Why Apple Clearly Thinks You're Stupid

Well, one picture is worth a thousand words, but a video clip say it all. Without further ado, here, it is.

Why Apple Clearly Thinks You're Stupid -- powered by Cracked.com

p.s In all fairness, I do think Mac VS PC ads are funny and worth to watch it, but not so much with the iphone ads. 

WTF is wrong with iPad? I simply had enough of it and I only had it for 15 mins

 

Well, it is obvious that I am not a fan of iPad or i-anything in general.  It is my belief that technology should be open, innovative and engaging to the users which make me a proud non-owner of any apple products. Yet, it is just my crusade against the tyranny of capitalism. There is no need to drag everybody to join. Therefore, unlike some other vocal haters out there, I usually keep my personal distaste to myself, as thou should not pass judgement on one another. Also, Apple products are expensive. Some people actually save up money to buy the "dream device(s)" (in some cases, selling their own kidney to get it). I think they unequivocally earn the right to enjoy their devices. Therefore, every time when my friends are flashing their new iDevice to me and raving about how great the device is, I usually just put up a smile and listen, trying to share their joy while knowing there is whole new world out there. In fact, I tried to reason to myself that deep down in my heart, I believe there must be some goods in those pretty gadgets; I just fail to see it.  

However, this time I simply had enough. I can't help myself but to talk about my experience on how frustrating it is to use iPad. 

So, here it is:

Like most of the frustrating stories go, I was in a hurry and needed to get some files from my friend who recently purchased an iPad. Like everyone else, my friend immediately usesd the iPad as his sole device and stored all his things on iPad, even though he hasn't entirely figured out how it worked yet. As he eagerly tapping on the iPad, it became clear he had no idea what he was doing. Being such an inpatient person, I took over and started furiously tapping on the screen. As much as I want to claim I am way smarter than my friend, I too had a very hard time to find a way to send a file (After 6 years, Bluetooth still doesn't work, an attach option is no where can be found in the stock email app and it is still lightyear away from using NFC). When both of us ran out of options, I enlisted one of my friends that used IOS in daily basis for help.

Here is a summary of the clean-up version of our 20+ Whatsapp massage exchanges:   

                 - the message screen-shots generated by ifaketext-

At the end, we decided to use facebook to transfer the files I need. The whole thing took about 30 minutes in which I can put those time into good use.  

If I paid $499+ for a mobile device, I expect that device make my life easier,  such as sending a file without a moment of hesitation in which $20 cellphone can easily achieve that task. Unfortunately, as you can see, it is not that easy with the iPad or IOS in general. Well, some may argue, like my iPhone friends, I will eventually get used to it. My response would be why would I pay almost 500 bucks to get used to something that shouldn't be existed at the first place. If they can make a phone as a remote control to a flying model plane, they can definitely make a functional email client, like every other god damn software companies.  

My only advice to Apple is that instead of adding more pixels on the screen, putting more cores into CPU, or coming up a cool name for whatever, they should go back to the very first question. What make a great device great?

Top Three Questions Jolla Can't Give You A Straight Answer( Or You Just Refuse to Listen)

I have been following Jolla for quite some times.  It became my daily ritual to check up on Jolla's Twitter and Facebook to see what they have been up to and what the other say about the development of Jolla.

To be honest, I am quite impressed by how actively Jolla is engaging to the community. Unfortunately, there are certain questions that they just can't give us the answer we want , even if they really want to (or not).

I feel sort of bad for the PR guys at Jolla that they have to answer the same set of questions again and again, even though those questions have been addressed appropriately ( Not satisfyingly, but we can't always please everybody). If I were them, I would probably gone mad for keeping answering the same questions.

Here I listed the three most popular questions from Jolla's Twitter that I would find them annoying if asked over and over again. However, if I ran into anyone from Jolla, I would not hesitate to ask the same questions myself. ( I just can't help it.)

#1-  Support for existing devices
Will Jolla Support N9?
 Answer: Nope, at least not officially. Here is one of the most recent official responses

@bonchehopp We cannot support Nokia products with official releases. Most likely there will be unofficial ports to eg. N9.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) February 8, 2013

If you are like me that got nothing to do but to spend hours on internet, you will notice it is almost the same response we got from them on November last year.

