The iPhone

You know, a few years back, one of my assistants at my old job, both of us Mac users, were musing.  The iPod had just come out, it was pretty, but still small, I think it topped out at 4Gb of storage.

So we had the idea that one day in the future, that Apple would produce a phone based on the iPod.  It would be called the iThing. What would it do?  Everything, we theorized.  In addition to making phone calls, it would let you browse the internet, send email and instant messages, watch movies, listen to music, it would connect to your computer, your car, your refrigerator. It might even cure cancer, but we knew we might be out there on that one.   The price tag?  Well, naturally somewhere in the $1300 range.

So we were wrong on some of that, obviously.  To my knowledge, it doesn’t cure cancer, at least not this version.

Ah, but the price is where we were really wrong.  There are 2 versions, one 4Gb and one 8Gb, costing $500 and $600 respectively.  But what is the cost to produce such a wonder of technology?

Apparently according to this site, the 4Gb cost $200 in parts, and the 8Gb costs $220 in parts.  Soooo….  the profit margin on the 4Gb model is $300 and for the 8Gb its $380.  Well, thats a helluva ROI, wouldn’t you say?  This is so Steve Jobs.  He is putting immediate profit above really affecting the market.  He did the same thing with the iPod when it first came out, made it really expensive and restricted it to Mac only.  He eased up on that restriction later on, making millions again over night, I’m sure when someone pointed out to him that he was only marketing to 3% of the computer market.

Here is the mistake.  If he priced the object in question, this time the iPhone, below its competitors, it would very very quickly take over the market.  Look at what happened during its release.  People lined up around the block to drop 5 to 6 hundred dollars a pop for what will be an obsolete piece of tech in a year.  I’m hearing that they have sold 700k units to this point, and with a based profit margin of $300 per unit, Apple just pulled in over $210 Million dollars.

But imagine, that they priced it a bit more reasonably.  Put somewhere in the $300 range, imagine how many units they would move.  Apple, just getting into the cellular communication market, could become one of the leading producers of cell phones over night.  They could lock down that market so hard and fast that Motorolla and Blackberry would probably lose most of their market share over night.

But this is not the Steve Job’s way.  The Jobs’ way is to milk it for all its worth right out of the box, and this is exacly what cost Apple their position as a leading computer manufacturer all those years ago, and this continues on to the present day.  They price their products such that they are the Jaguar of computing, a term that Jobs hates.

I think all I’m trying to say is that, Apple’s mistake is always to go for immediate profit over market position.  Hey don’t get me wrong, $210+ Million dollars in a day would be nice, but if they thought about things in the long term, they would be more profitable.  This is the difference between the Gates’ and Jobs’ philosophies.

My first video game review: Spider-Man 3 for Nintendo Wii

This is my first official video game review, so be gentle.

The Spider-Man franchise as brought to us by Sam Raimi has been truly an impressive series of movies.  Sure, he messes with canon, but by and large does a great job bringing Spider-Man to the silver screen, to the point where it could be said that only he could have done so.

In this age, there are few movies of the action genre that don’t try their hand as a video game.  Some are successful, arguably more successful than movies made from games.  The first installment of the Spider-man video game series was at best a place holder.  Nothing special there.  Spider-Man 2 however was a great title.  The ‘Sandbox’ notion of having Spidey roam all of NYC was fantastic.  The controls (I played on the Xbox for that version) were easy enough to master.  It was loyal to the film, while throwing in some extra villains (Mysterio, Rhino, and Scorpion), and the ability to respond to New Yorkers in distress.

Spider-Man 3 tries to carry on with the standard set by the 2^nd of the series, but in many ways comes up short.  To make matters worse, the game is riddled with bugs.  Bad cut scenes, truncated speech, loading screens that are poorly executed….  And the list just gets longer and longer from there.  I do not know if these problems are endemic to the whole title, or just the version released for the Wii.

The Wii as a platform does offer something that the others cannot: play via motion control.  The Wii’s vaunted movement based play makes the title on this platform worth trying regardless of all its glitches.  Swinging on webs through the cityscape has a meaning on the Wii that I imagine is missing on the other platforms.  You are involved, concentrating, and in the end having a great time.  The learning curve is a bit steep, but I figure most folks can pick it up in about 15 minutes or less.  Using the remote and the B button, along with the Nunchuck and the Z button can be challenging, but once you have it down its quite easy, and a wonderful application of the technology.

