Gadgets and Gizmos – Page 7

On iPhone OS 4.0

I’m sure almost everybody here has heard that Apple unveiled iPhone OS 4 yesterday. If you didn’t I’m surprised being it was “the news.” Anyways I’m here to give my initial and patented cynical overview of it.

All in all Apple claims to have added seven new major features. In reality I only give a shit about two of them. The first finally corrects one of my biggest gripes with the iPhone, lack of multi-tasking. Well it sort of fixes it. iPhone OS 4.0 finally introduced multi-tasking for third party applications. Let me rephrase it introduces a rudimentary form of multi-tasking for certain third party applications. Instead of doing like Palm and Google with their respective operating systems Apple has going the route of ancient Palm OS. Ancient Palm OS allowed some things to run in the background. They called it threading. The main two items that could be run in the background were open network connections and sound. This was accomplished by calling an operating system provided service. And that’s exactly what iPhone OS 4.0 does. It introduces seven services for running background tasks. My problem is the services appear to be very specific instead of generalized.

Like Palm OS of yesteryear the iPhone has a service for sound. It also provides a background service for location (GPS), a mechanism for applications to provide notifications when they’re not running, and a VoIP services (there are a few others but they’re mostly meaningless to me). There is no generic networking background service though. This means Skype can run in the background so you can take calls. But if you write an IRC client it will not be able to run in the background meaning you’ll get disconnected when you change to another applications (unless one of the mentioned services can be shoehorned into a generic networking services). That severely limits the application possibilities again. Apple proves yet again that they can offer a feature available in other operating systems for almost a decade while spinning it as something unique, new, and innovative. I’m not impressed but it’s certainly better than what they’ve had in the past (nothing).

The final note about multi-tasking is if you have an iPhone previous to the 3GS you won’t get it. Sorry Apple has decided previous models of the iPhone don’t have the required hardware even though jailbreakers have been multi-tasking on every iPhone model that has ever existed. It’s nice to know you’re loved right? Nothing makes me happier than companies denying features based entirely on the fact that they want you to buy a new product.

Let’s talk the other feature I took notice of, iAd. Apple has pretty much included adware directly into the OS (much to the bane of many like myself who avoid getting a system infected with adware). This is a feature that can be included in applications and allows easy advertisements. Apple controls the actual adds so the developer simply collects a paycheck from it (they get 60% while Apple keeps 40%). All in all I’m not as hysterical as many are about this feature. Currently many free applications already have advertisements in them so not much is changing. My main issue is since it’s easy to implement advertisements in an application more and more developers will be doing it (I had advertisements in my applications, if you want to make money just sell the damned thing). But my biggest fear is advertisements will start being included in pay applications (to offset the “subsidized price” of $1.99 of course). Not that big of an issue overall as you can just avoid applications with advertising in them.

The real problem with iAd in my opinion is how it makes the product feel cheapened. Let’s face it nobody likes adware getting onto their computer (as evident by applications like Adaware existing who’s sole purpose is to remove adware). So knowing an advertisement service exists inside of the operating system itself just makes the entire system feel chintzy. It’s a psychological thing but alas it’s what it is.

Overall iPhone OS 4.0 is an improvement but not nearly as good of one as I was hoping.

The iPad

Being a world renounced technology pundit… wait scratch that. Being a geek I get asked about various technological doodads and gizmos quite often. Since the iPad is the current hot tech device I’m getting asked my views on it. Because of my inflated ego and perceived self worth I’ve decided reads of this site (both of you) may be interested in my views on the device. So here it is.

First let me start by saying I don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch. Coincidentally I also don’t have an iPad therefore this post is going to be my views based upon the published specifications and my person beliefs as a computer scientist (note that’s the only credential I’m going to be using because I have no other credentials related to this). I do have the development tools for the iPhone installed on my computer and have written test applications for the platform and most of the time I view a platform based on my development experiences. I have played with physical iPhones but have yet to hold an iPad. There that’s straight up and honest. My opinions may change based on exposure to the physical device at a later date and if that is the case I’ll post my revised ides.

