Andy Laub

I (still) can’t make the case for an iPad – not yet, at least. I think it’s a brilliant machine and it’s certainly the best in it’s class, but it remains comfortably outside of “impulse buy” territory.

Still, I was starting to get a hint of tablet envy. I think the seeds were sown when my dad brought home a budget tablet obtained in the Black Friday craze, which I promptly convinced him maybe wasn’t the best idea if he was serious about getting a tablet that actually worked. He agreed, and a couple weeks later committed to a 10″ Acer Iconia – Acer’s bulkier, cheaper, Android-powered iPad alternative.

At the same time, I started scouring the internet for sweet deelz™, thinking that if I was going to join the tablet revolution it would have to be at a price point somewhere more in the territory of a Kindle Fire. Initial reviews of the Fire, unsurprisingly, were (har) lukewarm, and using one in person left me cold (double har) so I let it go. Instead I bought an HTC View at a very deep discount from a site I’ve never heard of. After a couple nerve-wracking days of wondering whether it would actually ship, it did, and arrived in my hands not long after.

Hardware

The View is essentially the Sprint-branded version of the HTC Flyer, a 7″ tablet sold both through GSM carriers with 3G and at Best Buy with wi-fi only. The Sprint version gets different CDMA radios capable of 3G and 4G (which I didn’t care about) and a black case instead of silver (which I did care about – it looks pretty great). Unlike the Flyer, the View is only available in 32GB form, but all of them were shipped with Android 2.3 (aka “not Honeycomb”).

The View has an aluminum chassis and as such feels solid and mostly well-built. Bits that aren’t aluminum are finished in a nice soft-touch material, and branding is minimal and tasteful. There is a bit of the tumor on the bottom back of the slab and I’m not sure if that’s an ergonomic decision or a functional requirement. My only complaint is that I’m just not a fan of the volume and power buttons – they’re okay but they don’t feel as well-built as the rest.

Devices that run Gingerbread require hardware buttons for Home, Menu, and Back. In a clever move, HTC made these buttons capacitative instead of hardware, and included two sets of them – one for landscape and one for portrait orientation. The buttons are hidden behind the glass screen and only illuminate when their respective orientation is active; it’s very slick.

While it’s not easily mistaken for an Apple device, I’ve been pretty pleased with the overall aesthetics and build quality. If I had to make one complaint, it would be that the wireless seems somewhat weak, to the point where I need to turn wifi off and back on again to get it to find our router.

Software, Part 1 – Gingerbread

Around this same time rumors were flying about an official update to Honeycomb (Android 3.2, the tablet-specific version) being released for the HTC tablets. Initially, though, I was stuck with Gingerbread, originally intended only for the HTC’s smaller brethren. Given its diminutive size and comparatively lower resolution (1024×600), this actually worked pretty well. The status bar at the top of the screen used precious little space and, not unlike iOS, the HTC Sense version of Gingerbread includes a quick launch bar along the bottom of the home screen.

Initially there was a lot of fumbling, and a lot more Droid Sans than I’d ever like to see in one place again, but overall I had little to complain about. I spent a fair amount of time just messing around and getting my bearings, and then seeing what there was in the Android world that I couldn’t do on a comparable Apple device.

There are a couple of interesting things that apply even to a stock, unrooted version of Android. One that stands out to me is the file system, or rather, the fact that there is a tangible file system that you can browse and manipulate (to an extent) just as you’d be able to do on a “normal” computer. I was able to download a .zip file of music, unzip it, and copy it into a music directory, where it then showed up in the music player. Neat.

I also like the direction they’ve taken with the home screen. In addition to your standard selection of app shortcuts, you can also deploy various widgets that allow you to perform simple tasks (checking email, an RSS feed, your calendar, or the weather) without having to go to an app. It’s really a smart idea and a great use of screen real estate.

Android (in stock form!) also allows apps to be sideloaded simply by changing an option in the settings. This means that you can find an .apk file (the standard format for an Android App) on the internet, download it / copy it to your device, and install it without having to ever interact with the Android Market. For nerds (like me) this is a pretty cool thing to be able to do – more on this later.

There are some other fundamental differences, but one of the more practical examples is how – and I’m going to try to effectively regurgitate this explanation – Android allows apps to more easily interact with each other while iOS keeps it’s apps in “silos”. Put more simply, if you install something like a different browser, the OS acknowledges its existence and you’ll be given the option to use it as a default app for a given action. You only see this level of integration in iOS on the built-in apps, because Apple doesn’t give access to that sort of thing to 3rd-party developers.

Overall, there is a lot to like about Android, and I enjoyed my experience with Gingerbread, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t excited to get my hands on Honeycomb.

Software, Part 2 – Honeycomb

The rumors turned out to be true, and not even a week after receiving my View the official Honeycomb update was available. Of course I downloaded it immediately, and prepared to be taken to the next level in tablet awesomeness. At least, that’s what I was hoping would happen. Having played with HC a tiny bit on my dad’s Acer, I was pretty excited to get ahold of it and see what kind of usability improvements HTC would make, and how the experience would be more optimized for a tablet as a whole.

Sadly, the result wasn’t nearly as nice as I had hoped, for a number of reasons. Honeycomb itself isn’t exempt from criticism, and most of this criticism revolves around the status bar. No longer does it live unobtrusively at the top of the screen; now it is a fairly wide black bar at the bottom. Like the status bar of old, it has time and notification information as well as wireless and battery levels; these live on the bottom right corner. On the bottom left corner are new global buttons: Back, Home, and App Switcher. And sometimes Menu, depending on where you are.

If this sounds like it’s redundant, you’re right. Devices with Android 3 or later no longer require physical buttons, as they’re now built in to the OS itself as onscreen UI elements. Fortunately HTC was prepared for this – remember those capacitative buttons I mentioned earlier? Once Honeycomb is installed they essentially cease to be. Even after only a week using Gingerbread I had become extremely reliant on said buttons. Most confusing to me is the complete elimination of the Menu button from the home screen, as I was used to using that to get to some quick and useful tools like the task manager.

The other issue with this is simply the extra screen real estate that this will always require. It’s impractical to try to hide this bar within certain applications because the bar is your only way to get out of the application; there’s no other emergency exit like iOS devices’ Home button. One issue with this is that it simply takes up what seems like a lot of space on a screen with only 600 pixels on a particular side. A bigger issue is that it becomes difficult to have any sort of quick launch docked at the bottom of the home screen because there’s already important global UI there and it ends up a cluttered mess.

In a less cluttered world, I would be using this space to make minor and subjective gripes about the Honeycomb look – while I really like Google’s intent with the Holo interface overall, The icons and font in the status bar seem like they’re still trying to a little to hard to be XTREME.

