I just realized I haven’t ranted about what I’ve been ranting to people in real life about for months so.. here goes
2016 Macbook Pro:
if its anything that proves that Apple has turned from a formerly innovative company to a company that just cares about making money here it is.
-$300 more than previous generation
-only 2 USBC ports on 13 inch, and 4 USBC ports on 15 inch. No HDMI, No SD, No USBA. I realize that USBC is way of the future but cmon.. at least be like other manufacturers and have a mix of both USBA and USBC! nope now we have to carry dongles for everything…
-no extension cable for adapter anymore
-no bootup sound anymore
-no glowing mac logo anymore
-no MagSafe anymore
-touchbar is a gimmick
-new butterfly keyboard still doesn’t feel good to type on
.. all this to make the Macbook Pro thinner. WHY? thats the goal of the consumer Macbook or Macbook AIR, not the Pro model! The Pro model is supposedly to have more ports and features and be for professionals.. as it is the new Macbook Pro is simply an upgraded Macbook Air Retina. The defense for the removal of the ports was that Apple has always been future forward “but they removed optical, floppy drive, etc’ here’s my rebuttal to that: In the case of floppy drives, it was replaced by optical media. Optical media in turn, was replaced by thumb drives + downloadable content. What is HDMI and SD replaced with? Well? Does your 4K TV come with a thunderbolt port? Does your DSLR come with a thunderbolt port? until then, there is no replacement for HDMI and SD. Which makes this move kind of baffling and definitely not something Steve would have done. I get that he had obscure connectors like mini-DVI or mini-VGA but never would he suddenly ditch all data transfer ports and video ports and combine them into a single port while *reducing* the number of total ports as well. This is all based on greed of course. Apple increased the prices of MacBook Pros by $300, took away things like the glowing logo, startup chime, and extra extension cables that you used to get in the box, and does not even provide a cable to connect your iPhone (nor does the iPhone provide any cables to connect to your MacBook Pro).
Let’s not mention that USBC is also a very confusing port, because not all USBC ports are created equal: There’s USBC ports for data only, USBC ports that support power delivery, USBC ports that support DisplayPort and USBC ports that are Thunderbolt 3. The latter is the most powerful and Apple has chosen to implement the latter on all their laptops which is great, but not all computer makers are like that. PC makers have generally mixed these up. My Alienware 15 for example, has a USBC port that is data only and another USBC port that is T3, on the same laptop. They look the exact same. Now that is confusing isn’t it?
Apple watch / Air Pods:
-Yeah Apple Watch and smartwatches in general still look stupid. But hey I’m a traditional watch geek so I’m conservative like that.. I don’t want to have more things to charge
-Air Pods look like Qtips and you couldn’t pay me enough to wear them
2017 iPhone X:
-first off, I still hate that Apple enlarged their phones with the iPhone 6 and got rid of the headphone jack in iPhone 7. So many things still require a 3.5mm connection for example DACs, audiophile headphones and old cars only have aux jack. You could lose the dongle when carrying it around, and bluetooth is still something else you have to pair and charge all the time. A hassle. And you can’t listen to music and charge at same time with the dongle.
-its $1k. I mean cmon.. Essential Phone, Razer Phone, Oneplus 5T, Samsung Galaxy S8, Google Pixel 2 / XL, those are all great options for way less
-Wireless charging is a gimmick. Its not really wireless. You just put it on a pad, which actually decreases the usability since you can’t use it while it’s charging.
-no TouchID. There’s no doubt that TouchID is faster and more convenient than Face unlock + swipe. One is one action the other is two.
New ThinkPads
I’m a huge ThinkPad fan so this one gets me as well. Lenovo announced in their 2018 CES the new X280 would be thinner, lighter, but also remove the PowerBridge feature, full size Ethernet port, and have soldered RAM. Basically its become a budget X1 Carbon now.