A final note is I’m basing this post on the iPad in its stock configuration. I realize that is has already been jail broken and thus additional functionality exists. I don’t like messing with such things and if I need to jail break a device to make it useful to me I generally just get a different device.

First and foremost I’m going to mention my gripes with the iPhone (the validity of which will be made clear in a few paragraphs). The biggest one for me is third party applications can’t multi-task. If you don’t know what that means it is a pseudo-fancy way of saying multiple third party applications can not run at the same time. So if you have an IRC client you can not allow it to run in the background while you open the Pandora application meaning you’ll miss any messages sent to you during your time outside of the application. This is a huge issue for my uses. I often have an AIM client (don’t laugh, it’s what the majority of my friends use), IRC client, and various other programs open and running at the same time on my laptop. Likewise on my phone I have ran my AIM client while doing other tasks (yes the old Palm OS had some limited multi-tasking capabilities including network connections continuing to run in the background). Not being able to get messages sent to me using these clients while I’m doing other things is a huge strike against the device.

Another issue I have with the iPhone is the fact you can only install applications Apple has blessed. Their process of blessing applications is fairly random and they haven’t published exact specifications stating what will and will not get approved. They have mentioned some things but other things they seem to make up on the spot. I don’t like a third party having this kind of control over a device I have purchased. If I want to install a shitty application that will break my phone I should damn well be able to do so.

Third the battery in the iPhone is not easily user replaceable. Yes Apple will replace the battery should it become weak at a nominal charge but that doesn’t do anything for me when the battery runs out of juice while I’m on a trip and I need to swap in a fresh one. I have a spare batter for my current phone specifically because of this scenario. I want the ability to swap batteries when the one in my phone is completely discharged after a long phone conversation. Likewise I’m a big fan of self-servicing my electronics. My the fan in my old laptop died I bought a new one and installed it myself. I could do this because the case could be opened easily while the iPhone isn’t built in a manner that allows easy service. It’s a disposable device, when it breaks you’re just expected to replace it. I hate this idea.

I also hate AT&T which is the only United States carrier who has the iPhone. This is a non-issue for the iPad so it’s irrelevant to this post though.

Those are the big ones. Beyond that I haven’t much against the iPhone. But that brings up the first issue I have with the iPad. It doesn’t correct any of these issues I have with the iPhone. The iPad doesn’t multi-task and any application you want to install must be blessed by Apple. Also like the iPhone the iPad battery is not user replaceable which just pisses me off.

With that said the iPad does have one option available to it that I like. You can sync up a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPad giving you the ability to do actual typing on it. Combined with the size and portability of this device that means the iPad should be fairly proficient for writing tasks. This means you could theoretically bring an iPad in place of a laptop if you needed to write reports or blog posts. Of course the iPad lacks many tools (virtual machines and development tools mostly) I require for day to day tasks and hence would not be a laptop replacement for me. But that’s my uses and I don’t think most people require the same tools I do therefore the iPad is a potential laptop replacement. Most people outside of the computer science field I know would be able to function a week on the features available on the iPad.

Now the part I really like about the iPad, it’s simplistic interface. Once again this isn’t something for me personally but for people I know. The iPad would be the perfect computer for my grandmother. My grandmother knows nothing about computers. While trying to show her how to run one I noticed several things. First she always tries to touch the icons on a screen to open an application. She doesn’t get the interaction between the touch pad on a laptop and the pointer on a screen. A touch screen device would be perfect for her which is exactly what the iPad is. She doesn’t touch type, instead she has to hunt and peck for keys on a keyboard. Due to this she really gains no benefit from a physical keyboard since the main benefit is speed. An onscreen keyboard would be ideal for her uses (especially if you could sort the keys in alphabetical order instead of using the QWERTY layout). By default the iPad has a web browser which is pretty much all she needs or wants. She has no interest in third party applications at all. Of course a JooJoo would fit this use case well except for the fact it’s larger and heavier while my grandmother doesn’t have the best ability to hold a heavier device up for very long.