Weirdly, though, I can’t complain about that because it’s time to talk about HTC Sense. It’s become commonplace in the Android ecosystem for OEM’s to add their own layer of UI over the top the stock operating system. In some cases this is as simple as throwing a couple extra widgets, but with HTC it’s much more widespread and as a result, disastrous.

HTC’s devices all ship with Sense UI layered over the top of the standard software. Aside from the iconic flip clock / weather widget, I’m not sure exactly what Sense does that benefits me. I can tell you they’ve done their best to overlap the standard Holo interface with as many heavy gradients and round corners as they can muster, and replaced the handsome and subtle stock iconography with their own colorful illustrations – they even went so far as to replace the web browser with their own abomination. It’s sad, because the widgets that they include are really functional; they’re just generally unattractive and contradict Google’s own design philosophy – just like the rest of Sense UI.

There’s a lot of talk about fragmentation when Android is brought up, and this extra layer of junk on top of an already complex OS isn’t helping things. It’s especially frustrating when I see that Google, finally, is actually trying to design things, and yet most people won’t be able to experience that design in its intended form. The Sense/Honeycomb experience is truly ridiculous, because there’s this awful layer that you can’t turn off, and yet it also doesn’t cover everything so you’ll frequently see bits of plain Honeycomb showing through, teasing you.

Software, Part 3 – Rooting

During this entire saga I had become fairly addicted to the Flyer/View forum on XDA Developers – it’s been a tremendously useful source of info for all things HTC and Android. So in retrospect it seems that my decision to root was inevitable.

For now I’m running basically the same software as before with some minor differences; once you have root access you’re able to make changes to the core files you otherwise wouldn’t be able to modify. So far my experience with this is limited to replacing the HTC web browser with a stock Honeycomb browser (which also requires removal of some other system files), removing the Sprint-flavored boot animations, and removing the program that nags for wireless (3G/4G) access since I don’t intend to use anything other than wifi.

The beauty of Android is that there’s a pretty vibrant developer community even for less popular devices like the View (especially thanks to a bunch of fire sales in December), and so for now I’m keeping an eye on two different projects that involve basically removing as much of Sense as possible in favor of a more stock experience. In my ideal world, some wonderful genius(es) would figure out how to build a useable version of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4).

Alternately, I will lose interest and end up buying something else.

Applications

For the most part the things you can do in Android and the things you can do in iOS overlap considerably. It’s true that there some genres of apps that simply don’t exist in iOS – things like task managers and custom launchers. I’m happy enough with iOS that I don’t feel distraught by that. However, there is one killer feature that doesn’t exist on iOS: emulators. As it turns out, a seven inch screen is the perfect size for playing backups of some of my favorite Game Boy Advance and Super NES games. Super Metroid comes to mind, perhaps with the Super Zeromission patch that brings some new territory to an old friend.

Some additional recommendations:

• Perfect Viewer, for reading things
• ES File Explorer, for exploring files
• Google Voice, for textual messaging
• No Lock, which can turn off your lock screen I guess there is already a setting to turn off the lock screen; I’m not sure if this is party of Android or Sense.
• Sketchbook Express, for drawrings

TL;DR

I bought an Android tablet. It’s pretty good but the software leaves me a little cold in its current iteration and I’d really like to have a more “pure” Google experience. At any rate, it’s a really fun toy to mess around with if you’re into that sort of thing.

What it’s not is any kind of worthy competitor to the iPad if you’re not into that sort of thing. People who don’t find joy in just poking around with technology and hacking things apart are better served by a platform that doesn’t inherently allow for that. There’s a messiness to it that I don’t see in iOS – it’s more wild and uncivilized.

The thing is, even as a self-professed nerd and gadget aficionado, I don’t want that messiness in a device that I have to rely on. As I said before, the HTC is a fun toy and an interesting learning experience, but I need my phone to work consistently and 100% of the time, and I need to know that it won’t simply be forgotten about by the OEM when the next big thing comes out. I like the comfort of knowing that if I buy a new iPhone or iPad I will have the latest and greatest iOS device for a full year before something new comes along and starts receiving the majority of attention, and that’s simply not a guarantee that can be made for any Android device.

I’d rather have a device I rely on be 95% perfect for its whole life (iOS) than 75% with the promise that eventually it could be 100%.

We went to the MALL OF AMERICA over the weekend as part of our occasional “let’s pretend we’ve never been to Minneapolis before” thing that we like to do (we also went to IKEA!), and while it was enjoyable enough (and at least good exercise – did you know that a lap around the mall is over half a mile?), we basically only spent money on lunch and that was it.

But I did make one very important observation. We had been warned before visiting that Microsoft has done what we in the biz call “copying Apple” and opened one of their famed(?) Microsoft Stores at MOA. Not particularly humorous – I don’t dispute that a branded store for a company with as many products as Microsoft is useful, and putting it in one of the biggest malls ever makes sense. The issue at hand is where in the mall it is: across from the Apple Store.

Seriously.

The problem here is that Microsoft’s stores, as implied above, borrow heavily from the book of Apple in every way; it really is like they took an Apple store and changed the logo. That wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t immediately from their “inspiration” – it was like looking in a mirror. Well, maybe a funhouse mirror. We even noticed that both (at least on the Saturday we were there) have greeters positioned front and center – I like to imagine they spend their day staring each other down when not dealing with shoppers.

But that’s not all! My most memorable mall moment is walking into the Microsoft Store after a brief visit to Apple: immediately upon entering, the floor slopes upward about 6 inches for no apparent reason and with no warning. it’s a little jarring, to be honest, because no other stores that we visited do this. I’m not going to get all melodramatic and say it’s a safety hazard – it’s just weird. I guess they must have done it so they could run wires, but what a lazy way to do things when you have that kind of money to spend.

Then I realized it’s all a metaphor, man. That little jolt you get when you enter the store is preparing you for every little nit you’ll have to deal with when using their products. Sure, they’ll get the job done, but you’ll be complaining the entire time about the dumb little shit you have to deal with while doing so.

When Apple announced Facetime as part of the iPhone 4’s myriad of parlor tricks, I wouldn’t say that excitement was my first reaction. Cautious optimism might be a better description: video chat is obviously a very cool and useful feature, but who would I even Facetime with?

A few months and one iPhone 4 later, I had still only used the feature a handful (har) of times. So when Facetime for Mac was announced in October, I was pretty happy to see Apple expanding the system across their other hardware. I was quick to download the beta and happy to see that it basically works as expected. At the same time, I had a nagging feeling that there were better ways to video chat with someone (probably because there are better ways to video chat with someone. Facetime is great fine for phone-to-phone or phone-to-Mac chat, but what about Mac-to-Mac? Or Mac-to-Mac-to-Mac?

It makes me wonder what Apple’s grand plan is for iChat. It’s standard on every modern Mac but is often overlooked; I suspect most users who rely on instant messaging (myself included) install a multi-service client almost immediately, while the rest have no need for any client whatsoever.

