The Year of the Geek

So I was supposed to write about the other 2 posts on TUAW regarding the iPhone wish list, but I figure I should just skip that and go right into the iPad, the latest gadget from Apple.  For the last year I’ve been seeing rumors about the all mysterious “Apple tablet” that they’re working on.  I couldn’t go one day without some site I browse having something about this damn thing.  I actually was hoping that it would be something more than “a big iPhone.”  I think my hopes got too high, and when I was the announcement online I was just confused.

First thing, I’m really not a tablet PC type of person anyway, so I was hoping that it would at least have something different than other tablets, or even something so goo that I might even want to get one.  Lets face it, I do like my Apple products; my 80GB iPod, my old 40GB iPod, my MacBook Pro, the lab machines, the servers, etc.  I enjoy using them for the most part and I believe that Apple does make quality products.  And you already know my disdain for the iPhone from my last two posts, so you can’t really say I’m a fanboy; meaning I’m not going to buy everything Steve Jobs says because he said too, NO. I’m going to buy a product I feel has a use in my life, and that I will like to use.  And the iPad just doesn’t do it for me.

There are many things that they should/could have done differently with it, but they didn’t.  I admit, it’s very nice looking and I can see some uses for it (below) but I just don’t think it’s practical for most.

The iPad would be an excellent control for say a media system, or a presentation.  I can see people buying one of these for their office to use as a datebook, or a replacement for magazines and newspapers, or even to control things in their office (lights, music, etc), but using it as an eReader? Or an internet device when on the road? I just don’t see it.  Reading the screen would probably be like reading a book on your computer screen, you’ll go blind.  Why is the Kindle so popular? It uses e-ink and doesn’t blind you with back lighting.  That’s the whole point of it.  Don’t get me wrong, using the iPad as a magazine or newspaper reader would be great, you can’t do that shit with e-ink, but $400 for a magazine reader? I don’t know…

I also don’t see people buying this thing as a gaming device.  (Yes, I know that’s not the point of the iPad) Sure, it can do some nifty graphics and tilt functions, but it’s so big compared to a Nintendo DS or a PSP.  And those systems won’t make you look like an idiot steering a box in public.  And about the games and apps; all iPhone apps work on it, great, now I can have an iPhone sized app running on my 9 inch tablet, way to utilize the screen space.  Yeah, you can zoom in, but what happens when you zoom in on things that weren’t meant to be zoomed in on? That’s right, it looks like a piece of mosaic.

The drawing features are nice. I can see many artists or designers wanting this to sketch out things on the fly, and be able to send it to someone without a scanner or whatnot, but why not take that a step more?  Make a deal with Wacom and allow it to become an actual Wacom tablet.  Charge like $50 for an app that when you plug it into your PC it shows the screen of the PC and allows you to draw on it! Genius! That would actually make it multifunction; hell I’d consider buying it then.

Speaking of multifunction, I must say this:

HAHAHAHAHA!

They didn’t learn that people really wanted multitasking. I know many folks who were very pissed off about this, and I just tell ask them, “you’re surprised?” Good luck on the next update.

Oh and another one: Think they’d learn from their AT&T problems?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Unfortunately, sticking with AT&T was inevitable; the iPhone is AT&T only, so why in the hell would they move to another carrier?  If they released a new iPhone for Verizon then I’d see it to be more plausible…until then, enjoy your AT&T iPad users!

Oh and the name…iPad?  You’re fucking Apple! You couldn’t have used one of the much better names like iTablet or my personal favorite, the iSlate? You went with the name in which MadTV did a skit on already making the joke that everyone is making now? Wow. Someone missed that joke from like 3 years ago. That’s why people are making those jokes, not really because of the maxipad/pad reference, but because it was already a stupid joke on MadTV.

I’m not saying that the iPad is a failure, or it’s a completely useless product, because it’s not.  I’m just giving my $0.02.

Yesterday I came across this post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).  I read through it and couldn’t help but laugh at some of the requests; not just because some are silly but because some phones already do this and iPhone users used to ask, “Why do I need that?!” I felt I should write my opinions on these requests.  Mind you, I have never owned an iPhone, but I’ve witnessed countless people with them and have used them a good deal troubleshooting for people while at work, I also own an Android-powered DROID; just a disclaimer.

