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    April 01, 2008

    A Sad Day Has Come

    This is the last time I will post here. My time as the "Metropolitician" is up.

    I've realized a lot of things over the last week or so, since falling for a certain young lady of a more conservative persuasion, who has quite literally rocked my world. I realize that a lot of the liberal ideas I had formerly and formally adhered to were largely misconstrued notions I had held, distortions of ideological ramifications that simply had no precedence in either established fact, dilapidated fiction, or even (and not either) the demonstrated dialectics of most people's dystopic desires.

    In short, a new kind of love has made me into a harder, more turgid man.

    No longer will I carry the torch for a a deluded liberalism, nor be the voice for lefty illiberality. What I truly hanker for is a haughty helping of a hunk of cheese that isn't defined in terms of a mere neo-Freudian kitsch, but the kind of cheese one can count on, like money in the bank; indeed, one needs sustenance so solid and reliable one can literally stick it in a pipe and smoke it.

    So I can no longer continue to write here, after having fallen for someone like the one who has learned to call me "oppa." Such is an experience I never thought I could have had, either as a black man, or a Star Trek fan, and her highly-developed sense of what I have previously called here mere "fetishized femininity" has caused in me an emotional rise that is quite epic in its tense and torpedo-like tautology. Indeed, they didn't call Moby a "Dick" for nothing, as they say. Unlike the proverbial Ahab, my little lady has actually caught her whale.

    When wondering why I have decided to forgo any further forays into formalism and endorse not Barack "Aladdin" Obama, but rather John McCain, the answer becomes perfectly obvious, does it not?

    When you ask yourselves these questions, as you struggle for the answers, yet still can't bring yourself to face the truth, realize that Tom Cruise once said, quite poignantly, that the "truth could not be handled" and that in a similar situation, Al Pacino pointed a finger and said that the entire Supreme Court was indeed, very much "out of order."

    In the same way, I was once out of love, and was so lost without her, but believe you me -- I now realize that it's hip to be square. Or did not Huey Lewis not give you that news?

    So, it is with heavy hands that I make my last entry here, since the Metropolitician that was me has completely and totally ceased to be he.

    For Pak Geun-hye's youngest daughter knows how to hit me where it counts, and to not just do that to me once, but likes to hit me, baby one more time, all the time, if you catch my meaning, number one Negaroni! See, I don't shrink away from saying, loudly and proudly, what needs to be said. And if you didn't get it from the passage above, you need a double dose of dis doubletalk. April mothafuckin' fool's, bitches!

    Word to your mother, yo!

    January 22, 2008

    The Macbook Air – So Retro!

    OK. I was a little underwhelmed about the new release from Apple, although it is certainly cool in terms of some of the other things that have come out with it. If I ever get the extra cash together, it might be a buy for me, since I carry a laptop with me everywhere and that gets HEAVY. But in terms of being truly revolutionary – my hopeful predictions were just plain wrong. As they say in Korean: ㅠㅠ. (Those are supposed to be two sad eyelashes.)

    Some people have been poking a lot of fun at the Macbook Air, the funniest of which I've seen I've listed below.

     2008 01 19 Macbookcommodorecompare
    [source]

    A bit exaggerated, but funny. Hehe. For your information, my peeps in Yongsan say you can buy one in Korea in about 3 weeks, and the lower model goes for almost an even 2 million won.

    January 16, 2008

    MacBook Air!

    Here it is, fresh off the page as soon as it went up.

    Picture 8-7

    Go to Apple.com to see more. It's the thinnest notebook in the world and fits in a manila envelope. 3 lbs. 5 hours battery life. Damn. Watch the ad. Double damn.

    January 06, 2008

    More Apple "iPad" Theorizing

    It all fits into my previous prediction and conviction that Apple is working on a new, revolutionary touch screen computer, not a sub-notebook. Here's a patent application filed in 2006 but revealed today for the first time – I say the little object's a screen that you dock into the desktop housing, making it a desktop, with keyboard and mouse by night, touch screen portability by day.

