This is pretty interesting. I saw the terminator season finale last week and I was quite amazed. On the one hand the series can end now and it will not be a major cliffhanger.

Sure we don't know where John Henry went with Cameron's chip and John was been transported to the future where no one seems to know who he is but I see this as a setup for a sequel series or a series of movies (or comic books as has been eluded by some entertainment blogs).

I would like for the series to continue though so we can find out what's going on...

• Who is the weaverbot and why is she fighting skynet?
• Did Miles Dyson's son actually create Skynet? (was he in Terminator 3?)
• Where is John Henry?
• What are Elisson and Sarah going to do now?
• What are the dynamics that thrust John to be in a leadership position now that we know that he did not survive J-day (like terminator 3 says), but skipped it altogether?
• Will we see Arnold? (I hope so!)
• Will we see the original Cromartie? (I hope so!)
• What's the deal with the human Cameron?

The one thing that people are complaining about is that the series is now disjointed, there is no straight line to follow. Well, if you change something in the past, the future changes! If the future changes, the present will seem a little more chaotic, no?

I am hoping for a renewal!

Tags: television, entertainment, terminator, opinion

I saw the headline.

My initial response: "Boo Hoo buddy!"

Then I read the article.

OK, I have a little more sympathy for you, but I still have a difficult time going that extra mile to really, I mean really, feel bad for you, oh former AIG employee.

I do agree that your boss was a weasel. Any stand up person would have had the guts to come out and say "no bonuses until we weather this out", but no, that didn't happen. I sympathize with you there.

I also sympathize with you because you (claim that you) were not one of the ethically challenged people that created this credit crunch mess we are in yet you get blamed. To this I respond: This is normal human behavior. People are looking for a scape goat and it's up to AIG to prove to the public that they've got what it takes to bring this boat back on course

I also think that it's valiant that you decided to work for $1 and put your time into this to fix this mess. A person of lesser moral character would not have done this.


However:

You WERE there when people were going nuts over these securities. As an MBA student in finance I was appalled by this practice because it didn't make fiscal sense (even though some of my classmates were salivating at the wonderful prospects of these securities). Yet no one at AIG stood up to stop this insane practice within your company walls? If you had said in your resignation that you tried to prevent this but you couldn't, I would be more sympathetic.

Secondly, when you were asked to work for $1 you had a choice. In my opinion you made an honorable choice, but you essentially became a liable volunteer at AIG. With the current mess they are in, you surely must have known what was to come? If the environment is dysfunctional you can do something to fix it, you can moan about it and do thing, or you can leave. I don't fault you for leaving, or feeling used and abused, however with things this bad, did you think that things would be honkey dorey in the office? Why are you whining?

Finally, with the company in the trouble it's in, I know that you had contracts, and I know that it was very weasel-like of your boss to not come and ask for renegotiations, however you (and others) had the option of turning down the bonus, but you did not. I disagree that it's appropriate for the government to hang you out to dry by public embarrassment, but in this economic environment it would make sense to not give bonuses in order to get things back on track.

Bottom line: I still say boo hoo for you. I did not hear you complaining the last 10 years when you were getting compensated as you were.

Maybe you should read Seth Godin's book called Tribes - it may enlighten you

Tags: newspapers, opinion, idiots

In the past I've experimented with many blogging platforms. I've used blogger for a long time, and wordpress too! I've experiemented with LiveJournal which isn't really my cup of tea, and recently I've tried Vox, which is nice but can't really import my posts from other platforms.

I've been looking to consolidate some of my blogs where I don't post as frequently with my main CA blog (what you are reading now), but I've been experiencing some issues.

I would like to be able :
to easily intergrate the blog with my rapidweaver site,
to easily take my categories and tags and easily import them
to easily take my existing posts and import them
to maintain images and formatting of my current posts

I know that there is a WordPress way of integrating a WP blog with Rapidweaver but it seems like it's too much work. The blogger plugin for Rapidweaver only takes categories and not tags.

I guess this is more or less a summer project (or a project for when I graduate and have more time).


Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Tags: blogs, technology, opinion

A lot of people will consider what I am writing as heresy, but I do think that people should retire some of their blogs if they have multiple blogs going. In the past month a retired my two year old blog called Ενα μηλο την ημέρα (an apple a day) which is a Greek blog on Apple related news and tech. I also retired my first Greek blog called Είμαι φοβερός και το ξέρεις which I've had for five years now.

