I recently bought myself a Samsung SGH-X820 (I'm into the whole emaciated phones thing) and I have some qualms I'd like to share...
First of all, in order to pack in the 2 megapixel camera they created a 2 mm 'bump' in my otherwise 6.9 mm thick phone, since 1 mm/mp seems a fair enough trade to me I can live with that little transgression against 'thinspiration'. What I can't so easily live with is the fact that they didn't extend that bump a bit and either integrate more internal storage or, at the very least, give me a Micro-SD port so I could do it myself. Seriously - if you saw how beautifully this phone handled video you'd say the same - it's practically begging to be given a chance to play my videos. The phone comes preloaded with some music video by 'Sonique' (A crappy pop-star trying to make a comeback at the expense of my precious megabytes - deleted) which - once you mute it - is quite appealing. The framerate appears nice and fluid, the colors are perfect and there isn't a pixelated frame in sight.
Now then, you might be asking yourself 'Who wants to watch videos on their cell-phone?' - and rightfully so. Most people don't want to watch a full-length movie on a screen that's just a few inches across, but then again; I'm not most people, I have exceptional eyesight, really, I can read a newspaper from across a room - and as someone blessed with such raptor-esque vision I can honestly get the same satisfaction from watching a movie on my phone as I would from watching it on a 42" plasma screen. I can already see the visually-impaired (20/20 and downwards) pedants amongst you going on about how that would technically be impossible since I'm watching the movie in a format which contains very limited data, due to the small amount of pixels, and you'd be right. Another reason you'd be right is that I completely lied about my vision.
I said all of that because I hate 'geek apologetics'; I don't want to go on a rant about how the only reason I want to watch videos on my phone is because I can... I don't want to explain to you that I'm personally offended by technology which does not aspire to perfection and I certainly don't want to yell at the top of my lungs; "HOW DARE APPLE RELEASE THE IPHONE AS A CLOSED PLATFORM!"
Wait! Wait just one goddamn minute... Was that a freudian slip?
Did I just criticise my adorable Korean 'shiksa' of a phone just because I'm pissed at Apple?
Could Jobs & Co. have so offended my sensibilities as to incite me against my beautiful, skinny, 63 grams worth of phone?
Am I accosting a phone which has done nothing wrong save for having too little memory, the worst UI in the history of digital interaction (And I mean digital in the old-school sense; 'fingers,' not 'bits'...) and an 'Action' button at the center of its 'joystick' so small and stiff as to only conceivably be manipulated with a toothpick?
Am I so shallow as to project my mac-geek frustrations towards this innocent asian waif?
Am I asking far too many rhetorical questions instead of getting to my point? But of course...
You didn't actually think I'd waste space on my precious blog venting my frustrations at my current phone, did you? No, no... This post is here for an entirely different reason, this is all about me venting my frustrations at my future phone...
I'll start this off with one simple word followed by a lot of punctuation, namely;
Widgets?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Or, in full sentence form;
You assholes have the sheer audacity to design a phone that runs OS-motherf***ing-X and all you have to offer me is WIDGETS?!
Some of you might be saying to yourselves 'Why are you getting bent out of shape? So jobs showed a phone running Widgets, it's not like he said it wouldn't actually run real software,' at which point I'd call you lot idiots; Do you really think that if this phone could run 'Final Cut - Mobile' or 'World of Warcraft - optimized for iPhone' Jobs would be showing you the God-damned weather?! No... No, no, no. What we actually have here is very much akin to high-end car manufacturers voluntarily limiting the top speeds of their automobiles; The iPhone comes to you sexy, revolutionary, disruptive, and, as a footnote; castrated...
The reason that this otherwise perfect* piece of technology can only be deemed a 'Silicon Eunuch' is that Apple decided that a closed platform would be their best solution. This means that only a handful of developers will ever have full, kernel-level access to the platform and, to the best of my knowledge, closed platforms stifle, asphyxiate and eventually kill innovation.
If we were to return to the car analogy from before we could say that the first Porsche ever built was actually a 'Tweaked' VW Beetle, the Dodge Viper is, for all intents and purposes, a refined 18 wheeler (Look under the hood...) and the McLaren F1 was actually the nipped-and-tucked Frankenstein of the automotive world - a smorgasbord of stock parts fused and welded together into the fastest car on earth (albeit only for a decade or so). All of these examples go to show what happens when brilliant engineers are given unbridled access to hardware - an approach Apple have decided to forgo in the name of control.
I could be wrong, all the reports of the iPhone being closed might be wrong, but choosing to launch with only one carrier (Cingular) seems indicative of the control mentality over at Apple. Showing us 'Widgets' is akin to saying "The only 'source' materials developers will be seeing from us are our quarterlies."
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not proposing that apple go all Ubuntu on our asses but I'd expect a product this revolutionary to be accessible to the world's developers via more than a Widgets API.
*Yes, a 2.xG phone can indeed be perfect. 3G is badly implemented and inherently unsustainable due to the prohibitively expensive cost of serving decent bandwidth.
- Oren Goldschmidt (Desperate to upgrade away from his 'Shiksa')
Friday, 12 January 2007
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Hey blog readers, here’s an article I wrote on WOW, mainly on the Burning Crusade – hope you’ll find it interesting:
Almost 8 million World of Warcraft players around the world have been waiting for the release of the extension pack named The Burning Crusade. The WOW community was very excited to enter the new territories imagined and created for them by the ingenious Blizzard team. This extension brought to light two new races with new starting areas and quests, new dungeons, jewel crafting: the newest trade profession, PVP arenas and new battlegrounds. The big majority of WOW fans were very impressed of Blizzard's work.
The newest two races mentioned above are the "draenei" and the "blood elves" and they are great to start playing with all over again and no doubt new players will find the way up to level 70 very exciting.
The new territories look fantastic and the quests you have to pass in order to level up are very interesting. Many players' reviews agree that blood elves are more popular than the draenei and this fact can be easily explained. The Horde was never given the chance to play a good looking character until now while most Alliance characters are looking good and are physically attractive. Horde's characters are all looking funny; after all they don't have anything human in their look, but they have great jokes and it is a real pleasure to play as a troll, undead, orc or tauren.
Another important aspect to mention is that Horde was finally given the chance to play as paladin with blood elves. Blizzard balanced the two new classes by allowing draenei to play as shamans. However chances for the two new classes to interact with their neighbors are low while they are leveling up. The new classes will probably experience trouble in finding trainers and even some quest givers. The new profession, jewel crafting can be really profitable, especially when combined with mining.
The flying mount was something new for WOW players, but many reviewers agreed that flying mounts are cheap indeed but very slow, even slower than a non epic mount. The epic flying mount is fast and crucial for some quests and territories but it's a bit expensive to some players. However, camping in the new territories can be a real pleasure because the player is now able to raise more gold in a shorter time span than before and also has great chances to loot precious items they needs or they can sell in auction houses.
Patches are regularly released in order to improve the balance and the quality of the game. In addition Blizzard performs weekly server maintenance so they can prevent game bugs, account break in or other problems related to the technical support of the game engine. Game masters are always online and they solve players' problems very fast and in a professional manner. The Burning Crusade can be considered a great new real-time game and also the valuable proof that WOW was and still is an unique PC game that fascinated millions of people around the globe.
Michael
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