Pinoy Penman

T3 Select Opinion for November 2008


I'M TYPING this in the airport lounge at Tokyo Narita, waiting for my connecting flight to LAX. There’s a small huddle of us here around the power outlet, like so many piglets around a sow. My battery meter says I have over three hours of juice left—more than enough for a two-hour layover—so I move off to somewhere slightly more comfortable, and trust the wafer-thin battery in my MacBook Air to see me through.

In what’s become routine procedure, I’d plugged in all the gadgets I travel with overnight, before I left the house. The last thing you want to happen is to be on the road—where we like to imagine ourselves as being on some earth-saving mission—and then to run out of battery power at a critical moment. That’s never happened yet—precisely because I’m anal about these things. I’ve stashed spare batteries for everything into my luggage (too bad the MBA’s useless for spares).

So what exactly have I got? The laptop, the Leica point-and-shoot, the BlackBerry, the iPhone, the iPod shuffle, the Sony MP3 player (which I use as a USB digital audio recorder for interviews), and even an old Palm T5. (What, an ancient Palm? Whatever for? Well, I suddenly remembered that I no longer had a copy of Metro, that invaluable subway-guide program, that was in the Nokia E61i I gave away to my kid brother, so I dredged up the Palm which still had Metro on it from a couple of years ago.)

Each of these gadgets is a marvel of miniaturization, and I’m sure we all remember the time when we greeted each one of them with “At last! Just one gadget to carry!” Yeah, right. Instead of liberating me from my digital shackles, every new thingie has just gone straight into a progressively bigger bag. And they breed. Every new thingie has a case (or two) and a charger. You need to make them talk to each other (there’s Bluetooth, of course—which in the iPhone is pretty much useless), so you also carry a tangle of USB connectors, hubs, and extenders. And naturally, the USB connector tip that works with the Leica is smaller than the one needed by the BlackBerry, so you carry both. I have a four-port USB hub that now looks like a long- and many-legged bug, and I’ve begun to wonder if one hub can be daisy-chained to another (from a quiz I won in the early days of USB, I think the answer is yes—up to 127 devices, or something like that).

I’ve crammed all of these peripherals into a huge, covered Tupperware tub meant to keep sauces and salads, and stuck that tub into my checked-in luggage. Here at Narita, I’m getting envious glances from people still charmed by the anorexic beauty of my MacBook Air. How slim! How light! It’s the only thing you’ll ever need to carry!

If they only knew.

T3 Select Opinion for October 2008


ONE OF the most agonizing decisions a buyer of digital gadgetry has to deal with sooner or later is precisely that: should one buy the gizmo now, or later? This happens especially when something completely new, or a new generation of something old (like the iPhone or the MacBook Air) comes out, leading to much tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth.

The conventional wisdom is that you’d be pretty stupid to buy any so-called first-version or “Rev A” product (I’ve always wondered why they call it “Revision A” when it hasn’t even been revised yet). The argument goes that, almost by definition, any Rev A product is bound to be full of kinks and glitches, most if not all of which will be addressed in the inevitable Rev B. You’d also be paying a premium for the dubious distinction of being the kid with latest toy in town (remember when first-gen iPhones were flying off the gray-market shelves for as much as P40K?). Worst of all, you’d be paying to become the manufacturer’s guinea pig. You’d be the one to suffer the crashes, the freezes, the software incompatibilities, etc., all because you wanted bragging rights.

The procrastinator, on the other hand, is often held up to be patient, sensible, and money-wise, not prone to flashy displays of gadgetry. Again, conventional wisdom says that “good things come to those who wait,” which is empirically true. If you waited a year for the first-gen iPhone, you could get it for half the original price.

Trouble is, after waiting a year, you probably won’t want the original iPhone, but the new 3G one, which costs—whaddya know—more than P40K without a plan. I mean, you didn’t wait that long just to settle for something outdated and second-hand, did you? But now that the 3G iPhone is out, I’m hearing a chorus of pained voices screaming, “It costs too bloody much! I’d be crazy to pay that much today, so I’m going to wait till prices come down.” And, inevitably, they will; the question is, when? And by that time, who knows what else will have come along?