Now why retire those blogs? or any blog for that matter. For me it was both a maintenance issue, and and issue of inspiration. While I still do like (almost) all things Apple, I have neither the necessary income to buy cool new things, nor the time to test them out. Therefore the lack of content really killed this blog. Of course there's opinion and conjecture, but then you're a person on a soap box. This doesn't always build community, and one of the reasons to have a blog (other than telling people your opinion about things) is to find like minded individuals.

On the maintenance side, having four fully fledged blogs means a lot of writing, and when inspiration is an issue, maintenance becomes an issue too. One of the things that brings people back to your blogs (in addition to quality content) is the concepts of συνέχεια and συνέπια as an acquaintance of mine says. I guess I would explain these two words as continuity (συνέχεια )- do you add blog posts, and frequency (συνέπια ) - how often are these posts available. Do you post once a day? Once a week? Once a month?

With this blog, there is no issue of either. I write about video games, movies, television, school, books, personal stuff and work sometimes. There is always something to say. Both of my now retired blogs were thematic in nature and thus even though there was continuity, there wasn't always frequency - thus the audience isn't always there. So why throw out your opinion if you are not going to have someone respond back to you every now and then?

So using the rubrics of συνέχεια and συνέπια, blogs should eventually be pruned. Don't delete them, keep them in your archives, but do make it a point to retire them. Like a book, a thematic blog can have a good end.

Tags: technology, blog, opinion, thoughts

Well, along with the Y2K10 issues, there's been a lot of discussion about redefining the Newton. I came across this post by Michael, and I have to say I agree with a lof of his comments.

This is very interesting because this is exactly what I have been thinking for a while.I have long thought, the future of the Newton was in becoming a series of enhancements and applications to assist a chosen platform to provide those features which the Newton had (and differentiated it) which no longer seem to exist. (Keep in mind that different users will see this as a different mix of items)

I agree. The features that the Newton had that differentiated it for me (beyond the Apple Geek factor) were the addressbook, calendar, mobile office suite and my multilingual dictionaries. Oh, the large screen too.

In my case, I have recently purchased an iPod Touch to use as my basis for this.

I went with a Nokia Internet Tablet (N800 Model), plus an iPod Touch more recently.

My reasoning for this is pretty simple:1. The iPhone / iPod Touch SDK is FREE!

I don't care about developing, so this isn't a factor for me

2. The Developer community is alive and kicking and considering the size of the user base I have a good chance that something will be developed which may deliver what I am after or that something I develop will be useful for other users and therefore make the development effort pay off.

This is true for both maemo on N800 and the Mobile OS X on the iPod Touch. I have almost more functionality than I had on my Newton!

3. It's from Apple and syncs well with my iTunes Library on my Mac ( and the Address book and iCal and MobileMe).

This was, and is, the most important thing to me. My Media syncs perfectly with my iPod Touch, and all my calendars and contacts are synced. Yes, even the ones in Greek! My major problem with the Newton was the lack of Greek support, even though the OS was fully unicode. Initially this was not a problem since most of my contacts were non-Greek. I could literally count on two hands who my Greek contacts were. With the rise of the internet and social networks I've reconnected with many of my old friends, and it is easier to keep in contact with new ones making Greek support all that much more important.

4. It already had FMTouch which is a 3rd party Filemaker Database Engine so I can take my existing Databases and Sync them to "MyTouch" ( yes I was lame enough to call it that and you can guess my iMac is called) and carry them with me. Something I always wanted for my Newton but never quite had

.

Now, I am far from 100% satisfied with the platform.I have some minor annoyances with the following:1. Address book:  It doesn't support Custom Fields ( which I'm not sure was a Newton feature out of the box or an extension ) so all my Custom Fields from the Newton were lost

The iTouch does not fully support Greek, so even though I can get my contacts on there, I can't easily get to them! The system is built for latin based alphabets
Custom fields don't bother me as much as I don't use them

2. Calendar: Seems to be missing a few things as well. I'm not sure I actually need them but I guess time will tell.

Having used iCal for the last 3 years, whatever is missing, I haven't missed

3. Notes:  This has to be the most useless Notes App ever made! You cannot set the title of the Note it is simply the first line of your Note so I am forever having to put the title there. There is no Landscape Mode. It doesn't support Checklists or allow you to put them in Folders ( or at least Groups like in Address book ) and I cannot seem to Sync them only Email them!

