Scrapping the barrel

Well it has been a long time since I updated this indulgent blog, what with work and personal issues (isn't that all in life?). Apple has been really been hard at work to earn just a mere few billion greenback recently, meanwhile I have been stressing out at work to earn something to donate to the Great Steve's pension plan. Not quite there as yet, oh you know just how many Red Sing Dollar Notes we need to buy anything Apple.

Surprisingly to most people, it is not the iPad that I am thinking of as yet. The latest fruity thingamajig that has me lusting is the almost eponymous Macbook Air. The 11 inch version is just the right size and weight as a "netbook" (in your face Steve Jobs!). Ok before I get struck down by a right swipe, let me clarify. The Air is ultimately one of the lightest carry-everywhere net surfing machine around, with enough horsepower to do more than that. A hacked Atom powered MSI just does not cut it with iWorks and simple sorting of photos, and Videos.

My issue with the Air is that I still find it really expensive to justify buying when I have a Macbook (Pre-owned and with 1 brain) that is still usable. Just not as portable and slick looking.

Having seen and fondled both the iPad and 11 inch-er Air, the question now is, with Lion looming over the horizon, will they have a love child that can run both Mac OS and iOS. Why can't Apple come out with a touch screen Air with a bluetooth keyboard?

That would be a magical love story.

Similar, familiar but not the same

Somethings you just can't do with the magical and revolutionary.
Warning: Watching this video may result in heartache

Newsday iPhone App Commercial (Pulled) from Mike Fish on Vimeo.

The best phone ever

In lieu of impending news from Temple of Cupertino, here is the best phone ever.
French Vanilla Coffee please. Pomegranate Phone

Metallicapple

Apple will have the "next revolution" in metallurgy in their tool box. Looks impressive. Thinner but stronger casing means ever slimmer devices, hopefully iPad 2/3 will be lighter?
Though looking at the video below, I do hope  iPhone 5/6 will not bounce like the ball bearing when dropped. A definite YouTube moment with the clumsy owner chasing after a bouncing iPhone.

iLust

Sometimes it is just hard to keep up one blog let alone two, with different emphasis. After all the big hoo-ha with the last two iDevice launch, things are getting quieter, not that the iLust is totally gone. People are still gathering around iTemples to fondle the iPad and iPhone 4, virtual queues are still there and the iPriest Steve Jobs is still smiling on the way to his iBank. (Maybe he is laughing, or maybe he is hurt a little slipping his rear on the Antennagate.)

The new iDevices are every where, not just geeks and nerd, seemingly techno-disabled people have been seen clutching at least one device. At a meeting recently, I saw 2 iPads, one iPhone 4 and 3 iPhoneAntiques at a table of 7 people. (Are these people having more sex also? Unfortunately this popped into my head before I could stop it, sigh, now I have a hard time trying to erase the image from my harddisk)

Confession time: I admit I was very tempted to snatch the iPads and hiss "My Precioussssss", such an evil thing of seduction!

So perhaps iPads are like rings of power given to Man, we are bestowed great power to access instant information with the tip of a finger. Some would use it wisely, others will be overcome with darkness to be set apart from the rest of the world, sitting in public places fondling their iPad in isolation.

In the end, the true master of the Ring will wield his power from Mount Doom, from the Dark Towers of Barad-dur, the great "i" sees all, and bind all the rings iPad with an OS upgrade. We will be compelled to do his bidding and buy new iPads.

This is no myth my friend, my iPod Touch is losing its strength, my precioussss is leaving me, must goes Apple storesees gets preciousss, minesees, its mine!

Update
I was right! Mr Yap just said so too. Note also the last paragraph.

Since the problem has been reported on all three networks, it appears that there is no escape. I'm just hoping that these problems go away with the iPhone 4.

