Bugbear – iOS vs Mac OS X

 Phones, Technical  1 Response »
Nov 082011
 

If I had to name one bugbear about iOS vs Mac OS X, it would be this: thanks to the two of them using different names for the same app, it doesn’t matter whether I’m on iOS or I’m on OS X, I constantly find myself briefly befuddled when I go to look up an address, phone number or details about a person.

Why?

Well on Mac OS X, the app you use is:

That’s right – Address Book. You can see where I’m heading here, right?

On iOS, for some reason, instead of “Address Book”, we ended up with “Contacts:

ContactsAm I the only person that finds this annoyingly inconsistent? Am I the only person who has that momentary brain-fart every time I go to use either app on either platform?

I’m guessing no.

Likely now with 5 major iterations of iOS in play, we’re not likely to see this change. Still, it’s a pity someone wasn’t tasked with making common activities between the two platforms syntactically consistent.

 Posted by PMdG at 11:57 am  Tagged with: ,

Hello News Corp my old friend

 Humour, Life, Morality, Music, Phones, Politics, Writing  No Responses »
Jul 142011
 

A tribute to the News of the World and News Corp.

Sing along to the music from “The Sound of Silence” (or this instrumental version if it helps):

Hello News Corp, my old friend

I see you’ve hacked my phones again

Because a rumour had you thinking

That you’d delve while I was sleeping

And the wiretap that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

 

In restless dreams you heard my thoughts

Relayed them to all the world

‘Neath the title “He’s a tramp!”

I turn the page, my eyes go damp

When my eyes were stabbed by your words of shite

That caused a fight

And touched the sound of silence

 

And from the stolen words I saw

Ten thousand people maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing bile that voices never shared

No one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

 

“Fools,” said I “you do not know

Your works like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my truth I do beseech you”

But my words like silent raindrops fell

And echoed in the wells of silence

 

And the people read and prayed

To the vitriol they had made

And the beast flashed out its warning

In the words found in the morning

And the head said “Celebs and royals in the nude, for all

you prudes”

And fame it falls

And whispered in the sound of silence

 Posted by PMdG at 9:53 pm  Tagged with: , ,

A cell tower in every street!

 Data, Phones, Technical, Telcos  1 Response »
Feb 172011
 

Those funny folks over in the Coalition are continuing their “we hate NBN” rhetoric, with the alternative, you know, being a fully wireless network.

(A wireless network aiming for 10Mbit peak connectivity, that is.)

As I said, every time I hear them blathering on about the wonders of wireless technology, I’m reminded of John Malkovich’s line in “Burn After Reading”: “You’re part of a league of morons“.

Amazingly, they’ve now descended into full force farce. Even our communications minister, (aka “Minister for Censoring the Internet”), who … let’s face it, struggles with technology concepts at the best of times – even he understands the inherent limitations of trying to get everyone onto wireless:

STEPHEN CONROY: This claim this wireless is going to replace fixed fibre networks and destroy the business case of the National Broadband Network is simply a misleading campaign by Tony Abbott because he doesn’t understand that wireless networks, the more people that use them, the slower they get and the further you stand from the tower, the slower the broadband gets.

(7.30 report, 15/02/2011).

The coalition solution? Oh, that’s easy:

MALCOLM TURNBULL: But of course you can install more base stations and you can supplement it with, you know, extra cells, wifi cells, if you like. So, there are many techniques for increasing the capacity of wireless networks.

(Ibid.)

What an amazing idea – if you don’t have enough cells, just build more of them!

Except … just how many cells are we talking about, Malcolm?

“In order to get those 100 megabit speeds and beyond you’d need to be installing a base station around about on every suburban block,” she said. “At the end of every street there’d need to be a base station.”

(Crikey: Coalition Broadband: a wireless tower in every street)

Just think of that! A cell tower in every street! Near every school – hell, there’d probably be one on each corner of the school. There’ll be cell towers near cancer patients and pregnant mothers, near old people and babies and school kids, and there’d be no escape – because there’d be one on every street.