This IS a major annoyance. The Notes app is useless. I used my newton to take many, many notes. In meetings, in the classroom, at work. It was great! My iPod Touch is awful at taking notes. The N800 has a program that is somewhat comparable to the Notes app on the Newton, but it's slow.

There are of course features missing:1. HWR - There is a program called WritePad which gives you HWR via finger which works really well and I would love to work out if they are using Inkwell or a Home-spun HWR Engine; they are producing apps for this as well and their Notes App looks interesting but it is missing Checklists which I feel is a must.

You know, I would love HWR on the iPod Touch, but truth be told, I almost never used it. Initially I used it a lot, and it was great on the Newton. However as I met and recommended with my friends from Greece, I started taking notes in a mixture of Greek, English and something in between. The Newton did not recognize this. In class, I would take notes of words in German and Italian, but the dictionaries would not always recognize the words. The notes app on the newton worked well for monolingual people, but in my case it didn't fit my needs. Ink-notes were more useful.

2. Find - There is no Search feature so I can't simply search on a Clients Name and get a list of all my Visits from the Calendar and the Address book entry which I used quite a lot on the Newton.

Ditto!

3. Copy and Paste - Such a simply feature which could be implemented just like the Newton is missing. But I have yet to have missed it.There is probably a lot more that could be said.

I have missed copy/paste on the iPod Touch, but I always have my N800 to fall back on, so if I need to copy something to/from the web browser into/from another app, I use the N800

At this point I have gotten the touch to the point that for the first time since I owned a Newton it is actually sitting on my desk at home and not being carried to and from work each day. I think the potential is there but it will need some Apps built to provide the "missing" bits. For me, the first step will be the Notes App. I hope to start working on building such an App in the next few months.

One thing that I really miss from the notes app on the Newton, that I wish were implemented on the iPod Touch OS is the different kinds of notes. I want to-do lists (and have the synced with mail/ical). I was graph paper. I want plain paper to draw on. I want shapes and different size marker tips. Yes I can get all those in three separate apps (kinda), but the notes app on the Newton did all this.

Tags: technology, apple, Newton, opinion

So now that Microsoft has acquired danger, what will they do with the device and its OS? Well yours truly has a suggestion for Microsoft (not that they listen), as to how to best exploit and expand the platform!

Section 1: Device Hardware

Hardware needs to be improved, no doubt about it. First thing that Microsoft needs to do is to make quadband GSM and quadband HSPA a standard in all danger devices so that they have a global reach.

Secondly they finally need to add WiFi to all of their devices. WiFi is now a staple of pretty much all smartphones, and if Microsoft wants to capture the younger users AND maintain them and not see the SK as juvenile, they need to add wifi.

Third, they need a touch screen on the device. Dialing the device is a pain in the butt. With a touch screen this is taken care of, and it opens the door for more innovation.

Fourth: add GPS. Location based services are a must have for an always on-device like the sidekick

Fifth: use dedicated media/video chips to improve media playback and battery life.

Sixth: Number of devices - just have two, the classical form factor and the Slide form factor. No need to dilute your market. Special editions are OK.

Finally, add a front camera for video chat and video calling.


Section 2: Software


The first step for Microsoft would be to make a more generic OS similar to what other smartphone operating systems do and then add themes and customizations to the device, but make it so a customization does not impede the customer's ability to take this device from one carrier to another

The second thing they need to work on is full unicode input and localization of the OS. While the sidekick is available in English, German and probably Dutch, it needs more local support to be rolled out globally.

The third thing is Exchange support. In the mail client support exchange fully, just as if it were a windows mobile device. This will make it attractive to the enterprise.

Add a bit of social flair to it: social networks are all the rage today, from facebook and myspace to linkedin and friendfeed. How about being able to log into your social networks, and microblogs and get a feed of what your contacts are up to?

Add a blogging client: Do you use blogger? LiveSpaces? Live Journal? Wordpress? No matter what you use, a blogging client should be available to use out of the box.

Add better media capability: video and music playback, as well as youtube, vimeo and hulu (just a thought) should be standard on this device.


Section 3: Services

One of the great things about the sidekick in the early days was that the internet and IM was patched through a danger server which optimized websites for the sidekick browser and kept a messaging service running, so if you were offline with your sidekick (a dead-spot or something) people could still IM you and you would get the IMs when you came back into service. This is something apple is trying to do today (with the IM bit).

