iPhone
Why Do The Gadget Makers Hate Me?
You can spend as much as you like on new gadgets, gismos, software, hardware, firmware and upgrades. The fact will remain that at some point, usually within a few weeks you will wish you’d waited that bit longer or bought something else instead. It’s obvious that the Technology industry is growing all the time, new technologies are discovered, old technologies become cheaper and then obsolete.
What is the point in continual spending on having the next biggest, best gadget? Or having the fastest computer and the biggest television? It’s just like having a fast car, there is always a faster car. Or if you get a big house, there is always a bigger house.
The problem is, if you have the slowest computer, the oldest phone, the smallest television and a Dial up Modem then you will spontaneously combust. This is what we are conditioned into thinking by the Marketing. What’s more it’s true, If you haven’t got an iPhone or a Blackberry then I would recommend staying away from petrol.
So it’s quite clear i’m a believer in trying to stay current. I must confess my television is a couple of years old, I haven’t upgraded this because I’m very bitter. I bought this 40” Samsung television for about £1200, roughly 1 month later it was £1000, 4 months later it was £600 and obsolete because it’ll only do 720p. Watching 720p is like driving a fast car with cataracts, enjoyable but ultimately life threatening.
So people are popping up around with 1080p 50” TVs they swapped for a Mars Bar and they love to show it. However if somebody comes along with a DLP projector and a 102” projection screen in their front room, 50” TV man is going to feel pretty bad. They’ve always got the excuse of “I don’t need one that big for my front room” which actually means, “I can’t afford or justify one.” I am that person, except I’m worse because I only have a little 40” Television and it’s can’t even do 1080p.
I got a Macbook last year, the one Apple took the Firewire Ports off and replaced a year later with a Unibody plastic one. So on one hand, I feel bad because Apple want me to buy a MacBook pro to use a Firewire device. On the other hand I feel good because they’ve turned the MacBook into more of a freak show now. Mine is a great looking aluminum specimen, if you buy a MacBook now then it’ll be white again, and plastic.
This isn’t me doing this to you or even you doing this to you, this is Apple doing this to you. Apple hate you like Samsung Hate Me. I can at least put my Televisual Bitterness down to advances in technology. Apple took away my Firewire Ports because they hate me, they gave you a plastic Laptop because they hate you.
In the early Naughties, Microsoft gave us Windows XP. After about 4 years it started getting good. Then they brought out Vista and stopped you being able to get a PC with Windows XP. Vista was a mistake, Microsoft were forced to give you a choice again because Vista just wasn’t practical for businesses.
To run Windows Vista smoothly you need a PC with 32 Cores, 4 Billion Terabytes of Ram and an Array of Solid State Hard Disks. To run Windows XP smoothly you needed a Pentium 4, 1GB of Ram and a Mouse. Then there is all the different editions. Microsoft basically make you feel like Oliver Twist if you don’t get Ultimate Edition. You will feel poor and left wanting more. To be fair they’ve done the same with Windows 7 but at least that works.
With Windows Vista there was Poverty Edition, Poor Edition, Business Poor Poverty Edition, Business Poor Edition and Mans Only Option Edition. This is all because Microsoft Hate you. So you keep Microsoft happy by buying Mans Only Option Edition, they then punish you for trying to make them happy by giving you an Operating system that is unusable. They slowly put it right (better) over two years, leaving you feeling like you’ve had a two year bout of PIles.
You might think advances in technology have brought down the prices of Computer hardware. You can get a computer now, with and Microsoft Operating system for less than £250. I don’t believe it’s due to advances in technology, I believe it’s because of Windows Vista. Hardware had to get cheaper to make Personal computers affordable again.
It’s either that or consumers stick with what they’ve got and don’t put any money into the industry. This would in-turn stop money going into the Technology industry and we wouldn’t get any new gadgets to play with. Even that makes me feel like the entire industry hate me, they’ve got me up against a wall, they are telling me that if I don’t spend money with them, they’ll stop making me new toys.
