Rage Against The Machine (Or Buy A New One)

Boys and girls, here at Blog You Like A Hurricane’s international headquarters we are absolutely committed to the truth. We ARE going to let our campaign for blog world domination be ruled by the fact checkers.   

With that in mind, it is my duty to report to you a very sad event which occurred this week which, some might say, completely pulls the rug out from under my entire epic blog from last week. But facts are stubborn things---even more stubborn than me.

You may recall I sang the praises of the HTC One X smartphone. It has zoom functionality which leaves the iPhone in the dust. It also has the clearest, sharpest, most drop dead gorgeous screen I’ve ever seen on a computerized device ever. But…..I took it from its charger on Wednesday morning and discovered the screen was black. I played around with it, restarted it a couple times and it worked for the rest of the day. Thank God that problem was over! But on Thursday morning the same exact Black Screen Of Death occurred. I tried everything and nothing worked. It had gotten colder at night. Please don't tell me my beautiful screen couldn't handle 50 degree weather.

 

After work I biked down to the AT&T store. The guy agreed it was broken and he also agreed it showed no evidence of water damage. He then explained my two options: get in my car and drive to their warranty center located in beautiful Wallingford, CT. Or if, say, my car was in the shop, I could call their Warranty Hotline and have a new phone mailed to me in a few short days!

A few days? This was a real moment of clarity for me. A painful bit of self-realization. Telling me I can’t have a phone for a few days is like telling a junkie he can’t have heroin until Thursday. Come on AT LEAST offer me some methadone!

I'm proud to report I resisted the tempation to hold up a 7-Eleven to help pay for a brand new phone bought out of contract. Before I explain what I did, let me backtrack slightly. For the last several months my computer at work has been running poorly. Annoyingly enough, it hasn’t been running poorly enough to completely shut down or blow up, just poor enough to cause hassles and semi-regular interruptions of my work—last Tuesday morning, for example, it literally took me 45 minutes worth of shutting down and restarting and logging off and logging back on to get started on my work for the day. I’ve now complained enough that they are getting me a brand new computer and I’m still holding out hope for a 27 inch monitor which can largely negate my need for magnification software in the first place—as said software has been causing all the trouble even though it ran for years at work without major issues. Nothing is more stressful and demoralizing than having computer problems which go on--especially when you are the only one having them and the very reason you are having them is because you need “special” software. Needing to make that a focal point represents the very opposite of how I’ve tried to live my life: i.e., just like everyone else.

So in that context, my patience with phone problems as well was bound to be paper thin. I noticed that the AT@T store actually had my phone on display so the guy obviously could have gone back to the storeroom and replaced it. But he didn’t. So I called an audible and biked down to the Verizon store, transferred my account to them, got a new phone since they don't carry this particular HTC, and decided to just brace myself. I had only recently renewed my AT&T contract so I’m pretty sure I’m going to get absolutely raped with early termination fees. Even Senator Todd Akin will consider this a real rape.

Okay, that wasn’t a smart decision. But in my defense, I have been faced with TWO malfunctioning machines in recent months, the only two that I absolutely need to work: my work computer and my phone. Computers are amazing, but they are the most annoying things on earth when they stop working right.

The phone I got this time: the Samsung Galaxy SIII. This is the other high end Android phone that came out earlier this summer. The Galaxy is actually the more hyped of the two…..but it’s all about deeper advertising pockets since it’s just not quite as good as the HTC. Its screen is actually slightly bigger--4.8 inches to 4.7 inches—but it uses something called a Pentile display which differs from a traditional LCD display. How? I have no idea. It apparently borrows pixels for multiple colors instead of using specific pixels for specific colors---or something like that. But my eyes tell me it makes everything—including text--slightly less sharp.