This is a good idea, but it is implemented poorly. At the moment the carrier has control of that service, not Microsoft, which means I can only use my sidekick on T-mobile, not at&t, not rogers, not on cosmote when I travel to Greece.

Microsoft needs to decouple this from the carrier so a sidekick can run on any carrier, but still sees the benefits of messaging services (and possibly streamlined websites, although I prefer the real web experience of an iPhone to that of the blackberry and sidekick).

The other function of this server is to keep your contacts, emails, photos and PIM data backed up on the cloud. Again, when this came out in 2001 it was revolutionary, these days Apple and Google have joined the game in the consumer arena. Microsoft should decouple this PIM/media functionality from the carrier and tie it into their Live services (and if they feel up to it support syncing to google and yahoo). This means that now anyone can purchase a sidekick, and a plain jane data plan and with their live account they can use the device to its full capability.


Section 4: PR

The sidekick and the danger OS suffer from juvenile disorder. A grown man (even if the software were available) could not be caught with a sidekick because it's deemed to be a kid phone. Microsoft needs to fix this in order to make the device accessible to to a wider demographic.

Tags: opinion, microsoft, dangeros, sidekick

A while back I was reading this article over at the Internet Tablet School

It's been a while since I initially read it, so I went back to re-read since I had been thinking of the topic lately. The author's thesis is that Nokia doesn't want to compete with itself by offering two devices that do the same thing: the Nokia S60 touch interface phones (such as the Nokia 5800 pictured to the right) and the Nokia Internet Tablets.

The author further goes on to day that Nokia should put create subnotebooks like the Eee PC and put maemo on, abandoning the tablet factor, and that Nokia should focus on improving the functionality of maemo with regard to functions such as word processing and other office apps.


Now, I agree with two things:
1. You don't want to cannibalize sales of your flagship products (phones).
2. You should focus on adding functionality.

I disagree on the notion of getting rid of the tablet factor and making something like the Eee PC. Sub-notebooks are a pain to carry around. A tablet fits comfortably in your coat pocket, a sub-notebook does not. You don't need to put maemo on a laptop to clearly show who the intended audience is.


What should Nokia do?
Software wise:
1. Add a good PIM suite to your internet tablets. Contacts, Calendar, To-do and memos are a must and by doing this you will get people from the PDA market to switch over. While you're at it, make this PIM suite compatible with iSync and synv with Yahoo and Google as well.

2. Make office applications more accessible on Maemo. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are documents that people want to open and edit on the go.

3. Make mail for exchange available on maemo and integrate IM functionality into the OS (yahoo, MSN, ICQ, AOL). Pidgin does a good job, but this also adds one more app you need to run.

4. Get more support for web based clients, like the iPhone.

5. Get SMS, MMS, and phone applications on Maemo.

6. Make media playback easier on the device. Video podcasts don't play well on Maemo - fix this. Look at Canola for PMP inspiration (or support canola actively)


Hardware wise:
1. Integrate quadband GSM/Quadband UMTS (and if you're up to it, WiMAX as well). Will this cannibalize your S60 touch sales? To a small extent yes, but most people buy a phone for most phone related activities, and a tablet for extended internet activities. The tablets have more screen real-estate, and better processing power which makes browsing more pleasurable than on any phone.

2. Integrate your phone like and tablet lines. Make it easy to compose, send, and sync MMS, SMS from your tablet to your phone

3. Bring back the FM radio with RDS

4. Make tablets easy to connect to monitors and TVs for more real estate.

5. Take the N810 body and add some external buttons, so people don't have to slide out the keyboard to use basic navigation buttons

6. Throw in a 3.2 or 5MP camera.

7. Yes, do make wireless keyboard and mouse an viable option for maemo. There's nothing cooler than taking your tablet out, brining out a wireless keyboard and sitting and taking notes!



Nokia posits the N-series devices a multimedia computers. In my opinion it doesn't matter if you are running symbian or maemo. While current tablets can go online by tethering them to a phone, it's better and easier to keep the same form factor and add cell radios in them.

Tags: maemo, symbian, Nokia, future, opinion

So, recently I got a new computer at work. It's not really new - the hardware is a year old, but it's new to me. I asked for Vista on it since I was using Vista before on my aging Dell GX270. All I have to say is WOW. It makes such a difference to run Vista on capable hardware. I had no problems with vista on my aging GX270, even though boot-up was slow so I was not a hater.

