However, that was some years ago now, and I think I am well over my grieving.

It may be connected, but I think I am also over wantonly donating my credit card limit to Apple too.

After years of being an Apple freak, Apple aficionado and Apple devotee, I have recently completed my first whole 365 day year, totally free of an Apple purchase for the first time in quite a number of years. Not even a set of ear buds.

So why have I changed from being a mega-paying disciple to a parsimonious dissident? Because, perhaps due to Steve Job’s passing, Apple has, in only a few short years, lost its fearless daring, inventiveness and devil may care attitude, and in its place, has fallen into the grip of the Wall Street rules of doing business.

Instead of delivering wondrous products that we didn’t know we even needed, Apple now tinkers with what has been a success and exploits those past successes for as long as possible. This may make billions (Ireland domiciled, almost tax-free profit you bastards?) now, but Apple can toy around with trinkets and buttons until it gets to the iPhone 175s, but it won’t deliver anything new.

What’s new at Apple. Not much.

New? Ok, I’ve seen the Apple watch thingie, but really?Pppfft! I had a watch when I was four years old. New? What does it do? Tell the bloody time? Great! New and something I didn’t know I needed? I don’t think so.

I wonder if Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave, thinking that Dick Tracey did all that stuff such a very long time ago.

Taking a four-year-old iPad or iPhone and calling it SE, is not innovation. It’s exploitation. Why would I want to buy a four-year-old product, just because it’s available in a new colour? Innovation? Be damned.

Jobs may also be rolling in his grave about iCloud. This is the cloud service that replaced Apple’s last disastrous attempt at cloud services, MobileMe. When that was released and didn’t work, Steve Jobs asked this of his staff:

“Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continues, “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”

Well, Steve, you can rise from the dead and ask the exact same question all over again about iCloud, because while it’s an improvement on MobileMe, Dropbox still leaves iCloud for dead.

It seems that my old iPhone 6, iPad Air and Macbook Air are all very safe from redundancy now, apart from the fact that they can’t sync with each other reliably via Apple’s shitty iCloud that is, so I have no idea where my precious photos are. Oh, and they aren’t a fancy colour. Rose gold anyone?

As there is nothing at all new and compelling coming out from Apple, my credit card will be totally secure from being raided by Apple for another few years at least.

Well, I do admit that I bought a new Macbook Pro, but couldn’t bring myself to buy the model with the Touch Bar. Why? Well, I just couldn’t think of a use for it, to be honest, so I don’t need it.

When Steve Jobs was alive, he somehow found ways to make stuff that I didn’t know I needed, but did. That was his genius.

It’s a sad thing to say after being an Apple disciple for more than thirty years, but Apple has lost its gloss, shine, crunch, imagination and daring. It has also lost its ability to make and sell products that ‘just work‘.

Many facets of Apple’s product range now, ‘just don’t bloody work‘. Such as my expensive new Macbook Pro that refuses to reconnect to the Internet when I wake it from sleep. My eight-year-old MacBook Air manages this simple task with ease.

Apple has become sadly, yet another mainstream home appliance manufacturer. It might as well make vacuum cleaners to extract a few more billions in Irish tax-free profits.

Apple seems destined to become a replica of Microsoft in the 80’s and 90’s, which preyed on its past success and monopoly for future profits. And we know the Vista of where that led.

Maybe I’ll buy something with a Samsung label on it in future if I want something new and different that ‘just works‘, but I doubt it will have any ‘wow‘ factor.

Or perhaps, as I’m getting on a bit now, it’s time to get over my boyish gadget fetish and start hoarding my hard earned money for a stylish walking stick.

But anyway, thanks for the memories, Steve.

The post A Bad Apple After Steve Jobs appeared first on The Vandal - Derek Haines.

With so much interlinking, auto-sharing, auto-posting, and re-tweeting, I’m really wondering if I might just live on (socially speaking) for a few years without anyone noticing that I am actually quite dead.

Perhaps I can plan for this eventuality by setting up some horribly clever automation that will have me bothering people from the grave and having a damn good chuckle at the joke from six feet under. It wouldn’t take too much effort to link a few social media accounts and have them re-post to each other, ad infinitum, loop, loop, loop, laugh, laugh.

With a WordPress blog, there’s even a plugin that can keep re-posting old blog posts forever and a day. Wow. Forever. Now, that’s what I call planning ahead.

