Can someone please explain what is wrong with if it aint’ broke don’t fix it

Recently I’ve asked myself this question when a lot of the things I use in my daily life had changed. One of them being, Gmail while most like and the new look I was always a hold out for the old look it just worked better and was great and when it kicked me into the new look I always reverted back to the old look because of the poor use of space and bigger buttons for no real apparent reason.

I also liked the fact that I could see a whole lot more messages in the main view then I do now 20 vs 100 you do the math. Additionally I now have to choose between my contacts and my calendar before I had both why must I choose now? That’s RUBBISH! So I was notably miffed when I was kicked into the new look and the option to revert was gone I checked everywhere for the option to revert back and I think they have abandoned it completely which makes me sad but what gets my goat even more is the fact that in Google’s spring cleaning they will officially stop supporting their Google Sync product on my much beloved Blackberry. This is one of my must have apps on my phone it pulls in my Google calendar and puts it right into my phones calendar seamlessly and with little effort on my part, its brilliant in every way. But since Google has a horse in this smartphone race this little unknown thing called Android they are starting to make sure their products don’t work on anything but their own products. The fix is that they want you to use the built in syncing with the Gmail account tied to the phone so I turned it on for a few days recently and the damn thing near wrecked my calendar, I mean LOOK AT IT

Before those were one event each no its duplicated itself at least 8 times that’s just the all day events and reminders it not even the regular stuff so after this I had to promptly turn that off.  ! I thought their motto was do no evil but apparently that’s no longer true. But it’s not just Google doing it.

Now when Facebook announced its new timeline profile I thought it looked cool but very annoying because it made it near impossible to find something in the past because of the two column layout. Compare that to the single column stacked in order of event to the new two column where the timeline is in the middle and events are randomly placed along each side by some geometric time scheme that makes no sense at all

While it makes sense for quickly skimming for a recent post finding older positing is a lot more work because  you have to try to remember when you posted that photo you want to now take down because you want to make your profile look better for a job maybe. (Because a potential employer really wants to see your pictures of you wild crazy college parties you vaguely remember because you were let’s face it drunk) Or spend the better part of an hour or so scrolling through the confusing timeline attempting to find what you’re looking for either way making it more graphical and multi column isn’t the answer.

I do like new things when they improve on what already was good. But what Google and Facebook have done was taken what worked well and thrown it all out and in place put something that is worse.  Sometimes reinventing the wheel is not necessary just improving it will do and that is why quite simply these redesigns have failed.

EDITORIAL: why modern smart phones make terrible “phones”

I do take some heat from my friends who think Steve Jobs is their lord and savior  by bashing apple products like the iPhone. Even with a Verizon model now available i am still of the belief that the iPhone is a terrible phone. While i have a slightly more open view of Android  most of them are still plagued by the same problem have we all completely stopped talking on our phones? Is having a bigger screen and lack of physical dial pad or keyboards make us less likely to talk to others? Sadly I think yes.

You might think I’m crazy for saying this but this baffles me because i think the 3-7 presses on a touchscreen to place a call is unacceptable because these should be phones first, texting and email a strong second and games and apps should be and added bonus. however, i think the current priorities of smart phones is vice-versa. Think about it you first have to unlock the device tap the phone icon and if the person you want to call isn’t in you recent calls  you then have to scroll through your contacts to find their name then you have to select the number you want to call. It should not take fewer steps to do a foursquare check in then it does to make a phone call. Also these big phones with 4″+ screens baffle me as well their fine for watching video on but  they’re like holding a pop-tart to your ear.

