airport.  I’m sitting in the hotel lobby, bored.  After my virile display of business acumen, I’m too amped up to read.  I open up my computer, bring up Netflix in my browser and start watching… I don’t know… Jaws.  About the time the kid with the super-creepy mom becomes a stain in the Atlantic, the cab pulls up and I hop in.  It’s a little cramped in there, so I pull out my iPhone, open the Netflix app and there, in my instant queue, is Jaws.  I don’t have to start from the beginning.  No fast forwarding.  It knows where I left off and begins playing with the kid’s half eaten raft washed up on the sand.  A few minutes later, around the time Mr. Holland finds the severed head, I arrive at the airport.  I check in, satisfy the needs of the fear-ridden populace, and sit down in the terminal.  Now I have a choice.  Laptop or iPhone?  Laptop.  But… Jaws may be a little bloody for an airport terminal.  Maybe I’ll watch an episode or two of Family Guy instead.  A little while later l’m all Stewied up (it’s the one where he and Brian have some shenanigans and Lois gets mad at Peter) and they call me to board.  Now, I like to sleep on a plane, which is handy, because not all planes have wi-fi.  But if my plane did have the WEE-fee, as my father used to like to call it, I could have watched Roy Scheider smoking a butt, suggesting a craft of greater tonnage, which might have been more appropriate to the task at hand.  Right.  I land safely and grab another cab to take me to my ticky-tacky free bedroom community.  Twenty minutes and one dead Islander later I’m home, wife kissed, kid tousled, vodka poured, sitting in front of my big ol’ TV watching Chief Brody turn oxygen into fruit punch as Jaws streams through my Xbox… in HD.

Guess how much I had to pay for this remarkable experience.  Nuthin’.  Well… I paid them the eleven bucks a month I’ve been paying them since my local Blockbuster became a dry cleaner and a Chinese take-out.  I get Netflix on about 147 different devices and it costs me exactly zero dollars more than it did when they were just sending me a Blu-ray every once in a while.

So it’s cool, right?  See?  I knew you’d like it.  We’re gonna get along, you and I.  I can feel it.

The argument for video game companies refusing to serve the owners of second hand games is simple.  Developers and distributers don’t profit from second hand games.  Therefore, the owner of a used game is neither their customer nor their concern.  This argument is fallacious.  More than that, it is terrible business.

All customers, and particularly all gamers, have the potential to become repeat customers.  They develop loyalties (and boy, is that an understatement).  They talk.  That has a name… what’s it called… oh yeah, word of mouth… buzz.  Buzz moves product like nothing else.  Buzz sells DLC.  Buzz sells sequels.  Buzz is priceless.  The more people playing and the more people talking… or posting or tweeting or putting up gamerscore… the better, no matter how they got their hands on the game.

People buy second hand games for a reason.  Maybe they aren’t sure if they’re going to like a game and don’t want to gamble the full retail price.  Maybe they just don’t have the cash for retail.  Most kids and college students don’t.  Maybe they missed the game when it was new a couple of years ago and want to see what they missed before the “hotly anticipated” sequel hits.  But guess what happens if they like their secondhand purchase?  They buy the DLC.  They ask for the sequel for Christmas or their birthday (which is exactly what happened at my house last winter with Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2).  They grow up, graduate from college, get a job, stick a few bucks in their pockets and remember how much they liked playing John Q. Gamecompany’s game with all of their buddies in school and maybe the guys can get together again online for the sequel… and the DLC… and the next sequel… and the next sequel.  Oh, and they can’t forget to renew their Xbox Live membership either.  What’s that?  The next-gen console is coming?  Someone has a new peripheral?  There’s a guide?  A toy?  A t-shirt?  A movie?  I need a new video card for my PC?  Forget that, I need a new PC and make it the biggest, baddest, ballsiest PC any wonder-nerd has ever had the audacity to construct.  Bill Gates will be jealous of my PC.  I’ma have Skynet on my side when I’m kicking your ass in Modern Warfare 8.  And so the marketplace rumbles on.

Companies that refuse to service used games are short sighted, probably poorly managed, almost certainly cash-strapped, and are likely trying to sell bad games at a premium.  These are companies that have no confidence in their product. They have no interest in your satisfaction.  They don’t want your loyalty.

