Apparently XBox fanbois are called "X-Bots". More importantly, there are actually XBox fanbois? Really? Why?
Here’s the thing: virtually everyone I know has an XBox 360. They play these games on them, and apparently have lots and lots of fun. Yet every time I’ve visited, they’re not having fun and playing games, they’re flipping madly through menus that don’t seem to work, hunting for things on the hard drive, and trying to explain to me that “it never does this, just hang on a sec, I’ll fix it.” Furthermore, it’s made by Microsoft, and Microsoft is dead to me after that incident in 1994. And the incidents in 1996, ’98, ’99 and ’03.
I do have a Playstation 3, and a Wii, neither of which I use all that much. I tend to like strategy games, puzzle games, mystery games, that sort of thing, and not pew-pew-pew shoot-em-up games, so consoles aren’t really my best choice, but I suspect there’s a part of that determination that just comes from my dislike for the XBox.
Now I’ll freely admit that my own bias is the reason I’m so opposed to the machine, but I’m sure you all have examples that aren’t quite so laden with insanity polarized. Perhaps you simply don’t get the appeal when all your friends are raving about something. Perhaps you’ve tried a flavour-of-the-week gadget, and had nothing but problems.
What bit of technology do all your friends rant and rave with fawning love for, while you simply don’t like it at all?
Nobody in my household has ever had a Myspace or Twitter account, and the only Facebook account is a dummy one my wife created so she can view family pictures of out-of-state friends and relatives who persist in posting them in credentialed areas.
* XBox (don't have)
* Playstation 3 (have and never use)
* Android phone (have and wish it would die)
* iPad (had and NEVER used, EVER)
* Kindle (respect but love paper books way too much)
* Linked ABS on motorcycles, which applies braking to whichever brake you don't use. It's supposed to save shitty riders from themselves. I say if I can't apply brakes properly I ought not to be riding.
* Microwave oven (my last one disappeared out an eighth-story window back in 2001)
You're as bad as me, and while I've never ridden a motorcycle with linked ABS, I hate it just by reading your description of it, and I would hate any 'bike that it was on. If you can't properly operate the vehicle that you're trying to ride/drive, get off the f-ing road before you hurt someone, maybe me.
/I use a microwave a lot, but I do have a history with them
"* Microwave oven (my last one disappeared out an eighth-story window back in 2001)"
Gather round every one, It's time for another Uncle Number_Six story times.
Nah, I just don't get along with technology. Not sure why I read this site every day.
You're here for the
abuse and tormentwonderful people.♫tling♪
I think I'm just waiting for the Emmas to find their professor disparaging them over here.
Dammit you fungus eating weasel, you replied too quickly. I was trying to fix my
strike. Now I have to depend on the Magical Comment Fixing Stranger™ to fix all of my typos.♫tling♪
Good gods man, are you trying to get my office destroyed again? Don't give them any ideas!
Besides, I don't think I've said anything untoward about them here, have I? Normally the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I do…
Apple i"anything"
The wife got an iPod Nano for Christmas a couple of years ago, but has never used it. I quite happy with my cheap auction Zune and actually buy the few cable TV shows I really want to want on Zune video via XBOX.
For me, buying anything from Apple feels like I'm selling a portion of my soul for a trifling gew-gaw. I understand their business model, I just don't agree with it. The last Apple device I bought was a Mac back in '89, and I sold it to my sister a month later.
It doesn't even have to be Apple, anything that's branded with the i-prefix turns me off. That said, I'm hoping to get my mitts on a free iMac very soon just so I can run Boot Camp and load Windows on it.
Also, Google. As I use an Android smartphone, however, it seems I have decided to deal with the Devil after all.
The video games are probably the longest standing example. After owning one pong console in the late '70s I never had one, though my friends all had Intellivision, Nintendo, etc. (Truth be told, I never liked games of any kind, board, field, puzzle… except pinball.)
Personal audio. Walkman, discman, Diamond Rio, iPod, whatever. Never had one after that yard sale cassette job in '86. (I now wear full sized headphones at my workbench, but there's no obstructions between me and the museum goers, so it's more self defense.)
Now it's smart phones. Yeesh. Now you can take all the bad posture, short sighted antisocial aspects of using your desktop with you into the bar! Yay!
