Sometimes it feels good to give in.

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-02-19, 16:44 #1

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Subject: Sometimes it feels good to give in.

Many years ago cable internet was a brand new thing. When it came to my town, I wanted nothing to do with it. Sure, it was faster, but it required a tube managed by pure evil: the cable company. Shaw Cable, the only provider in Kelowna, was like most monopolies: unresponsive, expensive, and generally unreliable. I didn't want their cable in my house, fuck you very much.

So I stuck with dialup, expecting that any day now Telus (the telephone monopoly) would hook me up with some sweet ADSL love. Years went by, and I stuck with 56k modems and an ISP who still had such things (most did, for a while longer) until finally I caved. I had to. I wanted to play games with friends, I wanted MP3s to transfer in less than 25 minutes.

And holy shit, was it ever awesome. I played Quake 2, I downloaded videos, I created webpages, I got into digital photography. Suddenly I could do all these things, and it was liberating.

Getting this iphone is exactly the same. I avoided it for years, fuck Apple up the ass! Buncha hippy chumps selling expensive toys to the slobbering masses...

I regret it now. I regret suffering with cramped user interfaces on slow hardware. I regret ever thinking T9 was a great idea, I regret thinking Sony Ericsson made good phones. I regret suffering with small screens, exceedingly limited choices of software, and a GPS map system that was, in hindsight, entirely uncool.

I can type very quickly on the iphone, I can learn new apps (the ones I choose from a library of tens of thousands!) in moments, I can finally see why Twitter - of all things - is a cool new tool. Facebook notifies me now, instead of me having to ask it what's new.

I'm still outraged by the pathetic pile of shit that is the itunes program, and I'm none too pleased that all my authentic CDs, painstakingly ripped to OGG VORBIS, can't be played on the picky bitch of a thing, but man.

Man, oh man.

Sometimes the masses get it right, and I'm happy I let them talk me into this.

Also, fuck you Sony and Nokia and Motorola and everyone else for making your systems exclusive and each handset unique, so that no one can easily write apps for your hardware. You guys are retarded, seriously. Fix your shit, ok? Before Apple's the only choice in town.

I don't think I'd like that.

[Image: http://nfggames.com/system/arcade/special.php/b-d/bp-5/y-kof97/z-10/x-What?/.png]

This post was edited on 2010-03-22, 09:07 by NFG.

TwystNeko 2010-02-24, 10:58 #2

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It's really only in the latest incarnation of the iPod (the Touch and the iPhone basically) that Apple have gotten it "right". I tried an iPod classic - the one with the clickwheel. The interface was frustrating, everything was designed around a "spin the pad to do something" concept. Even the games on the iPod were like that. Now, with the Touch and the iPhone - it's brilliant.

iTunes is still a pile of shit, though. The media library sucks ass, it can't even manage album art consistantly. Syncing photos is retarded since you can only grab a "root" folder, and have no control over how iTunes recompresses the images. Applications are a crapshoot with syncing - it's like "buy it. We won't acknowledge it. Oh, NOW it downloads. Oh, and even though we SAY we're syncing it to your iPod, you still have to do it manually! And forget about refunds. You bought an Apple product, you've got money to burn!"

There are alternatives. Media Monkey can sync music to the Touch series, and it's pretty damn robust for tagging.

Foobar? err.. maybe? Who the hell knows with that one.

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-02-25, 08:00 #3

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Ooh, third-party sync tools? Excellent. <reads> Damn, 30 day limit on MP3 ripping? That seems like a petty way to encourage purchase of the full app, especially when they're using a free MP3 encoder (LAME).

Still pissed off with Apple's refusal to accommodate OGG files, but they're not really alone in that. I do not really want to re-rip my CD collection. =/

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-03-11, 09:17 #4

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So I've had time to let this iphone commitment (a 2 year contract) sink in, and while I'm still enraptured by the little toy, some of the irritations are becoming known to me. To be clear straight up, this is a great device: it's a phone, it's a computer, it's a game machine, it's a map, a voice recorder, an organizer. It does enough things really well that I still really believe it's the very best phone out there, and the best PDA.

What holds it back though is Apple and their insufferable control-freak attitude.

The iphone is the least compatible MP3 player in the world. Only five formats!? Three Apple-only formats, MP3 (which I'm sure they only added with reluctance), and uncompressed (ie huge and useless) WAV. No OGG? No FLAC? No WMA? No ASF? For fuck's sake, stop trying to control me and try selling me something that plays nicely with other kids. I've got a ten year old MP3 player that is more compatible easier to use. That's fucking preposterous, you guys.

And why is itunes such a hugely, massively, fucking SHITTY program? A lot of MP3s I download have two kinds of tags, the modern ones and legacy tags for older applications. Itunes sees both kinds (yay!) but then imports these as TWO SEPARATE SONGS. Are you fucking kidding me? No way to turn these off, the only method for pruning dupes is arduous and time consuming.