@lonely_cent We cannot support Nokia's product officially. Technically there is nothing preventing for porting to eg. N9.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) November 22, 2012

If you keep digging, you will find the message has been pretty consistent since the beginning. This is earliest official response I can find.

On Nokia #N950, we love it and use in development. Nokia #N9 is in our heritage, but we cannot provide support since it's Nokia's product.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) July 7, 2012

I guess we should take that as a hint that they are not going to change their mind for awhile .Even if you don't keep track of Jolla's tweets, there are plenty of Jolla's fan websites/Facebook/Twitter/Blogs to say the same things; even Engadget wrote up an article to report that.

As a proud owner of n9, I understand how bad we all want Sailfish OS running on our phone. Obviously, we are not getting any further news from Jolla, especially not from their official Twitter account, unless we are willing to pay for the huge lawsuits. As they already made it clear, the porting process has to be community-driven and off-the-record. There is really no need to ask the same question on every other days. If Nokia and Jolla make some kind of deals in the future, I am pretty sure they will let us know.

#2 Product's availability
Will the Jolla phone be available to my country?
Answer: It depends, but they can't tell you the details just yet.

@umanghome Product availability will be announced later, thanks!
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) July 21, 2012

If you live in China or Finland, the answer is most certainly yes, but ,for the rest of us, we just have to wait. The reasoning is simple: if the deals didn't go thur, it would just let down a lot of people which is worst than being just unavailable. It is best for us to wait and let them work behind the scene.

#3 The technical specification of the product ( both hardware and software)
Does the phone have this and that? Does the OS have such and such?
Answer: Well, you can use the phone to make a phone call for sure. Beyond that,we just have to sit tight and wait, but they do closely listen to what we want .( Hopefully, we can know more about the phone on MWC 13)

@jollaes 1st product will be revealed within this quarter of the year.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) January 2, 2013

To sum up, It is fun to speculate and discuss about rumors. It is just a part of the game and Jolla is more than happy to play along with it. At the same time, Jolla can only answer your questions to a certain point. Asking the same questions is not going to help and probably take up their time to address to more pressing/interesting  matters. If you are a fan of Jolla, you should do your homework before asking any questions.
 
** I changed one of tweets as I posted the wrong one ( I blame it on the Firefox, as it somehow disable the JavaScript)
** And Thanks for reading it and feel free to check out my other biogs :)
    

You Can Watch Star Wars For Free: Here's How [Video]

It has been a while for me to write a new post, because I am occupied  by three programming classes + Linear Algebra class. Therefore, most of my time have been devoted to write codes and do Math problems ( both of them have one thing in common; it is a pain in the ass).

Anyway, since I don't have time to write anything substantive, so I share this instead:

YOU DON'T NEED TO PAY TO WATCH STAR WARS

-  as long as you wouldn't mind watching it in ASCII 

In What? You may wonder what the heck is ASCII? Well,It is American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Simply put, it is just the characters you normally see on the keyboard. ( OMG, I can actually use something I learn from class.)

You can either click on this site to enjoy it or you open up a terminal (Linux user and possibly Mac user as well)  and type: telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

Here are some other random cool features for using terminal for you from Niki Pixel: ( and some eye-candy as well )

Teaching your mom can be Fun [Video]

I was just browsing on YouTube as usual and I came across with this channel that I found it rather interesting.

In this channel, there is an Australian guy who made a series of videos of his Mom trying out different OS on a desktop. He didn't just pick the most popular OS (i.e
Windows and Mac OS), he literally picked any OS you can think of, from the ancient MS-DOS to cloud-based Joli OS. To be honest, I haven't heard of some of the OS. His mom actions/comments on those OS are hilarious. 

I find his efforts quite admiring. I tried to do a similar thing with my Mom to let her try MeeGo OS, but that didn't work out that well. It took times to find the right OS and set up properly on a desktop, particular the old OS. Also, it is really up to the Mom whether she is willing to be a good sport or not.

In short, those videos are funny and definitely worth your time to check it out.

This is Windwos 8


This is MS-DOS 6.22
  


This is one of my favorite: MS BOB

 

A Random Fact-Check on Google map

Map Projections: How accurate are they?

