A great man once said, “The first step to improving anything is fucking disgust. You’ve gotta be disgusted, like whipping yourself with a cat o’ ninetails while cranking it to Golden Girls disgusted, to ever change anything.”
That man was Jim Rohn, and he definitely did not say it that way.
But the point remains.
My moment of absolute disgust came when I was watching a tech review — I’m a tech review/gear junkie — and a device got dinged a point because the fucking lid didn’t open up with one hand. He proudly pronounced “This otherwise piece of awesome and amazing tech that even five years ago we would have murdered our firstborn children for can’t be opened with one hand! ARE YOU NOT FUCKING ENTERTAINED?!” Of course, the other hand is probably playing pocket pinball, as the Golden Girls are still on reruns at the moment, but still. Most of us have two hands available to open the laptop with at any given time. Are we that jaded? That a device can lose points because it’s so thin and light that it doesn’t pass an arbitrary test made up by some jerk in his basement and people are using it for purchasing decisions?
Consider this my manifesto.
I’m Pope. I truly believe that most of the tech reviews and news you see are done by people that have instant access to every piece of tech you or I can imagine and more, and they are running out of things to say. “It’s faster, the screen is brighter, it’s nice, go buy it, now a word from our sponsors”. This doesn’t apply to all tech reviewers. I’m a fan of a few. MKBHD, Mrwhosetheboss, Linus Tech Tips, Luke Miani. They don’t all suck, but most do, because of lame shit like that.
The device in question, if I recall correctly, was a Samsung Galaxy Book S. That particular device sucks for a few reasons, but the ability to open it up with one hand is seriously not one of them. It’s also one of the thinnest and lightest laptops on the market, with full Windows (Well, 32 bit only but that’s being worked on), and one of the best laptops with an ARM SoC that you could get before Apple dropped the M1 MacBooks, and it has 4G capabilities, which is rare on laptops, and Apple STILL hasn’t seen fit to put on the MacBook line, despite being fully ARM. As with all tech, it’s a give and take.
You might say to me, “But Pope, I have an M1 MacBook, there’s no trade offs!”
Bootcamp gone, MacOs still inferior for gaming (Try opening Dwarf Fortress!), battery is killed by Rosetta 2 apps because of limited compatibility, no 5G… there are trade offs. I own that device, the Pro w/touch bar. Before you ask, I love the touch bar. So take it for what it is.
The tech world has reached a level of saturation that is frankly insane. Your kids can tell you more about your phone than you know. Who gives a fuck about what chip is in it? Can it run Angry Birds? How can you safely install a program on your 15 year old HP workstation? What’s a core? Does it matter?
I don’t know what this blog is, but whatever it turns into will be informative, fun, and obscene. And I solemnly swear to never do a “Open with one hand” test.
Pope is not the guy in the Vatican, although he did go to the Vatican once, as a child. His family did not know at the time the danger of being a ten year old boy at the Vatican, so they are forgiven. In his spare time he likes to make himself violently angry and alienate what few friends he has left with unchained rants about “CGI saturation” and “Right to Repair”.
Website: www.beetlemilk.com
Favorite Twitch Streamer: twitch.tv/ghostbody
Listening to: WAP. Seriously. Great song.
Watching: The Golden Girls, duh.
Reading: Warlock Holmes, The Finality Problem