The motion control for the fighting system however feels underdeveloped.  There is some variation in moves, but by and large it is clumsy.  For the most part you move the remote back and forth from left to right, and end every combo by hitting the A button.  It is really not very inspired.  It is only in the fighting system that makes me miss the standard control pad.  I see potential in it, but its not there quite yet.  You have a charge function for upper-cut move that you can barely use because one of your enemies is going to hit you, there by interrupting the move, before you can execute it.  If you hold down A long enough, while standing close enough to an enemy, you give him the opportunity to smack you down.

There are a few other items that pop out as being bugs.  Quickly, they are:

1. Bad character animation – Spidey can get stuck in poses all too frequently.  I carried out an entire fight in a locked standing up position.  Not once did he move while he beat the bad guys down.
2. Poor targeting – Doesn’t seem to matter who’s closer, or which direction you are facing, sometimes Spidey is just going to shoot web blasts in a random directions.  But Hey!  He’s Spider-Man!  He doesn’t have to answer to you.
3. Difficulty difficulties – When you advance in levels it looks like the bad guys, in this case gang members, are going to advance too.  However, I have noticed that they don’t advance until I have restarted the system.  This leads to some boring and unchallenging fights, and is quite inexplicable.
4. Loading issues – Missions end abruptly, or sometimes only after a long and pointless pause.  For that matter, when you are really rolling, there are far too many loading pauses anyway.
5. Bad sound match up – Okay.  You rescue a kidnap victim who speaks with a Brooklyn accent, but when you drop him off at the ambulance, his voice has changed and now he sounds like he is from the Hamptons.  Not a big bug, but still.
6. Premature failure (or success) – I received some missions only to have them declared failures a second after I take off to begin them.  This seemed to happen mostly with the ‘Rescue the Psychic’ mission.  Inversely, I have had missions declared successful after one second, usually the mission where I had to help the police beat back the thugs.  Sometimes I would get there just as they subdued the last of them, and I didn’t get to throw one punch.  Kudos to the NYPD for being so hardcore though.

Other things just fell short:

1.      Audio – there are many and varied audio problems, mostly with consistency of voices.  Also we could have used more variety here.

2.      Video – In a word, unimpressed.  I expected more from a 3 time sequel, especially on an advanced console.  Maybe it looks better on the PS3.  I’m going to have to wait till I have a spare $700 to throw around I guess.  I played Spider-Man 2 on the Xbox, and to me it seems the graphics have only moderately improved.

3.      Cityscape – It seems to lack many notable landmarks and could certainly have been more interactive.

4.      Difficulty – This applies mostly to the gang fights.  Perhaps the only part of this game that might be considered a sedative is the repeated battles to wrest the city from the gangs.  Not challenging, just boring.   The Boss Battles aren’t immune here though.  After you sort the pattern out, all of the bosses are brought down quickly.  Morbius and Shriek get more points than Venom, although the initial Venom encounter is made more challenging by the 3 minute time limit.

So, here is the deal.   It’s a Renter, not an Owner.  Fun for a few days of play, but nothing to write home about.  The only thing is, I’m not sure if I’m really critiquing the game, or the execution of the game on the platform.  I know the Wii lacks the power of the other systems, but as a stand alone to the Spidey franchise, this could be considered quite disappointing.  The worst thing I could say is that it wasn’t finished.  A common malady with big name games.

I give the franchise props however for turning out a video game, based on a movie, that was in turn based on a comic.  Lord knows that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

De Ja Vu

Hmmm…. Just had a really strong Deja Vu…  I know its just a feedback loop where short term memory reports back as long term memory….

Just feels like something is about to go really wrong…

hmmmm……

And I Think I’ve Gone Mad

Wow. This Virginia Tech thing is just crazy. My heart goes out to the students and their families. Things like this are so unfair, that a person has to lose their life because someone else has gone off the beam.

I have a habit of studying such criminal pathologies, really a form of social rubber-necking. What ever started this was quite recent, given that he purchased one of the weapons last month. The first shooting is being described as ‘domestic’ in nature. It usually starts there, with a broken heart. Then he goes back to his dorm, reloads, and knowing that he is in deep already, goes on a killing spree. There is really nothing more dangerous than a person with nothing to lose. He killed 2 people already, whats 28 more?

The one thing that bothers me in cases like this is always the behavior of the media. Of course this act is going to get constant attention, but the pointless speculation is quite irritating (He says after speculating…). Yesterday Wolf Blitzer had on a specialist to discuss this shooting in relation to the Columbine shooting from back in 1999. And then there were weapons experts, psychologists, and the one that really bothered me, a guy who offers training to SWAT teams, which really came of more like a plug than anything else. All of this was fueled on nothing more than a fluctuating body count and no other information.