Without a doubt the prize for the manufacturer who hate you the most, has to go to Cisco. Cisco are a manufacturer of Networking hardware for Business. They make routers with bugs. Most routers come with bugs as not every eventuality is covered in testing. This is usually not a problem, you go to the manufacturer’s support website and download a new firmware.
With Cisco, you go to the manufacturer’s support website, add a download to your basket and then are told you need to Pay, in one way or another, for this update. You can’t just buy it either, like an online shop. You need to pay for a Support Contract to get an upgrade.
Imagine if you bought a brand new BMW 5-series, a nice business class car. Imagine if it came with a time bomb and you didn’t know the time it was set to. BMW tell you they know how to deactivate it but you need to pay them.
Imagine if you were doing a sky dive and your shoot didn’t come out, this was an extra you had to pay for. The bag for the parachute was all you got and you had to pay if you wanted your chute to come out.
Both these examples involve certain death and so does not upgrading the firmware on our Cisco. If left in it’s factory state it would stop the internet working randomly, when it wanted. This would certainly cause a similar type of spontaneous combustion I talked about earlier.
I like buying gadgets but moan when I can’t afford better ones and I am a firm believer in Retail Therapy. I groan about certain ‘advancements’ in technology and I hate standing still. So where am on all this? I’m confused like everybody else, I feel loved by the money which buys me the gadgets and hated by the companies who make them.
I’m always left wishing I’d waited a few more months or given somebody else my business.
Consumers are left hating the Technology Industry because, like all industries, they want your money. Consumers having obsolete technology is just collateral damage. If this didn’t happen then the Economy would be in an even worse state and we’d all still be cave men.
iPhone Tethering
Well, Apple plan to charge £15 a month for the liberty of using their Tethering service. I’ve just used another method and configured it over bluetooth between my iPhone 3G and MacBook. I was quite impressed with the speeds I got (for a cellular network). The iPhone O2 contracts have unlimited internet so we’ll see if they pick up on the Tethering as I haven’t signed any O2 things to set it up.
On a less geeky and more housey note… Me and Sarah have a house. We move in next weekend. The Broadband is sorted to come first thing, on our first morning there (very important). The washer, cooker and freezer are also coming. We both have the day off work to sort everything out (a long weekend)
I’ve still got all my gadgets to take. There is all my AV equipment to take, for the living room and all my studio stuff for my studio. It’s a small room but it’s not going to disturb any neighbors and it will be big enough to fit everything in. It’s going to have a wrap around worktop going round 3 of the walls. And I’ll just leave enough space to open the door/ move my chair.
We are really looking forward ot the move. We’ve got a nice garden and patio and the house is excellent. The garage is big and we have a nice block paved drive.
MacBook
I ended up with the Mac Mini again but then it made me realise that I need a decent laptop for Work and don’t really need to use my Mac Pro for browsing etc.
I’ve decided the Mac pro and all studio/ music gear can go in the other room which can be a semi-dedicated studio and then my current room can stay as my film/ chillaxing room. I’ll leave the glass desk in here for my MacBook to live on.
I went for the 2GHz 13″ MacBook with SuperDrive, 2GB Ram and 160GB HDD. I’m going to upgrade the HDD to a 7200rpm one like I did in the Mac Mini the first time round. I’ll also upgrade the Ram to 4GB. It’s DDR3 now so it should be quite good, I’ll wait for the price to drop though as it becomes more popular.
We went to the Apple Store at Meadowhall today and I bought a Dock for my iPhone 3G and a Mini-DVI to DVI lead. I was tempted by the Airport Extreme but it’s going to have to be a purchase in the new year as I can’t justify the spendature due to just buying this MacBook. I got a good deal on it though thanks to Chris so It’s all good.
If Santa listened ot music, he’d have an iPod Touch!!
Current Affairs
So then I’ve previously touched on the G1 being dogshit and it got me to the top of google within 2 hours! bonus.
There are a few other interesting bits of news aswell such as the new Dell Quad Core notebook, the M6400 mobile workstation. It ‘boasts’ a full size keyboard with numerical keypad AND a 17″ screen. I think really it’s probably not THAT mobile at almost 4KG. It’s more of a desktop which you could move between rooms in your home/ office.
