“Part of Apple’s success came from popular antipathy to Microsoft because it was so successful … Jobs cleverly made Apple’s journey, like his own, into a countercultural success story, playing off the Goliath that was Microsoft. But this year Apple’s market value surpassed Microsoft’s, making it the most valuable technology firm in the world … It seems Jobs is finding himself hoist on his own petard. Too successful in a capitalist sense, at a time and to a new generation for whom success is suspect.”

Devine also explores Jobs’ take on freedom, as exemplified in his recent email exchange with Gawker’s Ryan Tate:

”If Dylan was 20 today how would he feel about your company? Would he think iPad had the faintest thing to do with revolution? Revolutions are about freedom,” Tate wrote.

Jobs replied: ”Yes, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.”

Well, finally, something Eric Schmidt and Jobs can agree on. We all deserve to be free from porn. This brings me back to the title of this post, which I have stolen from Devine’s article and have to include again because it’s just so damn insightful.

Too much freedom can be a tyranny of its own.

This applies not only to the incredibly important world of smartphones. It can also be seen in less important matters such as western society’s tyrranical attitude to implementing counter terrorism.

We seem to be fine with outsourcing the “filtering out of bad stuff” to any dictatorship who is willing to take on the task. In effect, we are happy to trade in our freedom to experience the bad along with the good, in return for being freed of the inconvenience of deciding which is which.

We are now getting to the crux of the Android vs. Apple dilemma. As observed by Craig Simms from CNET (my emphasis):

“The separate approaches of Google and Apple are interesting. Apple’s ridiculous level of control, strange regulations and amazingly closed system have severely limited what its platform can do, but has resulted in a much more polished, complete and integrated operating system. Most apps will actually work when you download them. It’s both its biggest strength and weakness.

Google’s openness and flexibility is equally its biggest strength and weakness: it allows considerably more capability than the iPhone, but to the detriment of platform stability and a more polished experience. We’ve lost count of the amount of apps that simply don’t work and need to be force closed.”

It’s also worth pointing out that Android’s openness for allowing almost any app onto the Android Market raises the possibility of wallpaper apps that steal your personal data. This brings us right back to the terrorism allegory: trading in freedom for convenience.

What is convenience?

In the smartphone space, one of the most important conveniences to me is speed: freedom from wasted time. I’m not just talking about the processing power of a device, although that is a contributing factor. The question of device speed involves many more aspects of the whole smartphone package. They can all be encompassed in the broader question:

“How much of my time is wasted in achieving my objectives on this device?”

Assuming for the sake of argument that activities performed on my smartphone are not intrinsic time wasters, I’ve jotted down some areas for potential inefficiencies for both packages in approximate order of importance.

Android still has a long way to go before it has anywhere near the polish of iOS, despite all its faults.

The evidence seems to suggest that an iPhone 4 would be the most efficient solution at the moment. Can I really allow myself the luxury of indulging my own principles by rebelling against the Apple alliance? Not really.

Am I willing to accept Apple’s tyrannical dictatorship if it saves me some time and potential heartache?

The answer is Yes. Suck it up Orwell.

I recently saw J. J. Abrams’ film Star Trek and was left feeling slightly underwhelmed. I had heard good things about the film but left the cinema and was followed home by a daunting cloud of “meh”, which was quite disappointing. This puzzles me as the film certainly ticks all the right boxes. Abrams has got his formula down pat, now; his TV series like Alias and Lost were just warm-ups. Perhaps a parallel with one of the film’s main themes can help me here. It must be that logically, the film has everything required for a great experience. However, apart from a brief moment in the opening scene, the film failed to engage me on an emotional level.

Let’s see, it’s based on proven IP, which movie publishers love, as this almost guarantees a healthy audience size. Director J. J. Abrams on the ticket will attract the Alias, Lost, and Cloverfield die-hards (the latter includes myself). The loyal Star Trek fan base will go and see it out of curiosity; and the prejudiced die-hard Trekkies will see it simply to scoff at its inferiority. It has a great cast including Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg and Eric Bana. Casting a couple of knowns means you get the Heroes fans and the Shaun of the Dead fans for free. The addition of Leonard Nimoy added a warmly familiar nostalgic touch.

Now, I’m about to risk sounding very sexist, but I disclaim that I’m only pointing out the Hollywood attitude to demographic reasoning, and in no way justifying it. Casting a relatively unknown but predictably handsome lead (Chris Pine) means the girlfriends will have something new and pretty to keep them amused while their boyfriends can enjoy his various macho exploits. And there is plenty of action to speak of: a healthy seasoning of well-choreographed hand-to-hand combat scenes, most of which are staged on precariously narrow or dangerously high platforms…or both. We also see some Point Break style skydiving suspense which was actually impressively well-shot; achieving the best sense of speed that I’ve seen on film to date for scenes of this kind.

