Please don't hurt me.

I’m really rather tired of explaining what I think about the iPhone and Verizon. So I’m putting together this nice little FAQ about what I believe.

Q: Is the iPhone even coming to Verizon?

A: Yes. I mean in all seriousness, it makes no sense for Apple to completely ignore the largest carrier in the Western Hemisphere. There is also no reason for Verizon to refuse the world’s best selling phone. Yes, it will happen.

Q: So when will it happen?

A: Well, let’s narrow it down by the month, first. Apple launched the first iPhone in the summer time. Along with that, was the iPhone 3G, and the iPhone 3GS. Fiscally, they have to launch the iPhone during the summer months. Not only that, but they have to launch it immediately after announcement. Any break between those event and sales are lost as people wait for the new model. So it’ll happen in June or July. When it comes to year, no one knows. Rumor has it that AT&T and Apple are reaching the end of their agreement this year. Don’t correct me on that, or agree with me. It’s rumor. Speculation. No one knows. It’s secret. They did, however, negotiate the deal earlier in the year, around April or May, so if it expires this year it’ll be in time for a new model on Verizon during the summer. My best guess? June of this year, as Verizon has been rather vocal about it’s want and has been snatching up a lot of other phones as of late.

Q: Is Verizon really better?

A: See, here’s the thing. A lot of people think the excitement is over Verizon being better. In reality, only those in large cities like SF or NYC specifically, really want off of AT&T, who’s network seems to be unable to handle such large and dense traffic. Because of the multitude of people on Verizon, there is, most likely, just a large group wanting the iPhone but not wanted to switch networks. When it comes to price, they’re really about the same. Not to mention the fact that Verizon’s CDMA network uses more battery than AT&T’s GSM network. 

Q: Should I get the iPhone?

A: No, you didn’t ask this, I know. However, I’d like to do some ranting right about… now. I love technology. I really do. I value advanced hardware and software that comes together in a beautiful package that shows what us nerdy humans can produce. However, there are some times when I really want to hurt someone. When I see the idiotic person walking around with a really nice phone with a punch of “fart” apps on it, I die a little inside. Yes, yes, technology is great now because a lot of it is accessable and easy to use so we can all play! Well, I don’t want you playing. Someone who fully understands what makes a product great and can make an informed decision is someone who I want to have this phone. When the iPhone comes on Verizon, every single person that wants it, will have it. That means I will literally be dead on the inside and my soul will die, because about 80% of those people have no idea what makes their phone the best.

*S'plosion*

GameCenter. It sounds childish, really. Xbox Live and PlayStation Network are rather successful platforms for multiplayer gaming, and definitely showcase what you can do with millions of people and some games. It would seem, then, that the mobile device with the most games would also get a network of some sort. Well, with iPhone OS 4.0, the iPod touch and iPhone will. 

Working with the rather enormous amount of applications offered on the iPhone OS devices (around 185,000), “GameCenter” will show leaderboards and achievements, along with an active friendslist. 

Sorry for some reason I’m writing this like it’s an article and that’s immensely boring if you ask me. 

Okay so basically the whole idea of this thing is basically some type of Xbox Liveish program for the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. Now, if you ask me this whole idea has rather double edged. First of all, I really like the idea of having any sort of friendslist or leaderboard. Keeping track of your friends progress in Tap Tap or whatever game it is that you like could really be interesting, because everyone knows they’re lying when they tell you what they have in person. Achievements are also a great idea, giving you some incentive to play more, but also allowing developers to get deeper with their games and eventually create larger, more unique experiences. 

But in all honestly who really needs this?

I really like the idea of an online network, but maybe I just want a phone? Sure, I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but it’s an important point to consider. Look at the iPhone like… iTunes. iTunes used to be very simple. Music, iPod, music store. Now it does way too much. Hook up with this and run this and view that and update this and buy that and scroll through this and make this look nice. Maybe I just want to play my music and sync my iPod. Now the iPhone is the same thing. With the app store it became the do everything device for productivity, mobile gaming, and communication. But now it’s becoming something larger. Connecting every single phone on some sort of gaming network takes the iPhone from a device that can play some cool games to a gaming device which can get really competitive.

