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Except, they can. They can block the number, but only for $4.99 a month.

So I’m forced to have the phone ring endlessly or take their “recommended resolution.”  You know what that is? I can change my number.

Hey, AT&T? Unacceptable.

I am the owner of many generations of Apple products. From iBooks to Macbook Pros, Macbooks to multiple iMacs, multiple Airport Extremes, Airport Express, AppleTV, every generation of iPhone, three iPods, iWork, iLife, OS X and much more, we’ve owned and paid for it all. I also rely heavily on the incredibly applications that run on OS X, gorgeous and useful as ever.

I have personally convinced at least 10 people to switch to AT&T to the iPhone. I’ve convinced dozens to switch from PC to Mac. I can provide names if prompted.

However, given the treatment of iPhone app developers recently, from Darkslide^[1] to Google^[2] to the recent Google Voice fiasco^[3][4], and the unnecessary lockdown of all of your platforms, I was forced not only to advocate for the increasing wave of jailbreakers, but also to make a startling decision: I’m kicking the Apple habit.

Your treatment of developers sucks. Your treatment of your users sucks. Your treatment of the general public sucks. I’m over it. I’m not buying any more of your products until I see a change. You don’t deserve your customers respect anymore. You still make the best products, but I’m not spending, or encouraging anyone else to spend, another dime with your company until you respect your ecosystem.

OS X only exists because quality developers wrote XNU, Darwin, and BSD. You benefit from that. If those people were treated the way you treat your developers, you’d have no core platform.

I’m anxiously awaiting your next move.

[1] http://speirs.org/2008/09/12/app-store-im-out/
[2] http://www.osnews.com/story/21903/Apple_Rejects_Official_Google_Voice_iPhone_App
[3] http://www.seankovacs.com/index.php/2009/07/gv-mobile-is-getting-pulled-from-app-store/
[4] http://www.riverturn.com/blog/?p=455

     $('a[rel*=fancybox]').fancybox({
          'frameWidth' : 500,
          'frameHeight' : 465,
          'hideOnContentClick' : false,
          'centerOnScroll' : true,
     });

This is the fix:

     $('a[rel*=fancybox]').fancybox({
          'frameWidth' : 500,
          'frameHeight' : 465,
          'hideOnContentClick' : false,
          'centerOnScroll' : true
     });

See the difference? Yeah, neither did I. The difference is the last comma in the argument list.

That’s 3 consecutive major versions of IE that have been absolutely crap.  Why anyone continues to use IE is beyond me.  IE: sucking hard since version 5.

Fast forward a few months, we still get 99% wrong number calls.  We never use the thing.  So when the device stopped working two weeks ago, we finally decided to cancel.

When I called to do that, I found out that Vonage charges $39.99 to cancel your service.  Buried in section 8.7 of their terms of service, you’ll realize that by signing up, you’re actually agreeing to a contract with a cancellation fee.  A big one too: $39.99 for the service, plus, you have to buy the “device” for the full price: returns are not accepted.  So, to cancel today, I have to pay them $170.  Worse than a damn cell phone carrier.

I’m telling everyone I can now: stay away from Vonage. While some may be happy with their service, their terms are intentionally vague (sdee seciton 8.8, “Recovery Fees“), their service “contract” is misleading and intended, I believe, to sucker you into thinking it’s a monthly service, and their customer service laughed at me when, after he told me that it was “kinda hard to find and understand,” I suggested that they should reconsider their terms.

Vonage sucks.

All goddamned day I’ve been getting this goddamned whale on Twitter. I’ve also been trying to change the background of my stream, but although it always reports successful (when it doesn’t fail due to capacity problems), it never changes. It either replaces my background with nothing, or it uses the background I had three or four changes ago. God damn it, Twitter, get your goddamned act together!

But Apple offers no phone support for MobileMe.    When you dial and tell the comoputer you want to discuss “Mobile Me”, it says “Our support is now available online at me.com/help.  Thank you.  Goodbye.”  Then it promptly hangs up on you.  Fail. 

My solution? Call and just ram through any menu prompt until I get to an operator and force them to help me.  Apple support is generally pretty decent, but aside from the fact that Mobile Me is priced about 5 times too high, they have the audacity to provide no real manner of support other than the massively un-realtime web.  

Boo, Apple, boo!  You’ve let me down a lot recently.  I hope my new iMac makes me happy, or it may be my last Apple product (for awhile, at least).

I should start by saying that MMS, or lack thereof, is the one things that bugs the crap out of me on the iPhone.  I’ve detailed before how useless and silly viewmymessage.com is. I can’t believe it’s not even something that can be accessed via a clicked URL.   But I don’t think the iPhone will ever have true MMS.  If Steve Jobs wanted MMS on the iPhone, it would be here by now.  No, they are phasing it out, which is arguably good in the long run, but at the expense of its usefulness today.  I don’t mind paying the extra few pennies each month for MMS.  Even just to receive the messages, but not send them.  But stop making the decision for me. 

I hate to say that the iPhone, a device that literally converted me from a mobile phone carrier to a smart phone carrier, as someone who sold more of these puppies in the last year than most Apple employees, is doing more to turn me off to Apple than anything else.  The iPhone and AppleTV both have let me down.  A lot.  So much so that even though I recently bought a new iMac (the 24″), I considered a nice new PC at a fraction of the cost, as prep for Windows 7, which looks to be really cool.  

Apple’s arrogance and inability to listen to its customers didn’t matter nearly as much when they were a tiny niche company.  But they play in the big leagues now, and I suspect that now that they have serious market share in the laptop and education market, they will find a mass defection in a few years as people start to get wise to their control tactics.  