The ThinkPad line to most hardcore ThinkPad users, has been slowly dying off, in favor of becoming more and more like consumer laptops. The X220 is a great example. The pinnacle of old school robustness and design. Old school 7 row keyboard, tons of ports, etc. The X1 Carbon on the other hand (introduced in 2011) is a computer that seems like its meant for mainstream users than for business users, then ever since Lenovo has been slowly transitioning ThinkPads to be more and more mainstream. Gone is the old keyboard replaced by a new chiclet style with less travel. Gone is the ThinkLight. Gone is the VGA port. All to make the chassis thinner. Now with the X280 they removed the PowerBridge feature, made the RAM soldered instead of slotted, removed the 2.5″ slot for M.2 slot, removed full size Ethernet port for a dongle. I can’t see how many business users would actually be pleased by this, just to get a thinner and lighter laptop.
Ok so thats my tech gripes now onto the movies…
Star Wars The Last Jedi:
The one movie I really have to complain about this year is Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi. This much anticipated movie got GREAT reviews from critics but polarizing reviews amongst fans. For me, I really didn’t like this movie. I liked the action and visuals and sounds those were all great, but the actual storyline and the way they treated the characters especially the ones from the original trilogy, really made me angry.
So first off, I don’t like Force Awakens either. I thought it was a poor rehash of a New Hope and I thought that Rey is a Mary Sue character who became too powerful too fast. I thought that Rogue One was a pretty decent movie in comparison.. very original plot and well executed.
Now Last Jedi is even worse than Force Awakens. It basically took a lot of pre-established points from the Force Awakens and threw them away. Also, the storyline is messy and incoherent. A lot of new characters introduced were just thrown away. Here are just a few grievances:
-Luke Skywalker fundamentally changes his character. The Luke that thought that Vader was redeemable somehow thought that his nephew Ben Solo was worth killing, if only for a moment.
-Luke dies a hermit instead of going out in a blaze of glory. I felt this was in poor taste and disrespectful to Luke.
-There’s no one on one lightsaber battles at all.
-Snoke and Rey are random beings who are randomly powerful without explanation. Snoke dies quite easily and quickly. This makes even less sense when we consider how Rey was built up in the Force Awakens. Like how did Maz find Luke/Anakin’s lightsaber? Why did Rey get visions? Where’s the Knights of Ren? What about that vision of Rey’s parents flying away? makes no sense.
-How does Rey an untrained force sensitive beat Luke freaking Skywalker in combat?
-How does the First Order have so many more resources and able to construct things like Starkiller Base? At the end of ROTJ the Galactic Empire had been defeated.
-Finn doesn’t know how to pilot in TFA but knows how to pilot just fine in TLJ.
-Leia floats back to the ship and no one says a thing. (this makes even less sense when you consider Ebony Maw from Avengers Infinity War dies from the space vacuum despite being 100x more powerful than Leia)
-Prank call at the beginning went on for too long.
-Rose falls in love with Finn in less than 12 hours. They both should have died when their speeders crashed. And the walkers should have killed them while they were making out.
-The codebreaker they were supposed to get is in a brief scene but never mentioned again.
-The replacement codebreaker is never seen or heard from again either.
-Why did Admiral Holdo not tell Poe her plans causing a mutiny? just.. why?
-Captain phasma is useless (actually she had some badass moments but this was in a deleted scene).
-They went to canto bight to free some animals basically.
-Apparently gravity exists in space.
-Luke milks some space aliens for some reason.
-Luke throws away his dads lightsaber without even blinking.
-Luke never reacts to Hans death (actually he does, but this is in a deleted scene).
-Porgs are completely useless.
-Rey went down a dark hole and.. nothing happens.
-Why don’t all spaceships just use a droid to pilot it and use lightspeed to ram it through capital ships?
-Rose tells Finn he is selfish for trying to abandon the Resistance at the beginning but selfishly crashes into Finn’s speeder later on because she has a crush on him, endangering the Resistance survivors
-Kylo ren has a brief moment where he could become good but then goes back to bad again.
-Leia is never killed off even tho Carrie is dead.
-Admiral Ackbar dies off screen while a new character we see for 10 min gets sacrificed instead.