That just seems a bit over complicated. Why does it have to be so… interconnected? Keep it simple? Does that make sense? 

Playing devil’s advocate is dangerous, I’m beginning to switch over. 

As far as I am concerned, creating a new mobile network is a good idea that will make you get more value out of your applications, but at the same time it will only create a mess in the long run as people struggle to maintain standards. 

Yes, it's gigantic.

I used to think that calling the iPad an iPod touch with a gigantic screen was an insult. I mean, why would you degrade such a great new product with potential to something like a music player? 

Well, now that the iPad is out, and there are apps available, I can easily say that it’s an iPod touch XL. But I don’t say it with malice, no. See, with that larger screen, and that more powerful hardware, the iPad is a device which isn’t just a supersized music player, but in actuality a whole new way to experience media. Let me tell you how.

First, that screen opens up a whole new world of opportunity for Apple and developers. When the iPad was first showed off, all you really got a chance to see was how their own apps (Mail, Contacts, Calander), really looked with the new screen. The thing is, though, what other develops have done. Primarily, applications have been using the larger screen to show different parts of navigation at once. Mail, for instance, shows your inbox and the message at the same time just as a laptop or desktop would. Instapaper does a similar thing by showing all your available articles. The screen also allows for better looking apps, ones that are either more detailed, or more in depth because you have more access to the game itself. However, the best part could just be the presentation of video and text. The NY Times and USA Today have fantastic applications that take great steps in presenting a newspaper like experience on a tablet. Scrolling through articles, pictures, and video, is something that isn’t entirely possible on a small tablet. ABC and Netflix have also used the larger screen to their advantage to present full TV shows and movies on the device. While possible with a smaller screen, it just doesn’t work as well that way. More power means more fun, as well. Not only are those larger video applications possible with the greater processing power, so are games which require more power. 

That larger screen also opens up something else: books. Yes, you can read a book on an iPhone or iPod, but for all intents and purposes, who wants to? With the huge screen on the iPad you can easily read a book in whatever font size you wish. You can flip pages (or show two at once), and best of all view color pictures on the screen. It makes e-ink almost obsolete. 

So, yes, you might be getting an iPod touch with a gigantic screen, but when you think about it, that isn’t bad. Not to mention not every teenager you see will have one.

MobileMe: Not for Me.

(From a few months ago)

I recently took some time to play around with MobileMe, Apple’s entry into the server exchange (?) market. You can head over to the site and try it out free for 60 days and see what you think, but after a week or so of using it, I really don’t think that the $99/yr price is justifiable.

First, I’ll run down the major features. For the aforementioned price, you receive syncing of your contacts, calenders, and (technically) mail. Also, you receive access to iDisk, your little peice of storage on the internet (10GB in the trial, and 20 after purchase, I believe). MobileMe also works with iPhoto to give you web galleries online, or you can upload on to the site or even use a created email address. Of everything included, my favorite feature was most certainly the compatibility with iWeb, and the provided web hosting (the URL is made for you, though).

Now, all of this is nice, and if you ask me, the price is questionable even if everything worked well. But that’s the problem: much of it doesn’t. The syncing of your contacts and calenders is spotty, at best. Sometimes it works properly, and other times names show up without information, or no changes happen at all. The syncing isn’t even instantaneous. From your Mac or PC, everything is updated every fifteen minutes. Your iPod touch or iPhone will sync via push, but that still means it isn’t as quick as it could be. Furthermore, one of the main features, the email address, would be somewhat useless to most people. I already have a two gmail accounts, and it works great. My family has the one address, and the other is used for website registration, which forwards to the other one. It’s perfect. So with all of that set up, what am I going to do with a new email address? That’s a hassle. You can set up the address to take in other mail via POP3, but I really need IMAP. The iDisk is probably the most hassle free feature. I have a Mac, and it shows up right in the sidebar of the Finder, and you can just drag and drop. Perfect.