Before I even get into the list I come across this

This is the first of a series of letters to Apple on your behalf, telling the gang in Cupertino what would make their wonder-phone even more wondrous

And it even goes into a real letter to Apple.

Dear Apple,

While it’s clear the iPhone is the best smartphone on the market right now, you have a lot of competition creeping up. We want to help you blow them out of the water with the iPhone OS 4.0. Here are our suggestions:

Now, if you know Apple AT ALL you know that they really don’t listen to the user. TUAW certainly knows this since they write about Apple all the time.  Apple’s idea of market research is “Steve said this was good, so it’s good.”  This isn’t always the case of course; they brought back firewire to all of their laptops after omitting it on most for a time, but Apple really isn’t going to listen to you all that much.  They will look at the market and see what other phones have that they missed, and probably include some of those.  For instance, people use removable-media on their devices a lot, some people prefer it over internal media of course.  Will Apple ever put a microSD card in their iPhone or iPod? Probably not.  Why?  Probably because it’s something else that could break that they don’t want to have to worry about, but it’s probably because they don’t want people to add more space to their devices without buying a whole new device.

Now to the list (please read the article if you’re going to ask questions or complain or whatever, I will only be posting the main idea of each item, not the description of the idea)

1. The lock screen needs to change

This one is nothing too crazy.  The lock screen could change of course to show more information; a list of to-do’s, emails, whatever.  So this one I really don’t have an issue with.  Other phones do this a bit; on Android you get your notifications with an icon in the top menu bar as well as a different colored blinking LED on the front of the phone.

2. A new home screen. The iPhone is the smartest phone on the market. Make it smarter. Introduce a location-aware home screen.

This is another one that I really don’t have an issue with.  I actually like this idea and wonder why more phones/devices don’t have it.

3. That new home screen? Let us access it by vertically swiping.

This one confused me a little bit. I can see the desire to have all of your feeds and shit within a simple swipe, but why?  Do something like Android and use a drop down menu at the top.  You select the top menu and slide it out, this way you don’t accidentally swipe vertically while you’re reading something and open your home screen. The mock-up looks nice:

Credit: Teehan+Lax

But it reminds me of the drop down in Android, just more refined.

4. Overhaul app navigation.

This is another one I really like.  Tape the home button when on your app menu and it shows all of your homescreens in a nice “exposé” style manner.

This should be standard too.  If hold my home button on my DROID it brings up my running programs and I can switch between them (more on multitasking later).

5. 85% of us want multitasking and 3rd party background apps

This is where I get a little annoyed with iPhone users.  Now, multitasking is something that the Palm Pre does with WebOS, as well as Android phones, but the iPhone falls short here.  It SHOULD have it, but iPhone users used to ask me “Who needs that?” or “Who cares about that?”  Well, apparently 85% of the people polled care about it enough to respond to TUAW.  This is a good demand…until I see the next line: “but not at the cost of battery life.” What? Really? You want to run multiple applications at once and not use battery life? What kind of engineering do you think Apple does?  Come on now, be realistic!

6. Almost 80% of us want Flash, even if it’s a bad idea.

Again, a pretty good request.  I want it on my DROID too.  Apparently it’ll be out for Android before the iPhone though.  Also, running Flash on anything MacOS related is a death sentence.  They realize this in the post, but I’m just throwing it in there also.

7. We love that you introduced landscape mode across virtually all apps in iPhone OS 3.0, but 70% of us want the ability to selectively turn it off.

Okay, this really isn’t built into the phone?  Android has it built in already…why didn’t Apple?  I don’t know. But it’s actually a legit request also.

8. When we leave an app, we want it to remember where we were.

This one is part of the whole multitasking thing. When multitasking comes, this better be in it, or you’re doing it wrong! (Yes, Android for the most part has this, and I believe WebOS does as well.)

9. 65% of us want the ability to remove Apple-branded apps.

This next one is a fair request, but it just won’t happen. Apple doesn’t care…really.  They don’t want you to remove their apps on the iPhone because, well, it’s their apps.  There are ways apparently to hid the app from your screen, but not to remove them. These apps are so small what should it matter? This is what you’re getting with a brand; the device and the apps to come with it.  Same on most devices.

