Why UltraViolet is a failure.

I bought yet another blu-ray movie with one of those "redeem your digital copy" cards inside. I usually ignore them, but this time I thought, why not? UltraViolet seems to be a thing now; it stood up to the test of time. My optical media isn't going to last forever, so I might as well get my moneys worth!

To start, I searched for an iOS app that plays UltraViolet movies. No such thing. There are apps that supposedly connect with UltraViolet to redeem the purchases, which allow you to then stream or download from a digital retailer, such as Flixter, Vudu, or M-GO.

Fair enough, let's start with Flixter. Netflix? Nope, that was Quickster. Whatever, this one's owned by Time Warner. How are the reviews? Four and a half stars! Great! Oh... no, it doesn't actually play movies. Scroll down. Flixter Video! One and a half stars?! Okay, maybe the reviewers were a little harsh. Nope! Most of the complaints are about not being able to play movies offline, or not being able to play movies at all. Not going to bother with this one.

Moving on: Vudu. Same story.

M-GO. Good reviews. Nice interface. Setting up an account was pretty easy. Okay, now I have to set up an UltraViolet account, too. Now I have to link it to the M-GO account, which is done by entering my UltraViolet credentials on M-GO's site. Not very secure, but whatever – it's not like my UltraViolet account has got anything to steal. Linked!

Finally! Let's add those movies! Enter the redemption code on UltraViolet's site. Choose your digital retailer: Flixter or Vudu. That's it. Try another movie code? Same story. Enter the code directly on M-GO? Doesn't work, of course.

Dear Time Warner and Walmart and all the movie studios that made a deal with these decrepit spawn of digital hell: let me recap my situation. I wasn't entirely happy with how Apple handled things, what with their DRM and being restricted to their ecosystem to watch any of my purchased movies. Honestly, it was mostly a matter of principle, because I was actually able to play those movies on all of my devices. The only real issue was "if I ever switch to Android", which of course doesn't support iTunes purchases. Instead, I now have these mysterious UltraViolet digital... somethings. These somethings have zero chance of being played back on any of my media devices.

iPhone 6: The Good, The Bad, and The Mediocre

© 2014 Apple Inc.

I finally got my iPhone 6 in the mail, and after playing around with it for a couple of days, I have many a praise, but also a few criticismesses.

The Good.

1. Touch ID.

Yes, I know, it's been there since the iPhone 5S. However, since I'm upgrading from the iPhone 5, it's new to me.

Words cannot express how well this feature works. It is simply amazing! It reads your fingerprints and only your fingerprints, and it reads them every time without fail, in a mere fraction of a second. You can store multiple fingerprints, which is very helpful if you want to unlock the phone with either hand, or maybe if several people are using the same device.

2. Slo-mo video recording at 240 fps.

It's official: my iPhone sees better than I do. Watch a droplet of milk fall into a cup of coffee, a pro skateboarder perform a complicated trick, or your house lights flicker, all at an impressive 720p resolution. Oh yeah, did you know your house lights flicker 60 times per second? I didn't, until I watched it in slo-mo.

3. Flash photography.

I believe the advanced flash was also introduced in 5S, but it is nonetheless remarkable. No more zombie-colored portraits! In fact, I will go ahead and state for the record that at close range, my iPhone 6 produces the best flash photography I've seen so far.

4. Video stabilization.

It's there, it works, and it makes videos look a lot smoother and more professional than they used to be.

5. Speaker.

For some reason, no one mentions this: the iPhone 6 has a massive speaker, compared to the minuscule, tinny-sounding speaker of the iPhone 5. You can actually hear the bass lines this time around, and it won't make that horrible clipping noise when you turn the volume all the way up.

6. Retina.

Not a new feature by any means, but the screen is as gorgeous as ever, perhaps even more so, now that it's quite a bit larger.

7. Background App Refresh and Google Hangouts.

Not really an iPhone 6 feature either; it has more to do with iOS 8 and Google doing a great job on the app.

After jumping through a few hoops, I was able to direct all my Google Voice messages (SMS) to Hangouts, and from there on it was smooth sailing. The push notifications work, and since the app uses background refresh, your messages are already loaded when you swipe on the notification. There's no wait time for the message to load, and you don't even have to be connected to the internet at that point. What does that mean for me? It means I can still read my SMS in a timely fashion, despite the fact that my Gmail emails now arrive with a 15 minute delay. More on that in a bit.

The Bad.

1. I don't like giant phones.

It's a personal preference. Many people like giant phones: there's a reason why Apple made the iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 5 was already too big for my liking. The iPhone 6 is so big that I can no longer hold it with one hand and press the home button. I have to use a new "typing grip" as well: holding the iPhone 6 by the sides with my index fingers, and supporting it on the back with the rest of my fingers, while typing with my thumbs. Typing and holding the phone with the same hand is now completely out of question.

2. Camera sticks out.

Everyone knows about this. It's ugly, and if you don't have your phone in a case, it will never lay flat on a table. That said, I always have mine in a case, so it's not a problem.

