So we made it. December 21st came and went, the Mayan calendar rolled over into whatever the next b'ak'tun is called, and as far as I can tell nothing exploded. I say this half-joking, but I know at least two people at my office who genuinely stocked up on canned goods "just in case," and now they've got a garage full of beans they have to eat through by summer. Thats the real disaster, honestly. Not the apocalypse. The bean surplus.
Anyway. Christmas is done, everyone's home, and I'm sitting here on the couch two days later still picking wrapping paper out from under the coffee table. Figured I'd do a little wrap-up post before the year fully closes out, because a few things happened this month that I wanted to get down while they're fresh.
The Instagram thing actually got walked back
If you were anywhere near a computer last week you probably saw the meltdown over Instagram's new terms of service. Short version: they announced changes (set to kick in mid-January) that basically said they could use your photos in ads without telling you or paying you a dime. People lost it. My sister-in-law, who posts approximately one photo of her cat per day, deleted her account in protest, which felt like a bit much but okay, principles are principles.
The part that doesn't get repeated enough is that Kevin Systrom actually walked a lot of it back within about a day. He put up a post saying it was never their intention to sell people's photos and that the confusing language would get fixed before the new terms go live next month. I'm not saying everyone should just trust a company because a founder wrote a blog post (I'm genuinely not sure I trust it either), but it's worth saying the story didn't end where the first wave of headlines left it. My sister-in-law is still gone though. Cat photos, RIP.
The Nexus 4 saga continues to be dumb
I wanted a Nexus 4 for Christmas. I did not get a Nexus 4 for Christmas. Nobody got a Nexus 4 for Christmas, because Google and LG apparently built about eleven of them. The thing has been effectively unbuyable since it launched back in November: $299 for the 8GB, $349 for the 16GB, if you can ever get the Play Store page to load with actual "add to cart" instead of the permanent out-of-stock banner. I checked on Christmas morning out of pure spite and, shocker, still gone.
What I got instead was a Kindle Paperwhite from my mother, which I was lukewarm about opening and now cannot put down. The front-lit screen is genuinely nice for reading in bed without waking anyone up, which is more than I can say for my old Kindle where I needed a clip-on light that always ended up pointed at the ceiling instead of the page. So that's my actual hot take of the week: skip the phone upgrade drama, the e-reader with the built-in light is the sleeper hit of this holiday season.
Also, my nephew has a Wii U now
He's seven, he unwrapped it at 6:45 in the morning, and by 7:15 the whole downstairs sounded like a NASCAR broadcast because that's apparently what New Super Mario Bros. U does to a household. The GamePad thing is a strange piece of hardware — it's heavier than I expected, and I kept accidentally covering the little IR sensor with my thumb — but watching him figure out the second-screen map stuff on his own without anyone explaining it to him was kind of impressive. Kids just absorb interfaces in a way I don't anymore. I had to ask him how to switch input on the TV.
That's about it from me. No grand theory of what 2012 meant, no predictions for next year, I'll save that for closer to New Year's when I've had more coffee and fewer in-laws in my kitchen. Going back to my book now. The light works great, in case that wasn't clear.