What about Twitter’s infamous auto-bot-spam all you like re-tweeting? Now there’s a killer opportunity to tweet for hundreds of years. Well, that’s highly unlikely as even the most optimistic of people would only give Twitter another four to five years as it has yet to cut a profit and looks highly unlikely to do so in the near future. What a pity if I get to outlive Twitter.

Google, of course, is the best bet for living on the net for years after drawing your terminal breath. Nothing is lost in their indexing so I am 100% certain that my posts will survive for almost ever. Well, some of my web pages from 1996 are still there, so who needs more proof than that? If you found this post by Google Search, how do you know if I am still breathing? You don’t, of course. I may well have become ashes, but hey, don’t let that bother you. Keep reading.

Then, of course, there are mailing lists. They never cull anyone, so maybe I’ll set up automatic forwarding of all my junk mail back across to all the other junk mail senders and drive them crazy for eternity. What a payback for all the long years of cleaning out my junk mail folder. Better still, I could set up an out of life message!

“Thanks for reaching out to me. But, sorry, I’m not in my office right now, because I happen to have suddenly died. But be patient, and I’ll be reaching out back to you just as soon as I can chisel my hand through my gravestone.”

Oh, the possibilities are endless, aren’t they?

Perhaps there’s even an opportunity for a new online business. I could offer to manage your social media presence after you have taken your last bow and hope that you forget to cancel your recurring payment to me on your PayPal account. Now, there’s a very good reason for me to keep breathing a little longer.

Then, of course, there is the sad fact that I am an author, and like all authors, I never sell enough books to feed myself. But in death, opportunity abounds as dead authors sell much better than live ones, don’t they?

To quote Monty Python:

So always look on the bright side of death!
Just before you draw your terminal breath.

The post How Sociable Will I Be When I Die? appeared first on The Vandal - Derek Haines.

Tech has come to a grinding halt on three fronts for me. The halt though, while extremely boring, is also saving me a lot of money. What’s boring is not worth buying.

Apple

I’ll start with Apple, who of course were everyone’s favourite company just a few short years ago. So cool were Apple, that people used to queue up for days in rain, snow and ice, just so they could be first to donate huge wads of cash to the Apple god of tech.

Today, however, where are the queues of Apple tech heads with fat wallets of cash? Like me, people have learnt the lesson. To reinforce the lesson, I saw a new iPhone this week in a store, and when I looked at it, it hardly differed from my three-year-old iPhone. My old phone works perfectly well, and apart from a new bit of chassis candy, the new and very expensive iPhone was exactly the same as mine. Well, except the new one didn’t have a plug for my earphones. Yes Apple, take away and try to charge me more. Do you think I’m that stupid?

Sorry Apple, I am not that dumb.

Staying with Apple, my Macbook Pro is getting on a bit now – well in techie years that is. But when I looked at possibly buying a new one online at the Apple Store, I couldn’t help but notice that there was hardly a shred of difference between my current Macbook Pro, and the new one on offer. Well except, again, a lack of holes to plug in the devices I use. Um, like my iPhone? WTF Apple?

Sure, there are probably a few new, faster bits inside, but who cares about all that nonsense. Mine works, so again, sorry Apple, I’m not that stupid. I’ll keep my money thanks.

Twitter

The next tech stuck in the mud is Twitter. Oh Twitter how I love you, but dear me, you really are a very slow learner, and you are proving to be the real dunce of the techie class.

Six years ago the warning flashed in huge red letters for Twitter.

NEW TWITTER USERS GET CONFUSED AND BORED! THEN LEAVE. DO SOMETHING!

Sadly, Twitter ignored this warning, or perhaps in fairness, tried, but still had no clue as to how to change Twitter to become a new user-friendly platform. Like, it’s not rocket science, as every other social media platform has worked out how to be nice to new users, and keep them.

Okay Twitter, you have replaced the eggs with an odd little bubble human thingie. I’m sure that’ll help overcome all the confusion for new users.

Twitter is fantastic, but only if you spend a year learning how to use it. People don’t have time to waste, and Twitter still wastes new user’s time.

Nope, there’s nothing new at Twitter.

Ebooks

During the early years of self-publishing from 2010 to 2013, I had a great time publishing ebooks. Not only publishing but earning a nice side income as well. Then, though, things started to slow down.

