Srcasm

It’s not very often that I become envious of my friends with iPhones.  I mean, sure it’s slick, has the Apple name on it and works really well but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be (no pun intended for you cracked LCD users).  For me, the full, Qwerty, real keyboard was important.

In my line of work I send a lot of emails.  I also text quite a bit.  When it comes to writing paragraphs of information or a blog entry, a real keyboard helps me to both type faster and more accurately.  With the onscreen keyboard of the iPhone, I would need to constantly look at it to make sure my fingers are where they’re supposed to be.

Today however, I’m excited for those iPhone friends/fiends that are now using the Google Voice Search for the iPhone.  From what I’ve seen and heard the interface is simple to use, works really well and the best part — The voice recognition is done on the phone so it’s much faster than most traditional voice recognition products (TellMe and Vlingo come to mind).

Fret not my Google Android friends, I have two things to let you know:

1. Since Google Android is made by Google, I’m sure that the G1 and Android will have integrated voice search in the near future.  It only makes sense to add this and an onscreen keyboard to the device (please?).
2. You can search with your voice for certain things by using a tool like TellMe.  Call 800-555-TELL and you can say any number of things that you’d like (including movie times, weather and directions).  It’s kind of cool — Just not as cool as an integrated G1 app.  Go figure.

One can only hope that Google will come to their senses and start rolling out software for the Android OS when they do others.  I mean, it is their baby!

I am in no way a Mac-head or an Apple Fan Boy but I have been asked for the top 10 reasons to get a Mac instead of a PC — Without the obvious, “it’s a fun new toy” remark.  I decided to poll the community (Strands, Facebook and Twitter) and these are my results:

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It was a dark and gloomy day in the Middleton-Kozak household when the MacBook’s power adapter ceased to function.  Magda screamed out in agony over the fact that her batter would no longer charge and she would have no way of getting online — Oh wait, we had 4 computers, 3 Blackberrys and a G1 in the household so that wasn’t a problem but the laptop not charging was an inconvenience to say the least.

Fast forward a day or two later, we decided to take it to the Apple store at the King of Prussia mall on Halloween and on the day that the Phillies parade was in Philadelphia.  This meant that there were little to no people at the mall for this time of year.  We got into the Apple store and went to the Genius Bar (the place where the Apple geeks live to fix Apple gear).

After signing in, they told us it would be 5-10 minutes before we were seen.  It was 2.  After Tim, the friendly tech, took a look at the machine, he said that it wasn’t the battery or the power adapter so it had to be the DC board in the laptop.  Something was screwy with it and it would get power to run but no power to charge the device.  He did however explain that it could be fixed by Apple for free (under the Apple Care plan).  Another win for Apple.

Tim said that we should leave it with the store for 3-5 days so that they could replace the hardware and all would be right in the world again.  We made sure they had the proper information to get ahold of us when it was fixed and left to go shopping for clothing (which I despise).

About 2 hours later, Magda got a call on her cell phone from Tim.  He left a voicemail that said that the laptop was finished and we could pick it up.  The time to fix went from 3-5 days down to 2 hours.  That was excellent as we were still at the mall so with a quick swing over to the Apple store again, we had the laptop back and it took a charge.  They get a huge thank you from me for the speedy recovery of the beloved device.

While I am not an Apple or Mac fan boy and I own many PCs as well as a few Apple devices, I will say that their customer service and support is one of the best in the country.  I have never had such a pleasant experience getting a piece of hardware fixed and with the speed they won’t a new spot in my heart.  I would go so far as to say that if Apple wanted to give me a MacBook Air for my new consulting job, I would be proud to use it.  (Hint, hint.)

Today has been an interesting morning…  I woke to find out news about Steve Jobs having a heart attack and being rushed to the hospital.  But I, being the smart reporter than I am, did not immediately Tweet this out or post a blog entry about it — Nope, I waited.  And low and behold, the news turns out to be false.  A quick Google search shows how quickly the news spread around the Internet and how soon after it was denied by Apple and re-reported with the proper information by other news groups.

Now I’m not saying that people shouldn’t stay on the cutting edge of news.  It’s how we have breaking stories and more but I am saying that too many people believed the “citizen report” and that can cause repercussions to not only the person writing the story (as they are chastised by the public) but also the company and employees that it affected (by lowering the stock price).

All I’m asking is that we take a breather.  Make sure you confirm or deny the story before you go off spreading it around the internet.  If not, we may have another Rick Roll on our hands and we all know, we don’t want that.

One last thing for your viewing enjoyment — Steve Jobs is…