Monthly Archives: June 2009

Additional Hope & Change

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Recently I had been starting to succumb to the spreading lack of faith in government and waning confidence in the Obama administration’s campaign promises of securing equal rights for the LGBT community.  Though it has only been six months since the President has taken office, there were a handful of small signs which made me feel uneasy about the reality of what was going to happen.

There had been updates to sections of the White House website page concerning the civil rights agenda of the administration.  It had dropped the specific wording referencing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and efforts to repeal it with a more general phrase stating the administration “opposes a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage”.  There has also been talk about progress in reversing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policies which bar gay men and women from serving in the military, but people are still being ousted.  Additionally, just days after the Justice Department made a very strong show up support for DOMA, President Obama signed a memorandum extending same-sex benefits to federal employees.  While there were no signs of a dramatic about-face it appeared that the support for the gay community was growing tepid.

Then, on Monday, President Obama and the First Lady hosted an unprecedented reception to celebrate LGBT Pride Month and mark the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots which kick-started the Pride movement.  He delivered a very beautiful speech making it very clear he is still an advocate for the gay community.  Watching it, I was awestruck to see a man elected to office in the face of decades of racial discrimination, standing there in the White House as my president pledging support for me as a gay American and promising to be my champion.  This, only a handful of years after the last president stood in the White House stating, in so many words, that a ban on gay marriage was the only way to secure the future of our nation from the forces of evil.  Though I am not ready to say, “all is forgiven, obviously this was just some big misunderstanding,” my confidence has been buoyed significantly after hearing his remarks:

Until the last year or so, I’ve not been very politically aware or active.  I’m still not extremely informed, nor do I consider myself very much of an activist.  However, for the first time in my life I have a vested stake in what is happening, these things directly affect me and how I will live my life.  I have never been so frustrated on a personal level with politics as I have regarding DOMA.  The recent ruling from the justice claimed that DOMA is “a cautious policy of federal neutrality towards a new form of marriage,” when in fact it is anything but neutral.  It affects me negatively on personal level as well as having impacts on me professionally.  Every morning for months I have got up in the morning and started my day only to realize with great disappointment that DOMA is still out there.  That I am not equal.  I am not the same.  Even if I were to get married in a state which recognizes me as an equal citizen among my peers, the federal government would not be so kind.

I was growing more and more impatient regarding the seemingly apparent ambivalence toward the gay community recently from the White House and I began writing about my dissatisfaction though I had not yet decided to share these thoughs.  In a way I’m happy I was late to the game because I hate the idea that I might give people who dislike the administration the satisfaction of knowing I was not satisfied.  More than anything though, I’m disappointed that I didn’t take the opportunity to be more vocal.  I feel that it is one of the very few ways I can try and reach out and make more people aware of these situations, to share my determination and my story and try to somehow spur change on my own.

In the future I hope to be more vocal about these things.  I plan to be an advocate for myself and other people like me regarding issues like this.  I realize that I’m just one small voice in a sea of thousands upon thousands of other people both for and against these issues.  But standing silently has even less of an impact than even this tiny effort and right now, every little bit counts.

In The Lurch

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I’ve been naughty lately.  I haven’t posted for far too long and that just won’t do.  There is a story behind why and it kind of turns into another long technogeek post so I apologize to those of you who aren’t as interested!

I haven’t posted because I ended up caving in and doing something stupid.  I knew this would happen after being so vocal about my dislike of the iPhone 3GS pricing.  I thought that I could be a good boy and wait for the next revolutionary change in the iPhone product line and pass on this evolutionary offering.  I even thought I might be able to leave the iPhone and to back to my Nokia roots and live happily with a Symbian smartphone…  Then my brother called and asked to buy my iPhone for a really fair price and the whole deal was off.  I went and bought a new iPhone 3GS.  I had convinced myself that I could live without it.