Why can't I assign my own audio for SMS messages? What anti-social cocksucker at Apple HQ decided I should be trusted with the ability to use my own ringtones, but not SMS tones?

And for that matter, why do you force me to use only ringtones I buy from itunes, eh? You fucking greedy shitsuckers. The only difference between a regular audio track and ringtone is the FILE NAME: M4A -> M4R. Why do I have to jump through hoops to make ringtones, while at every stage you throw up warnings telling me "only songs purchased from itunes can be ringtones"? I thought Apple users were creative types? And here you are, telling them not to use their own creations for ringtones.

Jailbroken iphones are far, far more useful than the Apple-authorized ones. No skins or themes for Apple's product, but the hacked ones can. No assigned SMS tones on the legit iphone, but hacked ones can. Hacked ones can run apps in the background, Apple can't.

Apple gets a lot of credit for making things easy to use. That's starting to look, to me, as if they made it easy by taking away the ability to do many things. If your widget has but one function and one button, it's all very well to say it's user-friendly and easy to use. But if every other widget has four buttons and does twenty things...

Well, my dickhead friends, you've just made an inferior widget.

Add to this the fact that you treat your developers like shit with capricious bannings that you frequently reverse... Well, I gotta say, you're not going to be at the top for long. Everyone uses Windows, but everyone wants to get away from Microsoft. Everyone may be using the iphone, but if you keep fucking them over, they'll all be looking for something better.

Not how I'd run a business.

This post was edited on 2010-03-11, 09:22 by NFG.

TwystNeko 2010-03-11, 09:31 #5

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As you know, I own an Ipod Touch. It's nice. Except they include most of the same apps that an iPhone does. Without the hardware. Case in point: Voice Recorder. I cannot use this, because the Touch doesn't have a microphone. The Touch is an example of Apple being goddamn lazy as FUCK.

Apple has always been about the "single button interface" - look at how long it took for them to make a 2-button mouse. (and of course, newer mice from them have NO buttons). This makes developers have to come up with creative interfaces, many of which intrude on the gameplay area, and make it a pain in the ass sometimes to see things coming from certain directions.

Apple's concept of their consumer seems to be "Some dude who doesn't really know how to use their computer, and so we can tell them how to do so."

This post was edited on 2010-03-11, 09:37 by TwystNeko.

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-03-22, 09:17 #6

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Over on Fingergaming, a developer who spoke out about the low quality of many iphone apps, calling Apple's device a modern-day Tiger* handheld, has had his app pulled from the store without comment from Apple.

Quote by Kotaku:
Last week, game developer Tommy Refenes publicly called Apple's app store "awful" and "horrible." This week, Apple yanked his game from their store.

This, right here, is why I like systems of well defined rules. Apple is, in effect, acting randomly and capriciously. This isn't only a matter of this ridiculous app, nor (as the comments in the above link suggest) should this sort of thing be excused 'cause the developer was a dick.

Quote by Fingergaming:
Apple offered no explanation for the app’s removal, and Refenes’ attempts to contact the company have received no response to date.

Apple wants people to develop for their platform, often at great cost, without clear regulations and guidelines? That's absurd.

Quote by The Developer:
They gave me no explanation at all as to why they took it down, I’m guessing they are mad that I said their store sucks and the iPhone is a Tiger handheld and they took it down.

Sadly, it's not all that uncommon. Microsoft is playing a similar game with their MS tags. You can use their system and create special barcodes, but they only last as long as Microsoft allows them to. Does it really make sense to build your business on that kind of relationship?

* Tiger was a company that made low-quality, licensed LCD games. They all basically sucked, but were cheap.

Source: Kotaku

Vertigo 2010-04-15, 22:41 #7

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The app store IS a pile of shit, as is itunes, but the 360's game marketplace is no more useful given the lack of decent search and the oddities such as Sensible World Of Soccer listed only as SWOS and the occasional glitch where a game's listed twice with slightly different names.
Anyway, what I really want to know is why 'white' is automatically capitalised on the iphone and 'black' is not, why 'Russia' is but 'Japan' is not, and annoyingly for UKers, why 'reading' gets capitalised to the place name instead of being left as the action. Is a crappy sub-city in Berkshire really more likely to be the topic of conversation than, you know, a human ability that's been performed for millennia? Also, why can't we manually edit the fucking dictionary? And why does my iTunes only display a graphic equaliser instead of seek functionality like others say it apparently has?
Grrr!

"...either stop and think or fuck right off" (TheOutrider)

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-07-21, 15:48 #8

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Subject: The iphone, six months later.

I'm really very happy with my iphone, all things considered. It's a great little device, with a lot of features and power and, thanks to Apple's dominance, a well supported little game machine. I have some really great games for it.