10. 60% of us want a universal “documents” folder.

Okay, fair again, but a question is why doesn’t it do this anyway? “We realize this breaks the sandboxing model that prevents one app from blowing away data belonging to another one, but we have every confidence you can make it work.” Yeah, and when an app comes out that removes all of your pictures and documents who are you going to blame for allowing this? Thought so.

11. Better Support for Codecs and Add-ons.

This one is basically asking to allow WMV and AVI stuff to run. I suppose this is another valid request. Next!

12. The iPhone is a hard drive with a screen, so….[Give us Disk mode in the OS. 50% of us want to use our iPhone as an external USB/Wi-Fi hard drive.]

One of my favorites. I wonder why Apple doesn’t allow this.  Maybe it’s because they don’t want people to be able to remove their apps so easily, or copy some over, or maybe it’s because they want their users to use iTunes.  You know, one of their most popular pieces of software.  It’s all about controlling the environment the phone runs with.  You can use other programs to add songs, and documents and pictures, but adding apps is all iTunes.  There is really no third party app vendor, is there? You’re stuck with iTunes, like it or not.

So that’s really my $.02 on this blog entry.  It’s probably biased, but it’s me being honest.  I like the iPhone.  I think it’s a great device, but it does have some stupid flaws that can easily be fixed (as well as being a shitty phone).  Unfortunately these requests might fall on deaf ears,  Steve Jobs is not going to listen much, he’s going to make you listen.

Fixing or adding any of these features to the iPhone will still not help if you’re sitting on a shitty network. I’ll keep m DROID and use an iPod Touch (or my 6th Gen iPod Classic).  I’ll at least be able to do everything I can on an iPhone while actually being able to make phone calls.
There will most likely be a part 2 from this article, so I may just have to wager in on that one as well.

I love technology, obviously.  I love my computers, my iPod, my PSP, televisions, and I love my cell phone.  I’ve had a cellular phone since my junior year in high school around 2002.  My parents and I had a plan with Cingular (remember them?) and we used our phones in normal emergency cases or cases where we needed to ask something ASAP.  Minutes were scarce, and texting was totally out of the question, it was $0.25/text or something, and texting on my original phone; a Nokia 5120, you remember…the phone that EVERYONE had, was a real pain anyway.

Hi, remember me?

Finally in 2004 or so we got fed up with Cingular’s shitty service (me being in NY for school also made this easier as we needed some method of communication) and the lack of minutes, etc., I decided to drop my grandmothers Cingular plan (she got it for us) and pay for my own Verizon Wireless family plan.  It cost a bit more, but we got nice new LG vx4500s, 700 minutes, and a MUCH better network. It was a big step.  That was 5 1/2 years ago and after 5 different phones I’m still with Big Red.  I have come to upgrade many things with my plan and demand much more from them, but not much else has changed.

My phones with verizon

There is a progression of my Verizon phones.  “But you said 5, that’s only 3!” You’re right, and I’m sure you knew I wasn’t going to write about my cell phones since 2002 without a reason, right?

Right.

In September I was eligible for a new phone on my “new every two” offer.  Psyched, I took to the interwebs and researched phones that I would love to have vibrate in my pocket when people decided to call me.  I looked far and wide, and read review after review of phones.  I went to the store and used the many phones offered, and used friends’ phones as benchmarking.  I came to 2 conclusions while doing this:

1. I wanted a phone with a touch screen. I don’t know why, I think it’s the “new thing” but I wanted a touch screen dammit.
2. I wanted a full QWERTY keyboard. I do a shit-ton of texting now, and this became mandatory now. I didn’t know if a software keyboard would be alright for me, so I wanted a REAL keyboard.

With those in mind I nixed my previous idea of obtaining the LG Dare (a rather pretty touch screen phone, but NO keyboard) and instead opted for the new LG touch screen phone, the LG enV Touch (vx1100). I used the voyager for a little while from a friend, and I kinda liked it.  When I started to test out the enV Touch I wanted it badly.  It was everything I needed, beautiful screen, nice tactile keyboard, and even an HTML browser; which came in handy when I opted to get the unlimited data plan for it.