What does require more explanation is the photo gallery and iWeb use. The gallery gives you space to upload photos so others can see them. You can hand out the URL to family members and friends, so they can navigate to the page with their browser (more on that below), and enjoy your photos. Also, you can hand out an email address if you wish so others can upload their own photos. However, sometimes this doesn’t work as planned. My iPhoto library failed to really upload correctly, often hiding albums that I had not told it to. 

A final note: If you have a PC, you need to download the MobileMe control panel to do anything at all, and PC users will notice that the experience is much worse for them. Another issue with compatibility is the fact that web browser support is terrible. Safari 3/4 and Firefox 3 are the only that fully work. All others have problems, and considering IE 6 is still one of the most widely used browsers in hotels and businesses, you’re out of luck if you travel a lot and need to access something using a computer with it.

Apple is well known for it solid software that delivers well all around and is easy to use. But compared to everything that I have used that is developed by them, I can easily say that MobileMe is the least solid and easy to use.

Why the Future isn't Ready for Us.

There are a lot of things with today’s technology industry that really get on my nerves. The natural evolution of a business, specifically videogames, means that eventually the mainstream audience gets involved, and that’s where we see something such as the Wii, or Microsoft’s pushes out of it’s hardcore market (Xbox 360 Arcade Bundle). Those kind of things don’t bother me quite that much, as long as they don’t really affect me that much, which they haven’t. However, there is one issue that is present all over the technology industry, and is something that really bothers me about today’s videogames.

While I know, that as a developer, it is really hard to get something to be utterly bug free, there are limits. Today’s software, be it on a computer, a phone, or even a TV, is just riddled with bugs and glitches. I’ll even admit that my beloved MacBook does some rather odd, and frustrating, things sometimes. My phone decides to restart at certain points, and I’m pretty tired of game killing errors in $60 video games. That isn’t what I paid for.

I have a great example of that, too. I had invested quite a bit of time into Far Cry 2. Honestly, it is one of the best games I’ve played in a while. But, one day, for a reason I still cannot figure out, the game decided that the save file was corrupted. Anyone who has ever been there knows how frustrating that is, and what it’s like to try to figure out if you should even replay. Luckily for me, however, there was another save file from earlier still there. That’s lucky, but sometimes I haven’t been quite that forunate.

Fable II, also one of the best games I have ever played, has one glitch that really annoys me. Sometimes, during a specific quest, the game will not load a region of the map. And once this little glitch happens, it stays, so no matter what you’re doing, you cannot load that region. So, your progress within that game is essentially stopped in its tracks.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of games out there that are really solid, and that I haven’t had problems with, and the same goes with other software. It just seems where we’ve gotten to the point where this is something that is going to be regular. The old Palm OS was behind, certainly, but it was really solid, and days with things like that won’t work. And that’s just because as consumers, we demand the cutting edge. we want to see cool looking stuff. And unfortunately, that means we’re basically asking for something that isn’t here. We want the future, and it hasn’t had time to work out its kinks yet.

There is Sex on My Screen

I can’t say that there have been a whole lot of topics as touchy with as how video games are treated in the mainstream. Violence within gaming is something that has always been there, but as we’ve come to an age that media plays into life and politics more and more each day, we see how the public looks at the industry. Grand Theft Auto IV is a fantastic example, as is Mass Effect.The latter of the two is a prime example of how things are just taken wrong. Bad reporting might go hand-in-hand with Fox News, depending on your opinion, but saying that Mass Effect allows you to choose when to have sex, how to have it, and who to have it with is just terrible journalism.

But look at the big difference between “gamers” and the rest of the world. We look at that and ask how such a deep piece of entertainment can be taken like that. Others look and see a game with sex- and that’s just an issue: GAME. Of course it’s a game, but that’s the big problem. Movies, TV shows, books, and the like all have deep elements and full fledged stories that come along with them. So when there is violence on the television, people don’t think much of it because if they recognize good writing or an engaging plot of any sort, it makes everything else a side note.

Not so with a piece of software. People don’t expect top of the line stories with character development and the like – at least not those that think games are still just that. How can one expect the industry to gain respect if everything it spits out is seen only as a game. Sure, that’s what it is, and there isn’t another option, but until the mainstream consumers think beyond a control pad and guns, they won’t realize that video games are much more nowadays. As far as I’m concerned it won’t be a time when video games are seen the same as movies until the older generations have passed on.

