The Bloj

Reason iPhone is the best smartphone ever? No one else makes a smart phone.

Posted on December 28th, 2007 by Chris.
Categories: Business/The Software Industry, Chris, General/Misc., Product Design, Thinking Outside the WTF, UI Design.

(changed for readability)

Me: I hate windows mobile.
Tim: Why?
Me: In what universe do you get a smart phone that’s too smart to make calls with?
Tim: Yours must be defective, i’ve never had a problem with that.
Me: No, it’s not. I’ll explain.
Me: My mom got a palm treo 750.
Me: This should have incited my “ruh roh” response.
Me: somehow it didn’t.
Me: That was fine, even though she never uses mobile web
Me: but then, she got this plantronics headset
Tim: ruh roh
Me: and she was telling me how she couldn’t get the regular phone speaker to work anymore
Me: she disabled bluetooth
Me: but she could still only make calls with the headset
Tim: hmm
Me: soo, I removed the device from the partnership. Now, it still doesn’t work, bluetooth’s off, and when i call i don’t hear anything.
Tim: Did you check the volume?
Me: Furthermore, it requires some ridiculous YES I CHECKED THE VOLUMEFDSFDSF
Tim: and does speakerphone work
Me: –anyways, ridiculous passkey (no speakerphone doesn’t work)
Me: and without the pass key you couldn’t reattach the headset
Me: So now i couldn’t talk on the phone,
and couldn’t talk on the headset.
Me: ==with a palm treo and winmobile, you can do everything but make voice calls
Me: We called tech support
Me: They had us do a hard reset
Me: The lady’s basic explanation was “you have to think of the phone as a little computer. and just like your computer builds up cookies and stuff and slows down, your phone can also get cookies and slow down as well, so you need to turn it off regularly”
Me: (I congratulated myself on keeping a straight face through that one)
Me: but it seems to have worked
Tim: treos suck

Tim: the phone is clearly better than my old one
Tim: but the cpu sucks, and the screen configuration is retarded

Me: it’s totally unacceptable to have to whip out a stylus just to turn off the headset
Tim: there’s not a button on the headset?
Me: there is….it doesn’t work
Tim: my friend josh has a blackjack and bluetooth headset and has zero problems with it
Tim: it’s clearly the treo that sucks
Me: menu->cancel bluetooth
Me: so….go to the MENU menu
Tim: whaaa
Me: i want to find the idiot who dreamed that one up
Me: and give them their phone back
Me: with my fist
Me: the button on the headset hangs up
Tim: funny
Me: not when mom’s on a 2 year contract
Me: there are three buttons on the headset
Me: volume up, volume down
Me: and the “multifunction button”
Me: which i believe is mainly for hanging up

1 comment.

Sales tax

Posted on December 25th, 2007 by Tim.
Categories: General/Misc..

There are a few presidential candidates (including Ron Paul) who advocate getting rid of the income tax, and instating a higher flat sales tax instead. The economic theory is sound behind this, since it increases incentives to work harder, save more, and spend less. This translates to higher worker productivity and higher MPS (Marginal Propensity to Save).

The problem with this, of course, is that a flat sales tax is an extremely regressive tax, compared to our extremely progressive income tax. However, it occurred to me that a sales tax doesn’t necessarily have to be a regressive tax. In our modern age of digital finance, it would be easy (in relative terms) to have a sales tax rate which is dependent on income level. This could in theory maintain the progressivity of the current tax rates while rearranging incentives to promote long term economic growth.

Are there other downsides that I’m missing?

2 comments.