So…….I face yet another crucial decision. As far as my AT&T account goes, the deed is done. But now that I’m back with Verizon, I have 14 days to decide if I want this phone. I’m not sure if I do or not. The less than beautiful screen just seems to highlight some annoying Android traits. At the top of the list: all those apps! My phone has 45 apps installed on it. Guess how many I actually downloaded? Three. What’s most annoying of all is you can’t delete them and THEY ARE ALWAYS RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND. This drains your battery life for no reason. I guess you can power off every single time you aren’t using the phone, but that’s a pain. You can readjust the settings to disable apps or “force stop” them but this doesn’t seem to completely work. Or you can download an app that will help you force the other apps to stop running but in the process you’ve just created another app which has to run in the background to tell other apps to stop running in the background. It's kind of like solving your whiskey problem with vodka. The apps are like flies that keep getting in your house when you can’t even locate the hole in the screen they seem to be crawling in under! Okay, a maps app is cool. But do I need a latitude app as well?? What’s next? A sea level app? These apps will be key for me the next time I sail to Madagascar. My Application Manager tells me 16 apps are running as we speak. Why are they running? I have no clue! I’ve heard people complain Android phones are too complicated to use. I haven’t found that to be the case. You just have to get used to them. But my beef is they don’t give me enough control. If you want to pre-install a bunch of crap, that’s cool, but at least let me decide what I can delete and if I can’t delete them, at least let me stop them from running.     

And here is where I…..have to give Apple some credit. My Ipad has 20 pre-installed apps. My Ipod Touch has 22. Niether have the Phone app, so on an iPhone it’s what? 23 or 24? And the only 3rd party apps are Safari (which blows compared with Opera or Chrome)  and Youtube—which is apparently going away since Google owns Youtube and Google also owns Android so Google is standing in Apple’s path to world domination and they make a better door than a window. But as far as I can tell, Apple apps aren’t endlessly updating in the background like electronic bedbugs breeding behind your walls.  

And, truth be told, Apple’s stuff seems to be more reliable—possibly because of their extreme idiot proof "let's cut throught the bullshit" implicity. I had an iPhone 4 for two years and I did get it replaced once. It started acting strange…..but I had dropped it a few times. And the Apple Store did replace it on the spot instead of making me drive to Wallingford. During two major power outages last year, about the only things that still worked were my iPhone and iPad. I would not have retained my sanity without them.

HTC’s motto is Quietly Brilliant. And they are right. Their latest phone is amazing. Apple’s motto should be Loudly Reliable. The actual benefit of Apple’s stuff is the opposite of what their marketing says it is. Despite what they claim, none of their products are all that innovative. The new iPhone has a bigger screen. Cool…….except it’s still smaller than many Android screens. It has 4G LTE. Cool……except my phone already has that. They have 8 megapixel cameras. Can you see where this is going? My phone already has that. BUT…..there is a good chance it will be more reliable and have better battery life. So based on those rather boring considerations, it might in fact be as great as they claim.

Android is like that incredibly beautiful girl you become hopelessly smitten by until you get to know her better and start to have nagging doubts about whether coping with her high maintenance ways is worth it. What’s the old saying? “No matter how hot the operating system is, someone, somewhere is sick of her shit?”. Apple is the down to earth girl next door who doesn’t really turn any heads but you can trust her.

So what I’m trying to say is……I’ll see you in line for the new iPhone 5!

Actually that might not be possible. I just don't see myself camping out so I can talk to Siri the next morning. And the odds of finding any in stock before my 14 day return options expire seem slim. But besides…..their zoom function sucks!

But why has a smarphone become such a necessity to me when it’s clearly a luxury? Do any of us need portable computers in our pockets? I didn’t even get one until two years ago-I assumed the screens were too small for me to see and anyone who needed more than a cellphone was CLEARLY someone with issues. I didn’t realize the very high “pixel density” of these screens creates enough clarity to somewhat compensate for their lack of size. Size matters. But only so much.   

Plus all these storms happened and luxury items became necessities. In the world of climate change, the future belongs to battery operated devices.

Well I’ll probably stick with my new, new phone. It’s just an emotional time for me right now. I’m just getting out of a two year relationship with Apple followed by a hot summer fling with HTC. I’m just not sure if I’m ready for a committed relationship with Samsung. I’ve been hurt before.

But if this thing acts up I will probably make another horrible financial decision and end up buying the iPhone 5 out of contract. Don’t make me do it!