Myself, I’ve always shamelessly been a Rev A sort of guy—not because I want to score pogi points (I’m too old and ugly for that), but because, as I’ve recited so often it’s become my mantra, “Technology is my way of cheating time.” If I vowed to wait a year and croaked next week, I’d never see what it’s like on the bleeding edge of things. Indeed time is money, and money buys time, so if I can afford something, I’ll buy it today (or whenever I need it) and put it to work pronto to make its cost back.

And what about the pilot-testing? Well, someone’s got to do it, so it might as well be me. Never mind that I get no thank-you’s from the guys who’ll benefit from the firmware revisions that my hiccups paid for. At least, for one shining moment, I felt like Captain Kirk, audacious or maybe stupid enough to boldly go where no geek has gone before.

T3 Select Opinion for August 2008


ABOUT A year ago, I wrote a piece for my newspaper column that—much to my surprise, although I probably should’ve expected it—generated the most hits ever up to that point for my blog, where I also posted it, in a single day. The piece was titled “The Anti-Rant Rant,” and it talked about how, it seemed to me, too many blogs were put up just so their authors could vent their anger and frustration for everything from the state of the universe to their smelly apartments and their neighbor’s music and politics.

And this is still true. Some days, every other blog or blog post that you read is a tired and even more tiring complaint about something or other. But even worse than the constant moaner is the pussycat in real life who turns into an attack dog on the Internet, yapping and biting away at anyone who dares express a contrary opinion—all because, well, he’s not really there, so you can’t really hit him back, except by turning nasty yourself and turning into an online ogre. My word for it is “enonymity”—a nice if disturbing mish-mash of anonymity and enmity, coming from behind your firewall.

I had a little dose of this again the other day, over at my favorite digital watering hole, philmug.ph, which I’ve been helping to moderate for some years now in search of a refuge from the slings and arrows of the literary life. Alas, it turns out that I was running straight into a battery of archers. The PhilMUG (Philippine Macintosh Users Group) mods had decided and declared that, in consideration of the 3G iPhone’s official launch in the Philippines by Globe Telecom on August 22, all talk of iPhone unlocking was going to stop on philmug.ph (which doesn’t prevent others, of course, from taking up the slack).

This was a decision we’d actually made a year ago, when the iPhone first came out in the US and crossed the water here, and when—in the absence of a local telco selling it, and of AT&T in the Philippines—we figured it was no loss to Apple nor to anyone else to make our iPhones work through the magic of hacking. Now Globe was in the picture, and now that we were enforcing the rule, you could hear the pained screams from here to there, calling us hypocrites and power-trippers. The unkindest cut came from a newbie who wasted no subtlety in implying that the mods had been bought out by some unseen hand to favor Apple and Globe. (Don’t I wish they’d buy me out—so far, all I can see is a money trail leading their way from my pocket.) The air reeked of hot, raw blood.

Methinks it’s a lot easier to rant and rage online because you don’t see who you’re hurting and nobody sees you. If this brave fellow had met me for five minutes, I’m sure he would have come away with a rather different opinion of this faceless monster who’d taken his marbles away. Or maybe not—which is why he did the safe if dastardly thing, which enonymity empowers all of us to do.

T3 Select Opinion for July 2008


BACK IN the early ‘60s, well before most of this magazine’s readers were born, “television” meant a wooden box in a neighbor’s house—a box with a glass screen on which fuzzy black and white images moved, making tinny, raspy noises through a speaker in one corner of the machine. Since it was our neighbor’s TV, we were at the mercy of whatever she deemed worthy of her time and her electricity, which usually meant some afternoon soap like “Munting Banal” or “Ang Hiwaga sa Bahay na Bato” when what I really wanted to see was “Highway 54” and “Bonanza.” But it was okay; we all had fun, and couldn’t stop talking about what we saw, over dinner, while we fervently pledged to succeed in life so we could buy our own TV.

At that same time, “radio” meant one of two, maybe three, things. It might have been a large wood-paneled appliance with cathedral windows and knobs that moved a dial from here to there, transporting you at nearly every stop to a station playing sweetly sleepy music. Or it could have been a portable wooden or plastic shoebox powered by enough size-D batteries to run a small boat, or yet again—if you were young and hip—a truly pocketable transistor radio that sounded like it housed a colony of musical ants, but never mind that; in the world of mono, there was nothing cooler than walking around with an AM/FM radio glued to your ear. (Yes, we had earphones even then—just one, not two—and it was the shape and almost the size of an acorn.)