You cannot escape the power of the Ring.

iSiow liao

Mr Yap kindly reported on iMerlion about this Devotee of the All-i. Oh the dedication of the followers. I am equally impressed and stunned by this one Bobysen Francisco, who upon waking up late, made a pilgrimage of the shrines on Orchard Road for in atonement for 4 hours. Absolved of his sin of tardiness he was rewarded with a Shiny Apple, never shall he be tempted to be late for worship.

Not long ago, the Straits Times reported on the death of the sole bread winner, whose family was burdened with health problems and debts. Now the sister tabloid is chasing iPad chasers. It just feels a little weird. Society seems a little off balance.

iNag. iWhine. Oh Stop already

The iPhone 4 is set to land on the Little Red Dot in about a week, and the chorus of whine still rings from the Temple of Cupertino. Smarting from Antennagate, Apple has produced a slew of videos showing their competitor's phone also lose bars when strangled. Almost a week after the press conference on the 16th, they uploaded the latest video of the Motorola Droid X.

Sure, phones lose signal strength if you do an Anaconda grip, I tried it on my Nokia E52, but hey Apple, the iPhone 4 has basically a "death accupoint" (死穴) in Chinese Kungfu parlance. In case it's lost in translation, we shall call it the Gap of Oblivion, too obscure? Hows Death Spot? Comprende?

It would have been a simple issue to solve actually, even if I ever own an iPhone. As I said before, don't touch THERE. Seriously. That is commonsense. Use a case, even more commonsense with shiny glassy toys. But that is not for those on high to toss about with arrogance. Comparing yourself to competitors and saying you are no better than them or vice versa? Seriously? Calling that dumb would be the understatement of the Millennium.
Get over it and just collect the offerings from your followers. By harping on and on, you look like a spoiled rich brat. Oh that's right, Apple, you are rich. Brat on.

iPad, iQ

Mr Yap says someone made a boo boo which was then echoed back in multiples. Why don't people pay attention to their To's and CC's in their emails, and importantly the Reply All button. Will the magical device mystically elevate iQs?

The Lion, the Wallet and the Pad, The Chronicles of NahTeckmahMahnee.

In just under 3 hours, the iPad would be officially launched in the Little Red Dot, but of course the crops of temptation are no doubt shipping around quietly or nestled carefully for the storm tomorrow. Hopefully the only storm tomorrow as the region is battered by a real and dangerous storm.

Are there people queuing already? Never mind that, read Mr. Yap's advice if you are craving for iPad desperately. Wouldn't want you to tear your hair out to 2 simple words "sold out".

Intentional or not, Apple strategy has been to hype up a thirst and then satisfy it with mere drops. This initial craze just makes more thirsty believers begging for the sweet nectar and finally a self propagating chain reaction, you just have to have the thing.

This is the long breath before the deep plunge into the abyss.

Distraction

This is really mind boggling (Attention: Mr Topolsky of Engadget).

Watch the whole video, really amazing, especially the simulation of fabric and water.

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 - Teaser from Thiago Costa on Vimeo.

Half eaten fruit, half a fruit to eat

Have to be honest here, while I cannot profess to be a Mac/Apple user, I do use Apple products, a total of 4 pieces of hardware and 1 software (excluding OSX).

Despite what readers may think, I don't hate Apple and their stuff, they are good tools to use. Sometimes. Ok will be nice for a while, just a little not to damage my credibility as a criticizer.

Mac OSX is a robust Operating System, less cranky while simply trying to do something simple. Sleep mode on MacBook works far far better than a Wintel machine. You could open and close the lid many times before it might fail, requiring a reboot. For a newbie to computers, its a lot easier to visualise and understand, and the system more tolerant to mistakes.

I jumped onto the iPod Touch because of one reason, I was really impressed with the Chinese character recognition software. (Of course later I discovered they purchased it from a Chinese company...Shush..trying to be nice.)

The now famous user interface is another reason, it is the best touch interface ever. (I just shuddered hearing myself say best ever...but nice I shall be).

