My iPhone 4’s Mic Won’t Switch To External Mode No More

This means that I can’t do speakerphone or record audio for videos or do my awesome Talking Carl. There’s something physically wrong inside my phone that’s causing the mic to stay on the “hold the phone up to your face to speak” mode. It ain’t software as I’ve done a complete reset of all data and the phone still does it. Didn’t happen from damage or nothing as it happened one day just chilling on my desk, one hour the speaker phone worked and the next it didn’t.

What are my options? Well I took my phone to the Apple store, which is (of course) still under contract, and they said they wouldn’t do shit because it’s out of the one year warranty. When I mentioned that numerous people got their phones fixed after warranty if they were still within their two-year contract if the problem effected normal operation of the phone, then they mentioned they’ll do that “30 days out of warranty”.

I’m too early to get an iPhone 4S (which I really don’t want to, I want to wait for the iPhone 6, aka “iPhone 5”), so I could either pay the half-upgrade price (my iPhone 4 is a 32 GB, so an iPhone 4S 32GB would cost $549!), pay $150 for Apple to fix the problem… or pay a local company to fix the issue (which I doubt they’d even know where to look).

None of those options really work for me. And for those who think buying Apple Care is a smart thing and would “prevent” this issue, it wouldn’t. You’d pay $99 up front and then pay $50 for a “complete replacement!”. So $150 total? The same price I’d have to pay? No, Apple Care’s a waste of money.

What’em I gonna’ do? Shit… I’m just gonna’ try to live with it until the end of this year when I can upgrade to the next model. Upgrading to an iPhone 4S so late would really screw things for me. And if anything, I’d want to get a 64 GB (because of the increase in video and photo files), so that shit would be just too damn expensive without a full upgrade. Na, it’ll either be an iPhone 6 32 GB or 64 GB or nothin’ at all. JbB

My iPhone 4’s External Mic Is Messed Up

Damn, my iPhone 4 (the Neocell) developed a problem today. The external mic is muffled (damn near not working). Noticed it today when trying to use the speaker phone. Ugg. It ain’t from no damage or nothin’, just started outta’ the blue. 

Gonna’ head down to the Apple Store to see what’s up, but apparently they’ll turn me away as their “genius bar” is all booked up or some shit. Ugg…

Apparently, as my phone’s still in contract and if it has an internal hardware defect (yo), Apple will repair it.

Poor ‘ittle Neocell 4… I’m’a get you fixed, don’t you worry. JbB

Consumer Innovation Trumps Business Innovation

What’s really funny here is the fact that these companies are wanting to adopt iPads (the article says “tablets”, but come on, it’s iPads) and are leading the change rather than their IT departments. 

Small and mid-sized businesses planning tablet buying spree

This… this… is what I love about this new “consumer-based” technology revolution. Never before in the history of computers has there been this kinda’ movement, and it’s exactly the kind of movement that I like seeing. 

No longer do you have business and IT assholes dictating what the rest of the world uses… devices they dictate we, the everyday person, will use long after they’ve been using them and have moved onto the next generation technology. It used to be CEO’s and CTO’s (chief technology officers) of major, pretentious Fortune 500 companies drove where innovation and technology was headed. They, and the IT industry, created a class-warfare type of divide between big business users and everyone else. Big business used to idolize companies such as IBM and later RIM (Blackberry). These tech companies catered to their enterprise segments and really treated their consumers as second-class citizens. 

The poster child for this type of scenario is embodied best by RIM and their Blackberry. This was a company that rose to power fast by giving Fortune 500 managers and IT departments exactly what they wanted: elitism and prestige for the managers and control and complexity for the IT techs. Blackberrys were extremely expensive and their service very costly… unless you bought in bulk and dedicated your entire infrastructure to their technology. This ensured that only the biggest of big companies could afford Blackberrys. In time, RIM created lower-end Blackberrys for your average working person and later consumers, but they were cheap, crappy, overpriced devices. See, CEO’s and CTO’s wouldn’t have been happy if their workers got devices with the same capabilities as them.