Windows 7, some videos have been release of it’s ’surface’ style multitouch capabilities. I’m not sure how Microsoft get away with it as Apple have patented it but there is obviously something I am missing. It looks to me, like Vista with touchscreen capabilities. So it’s still likely to be a disappointingly dreadful dire heap of Dogshit, just like Vista. Although in Vista’s defence, if you have 2x Quad Core Xeons and 8GB of Ram, it will run reasonably.
BBC iPlayer support for the iPhone works now. Instead of using flash (which the iPhone doesn’t support, it’s a quirk son!) it now uses Quicktime to stream the content. You can watch your favorite shows upto 7 days after they are aired in full screen and decent quality without having to download a thing. Just go to the BBC iPlayer website and it will put you straight into iPlayer Mobile Beta.
An interesting but more political bit of technology news is relating to the WEEE regulations. In business it’s a real pain, you have to pay somebody to take away your old equiptment or alternatively you can donate it to charity/ schools who have started to get picky and sometimes your stuff just ‘aint good enough. I’m not sure if this is advise or a situation which is being addressed by the government, but, if your equipment falls under the WEEE regulations, you could donate it instead of pay for disposal. So, a Desktop, Laptop, Monitor, Printer, TV, Microwave, Fax Machine, Franking Machine, Electronic Scales (you get the point) could be shipped to another country, the charity accept it subject to inspection.
Bulk loads of a WEEE items are being shipped to Africa and China by the tonne, all faulty and useless, fit for the tip. It’s useless but can’t be sent back so gets dumped there. There are literally MASSIVE piles of U.S. WEEE in Africa and China. I just thought it was really funny, because it’s basically Fly Tipping your Crap on another Country’s front Lawn. Many don’t find it so funny though which means it is being clamped down on heavily. Computeraid have started a petition but I can’t see it slowing down much.
Google G1 ‘gPhone’
I have been trying to think of a word or phrase which can suitably sum up this peice ‘technology’. So I was thinking long and hard and wondered what I could get away with actually calling it. The most suitable phrase I’ve come up with is, “The G1 is Dogshit”.
So what do you get with your T-Mobile G1? No signal for a start, the next problem is where do you store everything? On a MicroSD card, 2GB, I think that’s what my Grandma and Grandpa have in their Rotary Dial Phone. The next thing to ‘wow’ you is it has keyboard, not a touchscreen keyboard like on the FAR SUPERIOR iPhone but an actual keyboard, like I had on my ZX Spectrum.
It doesn’t even beat the iPhone in the usual AREA because it can’t record video either. It has a touchscreen though, not multitouch though is it? No… Bit like an ATM then isn’t it?
I don’t really have much more to say on this matter other than this has just lost Google a load of credibility in my eyes, oh well at least we can forgive them for making Chrome.
Birthday Night Out
We had a nice family meal at the Ranger last night and Adam and Vikki came along aswell. Adam drove us to Sheffield after the meal and we had a couple of drinks at Vikki’s new house. I saw her crazy little cat for the first time and it was really playful and naughty. It likes to pounce on things and chew things.
We went into town and went to a couple of bars first one of which was a house music bar, it was all reasonably old and commercial looked a bit studenty aswell, was ok though. We then went into a DQ Bar for Threads which was a guy from Reverend and the Makers trying to DJ. It was a good night though with plenty of really dirty electro tracks and lots of indy at the same time. It started to deteriorate though towards the 3 o’clock mark when Bassline and Drum and Bass started playing. I like both those genres but I don’t think Vikki or any of her friends do.
Everybody got pretty merry and I didn’t spend a penny all night – now that is a birthday! I spent this morning Jailbreaking the iPhone I gave to Vikki, the baseband was the wrong version and it wasn’t getting any signal. I bootneutered it and restored using a custom firmware I made using Pwnage Tool.
Here is a few photos from my Birthday, see the rest of the photos from last night in My Galleries
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