Oops!

By now the entire world will have heard about the disastrous antenna issue plaguing what seems to be every single iPhone 4 on the market. To add insult to injury, yellow spotting on the screen and various issues with Exchange have also been reported, making this product launch one of the most disastrous in Apple history.



One may well recall the Mobile Me fiasco of a few years ago, and while that disaster was truly one of epic proportions, the floundering mess of design and engineering mistakes that the iPhone 4 has become eclipses those in every way. But nobody seems to care. Apple has sold over 1,700,000 iPhone 4s, despite news of the product's many flaws being common knowledge.

The truth is that people (me included) are so blindly devoted to Apple that they are willing to line up around the block to purchase a "perfect" phone. Except they aren't purchasing a perfect phone; far from it. They are purchasing a flawed, inherently broken product which is discomfortingly easy to break and, in many cases, does not function as a phone unless you hold it in a certain way. They are purchasing the idea of a perfect phone, purchasing the hope that Apple will resolve these issues and purchasing the blind belief that somehow everything will be okay, that somehow the pros will outweigh the cons.

Ask yourself this question: do you want an iPhone 4? Do you want a phone that doesn't work properly? Do you want a product that can so easily end up looking like the picture below? Would you sacrifice the harsh reality to believe in the dream? Stupid as it may sound, I know I do.

Why You Should Get Laser Eye Surgery

A few weeks ago, my friends and I took a trip to the cinema in the hope that our minds and eyes would be well and truly blended into disbelief by the supposedly unparalleled spectacle that was 3D Avatar. To this day, I can never be sure, however, if my was mind successfully blown due to the fact that my astigmatism ruined the three-dimensional experience.

After further research on the subject, it appears that I am not alone on the matter and that over half of Americans do not have 20/20 eyesight, and therefore will not be able to experience the full effect of the third-dimension.

But even worse entails for the sufferers of the so called 'lazy-eye' who will not be able to experience 3D! I was somewhat looking forward to jumping on the 3D bandwagon, but it seems things were not to be.

It is, however, reassuring though that I will still be able to look like a complete badass with the ridiculous image-brightness reducing (not a good thing) nVidia 3D sunglasses even if they don't actually work on me. Oh well.

New poster incoming

Just a brief update for you:

As of today, I will not be the only one posting on this blog. My elegant prose will occasionally be punctuated by the sarcastic ramblings of my tech-enthused friend, !!1!one!. Enjoy!

The Future Is Here

It will change the way we play games. It will change the way we watch movies. It will change the way we use computers, and change the way we live our lives.

And it is called... Kinnect! Wait... kin what? That's a horrible name! No product could possibly sell with a name like Kinnect. Some sort of demented fusion between kinetic and connect? Oh. Ok. I get it now. It's a MICROSOFT product. The people who brought us the wonderfully named 'Zune' *scoffs* and the soon to be released 'Windows Phone 7'. Catchy. I mean, seriously, its. If these guys had launched the iPad, they probably would have called it the 'Microsoft Tablet Device Home Edition... 7'. And then changed the name a month before release to 'Kinslate'. Not only that, but they would probably name the English version 'KinRobert Green'.

But all overfunded marketing department jokes aside, the Kinnect is actually a very good product. It works as advertised (at least, it appears to) and is literally able to track your entire body and understand what you are saying. The possibilities are endless - who wants to play a game with a controller when you can just interact with the screen as you would the real world. Who wants to flick through channels with a remote when you can do it with your hands?

Kinnect will do the same thing to home entertainment and electronic interfaces as Apple's multitouch did to phones. 5-10 years from now, this technology will be built into our televisions, perhaps even our computers, paving the way to a future without buttons.

Rock Band 3

Since the initial introduction of Guitar Hero in 2005, the Music/Rhythm video game genre has never really been able to deliver on its true potential. Having the player, or players in recent games, mash coloured buttons is extremely fun (I would know), but always leaves me with the feeling that, perhaps if I had spent that time playing my real guitar, I could be truly excellent.

This type of game has the potential to teach hundreds of thousands of people how to play actual instruments. The coloured prompts that flash down the screen could represent chords, or individual notes, and a
real guitar/controller hybrid could well be used to teach players how to play real music.

