Punderings

OK, hate is a strong word, given that I’ve never run a mac as my daily driver. But still, whoever on the iPhone design team decided to use a non-standard audio jack is just plain stupid.

Whether you call it a bad engineering choice – if they actually thought they needed the structural strength for the case, thereby meaning a smaller jack size – or a thoroughly evil business choice – if they simply decided to force lock-in for headsets – it was a bad choice no matter what.

I mean, sure, Apple’s got this pretty design and wow factor as huge selling points. And yes, their user interfaces are very different than the rest of the world – they are so good they’re like magic 80%+ of the time, which most people like. And the other 20% is well understood, and either you don’t mind (most humans) or you can’t stand it (geeks who need control). But that’s the software side.

Headphone jacks? 3.5mm TRS connectors have been pretty darn standard for decades now, especially for audio purposes. If they wanted small, they could have gone for the normal 2.5mm TRS that cell phones have made standard for years now. But no, Apple had to go out and do something that was almost a standard, but wasn’t. If I were in any worse of a mood, I’d compare their design choice here to Microsoft’s, but it’s been a pretty good day, so I won’t go quite that far.

But now I think of it, I do know a handful of people who’ve worked at Apple. Maybe someday I’ll get to meet the “genius” who made the final decision on this one, and get to call them stupid. Normally I’d call them dumb, because as a very small person reminds me, stupid is not a nice word. But I expect better design than this from Apple, so in this case, I’m sticking with stupid.

So – tips for over-the-ear iPhone compatible headsets, especially ones that double as phone headsets (i.e. mic too)? Preferably ones not sold by Apple, please.

It’s been that kind of week. I stopped at a cafe I’ve always liked but rarely pass by, because it was a special week. Café-au-lait because I want something different, and a croissant because they look good. Get to work, laptop refreshes for dual monitors, and dive into some work and my tasty second breakfast.
But it’s not. Tasty, that is. The café is blah, the au-lait I could have poured myself from a carton, and the croissant isn’t. It’s tasty, but it’s no croissant. I may not be French, but I’ve learned more than enough from Julia Child to know that this is actually a very trickily disguised brioche, shaped to look like a croissant. Nice, but not what I had gone out of my way for. I was actually doing the fancy second breakfasts several days this week because it was my birthday – a way of treating myself.
See, Amy was actually away on a trip on my actual birthday. When I woke up with Roxanne, I talked about it being a special day, it was my birthday. With the perfect clarity and sense that only a 3 year old has, she said no, it wasn’t – it couldn’t be my birthday without mom home. We’d just have to hold that thought until later in the week when the whole family could be here.
Hence, I sort of stretched my definition of birthday for a while, and had quite a lot of second breakfasts. Peet’s is my favorite, both for coffee and bar drinks, plus the excellent service locally (Lexington). They get snobby bakery croissants, which aren’t bad, but I usually go for their scones which are just about right on the slightly dry/crumbly side.
Today I did Au Bon Pain since I was passing by there. I opted for a croissant, since I’ve long ago bored myself of their mass-made scones. What the heck happened to Au Bon Pain’s croissants? It wasn’t even brioche, it was just vaguely buttery cooked dough shaped in a wrapped horn! Geez, I’ve had more layers in a Pillsbury Crescent roll before! Was it just me, and nostalgia for days past, or did Boston area Au Bon Pains actually used to have decent croissant? Not actual French croissants – no American chain could pull that off – but still, I recall watching The Chessmaster noshing on a nicely flaky ABP croissant in years past.
This is turning into more of a nostalgia trip than a riff on disguised bakery products, but I do remember The Chessmaster, and was glad to see he’s still there one second breakfast earlier this week. The used book shelves at the Harvard Book Store are still there, although the science fiction section is disappointingly short from the pre-Amazon days. And so many of the stores in HSq have changed! The past 6 or so years has seen a huge gentrification of the area, which is a real shame. I mean, Cardullo’s Wursthaus may not have been the healthiest place around for your wurst-mit-kraut, but it sure had an infinity more style than the stupid sunglasses and trends store they’ve got in there now. There really isn’t that much benefit to the new HSq, and there’s a lot less class and culture there now. I suppose a fair number of places are a little cleaner, though.

Now I really want some decent coffee – and a brioche-shaped brioche. Hmmm. That’ll have to wait for morning, I suppose.

.. get me down sometimes.  Like my badge not working in the garage this morning.  Talking to the security guard – perfectly nice, but not paid, nor willing, to actually think at all – is zero help: “Go get a new badge”.  I spent 10 minutes walking around the building proving my badge indeed works great at every reader except the garage.  Given the evidence, I tend to think that reader is faulty, not my badge, eh?  And it’s not security’s job anyway: someone else is responsible for the readers, probably a different set of people than are responsible for the badge database (i.e. who should be in / out of each reader) as well.  And finding contact names for things like this inside &BigCo; is sometimes and impossible task.

So hopefully the catharsis of writing that out here will help me move past it and do something useful.  Even though I feel a little silly using Charlie Brown’s typical trying-to-kick-a-football yell in this situation.  Than again, I seem to remember Charlie Brown having several themes of little things at various points in his perpetual 6 year old existence…