5 pieces of technology that defined my adolescence

The Verge posted this and asked what was my five. I posted in the comments, but I'm reposting here for posterity.



1. My first cell phone. GSM, it was on Sprint's now defunct GSM system. Such a great little phone. 30 minutes of call time a month for 30 bucks and the first incoming minute was free!


2. My first touchscreen. I remember it being terribly expensive and then it died cuz it got submerged in water. Didn't know until I was researching that there's a shrine for this watch http://cdecas.free.fr/computers/pocket/vdb1000/


3. NES, what else is there to say?


4. Worked a whole summer to buy this thing. I dreamt about it constantly. The possibility to have console quality games in my hand was too much. 400 bucks for this thing was too damn steep though.


5. Waterproof and played all my tapes. It was *the* walkman to have during my highschool days.

Switching from the (first gen) iPhone to the G1 Android

A friend of mine asked why I was preordering the T-mobile G1 rather than jumping ship from T-mobile (which I am using with a hacked iPhone) to AT&T for the 3G iPhone. He was considering the iPhone and was curious why I didn't want to upgrade. I wrote him an email but I figured it was good enough to post as well:

Personally, I think you will enjoy the iPhone. I mean, I've had it for over a year now and its been pretty good to use. The lack of a persistent apps, like a google talk client is kinda weak, seeing how the blackberry can do it (which seems pretty underpowered in comparison). Also, I'm kinda curious how expandable and far the apps will go for the G1. I mean, T-mobile says no tethering, but I can bet that's gonna be blown away within the first few months from a dev. Also, seeing how the first gen iPhone doesn't have GPS and the G1 has a nicer camera on it, and the fact that I didn't wanna really switch to AT&T (wiretapping is legal!), I figured I'd go with the G1. The hardware is intriguing even if there is no 3.5mm jack. I always liked the trackball from the blackberries and I kinda like hardware keys. Even though I can type pretty fast on the iPhone now, there still is some cognitive dissonance since there is no feedback from the keyboard, especially since I've turned off the keyboard clicks. I think coupled with my curiosity and my growing annoyance with some of the small niggles of my first gen iPhone made me take the leap to preorder the G1. That and I didn't wanna pay 35 bucks a month for data and 200 SMS text messages which would push my monthly bill close to 80 bucks a month after taxes are included.

If you want your phone to work well, and you don't mind the limitations of the SDK (which means stuff like not being able to download a podcast without iTunes or customization of the themes, which for the latter technically you can do if you jailbreak the phone) and you don't miss a hardware keyboard, I think you'll like it. There is one caveat as of now. Apple released 2.1 for the iPhone and while its less buggy, its still kinda buggy. I mean before, if I opened an app on the 1.1.x version, it was instantaneous. Now when I open an app, even a core app like SMS, Safari, or Contacts, there is a 1 or 2 second freeze before it starts operating which is a lot better than the 2.0.x versions which would freeze for 4 or 6 seconds before anything would happen. I think v2.x is a deviation from the iPhone's supposed roadmap because they felt they had to open up the platform with a SDK before they were ready to do so since they knew there was a demand. Feels like a bit of mismanagement from the mighty Jobs but who knows. Maybe v2.2 will fix a lot of the issues I'm bringing up here. They say that since there isn't persistence in the apps, they'll handle notifications (like new IMs) via a notifications server. It was supposed to be released in 2.1 but I guess they had a huge mess to clean up with the 2.0.x debacle, since calls were dropping, crap was buggy, and a lot apps were just crashing. The other annoying thing about non-persistence is that if I had a webpage open in safari, and I close it, and I don't have a signal, there won't be a cached page of what you were looking at if you start safari back up. Its like its wiped clean and will try to retrieve the URL again, since the URL is the only thing that is cached. You should read this esquire article, it seems to make a little sense, even if the writing style is kinda douchey and a bit pretentious.

Nokia's New tablet...revisited

So the cat is finally out of the box and Nokia has come clean on its new Tablet. This was just a scant 10 months after they had introduced their second generation tablet, the n800. Although pundits seem to be saying this is not technically a third generation but a 2.5. Why? Because the guts of the machine are almost the same (except they over-clocked the processor, or underclocked the n800's depending on perspective) and they slapped on a nice slide-out keyboard (finally!) and a GPS chip. So does it address some the issues I outlined in my previous post, let's take a look.

1. Out of the box web browsing experience: Looks like Nokia has been listening, they've replaced the close sourced Opera browser with Mozilla/Firefox variant which is able to handle sites like Google Docs with ease, judging from ThoughtFix's videos over at tabletblog, youtube seems to work fine. Nokia has also finally added more video codecs so let's hope that videos on certain webpages will play just fine. Page rendering seems to have been alleviated with a snappier processor. Again, I'm going to reserve judgement on this though until I actually have one in my hand to test.
   
   
2. Media Player: It still looks like something that's been thrown together. Nokia really needs to put some more time/money/man power into developing this thing into something usable.
   
   
3. Email: Still the same crappy email client. This is not good, especially with the introduction of the keyboard. People will want to use email more and more with such a device. Of course there's always be webmail, but really, if that's the case, why even give us such a crappy client to begin with?
   
   
4. Non-symbiotic relationship: we're still tethered to the desktop to do OS/firmware updates. bleh.
   
   
5. GUI: Same ol' same old. Obviously, no one in Nokia's maemo division has picked up an ipod touch/iphone and see what consumers are readily getting used to with finger gestures and the ability to forgo the use of a stylus.
   
   
6. Transflective screen (viewable in the sun): YES! Finally, someone in the design team decided not to go cheap on us.

They've also thrown in GPS and maps which is a nice touch, except to unlock all of its potential, you have to pony up more cash to subscribe to the features.

Now here's the kicker, the n800 has started to become a lot cheaper on various online stores. You can find it as little as 230 bucks at buy.com. How much does Nokia want for the n810? 480 bucks. That's more than double for essentially a keyboard, GPS chip, and a transflective screen. Not to mention that you lose dual-full size SD card slots (from the n800) to one mini-SD card slot and non-removable 2GB flash memory onboard. Which to some might seem like an ok trade-off, but to most users that were looking to upgrade from the n800, looks like a downgrade.

Had Nokia released this tablet as its first iteration rather than the third, it might be a revolutionary product, but as it stand now, I'm not that super-excited about purchasing such a device for such an expensive price.

Nokia's third Internet Tablet

A few days ago, Nokia unofficially announced their third iteration of their internet tablet. Ok, they didn't announce it, but it showed up on the FCC testing radar. I truly hope Nokia makes a better product to the point that it hits critical mass. I do know they tried with their n800 model, but it became a niche player. Why? Because it was still targeted at the power-user set but they tried to market it to the everyday person. Here are the reasons why I held off on purchasing one, even though I do own its predecessor (the Nokia 770)

1. If you're going to call it an internet tablet, it has to handle whatever the internet throws at it. This includes but isn't limited to the following:
   
   
   1. Be able to play youtube and the like smoothly. This should work out of the box without any types of tweaks.
      
      
   2. Speaking of video, any other types of embeded multimedia should also play flawlessly. That means quicktime videos, windows media videos, and the like. I know that's a minefield that a big corporation like Nokia could probably maneuver if they realized that the mass market isn't going to want some half-baked internet browser.
      
      
   3. Web Applications like Google Documents should be usable as much as it is on any plain old web browser
      
      
   4. Page rendering should be snappy. I shouldn't feel like I'm sitting on my old 486DX computer trying to browse the web. If I'm connected via broadband speeds, I should have a broadband web browsing experience. (This was not the case with the Nokia 770, trying to load something like washingtonpost.com slowed to a crawl)
      
   
   
   
2. If Nokia is going to tout its tablet as also a powerful multimedia machine, it shouldn't release it with such a poorly designed, unintuitive and ugly media player.
   