-Bing/Nokia Map on windows8

So, I decide to talk about Map today. However, before I go on, please don't be mistaken by the picture nor the title I posted above. I have no intentions to talk about any navigation or map service on your mobile phone. If you are looking for story about some crazy glitch found on the maps from it-must-not-be-named or cool augmented reality enhancement on the mobile devices (like Nokia city lens on Lumia 920 or google augmented reality glasses ), then you are gonna be disappointed.

The next question that may came into your mind before you decide to stop reading this nonsense is that what I can possibly talk about. We human has been mapping the world since the beginning of the time. Mapping is old news.It is nothing controversial about it.

Wrong!

Okay, now you must think there is something wrong with me. Particularly, with the advancement of technology( there is around 3,000 satellite in orbit), no way in hell that we don't even know what the world is supposed to look like. Before you think I am one of those people wearing tin-foil hats, please give me two seconds to make my case.

Now, closed your eye and try to remember how the world map looks like ( no peeking)
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

 OK, I hope you come up with something like that: 

  - A screen-shot from Google Map  

This map looks pretty normal, right? It is just like the map we learned at school (in fact, it is). 

 BUT

 In reality, Australia is more than three and a half times larger than Greenland

 

In fact, *the world looks more like this:

 

 

 

 

   

-Gall–Peters projection 

Than the one we are familiar with:

 

-Mercator projection

Why does it look so different? The truth is because the earth as we know of is a globe.In other words, the surface of the earth is curved. Since we like our map flat, certain distortions are inevitable. Therefore, no projections are 100% accurate. Different projections are chosen based on different purpose.That being said, despite its infamous inaccuracy, Mercator projection still retains its dominant popularity, because of its rather aesthetic appeal. When Mercator projection was developed in 1569, it was just made for sailing navigation. Now, you can basically see them everywhere. 

Therefore, next time when you pull off your phone to check on the map. Just keep in mind that what you see is not necessary what it is there.

* Disclaimers: As of matter of fact, the Gall–Peters projection is not accurate either. As I am not an expert in Cartography, I heavily relied on the information from the internet, namely the Wikipedia. National Geographic has a very informative webpage on map projections. They have a video showing different kinds of map projection. If you are interested in learning more, click here. 

 

 

Random Change of subject: A cool concept phone

In my last post , when I said about the problem we have nowadays is not about the lack of creativity, here is one of the example of it that still make you surprised by what can be done with mobile phone. Here is the company website if you want more details.
 



The first impression of this phone is that it actually reminds me of a "feature phone" I used to have before the "iPhone"-era which also happened to have a dual-monitor.

 -The Samsung Upstage from sprint

I liked that phone ; it was one of the kind (I think it still is) that combine iPod like music device with a traditional phone with a keypad from the good o'day. That's pretty much the same reason why I fall in love with Yota phone. As you can see, I do have my fair share of using two monitors at once. So, when I tell you it is not difficult to get used to the switching, I know what I am talking about.That being said, it is still unclear to me how the switching experience of the Yota phone is like , such as, practicability: which apps can go on e-link and which apps can not and the smoothness of the transition experience (which I find it very important, as you don't want to miss a call when you are in the middle of reading).

Although I like the idea, I still have some reservations on the e-ink integration into this phone. Based on the demo and the couple others I watched on YouTube, I didn't see much of interaction on e-ink side. Most of the activities have to be done at the front side; I suspect there is no or limited touch capability on the e-ink screen. Also, my own experience with e-ink wasn't that great, as I found it rather unresponsive and slow, but it was couple years ago. The technology is definitely better by now (check out the kindle paperwhite and you know they ain't playing around). So, it is really up to folks from Yota to meet up the high expectation.

In all fairness, the idea of putting e-paper on the back of the phone is intriguing but the fact that they actually make it work is even more impressive. It definitely opens up a new venue for phone application and it definitely helps with people that can't read on a LCD monitor.  I think this phone generates enough hype that there are plenty of information and coverages about this phone out there already, so I am gonna skip  the fine prints and call it a day (the demo clip is also pretty much self-explanatory).

*One more thing to add is that not only they did a significant change on the hardware front, but they also did some changes on the software front. They modified the Android OS to make it a more gesture-based OS. That make me wonder if it is possible to port other emerging gesture-centric linux OS into this phone.

I really hope this phone is a hit, not so much because it is a great idea that deserves much of the success but mostly because it will make those major phone manufacturers wake the hell up and once again start making phones that people actually want to buy .