Apple’s commercials have always been dramatic and sometimes emotional, but some of the new iPhone 5 commercials are condescending in a very uncomfortable way.

It’s certainly not the first time Apple has made feature-comparisons to another product in their commercials , but it’s definitely the first time I’ve felt bad watching one. Even back in my Windows-fanboy-days I appreciated the Mac vs PC commercials for what they were. And yes, I had a Zune HD.

Yet, here I sit with my Retina Macbook Pro and my iPhone 5 absolutely hating the tone of the new commercials. One of the advertisements shows the reach of your thumb across the iPhone– which I think is an important point to make. However, the announcer goes on to say something along the lines of “it’s either a startling coincidence or common sense. Probably common sense.”

This is obviously a jab at Samsung, but unlike the Mac vs PC commercials, they essentially dispel any point they’ve made about thumb-reach to imply that everyone who’se thought of a bigger screen is an idiot with no common sense.

Just a few weeks prior to the iPhone 5, Samsung released an ad that implied iPhone owners were old, out-of-the-loop and basically sheep that regurgitated anything Apple had to say.

I don’t know if the new iPhone 5 commercial is in response to Samsung’s ad, but they definitely have a defensive tone: something I’ve never seen from Apple before.

Apple has always focused on the product first and criticisms last. It’s scary to see what looks like a bit of insecurity on Apple’s end from a bit of internet-chatter and prodding from Samsung.

As a child of the ’90s I’ll openly admit to once being a reckless pirate: games, software, music, videos– I did it all. A year or two ago everything changed and I started looking for ways to pay. This isn’t a post about the problem of piracy (there’s enough discussion about that all over the internet) but about why I’d rather pay for software now.

To be fair, paying for software (and just about everything else) is way easier today than it’s ever been. That’s definitely a large part in my step towards legit software but it’s not the whole story.

Here’s how it all started: I got my iPhone 4. Browsing the App Store for the first time was dramatic. For the first time in my life I had access to cheap software at just a tap. For the cost of a soft drink I could have a calculator. For the cost of a sandwich I could fingerpaint. For the cost of a cookie I could slay dragons.

That’s when I started paying for software, but that wasn’t the tipping point. It wasn’t until I started making apps that I started to understand the value in paying for something– and it had nothing to do with piracy.

To me, the transaction between the developer and I became an exchange of knowledge. With each app I purchased I learned more about usability, things I liked and things I didn’t like. With each purchase I learned a bit more about myself. With each use I thought a bit more carefully about how everything fit together.

When I pirated software I simply didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t get excited about it and I sure as hell didn’t think I could learn from it. I’m certain that my work and outlook would be completely different today if I didn’t start paying for software– and that’s why I pay now.

I’ll start off by saying that this post isn’t written in contempt. It’s just a bit of reflection on my experience working with a co-founder that was a stranger to me prior to starting the project. I’ll call this person Bob.

Building a startup is something that you pour your life into. That’s why it’s imperative that the person you’re working with is someone that understands the way you work- It’s not a casual relationship where variation is understood and brushed aside.
Startups take people with aligned goals and compatible skills and put them together to make something awesome.

COMPATIBILITY

I thought that Bob and I were very different people- this seemed okay though. Most differences in casual relationships can usually be ironed out through compromise and understanding.

Like any long-term relationship though, that search for understanding is a search for compatibility. The longer that search goes for though– the bigger the tension. The bigger the tension, the bigger the incompatibility. Ironic, isn’t it?

This is precisely why it’s important to know your potential co-founder beforehand. Anything else just makes your startup a ticking time bomb.

We might’ve gotten along had we not worked together. Ultimately, it came down to my co-founder and I having extremely different philosophies both personally and professionally. We were searching for compatibility on the job.

WHAT SHOULD I LOOK FOR IN A POTENTIAL CO-FOUNDER?

So you’re on the hunt in your network. Or maybe you still want to give that friend’s-friend’s-friend a shot. What should you look for in a co-founder?

• Someone that gets the way you work.
• Someone that you enjoy talking to daily.
• Ideally someone you’ve worked with before.
• Ideally someone that shares similar life goals.
• Absolutely someone that absolutely someone that you trust.
• Absolutely someone that has the same professional philosophy as you.

If you can’t definitively say yes to at least 3 of the points above, that person probably isn’t going to work too well with you.

Really though, there’s a reason why people say you need to know your co-founder before starting. Really think it through before you decide, search for that compatibility and go make something awesome.

Here’s one of the things I was working on that’s now unfortunately dead because of the recent changes to the Twitter API.

Multi-column Twitter Client

Click here for my Dribbble shot.

It was an initial mockup for a multi-column Twitter client that I was planning out. Its’ future looks pretty DOA because of the new Twitter rules, but it seems they’re granting a few developers special access so there’s always hope. It’s just going on the back-shelf for now (Behind the back burner. Ice box? Dunno.).

Anyways, that’s all I have to share for now (‘CAUSE ITS PRETTY MUCH DEAD). Hope I have more to share soon! (I’m also working on a new design for my front page & blog! Check back soon!)