Which gets me to my point while iPhone and Android have all the apps and other stuff there is a smart phone manufacturer who has it right and of corse they aren’t american they are Canadian yes i am talking about humble Research in Motion makers of the Blackberry. Who have been doing smart phones longer than anyone else since the first pager style email only device in 1997. Now if you have made it this far you might think i have gone completely mad but hear me out. The one thing RIM have always done right is their keyboards the keys are properly spaced and in a QWERTY layout like your computer keyboard and it is a key part in phone operation to place a call you press the send key and either type in the name of the person you want to call and press send or look through your call log, or just press and hold the contacts personally assigned speed dial key it’s just that simple. Email and text messaging is also just that easy too it is neatly organized to get you in and out without all those unneeded steps. The Blackberry also has all the essential apps Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Weather bug and Amazon. RIM has used its years of experience tweaking the experience to make it simple and logical to operate and it also just works. it might not be the best looking or most popular smart phone choice out there right now but it’s the best.

(Yes I know about the Blackberry storm lets just admit it was a massive cock-up )

Mini Review: the new iPods

I recently visited my local Apple store to check out the new iPods announced the beginning of the month. First what changed the iPod nano lost its video camera and ability to play video entirely and just about everything else it is now about the size of the iPod shuffle and has a 1.5” touchscreen. The iPod Touch got the A4 chipset a front and rear camera retina display. The iPod shuffle got it’s old shape and buttons back YAY!!!!

iPod Nano

like I said above changed the iPod nano lost its video camera and ability to play video entirely and just about everything else it is now about the size of the iPod shuffle and has a 1.5” touchscreen.

While it looks like an iOS device you cannot put apps on the device just the ones it comes with. The touchscreen is a nice touch but I have a problem with the implementation of it is just too small for me to use scrolling through music especially if you have a lot will take a while and you if it is not clipped to you it is a two handed affair whereas the old one with the click wheel was not.  If you are in a screen and want to go home you press and hold the screen in a blank space the only problem is and it could be me it would not do it consistently and while and owner of it would get better at it I find it quite annoying that it doesn’t work consistently. There is one cool thing you can do with it though with it being so small with the clock on it you can get a special watch band the nano clips on and becomes an expensive watch that plays music, neat (I guess).

iPod Touch

The iPod touch has always been the iPhone for the people who don’t want to commit to AT&T’s god awful cell service. (I don’t blame you) The iPod touch followed suit with the A4 chipset the retina display and the 2 camera which include the ability to Face Time with iPhone 4 owner s and other iPod touches and the new game center a way to play games with friends like on your console.  I have always liked the iPod touch and it just gets better over time

iPod Shuffle

the iPod shuffle (the cheap one)  got it’s buttons back  and no longer looks it a  stick of gum  not much more to say about it.



AT&T & iPhone 4: Fewer bars in fewer places

Upon the beaconing of our tech god Steve Jobs some (about 2 Million) people went out and stood in line to get the new must have gadget from the Apple.  It is the iPhone 4 the 4^th generation of Apple’s entry into the smartphone arena and among all the new features it has what is quite possibly the best screen on a phone at the moment but it is only somewhat better than the AMOLED screens in some of the newest phones on the market like the Sprint HTC EVO 4g, HTC DROID Incredible, and the HTC Google Nexus One. Apple calls it the Retina Display and claims that the pixel dimension of the display is so high that it is more than the eye can see.  Steve Jobs says “It turns out there’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch, that when you hold something around to 10 to 12 inches away from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels,” the iPhone 4 is at 326PPI,however Raymond Soneria of Display Mate a company that has spent years calibrating displays disagrees a more accurate “retina display” would have a pixel resolution of 477 pixels per inch at 12 inches” (Wired.com) to read more go to the wired magazine article http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/iphone-4-retina-2/ .