                                              

 

 

A Convenient Truth

Hi. So lately I’ve been on a tech geek kick. This is very scary. As if being a tech geek wasn’t scary enough, there’s the added reality that a tech geek and his money are soon parted. But I think I’ve learned something important about technology and---dare I say it?---life itself.
 

Convenience is overrated.

Let’s talk about home computing. I own an IPad—a device that has first world decadence written all over it. “Honey, have you seen my IPad?” is surely not a question Jesus and his disciples could have ever foreseen. I also own a smartphone—an HTC One X. This thing blows away my old IPhone—bigger, clearer screen with retina display by Steve Jobs’ own definition (300+ pixels per inch). The new IPad and Macbook Pro, um, don’t have retina display by that definition. Apparently Apple’s braintrust interprets “retina display” with the same looseness and fluidity that John Edwards interprets “ethics”. The boys in Silicon Valley must have had a meeting and said, “Ah screw it! Let’s say 200 pixels per inch is retina display too and call it a day! No one will notice!”. My phone also has a zoom function which actually reformats the right margins to make the screen readable! Apple’s zoom functions about as well as the zoom on an ‘84 IBM: you can zoom to your heart’s content but good luck navigating around the screen. Apple just won a patent lawsuit against Samsung because, among others things, Samsung allegedly stole their zoom idea on smartphones. That’s like Paula Abdul suing Lindsey Lohan for stealing her idea to mix Xanax and Red Bull.

Anyway……with my hip, trendy mobile devices I decided to do something about my home computer. I had an old Dell PC—with a tower, a mediocre screen, a wired mouse and keyboard. A real eyesore. This thing scored zero on the Sex Appeal meter. Whenever I go to Barnes and Noble or Starbucks or It’s A Grind or Cosi or any other yuppie haven in West Hartford Center I always see people on their laptops. I’ve never been a fan of laptops but I decided it just might be because I have a hard time seeing the screen. I don’t like them but I want to like them. But I had a plan: get a Windows laptop which is compatible with screen magnification software unlike Macs or Macbooks (again, Apple, why do you hate blind people?). I saw they even make laptops with 17 inch screens and “full HD” 1080p screens. So this would be a piece of cake for me to see! I bought a really nice HP Envy—pretty close to the Windows equivalent of the Macbook Pro. It was a beautifully made, top of the line machine.

God, I hated it.

I returned it after two days to Best Buy for my money back. You might say I subconsciously KNEW I would hate it so I chose Best Buy over Amazon because returning it would be easier. Why does anyone like laptops?? If I was an ergonomics expert and I decided to design the perfect anti-ergonomic machine of death, could I do much better than a laptop computer? The keyboards……awful. The keys are paper thin and clumsy to type on, plus they are set far off from you to make room for the touchpad. Oh, let’s talk about that touchpad. I’ve heard turtles have watched people using touchpads and thought, “Geez, hurry up!”. Maybe experienced touchpad users develop lighting fast usage of it, but I can’t imagine how. I saw the movie We Bought A Zoo recently and there is a scene where Matt Damon is on his laptop---a Macbook, obviously, although a still less blatant product placement than the touching ending to the last Mission Impossible movie when Tom Cruise rewarded his daredevil crew for their hard work by giving them new IPhones!. Anyway, Matt Damon was considering deleting a picture of his widow because he knew he had to get over her. He starts to move the touchpad in the general direction of the “X” at the top of the screen. This scene lasts about 4 minutes. In the Director’s Cut I would guess it’s 9 minutes. You could have left the room, made popcorn, and came back and he would still JUST be getting to the moment of truth when he had to decide to delete or not to delete. (SPOILER: he doesn’t delete. He folds up his laptop--which of course demonstrates the Apple logo to all the audience. Another movie featuring graphic full frontal Apple logos). I guess what I’m trying to say is even Jason Bourne and Good Will Hunting are slow with a touchpad! I rest my case.  
 

And what about the screen angle? You always have to look down at it. Has anyone found a correlation between neck surgeries and laptop computers? My idea of health care reform: ban the laptop computer. I suspect we would save $395 billion per year. I know, I know: you can get a stand for the laptop and you can get a mouse to replace the touchpad. But once I started thinking about doing all that I had a realization: maybe I’m just trying to turn this thing into the desktop it will never be.
 

So I turned it in and bought a new desktop with a real mouse, real keyboard, and big screen. Again, I admit I was tempted to get the 27” iMac. I mean they are, like, white and shiny and stuff. But again, I wanted to have at least the security blanket of using screen magnification software since I read that many programs and websites default to small font especially with high resolution screens. So I did some research looking for the Windows equivalent to the Mac and, much to my shock and amazement, I bought another Dell. Dude, I was getting a Dell.
 

And I must say……the 27 inch screen with its 2560 x 1440 is awesome. By using the computer’s internal font and zoom adjustments I actually don’t need screen magnification after all! Where have these screens been all my life? I guess I won’t be able to write The Great American Novel from a chair in Starbucks while sipping a Double Mocha Cappuccino after all, but who cares?
 

But I’m STILL not sure if this is the perfect choice. Like the iMac, it’s a more modern All In One Desktop. The PC and screen are built together like on a laptop, and you just use a wireless mouse and a wireless keyboard (which I upgraded to a Logitech which lights up the keys—the coolest feature my HP Laptop had going for it). Less space, hardly any wires!
 

Except….I noticed something about this thing. If I stream videos for a fair amount of time, the fan kicks into overdrive and the top of the computer gets super hot. That can’t possibly be good, can it? Also……I don’t think I’m imaging this…..if I’ve been running it for a couple of hours it almost seems like the screen gets a bit less sharp. Apparently I’m not crazy because I read All In One’s are notorious for heating issues, poorer reliability, and, yes, even sometimes blurriness from overheating. Even the iMac apparently suffers from the same problems. It’s basically a very large laptop and, like a laptop, it’s not as reliable as a clunky old fashioned desktop.

Damn! I might end up considering trying to sell this thing on E-Bay and crawling right back to an old school desktop—a super fast tower with a separate 27 inch high resolution monitor. (By the way, ever hear someone say, "Don't buy that! It's Chinese made crap!"? I just read the desktop maker with the best reliability ratings is Lenovo: a Chinese company). I retreated back into a less convenient and portable option than a laptop but maybe I didn’t retreat quite far enough. I could turn it off for a while if it gets super hot and turn it back on, but there’s a real irony when a more convenient All In One desktop actually forces such an inconvenient step.
 

And then there is music. Music sales are down, everyone is worried. What happened? Bands started sucking? Okay, in many, many cases I agree. But I have an additional theory: Mp3’s are ruining music. That’s not a new thought. Record companies panicked when free downloads started cutting into record sales. But maybe it’s purchased mp3’s from ITunes and Amazon as well. I made the mistake of actually buying a CD a few months ago! I felt about as dated as I would have if I had bought a pair of bell bottom jeans and a turtleneck. I went home and did a sound comparison. The much maligned, never very cool plastic CD won hands down. I realized I had fooled myself into thinking ITunes downloads sounded as good, but a direct comparison made me realize CD’s sound clearer and much more 3-dimensional. An mp3 is literally a crushed CD—crushed so that downloading an album won’t take up all of your phone or mp3 player’s space and thereby discourage you from downloading more music. In a way, music has come full circle: mp3’s blended, compressed, nearly mono sound somewhat resembles an AM radio station compared with the more FM sound of a CD..
 

No more sonic fast food for this writer! I bought a bunch more CD’s (wish I hadn’t ditched all my old ones) and a portable (I can’t believe I’m publicly admitting this) Sony CD player! Don’t worry—they still feature their miraculous G Protection anti-skipping technology! (My G protection? My AK. Know what I’m sayin’ homes?). I took it on a run with me……and it skipped. Maybe it doesn’t skip on mall walkers, but it skips when you run. And it nearly fell out of my pocket 78 times. No one ever said 1.4 megabytes per second, 16 bit music listening was a walk in the park.
 

