Thank You.

We don’t care about Charlie’s past as a musician. We don’t care that his brother sold his piano. We don’t care about the love-triagle between Charlie, Claire and Locke.

What do the numbers mean? What is the black smoke? Why are the others on the island? What’s with the button? Where’s Walt? What are the hatches for? What is the Dharma Initiative? What is the island really about? How did they survive the crash? Where is the island? Who are the Others?

Stop with the lame character-developing episodes. They’re boring and no one gives a shit.

Signed,
A Fan of Season One.

This post really doesn’t have much to do with California*, which is what this blog was intended to talk about I suppose, but I’m going to chat about it nonetheless.

As I’m sure most of you already know, I’m a pretty big fan of Apple Computer… so it shouldn’t come as surprise that I was waiting patiently in front of my computer at 10:00 this morning to see what new products they were releasing their One More Thing… event. After spending some time to digest what was released, I have to admit I have mixed feelings.

First, they announced new iMacs. These are sweet – built in iSight cameras, thinner profiles, faster and cheaper. Beyond the hardware upgrades, they’ve also included a new piece of software called Front Row. Front Row looks pretty solid, but I’m at a loss to understand why it only comes bundled with these new iMacs, and not as a self-standing product sold separately.

Front Row is Apple’s first step into the “Media PC” market… well, maybe more of a baby step really. There are a number of other Media PC’s available on the market, the majority of which have vastly more options than Front Row. Sure, the iMac comes with a slick little remote control for you to navigate Front Row from afar, but my initial reaction was “where’s the TV-in option?” – I mean, anyone who’s going to consume anything from the couch is going to want broadcast content, and not just their movies made in iMovie… But then I got to thinking, and this may very well be the first sign of a significant change that I’ve been hoping would happen sometime soon. My guess is that the traditional TV model (pay cable company, channel surf thereafter) is on it’s way out, and a new “on-demand” model is on it’s way in. It’s still far off, but I think it’s only a matter of time before I can plug a Mac Mini into my TV, select the any episode of Lost in the guide and have it stream over the internet.

Anyway, I regress… the iMac release today is definitely a solid revision… not that I’d ever buy one personally.

Next up, the iPod. Announced today is an all new iPod capable of playing video. Sure, it’s thinner, and has a wider screen and comes in black, and no longer supports Firewire, and has the same software upgrades as the iPod Nano – but the main selling feature is it’s ability to play video. But one has to stop and ask themselves why? There has been a lot of hype about an iPod that plays video, but I personally don’t understand why the average person would want one. With a 2.5-inch screen, it simply can’t be the best viewing experience. And beyond the physical size of the viewing area, what about content? What exactly are you watching? Sure, there will be a group of techie geeks such as myself who will find a way to DVDs and TV shows on their iPods**, but most people won’t. They’ll need to be supplied that content in some easy to consume manner. Which leads us to the last announcement today.

After the iMac and the iPod was iTunes 6. 6? Wasn’t version 5 release, oh, 1 month ago? What’s so new that iTunes deserved a full point release? You guessed it – video. But it’s not exactly what you’re thinking… it’s music videos, and video Podcasts, and movie trailers, and short films (6 from Pixar to be precise). Now, there are TV shows available for purchase – a total of 5 shows in total, each for a $1.99 download. But with 5 shows (about 25 episodes in total), why even bother? Especially since they videos are downloaded in a laughable 320×240 resolution. And why are TV shows available for sale in the iTunes MUSIC Store? It just doesn’t make much sense. Either Apple needed a reason to justify the video playback abilities, or this is the a tiny baby step towards the new model I spoke about above. In any event, you’ve got yourself an iPod that can play video, but nothing that you really want to watch.

At least not yet.

*Well, technically it is… I mean, Apple is based in California.

**Umm, I guess this is where I make the political statement: “Downloading movies and TV off of BitTorrent is illegal”.