But the shit it doesn't let me do becomes incrementally more annoying every day. I'm about to go on a trip, and I'll be taking both my iphone and laptop. The problem is I installed itunes on my home computer, not my work laptop, and I can't believe how hard it is to even find out if I can sync my iphone with a second computer.

Before I put you to sleep with a long, boring story of all the bullshit hoops I've jumped through trying to answer that question, let me tell you what needs to be done to use an iRiver portable MP3 player on a new computer:

1. Plug iRiver device into new computer.
2. Drag and drop files to and from device.

Tricky, I know.

But no, I've got an iPhone, and Apple's astonishingly shitty iTunes software is really embarassing. The fact that I have to even ask if I'm allowed to use my property in different combinations tells me Apple has failed spectacularly. This is an unforgivable, egregious offense to me. You sick, disgusting control freak assholes! It's my gear! How dare you put limits on what I do with it?

I still don't know the answer for sure. I think I can use the iPhone on my laptop. I'm downloading 92MB of the shittiest sync software known to man (Hello iTunes, you bitch) and I'll find out soon enough. I've heard that it totally wipes out all your content the first time you sync on a new system. If true, well... I won't be tremendously happy, but I'm prepared for it. I've got enough time to re-download all my apps and re-sync all the music I painstakingly re-ripped in an Apple-friendly format.

Apple, you cunts. My next phone won't be one of yours.

Probably.

Vertigo 2010-07-21, 17:22 #9

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My 3G has become a laggy near-unworkable lump since iOS4 was installed on it. Every time the keyboard comes up I have to wait for about 5 seconds before I can actually type. Built-in apps now crash or get stuck regularly. I had to force reset the phone twice yesterday. Playing podcasts now seems to take up a lot more resources to the point where apps judder, crash and the audio starts skipping. Sending a text message is now subject to lag before the progress bar will come up and often the text message will fail to send even in strong signal areas. That was the impetus to consider a jailbreak. I just need the time to go through the caveats and make sure I want to do it.
Add to that the ongoing problem where, if you're not in an area with signal and send a text message, it won't do as other phones do and send it later when you have service, it just shits a ! onto the screen which you may or may not see depending on its mood and will only find out later when you go back in and check after not receiving a reply.
iOS4 on a 3G is crap. But there's no way to undo it!
Also, the iDevices are not computers. The development is semi-open, but apps need to pass heavy QA before you can release and you can't compute as such on them in their official guise. They're consoles.

"...either stop and think or fuck right off" (TheOutrider)

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-07-21, 17:55 #10

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Subject: Apple sucks.

Yeah, if you didn't store your SHSH (whatever that means) before upgrading to 4, you're fucked AFAIK. Jailbreaking though seems to work fine on a 3G, I think? There are no caveats, really - it just works. I haven't had a lick of trouble yet.

Apple's official software, on the other hand, is a rotten pile of shit. Do you know what you have to do in order to sync your phone on two computers? You need to hack the fucking files with a hex editor!! Apple, you miserable fuckers. This isn't easy to use. This is bullshit.

Vertigo 2010-07-21, 20:49 #11

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Yeh, and why can't I use more than five devices on my iTunes before it chucks a strop? Given the rate that these things die, etc.
Stickybits is a fun tidewaster of an app tho. They push me out then they pull me back in :-/

"...either stop and think or fuck right off" (TheOutrider)

Vertigo 2010-07-21, 21:07 #12

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Why can't I download all my email instead of just messages Apple deems small enough? Makes it impossible to get my email and read on the Underground. Cunts.

"...either stop and think or fuck right off" (TheOutrider)

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-07-22, 11:01 #13

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Subject: Apple still sucks.

So after hacking itunes to run on a 2nd computer, everything seemed happy. "Oh hey, your ipod's loaded with stuff that isn't on this computer. Would you like to copy it all onto the computer now?"

I opted for yes, please, back up my shit. What happened? About 2/3 of the apps on my iphone were happily backed up, yay!

About one third of my legitimate, paid-for content just disappeared, evaporated like so much DRM-laden ether.

Apple, you suck so much ass I can't stand it. Seriously.

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-07-22, 12:38 #14

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The more I learn, the more I hate.

The sync on the new computer nuked all my music and video content. This means I have to take a complete backup of all my music with me to Japan, 'cause if I dare add one track to the iphone while I'm there, it'll sync everything. There are alternative programs to iTunes, but Apple keeps locking them out so if you want to actually, easily use your iDevice, Apple wants to fight you.

Assholes. Unbelievable.

Vertigo 2010-07-22, 18:34 #15

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Yeh, the whole sync thing fucks me off. Better than that is the way you're not provided with a way to get your pictures off it. You have to use the picture and fax wizard instead and that's not obvious. What does the "Manually manage music and videos" checkbox do? I've not dared try it yet.

"...either stop and think or fuck right off" (TheOutrider)