   
3. People still use Email, and good god, the email app on the maemo platform (the operating system that the these tablets run on) is horrendous.
   
   
4. Non-symbiotic relationship with a desktop. If Nokia wants to set up an ecosystem with my desktop like Apple does with its iPhones and iPods, then great. There would be a reason for my to hook up my tablet to my desktop to sync stuff or whatever, but if its to be its own entity, why do I need to connect to my desktop to update its firmware?
   
   
5. Easier user interface. The Maemo graphical user interface (GUI) is horrible. Its not very snappy, nor is it very intuitive. I hate to say it, but Apple did something Nokia didn't consider. If you're going to move to a touchscreen environment, then shouldn't be borrowing GUI elements that require a keyboard or a mouse. On top of which, get rid of the stylus. No one wants to peck at screen with a tiny stylus, especially if its on the go.
   
   
6. Nokia marketed the internet tablet as something "on the go." If that's the case, why can I not read the screen when I'm outdoors? Get with it Nokia. Even your cell phones have better displays in the sunlight than the current tablets.
   

I'm sure there a ton more, but the "open-ness" of the platform that everyone loves, since its built on Linux, might also be its achilles' heel as well. A lot of the applications out there are ported over to be "good enough." But there isn't any killer app, besides, maybe Canola (a flashy multimedia player) that really shows off the strength of the tablet. Unless Nokia uses its corporate thinking to spruce up the platform a bit to the point that it will appeal to the masses and not the geeks. Here's hoping they figure that out sooner rather than later.

Facebook gets it right...so far

I'm enjoying using Facebook a lot more immensely than MySpace in the past few weeks. While I bitch about closed (technical) systems sometimes, I like the fact that Facebook only gives people that I know access to my content. Meaning, I can share photos and videos of events going on in my life with the people I know. A closed social system that tries its best to protect my privacy is great. Of course this could be accomplished on Flickr or YouTube too I guess, but Facebook is more broad than the niche areas that Flickr & YouTube serve up. After all, the latter options are focused on only sharing video, or only sharing photos, but with Facebook, its a one stop shop. It also helps that its where everyone is flocking to these days.

I think it also says a lot that people are fickle. Give them something better and they'll immediately drop what they're used to as long as they see some extra value. Which is why there seems to be this jump from from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook with the majority of people I know. I guess people aren't married to technological habits as much as they are to real life ones.

More Apple woes

Do you hear that sound? That's the sound of a corporation that bought into their own hype and got greedy. This is the year that Apple's stock might be soaring, but its also the year of many mis-steps. First, screwing early adopters out of 100 bucks only months after they released their iPhones. Which really isn't that big of a deal until you look at all the other factors that come into play.

1. OS X Leopard gets delayed. Everyone was expecting this beast to drop in June. I mean it has been touted as the next best thing for the last 2 years and now? We're not getting it til October.
   
   
2. iPods rushed to market. Sure the new iPod line-up is nice, but now there is all these bugs that are popping up because Apple got greedy. iPod Touch screens are having quality issues with dark screens. Coverflow and the UI for the iPod Classic and iPod Nano are buggy and not performing up to what most people expect from Apple.
   
   
3. More closed standards rather than open standards as time marches on. They tried to lock the iPod out of any other interface besides iTunes. Most people use iTunes which is fine, but what about the small set of people that want to use Linux? Before, no problem, but now the new iPods have a hash (that's already been cracked thankfully) to make sure who and what is connecting to it to upload music. I'm sure Apple is claiming that they're doing it for our own good. To "protect" us, but really, they're doing it for themselves. iTunes is now locking out any home-made ringtones. There was a way to circumvent this in the last few versions but Apple keeps patching them. What if I want to put ringtones on there of my dog barking? Does the RIAA have a say on that? What about a recording of anything that wasn't produced by some commercial entity? And of course why is the RIAA getting to say what Fair Use is on music that I own? Where is the little guy telling Steve Jobs that the RIAA is screwing us?
   