Over the last year or so, the slowdown has started to almost turn into a grinding halt. Sure, everyone knows about Kindle, but unfortunately, this is the cause of the problem.

While Amazon has been hugely successful, it has managed to decimate most competition in the ebook market, and now hold what is practically a monopoly on ebooks. This has led to a lack of innovation, which is clearly demonstrated by the dramatic fall in sales of e-reading devices, including the Kindle.

Ebooks are tech, and without new features, they are just text on a screen. Ho hum. How uncool is black and white?

This is the result of Amazon’s ebook success, and with it, the destruction of any viable competition. And with no competition, there is no innovation. Only stagnation. And that is boring. Ebooks are boring.

Tech is getting oh so boring.

I’ll stop here because I’m bored. How about you?

The post Tech Is Boring And So Yesterday appeared first on The Vandal - Derek Haines.

A young friend, who was about to celebrate her twentieth birthday, asked me this question.

“What twenty things would you tell a twenty-year-old about life?”

After recovering from the shock of being asked this question and knowing that there surely isn’t a twenty-year-old living on this planet who would bother listening to me, I thought, well, why not?

After making my decision, my only problem was stopping at twenty.

So here we go with my abbreviated list of hard earned life lessons that no twenty-year-old in their right mind will ever pay any attention to.

1. Never listen to anything said by anyone over the age of twenty-one. It will always be so boring and based on totally outdated opinions and standards of behaviour.

2. If you are a twenty-year-old girl, don’t ever believe a word that a twenty-year-old boy utters. And vice versa.

3. Grit your teeth and smile. You all have Neanderthal parents, so just accept this sad fact and get on with life.

4. Work. It’s a very nasty four-letter word that you should avoid for as long as possible.

5. Go ahead and change the world. We’ve all had a go at it before, and failed, but don’t let that dampen your enthusiasm.

6. Make very good friends of people who live in big houses, drive expensive cars and whose parents have a huge swimming pool.

7. Yes, the world is a really dumb place. But it’s your home, so keep it reasonably tidy.

8. No one understands you, of course. This is perfectly normal so don’t fret. Just work a bit harder at perfecting your tantrums.

9. When you feel out of place and a little awkward, accept the fact that you are out of place and a little awkward. Hey, it’s only for another ten years or so, so don’t get all worked up about it.

10. Fashions and trends do come and go. But when you get a little older, you might be surprised to discover they can last longer than a week.

11. Do not do as you are told. Wait until you are married to do that.

12. Your Neanderthal parents may be creeps, but keep taking their money for as long as you can. (Refer tip 4.)

13. Never smile. Smiling indicates pleasure, acceptance and contentment. You don’t possess any of these attributes yet.

14. Punctuality. Way too difficult to spell, so it’s a word that is impossible to look up in a dictionary to discover the meaning. Forget I even mentioned it.

15. There’s plenty of time to have friends for life, later. A month or two will be just fine for now.

16. Studying is good. Partying, getting drunk and going wild is way better, though.

17. Try not to make the same stupid mistake forty-two times. Ten or so times will suffice.

18. Have your own opinion about absolutely everything. Even if you don’t have a single clue about anything.

19. Respecting your elders doesn’t mean that you actually have to listen to them.

20. Totally ignore long lists of really dumb advice like this.

The post 20 Things I Would Tell A 20 Year Old appeared first on The Vandal - Derek Haines.

Software update available. Do not touch!!

How often do you have a notification for a software update?

Often I guess. It’s almost a daily occurrence. But my advice, after my last week of pain, is to ignore these dastardly red flashing alerts, once and for all. Well, until there is no choice.

Why? Because unlike the good old days, updates are so often rushed out and are now usually full of bugs, not tested and should be labelled, ‘only for the damned brave’.

It doesn’t matter if the update is for your iPhone, your Android phone, your computer’s operating system, or like for me this week, for WordPress. All I can say, after my last few days of losing a hell of a lot of time, immense frustration, and searching for solutions and ways to get back to where I was, that updating anything is an almost guaranteed way of inviting impending disaster.

The problem is that without exception, updates are pushed out in such a rush, that there is no time for testing. Even Apple, who famously say that ‘it just works’, can no longer keep these bragging rights, as the last few iOS updates have proven that even Apple are happy to release updates that are full of bugs, problems and frustrations, and has adopted the new approach of having early adopters find the problems, which then can take up to weeks to resolve. Sort it out for yourselves, so to speak.

