Andy Laub

As a technophile, it’s should be pretty apparent that I deal with an awful lot of gadget-lust. I’ve been getting increasingly better at shrugging it off, but that temptation becomes exponential on launch dates of particular devices. There’s something in the air on days like today; tech blogs go crazy, Twitter explodes, and nerds around the world line up outside of stores for the privilege of… giving away their money.

But you might be surprised to find that I didn’t join the masses today (or two weeks ago) considering my rabid enthusiasm for the newest iPhone. I toyed with the idea of preordering, but when the date jumped from July 2 to July 14, I figured that I’d be able to pick one up locally before then.

Yet this morning I got out of bed, did some work, ate a banana, went for a run, and came back here to write this. What I didn’t do was drive as fast as I could to Walmart (the only local reseller whose stock isn’t allocated to preorders) the minute I woke up, desperately hoping to get my hands on a shiny new toy. Don’t think that it wasn’t a major possibility.

In the last few days, though, I’ve been trying to pin down just why I so desperately wanted this phone that I felt compelled to inconvenience myself to acquire it. I couldn’t answer that question, beyond what I can only describe as a really strange sort of peer pressure, where by “peer” I mean “nerds and blogs”.

The only other explanation I can offer for this specific instance is that it’s the first time I’ve actually been eligible for a new iPhone at the time of its launch. AT&T didn’t even exist here when the first iPhone hit, and I was in the middle of my contracts for the 3G and 3GS.

But look! This is me, taking a stand.

I ordered one from the Apple Store while I was writing this.

“Are you gonna get Red Dead Redemption?” they said. I said I didn’t know; I knew the game was a reboot of sorts for the franchise, but having never played the original (Red Dead Revolver) that didn’t mean too much to me. There was a lot of talk about how this new installment in the series would be taking a lot of cues from Grand Theft Auto 4 (the Best Game Ever™) to the point where the proper title was eventually replaced with Grand Theft Auto But With Horses for the sake of convenience.

And that was really my hangup; I wasn’t sure if I could love a GTA game sans the A. I enjoy those types of games because even after the game proper is long since finished, it’s fun for me to drive around the city and just play. I couldn’t picture doing that on a horse (or really any other means of transportation). Honestly, the earlier the game’s setting, the less interesting I find the driving experience. The Godfather or The Sabotuer are both good examples of games that are just not modern enough to make the driving element engaging to me.

So I didn’t buy Red Dead Redemption. My recent changes in both mindset (don’t buy every game) and cashflow (inconsistent) have prevented that, so far. However, when I got a “we miss you; free rental!” call from the local video store (yeah, we have those!), I knew what I had to do. Three days should be enough time to get to know a game, right?

I think it was somewhere around hour ten when the truth really hit me. This isn’t just Grand Theft Auto But With Horses; this is a real, bona fide Grand Theft Auto game that just happens to be set in a world before the automobile was ubiquitous. Everything else – the mission structure, the tone, the general story, the gameplay, the feeling – fits seamlessly into the GTA framework (I sincerely hope to come across at least one ancestor of a current GTA character), and when you start to think of this game as an endeavor on the same level with such a behemoth it becomes that much more impressive.

Suffice it to say, Red Dead Redemption is a very good game that I had a lot of fun with in my limited exposure to it. There are a few nitpicks, the biggest being that it’s difficult to tell friends from enemies which wreaks havoc on your reputation; the auto aim isn’t particularly picky about who it points your barrel at and then suddenly you’re WANTED and all hell breaks loose. I still can’t figure out the fast travel system, if there even is one. Something about setting up camp and then jumping from there to a previous settlement, which I never experienced.

In typical Rockstar fashion, though, the pros far outweigh the cons. Visuals and design are solid, and audio continues to be a strong point just as it has in the GTA series. With no radio the music instead is sparse and appropriately Western, mellow when appropriate but becoming more frantic during shootouts and other dramatic sequences. Voice acting is superb, especially in the case of main protagonist John Marston. He reminds me very much of Timothy Olyphant’s character in FX’s Justified.

Unsurprisingly, gameplay is nearly identical to Grand Theft Auto IV, with a few notable exceptions. The new(?) DeadEye system (which effectively lets you slow time to pick off a number of targets) is an absolute joy to use and may stand out as the defining mechanic of RDR combat versus GTA combat; I don’t foresee it working in the context of a more modern setting but it’s very appropriate here.