And that’s sad, because iChat is a pretty neat application for a few reasons:

1. It’s had video abilities for years, so you can have a discussion with one person or multiple people simultaneously.
2. Screen sharing lets you share what’s on your computer screen with somebody else (or vice versa) – perfect for giving a tutorial or presenting a document. And it works with audio chat!
3. It’s still an IM client, so you can send links, files, or just message in realtime without resorting to email.
4. Facetime doesn’t have any way of indicating whether the person you want to talk to is available because it’s still based off the notion of a phone call. In contrast, instant messaging revolves around availability status.
5. It’s on every modern Mac. And it’s free.

I’ll admit to being a bit of an instant messaging (and to some extent IRC) romanticist. I feel as though I write better than I speak, so the notion of being able to type in realtime has always appealed to me. Interestingly, it seems like instant messaging these days has become more of a business tool, probably a result of those of us who grew up with it (sort of) finding it to be a tremendously versatile medium for communication, and because the younger generation has (logically) moved on to instant messaging in its place.

But what of iChat versus Facetime? For now the two occupy somewhat separate spaces, but Facetime on the Mac is encroaching ever so slightly on iChat’s territory, and bringing with it some strange new standards.

If you own a Mac and you did your software update today, it’s likely you’ve had a bit of time to play with the new Mac App Store. I know I did, and the first (and only) thing I downloaded was Twitter for Mac, replacing Tweetie as my desktop Twitter client of choice. I won’t get into a written comparison (but here’s a side-by-side if you’re curious) since it’s not that big of a deal to me.

What did occur to me after browsing the App Store further was that I don’t really care that much about it. Obviously it’s a new and different way of acquiring desktop software, and I think it’s a good idea, but I’ve probably downloaded more apps for my iPhone(s) than I have for any computer, ever. I just don’t go out looking for new Mac applications very frequently once the need is filled, and new needs come along very rarely.

I’m willing to say that most of my needs are filled on my phone as well, but the two simply aren’t comparable environments. The need I’m generally still trying to fill when I browse the iOS App Store is that of a diversion – something that no one app can necessarily fulfill. When I’m at home on my Mac, I don’t need diversionary software because I have full-bore internet, a a big screen on which to view it, and unlimited bandwidth. On the phone, however, I’m probably more likely to be playing a game that works well on the small screen and with infrequent network usage, and the web is generally relegated to tool-status like many other apps.

None of this is to say that the Mac App Store isn’t a great success; I just don’t see myself as a frequent visitor. On the other hand, it’s already making for some great entertainment in and of itself.

I did this before. Here it goes again:

As January hit Wisconsin, we were running down the middle of the street trying not to fall on our asses. Now that I think about it, that’s a pretty good metaphor for the year.

February took us to Chicago with some friends who used to live there, and we did all kinds of good stuff.

In March I bought a camera and took some pictures.

April was not so great, but in retrospect it was actually not so bad either.

I read a lot of books in May.

In June I loved the iPhone 4. And I still do.

I relaunched this site in July. (Side note: wow, that was only July?)

I rode my first ever half-century in August, which dovetailed nicely with my first ever 500 miles run in July.

On the subject of running, I ran a 10K race (off road!) in September. So much fun!

I accidentally another play in October. Is that bad?

In November, Conan came back and I made a pie. Both were delicious.

December. Miami.

When the iPad landed there was no disputing its novelty, but at the same time I wrote it off as “…a larger version of a device I already didn’t have a use for.”

Harsh, I know, but true. I could never really wrap my head around the iPod touch (a device made completely redundant by my iPhone), but as I’ve spent more time playing with iPads and seeing the new apps that are being made available, I’m starting to “get it”. It’s the size.

An iPad is an ideal away-from-desk computer. There are some instances where I’d like to relax and watch a video that lives on my desktop, or read an article while watching TV, or reference a game as I’m playing, where all I basically need is a screen. For now the iPhone is an adequate solution, but the extra screen space would be a welcome addition.

The thing is, I’m also finding myself more and more in need of a computer I can take with me to meetings, some of which are not local and thus require more flexibility from such a machine. It’s this away-from-home situation where a “normal” notebook computer still shines; I know that in a pinch I can browser-test in Windows, edit a file in Creative Suite, or do something as basic as charge my phone. Preparation is the keyword.

In a perfect world I’d own both of these devices in addition to my iPhone and Mac Pro which would leave me consistently covered for all scenarios. And while that day may eventually come (and probably sooner rather than later), for now the away-from-home computer has taken priority and that’s why I ordered an 11″ Macbook Air.

I haven’t spent a ton of time talking about iOS apps here, but it should come as no surprise that like most iPhone/iPod/iPad users, the downloaded apps on my device of choice far outnumber those that were there originally. While I didn’t share same the OMG NATIVE APPS mentality that many did, I also didn’t become an iPhone user until after the App Store was an established foundation of the platform.

Suffice it to say, the App Store is an important facet of iOS as evidenced by the enthusiasm for it exhibited by both consumers and competitors. Those who make the excuse that apps are unnecessary when you have the web are doing just that: making an excuse. So it was no surprise when the iPad launched with the App Store already implemented, but it did bring into focus the gap between iOS and OS X.

With today’s announcement of the Mac App Store, that gap… is still there, but it’s also different. I noticed that Apple is positioning the different fragments of iLife and iWork as Mac Apps (which refer strictly to those available on the Mac App Store for the purpose of this post). Given that they’re treated similarly on the iOS App Store, that makes sense. What I’m curious about is how this new delivery system will affect the current crop of applications. There are a few in my dock that seem like natural candidates for such a thing; Adium X, Flickr Uploadr and Transmit come to mind, to name a few. However, given that we can simply download them from their respective websites, I have to wonder what added advantage the Mac App Store could offer.

It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good idea; even as a tech nerd, the idea of having what are basically “1-click installs” for all of these Mac Apps is appealing to me, and the familiarity bred by the iOS App Store means users will likely feel right at home doing the same on their OS X machine. Plus it’s one more way to get applications on your hot-sauce MacBook Air or Mac mini server. And the developer has the advantage of added exposure and being able to push updates through a more automated system.

But speaking of updates, don’t iOS Apps have to be submitted for review with every update? While that just may be part of the package on iOS, it’s very different from current OS X environment where they’re free to push updates whenever they finish them. Considering that apps are still distributable the old-fashioned way and the developer is well-known (Panic, for example), they may opt out of the Mac App Store environment completely. And is there some set of unique guidelines for Mac Apps versus “normal” applications?

Furthermore, and this is something that’s been weighing on my mind since the advent of the iPad, it’s obvious to me that Apple wants to somewhat unify the iOS and OS X experiences. I’m not saying they want to start forcing multitouch on OS X users (at least, not yet), but it is logical for them to integrate similar visual cues and behaviors on both sides (just as they do with their hardware). But I think having such similar buying experiences across two (three, if you treat the iPad as its own) platforms may confuse the issue – especially since you can buy apps for any of the three on your Mac.