That brings me to the production values, which were exceptional as to be expected. Special effects were of high quality without being over the top. I was only disappointed there was not more emphasis on the epic futuristic Earth that we can all hope for. It was briefly alluded to by the teasingly occluded glimpses of a distant mammoth city we see in the background of a scene from Kirk’s childhood.

Abrams’ Star Trek also more than delivers on sci-fi cliché requirements. Look I have nothing against cliché’s; when used well they provide a comforting sense of familiarity, and even humour in a lot of cases. Here, these include a scene where the extremely impractically overdesigned, yet epically scary-looking spaceship appears, ridiculously dwarfing the puny Earthen ship.

On the topic of ships, there is adequate symbolism regarding alien races. Romulans as a race are characterized by their spikily pointed tattoos which mirror the design of their ships. In contrast, Earthlings are perfectly groomed and wear boring monochromatic outfits, and their ships are very sterile and pure in design. Vulcans, as the allies of Earthlings appear only marginally different than us, and as extra evidence, we learn early on that the two races can cross-breed.

The word “singularity” was used more than once, and “alternate reality” was also thrown in, for good measure. There was plenty of complicated alien tech including phasers (Pew! Pew! Pew!), faster-than-light travel, teleportation, gravity wells and a last minute escape. We had close encounters of the chase-scene-kind facilitated by improbably large terrifying alien creatures. On more than one occasion, a ship’s shields reach a percentage below fifty which is stock-standard sci-fi speak for “we’re in the shit captain”. What else? Hover cars/bikes; automaton Robocop-style law enforcement; a scattering of comically unspoken yet curiously framed miscellany of supporting alien cast members; indoctrination of children instead of education. Finally, (and yes this is a sci-fi cliché) humans remain primally human despite their world being saturated by technology.

Which brings us to… The angsty teen demographic is catered for with both protagonists defiantly rebelling against the destiny laid out by their parents. We also witnessed a good deal of enough “courtship” including some unrequited lust, which ensures those teens who are angsty because they are just too damn horny will be able to relate to the film.

Yes, overall, careful analysis confirms the Star Trek equation infallibly satisfies the criteria for “perfect film”. Yet something was still missing and I wish I could find it, but my Vulcan discipline prevents me.

Maybe that’s it! Could the film possibly have succeeded in creating such a powerful empathetic connection with the character of Spock that I was left incapable of acknowledging any emotional responses? Perhaps, for the entire film, I was just unconsciously discarding them as counterproductive anomalies…

*breaks down and cries*

“The web is a dynamic medium, and one example of this is the discussion features provided by websites. It’s functionality like this that will see readers tearing themselves away from the purity of their feeds. You can’t post a comment without visiting the actual website… yet. It won’t be long before we have … an open standard for abstracting website discussions into the feed reader, possibly eliminating the need for a website altogether.”

This is essentially Google Wave. The demo contained no specific example of abstracting blog comments into the wave client but I’m certain someone will write an extension; after all it’s open source.

I am really excited that Google have decided to push the web in this direction. If you’ve got a spare hour and 20 mins, go watch the demo. You WILL be impressed.

The service you have selected is on a mobile plan or fixed line service that does not support Usage Alerts.

I just spoke to a guy at Optus who was actually useful and actually knew what was going on and actually spoke English! What are the chances? He said the website is still being updated to include Usage Alerts functionality for the iPhone because it’s a new handset this hasn’t been done yet. Apparently the update is not so straightforward as the iPhone (allegedly) uses different technology for its data usage than regular phones. They don’t have an ETA of when Usage Alerts will be available to iPhone users. This could all be bullshit but it makes me feel better believing I will be able to get it one day.

If you’re on a Post-Paid mobile Cap Plan or have a fixed line account, it’s easy to control your spending. Just set up a Usage Alert and we’ll send you an SMS when you reach your chosen limit.

DO WANT.

The OMG!!!

