Donn's Profile

This is what Starbucks calls "the third place." The other two being home and work; they (successfully or not) actively try to achieve this feeling in their stores. But I've never felt as at home in a Starbucks as I have in some neighborhood haunts, and I used to work there.

I would have liked this to be more specific; 10 reasons why YOU picked an Android over an iPhone, not 10 reasons why somebody out there might want to. Which carrier and device interested you? Which keyboard, and why is it better than iPhone's? What does a custom ROM actually GET you? Otherwise, it reads like marketspeak, and not the article I expected from the title.

I happen to really love the Karlstad and find the quality just fine for the price and mobility. If it feels like it's going to fall apart on you, I would suggest tightening it up. If you got it second hand and it's been abused, perhaps a new one is in order. Sorry, IKEA is my best suggestion for such a situation.

It's also worth mentioning that Apple has been aggressively reducing the packaging size of it's products over the last decade, thus reducing the carbon footprint required to ship them.

I would live there. No, you probably wouldn't have a lot of guests, so if you like to host, it's not for you. In my bachelor days, this would have been awesome.

The only possible quibble for me is the question of fire safety - alternate escape routes? You'd need to get permission to attach a fire escape to one of the adjacent buildings.

I know a lot of people swear by universal remotes, love their Logitech Harmony or whatever, but here's my take on universal remotes: they suck.

By trying to be all things to all devices, they aren't really suited to any one, and the user-configurable, software driven ones are the worst; there is nothing intuitive or fast about selecting things on a little menu, or finding the right touch-screen button to do what I want to do. Where's the menu button? The input toggle? Can I quickly find "pause?"

I'd far rather grab the two remotes I actually need to deal with the content I have at hand: most likely the receiver remote for mode and volume, and the remote for the specific video device I'm using, be it DVD/DVR/[insert streaming content device of choice]. Their layout is already optimized for their particular functions and abilities.

My only beef with the C/dock, which otherwise I would fund in a heartbeat, is that it's only designed for iPhone 4. What about my current 3GS? What if iPhone 5 has a different design? Being so closely designed for iPhone 4 might be really limiting.

To refine that theory, I define "when you need it" as when my current machine won't run the software I need to do what I want to do. As long as this iMac of mine will run the current OS, I'm good. I expect Lion will be the last one, but that will put me at five or six years on one computer--unheard of in my PC days, when I would rarely get six months out of a video card before feeling the need to upgrade.

We also left the cable/satellite world years ago, and Netflix is a staple of our entertainment. We're just finishing the last season of Alias, then we'll probably go down to streaming only, which we do also use a fair bit. There's always a hidden gem of a series out there to watch. For more recent movies, RedBox is right around the corner.

For old series not available on Netflix streaming, I figure somebody out there is selling it the set on eBay; we can buy it, watch it, and re-sell it.

There needs to be a few token characters in line wearing gray Daring Fireball t-shirts.

I love this--what a great homage to the culture that has developed!