I initially started typing this paragraph with the intent of naming some of the apps on my phone that I wouldn’t necessarily need on my Mac, but they’re actually mostly inherently useful in some way. That, then, begs the question – why can’t I use the theoretical copy of Pages that I bought on my imaginary iPad on my Mac too? From a technical standpoint I understand that they’re two different environments with different specs and requirements, but I don’t expect that to be as clear to the typical consumer. I guess we just need to think of the Mac as a PS3, for example, while the iOS devices are PSP’s. We may see the same titles on both but we’ll need to understand that they don’t work across the two devices (unlike the iPad’s “backwards compatibility” of sorts).

Don’t get me wrong; I do look forward to seeing how the Mac App Store changes the OS X experience. I am just not 100% sold – yet. Now that new MacBook Air, on the other hand…

Today fall was in the air. Students (and teachers) are headed back to school, the weather this morning was – dare I say – crisp, and of course, Apple kicked off September right with their annual iPod event.

Since the advent of the iPhone these announcements haven’t meant a whole lot to me – it’s been my primary iPod since the day I got it and it’s the only device I have with me most of the time. However, running has given me a newfound appreciation for a smaller breed of iPod, a lightweight, pared-down option that I simply never had a need for in the past. Currently I’m running with a third-generation “fat” nano. Size and weight-wise I have no complaints, but I will admit to the clickwheel being somewhat finicky at times, the fact that it (like most other iPods) requires the additional receiver for Nike+ functionality, and the issue of storage when I’m lacking pockets (solution: armband).

Which is why the new iPod nano is amazing. As is usually the case, commenters on sites like such as Engadget are quick to point out the device’s shortcomings; namely that it no longer plays video or takes photos. The common sentiment is that kids like it for that sort of thing, which shows that these people are missing the point: this isn’t for kids.

There was a time when an iPod nano was the de facto teenager accessory, but as iOS has gained more attention and the devices are quickly becoming ever more competent and affordable, the iPod touch is the logical heir to that throne: the popular iPod. While the old iPods had “games” and “apps”, the touch actually makes good on that promise. And granted, the price difference is somewhat significant, but the difference in capabilities between the iPod touch and even the old, video-enabled nanos was even more pronounced. Many may even find (or have found) that the extra money is better spent there than towards a DS or PSP. And now that the touch has a (HD!) camera, the nano couldn’t/can’t compete.

Which is fine, actually, because the old lineup didn’t make sense in that regard. Apple is finally making it clear with broad strokes that if you need or want to do anything other than listen to music, get an iPod touch. Easy decision. And for those of us who only want music, and would like it in the smallest possible package (with a screen, please), this new nano is a godsend. While I’m wary of the touchscreen, I’m ready to believe it can’t be worse than the crazy scroll wheel on my current iPod, and happy to acknowledge that all my other concerns have been addressed beautifully.

And duh, Apple wants the popular iPod to be an iOS device.

Edit: as it turns out, the Nike+ receiver is not built-in, which is enough of an issue for me to downgrade this to “not sure if want” status.

I think it started with a MacBook Pro. Or rather, the observation that a 15″ MacBook is capable of the same (1680 x 1050) resolution as the 20″ monitors in front of me. Slowly but surely this spiraled into feelings of monitor inadequacy and I started to consider an upgrade. That was a mistake.

You probably already know where this is going, but suffice it to say that I can be somewhat — finicky — when it comes to buying things. With that in mind, I set off on a journey to see what I could see.

Parameters

I pretty quickly remembered that one of the must-haves in a new display is LED backlighting, because it’s awesome. While this helped narrow the search considerably, it wasn’t without its share of problems. It can be rather difficult to sift through pages of displays (regardless of website) to find those that are LED-backlit, as the technology isn’t significant enough to warrant different categorization from other LCD’s. Annoying, but understandable.

Getting past this obstacle, I was able to find some potential candidates at reasonable prices. I knew when starting the search that I’d likely have to make some sacrifices, namely in terms of aesthetics. I was pretty interested in the Samsung PX2370 (no link, but it’s black, rectangular, and really shallow), but true to Samsung everybody-but-Apple form the base looks like dogshit and for some godforsaken reason it’s not even VESA compliant.

More Parameters

But I digress. Let’s forget about specific monitors for a minute and talk about where the industry as a whole is headed: 16:9. It only makes sense, considering that’s where televisions have been for years and it’s a lot easier for computers to adjust to this standard. And as a result, we’re seeing cheaper panels which is why the Samsung mentioned above is have-able for around $300.

HOWEVER. The result is that it’s nigh-impossible to find an LED-backlit monitor with a pixel height of more than 1080 (“full-HD”) – a measly 30 pixels higher than what I have now. And with that in mind, it’s hard for me to justify spending any money to upgrade. Additional width is useful, always. But additional height is just as important, and that’s just not there yet – even larger 16:9 monitors are topping out at full HD. 1080P is great (I’d even go so far as to call it overkill) for a 27″ television, but a sick joke for a computer monitor of the same size. Where’s the pixel density?

These two search parameters have made my options extremely limited, and somewhat surprisingly, the front-runner is the outgoing 24″ Apple LED Display. While the new 27″ matches the 16:9 ratio and WQHD resolution of the 2009 iMacs, the late 24″ is the last of Apple’s 16:10 desktop displays. Price, especially now, is not as bad as I initially thought after comparing it with rivals that lack LED and niceties like the built-in iSight(s) (not to mention the aesthetic points).

Conclusion

If I had to buy new monitors right this second, I’d probably cry a little bit and then give my money to Apple. But fortunately I don’t have to buy anything right now, so I probably won’t. It’s a tougher decision to make when a few hundred dollars turns into nearly three times that much, and fortunately my current Apples are working just fine.

Addendum

After further research, some additional (and expensive) voodoo is required to mate a DVI Mac Pro with one of the Mini DisplayPort-only Apple displays. The search continues.

My iPhone 4 arrived two weeks ago while, fittingly, I was in the middle of what would be my final phone call from my iPhone 3G. I was caught somewhat off guard, as I hadn’t been following FedEx as closely as I sometimes do and it was arriving nearly a week before schedule. I managed to make it through the rest of the call without any sort of drooling or heaving breathing so I feel like I handled the whole situation pretty well.

The unboxing process was nice enough but I wasn’t nearly as excited about this iPhone as I had been about the 3G, mainly because I didn’t expect this transition to be nearly as drastic. I was both right and wrong about this, in a good way, so let’s break it down:

Design

This – THIS – is what an iPhone should look like. I liked the original aluminum iPhone, and very much disliked the glossy plastic 3G and 3GS so this new design is a very welcome change.