3. No support for push for Gmail accounts.

This was probably the biggest upset for me. It's not entirely Apple's fault. Some of it is Google's. You see, Apple never supported push via IMAP. However, there was a way to get around that, by setting up Gmail as an Exchange account instead. However, at the end of January 2013 Google disabled the ability to use Exchange to connect to your Gmail account, on any new devices. This means that my email now arrives with a 15-minute delay, which makes SMS forwarding pretty useless.

I tried out a bunch of email apps to connect to Gmail instead, such as the official Gmail app, Mailbox, and myMail. They all seem to share at least one common problem: there is no support for background app refresh. Which means that when you swipe on that email notification, you have to have an internet connection, or else your email won't load. And even if you have it, there is an annoying delay before you can read the email.

Luckily for me, Google Hangouts implemented support for background app refresh, and it works beautifully. They've also integrated Hangouts into the web Gmail client, which works great as well, both for Hangouts/G-Chat and for SMS. So now I can say "adieu" to SMS-to-email forwarding; it has lost its use, and has been superseded by newer and better technology.

4. iOS 8 app crashes and bugs.

iOS 8 is not the most stable of operating systems. Though I'm not seeing as many rendering artifacts as I did with my iPhone 5, both Mail and Camera apps have crashed on me way too many times. There are some interesting bugs as well. For instance, try putting the Camera app into the video recording mode, hit "play" from the Control Center, and then start recording a video. If you listen closely, you will hear the sound of Apple's programmers getting fired. 

The Mediocre.

Battery life.

Sure, it's better than the battery in my iPhone 5, which after two years of use lasts for about 15 minutes during active use. The iPhone 6's battery went down to about 65% after two hours of dicking around. And I'm not talking about heavy usage and playing video games that will make your phone warm enough to heat your apartment during winter. No, just playing around with settings and shooting a few 30-second slo-mo videos. Not great.

~

Overall, I'm quite pleased with what the iPhone 6 has to offer. The slo-mo feature alone kept me occupied for hours at a time! Now let's get some support for push in Gmail accounts, and "we in beez"!

What the iPhone 5C actually is.

Photo © Apple.

People, the "C" in "iPhone 5C" stands for "colorful", and not "cheap" or "China" as the Internets are speculating. Apple's website says so, right there in the tagline, so let's end this debate.

A more interesting question is, what is an iPhone 5C under the skin? Simply put, it is an iPhone 5 with a plastic back and a slightly upgraded camera. If you want to get technical, the guts have been reworked, but the components are mostly the same.

But why not just sell the old phone, like they did before? Two reasons. The obvious one is that a redesigned phone will sell better than last year's model. The other potential reason is that Apple is reducing the manufacturing costs by replacing an expensive dye-cut aluminum case with molded plastic. Moreover, the more expensive iPhone 5S uses the same case as the iPhone 5, albeit with three different finishes, so it's quite possible that Apple kept the tooling and the production capacity for the expensive aluminum case exactly the same.

It's nice to see a rounded plastic back making a comeback, though. I've been missing the ergonomic feel of my iPhone 3G for quite some time now. Apple's silicone covers for the iPhone 5C, however, are hideous.

RIM's Revolutionary All-Original New Phone

Without spending any unnecessary time on making unnecessary fun of RIM's dire state of competitiveness, their ridiculous "Wake Up" ad campaign in Australia, or their business plan of acquiring better third party developer support by outfitting them with "very, very stripped down" versions of the phone...

...To the left you will see what the above mentioned phone looks like. To the right is a totally unrelated phone.

The new iPad and "competition".

The new iPad was announced yesterday, and although I'm not in the market for one myself, I consider this the one that is really worth getting. The two major improvements are a Retina display and a good camera, likely the same as the one found in iPhone 4S. Those two things were critically missing in the previous iteration. Sure, a faster processor and 4G LTE wireless network support are always welcome, as well as the numerous software improvements.

Meanwhile, the press are split into two factions: Apple admirers and Apple opponents. The latter group is currently reporting their usual crazy statements like this one:

For Apple’s rivals, most notably Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., the incremental improvements in the latest iPad may be just the opportunity they need to establish themselves as legitimate competitors to the world’s most valuable company.

This corporate bullshit talk sounds very familiar to me. Spoken from first person, it's a denial of one's own poor performance. Notice how the article is not even denying that the new iPad will dominate the market; instead, it uses ambiguous lingo to get you to think so. All for a good cause, I guess. The cause, of course, is making money from serving advertisement to people who read the article.

I'll go ahead and make a statement of my own: if Apple hadn't come out with a new iPad this year at all, they would still dominate the market with their old tablets. iPad 2 is orders of magnitude better than anything else on the tablet market today. In fact, Apple created the market, and pretty much owns it. There is no competition. As popular as Kindle Fire has been, it is not competing with the iPad; it is competing with Kindle and other e-readers. The reason for that is that while Kindle Fire is a decent e-reader, it is horrible for pretty much anything else.

Over 100,000 gather to protest rigged elections.

Moscow, Saharov Avenue, December 24th 2011. The wide city street, wide enough to fit about 20 car lanes, is completely filled with people. So completely filled, in fact, that my blog cannot contain them within bounds! These people are protesting the falsified elections that favored the United Russia party, and the impending indefinite reign of dictator Vladimir Putin.

