Entries from April 2009 ↓

In 2009, it’s likely cliché (maybe even passé) to complain about things that you see around the security checkpoints at airports. For example, today I saw a mother removing tiny sandals from a baby’s feet to put them in a bin for x-ray scanning. I’m pretty sure that I’ve read before that the whole “shoe bomb” thing was overplayed. I’m more certain, though that a pair of baby sandals are not a risk. Maybe if the bad guys can hire away James Bond’s Q, baby sandals will become a risk.

The sadder thing that I saw, however, was the posters with a photo and bio of a TSA employee. I’ve certainly seen these in the past, but I hadn’t really thought about why they were there. The only thing I can imagine is that they’re there to “humanize” the TSA employees. It’s sad that such a thing is necessary. I’m sure that TSA employees have taken tons of verbal abuse over the past few years, and these posters are probably there to deter that.

Yelling at a TSA employee is not only likely to ruin the day of someone who’s just a normal person, it’s not going to do you any good. Those people are not empowered to do anything. If you have a complaint, wouldn’t it make more sense to complain to the TSA itself? Or complain to your congressperson? Or on your blog or twitter?

“When the iPhone came out, it was so far beyond what was out there on the market, pretty much up until now,” said Edward Zabitsky, analyst with ACI Research. “But with what’s coming out from competitors, that advantage is going away. For the first time, Apple’s going to be faced with a serious growth challenge.”

via Apple: 123% surge in iPhone sales – Apr. 22, 2009 .

Yeah, the gizmos coming out from competitors are going to kill Apple, since Apple hasn’t been working on anything new.

The analyst started off on the right track: the iPhone was indeed way ahead of the pack. A year later, Apple introduced the iPhone 3G and, more importantly, the App Store. Which put Apple even farther ahead of the pack (don’t underestimate the power that the App Store gives Apple for the time being!). At this point, we already know that iPhone OS 3.0 is coming out the summer with more goodies, and it would be fair to guess that Apple is not sitting around letting the iPhone hardware languish.

Perhaps the iPhone 3G’s advantage is going away, but I sincerely doubt this will be the year that the iPhone starts to fall.