Ippoippo

かっこわるい！(Kakkowarui… “(adj) unattractive; ugly; unstylish; uncool”).

That’s what Yuko shouted when she saw the Japanese language version of Apple’s Guided Tour of Leopard.
She wasn’t talking about the computer software itself… but the presenter of the video.

Weird that… because I had a different response to the English language version. Rather than coming across as ‘uncool’, the presenter came across as ’smug bastard!’

That got me thinking. The Japanese image of Apple (relative to other PCs) is very different to the Western image of Apple (relative to the PC world). (Well, that’s how it appears to my western eyes)

Here in the West, Apple has this ‘cool, stylish’, ‘arty-farty’ (well to some anyway) image, but overpriced and smug.
In Japan, overpriced is something you cannot say about Mac and Apple kit. It’s seriously cheap over there. Perhaps this is because Apple is finding it harder to sell there than it does elsewhere in the main global markets (US and Europe).

In Japan, you conform! So, buying an Apple Mac seems rather ’sticking out like a sore thumb’.
But then, Apple doesn’t seem to have this ’style’ and ‘cool’ image either. So, in a rather contradictory way, they still seem geeky and uncool just like any other PC.

OH - MY - GOD!

The Japanese Justice Minister has made a complete arse of himself. Once again, politicians (Japan, UK, USA….) just putting their foots in it.

From 20 November almost all foreign visitors and overseas workers will be photographed and fingerprinted as they enter the country.

So, after much criticism, the J-Govt decided it needed to explain why it was doing this.

“My friend’s friend is a member of al-Qaeda. I have never met him, but I heard that two or three years ago he came to Japan several times,” he told a press conference.

“The fact is that such foreign people can easily enter Japan. In terms of security, this is not a preferable situation.”

Right… so he knows there is a terrorist in Japan, and he hasn’t reported him to the police. This is meant to be justification for the introduction of fingerprinting of foreigners.
ROFL ROFL ROFL :) :)

Later, Mr Hatoyama cast doubt on all of these claims, saying he had been “unclear and misleading”.

What, so now he is saying he was misleading us. Bloody hell, dig yourself a deeper hole!

In further Japan related news:
Yet more dodgy dealings by Japanese Politicians!
Japan’s Dodgy Police System, when it comes to ‘beating’ a confession out of someone.

And finally…

I normally dislike AlJazeera TV, just as much as I dislike Fox News in the US.
But AlJazeera English TV News had two cracking videos on Peak Oil (hmmmm, I recognise the host, he used to be a BBC News Presenter).

There’s a rather big, detailed (and geeky) review of Apple’s Leopard release of OS X (10.5) here.

Quite interesting in that, based on this review, it seems Leopard is more of a ‘developers release’. Reading the review, I happen to agree about some of the comments on the rather dodgy new dock… and the weird Folder icons. However, all the other goodies look great, especially Core Animation APIs.

There’s some other discussion about ‘Fix the Leopard Folders’ here.

For some reason, I found this most amusing.

EDIT: Found a higher quality link on YouTube…
plus as a bonus… here’s something from Japan (It’s from a show called “Mecha mecha” which was something I used to enjoy watching when I was in Japan).