If you couldn't tell, I'm a big supporter of Apple, Inc. Slightly more than a fanboy, but less than a devotee. One thing I'm not, though, when it comes to Apple is an apologist. And when they screw something up, I'l be the first to point it out.

One such case is the latest release of the OS X based operating system that drives all iPhones and iPods touch. In its first incarnation, it was slightly buggy, yet beautiful, and lacked some features a lot of people wanted. When iPhone OS 2 came out last year with the App Store, it was a remarkably stable release with a ton of added features. But then this past July they rolled out version 3 while CEO Steve Jobs was on the DL with a liver transplant, and it fucked up the entire works. Usability declined, it started crashing more often and it took on some unfortunate design elements that detracted from its presence.

Obviously my opinions are just that, but here are ten things that I think suck really badly about iPhone OS 3 and how I would change them:

1) Spotlight The feature itself is great and long-awaited, but its access implementation fucking blows and is very un-Apple. I mean really, swipe left from the first home screen? So, unless I configure it differently from the menu, I have to exit an app to get to the home screen, then possibly double click the home button to then swipe left to arrive at Spotlight. Ridiculous. Here's what should happen: You can press and hold the power button to shut the iPod off. You can press the power and hold buttons concurrently to take a screenshot. Well, make it possible to press and hold the home button to bring up Spotlight within an app, like the in-app iPod controls. There, you could get some rough global results and with a click you can go to the full results page. It can't be that hard.

2) Landscape mode This is more of a personal thing and has been around since the first version, but I would really like a way to turn off landscape mode sometimes.. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I like to lay down on the couch or the bed and peruse the internets, and it is close to impossible to do so in portrait mode, which is my preference for reading blog content and single-column news as found at the New York Times and MinnPost. This could be a simple switch in the Safari preferences. Please? This could also apply to other apps like Mail. While you're at it, please extend this functionality to iCal. Thanks so much!

3) RSS? I know a lot of tech media types swear by outside news readers (Google Reader, NetNewsWire, et al) but I favor simplicity and have my RSS feeds in a folder in Safari. So can I pretty please have more-than-rudimentary MobileMe RSS support in mobile Safari? Like the landscape thing, it's an age old problem, but maybe it can be fixed very simply. And maybe then Apple can retire the deprecated .Mac name they tagged the mobile "reader" with.

4) "Now Playing" and play list tracking Now this is something that worked flawlessly, and then OS 3 completely broke it. Since my library is so large (about 60 GB of music and close to 250 GB of movies and television shows) I sync fresh content to it everytime I connect it to iTunes and just let my iPod cycle through songs on perpetual shuffle. This worked great before; whenever I picked up my iPod I just double clicked on the home button, hit play and I was right back where I left off. Now, though, whenever the iPod is put to sleep or not played for a while it's treated as a new session and the shuffle starts over from the beginning. That is super lame and increases repetition, the very thing I was trying to avoid! The only way to fix this behavior is to Command-Z everything done to it in OS 3.

5) Shake to shuffle One word: gimmicky. Thanks for giving me the option to turn it off though. I actually forgot this feature existed until the other day when I was walking downtown and that beepbeepboop noise went off and my songs shuffled. It's all good though, I hit the toggle and it won't bother me anymore.

6) That goddamn Genius icon As a design nerd, there are several things that grate on me about the current look of the iPod screen from its previous brethren. The one thing that sticks out more than anything is that Genius button, inelegantly sandwiched in between the shuffle and repeat icons. Isn't there some other way it can be implemented? By like, just making it smaller? Or even eliminating it completely and just having it accessible from the play list menu? (In fairness, Genius was added in 2.2; before that version the song count was below the scrubber.)

7) Speaking of the scrubber, who needs precision scrubbing for a five-minute song? While this feature may be useful for movies, TV and long podcasts, all it does is infuriate me while I try to scrub to the end of a track. Seriously, guys.