Most exciting though, is that we’re finally seeing a game from Rockstar with no health meters! RDR has gone the way of many modern shooters in that you still have a finite amount of health, but as your condition becomes more critical the screen turns red. If you can find cover, the reverse happens after a few moments. It makes for a much less stressful experience and unlike DeadEye, I hope this propagates to all future GTA games.

In short, Red Dead Redemption is both a great game by itself and, if you’d like, a worthy entry in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Three days was enough to get to scratch the surface but I definitely look forward to spending more time together in the future.

Today at WWDC, Steve Jobs introduced the eager public to iPhone 4, the latest and greatest addition to the iPhone family. A short list of awesome:

• 940×640 HIGH-REZ “Retina” IPS display
• Front and rear cameras with flash and HD video recording
• A4 processor (like such as the one found in the iPad!)
• FaceTime video chat over wi-fi
• All-new (albeit unsurprising) industrial metal and glass case design

So basically, it’s everything that we all knew was coming, yet the fact that it is official and will be here soon (and on my half-birthday!) is no less exciting. It’s a home run in just about every way; I’m especially excited about the new optics. My entire list of gripes can be summed up thusly:

• Storage tops out at 32GB.

Given that iPhones have a tendency to catch up with the prior year’s iPod touch in terms of storage I didn’t think it was too far-fetched to expect the iPhone 4 in 32 GB and 64 GB flavors; instead they’ll remain the same as the 3GS which means they still can’t accommodate my entire music library (which currently weighs in at nearly 47 GB for those curious). But it’s a small sacrifice; I’ll be the first to admit that at least half of my library should never be listened to again, ever.

But the phone is just the first third of an all-important trifecta. There was a fair amount of talk about iOS 4 (formerly iPhone OS 4) as well; the iPhone demoed was clearly running that software which leaves me to assume that the new phones will ship with it later this month. I’m curious as to how that will shake out regarding the iOS 4 update for the current crop of devices.

And finally, AT&T may have actually made a decision that works out in my favor for once. Last week they announced a restructuring of their data plans for all smartphones, eliminating the $30 unlimited plan and replacing it with two new variations:

1. The “DataPro” plan gives you 2 GB of data per month for $25, with each additional 1 GB costing $10
2. The “DataPlus” plan gives you 200 MB of data per month for $15, with each additional 200 MB costing $15

It was difficult to determine how good of a deal this ended up being without first consulting my own usage records; as it turns out it’s rare for me to even come close to 200 MB per month. As a result, I think I’ll be able to safely downgrade to the DataPlus plan and easily knock $15 off of my current bill (and as I’ve mentioned before, price per month is much more important to me than buy-in price). And on rare occasions where I exceed that bandwidth, I’m still only paying what I was before, which is a fine compromise.

All things considered, I’m pretty pleased with this most recent round of iPhone news.

One of my least favorite aspects of the process of makin’ websites is cross-browser testing. It’s not that I feel it’s unimportant; nor does it really cause me too much stress. But the mere fact that it is a thing that has to happen can be cause for frustration. Fortunately, it’s 2010 and for the most part we can be content to worry about which browsers support which bleeding edge features. Unfortunately, it’s 2010 and we still have to test in Internet Explorer 6.

I’ll be honest and say that of all the headaches I’ve dealt with over the past few years, IE6 has decreasingly been the cause of them. I think more people are starting to come around to the theory I posted on Twitter this morning:

IE6 users either A) know their browser sucks and expect a degraded experience (corporate) or B) don’t know/don’t care (grandparents).

Everybody knows this is true. Any self-respecting nerd wouldn’t be caught dead using IE6 – we’re talking about software that:

1. is nearly 10 years old.
2. was never that great to begin with.
3. stopped being supported 2 versions of Windows ago.

All of which begs the question: why are so many people still using it? The obvious answer is because they can. Massive corporations insist that their websites continue to be IE6-friendly, which means there’s no incentive for the user (or the user’s IT department) to upgrade. And since they don’t upgrade, then massive corporations insist that their websites continue to be IE6-friendly.

Which is totally insane; the burden then falls on the developers to build websites that somehow feature the latest technology and run in a browser that was built before most of that technology was invented? I mean, we can do it, but we don’t like doing it because it encourages bad habits.

As developers we can only explain all of this to the client in the name of enlightenment, but If anyone can pull the plug on IE6 it’s the enterprises. Google, bless them, is leading by example and we can only hope others take notice. We’ve got to get the IE6 users potty-trained onto better browsers instead of coddling them into adulthood while they’re still shitting their pants.