With the introduction of the original Rock Band in 2007 and Guitar Hero World Tour in 2008 the genre took a step towards that direction, offering players the opportunity to hammer at a brightly coloured drum set. This set mimics real drums, allowing proficient drummers to play the game as they would a real drum kit.

Rock Band 3, slated for release this fall, is the game which finally fulfils its original promise. Not only does it use a 102 buttoned, real string controlled guitar controller, but the game will also include a Squier Stratocaster hybrid controller, and a built in 'Pro' mode which, lo and behold, teaches players how to play a real guitar.

That's not all. A two-octive, MIDI keyboard can also be purchased.
It will also work with the game, functioning just like a real keyboard, and bringing the Music/Rhythm video game experience that one step closer to a fun, enjoyable game that can be truly called educational

Cool? You bet.

iPhone 4

Lets start with a brief rundown of the situation preceding the monumental geek fest that was Steve Jobs' WWDC Keynote. Apple was lagging sadly behind the leaders of the smartphone pack, exhausted by the stellar efforts of Google and its Android operating system. Having revolutionized the industry, it seemed as if Apple's dominance was to be short-lived.

I wrote last week about how Steve Jobs needed to pull an ace out of both sleeves and his shoe to impress the people who would eventually be buying Apple's new product, i.e. not me (sadly). It seemed unlikely that we would be presented with anything we hadn't seen before - after all, Gizmodo revealed most of the hardware specs of the new phone after 'acquiring' (whether or not by legitimate means remains to be seen) a prototype almost two months ago.

We knew that the phone would be slickly designed, featuring a front facing video camera, and have a second mic for noise cancellation. We knew, among countless other tidbits, that it would be fashioned out of glass and stainless steel, a camera with an LED flash sitting proudly on its back and, after closer inspection, that it would sport an IPS Display.

Everything mentioned above is true, and while those features alone would have made for an interesting refresh, they would hardly have been the decisive leap forwards that was needed sustain the platform for another year.

What's changed since then? A lot. Much like Mr. Jobs, I will be displaying my opinions by highlighting several key features of the new device. The following provides merely a brief glimpse at the hundreds of new features sported by the iPhone 4, but in my mind, they are the three most important.

Feature 1 - the display. In the past, the iPhone led the way with its remarkably high resolution display, boasting an impressive 480x320, a pixel density of 163ppi. By contrast, a 42 inch Full HD TV has a pixel density of only 52ppi. The iPhone 4 obliterates even the slightest inkling of respect for its predecessors screen by increasing the pixel count by 4, to 960x640, a pixel density of 326ppi. Yes, that is correct. Four times the pixel density. That means that EVERYTHING looks better. From text to images, apps to videos, everything you see on the iPhone 4 will, essentially, look four times as good as what you would be seeing were you viewing it on the 3GS.

Feature 2 - the operating system. Formerly the iPhone OS 4, rechristened the iOS 4, the software run by the iPhone 4 is jam packed with thousands of new features, not the least of which is Multitasking. In the past, only one application was useable at a time. Now? As many as your device's RAM can hold at a time. Folders, iAds and and multiple inbox email are also among the touted 100 user-accessible improvements.

Feature 3 - Video Chatting. This one strikes fear into the hearts of every single technophobic luddite (my mother) who complains that technology is making our interactions less intimate. Video chatting has existed on our desktops and laptops for a while now, but now that it has finally reached our phones, it stands a chance at replacing text and audio chatting as our primary form of electronic communication. When available, it is almost always preferential to see someone's face and their surroundings when conducting a conversation. After all, body language and facial expressions communicate just as much as words themselves. That Apple leads the way in this field is not surprising. That they have opted to make their buddy-list and setup free video chatting service essentially available to all is. Because any phone maker can build in Apple's software and a front facing camera means that the technology has definitive potential to be widely adapted within the next 5 or 10 years.

But is this enough? I say yes. We only need to wait another year until Apple shocks the world again with the iPhone 5, but the iPhone 4 should easily keep Apple's platform ahead of the competition for the time being. In the end, this only means good things for us consumers. Competition breeds innovation and, after all, we do love flashy new gadgets. Is the iPhone 4 truly magical, truly revolutionary? No. But that doesn't mean it isn't excellent.