One From the Vault

Posted by Steve on October 17, 2003: Fresh, wholesome comic available here. I guess there's a bit of a true story behind it, but since it's Bob's true story, I'll leave the details to him.

Ok, time to do a little ranting. I guess I should preface all this by saying that I am and have been a happy Mac user for several years now, so it's not like I'm just another basher.

So anyway, what the hell is wrong with Apple? They make all this cool stuff, and then when it comes time to advertise it, they let a bunch of morons write the ads. For example, have you seen those stupid iPod commercials? What the hell is that? I mean, maybe they're better than the last ones (those horrible ads where everyone is singing...poorly.) but that's not exactly saying much. Not one of the ads so far have just been a plain old "here's the product, here's how it works, here's what it can do." commercial. I mean, just show a kid using an ipod, and have a voice over describe what he's doing. You know? Kind of like the original commercials they ran for it. "Easily connects to your Mac or PC. Firewire connection means faster transfers. Also doubles as a hard drive. Etc." THAT sells a product. I mean really, if you dont know what an iPod is already, what good is that ad they're running now? it doesnt give you the slightest clue what the product is or what it does.

I mean really, you see that ad, and most people are gonna go "What the hell was that all about? Eh, who cares." To really find anything out about it, you'd have to go to apple's website and check everything out there, and most people just aren't going to go through that kind of effort. The only people that are going to go to Apple's site to check stuff out are people that are already fans of Apple's stuff. Its like Apple writes ads for people that already know all about their stuff, when it should do it the other way around. I already know what an iPod is and how it works. It's the average PC user you're trying to market to, not me.

And I still say their total lack of really advertising OS X, what it is, what it can do, how stable it is, etc., really hurts them. Now, maybe that will finally change with Panther, since its supposed to be really bad ass. Show people the OS, show them how easy to use it is, show them how stable it is, and how if one app craps out, everything else keeps right on trucking. I mean, I've been using X for about 2 years now, and have had one system crash, and that was from a reproducable bug in the program I was running. But they don't tell you stuff like that. I mean, X is an OS worth advertising, and they just don't do it.

Or like the new G5 commercial. What the hell is that? They get the new G5's. By all accounts so far, they're pretty bad ass machines. Now, G5's (and the power mac line in general) are what they market mostly to professionals. (musicians, graphic arts, etc.) So you'd think they'd create their commercials accordingly, right? Wrong. You'd think they'd tell people what the speeds are, show benchmarks, maybe show a G5 running OS X and cranking through huge files in Photoshop, stuff like that. But no, instead you get a guy flying through the wall of his house cause it's so "powerful". You want to get cute with the iMac ads, fine. Those are geared more towards the average joe consumer, so a more "playful" ad might work. But when you've got a product you sell to professionals, act like it.

So anyway, the point of all this is that i just think that Apple does a really great job making all this really cool, stable, easy to use stuff, then throws it right into the toilet with their advertising. I swear, sometimes Apple's desire to "think different" really costs them.

By the way, for our Windows friends looking for a good mp3 app, iTunes is now available for Windows, and while I've never actually used the PC version, I know the Mac version is really good, so you guys should check it out.

Oh, and I'm apparently the last person to see this, but it's still pretty damn funny. See you next week.

Posted by Bob on October 17, 2003: Yeah. First things first, last week's winner, Samus, is at that link there. This week's winner is the Joker, which should be up soon. Here is the new poll, which is another seven day affair. Please vote!

So, today's comic is based on a true story, as I'm sure Steve has already mentioned. Let's see how much of it I can recall here...Jason and I were working, and a lady came in with her son and a Nintendo 64. She wants to return it, but our return policy is you can't return things if you don't like it. Remember that.

So, she starts in, saying she wants to return it, as we assumed. "What's wrong with it, is it not working?" Jason asks. She replies "No, I just don't want him to have it. He never should have bought it in the first place." "Why did he buy it then," we ask. "Because I wasn't here with him, I was shopping," she says, as she grows more irate. "Well, I'm sorry, you can't return something if you don't like it. Returns are only on things that are broken," we tell her. "Well fine! It's broken!" She says. "Then we'll exchange it for another, and you already said you didn't want it anyway," we tell her. At this point, she is yelling loudly, and other customers in the store are starting to look at her. This is when things get fun.