I was without my crackPhone for a week.  A single week.  After just 48 hours the deal was off.  It was like my right arm had been severed just below the shoulder.  I hadn’t realized that my day-to-day information was tied up in the stupid thing and I just couldn’t jump ship.  Apple’s advertising push of “there’s an app for that” really defines the struggle I had to a T.  The primary application which really brought the situation to light is an elegantly simple and free application called Balance which I use to keep track of my “fun money” checking account apart from my bill pay and savings accounts.  I love this application to little bits and pieces all over and I really couldn’t find anything on the two competing platforms (S60 Symbian on Nokia and Android from Google) which I liked.

I also enjoy the fact that my credit union partners with the vendor who powers the Mobile Banking application which I use to pay bills with a very simple, sleek interface.  In fact I have come to depend on the simple and sleek interfaces for most of my daily computing and communication functions including GPS, SMS, mail, scheduling, contact management, weather, social networking, news, reference, blogging (!!!), and last but not least (considering its an iDevice) media sharing and consumption.  I know that most of these functions are available on every other smartphone on the market, but the unified design aesthetic which has emerged among the applications, cultivated and encouraged by Apple, is a key selling point for me.

This just shows how Apple has, yet again, figured out a way and developed it carefully, to keep people hooked.  Unlike the original closed sandbox created with the iTunes Music Store  and DRM (which was forced upon them by the music labels to an extent) which fenced you within the iPod ecosystem, Apple benefits from the very nature of software development being so involved with a single platform.  They have provided a very powerful set of tools to lure developers, both brand spanking new and veteran developers, to develop some amazing (and some not so amazing) applications which now number in the tens of thousands.  This abundance drives competition and provides numerous choices which serve almost every need imaginable.

Apple originally stated that dynamic web applications and Web 2.0 would be enough to drive independent innovation through the browser and no one would need to develop applications to run on the iPhone operating system.  The sandbox was closed with a big sign nailed to the tree next to it saying, “No Independent Development Allowed!”  Two things changed this.  The first being the jailbreak community which started to grow, cultivating a market for unauthorized 3rd-party apps.  People were able to see just how much was possible with the iPhone and demanded open development.  The second issue being the new influx of smart devices which use the WebKit browser which powers Safari on the iPhone.  Suddenly all these dynamic web applications benefit every platform, some of which had faster radios and chipsets, outpacing the performance the first and second generation iPhones.

Now I have to say that I firmly believe Apple did intend to open the platform to 3rd-party development from the beginning.  I could spin numerous reasons and ideas as to why this wasn’t offered at the get-go, but I do believe that the situation evolved much more quickly and in more directions than Apple anticipated.  Their hand was forced to a great extent and but they didn’t just roll over. They pulled something very clever out of their hat in traditional Apple style.  They created the iPhone SDK and a simple, effective distribution model through the iTunes app store which took a lot of hassle out of the development, debugging, marketing, distribution and sales processes.  Regular developers with ideas for applications could publish them straight to the market and not have to worry about the business end of things.  There were still strings attached with limitations to the APIs available to developers and the sometimes cumbersome app approval process but it paved the way for hundreds and then thousands of developers to get busy.

Just one year later, with a store now packed full of tens of thousands of applications, Apple now has an effortless way of keeping people loyal while driving new adoption: a diverse and robust set of applications with compelling features and an easy way to keep consuming more.  With an average of 20 apps downloaded per iPhone, people build up a personal portfolio of sorts made up of their “OMG-I-can’t-live-without-this” applications.  The device becomes “sticky” or embedded into the daily functions of a person’s life.  It enables certain convenient behaviors and habits and is in every meaning of the word, an addiction.  Sure I could have lived without my iPhone, just like any one could technically function without internet access or a telephone.  But would I want to?  Absolutely not.

Part 2: Realizations

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In the weeks after coming out I slowly started to come to grips with the realities of what I was facing.  My life, which had previously been laid out so clearly, started to lose its focus and it was clear that I would be treading in uncharted territory.  Here is another excerpt from my journal four years ago…

I now suddenly realize that the audience I thought I was writing this for will most likely never exist.  I had been writing this with with children and family in mind.  I had imagined that at some point I would take my journal and print it out and bind it.  I figured it would be something which I would be able to give them and future generations to help them identify with their past.  It’s always seemed to me that we tend to cast our ancestors in a somewhat rosy glow and hoped someone would benefit from a more realistic account.