Why the iPad doesn't suck (completely)

  I was not surprised by the huge backlash after the announcement of the iPad. People expected the second coming of Christ, but they just got what they thought was a giant iPod touch. Is it that? Yes, no, maybe so.
  To address that claim, I only have to point to two things: iWork and 3G. It is a netbook, but more "intimate", as Steve Jobs called it. The iPad appeals to the market that wants a netbook, but doesn't want a whole separate computer. That market it surprisingly large. Think about it. Have you ever wanted to have access to office suites (iWork), the internet, and your media on the go? Probably.
  But wouldn't you have a smartphone?
  Yes, but that smartphone doesn't read ebooks and magazines or work with Office documents. While the iPad cannot multitask, and isn't open to anything but the App-store, that isn't necessarily bad. See, Apple's iPhone OS ecosystem is fantastic in that way. It's closed, it's stable, it's safe, and it just works. Your iPad will be able to sync with iTunes, work like Microsoft Office, play all your games, access the internet from anywhere, play all your movies and music, and it will do it quickly.
  And of course, your friends will be jealous.
  The iPad will sell. It will probably further the hurt that has been brought onto iPod sales (down about 10% each of the last few quarters). I can't decide whether I'd want one, but the answer is no. I have an Android phone, which is open source and can do a lot of what the iPad does. I, as such, certainly understand the objections. At the same time, I can see who it appeals to, and I can see why Apple chose not to make a full on computer (people do not like crap).
  But complaining is fun. Just like people did about the original iPod.
  Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it will fail. And, chances are, you're missing something. I think that that is, for most people, e-reading. Apple has changed the structure of the business just a week or two after announcing their plans (no more $9.99 ebooks), and now publishers are jumping ship, killing Amazon. Comic books are in the work, as are magazines. You see where this is going. It's a larger ecosystem. It's Apple selling more hardware that does more things for a higher price at a better quality. A year after the release of the iPad, expect a hugely successful ebook store right next to the App-Store, and a new version of the iPad that is about as close to being a laptop without being a laptop at all.
  Of course, expansion has never done empires well.

Hello Moto

I’ve been using the Droid on Verizon for a month or two now. Because I am much too lazy to write up an actually review, I’ll just sum up what I love, and what I hate, about both Android and the Droid itself.
Pros:

• Multitasking. Oh GOD multitasking. Opening Pandora and starting up some music, then opening the browser. While the webpage loads, I open up Messaging and send a text. As that is sending, I check up on Twitter, and then look at my Facebook newsfeed. And it all keeps going. The music plays, the webpage finishes loading, the message sends, and I update my status. I could most likely live without this, but that wouldn’t be so pleasant. Honestly, the main luxury of it is having internet radio or something of that sort play in the background. Also part of this is the notifications panel, which is a great way to make everything that is going available to you quickly.
• Open Source. At first I didn’t quite think I would find this so amazing. However, allowing develops to change how the system works can be great. Different keyboards and file browsers are pretty handy. If the OS doesn’t do something how you want it to, there is an app for that (sorry). That isn’t always the case with the iPhone (AHHH COMPARISONS). This ties into the notifications bar as well. Having WeatherBug always show the temperature is actually one of the best little things about the phone. Widgets are nice too, but more on that later.
• Facebook. I’m most definitely not talking about the app, but rather the contact integration. Scrolling through your contacts to see all your friends and their Facebook information is just awesome. And being able to see their profile in a tap or two is a nice touch. However, it does seem to have a problem with one of my friends, and lists their name as someone else. I’m sure a minute or two of messing with my friendslist on Facebook could fix that, but nothing on the phone would.
• Verizon. Call quality is great. 3G almost always works just perfectly, and I haven’t had any major issues with the network. Not much else to say about that.
• The Build. While I’ll touch more on this below, I am actually quite impressed with the Droid. Metal body, nice and solid slider, and best of all, it is heavy. This beast of a phone just feels like a rock. This son of a bitch makes me feel like I am carrying a powerful device.
• Navigation. I don’t really need to explain how great this is. It’s accurate, shows street view, runs in the background, and works quickly. Oh, and it’s free. FREE.