This, to us, was home entertainment, and it was plenty entertaining, because we had precious few other options. You could go down to Avenida Rizal and watch “The Ten Commandments” at the Ideal Theater, or to the Araneta Coliseum to see Herman’s Hermits (not some revival group, folks, but the original laddies). It was a lot cheaper to stay at home, and sit all together in the living room with the TV and the radio—and ah, yes, let’s not forget the record player (aka the phonograph), with its scratchy speaker, sapphire needle, and a little plastic adaptor you used to thread a 45 rpm record into a standard 78 or 33 rpm setup.

Today, I’m swimming in a sea of iPods and assorted media players. (Yes, I have three iPods—one for music on the go, one permanently tethered to my car stereo, and another one just for interviews.) And who would’ve imagined that you could get what used to be your whole “home entertainment” system into an iPhone?

It’s a great leap forward for technology and for entertainment, that’s for sure. Now we can all listen to our own music, watch our own programs, create our own playlists. But something seems to be missing. Where did the “home” in “home entertainment” go—that sense of family and community that watching the same shows and hearing the same tunes fostered? I suppose it should still be there, somewhere on those wall-sized plasma screens—if only we found the time and the charity to do things together, once again, even it means watching the decidedly low-tech melodramas that make our mothers happy.

T3 Select Opinion for May 2008


WE GUYS generally hate lugging things around—especially when they come in paper or plastic bags with handles, looking suspiciously a lot like groceries or something stamped with “On Her Majesty’s Not-Too-Secret Service.” I know for a fact that, as ungentlemanly as it seems, I try to avoid carrying Beng’s shopping bags—not necessarily because they’re too heavy, or will make me look like a sissy, but because I believe that my precious hands deserve to hold something worthier, like a computer or a camera bag.

That’s right, we’re not absolute slouches, and we can carry even 50-pound bags and backpacks—as long as they contain something we’d happily march up the Himalayas with, or march up the Himalayas for. Usually, that means something that has at least three of the following attributes: (1) black, gray, or silver; (2) fluorescent green, yellow, or orange (NOT pink or purple!); (3) hard plastic, chrome, burnished wood, or anodized aluminum; (4) red, green, or blue diodes; (5) wi-fi, Bluetooth, and/or GPRS; (6) screws, dongles, and USB ports; and (7) ballistic nylon, epoxy paint, Velcro, saddle leather, and self-healing zippers.

In other words, we want bags, but man-bags, not girly-bags. Nothing with “Hello Kitty” written on them. Nothing with braided handles, satiny strips, or four-inch buckles.

This fundamental truth dawned on me the other day when I looked at a corner of my room—the corner where I toss my bags at the end of the day—and realized that I had about a dozen of them, not counting suitcases, carry-on bags, and serious travel gear. These were just my daily bags, for daily use—or so I thought, until I saw a Nike bag I hadn’t used even once. (For that matter, I have an iPod, somewhere, that I’ve yet to open.)

I had become luggage accumulator, a certified bag man—the kind of guy who thinks that every new gadget deserves its own bag, just as sure as our mates believe that you can’t use for Tuesday what you used on Monday, as if anyone would remember. I have bags within bags; I have laptop sleeves that go into compartments within backpacks; I have containers for earphone plugs that go into pouches that go into pockets within compartments within backpacks.

What makes things worse is that we can’t help thinking that the other man’s bag is always smarter—or that, whatever we’re toting for the moment, somewhere out there is the better luggage that maketh the better man. Never mind what the bag contains; it can’t be worse than what’s rolling in our spacious noggins.

T3 Select Opinion for April 2008


(I've been remiss in uploading my T3 columns for these past couple of issues, so here you go. Starting June, by the way, Lourd de Veyra and I will be alternating in the Select Opinion section.)

LAST DECEMBER, I marked an anniversary that I’m still not sure if I should rejoice over or not: my tenth year as an eBay member, with over 200 purchases recorded. Can you believe it? Some readers of this magazine were still walking around without any underwear, and I was already scouring the digital aisles for PowerBook Duos and Pelikan pens.

