No, Kenny is not dead.<\/p>\n
South Park Mall in Charlotte is one of a dying breed \u2013 an upscale enclosed traditional shopping mall \u2013 targeted at folks (California refugees) who will gladly pay $1,500 for a purse. It’s about the last place in the world I want to visit, but there was an unavoidable need \u2013 it is the location of Apple’s retail store.<\/p>\n
I had decided that I had had enough with my original iPad one. It is not compatible with iOS6 or 7 and cannot load a webpage now without crashing because it runs out of memory. I was certain that I was going to buy, the only question was whether I want an iPad that was full-size, or the iPad Mini retina display.<\/p>\n
On my way to the Apple Store, I passed no fewer than three kiosks offering to repair my phone (like replacing the wearing out battery in my iPhone 4S). I was a little surprised to see a Microsoft kiosk. There were three or four employees and large kiosk that was split between the surface tablets and the Xbox. The only “customer” I saw was a 10-year-old boy who wanted to play the Xbox games. The new head of Microsoft announced today that there are major changes coming to his company as it has lost focus and missed the boat on the mobile revolution.<\/p>\n
So I found the Apple Store, and walk in \u2013 not at all comfortable with the location nor the Apple “I’m an expert” culture. Despite there being probably 40 employees scurrying around, I seem to be invisible. Eventually a fat guy in the corner spotted me standing by myself and came over and asked if he could help. I explained that I was there to buy an iPad Mini retina and that I have given up trying to use the website \u2013 both Apple’s website and T-Mobile’s. He announced that somebody else needed to help me for that, and took me over to the middle aged lady somewhere near the front of the store. She announced in this store with at least 40 people that well it’ll be a few minutes before somebody can help you and made no move to get anyone’s attention. She did not engage me at all in conversation and didn’t even ask my name. The next person that walked in the front door she walked off with them to go solve their problem – I took that as a hint and opportunity to turn around and walk out the front door and leave.<\/p>\n
I hopped in my car, and invoked Plan B – I went to the T-Mobile retail store closest to my home. Fernando, who is probably a fairly recent immigrant, immediately attended to me \u2013 walked in the back room and pulled out a brand-new iPad Mini retina which I am holding in my hand now. It is an LTE compatible iPad which includes a 200 MB per month of free LTE t-Mobile Internet access for as long as I own the device. I whipped out my debit card and that was that.<\/p>\n
So at least for the time being, I have a much more useful tool for maintaining the streaming radio guide data. We’ll see how that goes.<\/p>\n
The most ironic part of this is \u2013 the only reason I’ve needed to boot my old computer to windows XP since April – is in order to do a backup and sync of my new iPad. Apple does not have a version of iTunes that runs under Linux \u2013 and it seems extremely likely they will never create such a beast.<\/p>\n
On fanboy message boards talking about Linux, this is a common complaint. “I would be able to completely get rid of windows – except that there is no version of iTunes that runs under Linux, and trying to install WINE or some other windows emulation pretty much requires a computer science degree and lots of luck \u2013 and still probably cannot run iTunes. The smartass Linux fanboys universally say something Unhelpful like \u2013 well that’s Apple’s fault. I’m sorry, but if your position is to use LinuX, you must throw away your iPad and iPhone \u2013 you got your head up your ass if you think that’s ever going to happen. Apple has the ball, and it’s theirs to fumble. Everyone else is a spectator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No, Kenny is not dead. South Park Mall in Charlotte is one of a dying breed \u2013 an upscale enclosed traditional shopping mall \u2013 targeted at folks (California refugees) who will gladly pay $1,500 for a purse. It’s about the … Continue reading