Thinking about Vista's problems, here is what I think Microsoft should do with Windows 7

1. Vista is partly a PR problem. People think it sucks because people are running it on inferior hardware. Those people talk, and influence the thought of others. The stupid "I am a PC ads" don't work. They are...well...stupid! I think the Seinfeld+Gates ads were AWESOME! Get some better ads, bring back Seinfeld.


2. Get rid of legacy shit and let people know that you are doing so! Look at Apple. They buried MacOS 9. They made a mostly compatible layer called classic and shipped it with all PowerPC machines. Now with the Intel transition MacOS 9 is gone. Microsoft needs to get rid of Windows 3.x and 9x underpinnings. Make a separate sandbox for the old 3.x and 9x based apps, and let people know, given them a firm date on when you are stopping support. Work with your developers to make the transition smooth. People who need those old apps will still run XP but at least they won't badmouth your product.


3. Be more ridgid on what runs windows! Again, look at what Apple does. No need to support a million configurations, and no need to support el cheapo $500 PCs with Vista. Force manufacturers to get rid of those crapola cheap PCs and design an experience just like apple does. There is no need for experience and utility to be separate and mutually exclusive entities.


4. If you REALLY need to have cheap PCs and webtops running Vista,build a microPC version of Windows that runs MOST programs. Dont taint windows's name my trying to make it all things to all people. Look at the various linux webtops like the eeePC. Their version of the OS is not the same as one you would find on the desktop and for good reason. Maybe you could assist your developers to create those webtop versions and have a way of marketing that it works with Windows-the-desktop-version and Windows-the-webtop-version.

5. Other people have said this, maybe this time you will listen. Get rid of those stupid and artificial distinctions between home basic, home premium, business and ultimate. Your BASIC BASIC sucks and it's more expensive than MacOS X (os x being $129 and home basic being $200). Just give everyone the Ultimate experience at the same Apple price of $129! If everyone has the same experience, everyone has the same basis for comparison. There should only be three versions of Windows: Server, Desktop (aka Vista/7 Ultimate) and Webtop.


Thus concludes my advice to Microsoft. Now go forth and stop shooting yourselves on the foot!

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx

Tags: technology, microsoft, windows, opinion, vista

OK, so I wrote about why Palm needs Android. Now I am going to help them with their overall strategy while I'm at it.

I listened to an episode of the 1src podcast a few months back, and it was mentioned that Palms strategy is to have three tiers of devices:

1. Entry level - running PalmOS Classic. These devices will be cheap smartphones to get people into the smartphone word from the feature-phone world. These devices would be devices like the Palm Centro. They may even retain the Centro naming convention for these devices.

2. Mid Level - running PalmOS II (Nova) and focused toward a more advanced user group, but not quite up to the enterprise level.

3. Enterprise Level - Running Windows Mobile. These devices will be like the Palm Pro and aimed at businesses and super-duper-uber users.

Now is a previous post I had mentioned how Palm should go for android and halt development of PalmOS II. In addition to that, Palm should also completely eliminate PalmOS Classic and get in bed with Symbian.

If Palm continues to court Windows Mobile, they've got the business user. If they go with Android, as I said in a previous post, they gain from the many apps that will be developed, and they can tailor the android experience with their palm know how.

Where does Symbian fit in?

Well, symbian is the largest mobile OS in the world. It has a lot of apps already available! Palm is not a known brand in Europe, but if they run Symbian they can make a bigger splash in the market over there. Palm is a well known name in North America, so running symbian benefits them because they will be building upon the great library of apps already available for symbian AND moving forward.

PalmOS classic at the moment is stagnant and has no future. Why invest in an entry level line that runs an obsolete OS?

Palm should look into making symbian phones both for entry and mid level clients.

Tags: palm, symbian, technology, opinion

I was reading this article recently about why Palm needs Android. I know, my google reader starred items list is a little backed up, so the article is not very fresh - but I do believe that it is quite relevant.

I do agree that Palm needs Android, but for somewhat different reasons than the article points out. The article does have some interesting points to make - like the OS market is crowded and making one that you control more doesn't guarantee you success.

My reasons for Palm ditching Palm OS II (Nova) are simple:

First, Palm has a piss poor record on OS development in recent years.
Palm was supposed to release PalmOS 6 - Cobalt... but they messed that up and the OS was essentially dead on arrival. No manufacturers, not even palm themselves used it!