The worst things in life are also often the most enjoyable ones, and one of the very worst things that happened to human civilization since the dawn of the Internet has been—you guessed it—online shopping and merchandising. Online, you’re always one click away from financial perdition, and that’s the beauty of it—everything (except the shipping) takes place in a blinding, blissful instant, and before you know it you’ve been charged for a new laptop, a new media player, a new book, or a new pair of hiking boots without feeling a thing—at least until the bills come under your door like unwelcome houseguests.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently, and if you’ve been following this corner for more than a few issues, you can probably guess why. I’ve been buying up stuff online like there’s no tomorrow—and there will be no tomorrow if I keep doing more of the same, which more or less depends on how fast Steve Jobs keeps trotting the goodies out of Cupertino, CA.

There’s the infernal nature of the beast: he announces something in San Francisco, I jump for joy on my sofa and nearly bust the cushions as I hit the “Buy now!” button on my downward trajectory. I won’t see the thing at my door for weeks, during which I can do nothing more productive than twiddle my thumbs.

It used to be that you bought big-ticket items like refrigerators the time-honored way, first by window-shopping (a kind of visual foreplay), then by canvassing prices, and then by saving up for long, arduous months before marching into the appliance center and plunking down cold cash with a triumphant sigh. There was no such thing as FedEx; you dragged the behemoth home in the back of a rented jeep, and slaughtered a pig or some other four-legged animal to celebrate the purchase of a lifetime.

Today it’s all too quick and too easy. With eBay and PayPal, the world is your mall, and you can let your fingertips do the malling as you hop from “Computer Accessories” to “Vintage Watches” and “Japanese Erotica” (I’m talking theoretically, boys).

But am I complaining? Heck, no! I’m convinced they invented the Internet to mate me with my $1,799 MacBook Air, bought online on credit. Ten years of practice on eBay either taught me everything, or taught me nothing. I’m broke, but I’m happy. How do you explain that?

T3 Select Opinion for March 2008

THERE WAS a time, back in the ‘90s, when the thing to get for your brand-new car was a set of bumper guards. Remember those? They were fat, ribbed rubber strips, and sometimes they came in hideous pink, like some weird sex toy. Its flat underside was meant to stick to your bumper corner till kingdom come, there to absorb every thud and swipe that came your precious limo’s way.

Why am I talking cars in a corner I usually devote to digital gadgets? Because I’ve lately noticed how many users have outfitted their laptops, iPods, and mobile phones with the equivalent of bumper guards, wrapping them up in centimeter-thick skins of squidgy silicon and/or aluminum armor worthy of a battle tank. Keyboards are covered over with spill-proof, type-through membranes. Even wrist rests have acquired fuzzy felt pads, and no screen goes protector-less these days. To top it all off, when you’ve reinforced everything with a second skin, you dump the whole machine into a well-chosen bag—whether aluminum, neoprene, leather, or, in particularly acquisitive persons, all of the above.


What we’re witnessing here—and have become hostage to—is the emergence and growth of the digital accessories industry, something that simply didn’t exist 20 years ago, when most of our digital doohickeys didn’t exist, either. When the first laptops came out, nobody had a choice—you used the bag it came in (if it had one); my first portable, circa 1990, was an 18-pound behemoth that used eight C-size batteries and came in a flimsy nylon bag. Today, as I eagerly await the arrival of my new 3-pound, 0.76-inch MacBook Air, I’m already thinking about all the sexy sleeves it’s going to spawn (and which, of course, it richly deserves).

I’m a helpless collector of computer and camera bags and cases, but my flair for accessorizing stops right there. I can understand the anxiety of the new laptop or iPhone owner who wants to keep his or new toy as spotless and flawless as when it came out of the box, and I went through a phase myself of buying five different covers for the same iPod. I can’t argue that bags, cases, skins, and screens are great and even necessary for protection.

But now—perhaps with the benefit of age—I realize that I like my machines naked. As a writer, I have a very personal and tactile relationship with my keyboard. I like the feel of bare metal or plastic or glass as the case may be; there’s nothing sexier in the hand than a bare iPhone. If my machines acquire scratches, they’re just growing a bit older, like me—with purpose and, hopefully, with some grace and lots of character.

T3 Select Opinion for February 2008


I SWEAR, the day will come, as sure as the sun shines in the morning (except where it never does, but then you and I never see that corner, either), when these glorious 7,101 islands will be blanketed by wi-fi. Wherever I go, it’ll be at least three bars strong on my Airport meter; I can catch a signal in the bathroom or on the beach; and best of all, it’ll be absolutely free, with no silly usernames and passwords to remember, and no brain-deadening bill to pay at the end of the month.

