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(CNN) -- If you grew up in the 1980s there's nothing guaranteed to make you feel older than a trip to the movies. "Conan the Barbarian", "The Thing" and "Footloose"... What's next? "Top Gun"?

But if there have to be remakes, then let them all be as much fun as Craig Brewer's "Footloose."

Brewer's previous movies, "Hustle & Flow" and "Black Snake Moan," were southern exploitation pictures with a smooth retro gloss, their sleazy trappings disguising a heart of pure vanilla. But both showed a real feel for music: hip-hop and 12-bar blues respectively. That's a good starting point when it comes to "Footloose," a fairly trite rock-n-roll rebellion story that's redeemed by its faith in dance.

The 1984 original was the first screenplay by songwriter Dean Pitchford, and Brewer sticks close enough to the template that Pitchford shares a screenplay credit with him here. Both versions get bogged down in silly speechifying, but in almost every respect Brewer's high fidelity cover version improves on the previous movie. It's sharper, punchier, better written and mostly better acted too. If anything the city-country cultural divide cuts deeper today than it did in the Reagan era, but Brewer shifts the action a few degrees south and navigates a more even-handed course between them. His small town, Bomont, Tennessee, is quite sympathetically drawn. And if the city by-laws prohibiting loud music, drink and public dancing make the local elders come off like the Taliban, Dennis Quaid's Reverend Moore is not the shrill evangelical caricature John Lithgow played, but a concerned parent and pastor who assumes responsibility for protecting his flock in the wake of a personal tragedy.

Los Gatos, California (CNN) -- A line began to form at the Apple Store here on the eve of the iPhone 4S release, as is often the case around the world during the company's product launches.

At the front of this particular line Thursday, Steve Wozniak sits in a Pico armchair, sipping Diet Dr Pepper and scanning e-mails from his white iPad.

The Apple co-founder, who gets a paycheck of "a couple hundred dollars every two weeks" and still maintains his status as employee No. 1 in company records, hasn't been able to stay put for long. Crowds of Apple fans, family friends and people who have seen him riding his Segway around the neighborhood stop to say hi, take pictures and ask for his autograph.

"I'll be taking a thousand pictures," Wozniak whispered with a smile. "I'm going to sit down and see if I can get a little e-mail done, because there's no way I'm going to get it all done today."

Seconds later, an enthusiastic man in a yellow polo shirt positioned his two kids near the computer legend and pleaded for him to pose. Wozniak immediately sprang to his feet with a grin on his face.

People brought iPhones, iPods and iPads for Wozniak to sign with a marker. "Now your phone is not going to be worth as much when you sell it," Wozniak said to one woman before signing her iPhone 4.

Fans gave Wozniak their condolences over the late Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder who died last week. Flowers, partially eaten apples and notes were laid in front of Apple Stores around the world, including this one, where the memorial was set just a few feet from Wozniak's spot in line.

Wozniak explained that sending flowers or onetime celebrations are the kinds of traditions he and Jobs agreed were unnecessary. However, he talked openly about how much he misses his high-school pal, with whom he built a technology empire.

Wozniak acknowledged that he could have easily made one phone call to Apple and gotten the phone he's waiting in line for, but he didn't. He has yet to play with an iPhone 4S or its Siri voice-controlled assistant. He has said previously that he does not ask colleagues about products in development because he does not want to ruin the surprise for himself.

Steve Wozniak autographed fans' Apple products outside the Los Gatos store.

"I want to get mine along with the millions of other fans," Wozniak said. "I just want to be able to talk to my phone."

Analysts have expressed disappointment in the iPhone 4S, but Wozniak, who looks forward to every new Apple device, is especially animated when discussing it. Over the past year, he has not been shy about his anticipation for voice-assist technology, like the new 4S tool called Siri.

People who say they have waited in lines behind Wozniak during past Apple releases have written spiteful messages online claiming he had used his celebrity to cut in line just before the stores opened. Wozniak said that he is usually further back in line at these events but that fans in front of him insist that he get his devices first.

On Thursday, there is no dispute about Wozniak's place in line. His Segway, which he rode from his nearby home, is parked in a corner near the store's entrance. Wozniak arrived about noon, and he plans to stay overnight in order to get the new iPhone first, he said.

(CNN) -- The love affair between BlackBerry devotees and their mobile communicators is becoming strained, and some of them made the quarrel very public this week after a service outage.

Fans often discuss the intimate details about why they are attached at the hip to smartphones made by Research in Motion -- the clack-clack of the tiny keys, the feel of the trackball or square pad on their thumbs, the informative indicator light calling out for attention. They affectionately call it the "CrackBerry."

After the recent outage, which RIM says was caused by a server error, some longtime BlackBerry users are writing goodbye letters on blogs, and on message boards operated and frequented by the CrackBerry collective. Richie, a British member of a Web forum called CrackBerry, summed up the concerns, saying RIM has been "chipping away our faith" in the company's ability to satisfy customers.

In interviews with reporters, RIM executives issued apologies, which they also made public in a recorded video, but they avoided questions about whether they planned to offer incentives as compensation for the millions of customers affected by the outage. RIM did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.

By comparison, after Sony restored its network this summer following a lengthy outage, the company compensated users of its subscription service, and gave free games and movie rentals to all users.

Netflix has offered small discounts to customers affected by technical troubles.

Despite RIM's lack of public comment, an AT&T customer in Cleveland wrote on the CrackBerry message boards that he received a credit on his bill when he called to complain about the outage.

RIM customers still holding onto their faith in the company should pay close attention to a conference being held in San Francisco next week. The pressure on BlackBerry from competitors is mounting, and RIM's promised next-generation models, with dual-core processors and large touchscreens, are overdue.

A CrackBerry forum member, posting under the alias N8star, says he is giving up his BlackBerry Torch 9850 "after years of being treated like a battered spouse by RIM," he wrote. His wife urged him to switch to an iPhone, and he says he will acquiesce.

Jim Kerstetter, the executive editor for technology website CNET, published an editorial on Thursday titled "RIM, you're dead to me now." He writes that he has defended BlackBerry, despite the lack of multimedia features, but that the recent outage has spurred him to switch phones and operating systems.

RIM still has a comfortable hold on corporate buyers, who snap up large orders for employees. Security experts tend to trust BlackBerry more than other smartphone platforms.

However, even tech departments in companies are becoming more lenient on this policy. David Hurst, who was waiting in line to buy an iPhone 4S for his wife at a store in Atlanta, said her company "has finally approved for her to switch from BlackBerry to iPhone, and her BlackBerry is just falling apart."

In the now crucial mobile-consumer market, Google and Apple both lead BlackBerry in sales, a trend expected to continue into the crucial holiday shopping season. A combined 69% of smartphone buyers say they plan to get either an Android phone or iPhone, while only 8% indicated that BlackBerry was at the top of their shopping lists, according to an NPD study from this summer.