If a company doesn’t believe you are a customer, don’t be.  Buy someone else’s game.  When you do, Microsoft will notice.  Sony will notice.  Apple will notice.  Amazon and Best Buy… even GameStop will notice.  That company’s displays will be moved to the backs of stores.  Its games won’t make the front pages of web sites, or the newspaper filers or the email ads.  Its booths will be set at the backs of convention showrooms, far, far away from the mothership brands…. removed from the traffic, from the customers, from the people who got their start, who fell in love with gaming, playing a used copy of a great game.

How many years will it be until all of this is moot anyway?  An all download digital marketplace will be the end of second hand games; maybe the end of retail software sales as we know it.  Amazon and Best Buy and GameStop will notice that too.  At the beginning of this piece, I jokingly asked if you remembered video stores.  How about record stores? What else are we going to laughingly reminisce about in a decade or two?  Oh… one last thing… do you think the price point will drop when games are download only?  No, neither do I.

I’ve never owned a Mac, though I have worked with them before… some graphics stuff, college newspapers… that sort of thing.  Anyway, every computer everything I’ve owned in the GUI era of computing (not jealous of my Tandy experience are you?) is Windows based.  I taught myself Windows 3 and a little DOS about a hundred years ago and have been riding the Microsoft range ever since.  But after the better part of two decades, I’m tired of breaking horses and dodging rattlesnakes.

My decision to switch was not lightly made.  I comparison-shopped.  I worried.  I fought with my wife.  Macs are expensive.  Here’s the thing they don’t tell you though; comparable PCs are at least as expensive as their Mac counterparts.  Sure, you can buy a PC for half of what a Mac will cost, but you’ll get half the computer.  Apple doesn’t offer a cut rate Mac.  There is no Mac eMachine.

One of my biggest concerns was that I wouldn’t be able to transfer all of my files and pictures and music over to the new computer.  I was terrified I might have to email the last 15 years worth of collected junk to myself, one piece at a time.  I’m not going to lie.  It took me a while to find a solution.  There are all sorts of suggestions online about how to handle it all, most of it either over my head Mac-wise, or Rube Goldbergingly ridiculous.  There is an easier way.

First, let me tell you what I chose and why.  I bought the 15 inch MacBook Pro with the i5 chip and the smaller hard drive.  It’s the cheapest of the Pro models, but I paid an extra $150 for the anti-gloss high-resolution screen (it’s gaw-jus) and got the Home and Student Edition of Office for Mac preinstalled for another $120 or so.  I picked the 15-inch instead of the 17 because a 17-inch laptop doesn’t feel portable to me.  In my mind, anything with a 17-inch monitor is a desktop.  I added Office because I’m old and set in my ways and don’t want to convert everything I’ve ever written into another file format and risk losing it to the data demons.  I paid the premium for the hi-res screen because I’m a guy and a video snob and I like high definition.  And I decided on the smaller hard drive (and the i5 chip which is standard with the smaller drive) only because I already have so much storage space available to me.  I have thumb drives, a big ol’ portable hard drive, a couple-a-three game systems and a PC that will probably work just fine as storage space once I take all of the crap off of it that was slowing it down; you know, like the browser and the virus protection.  Also, storage is cheap and getting cheaper all the time.  If I do end up needing more, it will only be less expensive later.

Ok, back to my transfer solution.  After I signed up for Mobile Me (I’m not explaining that, check it out if you like) read a few hundred message board posts and yelled at my dog for a while I decided to try some stuff myself.  What the hell, right?  I used to be pretty good at this.

At first, I thought my iPhone might be the solution. But it turns out that OS X and the iPhone OS don’t really get along that well.  I couldn’t even get my iPhone pictures to download into iPhoto properly, never mind transferring my entire iTunes library.  No, the answer was that portable HDD I mentioned earlier.  On a whim, I took everything I wanted moved from my PC… all my songs, my files, my pics and videos, even those pesky iPhone photos… and slapped it on the HDD.  I unplugged the USB cable from the PC, plugged it into the Mac, grabbed everything I’d just stuck on there and put it straight on the Mac desktop.  I didn’t convert anything.   I didn’t have to partition my hard drive and install Windows.  I didn’t even have to download any software to help with the transfer.  Everything opened right up and worked (though I did have to download a video codec or two play some of the movies).  I told iTunes to search the desktop and it rebuilt my iTunes library, even the ringtones.  I told iPhoto to do the same thing and it snagged everything, even the pictures it had refused to take straight from my iPhone.  After everything was in its place I deleted the files from the desktop (the other software had made its own copies) and it was like I’d had a Mac forever.

