Apples 'n Oranges

Well, apparently critics are being paid to entertain people with gibberish and ignored for what they were originally being paid for which was to be annoying and judgmental on everything. The Apple iPad, which spawned more toilet humor jokes in a single hour on the internet launched and without even having to try, it has broken more sales records than should be legally possible. Amazon and Barnes and Noble tried their eReader and netbooks have inched out the lower tech people by giving them a notebook with downgraded specs and power at a low cost.

Having tested the iPad, I've found the familiar work of the iPod's page like system, coupled quietly with a broader sense of depth. Apple wants to make people get lost in this thing, however they're over complicating the whole thing rather quickly. Just allow it to update everything on facebook instantly and let camera whores take a million pictures and that iPad will be everyones new favorite toy to update everyone on their friends list with pictures of their muddy dog that just trashed their house. Jokes aside, I've noticed that even under graphical stress, the thing doesn't heat up like my iPod touch which BAKES the hand to which you hold it to play with.

I honestly have only found two seperate problems with this thing. One is the price, which echoes the heralded PS3's 599 US DOLLARS joke.
The other thing that is both a bad move and still going to work for no reason is the 3G support. Its not a switch you just drop in to something, its not a plug in like a socket. Apple releasing some iPads with 3G and releasing the others a little earlier with out them? Pretty stupid, but its still going to work because Apple seems to have achieved Pixar like fail proofing on all their products. History suggests people don't like being screwed out a feature they could have gotten from the get go and that's proven by Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel no one was going to play but played anyway. I remember that boycott well. It got a lot of attention and for good reason. Valve releasing a game one year after the first one? Something is up, considering Valve doesn't release a game until there's a reason to do so in its mind. Valve being a company that innovates over publishing, especially since it makes plenty of money just maintaining and having people digitally publish through Steam nowadays. Still, Apple is ignoring this and could very well fault themselves on something this stupid but they're going ahead with this 3G iPad in just a few short weeks.

Now for the orange part of the section, cause I'm tired of trying to discuss the iPad. Me and Erik were rolling around the town yesterday investigating other major releases, both videogames and other things. Movie wise, I'm still waiting on the Losers, but Kick Ass will arguably take a bigger box office draw thanks to a more liberal approach to killing everything. The Losers might hit cult status, much like another one of my favorite movies Speed Racer, which was critically panned for good reasons and bad alike. I loved the Losers as a comic book and I can only hope this movie gets a little recognition, considering it was stuck in development hell since 2003 when the comic was still releasing and Kick Ass was more recent by a wider margin. The guys on the website think the two comic book films will cancel eachother out, I honestly don't buy it. I know the Losers was obscure so only some people will know it was a comic book film and the rest will see this as a nice 2 hour action film with Zoe Saldana and that dude from Watchmen (Jeffery Dean Morgan). Kick Ass will get the same crowd but I'm more than sure a few people will be unavoidably deterred to the gratuitous amounts of violence involving young kids and giant men dressed in black. I think the conservative nature of the Losers might make it a more successful picture thanks simply to lessened need to be overly controversial. I'll see both just to enjoy myself.

Game wise, Erik and my other friend Kyle (The Final Boss) both made interesting and astute observations concerning the game releases. It's been nearly a month of drought, oddities for sure, considering the rigorous release schedule games have been on since January, starting with Bayonetta. Between Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii and Super Street Fighter that's another Capcom dominated month. However, I actually got jumped by Splinter Cell, releasing for the 360 as well, which I forgot about thanks to the fact that it took double the regular time to actually release cause Sam Fisher looked like a hobo and that pissed too many people off. Still, I look at the summer and once again get this feeling of being barren. Again, I'm reminded of the beautiful marketing on Grand Theft Auto 4 which released just a week or two before school got out which left people playing it nearly all summer thanks to a huge gap in between games.

Pretty bad ass strategy. Still, I just hope the drought of the games over the summer doesn't effect me too much, I got a lot riding on the success of Super Street Fighter 4.

:D