Uhhh… hello, am I awake, am I alive? Is this the Philippines? Well, I can dream, can’t I?

I know, there’s the depressing truth: while places like Macedonia (really, why Macedonia?) are racing to become the first thoroughly wireless countries in the world, we, on the other hand, are still struggling to electrify more than a few of our islands. And even presuming that we do distill enough juice from the sun to power up those boonies, the people who live there are too poor to even buy a light bulb.

But let’s think positive, and dream on, to a time when even our lowliest farmers and tricycle drivers will own wi-fi-capable laptops or at least cellphones, maybe as a result of a US$10-billion National Unity Through Wireless Connectivity project that the next administration will manage to get past everyone, on a long holiday weekend when no one’s looking. That’s it, that’s all we really need, a great big wireless national group hug to banish the rebellion, sedition, and destabilization blues. If not love, then technology will keep us together.

As dreamy visions go, there’s something about a free-wi-fi-enabled nation that excites the imagination. It means that, theoretically, all Filipinos will have to do will be to turn on their Nokias, SEs, or iPhones (sorry, Treo fans) to dialogue with one another, exchange likes and dislikes, pass on stupid jokes, harass old girlfriends and boyfriends, pester Papa for a bigger allowance to buy that new iPod touch and listen to it in Boracay, conduct steamy SOIP (Sex Over Internet Protocol) affairs, tell some poor sods they’ve won a free Mercedes if they hand over the price of a Toyota, post last year’s motel marathon on next week’s blog, and, while we’re at it, catch the latest version of the Santolan Scandal…..

Hmmm, on second thought, why fi?

T3 Select Opinion for January 2008


EVERYWHERE WE look, the trend seems to say “Upsize me!” The idea of “less is more” now holds favor only with anorexics and nanotechnologists; most everywhere else—say, in the design of SUVs, jumbo jets, burgers, and tennis rackets—bulking up rules the day.

Computer technology is an interesting meeting point between upsizing and downsizing. Take the hard drive. As the physical size and shape (what disdainful geeks prefer to call the “form factor”) of the hard drive has gotten smaller, its storage capacity has been conversely and almost exponentially increasing.

I remember staring at a hard disk from the 1970s, on exhibit in the window of a computer shop in England: it was as large as a shoebox, held a humongous ten megabytes, and cost the equivalent of something like $10,000. Today you can get 200 times that capacity in a microSD card smaller than a postage stamp.

The scientific wizardry that makes such feats possible is indubitably marvelous, and the day will surely come when we’ll find a terabyte in a decodable microdot.

I wonder, however, what we need all that extra space for. Or is it the case that more storage space simply creates more needs, real and/or imagined? Why is it that we all felt rich with 100-megabyte hard drives just 15 years ago, and didn’t know what to put in them, beyond all the term papers, resumes, application letters, and unfinished novels we ever wrote? (But then again, 15 years ago, most readers of this mag were probably licking lollipops.)

To fast-forward into the present, what do we need a 160-GB iPod for? How many songs are there in the universe, anyway, and more to the point, how many of them do you need or even want to listen to?

I’m not against anyone buying all the gigabytes he or she can afford, mind you. I’m a storage and backup freak myself, and as far as I’m concerned you can’t be redundant enough when it comes to critical data. (Of course, it’s my conceit that all my data is critical.) Call it paranoia, but I keep backups in a 250-GB 3.5-inch drive and a 160-GB portable drive. (I know, you can use the iPod for storage—like buying a Lamborghini to carry furniture.)

But music? I keep two 1-GB iPod shuffles—one for the bag and one for the car—each capable of storing and playing the same playlist of about 250 choice songs.

Size does matter, and maybe some guys do feel heavier between the legs carting all that heavy metal and hip-hop around. But sometimes growing up means wanting less, and learning to choose what you really like could be a sign of upsizing what really counts.

T3 Select Opinion for December 2007


Before I forget and these pieces go utterly stale, here’s a couple of recent T3 columns on the iPhone, about which I will write no further until its scheduled release in Asia early next year (the scuttlebutt’s that it will be released in Singapore January 15, to coincide with the opening of a new terminal and an Apple Store in Changi Airport—I trust my source, but neither he nor I can verify that claim, so take it as yet another wild rumor until the real thing happens). And as I’ve noted over in the PhilMUG message board, I’m just about all iPhoned-out—and it isn’t even officially here yet!