I don’t know if your portable HDD (if you have a portable HDD) will do this.  It is possible mine is magical or possessed or something.  It isn’t a fancy piece of equipment.  I bought it on the cheap at Best Buy, and not recently.  But it worked for me and for that I am grateful.

Now I can really focus on becoming a Mac snob.  I look forward to telling you 18 months from now how my Mac hasn’t slowed down a bit since I took it out of the box, that I’ve never had a virus, that my ponytail is shinier than yours, and whatever else it is that we Mac people say to make all of you PC types feel so inferior.

Did I tell you that I pushed a button earlier and some guy popped onto the screen, smiled and started giving me a guitar lesson?  That was pretty cool.

“But dude,” you reply, shocked at my impertinence, “it’s good for EVERYTHING!”  That’s right, you used all caps and the exclamation point.  I saw you.

“True,” I reply with cool aplomb, slightly mystified at your overreaction, “but I already have stuff that does everything.”

“Uh huh,” you say with a tone in your voice that says I’m full of it even though we’ve never met and you don’t know me at all.

“It’s true,” I say, forgiving you for your mercurial nature and freakishly long monkey toes, “if you don’t believe me then read the junk I’m about to write just below this dialogue.”

“Ok, sexy,” you say, finally won over by my roguish smile and effervescent charm.

I have an iPhone.  Now, know this: my iPhone is a tiny miracle made of sunbeams, kitten noses and Leonardo da Vinci’s pencil stubs.  Four hours after I took it out of the box I mourned the waste that had been my life– my desiccated existence– before iPhone.  Because I have an iPhone I no longer have to carry a dictionary and a thesaurus wherever I go.  It is my clock and my compass.  It is my mailman and my anchorman.    It is the way.  It is the means.  It is the center.  It completes me.  Nobody puts my iPhone in a corner.  It surrounds us.  It penetrates us.  It binds the galaxy together.  It makes telephone calls.  I love my iPhone.  I don’t need the iPad for apps.

The iPad is a magazine reader too.  I like magazines.  I subscribe to many.  But I like to read magazines… privately… in various, undisclosed, shadowy locations throughout the house.  I don’t want to tote an $800 iPad with its outrageous service plan anywhere near running water.  Besides, I like a magazine to be waiting for me in case I’m… you know… in a hurry.

I wouldn’t play games on an iPad; that’s what all of those game systems under my TV are for.  And I don’t play handheld games.  I read.  I’m not trying to be pretentious.  I’m not judging you for loving Pokemon… much.  I just love to read.  I always have.  I would rather read rather than play Scribblenauts, no matter how revolutionary Scribblenauts may be.  I do like the word Scribblenauts, as evidenced by the number of times I’ve used the word Scribblenauts in this paragraph.  Also, reading is part of my job.  Good writers read more than they write, or so some good writers have said.  Maybe most importantly, I have a two year-old boy.  Two year-old boys are very loud.  I miss quiet.  Video games are bad at quiet.  Books excel at stillness.

Ok, I could read books with my iPad… except it doesn’t do that very well.  I’ve tried it out at the store.  It’s too big.  You need two hands.  It doesn’t have the electronic paper that the other book readers use.  E-paper is the technological advance that made book readers popular.  Reading on an iPad is like reading on your computer… and that’s fine, I’ve done that before too… but I already have a computer… and a book reader.

“Ha!  You bought a book reader?  What a WASTE!”  What is it with you and the all caps and exclamation point anyway?  You’re the belt and suspenders type aren’t you?  Do you like succotash?

“Yes, I did,” I reply with the coiled intensity of a kung-fu monk, “and I’m glad I did.”

“Ignoramus,” you sneer, “they’re called Shaolin monks.”