I take it that Steve Jobs is now thinking that the more closed of a system he can create, the better he can control who and what uses his products will offer rather than letting consumers do what they want with it. Its like telling a child that he should only use a spoon to eat with and not use it to dig up dirt in the backyard.

And today? To call a press conference to offer the same phone to the UK? I mean seriously, I don't know how many Europeans are really gonna buy into the iPhone. Sure, its a great iPod, but from my understanding, Europe is rocking 3G. That means most people that are data enabled and tech savvy are already hopping along at broadband speeds over their cellular network. Are they really going to want to downgrade to EDGE speeds just so they can lock themselves into the iTunes+iPod walled garden?

Sure, Apple makes things that usually "just work" that doesn't require you to be an elite hacker to get things done, but the larger they grow, they more greedy they get. If they move on this path much longer, I definitely will begin to lose faith in them, and they sure will be getting less and less of my money.

I'm starting to dislike Apple

I remember a time when I was pissed that Microsoft was flexing its monopolistic muscle so much. They had the power and they knew it. They started locking people down with their stupid "Genuine Advantage" activation crap and dictating what people should and shouldn't be doing with their machines. And now Apple is doing the same crap with their iPhones and iPods. Seriously, since they've gotten the power of the mp3 market, they've done their best to muscle out any freedoms their consumers can do with their devices. Why am I paying a buck to make a ringtone out of my own music? And why am I only allowed to do it with what the mafIAA has said could or could not be a ringtone.

I'm kinda annoyed that Apple is doing the same thing with a lot of their practices now. They stood on the shoulders of open source projects because they were the underdog but now they're in a position to do something with that power, they're locking stuff down. I remember Steve Jobs's speech at Stanford about to "stay hungry" and "stay foolish."

Hey Steve, how about Apple stay hungry and stay foolish and be on the side of your users, especially the ones that were with you thick and thin, and not the corporate lawyers and your shareholders.

No Ubuntu for me

After a week trying to use Ubuntu on my ultra tiny VAIO and wanting to really like it, I couldn't. I switched back to the evil M$ with much chagrin but Ubuntu just isn't ready for everyday use. And its sad that Windows "just works" better than Ubuntu. Because we all know Windows does not "just work." I really wish there was a polished version of OSX86 out there for my machine.

After reading today's column from Walt Mossberg about how Ubuntu isn't ready for primetime, I feel somewhat vindicated about my decision. First 2 annoyances out of the box with Ubuntu were simple things that should've been thought about from the get-go. Why is there no trackpad support to adjust my trackpad? Why did I have to go into a text editor to configure it?

Second, no GUI for bluetooth networking?! I had to go to a terminal screen, even after I had did a bunch of terminal hacks, to tether to my phone to get online? This was a deal-breaker since I rely on bluetooth quite often and realized this after I had no easy way to access it.

Third, out of the box, none of my videos played properly. Not on VLC, not on mplayer, and not on a couple other players I "apt-getted."

I really wish there was something polished as OSX but in an open-source form, but it just ain't happening. So here I wait, adjusting to landscape that is fraught with frustration.

iphonesimfree warped time space

What the hell is wrong with that site. They claim they've unlocked the cellphone with proof on Engadget...but its been a week since that and they claimed it would be for sale this week. Guess what? Week's almost over! Plus, if they sell the unlock for more than 40 bucks, I don't think they're gonna have a lot of takers.

Then again, I don't even have an iPhone nor plan on buying one anytime soon!

I don't usually youtube

I guess this makes me an old fogey, but most of the time, I don't use youtube, or any other type of video flash-based stuff. Maybe its because usually, I'm either on my internet tablet nokia 770 and it doesn't do video. I have to get an n800 for that, and the other time, I'm on my little hacked notebook that doesn't seem to have proper sound drivers. The only time I'm in front of a proper computer is when I'm on my work computer which unfortunately is sitting in a wide open space where there are no cubicle walls, so I can not just slack off without someone noticing. Thus, I don't use youtube that much.