BY THE time this column appears, we should’ve gotten more definite news about the official launch of the iPhone in Asia, scheduled for sometime in 2008—many months after the iPhone’s splashy debut in the US last June 29.

Ironically, many of the Asians most likely to buy iPhones already have them. My restaurateur friend and fellow Mac freak Elbert holds the distinction of being the first locally-based Pinoy to own one, as of July 3. He’s since been followed by easily several hundred Filipinos, who’ve gotten their iPhones directly from the US or from good old Greenhills.

The problem is, the iPhone’s supposed to work only with AT&T in the US (and Orange in the UK). Theoretically, you can’t get it to function as a phone unless you sign up for an AT&T package. How did all these people—and hundreds of thousands of others all around the world—get around that bind?

By hacking, of course. Almost as soon as the iPhone hit the streets, a global network of hackers mounted a concerted assault on the iPhone’s innards, eventually tunneling their way into several solutions, working on the device’s hardware, software, and SIM card. Apple shut off these options with a later firmware upgrade, but even Steve Jobs had to acknowledge that they were just playing a “cat and mouse” game with the hackers.

Is hacking the iPhone legal? Well, yes and no. An exemption in the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows individuals to unlock their phones—by themselves, for their own use. Have it done by someone else, and you could have a problem—that is, if Apple, AT&T, or our own National Telecommunications Commission takes the trouble of going after you. The NTC itself has said that unless someone files a complaint, they have better things to do.

Methinks that Apple should play it cool and remember its own roots in the hacker culture—back when Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs did their “blue box” hack to cheat (guess who) the old AT&T out of some long-distance phone calls back in 1975. Now that they’re in bed with this corporate giant, Apple should be the first to see the irony of the situation.

The bottom line is that every iPhone sold anywhere means a clear profit for Apple. AT&T doesn’t subsidize the phone and doesn’t operate here, so it really loses no money. If it’s your phone, you ought to be able to use it any way you want—to make calls, or to break ice cubes with.

We’re not urging anyone to turn to a life of cybercrime, but there are good hacks and bad hacks, and hacking the iPhone is a digital adventure that may be too exciting to pass up for many, including not a few Pinoys.

T3 Select Opinion for November 2007


YOU KNOW what happens when a new top-of-its-class product comes out in the US market: it’s here in Manila the next week, tucked into the carry-on bag of an indulgent tita.

That’s what happened as soon as the iPhone was released in the US last June 29. Among the 200,000-plus units it sold on opening day and the many thousands more the weeks following were several dozen iPhones destined for Pinoy Apple fanboys like me who’d been waiting for the blasphemous “Jesus phone” for ages. The iPhone isn’t supposed to be released in Asia till early 2008, which made getting them now even more imperative.

They began trickling in throughout July and August, and by September 1st we had enough working iPhones to hold a historic first Philippine iPhone Users Club meet in Bonifacio High Street. (See the pic in the next article above.)

But wait, did I say “working”? Did I mean iPhones—theoretically locked in to US giant telco AT&T—running on Globe, Smart, and Sun? I guess I did. Barely a month after its release, the inevitable happened: a New Jersey teenager found a way to unlock the iPhone; his hardware hack was complemented by other software-based solutions. I’m not going to go into those details now—heck, if you’re reading this, then you know your way around Google—but suffice it to say that where there’s a will, there’s a way, and no stronger will has been exercised of late than the resolve of hackers worldwide to liberate the iPhone from its American moorings.

Of course we all felt good and extra smart: early adopters get bragging rights and whatever thrill comes from seeing other people’s tongues sweep the ground.

And then the inevitable happened: on September 5, Steve Jobs announced huge price cuts in the iPhone line, presaging the arrival of the second-gen Rev B, which will hopefully address many of the iPhone’s teething problems. The otherwise joyful news was met by a symphony of anguished cries by early adopters, who felt they’d been cheated out of $200.

But not me. Sure, I paid a lot for a new iPhone, but I’ve always been a Rev A sort of guy; my thinking is, of course Rev B’s bound to better, but if I keel over tomorrow, I’ll never see it, so why wait? The whole point of being on the bleeding edge is to cheat time. We early adopters pay the price of quick obsolescence—but for a dazzling minute back there, we had what no one else did, and that’s what technology is all about, isn’t it?