Star Trek
Star Trek remains my favorite franchise in all of entertainment – fmor the wild-eyed idealism of Star Trek, the future-pointed brilliance of The Next Generation to the dark, war-tones of Deep Space Nine – the series in unmatched in depth and breadth of ideas and tones.
The franchise has definitely had its pitfalls with the odd-numbered films, horribly directed combat in most series, some poor special effects, awkward writing and masturbatory self-reference . . .
And not every Trek series was as strong . . . Voyager suffered from a severe lack of lasting story consquences, despite the edge of space setting. Enterprise, terribly casted, defaulted to rehashing old plots or reintroducing enemies from other series. There were rumors of a TNG follow-up series being developed, focusing on Riker and Troi during the collapse of the Federation, but basing a new series on two of the worst characters in the previous (one of which has not aged well) was folly.
With the final two Trek shows being canceled and fans signing petitions to have the franchise’s helmsmen banished from Trek forever, it seemed that Trek would have to go into cold storage for a while . . .
And then JJ Abrams signed on to direct a new Trek film, and the fanboys rejoiced.
But when it was announced that he would ‘reboot’ the original characters . . . there was much fear.
JJ Abrams Star Trek is not Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. It’s more hyped, more hyper-active, more aggressive, less introspective. The characters retain their basic threads but have been woven into a new, shinier tapestry. And there are not Shakespeare quoting Klingons in this one . . .
The Good
JJ managed dodged canon-heralding trekkies by creating an alternate timeline in which to play and reinterpret original Trek elements. His properties are not new to time-travel subterfuge, if you’ve been keeping up with LOST . . .
Fans are already lobbying to see Abram-ized Klingons or, strangely, Gorn.
The villian, Nero, is the opposite of the previous Star Trek villians. He is not secretive, intelligent nor dramatic. He does not wield an expansive vocabulary and an English accent. He is not an unfathomable floating-head space being, nor a murderous race of robotic hive-logic automatons.
He is a man who has lost his family and his planet, and he wants the perceived perpetrators to experience the same.
The ship is fantastically rendered, battles are less chess and more dodgeball. Just think, it’ll make sense.
There’s a real sense of scale and position in space. While space in older Star Trek films felt formless and without scale (why do you think so many battles happened in orbit of a planet?), JJ Abrams uses nebula, camera work and movement to create dynamic movement.
The GUI and design work on the Trek interior is fantastic and balances realism between the 60′s Trek’s bo-beep knobs and 90′s Trek’s featureless, personality-less touch pads.
It helps that the actors were interacting with actual real Adobe AIR applications designed by OOOiii. (also responsible for the heralded Minority Report virtual interfaces)
Chris Pine as Kirk was pretty much note-perfect. He had enough touches of Shatner’s Kirk to link the two – but also is a bit more believable as a rebel and a brilliant prodigy. Overly confident, cocky, and yet charismatic.
The ‘root’ story of the film is a bit fuzzy in the end. It’s about destiny, and the past and future fueling the now . . . but it was more a setup movie for future films more than anything. And that’s what’s most exciting and also risky – bringing this shined up, ‘modern’ Star Trek into the classic root of what Star Trek really was about – ideas and hope.
That’s what I’m more excited about – seeing where JJ will take them and what else he’ll do in the Trek World.
WWDC + iPhone 3GS
Gruber pretty much nailed every point of the Keynote on Sunday night. Spoilerz!
Keynote . . . notes
- Macbook Pro price reductions were a big hit with the crowd
- Safari tabs noticeably absent from the presentation . . .
- Apple OS X VP, Craig Federighi, looks like a super-nerd Steve Martin.
- Bing ads popped up all over nytimes.com as Federighi was demoing the Dock Exposé. Well played, MS, well played.
- 30 Rock clip was a perfect lead-in to ‘Find my iPhone’. Great security support couple with the remote wipe command.
- Wayne Grant from Pasco played off his bugged presentation off very well. Funny guy – and I’d believe he’s a great science teacher.
Macbook Pro
Decent updates to their notebooks. The inclusion of an SD card is definitely interesting and a good move by Apple. However, not EVERY digital camera has moved to SD. Higher end DSLR cameras are still using CompactFlash.
The price drops may be a simultaneous nod to the state of the economy and also a lean towards market share at the expense of a slight hit to Apple’s healthy profit margin. It’s also possible that their increasing sales are netting them a better price-per-unit.
Safari 4
Using it as I type. UI seems faster than the beta. Page rendering seems the
It still apparently likes to hang on ONLY the root of ebay.com, any other URL on ebay works perfectly. Works again if I clear my cookies.
Most interesting thing is that the poorly-designed top-tabs have reverted to the pre-existing placement but retain some of the new finish (curved edges, rollover square close button, etc).
The top tabs were not working as designed and Apple realized it . . . sheepishly, as they didn’t even mention it in the keynote.
AT&T’s missteps
Pricing
Now that the standard subsidizations have kicked in, people are realizing that they can’t get the iPhone for the advertised price. This has been an unfortunate standard practice by all wireless carriers for years, but there never really has been a phone as popular as the iPhone, so their long-standing questionable practices are put into even keener focus.
Existing iPhone owners who bought the iPhone 3G and signed up for the 2 year contract now may be paying up to $499 for a new iPhone.
MMS & Tethering Support
Most shocking and possibly surprising is that iPhone 3GS’ newest features, MMS and tethering will not be available at launch for customers in Apple’s own home country on the very first provider for iPhone.
AT&T has been quoted as targeting ‘late summer’ for MMS and currently has ‘no announcements’ about tethering. In other words, they’re still figuring out how to reasonably gouge existing and new customers for even more money per month.
I would not be surprised if they attempted to shoehorn in an MMS limitation into the contracts when it’s launched.
The positive spin is that it it weren’t for Apple, AT&T probably would never have gotten around to upgrading their cell networks to support MMS. Foolish.
But will Apple leave AT&T?
This is a recurring rumor whenever the exclusivity expiration date is brought up.
I find this doubtful. Most likely, they’ll pull a Pixar, put their feelers out this winter before the contract expires, let the rumors float and use it as leverage to AT&T to make some concessions. Possibly: faster adoption in advance of iPhone updates (avoiding embarrassments such as lack of MMS) and possibly asking AT&T to remove the probably impending tethering surcharge. Better rates for sure.
About this Blog
Variegating
1. Having streaks, marks, or patches of a different color or colors; varicolored; mottled; dappled
2. Distinguished or characterized by variety; diversified.
Drew Pickard is a graphic designer employed at Pop in Seattle WA. He is an amateur photographer, a collector of Galactic Heroes, big-picture obsessor and has a lot of opinions about stuff.
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