How to: the Highway System

There are a lot of things that annoy me in life. Incompetence is probably the biggest one.

I should clarify, of course, as I am, in fact, pretty incompetent in many fields, chiefly among them mathematics, auto repair, and almost everything not computer or history related. That's not the kind of incompetence I hate. No one can be reasonably expected to be good at everything. It's really only a mass misunderstanding of widely used skills or technologies that bothers me.

The standard example of this phenomenon is the misuse of personal computers (the subject of which will almost certainly be a blog post in and of itself). However, one thing no one seems to understand that everyone (or at least everyone who drives) should, is how to properly use the highway system.

Despite apparent mass confusion about how to drive on the highway, it's really not that hard. Are you going faster than the person in front of you? Move left. If you aren't, then stay right. Which lane you should be in is not arbitrary or subjective. You should be as far right as you can possibly be at all times unless you're passing. You move left only to pass or exit. (Left exits do exist, usually on highways whose designers are as stupid as the people they were designed for). If you're going 55 MPH in the left lane, you need to get out of the way.

Let me also make it perfectly clear that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the speed limit. If you're going ten over and the guy behind you wants to go faster, then move right if possible. It's really that simple. That's how the system was designed to work. Faster = left. Slower = right. If you can't figure out a system designed in the same vein as reading, you may want to consider staying off the road.

Oh and one thing you should absolutely never do is go the same speed as the person to your right. If you're going too slow in the left lane, people who know how to drive can (and will) pass you on the right if they are able. (Don't be surprised if they cut you off, especially if others on the road are using the system properly.) If you are going the same speed as the person to your right, however, you're blocking traffic. People will get angry, and with good reason.

I drive from PA to Maine at least once a year. In my experience, and for obvious reasons, it's people from Connecticut and Maryland who seem to have the hardest time understanding the highway system. People from PA aren't great either, especially around Philadelphia. (New Jersey drivers are the best, incidentally. No joke.)

To be fair, I know I was never taught this in driving school, which is odd, when you consider that it's pretty important. A lot of people I talk to weren't taught this sort of thing either. Apparently there is a hole in the education somewhere. So maybe it shouldn't bother me, but then again, try following grandma for 80 miles at 55 miles per hour next time you're on a twelve hour drive and see if it doesn't bother you too.

The Poison Apple

I will be the first to admit that I love Apple products. The hardware is pretty decent and you can't go wrong with a UNIX based OS. Additionally the build quality and support you get with Apple put it easily in the top five brands for PC quality. That being said, I don't personally own any Apple products, because while they are some of the best computers around, they're not the best.

For my mobile needs, I recently switched over from iOS to the heavily Google-based Android environment. What prompted me to do so was the Samsung Galaxy S3, widely considered to be the best smartphone on the market. In fact, it is so good that Apple sued Samsung over it.

I made the decision to buy the S3 right after the iPhone 5 came out in all its lackluster glory. The S3, which had come out months earlier, was and still is a better phone. If you're the biggest name in smartphones and your competitor is outselling you, you can either innovate and make a better product or cheat. Apple chose to cheat.

Apple may make good products but their business practices are questionable at best and often downright disgusting. From their misleading marketing linking OSes to OEMs or implying that a Mac is somehow not a PC to their tight control over who gets to use their product and how, Apple is the opposite of everything its UNIX base should have been and in fact is in products like Fedora or Ubuntu.

Of course, the fact that not everyone can or even should use Linux is why Mac OS is a fantastic operating system for the average user. It has the ease and simplicity of a UNIX base without allowing the user to totally break the system, like most users do with Windows. But you can build a user friendly OS without being evil.

Unfortunately for Apple, Google, a very non-evil (if somewhat nosey) company supports Android OS, used in most non-Apple mobile devices. Google is not only extremely useful, providing a plethora of free services (if you're reading this, you're using one now), but is also open with its products, allowing the public to opt into betas and releasing source code for developers. Google products are extremely accessible and innovative, and it shows. Android is the top selling mobile OS, precisely because Apple refuses to release their mobile OS to any third-party OEM.

All this is fine, of course. Apple has excellent reasons for keeping their products in-house. In fact, that they do so and therefore have complete control over their products is what lets them get away with attacking other OSes as "buggy." The problem isn't that Apple chooses to think different; it's that they refuse to let anyone else do the same.

Case in point: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/samsung_were_not_signing_license_deal_apple354

As background, Apple recently sued Samsung for patent infringement. Their case was shaky but they won a billion dollars anyway. My personal theory is that the jury didn't know memory from storage. Either way, Apple demonstrated that in the absence of actual innovation, demonstrated by the iPhone 5 and new iPad Mini (read Kindle Fire or Nexus 7 with an inferior screen), it is willing to sue those whose products surpass its offerings both in hardware quality and sales. The article linked is a clear demonstration of the continuance of that policy: HTC, if you're too lazy to read the article, recently signed a deal whereby they pay Apple six or eight bucks for every unit they sell. One may wonder what HTC gets out of the deal. The answer is, very simply, Apple won't sue them.

The legal term for this practice is cross-licensing. I'm no lawyer, but it seems like plain blackmail to me. Whatever the reasons the jury had for finding against Samsung, there were wide-reaching effects to their decision, one of which is that Apple can now legally get away with bullying other companies whose products surpass their own, rather than innovating and producing a better product. What makes the situation more offensive is that Apple now profits from every new technology its competitor creates without having to do anything at all. The more HTC innovates, the more money Apple makes.

Thankfully, Samsung refuses to give in to this blackmail. By doing so, however, they risk another lawsuit, for which there is now a precedent.

Apple is by no means the only company stifling technological innovation. Verizon blocks Google Wallet and tethering on smartphones that support these features because they want to charge their customers for similar services they provide or are developing, and they know most users won't root their phones. Instead of honestly trying to create a competing service, companies like Apple or Verizon simply hold back innovation until they can catch up. However, without danger of a competitor, such companies have little need to do so; after all, they can just sue and restrict their way to massive profits.

Ultimately of course, these strategies are doomed to failure. Open companies like Google will simply get tired of waiting and create their own product, as Google in fact did in partnership with Asus in the creation of the highly popular Nexus 7 tablet computer. Consumers offered a choice between freedom and restriction will eventually choose freedom. Apple may be the richest technology company in the world, but it isn't the best, and companies like Samsung legitimately threaten their position. Despite its legal trickery, Apple still has to compete, and many companies it has to compete with are in turn backed by Google, a giant in and of itself. Unless Apple learns that technology is about innovation, sharing, and openness  they will not remain on top for long.

Computing is about making lives easier, not simply making a ton of money. The nice thing, though, is that even if it was about making a ton of money (and that's a perfectly valid goal for an individual or corporation), it only works in the long run by making people's lives easier. If people are constantly frustrated by their user experience, they will make the switch over to a competing product. That's how Apple used to market: they knew they had a better operating system for a specific market than Microsoft, and they capitalized on it. Now they're the standard for smartphones, but losing out to competitors who bill their phones as "designed for humans." Only the future will tell, of course, but it was that kind of thinking put Apple on the map; without it, Apple can't even make maps. If Apple wants to become a legitimate company again, they need to start acting like one, by innovating and creating products people want, rather than suing others who provide a better and more accessible alternative.