The newest feature of iPhone 4 is  the front facing camera and the chat program FaceTime however to initiate FaceTime you first need to call the iPhone 4 user  and be on a Wi-Fi network  because the video chatting works over Wi-Fi only for now  coming to 3g sometime later on. You must be on the cellular network to initiate the call in the first place, weird huh and it is ONLY iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 which limits the number of people you can FaceTime with, making this feature a cool thing you can’t really use.  Now the real revolutionary feature the antenna design which consists of 3 Stainless steel   bands which make up the thickness of the phone the top left antenna being the 3G GPS antenna the top right being the Wi-Fi Bluetooth and the bottom being the GSM cell phone antenna 

apple claims it gives you the best coverage of any iPhone so far. Or so they thought as soon as the iPhone 4 started to hit the streets there were reports of being able to short out the 3G and cellular antenna by holding the phone in their left hand making the phone lose service completely, and there are numerous videos of people demoing this and being able to do it on command.  A friend of mine let me see his new toy I was personally able to replicate the problem without any difficulty at all on command multiple times so I can say it is a problem.  What is more ludicrous is Apple’s initial response to the problem “Your holding it wrong”  I’m not kidding  and apple advised their Apple Care support team to NOT give out free Bumper cases (the Apple frame case) which will remedy the problem . Why because doing that admits we screwed up which they did admit last Friday saying that “Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”  So what Apple is saying your iPhone has been lying to you the WHOLE TIME!!!!! ‘ so when the iPhone says it has  5 bars full signal  it is really 2 – 3 bars  add this to the absolutely horrid state of AT&T’s network  all one can say it WTF Apple and AT&T?  Read the whole press release at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02appleletter.html .

You might call me anti- Apple but I am not I proudly own and love my MacBook (fall 2007 black polycarbonate) I do own and use a Verizon Wireless Rim BlackBerry Curve 8330 and have no intentions of buying an iPhone or moving to AT&T but if Apple puts the A4 chipset and retina display in the next generation iPod Touch you call stand in line behind me.

image source  http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/#10-35-26-am

Ethical Journalism…. Gizmodo…And the iPhone 4G

Last week the tech world was in a tizzy over the stolen / lost (however you want to call it) iPhone 4g prototype and how the story of it getting into a certain gadget blogs hands does not add up.  The story as it is currently stated goes like this , an Apple engineer  working  on the radios that for the new iphone  possessed a working prototype out in the wild (you do have to test this stuff) was in a bar and “lost“ the phone in the bar.  The phone then was swiped / stolen by a bar patron and  apparently knew what he had found  taken some photos and sent them to some media outlets  the gadget blogs took the bait and posted the photos most with some suspicion having seen Apple look-a-likes before . But wait there’s more the unknown holder of the device was willing to sell is warez to anyone willing to pay his price $5,000 now most ethical publications and blogs stayed far far FAR away from this and want no part of this, except for one Gizmodo a gadget blog owned by Gawker media whose editor in chief Brian Lam with permission of the head of Gawker Nick Denton bought the device off the unknown third party.  Denton who came from a British tabloid (ethical right) broke one of the key rules to ethical Journalism he paid for an exclusive.  To make it worse Denton who runs Gawker admittedly participates in what is effectually called “checkbook journalism”.

The Gawker employee who actually possessed the device Jason Chen took pictures did a video and a tear down of the device and posted all of this on Gizmodo.  After posting this to the site Gizmodo got 1million plus hits to the story, then they got ballsy they actually outed the Apple Engineer who lost the prototype (I will not  … if you really want to know look it up for yourself) and then to verify their warez they would not turn it back over to Apple unless Apple sent them a formal request for it.  They did eventually hand it over but he story does not end there  Chen the “journalist” who had the iPhone prototype  lives in California and  that being the home to a lot of tech companies  and secrets they have there is a special law enforcement team called R.E.A.C.T  Rapid  Enforcement Allied Computer Team  got a warrant to search Chen’s house and took away all of the computers , servers , flash drives , cameras  and even his iPad as evidence. However the story does not end here Gawkers believes Chen is protected under California’s shield laws which protect journalists and their sources from prosecution. Gawker is hoping that themselves and Chen are protected by these laws; however, it is unclear at this time if the R.E.A.C.T   team is after Chen and Gawker or the source who sold them the phone.