8) Display foibles Why the hell are there leading zeroes on the ticker all of a sudden? That is so Windows it isn't even funny. Get rid of them; they aren't needed. Remember the Apple mantra: less is more. Also, why was it necessary to reduce the point size on the track display? The readability has been reduced severely, in addition to looking sloppy, just for the display of a few more characters? Again, ridiculous.

9) Lyrics on videos The last gripe I have here is an oddity that doesn't appear often: I have some music videos that have lyrics data in the tag before that ability was locked out in iTunes 8, and it is very hard to get them to go away on the iPod if they are inadvertently brought up. If you don't want lyrics in video tags, please disable them globally. Thanks in advance.

10) No downgrade path I want my version 2 back. That is all. Make it happen.

Agree? Disagree? Indifferent? You know how to reach me. Or sound off in the comments below.

Happy June! It's pretty hard to fathom how fast the year is going by. Just think: in January I was still thinking of putting a ring on it, and by next January a wedding will be mostly planned. Unreal.

Anyhoo, waaaaay back in the day I was rocking a Windows PC I built myself. Hard to believe, right? But you know, when I got out of high school, I had zero money for a Mac. They had those slick blue G3 towers that I wanted so bad, but they were so out of reach it wasn't funny. So with my brother's help and a couple of parts from a friend, I cobbled together a cheap beige box with a 750MHz Athlon chip and a 20GB harddrive. Oh man, that thing was a beast in 1999. And I put that thing through the wringer too.

Fast forward to 2004: On my third homebuilt rig, I have about seven years worth of data on my harddrive when I tried to install the Windows XP Service Pack 3. For some reason it didn't take, and I tried to dial it back to SP2. When that didn't work, I tried reinstalling Windows over the existing files. While that did work, it also resulted in my user folders being locked away in some weird-ass glitch so that I could no longer get to them. While I wasn't very forthright about what happened (who wants to admit they'd fucked themselves?) it was still pretty traumatic. My digital life was over! So I started anew, my lesson learned: back up religiously. And about six months later I got a Mac and it's mostly been smooth sailing since then.

Now, in 2009, I'm cleaning out my stuff in preparation to move in with my fiancee. And my brother, who now does IT for a company that makes artificial anuses (anusi?), lends me his dongle that turns any IDE/ATA device into a USB- mountable drive. On a whim, I hook up my old drives that I just never parted with and am able to pull up every single file I thought lost. It includes old photos, music, almost everything I'd written from 1997 to 2004, and old versions of my website! All this stuff that I thought I'd never see again is now available to look at and edit, and I'm made close to whole again.

So guys, let this be a lesson to you. Back up your shit. Like, four times if you have to. And if you don't, and your data gets corrupted, don't get rid of the old drives. You may be able to get at your old files one day. And if not, at least you have a long-winded blog post to write, and some ridiculous clip art to attach to it.

I always felt that reminiscing was for douchebags, and it's a belief I still hold on to. Thus, it should come as no surprise that I do it frequently, albeit on the whims of whatever is going on around me. The latest round of wistfulness that was foisted on me came courtesy of the depths of ES.com, as I tried to find that perfect Joe Smiley picture I could use on my Twitter page but then got distracted by all the other random web stuff I have done since 1996.

The nine-six was good to me, in retrospect: I found the Open School, the Purple Press and a writing voice I didn't know existed within me (thanks, Leo). I also found GeoCities and how to make my own webpage. Now I had fooled around on the internet the year previous in Mr. Ryan's computer graphics class at Como Park Senior High (I even had an awesome CPHS email: estemme@como.stpaul.k12.mn.us) but had zero idea that I could actually create my own content on it. The 'Cities changed all of that forever.

Granted, my first effort wasn't very impressive. Coupled with that awful "ZombieMan2006" moniker, it's a wonder that I wasn't forced to quit the internet entirely. But, as I started to poke around in HTML and learn the code, I was able to branch out a bit, resulting in the not quite so unfortunate Aerosmith Tribute. It all snowballed from there, resulting in the DISH Network Tribute (?), Open graduation packet, and, finally in 1999, the first vestiges of an actual personal homepage.