Unsurprisingly, it feels great to hold – Apple has few peers in this area. In recent history their influence over competitors’ designs is somewhat obvious, but photos can’t portray just how big the difference in build quality is. At the risk of stepping into fanboy territory, it’s often the difference between buying a gadget and a functional work of art.

Interestingly, I did run up against what is mostly a psychological problem when setting the phone down. In a situation where I’m about to put the phone on a desk or other flat surface, I’d tend to hold it with my thumb on the left, four fingers on the right, and the screen facing up. The curved back of the iPhone 3G meant that the back of the phone would make contact before my fingers, so I could then release. The flat back of the iPhone 4 results in the opposite, meaning I either have to reposition my fingers or “drop” it slightly. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an issue as it doesn’t result in any harm to the phone; it’s just an oddity.

Experience

I found the initial startup to be a little underwhelming, actually. I think there was a lot of buildup for the Retina display and at first I didn’t notice a tremendous improvement. It is definitely nicer – a little whiter and a lot sharper, but it’s something that requires a slightly closer look for me to really appreciate. Where the difference is most pronounced for me is the app icons, as some of them are still formatted only for the old resolution and are quite grainy as a result.

What I wasn’t expecting was for the increase in performance to be so noticeable. Everything is significantly faster than on my old phone, but for me the two most useful instances of this are:

1. The camera. It still takes a couple seconds to launch, but shutter actuation is much, much faster. It could still benefit from a bigger lens, but so could every camera ever made.
2. Wifi. Locking the iPhone 3G would result in a loss of wifi (understandable), but it would take its sweet time reconnecting when unlocked. Not so with the iPhone 4, which retains a wifi connection even while locked (presumably for short periods of time) or reconnects almost instantly when unlocked.

The wifi in particular is an example of what Apple does well: continually refining things that were already okay until they’re great. The 3G’s wifi performance was a little annoying at times, but it wasn’t a situation where identical behavior from the iPhone 4 would’ve prevented a purchase. The newfound responsiveness has been particularly useful when using Touchpad, the remote app for our Windows Media PC.

Gripes

I may be a fanboy, but I’m not so rabid as to admit that Apple’s devices don’t have their flaws. In this case, though, I think the nits I have to pick are mainly software-based except for two, both of which are self-explanatory:

1. More storage is always better.
2. The camera could be better still.

Even iOS 4 is pretty solid, in that it would take me a fair amount of time to remember and compile any of the complaints I would’ve had. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is with Apple’s implementation of Facetime. I certainly understand their reasoning for putting it front and center within the in-call menu, but they did so at the expense of the hold button. This resulted in a panic when I tried to put a call on hold the first time, and the end result was not pretty.

There’s been some coverage of this already, with the “official” response from Apple being that hold is just a glorified mute button. I get that, and now that I realize there even is a mute button I find myself a bit less peeved by the whole thing. The obvious question becomes: why did the two exist in the first place?

Also, I guess they’re having antenna problems or something? I wouldn’t really know as I haven’t experienced any.

And finally, still no 3G around here. Just go suck a dick, AT&T – you guys are terrible. On that note, though, I am now on the new DataPlus plan so I don’t feel like I’m being totally robbed every month. I guess that’s an advantage.

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.

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.

Hey, remember when this used to be a photoblog? Back then I shot everyday with my then-newly-acquired Canon SD400.

After updating daily for six or seven months, I started to realize that I wanted this site to be something other than a daily photoblog. I’ve long been aware that I go though phases of creative output; sometimes it’s writing, sometimes it’s photography, and sometimes it’s just redesigning stuff. But as time wore on, my familiarity with the little Canon increased, as did my frustrations with its limits. I’d long since acknowledged that snapping off a few noise-free photos in less than ideal lighting was something of a pipe-dream; an acceptable sacrifice in lieu of the camera’s petite stature, but the image quality in general seems to be degrading as the camera approaches its fifth birthday.

Now What?

This left me in a sort of quandary; time for a new camera? Probably; but what to get? I’d long since had my eye on a digital SLR (also of the Canon variety) and even came close to pulling the trigger a couple of times, but could never go through with it. I had also been considering the Canon SX200/SX210, another point-n’-shoot. It was hard to argue with 14x optical zoom and HD video, but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend the money on that either. Another ELPH? None of them really got me excited like the SD400 did when I first saw it.

So I waited, and watched. And then I saw a Canon EOS 30D on Craigslist. And then I forgot about it for awhile.

Then I was driving and thinking that I really don’t have any good photos of my car, and that 30D popped back into my head. I scoured Craigslist and it was nowhere to be found. Defeated, I decided it wasn’t meant to be, and started looking at new Canons on Amazon. There were some alright deals, but I kept falling back to the same thought that has always kept me from buying an SLR: what if I don’t use it?

That’s why this 30D was so attractive to me: it was a minimal investment to dip my toes in the waters of more advanced digital photography. So imagine my excitement when it was relisted that same day. After some Twitter hemming and hawing, I decided that the extra cost of the XSi simply wasn’t worth it to me, and sealed the deal.

The Setup

Photo-nerds are probably wondering what I’m shooting with so far, so here’s the list:

• Canon EOS 30D
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8
• Canon EF 18-55mm f/3.5 IS (soon)

It’s a short list, but a solid start. The first time I looked through the viewfinder on the 50mm, I was amazed at how narrow the viewing angle is, and it made me immensely glad to have won the 18-55mm on eBay that morning. Even so, I’m very pleased with the purchase, especially taking into account that what I’ve spent so far on everything is only slightly more than a new XSi body.

After what seems like decades, Abe and I finally have a week where we don’t have extracurricular activities eating up every evening. Thanks to a Target gift card and some smooth talking on my part, we decided to spend some of that time with New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

We played through the first world last night, and looking back I think I enjoyed it. The game looks great, and we did a decent job of remaining alive (a definite plus) and so I hope that trend continues. Similar to 2006’s New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS, this game is a spiritual successor Super Mario Bros. 3 from the NES days. A prime choice; I consider SMB3 to be the pinnacle of Mario side-scrollers. So all is great, right? Well… no. While the game in and of itself has a lot of potential, there were also some attributes that really felt detrimental to the whole experience.

The big news in NSMBW is that you can play with up to four people simultaneously – no waiting for your turn; everybody’s on the screen, all the time. Except when they’re not. Unfortunately, it is possible for players to find themselves scrolled right off the screen, which can be overcome but may also result in death if they’re beyond the threshold of what the game decides is “safe”. Fortunately, the deceased player will quickly return in a bubble that you need to pop to get them back into the action (imagine Baby Mario in the Yoshi’s Island series).

Player interaction is another iffy item. For better or worse, your characters cannot all occupy the same space at the same time. This becomes problematic when two overzealous teammates decide to tackle the same obstacle simultaneously and instead end up as obstacles themselves. You can overcome this by constantly trying to call out your plans (“okay, now I’m going to jump on this Koopa”) but that seems like a strange thing to need to do for what should be a relatively casual experience. At the same time, it really does add to the atmosphere of the game and make it more interesting.

