It’s hard not to be excited about 2012′s slate of films when you read Metacritic’s top pics for the new year. The list is full of exciting pics across the spectrum of styles and there’s only one or two movies that don’t sound too interesting.
Louis CK produced his own comedy special and put it up for sale on his website, DRM-free, for just $5.
Twelve days later he’s made over a million dollars and he’s giving a quarter of that to charities and another quarter to his employees as a bonus. Amazing.
I bought a copy for $5 and, after watching it, I can say it’s excellent and worth much more than that.
Peter Jackson is back in Middle Earth for The Hobbit, and Apple has the trailer.
This is just the first half of the story so we get more Gollum but have to wait another year (until December 2013) for a dragon.
I never met Steve Jobs personally and, like millions, I’ll always regret that.
I was fortunate enough to see him in person a few times though. The first was at the keynote of Macworld San Francisco in 2001 when he introduced the word to iTunes with “One More Thing” of the Titanium PowerBook G4. I waited in line with my dad for several hours in the dark and cold of a January morning just to get a good seat, but I was still way in the back. In the end, it didn’t matter, because I still could feel his charisma fill the auditorium. It was probably the coolest thing I had experienced at that point in my life; it probably still is one of the top.
I was working for Apple at Macworld in 2005 when I saw him next. Earlier that morning he had introduced the iPod shuffle and I was manning a wall with about a hundred of them hanging from lanyards (picture, yes, I had a bright green shirt on too). All of a sudden, as if someone started moshing behind me at a concert, I was getting pushed and shoved by a mob of people. I turn around, and amidst a throng of photographers flashing photos and reporters yelling questions, Steve, beaming from ear to ear, walks up to one guy who was trying the shuffle out to ask him what he thinks. The guy mumbles something about it being small & light, Steve thanks him, and with that strides off, throng of reporters chasing at his heels.
I wish I could have followed him too that day; just for a little while. I think we’ve all been following at Steve’s heel in one way or another since the beginning of Apple. I hope we still get the chance to trace his footsteps now that he’s gone.
The Brooks Review does the math and finds that it’s cheaper for AT&T iPhone 4 Users to change carriers than to upgrade to the iPhone 4S on AT&T.
Obviously this isn’t true if you bought an iPhone recently, but if had your iPhone 4 for a while then it definitely holds true. According to this AT&T Early Termination Fee (ETF) calculator, personally I would pay $165 for my ETF (I got the iPhone 4 the day it came out). However paying penalty would allow me to get $250 more in phone subsidies, netting me $85 in savings. How does this make any sense for AT&T?
The Brooks Review suggests several strategies to get around this including threatening to switch and doing a family plan shuffle (which I will be pulling). It should be possible to cancel your current account with AT&T and simply sign up for another with the same number, but this might be a bit tricky to pull off. Certainly the least hassle would be to simply switch from AT&T to Verizon or Sprint.
And that’s why AT&T sucks (today).