December 24th Protest in Moscow (Via Yuga)

There seems to be a debate about how many people actually showed up to the protest. The figures in different reports vary between 29,000 and 120,000. I did some approximate head counting and math myself, and I'm estimating that there are about 108,000 people in this picture. Meanwhile, Belorussian TV is reporting that the protest was a total failure, and only hundreds of people showed up instead of thousands.

iPhone 4S and International Roaming

If you're the proud owner of an iPhone 4S, and are wondering whether you'll be able to pop in a local wireless carrier's microSIM card when traveling abroad, wonder no more.

The rules are different for the main three wireless carriers in the US. AT&T won't unlock your SIM, no matter how much you beg or threaten them. Verizon will unlock it after 60 days of paid phone bills. Sprint initially shipped their iPhone 4S with the SIM functionality unlocked, but has now changed their policy, and will unlock your phone after 90 days of paid phone bills.

So now, if you're outside of the US, you won't have to pay exorbitant roaming fees to your wireless carrier. Unless your wireless carrier is AT&T.

New kid on the block.

All of the non-iPhone smart phones have so far been slightly above mediocre, at best. Enter the brainchild of a newlywed couple: Nokia and Microsoft.

The Lumia 800's hardware is pretty much the same as the MeeGo-powered N9, which was Nokia's last but noble effort before signing a deal with Microsoft.

It's a very pretty phone, indeed. By the looks of it, you'd think it was the bigger cousin to iPod Nano. I have not seen it person, and chances are – I won't for a while, because rather than competing with the already highly-saturated smart phone market in the US, Nokia is going after the emerging markets of Europe and Asia.

Nevertheless, I'm sure the hardware looks as good in real life as it does in pictures. What concerns me is the operating system. I had a chance to play with some random Windows Phone handsets recently. I was delighted by smooth, hardware-accelerated animations, but appalled by some other things. Mainly, the software keyboard. Some of the keys were placed in the most ridiculous places imaginable. That, and the browser was awful. 

Hopefully, these minor issues will be ironed out in Windows Phone Mango.

WWDC '97 Closing Speech

This is how it was before Apple became “magical, wonderful Apple” and started talking at WWDC events about how many billions of something they have sold. This was exciting and inspiring. Here you can witness how truly energetic and passionate Steve Jobs was about his ideas. How the answers that he presented to questions from the audience were incredibly well thought out and honest. Notice how he never dodged a single question, no matter how difficult, uncomfortable, or plain insulting they were. A freeze-frame of this video should be in Merriam-Webster, next to the definition of “visionary”.

That's not to say that Steve Jobs was never wrong about any of these decisions. Clearly, licensing Mac OS to 3rd parties to run on their own hardware turned out to be a bad idea, and was abandoned. Rhapsody itself was eventually cancelled due to its numerous problems with platform compatibility. It would be wrong to call it a failure though, since Rhapsody eventually served as the foundation for Mac OS X, which to me was the single greatest leap in technology Apple ever realized.

Fanatical People

From the Businessweek interview, Eric Schmidt on Steve Jobs:

He said, “The thing that I have that no one else has is very loyal customers.” He had these fanatical people who would line up all night for a product that wasn’t any good.

Steve Job dies at age 56.

Wow, he really wasn't kidding about his health when he stepped down as CEO. A mere month and a week later, Steve Jobs exhaled his last breath, succumbing to his long and tiresome battle with pancreatic cancer.

Much can be said about his accomplishments in creating and running what is now considered one of the world's biggest and most successful companies. He really was there till the very end. RIP.

iPhone 4S: an amazing upgrade to iPhone 3GS.

That's what it would've been if Apple hadn't released the iPhone 4 about a year and a half ago. Yes, the processors are faster and the camera is better. Yes, Siri is kind of cool, and only available for iPhone 4S.

It's supposedly a world phone, meaning it'll work on both GSM and CDMA networks, but I'm hearing rumors that it'll still be locked to one network. Hope that's not actually true.

That's it, though. Very underwhelming. Gruber, shut up. Just. Shut. Up.

Curious how Steve Jobs was absent from both the 3GS and the 4S releases...

Update: Apparently, iPhones sold in the US have always been locked to the carrier, and 4S will be no exception.

Let's Talk iPhone

Apple will be holding a major press conference today at 1 PM EDT. The highlight of the event is expected to be the unveiling of the new iPhone. Engadget will be covering the event in a live-blog format.

Finally.

I love this extension for Safari, which satirizes the bashing of Apple for delaying software releases, by adding “Finally.” to every headline on www.apple.com.

iOS 5 Beta 7 Blues

My iPhone 4 is bricked. It updated to Beta 7 on its own, overnight, and now when I try to activate it, it just displays "Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. It's been saying that for 3 days now.

According to the interwebs, I should be able to "restore" it from iTunes. Problem is, I'm running Leopard at home, and the iTunes betas can't run on it.

Here's a question to Apple that's been bugging me ever since the original iPhone: why does a phone need to be activated by the user, especially since that has nothing to do with the wireless carrier?