"You never should have sold this to him in the first place! He's not an adult! He shouldn't have games like this! All these games are too violent for him!" Mind you, the system is a NINTENDO 64, and the game the kid bought was a racing game; a racing game where the cars don't take damage nor do they ever explode. "Well, you should have been watching him and telling him he couldn't buy it, not going shopping. He's your child, you should take care of him, not us," we say. We have our return policy, and we're not going to change it for a big nasty troll like her. had she been NICE, maybe. But she was being stupid, so we weren't going to budge.

So at this point, she starts in on our return policy, and we explain it multiple times, she still does not accept that. Another customer in the store takes our side, and being a man who has owned and operated his own music store for many many years himself, he knows the drill. She doesn't believe him either, and calls him an asshole as he leaves. Of course, Jason tells her not to talk about our customers like that. Well, most of them, anyway. So she complains that the return policy isn't anywhere in sight. (Nevermind the big banner on the wall that lays it all out.) At this point, I was on the other side of the store after leaving Jason to the wolves as I had done so many times in the past. I heard that, grabbed the sign that had the return policy off the counter, swooped in, set it on the glass right in front of her, and walked back to my perch across the store. She looks at it, and covers the word "Not" in the sentence "We Do Not accept returns if you don't like the game" with her finger, and says "See! You do take returns if you don't like it!" Jason moves the sign an inch. "We do NOT accept returns if you don't like it." Silence. For the first time in five minutes, beautiful silence. She gathers her stuff up, and leaves the store, calling her son a "little shit." SCORE ONE FOR THE CLERKS!

So with a giant post like that, you'd think that'd be all I have to say, but you would be wrong!

The mail came the other day, and so I grabbed my sunglasses, hat and trenchcoat to go out and get it. You see, the latest issue of Toilet Paper Monthly came, and I was so embarrassed to be seen with it that the need to go Incognito presented itself. Did I say Toilet Paper Monthly? I'm sorry, I meant Toilet Paper Monthly. Darn it, I did it again. I really meant Game Informer. How this abomination can call itself a magazine, I'll never know. Each and every month, they manage to outdo themselves in the realm of absolute garbage.

This month's disaster is their feature called "The fifty greatest games of this console generation." And by "this console generation," they mean Xbox, Gamecube and PS2. Call me crazy, but I thought this current console generation included my beloved Dreamcast. Heck, where's the Saturn or the PSOne? Jesus, I'm part of this generation, and my generation includes the NES, Genesis and countless others! So to call the 'Cube, 'Box and PS2 a "generation" is just utterly ridiculous. Utterly, a word I don't think I've ever used before.

So, taking a quick look at the list, I notice an odd trend....10% of these games listed have not come out yet. Or, if they have, it's by like, 3 days. Does that strike anyone besides me as odd? By that logic, I'm declaring Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 17 the greatest game of this generation. And that's that. How about some of the other games on there? Super Mario Sunshine. It's Mario 64 with a water pack. Hardly a "generation defining" console game. Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance? It's frickin' Mortal Kombat. It belongs nowhere near a "best of" anything list. Just as a comparison, Soul Calibur one or two are nowhere to be found. And in one of the more ridiculous moves, the put GTA3 at number seven, while GTA:VC ranks as number two. Read that last sentence again. See, they say "Fuck" in Vice City more, so I guess that makes it better!

I could probably go on for longer on this topic, but at this point, who's really reading anymore, anyway? So I'll end it with this little bit...In their best of the year countdown last year, you might remember Steve's little diatribe last year about Metroid Prime. They ranked Metroid Prime as the tenth best game, which is an outright crime against the industry; no, I say a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. Now Metroid is in this countdown as well, but it ranks in at number nine. How is it a game can be the tenth best game of the year, but the ninth best game of the *snicker* generation? I don't get it. The only thing this damn thing is missing is elves painted on the side, cause it's more of a Christmas wish list than any sort of best of Countdown. Sheesh.

Well, I think that's more than enough from me this time. I will, however, leave you with this.

Posted by Steve on October 17, 2003: Bob went over the list in question with me. It's pretty messed up. I mean, it's pretty much a known fact that Game Informer is just a glorified catalogue for Gamestop, but this list is too much. I mean, games that aren't even out yet? They might as well have called it "The Gamestop 2003 Holiday Buying Guide".

By the way, I'd like to point out (particularly to bob's mom) that I actually managed to go an entire news post without swearing. That is all.