Overall I think the iPad is perfect for those wanting to use basic Internet functionality (web browsing, e-mail, etc.) but have no experience nor interest in computers beyond that. It’s simple and basic which is exactly what many people want.

As an e-reader I think the iPad suffers from the same flaws as any portable computer, the screen. The reason I love my Kindle is because the screen is something I can look at for hours on end and use outside in direct sunlight. Yes when the weather is nice I like to take my reading outside to places like my little deck or park benches. The iPad screen is highly reflective. Apple did that because it makes colors look much richer but it also comes at the price of being almost unusable outdoors. My laptop has a glossy screen as well and using it with any light source behind you can suck pretty hard. Finally the iPad is a bit on the large side for an e-reader in my opinion (I love the Kindle’s size, especially when I’m sitting on an airplane). Without an e-paper display I can’t imagine replacing my Kindle with an iPad. Of course somebody will bring up that I can’t view color illustrations on my Kindle to which my replay is, I don’t care. Truth be told through most of college I obtained international editions of my required text books. These are the same books you buy in campus book stores except they are not hard cover and they only have black and white illustrations. I never encountered an image or diagram in a book where I though, “Hey I wish this was in color.” And most of my reading involves novels and technical manuals which are mostly text and therefore don’t require color. If your main reading material are things like comic books I can see where having a device with a color screen is going to be a huge plus and in that case the iPad will fit the bill.

The iPad seems to also be a great portable movie player. The screen is large enough where you could watch a movie on it while still being small enough to have sitting out on an airplane or bus. If the screen is anything like the iPhone’s it’ll be plenty good for displaying good video. I think it’s too large to be an effective portable music player though. But most cell phones have this functionality built in. Having the larger screen the iPad offers is no benefit for playing music so most people will probably continue doing that on their phones (or MP3 player as in my case).

Overall I think the iPad is a great device for many use cases. None of them happen to be my use cases and therefore it doesn’t really fit me. The price seems to be in line with other similar devices although with how much more expensive it is than many netbooks in addition to have less features I’d say it’s not a good price point. For the most part my feeling towards the iPad is that it’s a solution in search of a problem. It’s too large to be as portable as a phone but tool limited to be a laptop replacement for many people.

Fuck You Too Sony

If there’s one thing I love it’s technology and gizmos. Because of my bizarre drive to have lots of electronic devices around I ended up buying a PlayStation 3 quite some time back. The feature list of this system is quite long although it’s been getting shorter as the system ages. This is really odd since most systems gain features as they get older. Well one feature I rather enjoyed was the ability to install Linux on the system. Sure it ran in a hypervisor and was gimped for the most part but it gave me the ability to write code for the cell processor and see what made it tick. Well Sony decided to take that away from me as well.

The latest firmware update released today removes the “Install Other OS” feature and removes any currently installed operating system. Of course I would put this off as some kind of April Fool’s prank but information regarding this has been out for a couple of days. And it’s truly bad form to pull an April Fool’s prank before the actual date.

This kind of shit really pisses me off. I realize this is a feature used by very few people but those few of us who used it really enjoyed it. The fact of the matter is one of the reasons I bought a PS3 was for this particular feature as I wanted to play with the cell processor which was all the rave at the time. Yes I paid for this feature and now Sony has decided to take it. Well I could always refuse to install the new firmware but then I can’t use the system for the other reason I own it, gaming. So no matter what Sony is ensuring I lose a feature I paid for.

Well it’s nice to see Sony has decided they no longer want my money. But this is only one piece of my two part rant. That’s right you’re getting two rants for the price of one! The other thing that’s pissing me off are the comments being made by people. For instance user HumanNature on Engadget had this to say:

Totally agreed. I blame Geohot for this mess. No one with a working common sense would not foresee Sony not fixing their security issue with OtherOs. I mean really, did Geohot really think Sony was going to congratulate him and let some other hacker make it easy to install like the PSP? Geohot releasing the exploit is the cause, Sony locking the OtherOs is the effect.