After using the phone for about a month I started noticing weird issues where the phone would turn itself off randomly, or reset to default screens or just not receive calls (it wouldn’t ring, it would just say I had a missed call). Verizon told me it was defective and sent me a new phone, free of charge of course, since it was still within 30 days from purchase.  The second phone was even worse!  It was to the point where I didn’t get ANY phone calls on it for days, and I would only text because that was truly the ONLY reliable means to contact me.  Mind you, when the phone worked it was actually a great phone and texting device. But I got fed up and called Verizon about it.

Fuck you enV Touch

Now here is the side note, during my time owning the phone, Verizon came out with the DROID, Motorola’s Android-based smart phone.  Reading reviews and playing with the system, I really really wanted this phone. I’ve become increasing interested in getting all of these mobile applications and using my phone for other things besides texting, calling, and occasionally searching Google for a place to eat. The issue was that I couldn’t upgrade because I just did, but if you have proper cause (which I’ll explain in a minute) you can get an early upgrade for your device without any penalty. I had to figure out a way to make my shitty phone turn into a DROID, and quickly.

I called Verizon and stated my issues about the phone.  I informed the woman that this was my second one in 2 months, and I do not want just a refurb that is going to end up doing the same damn thing.  I informed her that I have actually read reviews on THEIR OWN WEBSITE about people returning their phones 5 times in 3 months and still having the same issue. So I tell her I want a different phone, no bullshit.  Finally she tells me, “This falls under our 2 in 90 rule [or some shit].  If you return a phone 2 times the next time you return it you get a choice of a different phone from a matrix.”

Woah. Wat?

Apparently some phones can only allow you to get some other phones when you exchange them.  Usually these “matrix phones” are refurb or pre-used pieces of shit or other phones “similar” to the current one (like the LG Chocolate Touch).  I say “No, I want to choose my own phone like I was upgrading.” I inform the woman of my current status with them; I’m up-to-date on my payments, never missed a payment in 5 years, etc. After being on hold for a few moments the woman comes back and tells me that because of my continued loyalty to them they will give me a phone exchange for ANY phone they have at the store! All I have to do is pay the price difference of the phones and renew my 2-year contract.  Fine. Signed, sealed, done!

I arrive at my store and to my amazement, it’s not a phone exchange (meaning I’d have to give my enV touch back in exchange for the DROID) it’s an early upgrade.  I keep my enV Touch (which is not really a plus, but whatever) and get the DROID at the upgrade price.  After paying my $300 + taxes I walk out of the store with the DROID.

DROID, bitches!

Review of the DROID (Kinda)

So after having the phone for a bit now I’ve come to really love this phone more and more. Just a quick review (because this really isn’t a review blog) should suffice.

The screen on this phone is BEAUTIFUL.  It’s huge, bright, responsive, and just amazing. The Android interface is actually very intuitive and easy to work with.  The apps for it are pretty good; I wish some of them were a bit more refined with some things (the facebook app sometimes loads the browser for some things, which I think is a bit weird, but that’s not the phone’s fault, it’s the app).

It comes with a pre-installed 16GB microSD card.  This is enough space for plenty of apps and music and if you need more go buy a 32GB card! I love that it uses microSD as storage instead of non-removable internal storage.

It’s one of the few android phones with a real keyboard.  The keyboard is very flat, so it’s a bit tough to get used to typing on, but it functions very nicely.  Even when not using the real keyboard the virtual one is surprisingly responsive and easy to type on, much better than the one on the enV Touch.

One thing that surprised me was it’s feel. Yeah, the feeling of the phone.  What do I mean? It doesn’t feel like a piece of plastic that’s going to fall apart in your hand if you squeeze it. It’s heavy, sturdy, and just really solidly build.  You could probably bludgeon someone to death with it, that’s how it feels.

Its also a very quick phone.  Apps are pretty fast to load, websites load nicely (over wifi and Verizon’s network).  It doesn’t feel laggy that much at all.

I know there are a lot more things to talk about with this phone, but I’m not going to go into it too much.  I’m sure I’ll blog more about how much this thing kicks ass, and how much I prefer AndroidOS to the iPhone’s OS, but that’s going to be for later.

So, fuck the iPhone and AT&T, give me my DROID!

