Uncrunched

If you’re a man about town like I am, and that town happens to be San Francisco, you’ve got better than even odds of walking by someone who’s already brandishing an iPhone 5 loaner from Apple.

Today I had my first hands-on with the phone during a meeting at Darwin Cafe in SF. MG “This Is The Greatest Apple Thingy Ever” Siegler had it in his hot little hands and was willing to hand it over, in a supervised, hovering manner, for a good 90 seconds or so.

Physically the phone blows away the iPhone 4. It’s lighter, thinner and longer and it fits more naturally in the hand than the 4 does for me.

It’s also significantly lighter than the iPhone 4. It just feels cool in your hand. A feeling very much like the first time I held the original iPhone; but I haven’t felt that feeling of “happy/peace/power” since then.

Unless you count the feel of my light sabre chainsaw in my leather sheathed hands as I prepare to take on the Zombie Apocalypse. You can see it in my Facebook profile picture. It’s perfectness is marred only slightly by the fact that it does not, of course, exist.

But back to this iPhone. If the lightsabre chainsaw actually existed I wouldn’t hesitate to call it an iPhone 5 killer. I could then follow up with a literal demonstration if you like.

This phone is lighter, longer, thinner and feels of even higher construction quality than the already impressive iPhone 4S.

Next I’d like to review some of the software updates that come at the same time as the phone is being released. But alas, Siegler swiped it back from me before I was able to touch too many of his precious virtual buttons. It sure did look sparkly, though.

I’ll be getting one shortly.

An addendum to my notes from yesterday.

One of the big talking points for people is the notion that the Republicans want to “sharply cut social services for the poor to pay for huge tax cuts for the rich.”

example

This talking point really works, because everyone knows the Republicans want to rework entitlements and they don’t like raising taxes on the rich. People get really pissed thinking about it. Rich people want a new ferrari or something, so some dirt poor family has to go without shoes.

But anyone who says this is either completely misinformed or (worse) dishonest. Most of my friends here in San Francisco are one of these.

And this is the kind of dishonesty that is really going to make the final reckoning a
whole lot more painful.

Because it doesn’t matter how much you tax the rich. At some point this country is going to have to deal with the unfunded entitlement obligations that are going to crush us. That are already crushing us.

At some point we’re going to have to find some $47 Trillion dollars to pay for exploding Medicare and Medicaid obligations.

That’s not going to happen. The government will either create massive inflation to deal with this, or entitlements will be rewritten and gutted.

Either way everyone is going to get crushed.

If you don’t understand this but you continue to throw out ridiculous statements like Romney believes in “sharply cutting social services for the poor to pay for huge tax cuts for the rich” you’re part of the problem.

As I’ve said before, go for it! Destroy the rich. Take it all. But when you’re done, someone’s going to have to deal with the financial mess we’re in. Because destroying the rich will do absolutely nothing to fix this problem.

The problem is so big that we’re not going to deal with it no matter who wins this election because U.S. citizens don’t yet understand how hard things are going to get down the road. My guess is in another 5 years or so the shit will really hit the fan and everything will change.

But in the meantime, if you’re going to throw out righteous opinions, at least take the time to understand exactly what the problem is.