So this weekend I finally got Mountain Lion running on my ASUS P6T. I’ve been delaying it forever ’cause I didn’t want to spend tens of hours dealing with kernel panics- but the upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion actually went much smoother than expected. I did run into some annoying issues though, hopefully this guide speeds things up for you P6T Hackintoshers out there.

To start things off, my specs:
Motherboard: ASUS P6T
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.6GHz
Graphics Cards: GTX 470 SLI
RAM: OCZ Gold DDR3 @ 1333MHz

That’s probably all you need to know. For a full list of my specs you can click here.

Upgrading Guide:

The method I used for upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion was the xMove method. You can get xMove from tonymacx86. Yes, this means that I already had everything working on Lion. I’ve also yanked a few images from tonymacx86′s xMove guide for clarity (though my steps ended up a bit different).

1. Upgrade to the latest version of Chimera. You really should do this. I sat for 5 hours trying to fix a reboot loop when trying to launch the installer because my Chimera was out of date. This’ll probably fix most issues with launching the installer.

2. Back up all your data to another partition or drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. You can find that here. (This step is optional but may save you from a lot of tears if your install corrupts and you lose EVERYTHING.)

3. Download and run the Mountain Lion installer from the Mac App Store, follow the instructions and reboot when it asks. You should be back in your Lion install- now we’ll use xMove to get the installer working.

4. Open Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) and click on your current drive. Choose the Partition tab at the top and click the + to add a Partition.

5. Name this partition MLInstaller, give it a size of 10 GB and click apply then Partition.

6. Once it’s done partitioning, run xMove and choose MLInstaller as the destination.
DO NOT CHOOSE YOUR MAC PARTITION AS THE DESTINATION UNLESS YOU WANT TO DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER.

Don’t interrupt this. Just let it run for 10-15 minutes.

7. After xMove finished, I turned my computer off and unplugged my 2nd GTX 470. I’m not sure if this is completely necessary- it’s just something I left unplugged from when I was trying to fix my reboot loop. If you have an SLI setup and things aren’t booting- try this. (Edit: Just tested this, it probably isn’t necessary.)

8. From here, once you get back into your Mac’s Chimera boot loader: choose MLInstaller and you should be at a OS X install screen. You can then choose to install to your current OS X drive or even a new drive.

If the installer doesn’t load. Try booting MLInstaller again with the following boot flags, YMMV:

Basic Graphics: GraphicsEnabler=No
Safe Mode: -x
Verbose Mode (to see errors): -v
ASUS + Nvidia Graphics: PCIRootUID=0

9. Once everything’s done, nearly everything should be working. The only thing that wasn’t working for me was sound (something carried over from my 10.7.3 to 10.7.4 upgrade). You can grab the kext to fix it from here if your sound is broken too: InsanelyMac. Just follow the instructions in the thread.

After this I just plugged my 2nd card back in and everything was working just peachy. Good luck, feel free to ask if you need help either here or onTwitter.

This marks the end of my week with Apple TV- am I ready to cut Comcast cable?

I went over Hulu Plus and Netflix, but there are still a few (in my opinion, secondary) ways of getting your content on the Apple TV. There’s YouTube, Vimeo, and iTunes streaming- all of which are great, but probably won’t satisfy you if you’re planning on doing any _actual_ TV watching. Here are the conclusions I drew from each service.

The Services…

Netflix
Absolutely essential if you’re getting the Apple TV for actual shows. Might be all the TV you need, great deal at $7.99. Pretty exhaustive library.

Hulu Plus
Only necessary if you keep up new shows. If you aren’t the kind of person that waits weekly for new releases, there’s no point in getting it. It’s $7.99 too, so even combined with Netflix and the Apple TV it’s still cheaper than Comcast for a month (depending on your plan).

YouTube, Vimeo, Etc
Well, they’re free and they’re there. There’s a bunch of good content on YouTube (cat videos) and Vimeo (art, whatever that is), but if you don’t already have list of subscriptions the Apple TV UI makes it pretty difficult to discover new content. Searching always works, but these’ll only really be useful if you’re already an active watcher on the web.

iTunes Streaming
My last resort. I WANT MYTHBUSTERS. The only way I’ll get it is if I buy the last season and stream from iTunes. iTunes is there as a last resort for whatever you can’t find in the services above. I barely used this, but you can stream your music, podcasts, and do AirPlay mirroring. So there’s that. Really though, the iTunes library is way more exhaustive than any of the services above- the biggest problem I have is you might end up buying a show you’ll only go through once if you’re desperate enough.

I think I can do it…

My main complaint from the beginning was that I wouldn’t have up-to-date episodes of Discovery and Science (they aren’t on Netflix or Hulu if you haven’t been keeping up).

I still want that- but I can live without it. There’s a ton of programming at my fingertips. Between Netflix and my subscriptions list on YouTube, there’s enough to keep me watching all day long. I’ll miss fresh-off-the-press shows from Discovery and Science, but I think this’ll do for now- like I said before: a year of Apple TV decked out is still less than a month with our current Comcast subscription. I’m definitely ready to cut Comcast.

