As we all know, I’m a big fan of pretty much everything Apple makes. I have a lot of faith in the company’s ability to bring us top notch products. But the last couple weeks have been a barrage of snide, sarcastic, and sometimes really funny remarks about the iPhone 4’s glaring antenna problems.

After Consumer Reports said in their official blog that they “could not recommend the iPhone 4” because of the antenna problems, an avalanche of posts decrying the new iPhone came down.

The iPhone was even the butt of David Letterman’s “Top 10” a couple nights ago.

What strikes me as so interesting about all of it is that the problem with the new iPhone is significant. It’s crazy to think a company like Apple wouldn’t have caught such an obvious hardware problem during testing. But as far as things go, it’s still considered the best Smartphone available. Don’t believe me? Sign up for Consumer Report’s paid service and you’ll see that the iPhone is ranked, head and shoulders, above all the other Smartphone’s available.

The competing phones on the market are plagued with a variety of very significant issues as well, ranging from the scarcity of applications to laughable battery life. And often many problems are bundled together in the same phones. These are largely irreconcilable  problems. You just have to live with it. The iPhone can be fixed with a $30 case or an $0.08 strip of duct tape.

Of course, no one knows any of this. All they know is that the most pretentious phone in the market finally has a glaring and truly accidental blemish. And for that, let the roasting begin!

It got me thinking, this is largely because of the attitude Apple as a company carries around. For how long did Apple run ads poking fun at Windows Vista? Well, the reality is that as soon as you start criticizing someone, you have to be sure that you yourself are squeaky clean or else you’re inevitably going to get a taste of your own medicine.

Of course, ironically, Apple probably wouldn’t be enjoying its place of prominence without the arrogance. But was it worth it, Apple? Really, the embarrassment? Was it worth it?

Yeah, probably. And I’m definitely still getting the iPhone 4.

In the whole debate over which is better Apple’s iPhone software (recently renamed iOS) or a handful of Google Android devices. One of the major talking points is that Apple’s App Store is a close ecosystem that Apple controls. Android fans like to paint Apple as being almost soviet in their control over what their users can do.

But here’s my thing: my phone has to work. Sure, in a perfect world, malware wouldn’t exist. Developers all over the place would code interesting applications and we’d be be able to download them from any source they might come and run them on our phones with no worries. But that isn’t the world we live in. Many developers are malicious in their intent and what they produce threatens your privacy, your data, or simply the reliability of your device.

As a business owner, my phone simply has to work. I have enough to worry about in losing it or breaking it. I don’t need to worry about it dying from the inside out and losing all my important information. The iPhone is safe from these problems and that makes it an excellent balance between reliability and versatility. Exactly what I want from a device that sits pretty central to all of by business and personal activities. Android devices simply cannot give me that piece of mind.

However, on the other hand, the openness of Android’s operating system makes it something that could offer more versatility in a tablet like Apple’s iPad.

See, for me, a tablet device is the kind of thing that I will likely use for all kinds of unconventional things. Developers who are able to think way outside the box of what the device can be used for can likely find a way to develop their software to do it. And, since a tablet device isn’t playing a central roll in business or personal affairs, the risks associated with trying new things with the device are minimal.

So for me, Android isn’t something I’d want running my phone. But it probably is something I’d want running my tablet.

How’s that for useless information?

I’m not opposed to advertising, per se. But I am opposed to ads that insult the viewer’s intelligence. Advertising that attempts to dupe the potential customer. Among the worst, I think, are the fake in-article links. The ones when hovered over, pop up this really obnoxious floating frame.

You know the ones I’m talking about. You’ll be reading a blog, or article or something, and within the post seemingly arbitrary words are highlighted as links. Accidentally run your mouse across one of these and you get something like this:

Trying to keep your mouse off of these links is like navigating a mine-field. It’s so annoying. But what’s more important, and this is for you, internet advertisers, I never never never click on anything in that floating frame. Never.

Never.

In my opinion, iTunes (on Mac at least) is about as good as you can get in terms of music management. Organizing music is easy and predictable and barring just a few obnoxious idiosyncrasies, it will do just about everything most people would need it to.

Now, pardon my rant, but as good as it may be, it should be better. Let me explain what I mean.

iTunes uses a catalogued media ‘library’. That means that it maintains lots of information besides the little bit that can actually be stored directly in a song’s file (like artist, album, genre, etc.). iTunes is also storing information like when the track was added to the library, how many times it’s been played, what it’s been rated and so on. That’s a feature with a lot of power and potential. They could be building just about anything in that library functionality.

Now begins my real complaint.

I have a huge library of music. Somewhere around 20,000 songs. Services like Pandora or Last.fm help you discover new music you’ve never heard. Well I have so much music on my own computer I need to discover new music in my own library. iTunes Genius functionality is a good attempt, but it’s totally unpredictable. If I’m listening to a song and want to find other songs in my library that sound similar or have particularly similar qualities, I’m pretty much at a loss.

Today, there are literally thousands of genres and sub-genres of music. It’s no longer a sufficient means of discovering music. If I’m listening to hip-hop in my iTunes library, simply switching to another song in the hip-hop genre is no guarantee that it’s going to be something I’m interested in listening to. And, if we delve into the vast number of sub-genres, the names are ambiguous and don’t always lend themselves well to describing the music.

Last.fm uses an extremely convenient ‘tagging’ feature. Individual songs are tagged with more useful and descriptive words. Like, “Strings”, “violin”, “sad”, “happy”, “epic”, etc. This makes discovering new music a breeze since you don’t need to have a particular musical inclination in mind. You can simply start with a more abstract idea or emotion and find music based on that. It’s the marriage between automated music discovery and manual manipulation of that expedition.

Back to iTunes. I described how iTunes uses a ‘library’ functionality to catalog music and retain a lot of extra information we wouldn’t otherwise be able to keep.

So, if iTunes has a powerful catalogued library backend and genres aren’t a reliable way to discover new music, why aren’t there advanced ‘tagging’ features in iTunes to help us discover our own music?

It’s very annoying. Fix it Apple.

I found this on TheOatmeal.com the other day and thought it was so right on I had to share it here. As a business person who interacts with a lot of customers and regularly has to collect email addresses for customer communication, I can say this is surprisingly accurate.

The original Oatmeal post is here.

I’m so far from being a gamer it’s not even funny. I’ve never been especially good at learning the controls on video games. And recently, as I’ve complained about in other posts, the controls having gotten so out of hand (no pun intended) that it would simply take far too much time and effort to become good enough to actually have any fun.

Enter Angry Birds.

Angry Birds is my kind of game and it’s on the iPhone. Basically, just launch a variety of different kinds of birds from a sling-shot (why they can’t just fly, I’m not sure) at a horde of egg-thieving pigs to destroy their strong holds and topple their ranks.

Of course, the bird’s whole nobility is called into question when one particular breed of birds uses their eggs as bombs. I mean, isn’t that what we’re trying to prevent here? I the destruction of poor helpless pre-born birds in eggs?

In any case, Angry Birds can be played for 2 minutes, or 20 minutes. Waiting for the train, sitting on the pot, trying to fall asleep. It’s like all the enjoyment of classic video games meets the simplicity of internet-flash games, but all on a hand-held device that goes anywhere.

Now, would someone in the major gaming industry please take a queue from Angry Birds and give me more involved video games that don’t ask for anything more? Seriously people. Seriously.