Fuel injection. Only recently adopted that one, and it's TBI. Though to be fair, I really like it.
Anything Apple….
Anything that's popular, for some reason.
The previously-mentioned smartphones and console game systems are on my list as well. I'm not opposed to getting a smartphone; I just haven't felt like I need one yet. I don't really play games.
Everyone around me participates in the "integrated Apple lifestyle," with an iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort all linked up to each other. I have a Mac Mini that I use to do work that I can't do on my Linux machines. That is it. If any of my electronics reflect my lifestyle, that Mac is the least representative.
Here's another: cable TV. It was about a decade ago that I thought it stopped being a good value and dropped it in favor of an antenna. That was before online streaming services stepped in to fill its void. Now cable strikes me as a laughably overpriced service whose time has passed, yet everyone I know is a subscriber.
I'll agree with TV subscription, be it cable, satellite, Dish, direcTV, or whoever. I'd quite happily pay $20/month to get only the 5-10 channels I'd actually watch. Seeing as the providers won't spring for that, they won't be getting my money anytime soon.
The part that cracks me up is that basic cable here is worse than broadcast. Over the air, you can pick up all the standard stations in HD. Through the cable company, they're all still lo-res. No thanks.
Speaking of cable:
CRTC Adopts Bell Cable Proposal
I have Apple TV and I really like it because I've got a…modified…version that allows me to get into all kinds of fun stuff. But it freezes up fairly often and it drives me nuts because it doesn't have so much as a Reset button on it, so I have drag my lazy ass off the sofa to go turn it off and back on again when it does.
You hold the "down" and "menu" buttons together on the remote to reset it.
You know, I actually have to agree with you with regards to the Apple lifestyle. Techie and I have been almost-exclusively Mac users since before Windows 95, back when the mantra regarding Apple was that it was a dead company, they should just close the doors, never going to go anywhere, worthless technology blah blah blah. We used them because, well, Windows was a steaming pile of crap.
Windows stayed a steaming pile of crap for a solid decade, while the Mac went through OS9 (which wasn't bad for the day) and transitioned into OS X, which sucked at first then became really impressively good, particularly compared to everything else available on the market. And still, in university, I had people coming into my dormroom, saying, "You run a Mac? Why? There's no software!" And I'd defend it, and get irritable about it, and get myself written off as a crazy man.
Then the iPod came out, and Apple became the iPod manufacturer who also made computers. Then suddenly it became "cool", and the assumption became that I used a Mac and/or Apple products because it was the latest trend. No. Screw you, I use it because I have been using it since it was the only option that didn't crash if you looked at it sideways.
And, as a result of all this, I find myself in the anti-Hipster scenario. You know, those people who claim to have been into it "before it was cool"? Yeah, I'm stuck saying I used it before the Hipsters were using it before it was cool, and I wish they'd all stop using it and shut up about it, so I can go back to quietly enjoying a product that works the way I want it to. All those Apple fanbois you hear about? They're the same people who were telling me I was an idiot fifteen years ago for using a Mac.
I don't want there to BE an "Apple lifestyle". I want a nice computer with some good peripherals that do what I want them to do in a seamless and simple manner. I freely admit that they're not for everyone, and I like it better that way. As an Apple user, I perpetually have people telling me how excited I am about the latest iGadget that gets released. Honestly, I don't care. The only reason I use an iPhone is because it was the best choice on the market at the time, prior to there even being an Android option. If Android gets better Mac integration, I might even switch, I like some of the Android phones a whole lot. If a better computer OS appeared, I might transition the Hackintosh over. I refuse to buy something just because it's Apple, but often it's the option that suits me best. For now. So the Apple lifestyle junkies can take a flying leap.
Amen to that. I've been an Apple owner since 2000, and I've happily used them at jobs since 1996 (while I was still in high school!). It's a lot longer than all the "lifestyle" owners I know have been using them. And I'll probably keep on owning the lowest-cost Mac until Adobe debuts Creative Suite for Linux or Microsoft Windows becomes compliant with the Single UNIX Specification, neither of which will ever happen.
My attitude is basically that I know how all the available electronic gizmos work, I know what meets my needs best, and I know what it takes to get everything working together. That frees me from needing to buy electronics from a single company that has its own vision of "digital device convergence." I have my own digital lifestyle vision, thank you very much. And usually it involves hardware that–compared to Apple–is more reliable, more serviceable, and less expensive.