Part 1: Day 0 – Opening
Part 2: Day 1 – Apple TV
Part 3: Day 2- Hulu Plus
Part 4: Day 3-5 Netflix
Part 5: Day 6-7 – Conclusion

This is going pretty well:

I’ve just finished day 5 of my trip with Apple TV and I can honestly say I don’t miss Comcast at all. I’m still itching to watch some new Science / Discovery programming though, Netflix only has older episodes of shows on those networks. Still, Netflix has been way better to me than Hulu Plus- the selection is huge and varied enough for just about anyone to find something they like.

If you’re considering the Apple TV, Netflix seems like a must have unless you have the most extensive iTunes library in the world. If it weren’t for Netflix, I’m not sure I could warrant cutting Comcast. Without Netflix, the Apple TV would just be a YouTube machine.

Overall:

I’m very satisfied with my Apple TV and it seems like Netflix is a huge part of that. If it weren’t for Netflix, I don’t think I could cut Comcast. Having to buffer when your connection speed dips is a bit frustrating, but that’s more of the nature of the beast rather than of Netflix itself. For my last few days, I’m gonna try out getting things directly from iTunes and dig into YouTube and Vimeo a bit more.

Part 1: Day 0 – Opening
Part 2: Day 1 – Apple TV
Part 3: Day 2- Hulu Plus
Part 4: Day 3-5 Netflix
Part 5: Day 6-7 – Conclusion

It’s day two of my trip with Apple TV and I’m pretty happy with it. Hulu Plus has been a huge disappointment for me but just about everything else has been stellar. YouTube, Vimeo, and Netflix all have way better content than I thought.

HULU PLUS…

Hulu Plus seems way more focused on keeping up with traditional broadcast television- shows that are on there expire and new ones pop up a week or two after they air on TV.

There just wasn’t enough interesting content on there for me so I unsubscribed before my free trial even ended. I can see how someone who wants to keep up with “normal” TV might want to grab Hulu Plus to keep up with a few shows: but be warned- shows update a few days after they air and the selection is EXTREMELY limited.

On the bright side, I’ve learned that Discovery actually has an AirPlay enabled app for streaming and I finally got Netflix working. Gonna try those out next.

STILL…

I’m very happy with my Apple TV despite a few minor flaws- still itching for some Science / Travel / NatGeo stuff, but hopefully the Discovery Channel app doesn’t disappoint. It’s looking more and more like I can finally cut Comcast Cable.

Part 1: Day 0 – Opening
Part 2: Day 1 – Apple TV
Part 3: Day 2- Hulu Plus
Part 4: Day 3-5 Netflix
Part 5: Day 6-7 – Conclusion

I’ve been using Apple TV for a full day now, jumping between Hulu Plus, YouTube and Vimeo (no Netflix because of some error).

My first impression of Apple TV was that while the puck itself looks nice and sleek, the UI looks pretty dated. It has a bunch of soapy black gradients and weird shaped icons. It’s also pretty difficult to use. Talk about a side-project for Apple, it definitely looks like they haven’t been working on this in a while (though, hopefully this means they’re working hard on the rumored iPanel?)

Doesn’t seem very Apple-y does it?

WHAT HAVE I BEEN WATCHING?

Well, to be honest I’m already missing channels like Science, Discovery and so on. Hulu Plus’ selection is SUPER limited, I spent more time trying to find something to watch than actually watching it. It does have a wide selection of “prime time” stuff though, Revenge, House, South Park and so on. Hulu seems good if you’re actually keeping up with actual “shows”.

Eventually I settled on watching PBS shows like Wired Science and sat through a few TED Talks too. After that got old I went through my YouTube subscriptions which was pretty fun too.

It’s only day one but today the TV spent most of it’s time off because choosing a show seemed a lot more like a deliberate action instead of something I just used to leave on in the background or flip through. I’m not sure I mind that.

Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have Netflix working- I’ll also go over Hulu Plus tomorrow a bit more in-depth.

The Apple TV

Part 1: Day 0 – Opening
Part 2: Day 1 – Apple TV
Part 3: Day 2- Hulu Plus
Part 4: Day 3-5 Netflix
Part 5: Day 6-7 – Conclusion

I’ve been looking for a way to drop Comcast for a while now so I finally bit the bullet and got an Apple TV. I was secretly waiting for an iPanel (the ACTUAL Apple TV) which is rumored for Q4 2012- but I just couldn’t resist the idea of dropping Comcast.

So yeah, tonight’s my first night, I’ll be posting every day or two to see if I can survive cutting cable. If this week goes well, I’ll cut off Comcast Cable completely…And I’ll be patiently waiting to cut off Comcast Internet (I CAN HAS GOOGLE FIBER? D:)

JUST TO CLARIFY:
I’ll primarily be doing my watching on my Apple TV with Netflix and Hulu Plus. I might also rent a few movies through iTunes.

I DONT WATCH MUCH TV, BUT WHEN I DO:
Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, Food Network, Travel Channel, History Channel, and National Geographic.

I’ve just booted up my Apple TV and I’ve already noticed most of the shows I’m used to aren’t available on Hulu Plus and Netflix only has WAY older episodes of things like Mythbusters. (You can buy more recent seasons on iTunes though).

Let’s see how this goes.