Was there a point to this post? I guess even how pervasive youtube is nowadays, I've gotten over the gee whiz value of online videos...that or I'm becoming a crotchety old man.

Nokia Internet Tablets + Windows Mobile 6 != online

So I filed a "bug" on Nokia's maemo site a few months ago. This site is for the developers to be kept apprised of things they need to fix on their Internet Tablets (770 & n800). So my bug was to request them to add the ability for me to get online by connecting with a Windows Mobile 5 AKU3 or Windows Mobile 6 phone. This was due to the fact that Microsoft in their non-infinite wisdom completely dropped the "Dial-Up Networking (DUN)" bluetooth profile off their phones and replaced it with "Personal Area Networking (PAN)." Which is fine and dandy if you're running Windows XP or Vista. Which is also why I was bitching so much about OS X Tiger not supporting PAN for the longest time. Eventually Apple got of their lazy asses and fixed it in their 10.4.9 release.

But Nokia? No...they refuse to even acknowledge that they needed to have add this enhancement YESTERDAY. In fact, Daniel over at tabletblog.com started stirring the soup and ended up having the whole bug squashed...and not in a good way. Now Nokia's henchmen refuse to fix it citing the fact that there are hacks around it and that they don't want to do the paperwork to push it through. Why are they getting paid then? To attend conference after conference about Linux and push all this crap about openness when their whole operating system itself is closed-source? What a pain in the ass, and yet, they're the only kid in town right now. It won't be long before Palm releases their linux-based Foleo (much to the tech community's chagrin) and also Intel's MIDs are somewhere in the pipleine so hopefully that will stimulate someone getting off their ass to do something.

Of course Nokia is also migrating parts of their Maemo platform into a framework for open-source goodness, so hopefully someone else might take up the reigns and do something. From a user standpoint though, all I can do is wait.

iPhone...will it tether?

All the hoopla about the iPhone and yet there hasn't been a peep about the data plans and if I can hook my macbook or xp computers up to it or not.

If I was Steve Jobs, I'd say, "why would you need to tether? you've got the GREATEST web browsing experience right on the iPhone! In fact, we're doing users a favor by not letting them tether, because that's just one more thing that could crash the phone!" Which is the same lame excuse he used for not providing an SDK to developers at the WWDC.

Let's face it, the reason Apple did amazingly well with the iPod was because there is a walled garden. No one had access to the iPod's internal OS except for a few "trusted" developers, and the only official way to load songs onto your iPod was through iTunes. Its a great concept but it leaves very little wiggle room for those that don't want to play by Apple's rules. SO...my guess? A lot of people are going to be bitching a lot more about things they expected to be in the iPhone and are not there...

Jobsnote = underwhelming

Talk about underwhelming. Here's the problem, the iPhone...2 weeks before the big launch of something so huge that Apple can't take any risks to steal its own limelight, they had to give us one of the most mediocre keynote events ever... I mean seriously, how can you follow up something as huge of an announcement as the iPhone back in January. You can't. You can't try to top it, you have to give all the fans a snoozer to re-align their expectations. So there was no Macbook Nano, nor was there any new iMacs. There was just a website redesign, some demos of Leopard, and adding Safari to the mix.

My assumption is Apple wants to eventually use Safari to be the trojan horse of whatever the next big web services thing is. Probably once Safari hits version 5 or 6 will it suddenly be interesting. Until then....Zzzzzzzzz...

Finally! Opera on Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone Edition/Windows Mobile 6 Standard

I've been waiting for this day for over half a year now. Opera in their infinite wisdom has released a beta for the windows smartphones. This has just transformed my T-mobile Dash into a much more useful tool! Check out all the details here and get yourself a free copy while its still in beta (expires June 1st). Your phone will love you for it.