I find the new iPhone firmware, even before I get my hands on it, a let down.  My iPhone can’t do what phones from 3 years before the iPhone existed does without sweating.   If Apple doesn’t start delivering, I suspect that the odds are very high that by the end of 2010 I’ll be carry an Android powered phone.

Read on for more.

The problem is two fold, I think. First, the people who do the electing, sportswriters, are out of touch with the actual fans of professional baseball. Most fans fall into one of two groups: those who know their crap, and people who know pretty much nothing. Seriously, ask the average fan to name just three people on their favorite team and they will struggle. I’ve tested this.

The HOF voters usually consist of the first type of fan, and they get very technical in their analyses, and often, I believe, forget that the game is for FANS, and that it’s FANS who generate all the money, and FANS who keep the sport alive.

But ALL types of fans know Mark McGwire. “Big Mac” was the sensation of America back in 1998 when he and Sammy Sosa duked it out for the home run title in a famous, season long battle for the better pace. And McGwire is one of the best known players even today. There’s barely a bigger name in baseball; Bonds is more known for negatives today than postives, and no one else is that big: not Jeter, not A-Rod, not Ichiro, Rivera, Ryan Howard or David Ortiz. The only person who you could make a case for would be Roger Clemens. And frankly, I don’t think Clemens popularity amongst the general public, and even the general public fans, know Clemens like they know McGwire. McGwire was the last *big name* in baseball, bigger than Ripkin and Gwynn for sure. Tony Gwynn and Ripkin are ENTIRELY deserving of HOF status and I’m thrilled they made it, but I promise you more Americans — hell, more baseball fans — know McGwire than Gwynn or Ripkin.

Cooperstown is for people who have really made an impression on the game. It’s where fans can go to remember what baseball was like in previous eras. To omit Mark McGwire from the record is to ignore a large chunk of history, even if he HAS used steroids.

Now, on to the second issue: for whatever reason, there seems to be some sort of differentiation between being voted in on first ballot versus subsequent ballots. Sports journalists often feel as though someone who is… I guess… “less worthy” of HOF stature should be denied access right away but voted in in a later year of eligibility.

The reasoning completely eludes me. Perhaps someone is not a hall of famer one year, but then, the next year, is somehow better? Why do people take this so seriously? This is just stupid. Now there’s a backstory to the votes?? Come on!

Seriously, I think if you don’t vote for someone, they should *immediately* drop off the ballot. Either they are a hall of famer or not. You shouldn’t be able to say “last year I didn’t think they were good enough, but now they are.” That’s hypocracy. And it’s just plain old dumb.

I think that the Baseball Hall of Fame election system needs a shake up, something to revitalize it. The current voters have proven themselves to be irresponsible, inconsistent, and out-of-touch.

But Rogers did, I think everyone agrees. And the commentators discussed it for some time.

Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, a seasoned vet who should’ve known better, didn’t argue the call. He didn’t make an issue. He should’ve. This is the World Series, for crying out loud. He could’ve gotten into Kenny Rogers’ head. This is a guy known to lose his temper – once on field last year, and then later *in a police station*! So messing with him may have had a big effect.

Instead, LaRussa let it slide. It’s a well established fact that he’s a close friend of Tiger’s manager Jim Leyland. So that may have had something to do with it. But I don’t think so. Here’s my theory.

LaRussa was manager of the Oakland A’s in the early 90s. In the early 90s, the Oakland A’s were host to two young stars you may have heard of: Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.

Canseco, we now know, is one of the biggest juicers in all of baseball history. And McGwire, whose 1 homerun per 11 at-bats in his HR record-breaking year was as unbelievable then as Bonds’ streak is now was – not too long ago – telling Congress “I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to talk about the present” which is about as close to an admission as we could’ve expected.

By the way, smart move laying low for awhile, Big Mac. Your HOF bid is much stronger without you fucking it up by showing your face before this nonsense is settled.

Point is – LaRussa managed two major stars, likely in their steroid prime. Two cheaters. Under his nose.

Then there’s pitchers and pine tar. We all know it happens, every baseball fan knows it. Applying a little pine tar to your hand/the ball means a pitcher can create a little bit of stickiness on the surface of the leather. In cold weather especially, much like the other night, when a pitcher’s hands are getting chilly and the fingers are numbing up around a cold leather baseball, a droplet of pine tar can mean the difference between a wild pitch and a perfectly controlled strike. But usually, it’s the difference between a pitch in the batter’s reach and precise control. Enough to make a big difference.

LaRussa not making an issue means one of three things: either 1) his guys were doing it too, and he couldn’t risk anyone looking into it; 2) everyone’s doing it, and opening this can of worms makes it the 2006-2007 version of the steroid scandal, or 3) he’s simply an idiot, whose negligence probably cost his team a win in the Series.

At best, a manager of a world series caliber team is a schmuck who is ok with cheating. At worst, baseballers as a whole are ok with cheating. And as a baseball fan, I fear it’s the latter. I think people involved in baseball have come to accept cheating as part of the game. When Gaylord Perry did this crap back in the day, he was punished. When it’s done today, it’s overlooked even by skilled and experienced managers.

This is really a shame. I really don’t care much about Kenny Rogers or this incident, but I care about the integrity of American’s pastime. Frankly, I think it’s in the shitter. No one believes that the players are honest; rather, they view them as money-hungry cheaters. Nearly every record in the record books from the last 15 years is suspect to me now. The Pete Rose fiasco is more excusable than most of the infractions we regularly forgive/overlook today.

When Tony LaRussa failed to go apeshit over the obvious pine tar in Rogers’ palm, and worse – reaffirmed his decision in post-game press conferences – he killed a lot of my enthusiasm for baseball in one fell swoop.