This is so weird.  I used to think that I could just wake up one day and everything would be normal and I would be able to date, get married and have kids.  But I won’t.  I have spent the last eight years battling these feelings in cluelessness and the last four suppressing the idea of being gay while both were battles which could not be won.  The last two years I’ve been continually telling myself that I was going to go on a mission, wake up from my gay sleep and all would be well in Zion.

Ahem.

Well now that is not going to happen.  I may still go on a mission, but the whole waking up part just isn’t going to happen.  My parents have advised against a mission*.  It seems that gay people are allowed to go on missions in some cases though.  I need to talk to the bishop and find out what his take on this is.  He might just, lovingly, put the kibosh on the whole thing.

I think I have a crush on John.  When I first met him I had feelings which I couldn’t quite explain and I think I still do.  I couldn’t identify them simply because I haven’t ever felt them before.  It’s a lot to take in, so I will just sit here and try to figure this all out.  I know that I am gay, because this sort of thing never occurred when I was ‘straight’…

———

* Young men in the Mormon church generally serve a two-year mission away from home to teach and convert people to the church once they reach the age of 18-19.  At 20 I was past due, though it was not uncommon for people go later.

Roughing It

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Sometimes the idea of a power outage leaves me nostalgic and at times I look forward to the odd quiet they bring. This nostalgia has usually happened when I have a laptop with a functioning battery… A month ago mine decided it was no longer going to play nice and became bulgy, deformed, and incapable of maintaining a charge for longer than 10 minutes. Or when my DSL modem and wireless router had a functioning UPS… My UPS died a noisy and undignified death last week. I’ve also not minded when my phone has a full charge as that keeps me in the loop… As I write this my battery is less than half charged.

It looks like I will break out the candles and a book this evening! Shortly, I will have no familiar blue glow will keep me company. The power company has given an estimate of up till 10:00 this evening, if not later, before power will be restored. How exciting!

iPhone 3G S Pricing = Epic Fail

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In yet another great example of why handset subsidies must end the new iPhone 3G S is going to cost any existing AT&T customers $599 or $699 depending on the storage capacity.  New customers to AT&T get the rosy price of $199 or $299. I’m crying foul on this complete and utter failure on both Apple and ‘Ma Bell.  Get the customers in, get them to pay astronomical monthly fees to help bankroll the bait for new customers.  It’s a reverse ponzi scheme where the victims get trapped inside upon pain of early termination fee.

The iPhone 3G S represents the feature set and capabilities the product line should have had over a year ago.  I feel shamed to have drank the kool-aid so far and it just may end here.  Unless I can sell my current phone (which can be unlocked) for a reasonable amount of cash I’ll probably end up terminating my service with the deathstar and go back to T-Mobile. AT&T has lagged behind the rest of the GSM industry, huffing and puffing like a morbidly obese billionaire straining under the load of their insane profit margins, in terms of proper service support for MMS, network coverage, and reliable 3G network deployment.

T-Mobile and Verizon need to step it up and put the pressure on AT&T and put an end to this madeness. T-Mobile may not have 3G fully deployed in all markets but their service plans don’t leave me feeling like a redshirt who gets killed before the first commercial by a malevolent space villain or foam rock landslide only to be forgotten 5 minutes later. Verizon needs to get its ass in gear and deploy LTE fast to give the AT&T a run for it’s money and the American public a taste of what real mobile broadband is and make good on its open door policy for 3rd-party device support.

In closing, I issue a challenge to AT&T and Apple: Bring down these prices. Bring them down and extend your customers the courtesy and kindness of making them excited to use your products and services.  You managed to offer equal upgrade pricing to eligible existing customers last year and it was a phenomenal success, even during the darkest hour in recent economic history. Yet, just a year later you retract that offer which was open to iPhone v1 customers and nail everyone to the wall.

/geekrant

UPDATE:  Clarification on the pricing has been confirmed through Gizmodo which shows the pricing is not quite as shitty as the original information led me to believe.  $399 and $499 are the price points for existing customers with customers who qualify for an upgrade getting the full promotional pricing.  The spirit and tone of my post remain unchanged however, as I detest and always shall detest handset subsidization.