Do people really expect Sony to sit around and let the PS3 end up like the PSP? Like many things in life, it only takes one idiot to abuse something, and everyone will be force to pay the price.

That’s right people are blaming the well known hardware hacker who goes by the handle Geohot. What did Geohot do? Well you can go read his blog. More or less he found a convoluted way to accomplish nothing… yet. But as with all hacks it will eventually lead to bigger and better things.

Either way what he did was awesome. It should be seen as an accomplishment as it required ingenuity and understanding of the hypervisor. It was a good hack and he should be congratulated for figuring it out not blamed for Sony removing the “Install Other OS” capability on the PS3. The bottom line is Sony decided to take their ball and go home instead of fixing the flaw. This is akin to somebody finding an exploit in Windows Media Player and Microsoft reacting by removing Windows Media Player (granted not a horrible thing but I’m bias in my hatred of Windows Media Player).

Either way there seems to be a lot of blame and some hatred going towards Geohot for playing with hardware he owns. That’s the key thing. You don’t rent a PS3, you purchase it. Once you own it you can do anything you want with it. If I want to take mine to the range and blast the shit out of it I very well can because it’s my property. Geohot did what any good geek does, he developed an understanding of the device and decided to utilize that understanding to make the device to more. But the bottom line is this attempt to extend the capabilities of the device have nothing to do with game piracy as Sony claims.

Of course very few people really care about this exploit because few people use the “Install Other OS” feature. So I say the next exploit should focus on the Blu-ray player which people actually use. After all if that gets hacked it could allow the ability to play pirated games and therefore, using Sony’s logic, the Blu-ray drive would have to be disabled. Then people would actually be pissed.

Oh and I’m going to close out by saying fuck you Sony.

Dear Microsoft Please Copy Good Features And Ignore Bad Ones

I mentioned earlier this week that Microsoft was eliminating multi-tasking from Windows Phone 7 Series Ultimate Extreme Wordy Name That Makes No Sense. Well the guys over at Engadget have audio recorded proof of no multi-tasking and better yet no copy and paste. It seems Microsoft’s whole idea behind their new phone operating system with a horrible name was to copy everything bad Apple did with the iPhone.

I know I’m a niche users in that I want a phone that allows me to listen to music, download a file from a website, have an open SSH connection to another system, and have an application monitoring wireless traffic but come on. Now Microsoft will allow their own software to multi-task on the device much like Apple allows their included software to multi-task. But lowly third party developers will not be granted such permission from Microsoft.

When did people decide that their smartphones need to be less powerful? Even my Palm Treo 755p can do some basic multi-tasking and Palm OS isn’t even officially capable of multi-tasking. But that’s fine with me since Palm OS was developed back in the day when multi-tasking wasn’t feasible due to the lack of power in handheld devices (The first Palm Pilot had a 16Mhz processor and 128 KB of RAM which was used to both run applications and store them). But phones today have plenty of power on board. WebOS shows multi-tasking on a phone isn’t difficult nor impossible. Android can multi-task as can a Blackberry. We should be looking for more power and functionality in our devices not less.

Also is copy and paste really that difficult? Seriously my Palm OS based PDAs could do that! Even the iPhone can do it now. There are plenty of times where I want to copy an exert from a web page and paste it into a document elsewhere.

Why is it these new fancy phones have less capabilities than my phone released almost three years ago that is based on an operating system (Palm OS 5) released almost eight years ago?

Kindle Reader Software for Mac Available

For those of you with a Kindle Amazon just released their reader software for Mac OS. This software allows you to read books purchased on the Kindle store on your laptop. I find the reason to get a Kindle and thus purchase books on the Kindle store is because of the glorious e-ink display. But I have begun wanting the ability to read some technical books on my computer screen. This should solve that niche need pretty well.

The iPad

My friend Chris summed up my thoughts on the new iPad as well:

Its perfect, I was just thinking the other day: Wouldn’t it be great if I had an iPhone that didn’t fit in my pocket and couldn’t make phone calls? Or a netbook with no keyboard and 50% glass.

