A Truly Inspiring TED Talk About the Spinning Beach Ball of Death

[Compile 'em all]

Amusing ... for the first 30 seconds. After that just plain silly.

Agreed. The bar for "humor" is pretty low these days.

 

[jlgolson]

How is that "truly inspiring"?

That's part of the joke. ;-)

 

[Luap]

Agreed. The bar for "humor" is pretty low these days.

Im glad its not just me that thought so then!

 

[abhimat.gautam]

Apple would never design something like the beach ball nowadays. It's far too colourful. Even now as they try to strip all the colour out of Mac OS, I hope they keep the beach ball.

Have you seen iCal and Address Book? I wish they would strip the color out of that.

 

[notjustjay]

The funniest part is that so many of the tw*ts commenting on the TED page completely missed the joke.

Poor presenter, spent all that time preparing what could have been a world-changing speech, only to be ruined because a bunch of disrespectful audience members all coincidentally hit the same sale on beach balls and colorful umbrellas.

 

[jicon]

Nothing inspiring about that. To quote Louis C.K.:

Can we get over calling everything gorgeous and awesome? 'I made an awesome sandwich', 'This screen is gorgeous'.

What do you use as an adjective for the birth of your child, or seeing your soon to be wife in a wedding dress? You spent that adjective on a sandwich.

 

[retry4]

oh my God!, that happens to me all the time. Random people in colored suits and beach balls start flying every where and strange music starts playing in the background. Doesn't that happen to you too??? #

 

[ramuman]

I didn't care it was an attempt to add fun to a TED talk or the like. It was just idiotically executed. I agree with the comments about how it lost its novelty 30s in, if it had any at all.

 

[Azathoth]

Vaguely amusing for about a minute, fast forward fest (FFF) after that...

OS X Lion's Finder doesn't even have the common decency to show the Beach Ball - it just freezes for 20s then continues on as if nothing happened.

(2011 MBA)

 

[GenesisST]

I bet any Apple employees in the audience were freaking out at first.

To be honest, I haven't seen a spinning beach ball since I upgraded my 2009 model MBP to 8 gigs. Coincidental? Maybe, maybe not.

Install XCode...

 

[BiteMyApple]

Creative, but far from hilarious. Doesn't take much to make people laugh these days... But I guess this is a good thing in times of recession.

 

[Penderworth]

Creative, but far from hilarious. Doesn't take much to make people laugh these days... But I guess this is a good thing in times of recession.

I agree and would like to add that it is by no means "inspiring" either.

 

[grahamperrin]

… To quote Louis C.K.:

Can we get over calling everything gorgeous and awesome? 'I made an awesome sandwich', 'This screen is gorgeous'.

+1

Awesome would be … the skies, viewed by mankind thousands or millions of years ago, long before the skies were 'understood'.

What do you use as an adjective for the birth of your child, or seeing your soon to be wife in a wedding dress? You spent that adjective on a sandwich.

Some newborn babies make me feel, like, totally sandwich. (With kittens my emotions are much more brioche.)

Most brides-to-be look screeny, in the right dress.