The bestest software eh-vah is Pages from the iWorks suite. It was to help a friend in making an event brochure where I had no choice but to learn the program on the fly and he is definitely a Mac user. I had a bit of experience with word processing and page design programs like CorelDraw during ancient times aka Windows 95. That gave me a little bit of foundation, but Pages blew my mind, mind boggling blown. It is really easy on a newbie, not just to the program but to desktop publishing in general, build off the templates and expand beyond that, very logical and easy to do. How much of a fan am I? I bought 2 copies of iWorks. Ain't that just lurve.

The trick to Apple's popularity is simple, they sat down and thought really hard. The collective light bulb that lit up, I imagine, was brighter than R136a1. Why settle for a whole lot of guides for dummies, let's make dummies less er dummy. Use each device to your maximum, having never to apologise for your inadequacies.

Talking of maximum, the iPad is I think the embodiment of this dummies less dummy philosophy. The instant on makes it easy to pick up, be online, be working and be entertained. So natural that it is like another part of your body. There is no need to think, what does BIOS version 2.457 or System Ram means? Just make it happen already.

It is not just dummies that benefit, the jailbreaking business has been booming, people who reach the maximum that Apple offers, simply break out and soar. For the more legal minded, there those who have come out with creative uses, like a eatery offering them as customisable interactive menu, albeit expensive and breakable. There are simply possibilities with this latest export of the Cupertino Orchard.

Profits, profits, profits

Apple has exceeded the expectations of analysts this past quarter. Now we know why things are magical and revolutionary, the magic makes us happy with their over-hyped gadgets and their coffers magically overflowing. Revolu...well money revolves from our wallets to theirs..Duh!

Fueling the latest cash boom is the iPhone and iPad, their combined sorcery conjuring over a cool 3 billion dollars in profit. That is truly magical. In terms of sheer number, Nokia dominates the phone market, however Apple draws the most attention as, remarked a BBC analyst, it is the most innovative and stylish company around.

Apple is unique in style, with quite clean lines and different approach to design. It's shiny and attractive, looking all expensive. By tweaking each line and angle, they endow each product with pure seductive power a succubus would envy. Definitely a lifestyle toy, a look at me: I am cool and hip with a half eaten fruit.

Innovative? Are they? Well think about it, if you don't innovate, you die in this digital world of short life cycle, so yes they are innovative by default. Do they really come up with real original ideas ALL the time? That is debatable. Frankly the original iPhone was missing a lot of features, like for example MMS and video, in a time when sex clips of a teenage Singaporean couple were circulating with a speed even the Twilight movie would find difficult to match. Still it didn't stop the Great Steve from declaring its the best phone ever and a new religion was born. Hallowed are the All-i.

Moving forward to the new "bestest" phone ever...again, they manage to make it sound like 2 video camera was like something fresh and new and you can read books on it! Oh so wow. Actually front facing cameras have been around since ancient times, oh wait I have one too on my Nokia crap from about a year ago. Books? I had that on my Samsung MP3 player about 2 years back, page curling and that. So no....not innovating. What they have done is improved it very much, so that users don't have to think too much about how and just simply, magically use it. That, in my opinion, is what Apple is really good at.

Keep it simple, dummy. Or keep it dummy simple. It just works.

Sanitary in Singapore

The little red dot will hit the Pad soon. Citizens of Singapore get padded up this time of the month 23rd July 2010.

No apologies for the unhygienic pun, hot on the heels of the media trumpeting the huge profit (70%??!!) by Apple in the last quarter, insults of any kind would be shrugged like mosquitoes sniffing around a pachyderm's rear.

Although the Singapore market is small, nonetheless it would be a bump for the next quarter's profit pronouncement. Add on the grey market of early adopters (you know who you are!), it would mean a neat little profit.