So I devised a brilliant compromise: keep buying CD’s but “rip” them as .WAV files. These are similar to mp3’s but not compressed. They also take up much more space so using my phone to store them wasn’t an option. So…..I bought a 64 GB Ipod Touch. Damnit, Apple! You win again!
 

But I also decided to buy a home stereo system. I haven’t owned one in about 10 years. I used to have a monster Sony stereo—two gigantic speakers which were almost as tall as me with a subwoofer for maximum floor and window rattling bass to severely piss off the neighbors. But I ditched it for the convenience of mp3’s and my computer’s disc drive--I was told to love thy neighbor. But I came out of stereo retirement and bought a CD player which does nothing besides play a CD, a receiver which does nothing besides amplify the sound (and get a few radio stations), and two more modestly sized bookshelf speakers which do nothing besides play the music. Blissfully non-versatile. I also learned some important lessons about speaker wire. Wait, don’t stop reading—this will be gripping. it used to come pre-cut and pre-stripped. Now you have to do it all yourself. They obviously laid off the wire-cutters and wire strippers at the RCA factory. Welcome to the new business model. Also, they no longer use pure copper, but some sort of cost saving aluminum-copper combo. But of course that value is passed on to the consumer! Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…..
 

My new system sounds awesome. It’s the anti-smartphone. You can’t put it in your pocket and it does ONE thing. It’s a space hogging, non-versatile collection of parts and I love it. Now…do I go a step further in inconvenience and add a record player? There is that “warm”, “round”, “full” sound of analog every audiophile talks about. They are all sonic chubby chasers, I guess. (Apparently audiophiles also gushed about the crystal clear digital sound of CD’s back in 1983 so they are bigger flip-floppers than Mitt Romney). But I am tempted to relive my childhood when one magical Christmas Eve Santa placed a vinyl copy of Ozzy Osbourne’s Diary Of A Madman under our Christmas tree! (These days I heard Santa just downloads One Direction from the Itunes store. Dark days are upon us, for sure).

But musicians themselves embody a stubborn insistence on old, outdated, inconvenient technology. Most guitar players not only don't use digital amps, they don't even use solid state amps--kind of the bridge to the digital world it seems. They use vacuum tube amps: state of the art technology---in 1930. Stereos and TV's used to be made with tubes too but only guitar amps survive as a standard bearer of the old technology because, most agree, they sound better.
 

Kids, machines are a lot like people: give them one job to do and they just might do a great job at it. Give them multiple jobs and they might do all of them, but will they ever do any of them brilliantly or just passably? Will they be jacks of all trades but masters of none? A smartphone can take photos—but the best smartphone camera is 8 megapixels while an average stand-alone digital camera is in the double digits. Smartphones can play music—but they will never sound as good as a CD or a record. You can type on them—but you have to touch type: which is a bit like crawling after you’ve already learned to walk. You can watch videos—but they will never look as good as on a big screen TV or PC. I’m not sure if there is anything a smartphone does that you can legitimately say it does great except maybe tell time—but they destroy the coolness of a wristwatch. They also work as phones but lack the clumsy coolness of an old analog phone with its rotary dialing ability. You might say they were slow, but I say they were still faster than a laptop touchpad and didn’t make you want to punch something.     
 

Maybe smartphones are a symbol of our modern world where we try to do everything at once. I think our whole economy is in trouble because businesses and politicians seem to have taken the smartphone, All In One approach to managing everything. Businesses want to make profits on sales but they also want to not pay their employees as much—but if every business does the same, who will have the money to keep buying products and services at the same rates? Politicians want to grow the economy but they also don’t want to raise taxes---but how can you grow an economy when you’ve depleted your own education system in the name of lower taxes? You can do all these things at once—but can you have a society which is excelling or just functioning? Our economy today is like an mp3 player, not a home stereo system. You can opt for the convenience and “all in one” approach of a fast food restaurant, but can you expect to have long term health too? Trying to marry convenience and quality in every single aspect of life is a losing game! I say quality rules and convenience blows!

Well, I better wrap this up before my convenient, space saving, versatile All In Once 21^st Century PC blows up. If you want convenience, better make sure you have a good smoke alarm.  

PS--they will have to pry my smartphone from me with my cold, dead hands!