The VeriPhone!!?

Yes, its official; the iPhone is now coming to Verizon. And while that is great news to Mac geeks everywhere, current Verizon customers are fearful that another AT&T "Titanic" incident will happen to them.
When Apple released the iPhone to AT&T (formerly Cingular) customers, consumers and techies alike were drooling over the prospect of a "Blackberry killer", a phone with the potential to kill off all competition, the quality to make it a number one with phone consumers, and the technical dream that would make geeks wet themselves. In a way, the iPhone did all that and more. However, what tempered the obviously-much deserved praise of every consecutive release of the newest incarnation of the iPhone was, to put it bluntly, the crappy data network. Cingular/AT&T's (at the time) slightly primitive data network was not able to handle the immense amount of data needed by iPhone users to maximize the internet's potential on the device. And when the iPhone's App Store took off with data-intensive apps being used daily by insatiable users, it was only downhill for AT&T. Even the massive amounts of early revenue made by the iPhone's sale couldn't raise the giant that was once AT&T/Cingular. Today, in a recent poll, AT&T rated on the bottom of customer satisfaction among users. And the second-most loved carrier only to regional carrier US Cellular? Verizon Wireless.

I've been told from those inside Verizon that the iPhone launch won't hurt the data network; the same network that has been rated the most reliable (and one of the fastest-growing) in the US. However, that was also Cingular's line to consumers. Personally, I believe that Verizon's network won't be hurt by the iPhone launch. There are too many other data-intensive devices (Android and BlackBerry, to name a few) on the market and in the network already using data at a furious pace. The VeriPhone will only enter the network as another data-eater with the rest of them.

...And I'm still waiting for a white iPhone...

APP OF THE WEEK: Slacker Radio

I know, I know: "Slacker" really doesn't sound like an app that will work for you, but if you like your radio personalized, Slacker beats the technological pants off a personalized radio app like Pandora. I didn't hear about Slacker until a friend of a friend showed me the (gasp) Android app and gushed on and on about how great the app was. After wading my way out of that situation, I decided to give it a try.

Pandora, then my ONLY P.Radio app, was nice to start out with, but the premise of "Radio, your way" was lost on the task of having to work to personalize your "stations". C'mon, now: when I ask them to play "Come Fly With Me" by Frank Sinatra, I want a station that'll play Frank's bouncing tunes, along with other bouncy, fun, fast-paced music; something that Pandora promised. Pandora promised an amazing listening experience where your stations would be tailored to your likes and dislikes. They only didn't tell you that you had to sit in front of your computer (or iPod/iPhone) for hours/days/months liking and disliking artists and songs in order to play the songs you want. (By the way, it took me 4 months for my "Come Fly With Me" station to be tailored well enough to listen to)

Slacker promised something different, and I took the bait. I was NOT disappointed. Slacker delighted me as soon as I loaded the app when I found out that they have a "Comedy" station, and that I could get my Jackie Mason/Mel Brooks/Don Rickles fix wherever, whenever. Also, they had stations and substations for convenient quick listening, like "Christian", "Christian Rock", "Gospel", and more. Want to create your own station? Enter the artist or song you want, and Slacker creates the station to match, with scary accuracy. Entering "Frank Sinatra" led me to a station that would play The Chairman every third song, with favorites like Nat King Cole and Judy Garland playing in between. Need to change some settings or even tailor the station further? No problem. The settings page of each channel will allow the listener to tailor the station even further by specifying such things as "play count" or "frequency", "type of station (more indie music, familiar music, more popular music)" and other things. The biggest surprise of the app, not to mention one that I haven't tried out yet, is the caching of stations for offline listening. Caching is allowed for the first two weeks on the free plan, after which you must pay $10 a month for that and other features.

In the end, I love Slacker, and will continue to use it. Because who wants to sit there and tailor radio to fit you when you can let someone else do the work? That's what I call slacking.

The Immemorial First Post

The first post of a blog is supposed to be a general overview of what the blog is intended to be. This post, however...

...is no exception.

This blog is to rant, rave, praise, damn, skewer, adore, and otherwise talk about everything Apple. You know, the company with all the ideas, money, and Saint Steve Jobs?

My inherent love and adoration for Apple started in the early 90's, when I was a child (I'm 21 now). The first computer in our house was a Macintosh Performa 450, with a whopping 128 megabytes of hard drive space, and 4 (count 'em, four) megabytes of RAM. Today, I personally own a 2005-6 MacBook, third-gen iPod Touch, and Lord knows how many floppy disks, CD-ROM's, ZIP disks, old RAM, and drives. And I don't use half of them...

Check back all the time or follow the blog to see my irreverent posts and highly unstable posting schedule.