Chad Hawley's View

It’s funny really.  I’ve spent my whole life anti-Apple.  My parents were very forward thinking and bought me a Commodore Vic 20.  Surprisingly, they upgraded me to a  Commodore 64 when that came out.  I say me, because I was the only one that used the thing, and I used it!  I learned programming, application design, problem solving skills, logic, and Algebra on that thing.  I played games, cracked copy protection, re-wired my hardware, and rocked that 64.

Image via Wikipedia

And there in is the kernel of my hate.  It was Commodore 64 vs. Apple IIe, a head to head no holds barred struggle for Home PC dominance.  Apple people (owners) where kinda snobbish.  They cost a lot of money at the time.  I’m thinking the IIe was around $3,000.  People that owned them acted like they had Bentley’s and Grey Poupon.  The Commodore with monitor and printer was around $600.  The Commodore had half the RAM that the Apple did and kicked it’s butt in every way, except one.  Apple made it through the hardship and became a dominate company today.  I could go on and on about my feelings for Apple vs. Commodore, but that is the beginning.

[edit: Look for my future post on why I loved the Commodore 64]

I hated Apple like a sports fan hates the other team, only most people leave that on the field and move on.  Not Me!  I have never owned an Apple product and never will.  We have an iPod Touch in the house that my daughter got free from Girl Scouts.  I use a 3rd party software solution, because I refuse to have iTunes anywhere in my computer network.  I use a Quicktime alternative when I need that service.  I am Apple free.

I guess I’m silly as well.  I don’t know why I have such strong emotions towards Apple and Steve, I don’t really even know the man.  With Steve Jobs stepping down recently, I can only assume his health is near an end.  Men like him,at least how he appears to be, are too driven to let go of all that he has been apart of.  He’s really an interesting individual and I am impressed with what he has been able to steer Apple into accomplishing.  No, he didn’t do it alone, despite what the media portrays, but, he was a part of it. (I LOVE commas, too)

I remember NeXT.  We had a NeXT lab on campus.  I avoided it like the plague, ’cause it had “the taint.”  Heh.  I never matured properly.

I’m still a Commodore fan. I still have my 64 over 30 years later. I still have my drives and my printer.  I lost the monitor to a brother-in-law to use for a tv and I lost my games to a cousin that was supposed to return them before he lost or got rid of them.  I still fire up an emulator every once and a while to get a taste of that great time of personal computing at its finest.

If only Steve hadn’t been the coach of the other team.  I wish it was his drive behind Commodore at the time.  I’d be the biggest  iCommodore fanboy you’ve ever met.

So I guess Steve isn’t so bad after all (Wow! Steve gets a pardon after all these years.)  Apple still sucks!  The company may have changed their name, but they haven’t changed their “suck.”

Goodbye Steve.

Image via CrunchBase

 

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I’ve just recently revamped this website and I have decided to take it a little more seriously this time.  I’ve had this site up and running for less than a week and I’ve already dumped 32 spam comments.  I haven’t had a single comment that was honest, which is fine, but 32 spam? Really?  What is it with people today?  What is the need to spread all this crap around the Internet?  Why do morons click on the spam and keep incentivizing these spammers?

I’m probably gonna write an article soon about my opinions of people, not individuals but people in general, society.  The gist is: people are stupid.  Spam in all its forms are exactly what I mean.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID

Image via Wikipedia

A few days ago HP decided that they wanted out of most of their consumer businesses.  No more PC’s and no more Phones/Tablets.  All WebOS (their phone and tablet operation system) hardware will no longer be created.  They have rumored licensing and selling WebOS software, but HP’s reputation with accuracy and honesty when discussing the mobile platform has less value than dirt.

My wife and I have had and used the phones since their release.  The hardware is crap!  The software, though, is a dream.  There is no other Mobile OS that has the simplicity, ease of use, or intuitiveness that WebOS has.  No not that damn iPhone either! This phone OS moved my wife off of standard phones into the world of smartphones and I don’t think we can move back.  Our lives are centered around these devices so intrinsically, we can’t function without them anymore.  Sure we can live and breathe, but we use the calendaring system on the phone to track our daily routine.

Now after 2 years, our phone hardware is falling apart.  I’ve been struggling to keep them working in hopes that one day our carrier would get the newest flagship model of WebOS, but now with HP canceling the whole thing.  We are going to forced to try another platform.  I don’t know how we will handle the loss of simplicity in the new phones.

I think right now we will be moving to android, because I hate Apple with a passion and have hated since long before most apple fans knew of the company and certainly longer than most fan-boys have been alive.  I think I will get an EVO 3D, not for the stupid 3D crap, but because it is their highest spec’ed phone.  If I could get an EVO 4G with the same components minus the 3D I would, but they don’t offer it.  I think I will get the wife an EVO shift.  She wants a hardware keyboard and the phones are pretty close in make up which I hope will make troubleshooting easier on me.

All I know is I will probably never have a phone operating system as awesome as WebOS, again.

I like google+ !

Title Says it all.