Cons:

• The Mixed Bag. If the platform as a whole has one major flaw, it’s that it has to adapt to so many different devices. 1.6 over here, Sense UI over there, 2.1 on the N1, 2.0 on the Droid, and quite frankly I think that it is a mess for developers and consumers. It’s frustrating to download and app and have it literally not display correctly or even work at all on your phone. When 2.1 comes to the Droid I am not sure how it is going to handle those live wallpapers— it simply doesn’t have the 1 GHz processor of the Nexus 1. I don’t have to explain where that will go. It just makes a mess. Frankly, I think Apple, or even Palm (at least right now), have it right: they control everything so that the experience is always as good as they want it to be.
• The Build. I said I’d mention more later, and this is it. I’m on my third Droid. The first one had dust under the screen. The second was build poorly, so much so that the keyboard would open in my pocket, and it also got some dust under the screen. This one, the third, is probably destined to end up with dust under the screen as well. No matter how well you build something, it has problems, but it is annoying to deal with all these issues. Luckily I haven’t had to deal with the infamous battery cover, but when I do, I can’t imagine I’ll be too thrilled to have to come up with some sort of fix. It might seem weird to say I love it here, and hate it there, but it’s true.
• The Look. When you turn on an iPhone, you just feel like it’s elegant. When you power up an Android phone, you are confronted with a crowded home screen and an ugly lock screen. That’s okay (and the home screen does look better in 2.1), but the UI can actually become a barrier. There are many situations when you need multiple taps to do something simple, and sometimes you simply cannot find out how to do something. It isn’t a huge issue, just an annoyance that could be straightened out. Way too much is hidden under a long press or in the second layer of the menu screen.
• Facebook. Okay, I said I loved the integration but had some issues. After some work I figured out what that was. If I sync my Google contacts with my Mac Address Book, along with my phone, it won’t update Facebook information correctly. My contacts stopped updating, and some of their names switched around. The only fix was to delete the Facebook info and start again. And did I mention that the app itself doesn’t seem to want to pull down notifications due to some error? It would be nice to troubleshoot this, but I can’t because the error message is just cryptic numbers and talks about line errors.
• Minor Things. Multitouch is the biggest annoyance to me. Just put it in. Zooming in and out on webpages can become time consuming and unweildly in certain cases. Maps desperately needs it as well. It would be handy in Gmail as well. While the Gmail app is fantastic at emulating the webmail experience and then some, it fails when it comes to reading HTML mail. The view is too zoomed in and you have to load pictures manually every time. Where is the option to have it done automatically for certain addresses? And one thing that annoys me about icons (besides their resolution being off in most cases), is that there isn’t enough room for characters on the home screen. While “Twidriod” shows up fine, when I bought the paid version, it now says “Twidroid P-“, with the P beginning to fade, because it can’t fit the whole “PRO” suffix.
• Open Source. It’s easy to say that all 100,000 apps in the Apple App Store aren’t exactly quality. It’s even easier to say that many of the 10,000 apps in the Android Market definitely aren’t either. It’s free to develop for. Really, you can just go ahead and download the SDK on the website and get going. That’s great for first timers or those willing to start up a new developing business of sorts, but it hurts the consumer in some ways. When I search something, I shouldn’t have to sift through three pages of garbage apps to find something worthwhile. At least you can return something within 24 hours if you don’t like it. Also related to the market: due to the fact that you are limited to internal storage for apps, many aren’t that large, and as such you won’t find any assortment of amazing games. That’s also related to some devices having limited hardware (see above). This is supposed to change in the near future, but remember that because downloads are over the air or wifi (there is no computer software, obviously), downloading some huge application could be troublesome. \
• Multimedia. I put two or three movies on my phone. Not the best idea. After waiting for the file to sync, then removing it because it wasn’t compatible, then syncing again, I realized that it won’t save your spot. And there isn’t really a video play as much as a plugin in the Gallery that lets you view movies. Oh and why did I say sync? You don’t sync. You copy, because there is no desktop software and everything is drag and drop. There is always something like DoubleTwist, but that doesn’t actually work all the well. It’s a pain. And if you take a cool video, good luck making it play on your computer. The weird file type wasn’t even recognized by VLC.