1. Flush headphone jack and dramatically improved audio quality! Summed up: it’s actually an iPod now. I can easily say this is the one feature that sold me on the new phone. On the old iPhone every preset I wanted to use caused serious distortion even at low volume, making it utterly useless as an iPod.
2. The new case. I continually rejoice at the curved all-plastic back. The plastic has a much higher friction coefficient than the old aluminium back. In other words, the new back is way more “grippy”. The old phone would slip and slide around in my hand, leaving me anxious about dropping it. The result of this was that I actually used the front glass to hang on to the phone. Not ideal when this is the main control interface. The curved edges are nice too, doing away with that scary sounding thud when placing your phone on the table. Now you get a brief wobble which sounds way better for the phone.
3. Aurora Feint. Freakin awesome puzzle/RPG game. Totally addictive and very immersive animation/interface/music/sfx. And Free! Unfortunately, it’s a total memory hog, and menus can sometimes lag. In most cases it requires a phone reboot prior to play. But its all worth it.
4. The App Store. What an excellent idea. Makes the phone a true “platform” swinging the doors wide open for some extremely creative software. A shame Apple is so restrictive about some of their apps. Google “rejected from app store“.

The Good

1. I complained to Optus staff that I didn’t want to be sans-phone while my number was ported over to Optus. So they gave me my new SIM early so when the port occurred, I could just chuck the SIM into my interim phone. Oh yeah, and the closest store is 1.5 hrs drive so they posted my phone, which was nice. Still had to visit the store to sign up which was to be expected.
2. No in-store activation! As a consequence of the first point, I managed to completely avoid the rumoured in-store activation. When my iPhone arrived, I just chucked in the SIM and activated it myself through iTunes. Interesting side-note: The store trainee was the one who suggested iPhones could be activated by users at home. She said “the only reason we activate in-store is so that customers can walk away with a working phone”.
3. The country code bug is gone. I won’t say “fixed” because it could have been a quirk of Virgin’s service. The bug was that texts came from number format +61418555555 whereas calls show up as 0418555555. The phone saw these as separate numbers, so you had to have both numbers stored in a contact which is just annoying.

The Dissapointing

1. My biggest disappointment is that most developers, including those at Apple refuse to acknowledge the device’s superior usability when turned sideways. Not only is typing remarkably more efficient with a bigger keyboard and nice fat buttons, but most non-keyboard apps are more comfortable to use, especially Safari which I use exclusively sideways. Apps I would like to see with sideways support include SMS, Mail (composing), Maps, and basically anything where you type.
2. The App Store interface needs some work. I read in a blog about the lack of a shopping cart. This becomes a big deal when you are scrolling through a list of 500 apps, you install one and it exits App Store. You go back into App Store and its at the summary screen of the App you just installed. You go back to the list of apps and you’ve lost your place in the list. This forces users to remember their place in the list and this is a serious usability flaw. A shopping cart would eliminate this by removing the “exit after install pressed” behaviour. It would also be useful as you could browse the store over EDGE/3G and wait until you had WiFi to “checkout” as it were.
3. YouTube is inexplicably slow at buffering videos even over WiFi. I load the same movie in Firefox and there are no underruns, but on the iPhone, videos take minutes to buffer (longer than the length of the video in some cases). This just makes you ditch the phone and walk over to your computer! YouTube also lacks a proper cache, meaning that if you’ve just watched a video a minute ago and want to watch it again, the whole movie is downloaded again. There is so enough room on the flash for even a small cache of 50MB or so.
4. No MMS. I didn’t actually realise this until I was sent a text saying “You have recieved an MMS. Visit this website to view it” Lame Apple. Just LAME. This omission of a technology that has been present in phones for several years simply lets down something calling itself a next generation device.
5. Lack of proper Gtalk app. There is Palringo but it’s bloatware. I just want a slim Gtalk app with push message support. Thanks in advance Google.
6. No 3G Optus coverage. I’m stuck with GPRS up here. There is “3G” coverage, but on the 900MHz band which conveniently is not supported by the iPhone. Not such a big deal. I’m over it.
7. Still no Flash. Perhaps we can blame Adobe and licensing restrictions etc. for this. But why the lack of flash, Apple? Please explain.
8. Shazam. You hold your iPhone up to the radio or some other music source. The app picks the artist and track name. It works, but the probabilty that a track is correctly identified is directly proportional to the popularity of the song. Not something I’ll lose sleep over, but disappointing nonetheless.
9. No Dock. Last in the list because I wouldn’t use it anyway. But I didn’t get a dock with my iPhone. Meh.