Those are just few grievances. This movie has all the action and cast but it doesn’t do the right things with them… thankfully I did watch a much better sci-fi sequel a month before (Blade Runner 2049) so not all my childhood scifi franchises were destroyed
Dragonball Super
DBS has so far proved to be underwhelming to me as a DBZ Fan. The animations are very childish and simple, it focuses too much on Goku and Vegeta, the power scaling is messed up, the transformations are lackluster (SSJ4 in GT > any DB Super transformation), and a lot of things don’t make sense (Trunks x Mai? Goku is reduced to an idiot outside of battles, Future Trunks hair is blue while kid trunks remains purple, etc). SSJ Rage is completely unexplained, as is Super Blue Vegeta / SSJB2 Vegeta and how Goku/Vegeta got SSJ Blue. Frieza becomes super powerful in just 4 months, as does Android 17 in 6 months. Stamina is apparently not an issue in the ToP for Goku/Vegeta since they keep regaining it back. Caulifla & co get super saiyan transformations like they’re nothing. Future Trunks pulls a spirit sword out of his ass. SSJ3 Gotenks was beaten by a copy of Base Vegeta, at one point.
I think its odd that Future Trunks got rage boosted in Super and Gohan never did. But lets face it – Z is a better anime than Super.
I dont think anyone is going to disagree with this. Out of DB, Z, Super and GT, the gold standard and what makes the Dragonball franchise so popular and helped make anime popular worldwide is DragonBall Z. And part of that reason is that Z was so good at focusing on various characters, not just Goku and Vegeta which is what Super was up until the ToP… until all the other universes dropped out, then its back to the Goku + Vegeta show again (at least Frieza keeps things interesting). In DBGT, At least Trunks and Pan got their moment.
In the Saiyan Saga, we got showings from Piccolo, Gohan, Krillin and even Yajirobe got his moment. In the Namek saga, Piccolo, Gohan, Krillin, Vegeta and Finally Goku again all had a turn against Frieza. The Cell arc is what really got interesting because probably for the first and last time ever, a character that was not Goku, was the most powerful character in the show. That was Gohan. To this day, I think SSJ2 Teen Gohan in the Cell Arc + Bojack Movie was the most badass character in all of Dragonball. He just didn’t give a F about anyone. He toyed around with Cell, kicked Cell Jrs in half, and punched his fist through Bojack. That was Gohan’s peak. I don’t think that Gohan is ever coming back.
In the Buu Saga, Goten + Trunks got their moment to shine with Gotenks, and of course Vegeta redeemed himself, all while saving the galaxy from Majin Buu. Gohan had his part in there too briefly until he got absorbed.
Super doesn’t come close to any of this. Except for Ultra Instinct I don’t think any of the other transformations really had the same impact as in Z. The focus is mainly on Vegeta and Goku. Gohan and the others get left behind. Goten+Trunks are completely forgotten about. I feel the same way about this anime as I do about Star Wars the Last Jedi: the visuals are exciting and the nostalgia kick is great, but it ruins my childhood in a lot of ways. I feel like they disrespected some of the characters that we grew up on. TLJ disrespected Luke Skywalker in the same way that Super disrespected Gohan. What I’m saying I guess is that I want more fan service. I don’t want my character kicked to the curb like a weakling.. but I guess childhood nostalgia can only last for so long…
Video Games
Video games have just gotten worse and worse over the years. Back in the day, we just had to pay for one game, ONE time and that was it. We could play with a friend using LAN, local multiplayer, just set up an ad-hoc network and go. Or we can play hotseat or split screen. Expansions only came when they were necessary, like in Doom II or Diablo II or Starcraft. And they were great expansions. And there was always a great single player mode in there too. Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Goldeneye 007, Rise of the Triad, Quake III, Unreal Tournament, Halo 2, these are all great games I played with my friends.
Now these days, all video game companies can think about, is profit. They sell you a half baked game, sometimes with no single player at all (see: Star Wars Battlefront), and sell you season passes because they already planned out the DLC. There’s usually no co-op or LAN support at all, and you have to get your friend to buy the same game (or if they are on console, buy the same game, same console + sign up for Xbox live or PS Plus), and then connect over the laggy network and jump through a lot of hoops to play with them. And even then, the gameplay is still limited by the fact that they try to sell you DLC and Microtransactions else you are at a disadvantage. No better example than the new Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Destiny 2 games. Even The Sims 4, which was a great video game franchise, has gone all downhill selling you ‘stuff’ packs every chance they get. Its ridiculous, and unfortunately the days of good old video games you can just play on a couch with your friend over is gone.
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