Then palm decides to buy out a chinese linux manufacturer and merge their Cobalt OS with the linux they purchased to make a new OS. What happened? PalmSource was bought off by a Japanese company. The company then completed the OS (or is nearly completing it) and Palm is not using this OS, THEIR OWN brain child on new devices. Instead they opt to build something from scratch and call it Palm OS II.

Now Palm OS II has been delayed, and I think it will be delayed again, and again. I think it will be DOA just like Cobalt was.


Second, Palm needs to cut off the deadwood called Palm OS 5.x (aka palm OS classic). Palm needs to pull an Apple here. They've been supporting their classic OS for a long time, grafting on more and more functionality. Good for them! It really shows ingenuity on their part. Time has come though to make the symbolic gesture of putting PalmOS classic to rest.

By going with Android not only do they have the benefit of an open source OS, they also have the benefit of getting all those nifty apps that are coming down the road on Android. This is also an incentive for all those PalmOS developers to upgrade their apps from PalmOS classic to Android - there is going to be a bigger market!

What about all those legacy apps you ask? Well, they can be put out to pasture as well! It's time for them to retire. Palm has said that they will maintain the centro line for entry level consumers, so developers can still make apps for PalmOS classic if they want. People in the mid-tiers using Android Palm products can maybe use an Access provided Palm emulator to run most of the apps that they paid for in the past while they transition to newer apps.


Palm needs to stop wasting money on PalmOS II (Nova) and start developing some android apps to make their phones stand out!

Tags: opinion, palm, android, linux, symbiosis

Recently Nokia announced that they intended to buy the rest of Symbian, and then open up the platform. This should lead to some sort of consolidation of the platform. Nokia has done its part by merging the Series90 and Series80 platforms into Series60, but then there is also the question of UIQ and MOAP(S).

One of the reasons I went with Symbian originally (with the original SonyEricsson P800) was the promise of Over-the-air updates! Before my P800, I had used a number of feature phones, including the Ericsson T28w, and the Nokia 8890. I liked those phones, but in order to get another language pack, or to get a firmware upgrade that fixed problems with the phone’s existing firmware, I need to send the phone off to a professional (or service center) that flashed the new firmware to the phone, and sent it back to me. This cost me $50 each time I did it.
With the P800, I expected to be able to upgrade my OS from my desktop computer. I would just plug in my phone to my computer with USB, a downloader would download the new firmware and flash it to my phone. NOPE! It wasn’t like that! I still needed to send it into a service center. It didn’t really matter to me that much because I had the time to mess with my phone and reinstall all my apps.

Fast forward to the Nokia N80. I thought I was able to do OTA! NOPE! I got the ability to download and flash firmware on my desktop, so I did not have to send it out and pay money for the flash, but that still meant that all my data got whipped, so I needed to resync my PIM data and reinstall all my apps because installing on an SD card was not always dependable.

Now, all other smartphones are the same, palm, blackberry, windows mobile, and the iphone. You want new firmware? Erase and Install! Should I be bothered that symbian is the same way? Yes! I should be, because OTA and user upgradable firmware was something that was promised quite a while ago. While some features have trickled down, it’s taken a long time! I hope the new Symbian Foundation makes a batter OS and a better upgrade procedure.

Tags: symbian, UIQ, s60, OTA, updates, opinion

A few weeks ago I saw Apple’s new promotion. Get a new Mac, get a free 8GB iPod Touch! The offer is for college students, but since I am a graduate student, the offer still stands for me.

OK, I thought to myself, an iPod touch is a nice little web browsing device, I can put on it my most listened to music and podcasts, and use my older, four year old, iPod for more heavy duty tasks (such as outdoor entertainment while doing yard work). I also thought, OK, maybe this is an opportunity to get a MacBook. We’ll leave the MacBook rant for another time, this one is solely for the free iPod Touch.

The iPod is indeed free, but the caveat is that you need to buy it ($300), and then submit rebate forms in order to get that $300 back. Seriously, WTF? Just give me a free iPod touch, with the purchase of MacBook, and let’s forego the filling out of forms, getting receipt copies, mailing them to a rebate center, waiting six to eight weeks to get a check, and then deposit that check. My purchase is going to be electronic anyway, so why not let those internet electrons do all the work and save me from paying $300 that is just going to come back to me anyway!

I know that there are people out there that neglect to fill out their forms, so that is profit for Apple, but let’s get serious now!

Tags: ipod, touch, macintosh, apple, deals, opinion