The Downright Bad

1. The Ringtones. No excuses! These are some of the worst ringtones I have ever seen in the history of the universe. Seriously, I would have Crazy Frog before I would have some of the included ringtones. At least you can (relatively) easily make your own. This customisation doesn’t extend to other sfx, most importantly the SMS alert. I shouldn’t have to jailbreak my phone Apple. But your sounds are SO CRAP I’ll do it in a blink once a suitably stable hack emerges.
2. No Visual Voicemail! WTF? Excuse me while I rewatch the Keynote and observe this as one of the key features of the iPhone. I smell a class-action lawsuit, I do. Unfortunately, I doubt the ACCC could do much as I suspect Apple were very careful not to advertise this feature in Australia.
3. iTunes Account problem. You can only authorise 5 computers to download apps to the iPhone. If you want to waste one of those auth slots, here’s how. Sign in with iTunes account. Authorise that computer when it prompts you. Change your email address on iTunes account. Attempt to download apps to iPhone. Get prompted again to authorise this computer. Lose one of your auth slots. Voila!
4. The Optus support voice recognition lady. OMG she is such an idiot! Why can’t these things just say “Press 1 for mobile phones”, “Press 2 for landline”? I want to know who on earth decided that voice recognition in this context is more usable than the old number menus. She is kinda fun to mess with though. I was so frustrated one day at work I started shouting at her. Her response induced at least 30 minutes of uncontrollable laughter. Me: “Suck my balls!” Response: “I’m having trouble with that”. I guess you had to be there…

When I first started up Super Mario Galaxy, I was greeted with a message asking me to switch the Wii to 60Hz mode for better graphics (not its exact words but the message has gone now, and I forget). I tried it for a while but have switched back as I’m convinced it’s all a complete load of weapons-grade balonium. My first argument for not using 60Hz mode is the lower resolution. Last time I checked, 480 was still less than 576. But then it occurred to me that lowering the res could plausibly increase graphics performance on Wii games as they would have less work to do. But in 60Hz mode (on my povo CRT anyway) the quality is visibly poorer with the whole screen looking very obviously interlaced.

But the Wikipedia page lists the modes as: 480p (PAL/NTSC), 480i (NTSC) or 576i (PAL/SECAM). For a while I thought PAL-60 was NTSC but its not, its just PAL with higher refresh rate.

So now I want to know when Super Smash Bros. Melee asks you to select 60Hz or 50Hz, can anyone actually quantify the reduced graphics lag in 60Hz mode, or is it just one giant placebo? I also suspect that when played on the Wii, it will ignore the choice at this screen, preferring the setting chosen in the Wii menu, but I can’t confirm this.

So I thought, why not install a fan as well? I found another FAQ that shows just how to do it. I used cable ties instead of those rubber things though. I’m happy to report that the fan is hardly noticeable, especially while watching a show. On mute, or with the TV off, you can hear a faint whirring, but the disk is actually louder than the fan. The WD may be louder than the Seagate but it’s probably worth it. Anyway the fan of my aircon is way louder and I totally ignore that. Those with a closed cabinet for all their Hi-Fi stuff wouldn’t hear anything at all.

Next on the agenda is to get the serial interface and web interfaces for the Toppy working. Should be fun!

It came with OS X Tiger so I guess I’m ordering Leopard. There was hearsay today about Leopard not supporting Dual-boot with Windows, but seriously, it’s all bollocks people (feeling slightly guilty for picking that as the link keyword, but oh well). Hey I just realised the pic loosely qualifies for LOLcat status (sans caption). It’s running “Tiger”, get it? Must. Stop. Laughing.

First Download: Firefox (well, duh!)
First Customisation: Turn on touchpad tapping, dragging and two-finger right click (OMG mega w00t!)
First Drool: keyboard backlighting (yummy!)
First Design Observation: At first glance, disconnecting the MagSafe power adaptor without yanking on the cord requires Herculean strength. But I found if you kind of lever it off from the side, you can remove it without joining the local gym, or wrecking the cord.
First Annoyance: Software Update has no “I’ll restart later” button. Grrr. One of my pet hates.
First Challenge: somehow I have to get middle click working for Firefox.
First Road Test: time to get some XviD out and try out this FrontRow thing. But if I had half a brain, I would have ordered an S Video adaptor with the MBP.

Stay tuned for more Maccage.

The difference became more obvious recently, when I installed Safari for Windows. I have always thought that Arial on Mac looked much smoother and rounder, and I found it easier to read. Observe the difference below. Top: Windows with ClearType; Bottom: Safari with medium font smoothing (default).

Now it may just be personal taste, but when I’m trawling through RSS feeds, I’d rather stare at the bottom rendering for hours. It might be a bit blurrier, but who ever said sharpness was the holy grail of on-screen reading? The Safari rendering is easier on the eyes (softer, if you will) and much faster to read. In comparison, the Windows rendering looks awkwardly spaced and horizontally condensed, with circular letters appearing oval-shaped.

The obvious consequence of all this is that on a Mac, the on-screen rendering of a document is a more accurate representation of the printed product. If there is any truth to the “Macs are better for publishing” myth, I suspect this is a major contributor.