The biggest problem with this game, though, is where it is. My opinion is and always will be that the Wii platform is a hinderance to “normal” games. The controllers suck, not only in a physical sense but in an “it takes me 5-10 minutes to even get them to work” sense. By the time I’ve gotten the console to function I’m already beginning a game with a feeling of disappointment. Maybe it’s a repetitive fluke (oxymoron?), but how can Nintendo expect the console to appeal to non-techy casual gaming types when they can’t reliably sync their controllers to their consoles?

And while I realize that motion control is the Wii’s bread and butter at the moment, I think it’s ridiculous that they feel obligated to tack it on to every game just because it’s there. Making the game rely on motion control means that we are stuck with the basic Wiimote turned sideways (ugh, just like Super Paper Mario) instead of being able to use a Gamecube controller, the Wiimote/nunchuk combo, or the classic controller.

And that interface! Still so terrible.

In the last week or so, I’ve found myself facing a bit of a dilemma with regards to the various bits of content that I’ve created/found/shared online. The problem with the social Internet is the it inevitably results in massive stacks of content distributed widely throughout the various services; in my case what began with a handcoded blog gradually turned into WordPress, and soon was joined by links (fed initially by del.icio.us) and then Flickr. Then Twitter joined the party.

Through this point everything remained fairly manageable. Thanks to the terriffic Twitter Tools plugin I was able to easily turn those tweets into “real” posts. But recently I’ve become smitten with a new (to me) service that leaves me wondering where to go from here: Tumblr.

I’ve been playing with Tumblr for a week or so, and I’ve found it to be a neat bridge between WP’s long-form posting and Twitter’s extreme short form, text-only entries. I like Tumblr’s versatility when it comes to handling a large variety of content types, and it seems to have just the right amonunt of meta for such things.

The problem is, I still like WordPress. I’ve built a nice little home with it over the years, and for longer pieces (like this one), it’s pretty darn great. Plus it has comments, although I’m just not sure how important that is to me anymore.

So given my current situation, it seems I have some figurin’ to do with regards to what andylaub.com actually is. The ideal for me would be to treat posts from Tumblr similar to how posts from Twitter are handled in that they’re imported into the actual WP database and join the archive. From there it’s safe to assume I could use the associated meta to manipulate the various sorts of posts as needed. Honestly I would love to see the same behavior with Flickr.

Currently, though, it doesn’t seem that such a plugin exists. I’m about 99% positive that I’d prefer to avoid the opposite approach (RSSing WP into Tumblr). The other option is to break everything apart completely and then reaggregate it into one central location, but that too seems like a huge compromise.

You’ll probably see me messing with this issue over the coming weeks; alternatively I may lose hope completely or go completely crazy and try to replicate some of Tumblr’s functionality within WP. Time will tell, but ’till then I’m certainly open to suggestions.

Since its inception, Xbox Live has been hailed as the definitive online experience for gaming consoles. Originally only available as a paid service, it branched off into two tiers with the launch of the Xbox 360. A free Xbox Live Silver account (which every owner should have, at least) lets you browse the online marketplace and try demos. The real money for Microsoft lies in the Gold account, which allows for online play.

I’ve had a Gold account basically since the day I bought my 360, but truth be told, I wasn’t always convinced that it was worth the money I spent to keep it going. I realized that I really didn’t enjoy playing online competitively, because I basically suck at games (relatively speaking). I don’t have the patience to commit a huge span of time to getting good at Call of Duty or Gears of War, because it’s not even fun – it’s just work.

But recently so many of the games I’ve been playing have been offering some pretty attractive online co-op options. Fable 2 and Saints Row 2 both have modes for jumping into a friend’s game and playing through it, the same as you would when you’re alone. Then there are games like Valve’s Left 4 Dead, in which a single-player mode exists but really is not the point of the game at all – I’ll come back to this shortly.

With so many interesting games out there, my other frustration was that I had nobody to play them with. I am pretty shy about just jumping into games (well, any situation, really) with some random strangers, and that is another big factor that has prevented me from just randomly playing online. There was the occasional game with someone on my friendslist, but for the most part we all were emerged in completely different worlds, and they rarely intersected.

Something seemed to click, though, earlier this year. My BFF Jill (srsly) picked up a 360 in the spring, and so we started to play some stuff together. Then I started to become friends with her friends, and suddenly there were eight of us playing Team Fortress 2 and we all actually knew each other and it was amazing.

What’s even better is that Live now has something called parties. You can start a party with another friend, and it basically opens a voice chat session between the two of you. More interestingly, your other friends can look at their friendslist and see that you’re in a party with others, and join in if they’d like. If you’re all playing together in the same game, this doesn’t function much differently than the lobby of the game itself – and in some cases (such as team-based competition) that’s a more practical solution.

Where parties shine, though, is in their ability to unify two people who may not even be playing the same game. Single player games are still my preference, but if I’m working through some levels in Prince of Persia or blowing through some races in Forza, I can open up a party and talk to my friend who’s playing Portal and we can bitch about our respective challenges. Or there was that one time where three of us were trying to see who get through Half Life 2: Episode 1 the quickest.

Epilogue: Left 4 Dead edition

Left 4 Dead is a game about zombies. This in and of itself is not particularly enthralling to me. What makes L4D unique is its near insistence on playing with others in the campaign mode. The game puts you in control of one of four survivors, who are working as a team to escape the zombie hordes. Interestingly, you will always be working as a team of four – the only variable is what percentage of that team is real people versus AI.

As I mentioned above, you can play the game alone, and mechanically it’s very good. But it’s not really any fun. Much better to save the (only) four campaigns for nights when you and a couple of friends are all in the mood for some zombie hunting. Those are the times when the game becomes truly special and suspenseful.

Nothing that happens in L4D comes across as particularly scary – the game only has so many weapons in its arsenal in the form of a few specialized zombie classes. The real action happens when you or one of your allies gets pinned or knocked down, and you have to figure out how you can rescue them without getting taken down yourself. When you’re playing with the computer, you only want to save them because you need the firepower. But when you’re playing with friends, you want to save them because you feel bad – you’re emotionally attached by default, and that’s where the game really succeeds.

I remember the first time I played a Super Nintendo. The game was Super Mario World (was there any other?), and it was a demo machine set up in the local Kmart. During that time, I always relished shopping trips, as I knew that if I was lucky nobody else would be playing and I could spend a few minutes with my favorite plumber.

Imagine then, going back home, and trying to enjoy Super Mario Bros on the original NES. It wasn’t bad by any means – it just wasn’t “special” anymore. Mario World boasted multi-tiered backgrounds and sprites bigger than anything I’d seen before – remember the giant Bullet Bills? It had amazing new environments! It had Yoshi!

