Gorgeously simple animation. And very funny.
About those Samsung Ads
There has been a lot of press over the last few days about Samsung’s latest Apple bashing ads. If you haven’t seen them, they basically poke fun at Apple users for being mindless sheep following the whims of Apple’s marketing. There are some specific claims, but the point of the ads seems to be to play on the stereotype of the Apple fanboy and fan girl. It suggests that if you want real substance you should go with Samsung. The commercials may win kudos with the tech nerds out there and those who dislike Apple but as an advertisement it fails miserably, and here’s why:
If the ads are trying to win over Apple customers, which, one would assume is the intention, then the commercials are deliberately insulting their intended market. I’m not sure what genius at the ad agency thought it was a good idea to try and humiliate the very customer they are trying to win over? Did they think that you would embarrass them into believing that they really should buy Samsung to save face? I get what they’re trying to do, but given that a very large percentage of the population owns an Apple product of some description, telling them “you’re all a bunch of sheep” hardly seems like an approach to win new customers.
If, on the other hand, the ads are targeted at those who would never buy Apple anyway, then they’re just preaching to the converted, and are completely pointless, because in this case, the main competion for Samsung isn’t Apple but other Android handset manufacturers. Perhaps they think that by sharing in the hardcore android fan’s collective hatred for all things Apple they will endear themselves with them, but unfortunately, that particular demographic is probably much smaller than reading the likes of Gizmodo would have you believe. In fact, the whole commercial looks like something you would come up with if gadget blogs were your primary source of information as to the feelings of the general public with regard to gadgets and technology.
I know there are those out there that will say that I’m just another apple defending sheep, but then those people will never be convinced as to anything else anyway. They are the target audience for this commercial but as they don’t need convincing, it’s just a big waste of money. The ads might be humorous and well produced and they might serve to validate existing purchases or beliefs, but as a tool to sell products, in my opinion they fail miserably.
Farewell Steve Jobs, And Thank You
With the sad news last night of the passing of one of the world’s great icons, today has been a day of remarkable sadness. Steve Jobs was one of those rare people who touched the lives of those whom he influenced so profoundly, that even though they may not have known him personally, they feel his loss on a deeply personal level. His energy,drive and passion burned so brightly for too short a time and the world is a little darker today having lost one of its brightest lights.
I spent much of today reading the numerous tributes and stories from people all over the world in sort of a stunned remorse. Like many others I wanted to share what Steve had meant to me, but I had trouble finding where to start. People have often accused me of being a mac fanboy or some such derisive term because of my affection for Apple, but the truth is I would not be doing what I do today were it not for Apple and Steve Jobs. My career to date, and much of my life has been shaped by my first encounter with a shiny multicolored apple logo many years ago.
iBooks Finally Comes to Ireland
After over a year of waiting it the iBooks store is finally available to those of us here in Ireland. While the iBooks app has been available for some time, the store side of it had only featured public domain titles from the Guttenburg Project, somewhat limiting the appeal of the app. It was particularly frustrating as you could buy titles from the Kindle store no problem. While you can rightly argue that being able to buy books from kindle should be enough for you, the iBooks app in my opinion is in many ways a more enjoyable reading experience. If nothing else it is nice to have the option.
The amount of content on the store seems limited at the moment, but I suspect this will grow with time. Curiously there seems to be a lot of foreign language titles available, so it seems to be a pan european offering, although the home page does have a section for “Bestselling Irish Authors”. This currently only features three writers at the moment mind you, but it’s a start.
Another thing of note – before I noticed that books were appearing on iBooks, and what prompted me to look, was the fact that a new iTunes license agreement popped up when I tried to update some apps. The sections highlighted as new were to do with iBooks, but also curiously, season passes. We currently don’t have tv shows available for sale through iTunes here, so is that something that is incoming too? Hopefully.
The Fringe Ideal and the death of common sense
A disturbing realization has occurred to me recently and the more I think about it the more worrying it is becoming. A combination of careless blogging and Murdoch owned media outlets have created the atmosphere where fringe ideals and ideas are being represented as mainstream and where mainstream and common sense ideals are being pushed to the fringe and vilified as radical. It started with a few outlets and blogs, but as they became popular, more centrist outlets try to emulate their success, pushing the others further to the fringe. The fringe plays the victim and the mainstream is forced to react. Take even the vilification of the “mainstream media”. Even turning that into a dirty word makes rationality a no win scenario. The whole thing becomes cyclical and pretty soon we have the current situation where phony outrage over normal and sensible things has become the norm. And because the fringe has been legitimized by the likes of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire (i.e. Fox) the mainstream has to give it time and react to it, further giving credibility to what any sane objective view would see as ludicrous. Sensible and intelligent just can’t compete for ratings. The rational and scientific has become an outlaw to the radical, ideological and extreme.