I couldn’t tell you when I actually got my first computer. I can tell you that I first got an old used Tandy TRS-80 color computer from someone with loads of games and software. It came with a 5 1/4-inch floppy and an actual color ink-jet printer! I had the computer for a little while before it started to become difficult to load programs and then the thing just stopped working. I don’t know how old it was when I got it, but it was old.

Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer

My next computer was a used Apple Performa 400. My first computer that was really usable. It ran some version of System 7, had a geoport 56k modem, and a 15-inch monitor. The computer came with some productivity software (Claris Works, Pagemaker) and some games (Sim City, Myst, Doom II). The hard drive was 750MB. Although the thing never died (computer or hard drive) the system would just stop working from various System 7 related crap. I lost it 2 times in the year or so I owned it, and finally I let it go.

Macintosh Performa 400

As you can tell from the title, this post is obviously not about those machines. No, this post is just about systems I have had that never wanted to go. They never died, I never had major hardware issues, just the occasional software hiccup. I’m going to start with my first REAL machine. It was a no name brand custom PC purchased sometime in 1998.

My parents finally decided it was time for me to get a real system. After years of begging for a real computer our friend Rocco decided to put it on his credit card for my parents and actually get me a full, new, computer system. We drove to this computer store way out in the middle of no where and look around a bit. My dad and Rocco had no idea what to look for, but I did. I found one machine that stood out from the others; 300mhz AMD K6-2 processor, 32MB SDRAM, 56K modem, 8MB onboard VRAM, 52x CD drive, 4GB hard drive with windows 95, a beautiful 17-inch monitor, and even 2 USB ports! This was it. I wanted it, and I got it for $975 with a year warranty.

I was one of the only people on my block to have a 56k modem, and a computer that could play games and movies and music. I was one of the first people out of all of my friends with a new computer all to himself. I started eBay-ing at around 15 or 16, when I got my first job. With that money I started to upgrade my system. I upgraded the video to a Savage 4 PCI card, a Diamond audio sound card, I got up to 96MB ram, a CD-R (which was $300 when I first bought it), I added a 10GB and a 12GB hard drive for music and programs, and used the original 4GB Seagate drive as the system drive. I installed so many versions of Linux and windows it could make your head spin. I formatted it so many times I lost count. It was on almost all the time, hours and hours of intense (at the time) gaming, loud music, viruses, everything. I just worked that machine for everything it was worth and nothing inside it ever failed. Then I finally “upgraded” to a 450Mhz P3 Dell Gigaplex which was given to me from my old school library. I re-purposed the old machine as my own personal webserver (I had Cable internet in my house which another thing I really adopted first:  getting the best internet in the neighborhood…before cable was DSL).

The old webserver lasted through most of my undergraduate career sitting in my bedroom at home (and then our house in South Philly) idling on my cable connection 24/7 for maybe 3 years. I used it to host various things (pictures, my former website, friends’ pics, class projects, etc). In 2007 or so I finally decided to take the server offline, and drop the cable internet. I was never home anymore, and my parents didn’t go online at all, it was just an extra $45/mo that wasn’t going anywhere. The system was still using the original 4GB Seagate drive, original USB controller, original RAM, and the original video card (not the Savage 4) and even the original power supply. All working when I took it offline. It was slow, the CMOS battery kept dying (which I replaced 2 times in its lifetime), and it was loud from the old drives and old dusty fans, but it still worked perfectly.

The replacement Dell I had was tossed for an upgrade I got in college, another old Dell Dimension XPS with 700mhz P3 (The old Dell wasn’t dead, I just traded it for the other Dell). It was an old webserver years before, and I used it as my computer in my dorm for a few semesters. Many papers and hours of movies and gaming occurred on this machine’s life in my dorm also. It’s now used as my parents only computer at home. It’s running XP, has wireless, 512MB RAM, 2 hard drives, and still works fine.

Dell Dimension XPS

My replacement for that, a PowerMac Blue and White G3 is sitting in my basement in Philly. It has a G4 upgrade in it, a 20GB and a 40GB hard drive, a DVD-R/RW, 512+MB RAM. That computer is from 1999, and it still works. I got the Mac from my current employer who was throwing it out. The original 60GB drive died on it (which is only my second drive failure in my life, my other was my old Toshiba laptop 5+ years into its life) and the system needs to be reinstalled…but it still WORKS.