What really bothered me was when a reporter asked the president of the college at a press conference yesterday, what the ‘new normal’ would be like. Isn’t that an awful term? I’m generally no good with the current normal, let alone having to get used to a new one. This is where people usually lose me. It harkens me back to the USA PATRIOT ACT. There will be rash reactionary decisions made, that really won’t make anyone safer in the long run. The people on that campus are safer today by virtue of the fact that this man is dead and can’t hurt anyone else. It may seem an awful thing to say, but sometimes its just too obvious. People may not accept that of course. What are they going to do? Turn college campuses into high security facilities? Will there be metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs at every entrance? I tell you, actions like that will not help the situation.

Now is a time for healing and understanding. The students and their families have such a weight, such pain to deal with. I wish them all the best.

Negative Indications

I saw this piece on CNN and just felt awful.

A good way to judge a person is how they treat animals. Most people don’t place the same value on the life of a dog when compared to the life of a person, but animal cruelty can often be a sign of something much worse.  A person who would do such a thing to a dog, is really only a hairs breadth away from committing a similar act on a human being.  This man needs to go away for a loooooooong time, not just as punishment for what he did to the dog, but also for the protection of what ever community he may live in.

UnBox by Amazon

Damn what a fucked up service.

My advice..  Well, pending my confirmation from their customer service on my particular issue, I would say stay away.  Its quite un-evolved, especially for those of you who might expect Apple’s level of service when it comes to serving media.

What drew me to it? The TiVo functionality.  What else?  I was thrilled that it was possible for me to rent/buy amovie, and have it in my living room in such short order. but nooooooooooo…..

My first download, Borat, went just fine.  Ordered it, downloaded it to the TiVo, watched it.  Laughed my ass off (good movie).  The second movie… ‘Man of the Year’… would not download to my TiVo at all, even after repeated attempts. not only this, but apparently you cannot download TV shows to your TiVo.  I bought 2 seasons of one of my favorite series, and not only couldn’t i DL to my TiVo, but the first one was incomplete.

My advice is to avoid this service.  Its a joke… for the moment.  It could well improve, given i know its a glorified beta, I full well understand that it takes some time to work the kinks out. But, Amazon, if you are listening, ‘DRM’ does not mean ‘fuck your customers over’.

Look. I’m an IT guy.  I know it isn’t that difficult.  Just do it right.

3d Studio Max

I am a jack of all trades when it comes to computers.  I can do help desk, pc repair/modification, I can work with both servers and workstations on more operating systems I can name at this point.  I specialize in graphic design, and have been in the business for a while.  I am considered in certain circles to be an expert with Adobe and formally Macromedia products.  I even have been know to dabble in 3D.

3D Studio Max… where do I begin?  I’m one of those really annoying folks that can learn a piece of software by myself in the fraction of the time it would take someone else to learn with instruction. And this isn’t the first time I’ve done 3D, just the first time with Max.  And here is my review of the program:

Dear 3D Studio Max,

Could you be less straight-forward?  Jesus Herbert Christ!  I fucking dare you to make this program harder to navigate! What the hell is up with the designers?   You take very simple concepts native to every other modeller/renderer out there, then do your damnedest to hide them in the UI.  Do you think the program might be easier to use if the UI were a bit more concise?  Damn it man! You know what?  I was wary about Adove’s acquisition of the Macromedia suite, but looking forward, I can see where the Macro-apps could use a bit of a clean up by the Adobe crew.  You guys?  I wouldn’t blink if Adobe bought you out.  This program needs a streamlined interface like I need a cup of coffee in the morning: desperately.

What a piece of standardized shit.

Snakes on a blog

Just saw Snakes on a Plane, and damn, what an eye opener.

Has anyone down at the FAA seen this movie?  This movie really just emboldens the terrorists you know. Please tell me that they are screening for snake bombs before people get on a mother fucking planes.

Cause We Are The Aqua Teens!

Seeing as i have the TiVo and all, I thought i would put it to use.

My opinion: Adult Swim? I do not think that having people leave electronic assemblies around major cities is a very good idea. Next time, try something a bit more conventional.

Boston Police? A circuit board with a power pack is unlikely to explode if not attached to explosives. While I am not in law enforcement, I did work on military electronics for several years. From what I saw of the objects in questions, beyond the fact that I watch ATHF and know what a Mooninite is, they were clearly not destructive devices. None the less, I appreciate your caution and attentiveness, for which you should be dually honored. Thank you.

Now lets all take a breath, file no charges, and go on with our daily lives.

Vincent

A friend of mine sent me this.