The iPad Mini?

To be honest... not much. Yeah, I know. What a let down. How could you do this to us, Erwin? But I have to admit. The iPad Mini is without a doubt the best tablet I've ever used and/or owned. I've gone through all iterations of the iPad except the 4th one, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab Plus, Note 10, and even the Nexus 7.

Frankly, the Mini blows them all away. It's just about the right size for a tablet, yet unlike the Nexus 7 or the smaller Galaxy Tabs, the screen is larger and thus feels more usable when in the hand, without those ugly bezels.

It's fast enough to do anything you would want to do on an iPad, unlike say the original iPad which really began to show its age sometime last year. It still works more smoothly than any Android tablet, even though its specs seem measly weak, and more importantly it has all the right apps I want on it that often have no decent counterpart on Android.

Apps like Converter+, Manga Storm, Awesome Note and Pip just don't have any equivalents on Android. Sure, we have lots of unit converters on Android, but none of them are as elegant as Converter+, with the very, very useful simultaneous-units-converted-in-real-time-alongside-each-other display of Converter+. Manga Storm (and even other apps like Manga Rock 2) simply run circles around the best Android manga-reading apps like Mango or Manga Watcher, it's so bad it's not even a contest. And dice rollings apps just haven't hit their stride on Android, something important to people like me playing tabletop RPGs or the odd game of Arkham Horror in a pinch.

I'm no Apple fanboy but I have to give credit where credit is due. The Galaxy Note II is still the smartphone of choice, to be honest, but the iPad Mini is just such a nice, nice tablet that it's really become my go-to device for most of my internet, reading and social  networking needs.

But hey, this wouldn't be WhatsWrongWith.co if I didn't bash the thing a little, right?

Oh yeah baby! Come on Apple, what the hell is up with not giving us a "Retina" display on the Mini? I mean you were making such a big deal about how Retina made your iPhones, iPod Touches and MacBooks so much better than the competition, and viola! Here we are with a piddly 160 PPI on the Mini. It wouldn't be such a big deal, were I not using a Galaxy Note side by side the Mini and seeing that ooh so crisp sharp display everytime I glance from tablet to smart phone/phablet.

It's not a dealbreaker, but ohhh when I see the iPad Mini 2 later this year with Retina on it I am so going to stab a voodoo doll of Tim Cook in the groin with a very, very fat needle.

The other main issue I am docking the Mini for is its freakin' price. When tablets like the Nexus 7 are coming out for about 11,000php, the Mini at its cheapest is around 16,000php. A difference of 5k pesos comes out as a little shy more than $100US... and I know online the price differentials are similar. So as usual, while the Mini is overall the superior tablet on my scoreboard, its ability to kill my wallet is also similarly far above the competition.

We still have other intrinsic iOS weaknesses, such as how the iPad sucks for viewing movies with its too fat and not wide-enough screen, the need to convert videos into icky formats suitable for iPad viewing, the need to use iTunes to sync instead of just drag-and-dropping the video onto the tablet. Or how we have no expandable data storage, the annoying proprietary dock and cable, or the boring as hell home screen that hasn't evolved since the original iPhone.

Apple wouldn't be Apple without these stupid limitations, but screw that.

"Give me my perfect tablet, goddamn Apple!" -- frowning and extremely irate consumer with an unrealistic sense of entitlement

The Pope?

So let me ask all you people... what the heck is wrong with the Pope?

Not the new one... although he seems to be missing a lung or two. I'm talking about Pope Benedict XVI, the sixteenth of his name, the man who led the Roman Catholic Church into some really serious shit.

Let's look at the rap list of embarrassments that happened during our erstwhile clueless pontiff's watch:

• Vatileaks - this huge scandal was probably the breaking point of why poor Benedict fell off his horse. Secret Popey memos about Church corruption, bribes, secret deals and one hell of a media shitstorm. Oh, and the butler did it.
•  Happy, Happy Cardinals - and do note that the first "happy" is quite literal while the second "happy" is a euphemism. Apparently, them Cardinals like taking nice long baths with... other Cardinals. Of the manly type. Or maybe manly backscrubbers. Oh, yes, happy days (and nights)!
• Condoms for One, for All! - Probably the only Pope in history to promote the use of condoms, a bold move when the church traditionally frowns upon the use of contraceptives. As a certified conservative, the Pope's move was almost revolutionary... until he backtracked on it and put his foot in his mouth.
• Children are the World's Treasures - and apparently, moreso a priest's treasure. Under our dear Pope, hundreds of priest child abuse victims crawled out of the woodwork, with stories of mafia-style "settlement contracts" being thrown left and right with the Pope's blessings.

It's no wonder why, in the grand scheme of things, Benedict was the first Pope in centuries to resign from his post. Rumors abound, saying that our dear Pope Emeritus had extremely weak leadership skills. It's fair game to hypothesize that this particular Pope couldn't keep his cardinals and bishops and oh yes butler on a tight leash, so they probably ended up doing a lot of infighting and political maneuvering during his reign. 

This is probably the greatest headache of a schism the Church has had in modern times, and being a manager who leads hundreds of people daily, I know that it's an incredible lot of stress to have to deal with these kinds of bickering underlings day in and day out. 

And what is the main reason why people resign from their jobs? It's stress. Yeah, usually people say it's their boss, but what exactly does a bad boss do to an otherwise good employee? Oh yeah. He causes him a lot of stress! 

There's no doubt that the previous Pope ducked out as he wasn't able to take the heat. But then, sometimes, I think that this is the real reason why the Pope left was a great career move:

Credit to the original picture creator

Seriously people, what's wrong with this picture? Well nothing about this picture... but the picture of the Church at large and how it's supposed to be leading a fourth of the world's population...

It's bleak. 

Women and Starbucks?

What the hell. I know that people like going to Starbucks for a little posing, and that lately law students, MBA students and beleaguered headphone aficionados like to frequent Starbucks for shits and giggles.

I used to never really be able to understand why a person would go to a coffee shop to study or do their thesis, but then again at the time I had a posh house that was comfy enough to do all these things. Ever since I moved out into a crumby 13 square meter room I realized I'd never get any serious work done in that glorified cubicle.

As I started studying this trend further, though, I realized that amongst the people who tend to go around trying to look smart and studious at Starbucks, a disproportionate amount of them are women!

Lo and behold:

Looking good, but... why are you here?

And they all seem to be flaunting gadgets with a fruit on them, saucy coñio accents, and bashful emo looks all the while fluttering and preening their feathers. Are they like, available?

I am not really sure what is up with this trend. Do women have an intrinsic need to be seen more? Is caffeine an integral part of the female diet? Or am I just talking out of my ass with these chauvinistic assumptions?