     Article 2008 01 03 Imacdock 300
    [Source: MacRumors.com]

    I still say it's gonna be a touch screen computer. Aren't you hoping I'm right? I sure am!

     Scribblings Of The Metrop  Magplus Img Gif 050510 Tablet Patent
    [Source: MacPlus.net]

    Don't these two just fit together?

    December 15, 2007

    Get Ready for the Next iThingie

    Or whatever it'll be called. iPad. iTablet. iNote. iScribbler. Whatever. The name's not important.

    The upcoming new "sub-notebook" from Apple, rumored to be coming in January's Macworld Expo, will not, I predict, be a super-slim notebook.

    It just doesn't make sense, and I've been thinking on this ever since the iPhone and the iPod touch came out; and a little common sense combined with wishful thinking, as well as a bit of like-minded thinkers in the Apple fanboy world, make me really think that we'll be looking at a revolutionary product come January. Here's why:

    1) IT WON'T BE A NOTEBOOK.
    I just don't see Apple introducing a super-slim, compact notebook. Who cares? I certainly don't. Apple's style is leading the industry with cutting-edge new devices that are increasingly integrating new media, making new platforms for old devices. The iPod wasn't just a souped-up MP3 player, as the iPhone wasn't just a phone with an Apple brand on it, just as Apple TV, for better or worse, isn't just a computer you hook up to your TV. They're all defining new ways of integrating media, of allowing you to get media into different forms. Sub-compact laptops already exist; Apple's not just going to make such a not-fashion-forward, not-platform-forward product.

    2) IT WILL BE A 'NEXT-STEP' PRODUCT.
    Related to that is the Touch interface. From iPhone to Ipod Touch, there seems to be a logical next step taken to allow Touch computing, meet the needs of the sub-compact buyer who wants an Apple computer that isn't a bulky laptop. And Microsoft already has its cool-ass Surface computer. The future is already here, and the writing's on the...screen.

    3) THE TIME HAS COME FOR PRINT MEDIA TO DIE.
    Or at least start to wither before eventually dying. And I'm not saying that The New York Times is going anywhere or anything, but just that we won't be killing trees anymore to read it. The new device will meet the needs of the emerging eBook/online publishing market that IS the next area of battle, as we move from primarily paper to primarily screen-based, portable, and vastly more flexible, screen-based reading. It's never been a matter of if, but of when the easy-on-the-eyes nature of reading from paper would be paralleled by a screen that can do the same. And look at Amazon's Kindle, or the ongoing online publishing revolution that is so obvious it might not be so apparent. Yes, I agree that within 5 years, most reading will not be done on paper. Amazon knows this. And so does Apple. And the first killer device that can be comfortable screen reader, as well as computer, as well as PDA, and nice size for watching videos, and can communicate seamlessly with your home computer/iPod/iPhone and detach you from being anchored to any one place in terms of content – that's gonna be killer. Download the NYT, or your local paper, or your blog, or what have you – the technologies are there, from RSS to podcasting to iTunes pay store to whatever else will pop up with a device that can put whatever you want into one place. And who already has the only tried-and-tested, fully-operational paid media delivery system? Apple. Just add more eBooks to the podcasts, movies, TV shows, and songs you can download. As Steve Jobs is surely saying: "Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!"

    4) THE PATENT APPLICATION DRAWING JUST MAKES SENSE.

     Magplus Img Gif 050510 Tablet Patent
    [Source]


    I may be wrong, and Apple has a way of surprising everybody, even if it's just a little bit. But I think that's this has got to be Apple's move, looking at the way online publishing and media are going, the move into new computing interfaces, and the fact that major players are lining up along the lines of a vast new market that hasn't been tamed yet.

    To me, it just seems like Apple is going to try to do in the new territory of text-based media what the iPod did for music and then video content, what the iPhone is doing to the mobile phone industry, or what Apple TV hasn't quite done much of yet in the home video realm.

    This new device will do it while integrating text with pre-existing text, photo, audio, and video mediums (which a glance at any web-based newspaper, "pro blog", or online magazine will show you has already happened), while also giving you the power of a portable computer, to boot.