What’s interesting, then, is that no 2D platformer came along after Super Mario World that really made it look outdated and stale. The next huge Mario game was Super Mario 64 – and while it’s notable for the fact that it brought a third dimension to the Mushroom Kingdom, comparing it to any Mario game that came before it is basically apples and oranges.

An eternal plus for Mario is that the game was never meant to be photorealistic; so even today the NES and SNES titles manage to keep some freshness. The original SMB is a little flat, sure; but Mario 3 will always be an exceptional game. While the graphics in this day and age could easily be surpassed by my phone, it doesn’t matter, because they were what they were. They were, and always will be, classics.

Where am I going with this?

I just finally got around to playing Indigo Prophecy. It’s not a new title, having seen release on the PS2 and Xbox a few years ago. My curiosity was piqued during a discussion about it last year, and recently reinvigorated by the news on the developer’s follow-up title Heavy Rain.

My point here doesn’t require me to go into too much depth regarding the plot of Indigo Prophecy, so suffice it to say that it was in their best interest to make things look as realistic as they could. That is an admirable and common goal among a good portion of games nowadays. And I suspect had I played the game 3 or 4 years ago when it came out, I would’ve found it perfectly acceptable.

However, I have been playing games almost exclusively on the Xbox 360 for nearly three years now; games that have truly raised the bar in terms of what video games should be. It’s not really a stretch to say that these games have spoiled me with their bright colors and slick graphics – that’s kind of the point.

So from the minute I put in Indigo Prophecy, the deck was stacked against it. It probably didn’t help that I had just finished Prince of Persia, one of the most beautiful games available on the current crop of consoles, the night before. Everything about Indigo Prophecy was blocky, muted, flat… stale.

The thing is, I’m not convinced that these modern 3D games can ever be enjoyed the same way classic 2D games can. Why would I want to play the original Gran Turismo when I know that Gran Turismo 5 is even closer to the game Polyphony Digital really wants to make? I think that when the paradigm of game design shifted away from traditional 2D, sprite-based platforming games towards 3D polygonal mishmash, all of the 2D games that were great at that time (Mario, Metroid, Zelda) were immortalized.

I don’t think we’ll see that sort of phenomenon again for awhile, what with the massive leaps in technology happening so frequently. Look at Grand Theft Auto IV, versus Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, versus Grand Theft Auto III. You’d expect the differences between this and the previous generation to be pronounced, but even the two games on the same console are worlds apart after only 4 years.

This is going to end in one of two scenarios:

1. Games will continue to develop and advance, graphically, until they can’t go any further. We will have games that are truly photorealistic to the point where the only way to improve is to increase the scope of the game and continue to expand the player’s environment.
2. Console games as we know them will phase out due to some dramatic shift in technology. True, immersive 3D, I suppose. A sort of holodeck type of thing? Once this happens, it will basically render the current types of games moot, leaving the last of their kind to become legendary like some of the great SNES games have become.

So basically what I’m saying is that I like new games, and I like old games. It’s the in-between area that fails to light my fire.

In the past week, two iPhoners friends with iPhones have asked me what apps I’m currently using on my iPhone. And while I’m not writing this down with the pretense that anyone will actually care, I figure it’s a thing appropriate for a blog such as this. Yes, I’ve covered this topic before, but this is a more comprehensive listing that also accounts for my tastes having since changed.

The List

I have my phone divided into four pages, plus the typical quick launch bar at the bottom (Phone/Text/Safari/Mail):

1. Primary Apps (11 + Settings)
2. Secondary Apps (16)
3. Games (8)
4. Web Shortcuts (3)

I’ve decided to include arbitrary ratings for usefulness (how good it is at what it does) and frequency (how often I use it), 5 being the highest.

Recommendations

I’ve already covered Twitteriffic, TWC, and WhitePages Mobile; my reasons for liking them still stand. But here’s a quick rundown of the others:

• CameraBag is a nice little filtering app that makes the photos taken with your phone not look quite so lame. You can either shoot directly from the app itself, or edit photos after the fact. Here’s a quick example: before and after.
• Delivery Status Touch is the best package tracking app I’ve found with support for every delivery service imaginable. As a bonus it’s updatable from the web.
• Aurora Feint: The Beginning is a really fun game, when it works. It used to constantly throw out errors when it couldn’t talk to the server, to the point where you couldn’t even resume a game you were playing. It looks like the original free version had been removed from the store, replaced by Aurora Feint II; perhaps this newer iteration works better.
• Sol Free Solitaire is solitaire, with a few variations. Go play Demon – I’ll see you in a few hours when you realize what time it is.

I’m not sure I can describe how I felt at the end of Apple’s iPhone event yesterday. Indeed, it was two hours spent talking about what to expect from the next major release of the iPhone OS, and while that actually affects me now (yay), I think I found myself in kind of a neutral state afterwards. I am certainly glad to see progress being made, but the new features and fixes don’t generally hit close to home for me.

Copy and paste is a welcome addition, obviously, as is MMS for those that actually use those. The additional calendar protocols are nice to see, although Google Sync addressed that issue a month ago. I don’t know how useful Spotlight will be, as I don’t think I have a lot of things that I have lost on my phone, but it will be fun to mess with.

But two features stood out and have me eagerly awaiting the magical summer day when I plug my phone into iTunes, and after it stalls and I have to restart it one or two times, I can finally download iPhone OS 3.0:

• Landscape Mode for Mail, Messaging, and Notes
  Just, seriously, duh. I never really understood why Safari was the only app to make use of the big horizontal keyboard; especially since that is not where a typical person would be doing the brunt of their typing. So I am really glad to see that option proliferate to the other apps that badly need it.
• Note Syncing
  Assuming this is implemented well, I am excited about it. I don’t use a ton of notes, but I really like the option to sync them from my computer. Now that I think about it though, a wireless sync would be even more useful than having to deal with iTunes just to update my grocery list. Oh well, we’ll see.

All in all, though, I can’t complain too much because it’s all free and it only makes the iPhone better.

Apple is a strong advocate for keeping things simple. This is especially evident in their hardware design, as one may gather from the fact that most of their hardware has only one switch or button. And generally, this strategy seems to work like crazy for them, effectively setting them even further apart from their competition.

However, there are some decisions that can be subjectively classified as missteps on their part. The new iPod shuffle is a demonstration that maybe not having any controls on the device is an idea that should’ve remained on the drawing board. I can’t say for sure as I haven’t played with one (and probably never will), but most of the complaints I’ve heard thusfar have centered around the decision to take the controls off of the device and make them part of the component that you’re more likely to replace or lose (the headphones). I don’t disagree with that particular sentiment, as having to carry specialized headphones for two different devices (iPhone and shuffle) is a concept that seems vaguely, uh, mentally deficient.