WMATA and Verizon/ GSM and CDMA

Living in the DC area and close to a metro stop for both work and home has made me the default spouse to take the metro while my wife takes the car. Whilst riding the metro isn't usually a bad thing (except for the fact they blast the A/C so hard that my eyes dry out to the point of popping out of my sockets), I do get taunted by the fact that I don't have cellphone coverage down in the depths of the DC Metro tunnels. This is because I'm not "IN" the Verizon network.

This is due to my hatred for CDMA networks. I realized this years ago when Sprint had just started getting their feet wet in the wireless game and had rolled out a GSM system that they initially called "Sprint Spectrum." I loved it, even though it was something like 30 bucks for 15 minutes of airtime. However, the first incoming minute was free so I would constantly tell people to all me back after 50 seconds. And if my phone ever broke, or a nicer one came out, I didn't have to call up Sprint to get their permission to switch phones. All I had to do was pop out the SIM card from my old phone and pop it into the new one.

Then suddenly they dropped the whole GSM deal and decided to relaunch as "Sprint PCS" using a CDMA network. Which sucked. My calls were constantly being dropped, the phones were of shoddy quality, and to top it off, I had LESS control over the functions of my phone and I couldn't switch phones easily. I could see the writing on the wall, Sprint was slowly moving towards limiting what I could and could not do with my phone. I couldn't even load my own shrill ringtones onto their phones, I had to live with the default ones they gave me.

This was around the time I realized that the GSM system that I had originally come to love was still being operated! In fact, it turns out that Sprint was just leasing airtime off of Omnipoint's GSM system that was subsquently purchased by Voicestream (which was rebranded to T-mobile). With the GSM phones, I could swap out my SIM card and use a different phone each day of the week, rather being locked into one phone for the life of my contract. I also could sync my contacts, load my own ringtones, and eventually have access to the internet without having my bluetooth crippled.

Sprint and Verizon had jumped on the CDMA bandwagon by this time, and selling crippled phones that wouldn't let you transfer ringtones, sync your contacts, and if they caught you trying to tether your laptop or PDA to your phone, they'd charge you insane fees.

But now I'm riding the metro, and guess what? The only system that's underground is CDMA. So Verizon users can talk freely on the metro, and so can Sprint PCS users roaming on Verizon's network. Around 2002, there were rumblings that either AT&T or Cingular, or even T-mobile would be able to hook up a similar GSM system by 2006. Meanwhile, what was blazingly fast GPRS/EDGE speeds on my GSM system of 56k were being eclipsed by Verizon and Sprint's "broadband quality" EVDO connections.

Its now 2007 and getting online anywhere I have a cell signal at 100kbs isn't as impressive anymore and when I can't have access to it when I'm riding the metro, I'm wondering if I should switch. But then I look at the data access prices. Verizon wants 60(!) bucks to have "unlimited" data. I hear its not unlimited because if you go over 5 gigs of bandwidth in a month, they'll cut you off at their discretion. This is also before any voice minutes get added. I'm paying 63 bucks right now for 600 minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, unlimited data from my phone OR tethering via a laptop, internet tablet, PDA, etc. and I got 300 text messages coupled with 100 picture messages.

Your phone might be only as good as the network, but its not worth twice to have fast cell coverage on my commute in and out of work everyday. And having dial-up speeds seems a little more tolerable knowing I'm not paying out the nose for it. I guess I'll take that time popping my eyes back into my sockets dodging the A/C vents.

Apple TV

So Apple TV is finally shipping. And there are a flurry of posts about it. All the Apple-haters are accusing all the tech sites of being fanboys. The reality is, its a SLOW tech news week.

I however could care less about the Apple TV. Apple gets a lot of things right but the only thing they don't get right is leaving a little back door open on stuff like the iPod or the AppleTV to let advanced users take advantage of the technology. I mean, seriously, is it that difficult to incorporate other codec into the player so we could stream non-iTunes video to our Apple TV instead of having to convert everything so it'll play nice with it? Come on Apple, throw the early adopters a bone here. Lock it down once you reached the tipping point of mass appeal. Oh yeah, same goes for the iPhone. We don't want a completely impenetrable wall garden!