People argue that these fringe media outlets, the ones that represent the far left and right of views are just a response to the growth of such sentiments, but is the opposite not the true reality, that the growth of the bring is because of these channels, papers and blogs pushing them in a bid for ratings?
The FCPX Fiasco
I’ve been trying to find the best angle to write about the whole fiasco surrounding the launch of FCPX. You see, it’s become a controversial subject because, as with most Apple related subjects, once someone complains or protests something Apple does, a dozen or so people will pop up to defend the company, regardless of the merit of the original complaint, or even their understanding of the subject. The FCPX launch is no different. As you’ve undoubtedly witnessed by now, professionals in the video industry were somewhat upset over the launch of Apple’s latest version of final cut pro. I’ll get into why in a minute, but needless to say, lots of non video pros chirped in with their own “analysis” of the situation defending Apple from those mean video editors who had dare to question the wisdom of Apple.
You see, in the eyes of these people, having learned editing for years and having worked in an extremely demanding industry doesn’t really count for anything at the end of the day, because when Apple says jump, you either jump or keep your mouth shut. It doesn’t matter if you can’t do your job, meet your deadline or fulfill the needs of your clients. All that matters is that if Apple says that this is the way you’re going to do things from now on, that’s the way you do it, and they invented the iPod so they must be right. I’m being facetious here of course, but that’s not far from the tone of some of the pieces defending Apple’s handling of the FCPX launch. Funnily enough, most of these pieces attacking pros for their “feelings of entitlement” usually contain some variation of the phrase: “I’m not a video editor but….” or “I don’t normally use Final Cut Pro, but….”
Some thoughts on FCPX
This is based on a forum post I posted earlier. I thought I’d share it here too. I’m working on a lnger, more featured story on the disaster that is FCPX but for the moment here’s a start (forgive the spelling and grammar):
It’s been particularly galling this past week reading articles defending FCPX, most of them written by people who aren’t professional editors and have never worked in the video or television industry. As someone who has worked in television for 15 years and having been trying to use FCPX all week, let me tell you, for a pro, these aren’t “knee jerk reactions”. In a TV or Film environment FCPX is virtually unuseable. And it’s not just missing features, it’s got some fundamental flaws from a basic functionality point of view that will be very difficult for them to change. Here’s some things that you can’t do with FCPX….
A) Because of the “trackless” workflow, that clearly wasn’t thought through…
1. No Audio mixer, and there never will be because there are no audio tracks
2. No way to seperate audio into tracks for usage (ie fx on 3&4) because, again there are no tracks.
3. No way to mute an entire track …. you can see where this is going – if you want to mute the equivalent of a track you have to select every clip individually and disable / enable them.
Some Updates from my Photography Site
I’ve been updating my photography site recently (finally getting back into the habit of it). I’m still finding my feet with it a bit, but please check it out if you get a chance, and subscribe to the RSS feed.
I ’ve posted some nice stuff on the blog recently, including this cute post on a family of ducks I came across trying to cross the road the other day.
I was also very lucky to have my photography site featured on Photoshelter’s blog the other day. I was really surprised to see it, and it’s a great honor. They also very kindly emailed me to let me know it was going to be featured and they said some really nice things. I was very chuffed. You can see the blog entry here.
Speaking of Photoshelter, I’ve been busy adding to my archives online, and the gallery is starting to grow. I’ve also added the option to order Lab prints direct from the site so check it out if you have the time. My aim is to eventually get all of my Photography online(well, the good stuff anyway) but I’m taking my time and doing it right.
Finally, I got some great images of some pretty dramatic clouds that were building in the sky outside my window last night. I’ve a blog post about it here and there’s a gallery of images here.
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- Apple and the Politics of Phoney Outrage
- I want choice, but only if I agree with your choice
- Top 10 New Features of Aperture 3
- The iPad is not a Computer
- About that iPhone 4 Reception Problem (And the bigger issues in Technology Journalism)
- Simon’s Cat: Snow Buisness
- About those Samsung Ads
- Farewell Steve Jobs, And Thank You
- iBooks Finally Comes to Ireland
- The Fringe Ideal and the death of common sense
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