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The Good, the Bad, and the Retarded

So the UI is “the Good”, the engine behind this app is “the Bad” and the Google Reader user experience is “the Retarded”. I was concerned during the beta with Google Reader as the application was pretty much unusable with a gReader account active in it. I read a few praising reviews after its launch and hoped that they had fixed the show-stopping issues and purchased this app. It was definitely better and I loved using it despite the eye-rollingly long launch time for the app (when there’s a gReader account active in it).

“The Retarded” really came about the first time Google syncing failed. Removing the gReader account and re-adding it didn’t work. After some searching I found that a lot of others were complaining about this issue on their forums. The solutions involved removing the Google Reader Keychain entry. Fine, it worked. Ok, happy again, sort of. Then it happened again… and again! Reps on the Realmac forums claimed that “Google changed their API”. At this point I reopened NetNewsWire (which I hadn’t used for 6 months) and it loaded ridiculously fast (after my Socialite experience), connected fine, AND loaded new articles without freezing the application. Not sure about the Google API thing, as it doesn’t seem to affect NetNewsWire (free app) at all.

The retarded… in colour!

To illustrate just how poorly Socialite handles Google Reader I timed various application activities under the following conditions:

• Socialite 1.0.2 used.
• Test machine: Macbook Pro 2.33GHz, 4 gigs ram.
• Timing using stopwatch on iPhone.
• 3 Twitter accounts and 1 Facebook account in Socialite.
• 169 RSS feeds in Google Reader.
• Photoshop CS4 and Blender were thrown in to compare with “heavy lifting” applications.
• Coffee was brewed using electric kettle, single plunger and freshly ground Guatemalan coffee beans.

So basically one could launch and close Tweetie/NetNewsWire about 3 times before Socialite would be usable and I could brew two individual mugs of coffee before Socialite becomes responsive again while trying to load my Google Reader account. When the application takes over 40 seconds to load, it grinds against the philosophy of Twitter and I find myself launching the free version of Tweetie when I just want to quickly Tweet something.

Note: During writing this post I did try the Socialite 1.0.3 beta which promises to fix the  Google Reader authentication issue. The application still feels a bit sluggish in response at times but the launch time with Google Reader looks like it has dropped quite dramatically to 10-15s (cold start still takes forever). Memory usage seems slightly better as well. This means that the next update may prove to bring this application into the realm of usable!

[Edit 6th Mar, 2010]

1.0.3 is out and still get beach balls, slow starts and occasional high memory uses. This is going to be a love/hate thing isn’t it?

Lameboat

The Wolfman is a movie that did a lot of things right but was an overall disappointment for my movie-going experience. The sets were gorgeous and  with Anthony Hopkins starring, how could at least some of it not rise to greatness? And indeed some of it did; Mr. Hopkins certainly aided to this even though I felt his performance to be a bit luke warm in places. What pushed this movie’s rising head back down in the B-grade stye was the creature design of the werewolf and the title of the movie. In the words of Dylan Moran they are both “so fabulously f*&king stupid”. They reek of ’80s B-grade horror which is a shame as genres movies like this really need to contribute modern reworkings of the clichés to fly.

The editing of the film was effective at producing the occasional jump and help build the power and prowess behind the beasts. Some of the pacing felt a bit out and the first quarter of the movie didn’t really involve me enough with the characters to care what was happening. When Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) goes back to the asylum I felt that there was more opportunity for emotive content and character expansion. Still this section had a great scene towards its end which had me up and cheering for more blood.

Awesome!

Lame!

The concept of vampire apocalypse is not very widespread (yet), though I still have to read the original I Am Legend novel. True Blood was the first time I encountered the idea of vampires out in the open and I really enjoyed that premise. So to follow it up with “everyone is a vampire” in Daybreakers had me waiting for its release, and then annoyed that its original release date got pushed back (at least as far as I could gather).

! SPOILERS FOLLOW !

It occurred to me during the movie that the idea of what it was to be human and our condition was not explored as much as it could be. For instance the rebirth idea, through a certain burst of sunlight, along with the human blood being a food that sustains a vampire in a “humane” state have such potential for deep reflection and comment on the human condition. Especially with the conflict within the main vampire,Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), as he grapples with his role as head haematologist at the vampire blood farm, big, oligarchy, company fronted by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill). I did enjoy the final twist implied, of a reinfection of the vampires back to human through tainted blood. The division of condition/’humanity’ of the nourished vampires versus the starved sub-siders also seemed ill-explored. But one has to remember that the budget was only 21 million and the opposite to these disappointments would be to actively make everything explicit. At least it was not preachy or in one’s face about anything.

All-in-all I agree with the following quote:

In speaking with fellow Screen Rant scribe Ross Miller about the film, we both came to the conclusion that Daybreakers didn’t do enough to live up to its ambitious premise. Despite a few humorous lines, the movie took itself way too seriously to be enjoyed as either a dark satire of corporate greed or a campy splatterfest. Conversely, the characters weren’t developed well enough and the plot was too predictable to work as a moody sci-fi/action/horror thriller. In essence, the movie was a run-of-the-mill piece of genre fare, albeit one with a remarkably original idea.