As my fellow blogger noted, a queue of devotees are expected at all iTemples. As much as I am under the iPad spell, I shall try to sit back and wait. News of "Pay to upgrade" means having second thoughts, although I am doubtful it is true, you just never know now that their egos are truly inflated. I am still hurting from the expensive iOS3 upgrade, one of those spellbound moments.

Antennagate Press Conference 16th July

Antennagate conference, this taken direct from SteveNote, was held at a place strangely or aptly named Infinite Loop. Are they powering the Reality Distortion Field through infinite energy of their fans? Hallowed are the "All-i"? My bet is the RDF is powered by a Singularity Engine, codenamed SJ.

The presentation started with self deprecation to deflect their self importance and is followed by meaningless statistics and self congratulatory remarks. This time, they made comparisons to quite a few other brands: "See all smartphones lose signal strength when held. We are not unique!".

Right.

Throw in a front facing video camera and voila it's changing everything, again. Yawn. Losing signal strength? It because everyone else does it, duh!

Frankly I am not surprised by this whole antenna thing, when I first saw the new marvelous design, it had crossed my mind there would be a chance the antenna might be shorted out, just surprised it was simply with a finger and skin contact, when I was thinking more of keys and coins in a pocket.

If I were to purchase an iPhone, it would have been a non-issue for me as I would very very likely purchase a cover of sorts. After my iPod Touch getting scratched on the very first day, shiny new toys are afforded protection, the klutz that I am.

So Great Steve, you have a problem that some users complained about, stop sniping that they don't have the kungfu to hold your precious invention properly and really make your users happy. Customer happiness is not just a Keynote point.

Sincerity, it just works.

iOS4 and iPod Touch

iOS4 is a mixed bag of annoying flaws and long delayed upgrades.

I am becoming a nag when it comes to battery life. It really sucks now and the thing is almost constantly tethered to the charger when I forget to turn wifi off. No Jobism please, turning off the wifi means all the online goodies are useless.

iBook is useful, and readable, but runs slow on the 2nd generation machine. Loading is slow, and I only have 3 books so far. Free ones. I have not figured out how to lock the screen or it just won't lock on the 2nd generation device, reading in bed means twisting and turning when the pages rotate, which is slow.

There was a problem with Mail and Safari, although not on my machine. The Mail app hung on trying to send a mail, going through a loop of sorts. Solving the problem involved reseting, reinstalling, and manually setting up all the mail accounts. Not a pleasant waste of time. Safari will simply shut down when its not happy, apparently more grouchy than Oscar.

What is amazing is not the flaws rather that it should be happening to one but not another. Both are not jail broken or hacked in any form. So why is it that 2 machines from the same company with the same operating system should behave so differently? Are they so complex now that they are actually behaving in a Darwinian fashion, random mutations in each device? Are they going to evolve? With Apple's monopoly of their devices, one would assume they would subscribe to a more Creationist creed.

Probably that's the reason for the mess about the new antenna design in iPhone 4. The problem is not uniform for all users, those affected are obviously irked, those spared are enthusiastic denial-ists for Mr Jobs. So what is to be pronounced at the press conference on the 16th of July? One can only guess, but without a doubt the Reality Distortion Field would be set to maximum. It just works.

Fruit, Finance, Tsunami

The recent financial crisis that has been sweeping the globe in waves resulted from deception, abuse of trust and blind faith. While it is far beyond me to understand what happened, but the latest reply from Apple just stinks the same a little.

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. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T's recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone's bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same- the iPhone 4's wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.

Imagine a teacher telling you why your child scored a D. "Oh we actually found out to our big surprise that we have been counting the tests wrongly, all the As he's been getting are actually Cs, so he's not suddenly failing, he just was never really good to begin with." Fabulous.

The cherry on the top : "Oh and he is still the best student ever"

One would certainly hope that each new version shipped is the best of the lot, after all, why bother upgrading if not to improve.

Reality Distortion just works.