Me being the Anti-Apple that I am it limits my options in some respects although gaming isn't one (save for Angry Birds). I love my Xbox with only a few minor gripes and they are. The system wasn't built to take the updates that have been thrown at it and that's why I'm anxiously waiting for the 720 because they're treating it in the way they know best as a computer with adjustability.
I am inclined to just agree with the Professor and say anything popular. My wife likes to tell me sometimes that just because somthing is old doesn't make it better. (Yes it does.) I am not an Apple fan really, because of the whole 'lifestlye brand' thing that creeps me out about companies like illest/fatlace. I do own a 6 year old iPod Shuffle that works and so I feel no need to upgrade. My smartphone amuses me, and since Android is getting more popular I may have to switch to Nokia Symbian or something. I am not amused by automatic transmissions, I don't watch much TV (we use a BluRay box to watch Netflix these days), I have always stunk at video games and owned an N64 I got as a door prize for about 3 months before selling it at a pawnshop and an NES about 15 years too late that I could still never beat Mario on. GPS is great and all but I love a big giant map, and I would rather eyeball the places I want to go and all the roads in between and plan my own route. I think drones for flying and space probes for spacing are sweet technology and all, but if there's nobody flying then what's really the point–just stay home and watch TV. E-books are swell but I'll never stop hoarding the real thing. Our minivan hauls the kids around fine, but I wish it was a luxo-barge wagon everytime I assume the position behind the wheel. I haven't figured out what the big hoo-rah is about 3D video yet, probably since I almost never watch the plain 2D. I like Coors Light, and I'd rather buy a case of that that a sixer of snooty beer from Trader Joes and pretend I can 'really taste the hops!', which seems like code for 'it tastes bad because it's expensive!'
So, just a few little things.
You get a +1 for "pretend I can 'really taste the hops!', which seems like code for 'it tastes bad because it's expensive!'"
Craft brewers are putting so much hops in beers these days that I find many of them undrinkable. Today's brewing zeitgest is domanated by the India Pale Ale, which is just a beer where extra hops was added to cover over the flavor of insufficient fermentation.
That said, I can't stand Coors Light. I do drink fancy-pants beer, but PBR is my go-to brew for stocking the refrigerator.
Paper maps, yo! In the first place, you can see every detail on the map, not just what your digital mapping service thinks you want (or wants you to want). God knows how many interesting things I've discovered just by looking at a map. In the second place, the batteries don't die, and they don't disappear when you cross into Mexico. (Honey Bunny swore she had downloaded and stored all of the maps of northern Baja California onto her phone, soon as we hit Mexicali the stupid thing went blank.)
-I got an ipod for iMas a few i ago. While I merely dislike it, I hate itunes with a blazing fury. It's a nano 4gb, which is apparently a weird and obscure version, so I was never able to find a Linuxification for it, otherwise I might still be using it?
-Netflix (streaming only, because Canada). All my friends have it. Whenever I say "Let's watch _________" where "_________" is some fairly mainstream thing, they don't have it. If Netflix was a video store, I wouldn't go there.
-Yes, Xboxes are pretty terrible (also, extraordinarily noisy). I just want to play games or watch DVDs, but it wants me to do all kinds of other things with it. These things are stupid. Also I have to make a new avatar thing every few months because they all make me hate them.
-Same deal with the wii, except with the added layer of stupid interface.
-I have a smartphone, because the store paid me 100$ to take it. The only smartphone-like use I've found for it is google maps, I don't have any use for any of the other junk.
-Social media: Vigorous loathing.
i cant be bothered to really loathe a piece of technology. I figured i'll much rather just read books and teach myself to play the guitar. Have to get some sleep now, tomorrow is grandmas funeral and then straight to work after that. I should really get a new job.
Well crap now i cant complain about anything… as its already been noted…
I dislike anything made by Apple after the Apple 2.
I dislike the lack of 3 1/4 and 5 1/2 drives on PC's and Laptops.
How do you keep your voice from going hoarse after yelling at kids to get off your lawn so much?
You get rid of the kids before they get on the lawn… K.I.S.S. or… even easier you live where there are no kids.