unhyped

How most people are mostly wrong

iPhone 4s

November 22, 2011
by Thorny
3 Comments

The ‘new’ iPhone 4S

Introduction

On October 4th 2011 Apple released the ‘new’ iPhone 4s, nothing ‘revolutionary’ nor ‘remarkable’ this time, not even to the fanboys, the hardcore fanboys could argue though.

A revolutionary iPhone is always good for the market, whether for the loyal Apple customer or not, because Apple is known to be a trend setter. If Apple makes a great revolutionary iPhone with a lot of new remarkable features the market will undoubtedly follow suite providing these features. So in the end of the day everyone should yearn for a revolutionary iPhone, whether he’s going to get one or not, because every other smartphone will evolve similarly.

Apple has successfully continued through its two extraordinary strategies, the first being very late in introducing technologies while showing them as being new and pioneered, and the other strategy being the power of deciding what is NOT necessary for its customers. In the last millennium, in the eighties of the last century, there was a new -at the time- invention called the “Mouse”, it was spreading, a tool that is essential to any personal computer or laptop nowadays.

The first Apple personal computer that had a mouse was called “Lisa” (named after the illegitimate child of one of Apples founders). What made me mention this story is the fact that after 23 years of “Lisa” being introduced, in the year 2005, Apple gives releases the “Mighty Mouse”, a mouse featuring a second button, instead of having just one…

Yes, in the early 90s of the last century there were a lot of “mice” with even 5 buttons, while Apple stayed with one until the year 2005, this is just one example showing what I mean by the “extraordinary Strategies” that I’ve mentioned earlier. Apple has influenced its customers into thinking that they don’t need a second mouse button, 23 years later they introduced the “mighty mouse” with its fanboys swarming to get it for the ‘remarkable new feature’ that it has, a second mouse button.

I can say with a large degree of certainty that Apple has never introduced a new product feature. What Apple excels in is creating new markets and trends. The personal computer is the most remarkable example, set by the “Apple II”, and nowadays, the tablet computer, set by the iPad.

Now, let’s forget every previous product and focus only on their latest flagship product, the iPhone 4s, what new features does it have? I will divide the common misconceptions about its non-existing new features into two categories, Hardware and Software.

The Monarch - By Patricia van Casteren

June 10, 2011
by Thorny
0 comments

The dark tale of the ‘white’ tiger

In the Animal Kingdom, there’s a normal animal, and there’s a white version of it, with the white version being the popular one, so popular and loved that it became more of an obsession.

So it is the case in the Felidae family, especially amongst Lions and Tigers. White felines always captivated our emotions, they always looked majestic and well poised, they had a sense of royalty and purity in them, maybe the fact that they’re rare contributed to this.

I don’t think that I have to prove that white felines are popular, because they wouldn’t be popular in that case! But here’s the catch, there’s no such thing as a White Tiger, what is known as a ‘white’ tiger is only a regular tiger suffering from a well known genetic mutation which is Albinism that occurs even in humans. Albinism is spread throughout the Animal kingdom, here are some pictures:

sleeping apple

April 9, 2011
by Thorny
0 comments

To eat or to sleep..

In the 21st century, where the human condition never been as good (and where some would argue that never will be), we’ve saturated all of our basic needs and wants, the necessities and pleasures. There’s always room for more of course.. but only for the greedy.

There’s one basic need that is massively ignored in this age of fast pace, “the need for sleep”, because if wesleep we’ll miss a lot of the fun.

Here’s what Tony Schwartz said in the Harvard Business Review, which is basically the bottom line of the whole idea of this post:

14 More Days

February 25, 2011
by Thorny
0 comments

Eye don’t think so

Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? if so, you’re better off with them, I prefer the first option. But don’t think about making a LASIK operation!

Here are some extracts from Politics Daily:

This is a story about one scientist haunted by what, he fears, was a bad decision. Between 1996 and 2000, the scientist, Dr. Morris Waxler, was chief of the FDA’s Diagnostic and Surgical Devices Branch and in charge of approving the LASIK medical device to restore visual acuity. And now, Waxler thinks that the FDA’s standards were not tough enough. In 2008, an FDA advisory panel was urged by unhappy patients to re-evaluate the long-term effects of LASIK surgery and around the same time, patients began contacting him personally to report bad outcomes, including blurred and double vision.

Superbokehtheorie

February 17, 2011
by Thorny
0 comments

A quickie: Mr. Newton, Vacuum has friction

You must’ve studied newtons fundamental laws of physics probably in high-school.

This post is related to Newton’s first law of motion, which is:

I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

After learning this law the teacher usually gives an example regarding motion in vacuum for the lack of friction, weather projectile or rotational motion, well the thing is, rotational motion can decline due to friction even in vacuum! Here’s the introduction from the article on the matter from NewScientist: