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You gotta buy Apple stuff because it just plain works, right? I've been trading e-mails and calls today with a friend whose iTunes won't work and, when he tried instead to move everything to a laptop, can't get the laptop to recognize the iPod. Oh, I know we'll somehow find a way to get it to work- I'm pretty sure I know what's causing the laptop problem- but, still, this isn't the "it just works" the Apple apologists tell you about.

And I remember doing IT work several years ago in a mostly-Mac office. Things were constantly running into trouble- crashes right in the middle of critical work, freezes, the little bomb icon. Some made the vaunted video capabilities easier by just plain quitting. I kept busy for a year with that stuff.

That's not to say Apple doesn't make good products- it does, and I would happily accept one of the new Intel MacBook Pros from anyone willing to buy me one- but it's just a reminder that when people evangelize about Apple, they're evangelizing about products that are as prone to problems as many others. They don't always "just work."

But at least they're not Dells.

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It's hot, it's windy, it's Labor Day.

You should be someplace like this:

Of course, it doesn't exist anymore. But you should be enjoying your freedom.

Me, I worked. It IS Labor Day, so I labored. It's what I do.

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No time- just spent an hour and a half at the cellular store. Perhaps it'll be the topic for tomorrow's "The Letter." We'll see.

Let's just say that at the end of the day I'm poorer but pleased. More when I have time.

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To death and taxes we can add one more inevitability: there will always be a long line at the cell phone store, and that line will be populated by the kind of people you normally only see on "Cops" with their faces blurred out, or being ejected from the audition room in the opening rounds of "American Idol." That's where I spent an interminable hour and a half waiting to replace our cell phones the other night.

The floor show resembled one of Fellini's lesser efforts. There were the three teens- two guys who actually appeared to be dimmer than Beavis and Butt-Head (and looked a LOT like them) and a girl who clearly doesn't own a mirror and therefore doesn't know that her clothes are about 30 sizes too small. There was the older couple, the very large husband attired in short-shorts and a shirt with the sleeves torn off to show off much of the sides of his torso, the wife walking around with the kind of expression that says "wear what you want- I'm too old and tired to argue anymore." There was the yuppie woman in a business suit who was rapt in conversation on her cell phone for the entire time, not even willing to get off the conversation- which was clearly not about business- when her name was called to come to the counter. And there was, er, me.

And I was writing a column in my head, ready to complain about the wait and the weirdos and the management but then a miracle happened. I got called up, and the clerk and the store manager patiently made everything work. I had an unusual situation- a grandfathered deal, some credits to attach via codes that the system wouldn't take, a very new model phone- launched this weekend- with which nobody's familiar- and the manager, with good cheer and tenacity, got the thing done right, even as she was being peppered with questions and complaints from people every few seconds. She was able to get me- and all of the other people she dealt with- on our way happy, problems solved, phones working. And now I have my Treo 700wx phones, and they work, and my account's in order.

That's the Sprint-owned store on Hawthorne Blvd. in Torrance, CA. They made me happy. Lately, that's a real achievement.

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This week's All Access newsletter talks about, er, the All Access newsletter that never was, with the moral being something about getting to the point again:

This one's gonna be short, because I wrote a much longer one yesterday and threw it out. And there's a lesson in there somewhere.

Next week: probably more rambling. I know my strengths.

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I've had the new Sprint version of the Windows Mobile Treo- the Treo 700wx- for a few days now, and so far, I like it. I haven't tried Bluetooth yet- the headset I ordered hasn't arrived- and I'm still getting used to Windows Mobile 5, but here's what I like:

1. It works.
2. I can finally access and post to All Access' unusually-scripted administration pages without any problem at all. Palm browsers- Blazer and third party versions- couldn't do that.
3. Unlike Palm, I was able to find a notepad program (freeware!) and an FTP client with the right security that would allow me to edit non-.doc or .txt files on my phone. Couldn't do that with the Palm equivalents.
4. It's fast. And when I'm within EVDO range, it's broadband fast.
5. Sling Mobile works- my satellite TV wherever I want it. Ideal for waiting in doctors' offices.
6. Still the best form factor for a PDA phone. No pullout keyboards to screw up one-handed use.
7. The ringer seems louder, the vibrate function is more noticeable. On the old Treo 600 I was using, it was way too easy to miss calls.
8. You can stream lots of content with EVDO and Windows Media Player.

Here's what I'm less happy about:

1. It's still a little thick.
2. I'd like more screen resolution, although the jump up from the Treo 600's substantial enough (the Palm Treo 700's screen is better, but if I can't use the Slingbox with it, big deal)
3. Windows Mobile is still cluttered when you launch it- the Today page, no matter how you configure it, is not as elegant as Palm tarting with a phone keypad. And I'd like more speed dial buttons to appear up front- I haven't really found the ideal configuration to maximize that and still include neat stuff like the photo speed dial buttons yet.
4. The camera's still not great, although it IS fun to take video with it. I immediately shot an Ella the World's Most Famous Cat video, and it was watchable and not horribly choppy.
5. No threaded text messaging, not that I use texting much. I'll just throw an IM program on there and use that.
6. No WiFi built in, which would help here at the fringes where EVDO drops out. But I'm getting a simple WIFI SDIO card that'll take care of that (and my battery life).

Early opinion: it does everything I was hoping it'll do, and while it's a touch less intuitive than the Palm OS version, that's well worth the tradeoff. We're not quite at the point where I could leave the laptop at home, but this is as close as anything has come to that goal, and in areas with good EVDO coverage, I could use it to do my work in reasonably good order. I'm very, very happy.

I took some pictures of the phone, but they didn't come out well, so here's a picture of Ella on a bed instead.

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We decided to go see Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" today, which meant some schedule planning, because it's playing in exactly one theater in the area and playing once- once!- per day, the first matinee, 12:45 pm. Predictably, the theater was largely empty- nobody knows this movie's even playing. There was one print ad that carried no information other than the title of the movie; it ran on opening day last week in the Times Calendar section. That was it. The Times ran a favorable review a few days later, but otherwise it's just listed in the AMC listings by title only. Fox is determined that people not see this picture, and they're succeeding.

Too bad. It's quite funny and perceptive, very entertaining, and perhaps the first and only movie Hollywood will ever release that specifically blames the fact that stupid people breed more than smart people for the world's ills. That alone is worth the price of admission. It's also reasonably speedy and contains plenty of laughs, Luke Wilson is relatively inoffensive (compared to his usual grating self), and despite a slightly heavy-handed narration that seems to have been applied to help edit the thing down and skip over some exposition, it works. It's certainly no worse than countless other movies that have been given full, heavily-publicized releases this year. Someone at Fox should be ashamed of himself or herself for ordering this movie to be hidden, but it'll rise again on DVD.

The trailers shown before the movie gave some indication where the studios' heads really are. One movie was trumpeted as the most important political movie since "Fahrenheit 9/11" ("Fast Food Nation," which takes the daring position that fast food is bad) and another is touted as from the producers of "Fahrenheit 9/11" ("The U.S. Vs. John Lennon," which point blank says that Bush is pro-death, yet omits the part where John Lennon is an egotistical, hypocritical phony roaming around L.A. with a Kotex on his forehead and scooping up millions of dollars while singing "imagine no possessions"). No, sir, there's no liberal bias in Hollywood, none at all.

But "Idiocracy" is worth a couple of hours of your time, if you can find it. It's only playing in seven cities in North America. By the end of the week, that'll probably be zero. If I was Mike Judge, I'd be ready to do a little Monday Night Rehabililitation on Fox. (You'll need to see the movie for an explanation)

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