    If Apple makes a device like that, who ain't gonna buy it? Computer, iPod, PDA, calendar, big-ass screen for watching movies/podcasts/TV on the train, and a place to read a trashy romance novels writ LARGE across the screen, or your favorite blogs, all downloaded in the morning through RSS and sitting for you on the subway ride...

    That's the killer move that will focus all of Apple's power as a computer and media company into the true killer device.

    Sure, I'm just being hopeful, as anyone making guesses at this stage is, but damn – would that not make a whole lotta sense?

    A TRUE notebook that can do - everything. Who isn't going to sell their left kidney for that kind of integration, ease, and load off one's back? I'm sure it'll sport a pop-up keyboard onscreen, but for the diehards, I can see a huge peripherals market for mini-mice and cute keyboards, the usefulness of this device in the education market, where this will become THE new way of taking notes (and surfing the web in class), and could open up whole new doors as a device in the medical field, as a means scratchpad for artists and other creative types, and as a "base unit" of some type for people who already have iPods and iPhones, which could be used to integrate with the new device and offer a new kind of function or increased usability.

    Who knows? Possibilties are endless, with a wireless and Bluetooth-enabled super-device that can be anything software can make it be.

    I'd buy that for a dollar. Or 2000. Hopes are that it will be priced at somewhere in between, priced to move.

    And this way, no matter what you buy it for, Apple is building new users of OS X, more subscribers to and users of the iTunes Store, and many more ways to convince more people to buy Apple stuff.

    And if it can run Windoze, too – who's gonna buy a sub-notebook or Tablet PC?

    Damn, Apple. Am I going to have to start being scared o' you?

    September 22, 2007

    Hell Hath Frozen Over

    I am very verklempt right now.

    Things must be a-changing, for real. I'd heard that there was work on a Mac version of NateOn, the chatting program that everyone seems to be using in Korea, but that Mac rumor was something we Korea Mac users had gotten used to, sort of like Roswell aliens or tales of unicorns. It would show up on hardcore Mac users' blogs – "it's really just about finished!" – but then again, look at who you were asking: hardcore Mac users.

    There was/is a Java-based version of the program, but by then, I was already running Windoze in Parallels. In fact, besides checking web sites in Evil Explorer™, the only reason I would fire up Windoze was to run NateOn, which has replaced MSN as the messenger of choice in Korea for most people under the age of 30.

    Picture 2-5But today, I got a barrage of messages from my besieged Korean Mac friends – which, in Korea, is really like belonging to the People Who Like to Ride Unicorns Club – that the Mac version of NateOn was finally, finally out. It really is quite...bizarre. And the wait has indeed been long. When I searched on Naver, the first blog hit I got had an entry that lead with the headline: "Finally!"

    So I found the most official source I could – the Chosun Ilbo online – and indeed, there was the story. It was true, and they had all the links. Including the link to the beta version of NateOn – for reals! And not just for Mac, but Linux as well! The devil must be reaching for his ski parka right now.

    I'm running it now, and it was weird to hear the NateOn startup chime without my Windoze going; and it's going to be majorly useful. See, I have one little snag hit me when running Windoze in Parallels: when I stick in USB devices, the system fights for control over them, even if I've specified in Parallels to let the Mac OS have, say, my CF card from my digital camera. Parallels shares most everything with the Mac OS well – the mouse and keyboard (obviously) as well as a common folder, the Internet, even dragging and dropping, cutting and pasting between the systems. But when I stick in a memory card and I've forgotten to close Windoze, it hiccups. And since I am generally only using Windoze for NateOn...you see the point.

    So, it's running, man! I'm sure there'll be some hiccups to this program as well since this is a beta, but so far, so good – and I can save much computer resources by not running an entire operating system just for the sake of a little chat program.

    Bless you, SK! Great job!

    "Why Be Critical?"

    • Before you say this site is "anti-Korean" or bashing Korea – read this: "Why Be Critical?" Chances are, if you're simply angry because I am a social critic in Korea but not actually Korean, see if your argument isn't just a kneejerk response that follows these patterns.

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