This power trip among those in control created a working environment that was hostel towards intuitiveness, simplicity and innovation. Just four to five years ago, nearly all Fortune 500 companies had a strict policy that no emails could be accessed on any mobile device unless it was a Blackberry. Workers were stuck with some of the WORST laptops, IBM’s and their God-awful little eraser head pointer devices, because their CEO’s and CTO’s insisted they were the best laptops.

Workers, consumers and small businesses developed a resistance to change because it was never positive change for them but was always a positive change for someone else (namely the IT department). This became the normal for, what… 20 years? Consumers were left with inferior products while big business dictated the path of innovation (or lack-there-of). 

But then something changed… it all started with the iPhone, a device not only far, far superior to anything big business was using, but a device targeted towards the everyday person and not the business-ruling elite! CEO’s and CTO’s thought of it, and Android phones, as nothing but a toy. But people started buying their own iPhones and started using them for work instead of their company-issued Blackberrys. That’s when things started to change. Soon the CEO’s were using iPhones and Androids and only the CTO’s were the ones left crying bloody murder… well them, and RIM.

Then the iPad was introduced and that changed up the mindset for millions, if not billions, of people. Now, anyone with $500, from a housewife to a college student to a CEO could possess a device that, just a few years ago, should have only been reserved for the business elite. 

This is now where your seeing real innovation happen in business. No longer is business innovation limited to companies grossing millions of dollars but to whoever has the best ideas and who’s willing to take risks. That’s why, even though hospitals ARE adopting iPads at a brisk pace, you got the article above that talks about small clinics taking charge in innovation. 

Damn I love the period of history we live in, in a technological perspective. I typed this entire blog post while chillin’ in bed, on the same device (my iPad) that this article talked about leading innovation. I hope we never move from consumer-led innovation ever again. JbB   

Companies That Oppose SOPA Wouldn’t Otherwise

I started thinking about SOPA and all the non-digital media companies that support SOPA…

http://theoriesofconspiracy.com/2011/11/list-of-major-companies-supporting-sopa.htm

Nike, Coach, Lucky Brand… I get it, I get it. You wanna’ stop oversea counterfeit web sites. That’s their reason. With 95% of those companies, their support isn’t based on ethics but necessity (greed).

Of the companies that oppose SOPA, companies like Wikipedia, Facebook, Reddit, Google… well it’s mostly a lot of Internet-based companies. I started thinking how lucky we are to have them on our side. But then I started thinking about Apple and how they support SOPA, the company that typically only does good. So why, then, does Google oppose SOPA? Google has no problem “being evil” (such as them working to undermine net neutrality with Verizon), so why wouldn’t they take the same stance as Apple? AOL and eBay are also opposers of SOPA, and they’re both greedy, faceless corporations. So why do they do the right thing?

I kept thinking about all the companies that oppose SOPA that are clearly evil… way more dirty and greedy than, say, Apple. Why… why are all these faceless corporations opposed to SOPA when they could just as easily support it?

Then it dawned on me… nearly every single one of the companies that opposes SOPA are ALL internet companies! They don’t give a shit about SOPA ethically, they only care because SOPA would make them do extra work to police their Internet businesses! In fact (given the record of the companies that already do support SOPA), they’d actually SUPPORT SOPA if the tables were turned and everyone else was effected but them.

Think about it… Wikipedia, Reddit, Google, they’re opposing SOPA and acting like they’re doing it because “it’s the right thing to do” or “we’re protecting the Internet”, bull shit! They’re only taking a stance because their business model would be effected for the worst! Just like all the companies that support SOPA only do so because it’ll effect their business model for the positive.

What a load if crap… all these companies that are taking a stance against SOPA, they ain’t standing with us, they never have been… they’re just USING us to help make sure a bill ain’t passed that effects their business model (when it’s the users of the Internet who’re truly being effected). The only major web site that comes to mind that is truly looking out for the public is The Electronic Frontier Foundation. All the rest, publicly, wouldn’t give a shit otherwise.

But that’s life. Don’t really matter if your standing in the middle of the road with your eyes closed or with your eyes wide open… your gonna’ get hit by the bus whether you see it coming or not. JbB