What will come of Chen and or Gawker and Gizmodo is yet to be known , will there be charges filed will there be a lawsuit.  One thing is almost certain Chen / Gizmodo knowingly bought/ received stolen property and that is a misdemeanor. But Gizmodo will go to any extent to get the story even if it means breaking the law in this case, Gizmodo  in my opinion acts like the TMZ of the tech blogs post first then verify, and possibly that is why they are banned from attending the Consumer Electronics Show  for using a TV B Gone device to turn off demo tv’s at the show and post a video of them doing it on YouTube ( a lot of intelligence there).

Apple iPad : Evolution not Revolution

Apple yesterday announced their latest device called the iPad and i am one of the few who felt disappointed …. ok  underwhelmed by the device itself. What the iPad is an iPod Touch blown up to about 4 times it size with a few apps modified specially for it.

So what is different from its little brother the iPod Touch. the 9.7″ screen the 1ghz processor, access to productivity tools like the iWork office suite, and access to the new iBook store that is about it.

What I think is severely limiting about the iPad is that with the 1ghz processor you STILL CANNOT MULTITASK  ON IT which in the case of composing an Pages document or Keynote presentation is key. Because if i need to copy and paste something from the browser i CANNOT  because i have to close the application to open the browser to find what i need then reopen the document and paste it in. That is 20 steps TOO MANY to do a simple task that takes about 10 seconds on any other conventional Mac or PC.

one thing that you have never been able to do on an iPhone or iPod Touch is view a website using flash and enjoying the full experience from the site, which you STILL CANNOT DO on the iPad even with the 1ghz processor most netbooks allow you to run flash and  don’t cost $500. Flash is now a critical part of most websites today and not being able to see  flash content is severely limiting and could potentially hinder the iPad experience.

the other thing is that Apple is still in bed with AT&T and this might go into an AT&T sucks rant,( you are so warned) AT&T BLOWS i really don’t care what the guy on the commercials says Verizon is 1000000 times better their 3g might be slower but it ACTUALLY WORKS 99.9% of the time. Sure i can’t talk and browse at the same time but im not going to if the phone is TO MY EAR and half the time if you do both your call will most likely drop out  anyway. Apple gave the iPhone to AT&T and they are completely botching it because expanding the network is such a hard task to do.  (END OF RANT) and most likely when they say unlimited data for $30 / month it will most likely mean that is capped at 5gb which most carriers do anyone not just AT&T. the only good thing about this is that you are not locked into a contract you can bail at any time which you will most likely do because you will eventually realize how much AT&T SUCKS.

There is one thing that cannot be argued and that is the generally excellent build quality of  all Apple products (they better at that price) in both hardware and software. But no matter what product you do buy  if is an iPod to the high end Mac Pro you know that it will last a long long time. With prices starting at $499 for the 16gb non 3g model that to me is a bit high to most to bridge the gap between a smartphone and a laptop now if it was say $299 apple would give the consumer a really difficult choice  Amazon Kindle or Apple iPad. Oh and by the way Amazon is rumored to be working on the Kindle 3, and depending on the level of innovation and the time of announcement the iPad could be an also ran.

When the iPhone was unveiled in 2007 Apple revolutionized the mobile phone industry and the platform Apple developed around the iPhone which evolved into the iPod Touch and now the iPad not much has changed since version 3.0 of the iPhone OS which allowed users to install third party apps from the App Store. So until Apple decides to allow the user to multitask and allow me to browse the web in all its glory (INCLUDING FLASH) the ipad to me at least is another Newton.

Review: panasonic RP-HTX7 headphones

i recently upgraded my every day headphones and demoted my sony street style headphones to the travel kit and purchased these panasonics.  It was  these or a grados i chose these because theses seemed more comfortable for long term wearing and not sacrificing sound quality.  in my month or so test of these i’ve listened to my entire itunes library internet video and audio steams  and found that they work very well accross the acustic range of my music of multiple genres the only issue is that the mids are not a crisp as the highs and lows but for only between $30 – 60 ( depending on where you look) they are not bad headphones. in my opinion they are very comprable to the bose headphone at about half the cost.