“Meta much?  I know what they’re called,” I say, giving you the middle distance stare.  “I just wanted to see if you’d fall for the Nerd Trap.  Ha!  NERD.”  See that?  One at a time; first an exclamation point then all caps… so much better, right?  Let that be a lesson.  You owe me a beer.

“Whatever,” you say eleven-year-old-girlishly, “I like real books.”

“So do I,” I reply, “and if you’ll read this next bit, I’ll explain.”

“Ok,” you say non-subtextually.

I love books.  I have a living room full of overstuffed bookshelves to prove it.  I like the feel.  I like the weight.  I even like that smell.  Hardbacks, paperbacks, leather-bound, or crumbling cardboard; I love them all.  Far more important though, is what’s in the books.  (Underlining… didn’t think of that, did you?  You’d better watch out or I’ll italicize something.  I’ll do it, I swear to Douglas Adams, I’ll do it.)  The content is more important than the medium.  So I love my eBook reader too.

I have a Nook, the Barnes & Noble version.  I picked it because of the little color touch screen, the non-proprietary files (says the guy with the iTunes account) and the Lend Me feature.  Also, I’ve had hours and hours of joy just farting around in Barnes & Noble.  All Amazon has ever done for me is occasionally not charge me for shipping.  It was an easy choice.  I liked it so much I got one for my wife too.  She liked hers so much we got one for her mom.  Her mom liked hers so much she… uses it a lot and thanked us a couple of times… what is this a shampoo commercial?  Like you have two friends who have two friends anyway.

Now, granted, while an eBook reader is the kind of tool that Alton Brown would disapprove of (What if I don’t need my bottle opener to smoke a salmon while doing the dishes?), it is surprisingly good at the one thing it does.  No glare, no backlight; it looks just as good in bright sunlight as it does under a warm, incandescent reading lamp.  It is worthless in the dark, but then, what book isn’t?  Book readers store hundreds of books, which is handy if you like to read more than one thing at a time but are tired of carrying a purse, a briefcase and that canvas tote bag with the picture of two kitties conversing in thought bubbles about perseverance.  Also, eBooks allow you to read incognito.  Are you reading William Faulkner or Erica Jong?  Tolstoy or Tolkien?  Pride and Prejudice or Men Are From Sports Authority, Women Are From Bloomingdale’s? Your mother-in-law will never know.  Buying books has never been easier either.  Open the shop, pick the one you want, wait a few seconds for it to download and then you too can finally know The Secret.  I will never stop buying real books, but I think you can agree that some books don’t need to be displayed, particularly if your shelf space has become limited.  Oh, did I mention that eBooks are cheaper?  Way cheaper.

“Dude! You’ve got it BAD for the plastic bookie thing,” you say, finally having learned some restraint, “and you totally forgot we were talking about the iPad, not your new fake paper bed buddy.”

“You’re right,” I say, “I apologize for becoming distracted.”

“Really?  No snarky remark?”

“Nope.  I’m good.”

“So, are you going to buy an iPad?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Yeah?  You sure?  They’re crazycool.”

“I know.”

“I have to say, while I disagree with your argument that all of that other junk is as good as an iPad, I really respect that you’re sticking with your principles here.  At least you’re no slave to American consumerism.”

“Yeah, I’ll probably just ask for one for Christmas instead.”

“Good plan, Dude!  Scribblenauts!”

“Scribblenauts to you as well, my friend.  Scribblenauts to us all.”

“Hey mister fancy writer guy; am I male or female?  The dialogue could go either way.  Am I like a closeted fratboy type or a grumpy skater chick or what?  Dude?  Dude!  DUDE!”

]]> http://www.constantinconstant.com/2010/08/19/an-ipad-argument/feed/ 0 http://www.constantinconstant.com/2009/11/16/open-source-sixth-sense/ http://www.constantinconstant.com/2009/11/16/open-source-sixth-sense/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:42:09 +0000 Jack Bronn http://www.constantinconstant.com/?p=130 This tech is so far over my head I can’t really even comment.  It’s also so far beyond cool I had to share it with you.  This is Pranav Mistry giving a TEDTalk at TEDIndia.  Don’t know about TED? Find out.  Go to ted.com.

The video isn’t embeddable.  You have to click this:

Pranav Mistry TEDTalk, India