I feel like over the years I have done some great work (GOTW!™) and some not so great work (The Probe) here at the .com, but the entire time I was freely expressing myself. Integrating a weblog greatly enhanced this and hastened my move away from the free website model, but without that fall of '96 I might not have had that opportunity. Or at least I would have socialized more.

it seems a tease, though, because like spring, autumn in Minnesota is fleeting, and if you blink you miss it. soon, the crisp air will give way to sleet and wind chills, the branches will be covered with ice and snow, and parkas and shovels are required equipment till next May. I guess my point is, get out and enjoy the fall while we have it, since like everything else in life our time with it is perilously short. and don't forget to try the apple cider!

the reason I bring this anecdote up is to show what kind of guy Kirby was in my interactions with him. I ran into him a few more times in my two years at that store, and though he didn't recognize me all the time, he always had a smile on his face and joked around with everyone around him. and this is what I will choose to remember about him as I go forward in my life. we all have things in our lives that we have done and regret, but we shouldn't let those things define us. Kirby Puckett was a shining example of this. while the final years of his life were controversial, he did a lot of good for the community and remains one of the premier role models of a sport that seems to have lost its way.

RIP, Puck. don't forget to touch 'em all up there.

... or, alternatively, I explain in long-winded detail my music tastes.

Music is a funny thing. It's almost like politics, in the way that so many people are so deeply passionate about it. And like politics, which I do my very best to avoid in this here blog, music strikes a nerve because it really is an extension of a persona. Here, let me try to demonstrate, using my musical timeline as an example:

Ah, them 80's. Hey, remember them? Because I sure as fuck do. Well, most of them anyway. Starting when I was the tender age of zero, my dad played album rock stuff wherever he could. If it was on the freeform KQRS, it got played. This probably played a large factor in later listening habits. Anyhoo, as I grew up, I started listening to the top-40 radio stations (at that time, WLOL and KDWB) and all these weird-ass trends started to take place, like new wave and Prince. Back then, I listened to it all but like most kids at that age was pretty unaware and/or oblivious to who actually made music. Nevertheless, all these nameless dudes and in some cases chicks helped to provide a soundtrack to my childhood (thanks, Roxette and Timmy T.!). Once I hit them awkward preteen years though, it started to matter more: I remember agonizing over what to put on a mixtape for the first girl I crushed on, even though I don't remember her name. Um, Mr. Big made it on there. (cough)

For Christmas in 1993 I got two things that probably had some effect on my life: I got my first CD boom box and Aerosmith's Get a Grip to play on it. I remember asking for the latter, because of Alicia Silverstone in the videos, but I soon wore out that CD and had to buy a second one to replace it. In short order, Aerosmith had officially become my favorite band. I started with their then-recent stuff, but as I dived into their back catalog I heard all these songs that I first heard on KQ back in the day, which in turn led me into exploring classic rock. I slowly abandoned top-40 music, leaving it almost completely behind me by 1996 or so, when I found my new favorite band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. These guys jumpstarted my affinity for classic rock, and by the time I graduated from high school I listened to classic rock almost exclusively, leaving me oblivious to ridiculous trends like boy bands and Christina Aguilera. So, I guess it wasn't all bad...

I wasn't always stuck on the old-skool, though: I definitely bought everything the Dave Matthews Band released, but I still listened to mostly pre-1990 stuff. But then in the fall of 2001, I discovered John Mayer purely by happenstance, and he quickly became me new favorite artist. Also, because of the influence of his music on me, I began listening to current mainstream music again. Mostly Cities 97 fare at first, I started to branch out and listen to different genres of music entirely, exploring at various times bluegrass and folk, modern classical, and the not-really-a-genre "indie" scene. Now though, I think I have learned to appreciate almost anything of value out there. No, I won't be actively listening to the Pussycat Dolls anytime soon, but I can now enjoy a finely-crafted pop song, underground rap, and even the occasional Rascal Flatts.

Now, what does this say as an extension of my persona, as I alluded to earlier? I'll be honest with you, I'm not exactly sure. But I think the fact that I am able to take most everything in while rejecting a minimal amount says something good about me. At least I hope it does.