Yeah I’m not impressed. I’ll also add wouldn’t it be great to have an e-reader with an LCD screen so I can replicate the experience of reading books on my laptop. I really don’t see where Apple is going with this thing.

MacBook Air USB Ethernet Adapter Works on All Macs

Just a heads up to a question I had for a while but never found a definitive answer to. Apple has a USB Ethernet adapter for the MacBook Air which lacks any Ethernet interface. They advertise it as only working with the MacBook Air and if you ask an Apple Store employee they will tell you the adapter doesn’t work with any other Apple computer.

This made little sense to me since I assumed the driver for their adapter is included in their operating system. Anyways I purchased one because I need access to two separate networks at work. Anyways I’m happy to report the adapter works perfectly with my MacBook Pro laptop.

The adapter works very well. Being it plugs into a USB port (The theoretical maximum data rate of which is 480 Mbps) the adapter only runs at 10/100, so no gigabit for you. The data rate is good enough for the purposes I have at work but I wouldn’t want it for home use due to speed issues. Every application on the Mac, included my beloved and needed Wireshark, see the adapter as a standard Ethernet port and interact with it accordingly. That was my primary and honestly only requirement.

On the downside there are now status lights on the adapter. This is very annoying as I often use the status lights to determine if a port has gone dead or if data is flowing. Either way it works and that’s what I cared about most.

The E-Book Reader Wars Continue

First Sony, then Amazon, then Barnes and Nobel, and now Borders. Spring Design, whom claim the Barnes and Nobel Nook is a rip off of their design, has signed a partnership with Borders book stores. Spring Design has an e-book reader that also happens to have an LCD screen (But of course their’s is bigger.) and is also powered by Android.

Engadget has a video of them playing with the device. They said the speed is good (A common complaint against the Nook) and the touch screen is responsive.

Either way it’s nice to see more e-book readers hitting the market. Hopefully this means more books will be released in electronic format. I’m looking at you gun book printing industry!

Native Development Comes to WebOS

Yeah I’m still a fan of Palm even though I lack a physical WebOS device (I have the emulator though). Well something that’s been a long time coming has finally come, native development for WebOS in the form of C and C++ plugins.

This is advantageous because it gives direct access to the hardware (Needed for things like 3D games) and allows developers with applications already written in C or C++ to port their application over easier. I really need to just get a Palm Pre at this point.

In other news WebOS will have an update that allows recording video and utilizing *shudders* Flash. OK in my opinion the first is a feature and the second is a bug.

The E-Book Wars Continue, A Barnes and Nobel Nook Review

No not a review by me, but by Engadget. So much like the first Kindle the Nook appears to be very 1.0. In other words it’s a valiant initial effort but needs improvement.

The main criticism made by Engadget deals with the software. Navigation on the Nook appears to be a slight mess with an amalgamation of submenus inside of other submenus which in turn are inside of main menus. Furthermore due to the slowness of the E Ink display’s refresh there are often periods where the LCD and E Ink are synced up leading to apparent frustrations. Overall the entire software stack is sluggish according to the review.

Engadget also mentioned the backlit LCD screen is quite unpleasant when it’s on full brightness and you’re reading the E Ink display. Apparently if you’re using the Nook to play music the LCD screen comes on every time the song changes, something that I would find annoying.

The buying experience on the device appears to be quite a bit better than that on the Kindle. Also if you’re using the Nook in a Barnes and Nobel store you can read through entire books while there. Well you can read entire books for up to an hour a day at least. This feature seems rather meaningless to me since if you’re in the store already you can go grab any book there and read through it for as long as you please while there. Still it’s an interesting feature to note.

Hearing all of this I can honestly say I’ll be staying with the Kindle (not that I was planning to change). But it’s good to see some major competition coming down the pipe from another company that knows books and book selling (as opposed to a company like Sony who traditionally isn’t in the book industry). Many I love the gadget industry, there is just so much competition.