Well, I for one say no. I don’t want to be your beta tester.

So that’s it for me. After this last week of pain, I have vowed that from now on to resist the temptation to click any red button labelled, ‘update‘. I don’t want to be a beta tester.

My advice, when you see an update notification, is to wait and ignore. Tough, I know. But instead of rushing in, go and check the forums first and take a look at the pain and suffering of others. Then you will resist, ignore and, have a nice day.

Albeit, with flashing red icons and warnings all over your devices.

While everything is working just fine, why risk disaster, just to get rid of flashing red icons?

Do NOT update anything, until it breaks!

The post Software Updates – Ignore And Have A Nice Day appeared first on The Vandal - Derek Haines.

Relax, it’s only another financial crisis

A quick glance at any newspaper will tell you that we are soon going to enter yet another economic or financial crisis. Yes, yet another one.

As always, it will bring on a period of times are tough, things are hard, forget about a welfare card kind of financial crisis bordering on the total economic collapse of the entire Western world as we know it.

That we don’t say or know much about the Eastern, Southern and Northern worlds, and if they will suffer the same financial crisis, tells us a lot about our ignorance, but that’s another story.

However, there’s no use crying in your coffee about the oncoming financial meltdown. Nor is there any worthwhile value in making a big fuss about it. Screaming and yelling might make you feel better for a little while, but in the long run, it won’t help you much at all, and really, you are going to need your energy for far more important matters very soon.

What you need to do is stay calm, become proactive and adapt quickly to the new realities of good old fashioned capitalism operating at its absolute worst.

To help you through the lean times ahead, here are a few helpful hints on how to survive the impending catastrophic collapse of the entire Western World and along with it, the total disintegration of most, if not all, Western democracies.

Get Elected

The very first thing you should do if you can is to get elected into government. It doesn’t matter if it’s local, state or federal. Any government will do just fine. Once entrenched there, you can sit back, relax and do nothing at all for four to five years. Rake in a disgustingly enormous salary along with a bundle of juicy perks and thumb your nose at the poor souls starving in the street. However, if your luck is out and you fail to get elected, move on to the next point immediately.

Learn a new skill

Enrol in a shoplifting or pickpocketing course. Although these two professions might seem very easy to learn, shoplifting and pickpocketing require very specialised skills, which need to be practised and honed to precision. Once you are adept, though, your chances of surviving starvation will improve significantly.

Assist Economic Growth

Economists blame every economic crisis and collapse on a lack of growth. So try to help out a little economically by perhaps, growing a beard, your fingernails, growing some vegetables, or staying in bed with your spouse and growing a new baby. Growing old doesn’t help gross domestic product apparently, but anyway, who expects to be able to grow old on an empty stomach?

Get Comfortable

You will need to wean yourself off comfortable beds and a mattress, as sleeping in the street usually involves making yourself cosy on cold hard concrete. If you still have a roof over your head, wean yourself off comfy sleeping by starting to sleep on the carpeted bedroom floor for a few nights, before progressing to the cold slate or tiles of the kitchen floor. Then when you’re ready, move to sleeping on the stony cold of your bathroom floor. It might all seem a bit harsh, but you’ll be so thankful that you have prepared your body for sleeping in a cardboard box on the pavement, once the bailiff arrives and kicks you out of your house.

Pay Nothing

Stop paying all those bills immediately. It is about as useful as installing an ashtray on a motorcycle. You’re going to be destitute soon enough, so why rush into it by giving away your last few dollars to corporations that are probably going to collapse anyway. An economic crisis is usually caused by a lot of people, companies, banks and governments who couldn’t pay what they owed, so how silly have you been?

Train Your Babies

If you have very young children, start training them now in street begging skills. The younger, the better for this type of work.

Keep Your Chin Up

Don’t get too depressed about the effects of the financial crisis on you and your family. After all, it’s just yet another financial collapse, and as history tells us, they usually only last for about ten years or so. Time will fly by, won’t it?

Hopefully, these few helpful tips will help you, and see you through the doom and gloom of another financial crisis and total economic meltdown. So, off you go and have a happy and safe total economic collapse of the entire Western world as we know it!

The post How To Survive A Financial Crisis In Total Comfort appeared first on The Vandal - Derek Haines.