Now, at the current levels of exposure, I’m not convinced cell towers pose a problem – I’m yet to see conclusive evidence either way. When those cell towers increase by several orders of magnitude to provide that level of coverage? That’s going to get a lot of people worried.

A lot of those people who are going to worry about cell tower radiation are those who are also thinking along the lines of “NBN bad. Wireless good.”

Let’s keep them appraised of the consequences of a wireless “high speed” internet for Australia, shall we?

 Posted by PMdG at 5:46 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

Chaos theory

 Phones, Technical, Telcos  1 Response »
Jan 152011
 

This could almost be nominally a follow-up to a post I made ages ago, “The walled garden vs the overrun garden“. You’ll probably want to read that first.

Now that Android has been out for a while, I wanted to reflect on how fragmented the Android platform has become, and how the consumers have not reaped the benefit of an “open” platform. Indeed, despite arguments to the contrary, Android has proven itself to be a remarkably closed platform that is actively used to deny user freedom.

Don’t believe me? Let’s have a quick run through the catalogue of failures, or to be more honest, the catalogue of “consumers being shafted”:

The list just goes on and on, and frankly gets a bit boring and repetitive. The message remains the same though: Android is “open” for values of “open = closed”. A consumer using Android is at the mercy of both the carrier and the hardware manufacturer, unless of course they want to “root” the device, but that’s not something that Aunty Betty is going to be interested in doing.

OK, so Apple has a “closed wall” garden, but at least it’s a well maintained garden. Devices get OS updates for at least 2 years. Carriers can’t install consumer-borking user experiences on the devices, and … oh, the upgrade process is simple.

A very common story is devices that are less than a year old are being denied updates. Hello? What the fuck? That’s why I dropped Palm all those years ago. “What’s that? You want to upgrade from X.2 to X.3 of the OS? OK, pay $1000 for a new phone and you’ll have the new OS!”

Android is increasingly becoming the platform for people who want to be screwed without bothering to have sex.

 Posted by PMdG at 7:09 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

iPhone 4 Delayed in Australia?

 Phones, Technical, Telcos  No Responses »
Jul 152010
 

I personally can’t wait to test out the much touted reception issues with the iPhone 4. You probably think I’m crazy, but actually, I’m perfectly lucid for one clear reason: in order to do that, I’ll have waved goodbye to Vodafone, since I’ll be shifting carriers when I get an iPhone 4.

When I got an iPhone, I shifted from Telstra to Vodafone. I then found out that just because you can have perfect cell coverage with one carrier doesn’t mean you’ll get perfect cell coverage with another carrier, even when they advertise good coverage on the Central Coast. The only people who would describe Vodafone cell coverage in my area as “great” would probably also describe a shit sandwich as “tasty”.

So, quite frankly I’m looking forward to the phone – particularly when I don’t, as they say, “hold it that way” – I hold a phone from the top, not the bottom.

(I wish, personally, that Apple had engineered a phone that worked against the people who “hold it that way”, when “that way” is “imbecilic walkie talkie” way. You know who I’m talking about – the twits who go on speaker phone – as if I and others around them give a rats arse about their conversation – and talk into the microphone holding the phone laying flat poking out from their mouth, rather than against their face. I’m not a betting man, but if Apple had engineered a phone that prevented idiots from using their phones that way, the media coverage would have been far more positive…)

But it seems inevitable at this point that the iPhone 4 will be delayed in Australia – and not just picking on Australia, maybe a great many or all of the second wave of countries. Here’s a few reasons I suspect why:

  • Apple are still unable to say when they will ship the white iPhone 4 units.
  • When Apple have traditionally said that a product will be available in “late <month>”, they typically start the pre-order process at least 2, sometimes 3-4 weeks out from that date. There’s been no sign of the pre-order process starting in Australia yet. (By comparison, for a May 28 release date, my pre-order for iPads – that had already had their release date put off a month – was May 10.)
  • If discussions are being held at Apple regarding remediation of the kerfuffle over the signal strength, they won’t go and add another 15 or 30 (or whatever the number is) countries to the list of affected devices until they have decided what they’re going to do.
  • I got an email from Optus on Tuesday, more than a week after I registered for interest, that read, “We can’t wait to bring you the latest iPhone 4 News … and we are looking forward to being able to share it with you as soon as we can.” It seems somewhat doubtful if Optus would bother to send out an email if it was expected pre-orders would start this week. If pre-orders don’t start this week, that further diminishes the amount of time left before the end of the month, again making the chances of a July release lower.
  • If initial sales are to be believed, iPhone 4 is selling in record numbers. Like the iPad before it, Apple may be focusing on increasing production and providing units to the original core countries before expanding outward again.

So, as of July 14, with no sign of pre-orders available, my guess is that iPhone 4 isn’t going to hit Australia, and the other countries in the second wave, until late August. (Of course, I hope Apple might blow this prediction out of the water and announce availability soon.)

[Edit]

With Apple having announced a press conference to be held 10am Friday US/Pacific time at their HQ on Friday, it seems completely implausible that there’ll be any announcement regarding the release date of the iPhone 4 in the second-wave countries before that time. Given it’s reasonably unprecedented for Apple to hold press conferences about products (rather than to release products) , I’d surmise that my “late August” prediction of an iPhone 4 release in Australia may actually be optimistic.

Let’s hope iOS 4.1 addresses some iPhone 3G performance issues to tide us over then … iOS 4 hasn’t exactly been kind to the older phones…

[Edit 2010-07-17]

Apple have said in the press conference that the second wave countries, including Australia, will see the iPhone on July 30. I’m happily proved wrong, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

 Posted by PMdG at 6:30 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Why all Android phones are still toy phones

 Phones  3 Responses »
Jan 112010
 

Much fuss has been made about Google’s Nexus One over the last few days. Let me tell you a simple fact though: all Android phones are still toy phones.

Don’t get me wrong, the potential for the technology is good, and much as I love my iPhone and have no intention of swapping any time soon, I have a strong desire to see healthy competition in the Smartphone market. RIM barely provides this. It addresses a limited, primarily business market, and that’s becoming increasingly apparent. Palm lost it years ago. (I had a Palm Treo 650 for 2 years, and got one update during that time. Palm spent years treating their users like disposed faecal matter, demanding that to get even a minor OS update they replace their device. You reap what you sow, Palm.) Microsoft has shambled from one failure to another with their Windows Mobile devices for over ten years without any major successes, and of late has seen their extremely limited market share plummet like a brick thrown from a plane … a plane that was still on the tarmac, mind you.

Android does seem the best possible hope for strong competition to the iPhone.

But, and I’ll be very blunt here, all Android phones are still toy phones.

Why?

Look at the Apple App Store. Apple has made the iPhone what it is today with third party applications. Most users have dozens of them, some have hundreds. Each one of those applications takes up space. Some may be small, some may be large, and others huge. Thankfully though on iPhones (and iPod Touches), there’s plenty of space, with the smallest iPhone having 8GB of space, fully shared between music, video and applications.

It doesn’t matter how much space you have on an Android phone at the moment, there’s an inescapable limitation: you are limited to 190MB for application storage. Yes, that even includes the much vaunted Nexus One. 190MB is, despite what some people think, not very much. A couple of games will quickly fill you up to that. If you think games aren’t important, think again. Games constitute a significant portion of the App store. People want games. Even more so, on powerful Smartphones, people are clearly valuing microgames – games they can run for five minutes while waiting for a bus to arrive or while in a queue. Microgames will usually take less space, but people want more of them, and good graphics always take space.

190MB? That’s laughably low.

This is something that desperately needs to be addressed by Google. If they want any hope of their product surviving, they need to fix this one basic flaw as soon as possible.

 Posted by PMdG at 7:51 pm  Tagged with: , ,
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