Android isn’t bad. It also isn’t perfect. All of the problems I listed are really simple things that could be fixed with some software updates, and don’t seriously hamper the experience. For the most part, I can’t see that there is anything that would make me tell someone not to get it. However, anyone getting an Android run device needs to understand something. It isn’t an iPhone. You will need to change settings and get your hands dirty to make it work how you want to. As James DeBragga of Microsoft said, it’s like a free puppy that needs training.

The Decline of the Music Genre

When Guitar Hero came out in 2005, I remember reading a review in OPM, and not caring much, because it just wasn't my thing. Most critics at the time claimed that it was basically the Jesusgame, and you should bow to it, worship, and bask in its greatness. Of course, I'm certainly not disagreeing with them-- they were right. DDR had been the staple of rhythm games for years, but had, at that point, wound down to merely the big booth in arcades. Harmonix, though, had created something that had changed the genre into something not only mainstream, but something that you could relate to, and not embarrass yourself playing (for the most part).


I'm sure that somewhere on some corner of the internet, people were shouting that this would just be a fad. I'm also sure that those same group of people were shouting that while playing the game, and they quieted down once the sequel came out. People kept playing, and the game kept going, and regardless of developer changes and whatnot, it remained incredibly popular. Guitar Hero III actually managed to grab me out of from under my rock. Honestly, it was less of a rock and more of a place to hide from the noise. I played the game for a while, but when it came down to it, it lacked things that generally make me come back to games, and the controller has since gathered dust.


In the meantime, Rock Band came out, and the genre received it's final innovation, which, quite naturally sold enough copies to warrant a sequel. Then Activision decided it wanted to be popular again and said "OH NOW EVERYONEZ PLAYZ IN BAND IN OUR GAME TOOZ". I think it was something like that. That became Guitar Hero World Tour, and it came out the same fall as Rock Band 2. This seems normal, really, but then you remember that Activision released all of these (count 'em: 16) expansions and spin offs. See, now it isn't normal.

EA can release the same games every fall, along with numerous other publishers, for a few different reasons. Primarily, they actually put something NEW in the game. Yes, Need for Speed is the same formula overall, but it's slapped onto something different. The problem with a game like Guitar Hero or Rock Band is that the formula isn't just a template, it IS the game. You can change the backgrounds all you want, but in the end the only thing worth altering is the soundtrack, which is a problem in itself. 

There isn't much more to be said besides this: the music/rhythm genre is now in a corner. 

There are a multitude of metaphors, many of them terrible, that could describe what has happened, but overall, the originality has been rung out off the whole idea to a dangerous point. Business wise, it was a great new way to get people into gaming, and it became popular that even stubborn people like me HAD to buy a copy, and some people liked it and clung on. But, it's that group of people that are left now. You aren't getting me back, and you won't be getting back casual fans who have gotten bored. So now, all you're left with is a hardcore fan base, who eventually, like everyone else, will lay down their axes and move on to the next big thing.

Guitar Hero 5 might be a good game, and the next Rock Bands will be too, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean people will keep coming back. Thanks to Activision's spin-offs and cash cow mentality, the entire idea of music games has become something that looks like a fad, even though it is a lot better than that.

Welcome, or something like that.

    I've tried writing things online before, probably about 10 times.
    It never really works out.
    Most likely it is a result of me not following through, which I think is understandable because anyone can forget that they have some sort of responsibility to essentially no one. I mean in all seriousness how many people do you think might read something like this? Considering that's another subject alltogether, I'm just going to explain what this actually is. Primarily, I'll be writing about technology. If you don't understand what I'm saying, that's fine. You can ask if you want. If you don't really understand why I care so much about the business strategies of large corporations, that's also fine. You can ask that too, but I won't have an answer. 

    Everything published here will, most likely, originate on my Tumblr page, at ericbreese.tumblr.com.