10.4.9! Hallelujah!

So, now that Apple has released their .9 revision of Tiger. A lot of people are stoked that OSX Leopard is ready to pounce. You know what I'm excited about? Well, for one, someone at Apple was listening to my pleas! They have inclueded Personal Area Networking in the bluetooth profile! This is such a blessing, because now I can just get online with my Powerbook or Macbook Pro via my T-mobile Dash. Before, I'd have to swap my SIM card outta the Dash and into my Sony Ericsson W600i.

Another thing that I'm reading, but haven't tested is Apple has built in VPN compatibility with Cisco VPN servers. I haven't really tested it yet, but if this is true, it would be so sweet for the job I'm doing right now since we have the option to work from home. Right now, I have to use Parallels for the Mac and run XP and use the windows version of Cisco's VPN since the VPN solution for the Mac kills my internet connection.

Now if Apple releases their MacBook Nano in the next month, I'd be set...at least for the moment.

Sporadic Tech

Having started a new job at the beginning of the year, I just haven't had the time to keep tabs on the tech news the past few months. If I had the time and the money, I'd probably be bitching up the storm about Windows Vista right now. But sadly, I've used it twice, for about a minute...at a closing Compusa and at CostCo. And really, there hasn't been anything truly groundbreaking or exciting since the announcement of the iPhone. I mean, the big news this week is Vulcan PC finally released their "palmtop computer." Of course its four years too late, and a year after the big UMPC release, it just looks dated and boring. 3GSM came and went...Zzzzz. CeBIT is next week in Germany. I'm not having any high hopes.

I keep hoping that Apple will come out with a MacBook Nano already. I've been eyeing the Sony VAIO TX computers. They're so tiny and still functional! Especially after lugging around the MacBook Pro the last 2 months, my shoulder's getting a little sore, and so is my back. There's a reason why there's a large ultraportable market Apple, get your ass in there! Otherwise, I might be forced to go back to the dark side and buy a Vista machine.

Sony Ericsson diverges

So Sony Ericsson dropped a lot of phones today. Well, figuratively, seeing how these press releases mean we the buying public won't be able to get our grubby mitts on them for another month to 6 months depending on distribution and manufacturing issues.

First off, the thing that strikes me is SE giving N. America the big F U seeing how most of their high-end (and most desirable) phones seem to be missing 2 important things. The 850mhz band which is the more prevalent band in the U.S. And lack of EDGE data connection, which again, is only used here, seeing how the rest of the world has already hopped on the 3G bandwagon, while most of the U.S. at the GSM camp, with a few market exceptions, are stuck on this "2.5" thing. Also a telling sign that SE's phones only operate on the European standard of 3G data (UTMS).

I'm also noticing something. SE has decided to make devices that are more specialized. Some are better for taking your music on the go, while others shine as cameras, while some are just dirt cheap that anyone can own a Sony Ericsson phone. Nowhere in their lineup is there a divergent phone that can really compete with something like, say, the iPhone. Most of their Symbian phones lack cameras, while the one that is supposed to be all in one (the P990) is getting kinda old. Hopefully all this will change next week at the 3GSM conference. Maybe they've got something up their sleeves they haven't shown us yet.

MacBook Pro/MacBook complaint

So after using a shiny new MacBook Pro for a week, I've found something I don't like about it. This also applies to the MacBook, since I've tried my wife's MacBook out and it has the same design flaw. The screen does not tilt back far enough. I know this because my old school twelve inch Powerbook G4 tilts back a little further. Which is something is nice to have when you're stretched out on the couch half slouched, half laying down and you wanna prop your laptop on your half propped up leg and type, not so easy. Why did Apple shorten the throw/tilt of the new macbooks? Give me back more tilt!

Update: Apparently I'm not the only one bitching about this problem. -> Link