~ Rob Frappier

The core functionality of MoneyBook is to budget by tracking how much you spend; the most attractive part being that it is on my phone and thus with me all the time for when those transactions take place. My most immediate gripe was that if you add an income transaction it automatically adjusts your budget with that amount. Having a starting budget is separate to ones income unless you are set to spend everything that comes in. I thought then that there would be two ways to use the app:

1. Use the starting budget amount and don’t add any income transactions, thus using it as a “don’t spend more than this allocated amount” for the month.
2. Set the starting budget amount to zero and add income transactions. This way, I would have a running total of my savings.

Option two seemed slightly against the grain of the how the app was intended to function and I have no way of knowing when the month ends, if the app will only say how much I spent or not.

Funnily enough, this morning MoneyBook was updated with an option that allows you to add income transactions without affecting the budget total – called “budget mode”. Sadly they did not address my 2nd gripe: the reoccurring transactions (income or expense) is useless for anything that is not monthly. Adding the calendar standard of daily, weekly, fortnightly etc would really make this feature usable, perhaps the only way to make it usable.

Now the good bit: I was going to talk more about the other apps and why I choose this one but when looking back over them for the purpose of this blog I found that MoneyBook and another pretty app Pennies were almost exactly the same… I wonder if MoneyBook is a ripoff. Pennies has a feature of browsing by expense category (just discovered that MoneyBook also does this) which would certainly be good but the reason I quickly wrote it out as competition for the “New and Noteworthy” MoneyBook was that it did not offer a way to export the data (at least according to users comments). Anyway I comped iTunes screenshots of both apps for a laugh:

• you can see all of the web as opposed to say a 24 inch desktop screen?
• there’s no right or wrong way to hold it… ahhh derrrrrrrrrrrr *facepalm*

The price of the device itself is fantastic and the tech specs are not revolutionary because of this; it is a compromise that I’m happy with. It seems to look better than the Android offerings. The prices of ebooks however, seem to be about the same as buying the physical book which doesn’t inspire me much and the bookshelf thing is a bit silly, reminds me of Delicious Library’s equally silly digital bookshelf. I’ll be looking forward to using Stanza on the device as well as a comicbook reader.

It seems that people are still fussed about the app store being “locked down” and controlled. I’m a bit mixed about this as the idea makes sense that it is all quality controlled but you can argue about this as some apps on the iPhone make you wonder how they ever got cleared. Security is debatable whether an open system would be worse off but I like that I don’t have to be conscious of security when downloading new apps.

I was disappointed that iMail on the iPhone isn’t getting an iUpdate for read mail syncing with Mail.app. This is the single reason I don’t use Mail on the iPhone as not only does it not do this obvious thing but it also doesn’t even have a read all button to at least get rid of the stupid badge counter. The new calendar app looks really good but why, oh why is the UI for it a poo-stained colour? I better be able to change that.

I see iWork is still at 2009, meaning that although you can use the iPad version and “change the orientation in case you need to write upside down”, you still can’t have a landscape page in a portrait document. I still can’t fathom why this wasn’t a feature from day one and after enquiring about iWork 2009 in an Apple store when it was released, the guy just told me to go get Open Office. So I guess iWork 2010.5 or just 2011? At least the iPad may have a better file sharing set up.

The other disappointment about all this is there is nothing I can have right now. Another two months till the iPad (yay for RSS feeds to continue being iClogged). What will I do with my pent up technolust?

Ben Claremont provided his own lovingly crafted logo idea which was enhanced and remains a very strong icon.

Australia’s R18+ debate is a lot like NASCAR: it has just been going round and round in circles without a whole lot happening. Every now and again there is a collision when a controversial game looses traction as it rounds the corner…Sometimes, like Left 4 Dead 2, it makes the finishing line a butchered wreck.

~ Pg 13, Game Informer #1

This sparked me to contemplate again the debacle of Left For Dead 2. Although I was able to acquire it uncensored, I still suffer the affects of the Refused Classification order as there seems to be less people on Australian servers and consequently less interest for games amongst my friends and gamer acquaintances. More often than not I see people playing the original L4D in it’s uncensored glory.

The next cause for my flailing arms was Aliens Versus Predator 3¹ which initially received the dreaded RC as well. But, rather than kneecapping their game like Valve, SEGA stood up with the following official statement:

We will not be releasing a sanitised or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices.

~ Game Industry Biz

After review, AVP3 had the “ban” lifted and I can’t help but wonder whether this marginally insulting official comment helped bring this about since the ratings thing seems to be politically infused. Of course it is most likely wishful thinking that the world works in a logical way but it was nice to see someone bite the hand of the lumbering giant and get favourable results back. Yet, a brave new world haunts the horizon.

1. Nothing to do with the incredibly awful films spawned from this awesome computer game franchise.