Blue and White G3

I have a lot of hardware like the the Dell and the Mac; my old third-gen iPod (still used for storage!), my old Toshiba laptop (needs new hard drive, screen hinges are breaking), and other various systems I have built over my life. These all still work fine. Is it something I do to my systems that make them last longer? I like to think so. I like to think that I do take good care of my systems and try to get the most life out of them. Maybe it’s also that I just don’t thrown systems out at all until they are completely useless to me. Whatever it is, I have surprisingly good luck with hardware. I’m going to be replacing the Dell at home with an actual new computer sometime in the near future, but that dell will be reused as a server somewhere I can assume.

I’m not saying I have the best luck with machines, older entries clearly state that that I don’t, but I do have surprisingly good luck.

So I wonder, why do people have so many issues with their new machines which they spent thousands on and I have almost no issues at all on older systems? Do they not make computers like they used to? Is hardware getting crappier? Or is it that performance comes with the high price of high failure rates? I can safely assume that a 10,000RPM 700GB drive will get much more wear and tear on it than a 300GB 7200RPM drive, but shouldn’t the failure rate be lowered as time goes on with technology? We have better materials, and better methods of testing hardware now. Should we just stick to old hardware because it’s “safer?” Or should we just accept the high failure rate because performance is worth much more? I wonder.

In my lab I keep a wireless access point active; mainly for students and profs using it to connect computer together for whatever. I used to use a WPA password for the system. WPA worked fine except that many people who were not supposed to be on the network were on there. Students would give the password out, and this annoyed me. That network is supposed to be for DM staff and students only, that’s why I have it separate from the schools wireless.

Over the summer I made a lot of changes to the network, mainly I changed it over to use WPA2 Enterprise with our RADIUS server. The logins are taken from our Open Directory LDAP (the ones people use to log into our machines, website, wiki, etc.) and thats how people connect. Works great in MacOS, I select the network, put my user and pass in and voila! Windows was another story.

My MBP has Windows 7 Ultimate; I was able to connect to the network after changing some WIndows defaults. It does ask for a login, which is better than what XP did, but it still had some issues. I had to disable the “Check server certificate against blah blah”, because it’s a self-signed cert it wouldn’t work. I also need to disable “Use windows login password to login to this network.” I understand most people using “enterprise” networks all use AD or whatever to login to their computer, but why make that default? Not to mention, to change both of these options it’s 5 levels down or so buried deep in the wireless preferences. It’s impossible to change if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Windows 7 connects fine now. No issues, it’s actually very stable. Issues arise when Vista users connect. Now, when I add the network for a Vista user it comes up as WPA2 Enterprise (good), AES (great), it even prompts for a user and password (excellent). No connection. I change those settings above again, because it’s by default, still nothing. I go into even more advances prefs by changing the authentication method to MSCHAPv2 or TTLS, PEAP, whatever works. Nothing works. I check all of the Vista prefs with my working Windows 7 prefs, they are identical. What is the issue then?

After a good Google search, and more and more searches, and stops to Apple discussions, and everything else I can think if, I see similar results. Apparently Windows Vista HOME does not work with WPA2 Enterprise. It just doesn’t work. It’s “broken” as some would put it, or “disabled.” Whatever the reason, my question is “Why??” Why do you put WPA2 Enterprise network prefs and even allow me to add said network to my computer when I can’t fucking connect to it? Explain that one, please! If you don’t want Home users to connect to enterprise networks, take the fucking thing out, don’t just make it act like it works and then not let it. How do I know it’s a client issue and not a server issue? Logs.

My server logs all RADIUS connections and attempts to authenticate. My server issues the challenge to the machine, but the machine apparently ignores it, or throws it away, or wipes its ass with it. It does NOTHING.

Now, I was having this issue with some other computers as well, Windows XP users. Their main issue was that they didn’t have updated drivers or settings were screwed up, but they eventually worked most of the time. I’ve also tried with some Vista Pro computers, and yes it works most of the time. The times it doesn’t usually work, I tell the people to get the software from their card manufacturer and use it, and then it seems to magically work.

What is wrong with WIndows wireless? You got me, but I finally told those people who couldn’t connect to either upgrade or deal with it and connect to a poly network. Hell, Poly’s putting N-Wireless in, I might just use it from now on also!