Picture this: You have the newest iPod Touch. You are quite happy with your purchase and pride yourself in being the most technologically advanced person in school. A week later, apple introduces the newest iPod with all of the same features as yours but with a better battery and a higher quality camera. Fearing humiliation, you try to sell your week old iPod, only to find out that now it’s only worth fifty dollars. You finally scrape up enough money to buy the next iPod only to find out that three more versions have been released in that time. You feel yourself becoming a technological pariah as you walk around school with your $400 dollar dinosaur in hand.

Technology is constantly changing and, of course, this is not a bad thing. If everyone thought that inventions did not need to be upgraded we would all be riding around in our horseless carriages playing the newest beeswax cylinders on our gramophones. Rushing through too many upgrades too quickly however, leads to the classic mistake of fixing what is not broken. Whether it be for money, or for an odd obsession with being be the best, businesses that specialize in technology often suffer from a short attention span.

Facebook:

This article is an online exclusive so I assume that all four of you reading this have had some kind of experience with Facbook’s changes.  Facebook is notorious for changing its layout without the consent of its users. Sometimes the changes are a step in the right direction, but unfortunately, with one step forward, they take 50 steps back. One recent change is the news feed.

In September 2011 Facebook announced that your news feed will now only display what it deems is important to you. Mark Tokelowitz the design engineer at Facebook said  “All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top.” There are two problems with that. One: as of now Facebook thinks that I am interested in John’s pictures from camp and Sally’s forty cat memes. Well Facebook is wrong I don’t care about John’s pictures. In order to see the second problem we need to read a little more of Mr. Tokelowitz’s statement. “If you check Facebook more frequently, you’ll see the most recent stories first.” So the only way for me to view the most recent stories like I am used to is to always be on Facebook I mean, who would change their website so you have to be on it constant–oh, I get it now, nice one Facebook. At least I can still use the mobile version on my iPod without being forced to upgrade. Oh hey speaking of iPods…

Apple:

Let me start this by saying the late Steve Jobs was incredibly good at his job (pun not intended): to be an innovator and a business man. It is very important to remember that Apple is still a competing business so, their goal is to make money. By any means necessary. And, Apple is really good at achieving its goals. As a company that specialises in technology you can do two things to have a constant income: you can make a wide variety of products, or you can update your products often. Apple does both of these things. Apple sells 46 different products and updates these products about once a year.

Since 2007 there have been 26 different iPods released if you count the different memory options. That is over six iPods a year with mostly cosmetic upgrades. You might not think that is a bad thing but here is the problem: Apple markets these upgrades as if they are the next big step in human history, when your just getting a thinner design with a new button for $200.

And then there is the iPad. When the first iPad came out, I imagined that Apple just injected their iPod touch with a growth serum. The iPad ran the same OS, had the same apps and did not support Flash.  The iPad 2 is now leading the charge in tablet computing devices. What, you might ask, did Apple upgrade in order to make it so succsefull? It’s thinner and it runs a little faster. It still has the same OS, the same apps, and it still does not support flash. The iPad is still pretty much your iPod touch with a big screen. But wait, now you can add 3G which means that with a data plan from AT&T or Verizon and a small fee of $120.00 your iPad can now do what your iPhone has been doing since 2007!

Don’t get me wrong I love my first generation iPod touch, I just don’t like it when people give Apple too much credit afterall, they really are just a business. I mean, I love my Apple products, without Apple how could I watch Netflix on the go? Oh yeah and then there’s       

Netflix:

Netfix is a powerhouse in the home entertainment business. With its DVD delivery service and its online instant streaming service, it has made sure that young bachelors will never leave the home again. After all, why would you go out and meet people when you could stay in and watch Mad Men for seven hours straight?

Despite what you may think, this segment is not going to be about how Netflix will eventually lead to the destruction of society when people realize that a week watching Doctor Who is a week well spent. No, this segment will be about the almost-blunder that was to be called Quickster.

Last September, Netflix announced that it would be splitting its online service and its DVD delivery service into two different brands. The online service was still going to be called Netflix but the DVD service was going to be called Quikster. With this change there would also come  a change in pricing. Netflix users could still keep their accounts with the same monthly fee but if they wanted to continue getting DVDs they would have had to make a completely different account for Quikster requiring a separate monthly fee.

Naturally Netflix’s loyal customers did not like this one bit so Netflix quickly announced that they would not be following through with these plans. It is still unclear whether or not Blockbuster employees infiltrated the board room and suggested this to sabotage the competition.

Technology will always change and its hard to keep up but it has a large market and spreads fast so you just kind of have to get used to it. Hey, speaking of technology spreading fast, if everyone reading this posted it on their Facebook and got one person to read it, that would lead to eight people reading this article. Lets go people chop chop!