Reality Distortion Field

Definition. They are experts at generating a massive field, and it just works.

eyePhone

Undisguised dig at Apple on Futurama. Almost similar to Simpson's Mapple store.

Quote of the Clip : Shut up and take my money

iOS4

iOS4 is CRAP on my iPod Touch.

Well battery life anyway. Went from 100% to less than 20% in 8 hours,  less 10 minutes of checking mail and App store. Wifi was left "on" while sleeping.

The original OS version 2 was way way better. I could leave the thing alone without worrying about battery life. Wifi was also more robust. Now even in line of sight of the transmitter, the reception would drop to 1 curve at times.

I can imagine what the Great Steve's response: "Don't leave Wifi on."

iOS4 Impressions

First Impressions

It starts up with a subtle difference, the icons fades in with a flourish and the dock now looks like its desktop cousin. The faux 3-D look didn't work for me in OSX and still does not work for me here. No big deal, just unnecessary and unappealing.
WTF 1 Hmmm where is the wallpaper? Oh right I have got a fossil of a device, wallpaper will just ruin the opening flourish.

Folders. It's a good thing, long overdue. Much easier to look for apps.

Mail. Electronic missives are now arranged in threads like Gmail, eases searching.

Airplane Mode. Curious setting at first, but now I realise it ties into WTF 2.

Battery life sucks. Strangely the juice drains out when the iPod is sleeping. It went from less than half full to barely quarter full in matter of 3 hours. Now putting it in airplane mode in case it keeps connecting through wifi while sleeping.

Apple crisps

The iPhone 4 is tougher than it looks. But it blends

iOS4

A new spanking operating system for all the i-mobile devices. Unfortunately my singular i-device is not so spanking new, so I won't enjoy all that goodness it promises.

First step. Upgrading.

Now one would think updating, means clicking "Update" and just waiting for the deed to be done. Well technically it is just like that, except the process seem to stop at "wait", and wait and wait and wait.

I hate iTunes actually, yes hate, it doesn't like me either, but  frankly there is NO other choice. So I plugged in my second generation iPod Touch to iMac and to iTunes. Faithfully I sync-ed the device, backed up, downloaded the new OS and clicked Update.

Backing up iPod. Hey I just did that.
Wait wait wait wa...it w...a....i....t....w..........a...............i......................t
Anticipated this wait after reading everyone else's attempt to upgrade.

Clicked Stop. Clicked backup from options menu. Done. Click Update.
Backing up iPod. What the F!!!. Wait.wait.wait.wait.wa....i..............t

On the phone with my personal hacker. (No, I don't jailbreak, the good boy I am)
Do a restore. Restore? doesn't that just puts the old stuff back? Do a restore. Yes Sir.

Restoring. The restoration process apparently wipes out your i-device and puts the latest OS available in iTunes on your machine. Then you have the luxury of putting everything precious back or starting fresh.
One would think that logically restoring means the device is not working and lets go back to when it was working. Apparently iTunes logic is different.

Restoring data. Time to completion 4 minutes. 10 minutes. 12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19.... WTF. Shouldn't it be counting down?

Time to completion About an hour. How clever, basically saying "Don't bother staring, come later. MUCH later".

Finally it restored the device, and re-synced all the apps and stuff. Hey, got my iPod back, washed and buffed. And it took about an hour, a bit more than an hour.
It now works.


Moral of the story: Update updates not. Restore restores update. It just works.

Apple Cart

Ok. Starting a new blog to speak about my experiences with magical and revolutionary products from the land of the half eaten fruit.

No. I don't hate them, otherwise I would not have donated money to the retirement fund of the Great Steve.
What bugs me is despite being a complete monopoly over Apple products, from software to hardware, they can screw up so badly sometimes. Its all that "What the f" moments that prompted this ranting blog. Plus the arrogance with which they promote their products. Watch some of their promotional videos, they truly believe what they say, though sometimes looking like characters in a George Romero movie. The ones without lines.

So let us start.