The one-button mouse, while an Apple icon, is another great example of their overzealousness for simplicity. The Mighty Mouse is a drastic improvement in terms of functionality, but only when you compare it to their previous offerings. Beyond that, it doesn’t offer much that can’t be found in even the cheapest optical scroll mouse. The scroll ball is nice – until it stops working, as it has now in every Mighty Mouse I’ve owned.

But the device where the button shortage bothers me the most is the iPhone. I pretty much despise the whole “slide to do whatever” mechanic – I would love to have the option to turn that off and just use some combination of the hardware buttons to bypass it. I’d even be fine if they used the Accept/Decline buttons that are present when the phone receives a call while unlocked. I don’t enjoy sliding my fingers around the screen for no reason; especially when it’s in an attempt to accomplish something that’s more easily achieved by pressing a button.

And that’s the crux of the matter. There’s no question that Apple makes some amazing products, but sometimes it seems they favor perceived simplicity to actual simplicity.

It seems that content providers have decided that Hulu will no longer run on boxee. What I’ve read suggests that they would prefer the revenue from actual TV ads versus the revenue generated by watching Hulu on a television.

Except the content providers always seem to ignore that it’s not black and white. My viewing choices aren’t limited to “watch it on Hulu” or “watch it on live TV”. They also include “don’t watch it at all”, “torrent it”, or “watch it on TiVo and skip the ads”. So are those zero-revenue choices (admittedly I’m not sure about the TiVo one) really preferable to the revenue from Hulu’s ads?

All I can say is that someone with extremely questionable taste must have borrowed my computer, I swear:

1. Spin – Lifehouse
2. 100 Years – Five for Fighting
3. Mandy – Barry Manilow
4. Toxic – Britney Spears
5. Trouble – Pink
6. Na-NaNa-Na – Nelly
7. La La – Ashlee Simpson
8. Little Girls – Oingo Boingo
9. Livin La Vida Loca – Antonio Banderas & Eddie Murphy (Shrek 2)
10. Invisible – Clay Aiken

Terrible music aside, I Twittered recently that it would cost me $135 to upgrade my purchased iTunes music to iTunes Plus. In news that’s both depressing and reassuring, that number has since climbed to $153. Imagine my relief when I read today that iTunes is now offering a la carte upgrades, so I can upgrade the stuff I’m actually glad I bought the first time without having to deal with the guilt that would stem from paying yet again for the shitty songs.

As a bonus, I’ve been able to recover a few songs here or there that managed to lose themselves in my computorial transition last year. The ol’ Powerbook was easily confused and ended up occasionally trying to put music on its internal drive instead of the external where it belonged, and that music was lost when I formatted the machine. I was able to recover a good portion of it either from CDs or off of my iPod (SHHH IT WILL BE OUR SECRET) (also this is why I demand an iPod that will hold my entire library), but upgrading filled in a couple of the gaps that still remained.

2008 ended last week, I guess. I feel like I wrote a decent amount, and I had every intention of writing a sort of “year in review” type of post. But I never got to a point where I had the right tone in my head, so instead I present you with this meme I found on the internerd. INTERNERD.

Achievements & Landmarks

What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?

Lost weight on purpose. Went into debt for a car that I fell in love with.

Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I guess so, and probably not. They were always a half-hearted promise to eat better and take better care of myself. Also I’m pretty sure I was resolving about a Mac Pro heavily at this time last year.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Uh, our neighbors? Or did you mean emotionally close? Then no.

Did anyone close to you die?

Sort of close. It would be wrong to say we weren’t close at some point.

What countries did you visit?

This one.

What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

Patience.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I don’t think there’s one big thing that stands out, but I’m really proud of the work I did on Over the River and Through the Woods and Sweeney Todd. And losing weight counts as a major thing for me.

What was your biggest failure?

I let things fall by the wayside that shouldn’t have, and got angry way more than I should have.

What was the best thing you bought?

The Mac was the most practical best thing, and the Miata was the least practical best thing.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

What? Not mine, that’s for sure.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

People I thought I could trust. Myself included.

Where did most of your money go?

Toys. Lots of toys.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Grand Theft Auto IV. Driving stick. Singing in public.

What song will always remind you of 2008?

Monsters, by Matchbook Romance. Lame, I know, but it got me stoked for rides at Nine Mile.

Compared to this time last year, are you:

Happier or sadder?

Sadder, but I shouldn’t be.

Thinner or fatter?

Way, way thinner.

Richer or poorer?

Richer.

Miscellany

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Enjoying myself. Letting things go.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worrying. Spending money.

How did you be spend Christmas?

With people whose company I enjoy.

Did you fall in love in 2008?

Only on stage.

How many one-night stands?

None.

What was your favorite TV program?

I enjoyed SNL, as usual. Surprise second goes to Prison Break for no reason whatsoever.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Yeah.

What was the best book you read?

I don’t know – something that was on the bookshelf.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

Stephen Sondheim. The man is a genius.

What did you want and get?

Dollars, which enabled me to get many other things that I wanted.

What did you want and not get?

Resolution. Recognition.

What were your favorite films of this year?

Iron Man, easily. Dark Knight was also enjoyable.

What did you do on your birthday?

Complain. It was a tough day for me this year. That’s what I get for being born on Christmas Eve.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

“Hey, this fits me now!”

What kept you sane?

The internerd. Driving. Acting.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Obama would be a logical answer.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Obvious also starts with an “O”.

Who did you miss?

People I could only talk to online.

Who was the best new person you met?

Somebody who helps keep me sane.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:

Let. It. Go.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I don’t think I can. That’s pretty lame, even for this.

Yesterday I mentioned that two devices that I tend to use frequently would benefit from the addition of one more wireless standard (infrared). When I made this statement, the general consensus (okay, two people) was “why?”

It’s a Blu-ray player!

Everybody knows this about the PS3. And that’s because Sony has been shoving that information down your throat since well before it launched. But if you’re going to send your console into the world masquerading as a home theatre component, then the very least it should be able to do is conform to the standards set by other components. If you have to sell a proprietary remote for it because other “universal” remotes don’t work, that may be a hint that you’re doing it wrong.

As someone who is enthusiastic about home theatre, it strikes me as an obvious omission. No matter what I do, I can’t avoid having two remotes on the coffee table – one for the PS3, and the other for everything else. Even the PS2 gained an IR port in the middle of its life, and the Xbox 360 has had one forever.

Fortunately the PS3 is a stationary item with ample USB ports, and one would think it’d be relatively simple to design a small USB dongle with an IR receiver. Of course, Sony won’t do it because they don’t care.

It’s a phone…?

The reasoning in the iPhone’s case is not so obvious. I don’t know how many current phones have IR these days (is it even a “thing” in phones anymore?). But wouldn’t the iPhone be the most amazing universal remote ever? Plus, it has Bluetooth, so it could even talk to the retarded PS3.