Added 2010-08-22, 11:19 PM | 18 Replies

You may have heard about our latest pending software update. We float one of these every so often and never really get into details, so let's cut through it all and discuss a roadmap.

- Phase 1: ToldWire. This is totally a stopgap, and it just went live. Automatically imports potential trolling material from MacRumors and possibly (eventually) other sites. Most content on MacRumors' front page has high trolling potential, so aside from the clutter, hopefully you'll find this to be an interesting diversion while I work on phase 2..

- Phase 2: Other stuff. Such as it is today, I have a few important projects that are overdue for some really awesome and tolerant people. With the readership here being mostly a tech crowd (I'd assume), perhaps you can relate to the situation. Anyway, once everything in phase 2 is out the door, then I can start on phase 3..

- Phase 3: Editors. This is really long overdue, but the idea is that editors would be able to access the feedback queue and create posts or QuickTolds here in the blog. Users leaving feedback would be given a dropdown to specify whether they want their submission to go to editors or the admin. New blog entries would have to be activated by an admin. Hopefully this will keep things in good enough shape while I work on phase 4..

- Phase 4: Reinvent the boards. This is extremely overdue and extremely laborious. Which is fine, since by this point I'll probably have absolutely nothing else better to do. ;_; The current board system was literally an overnight hack and it's too inflexible to expand to the degree it deserves to be. (Again, being a tech crowd, I'm sure you've coded yourself into a corner at least once before.) It's one of those situations where you've got existing code, and you ask yourself, "do I just hack more stupid shit on top of this, or throw it all out and do it properly for once?" Well, it's getting thrown out, in a big way. I'm not adding multimedia, images, or any of that bullshit to the boards. Too much distraction, cost, and liability. But the timeframe on starting all of this is at least a month or two from now, so look forward to the thrilling details at some point. With some luck on our side, maybe it'll even beat Titan to release!

- Phase 5: ???

- Phase 6: PROFIT! lol money pit

#1 and #3 are pretty much stopgaps leading up to #4, but the idea is to keep things moving with content and new things so we don't drop off the radar in the interim.

tl;dr: Fun things happening!

Comments, flames, and outright trolls are welcome, as always. Ciao for now!~

Added 2010-08-19, 07:38 PM | 28 Replies

Oh boy!

There sure are some significant changes coming to YFSGT, which are really exciting, but we promised we'd take care of some important things for our bros first.

In the meantime, feel free to use this as an open thread to troll Apple, or WHATEVS. Don't worry, we didn't misplace your feedback submissions or anything. Things should be back on a normal schedule soon enough (or, as normal as you can expect from this site..)

Tip by Anonymous | Added 2010-07-26, 01:34 PM | 16 Replies

Anonymous writes:

So its been a while since I wrote my last editorial to Suregottold. Since then, a lot of things have happened with the iPhone and iPad. Both have resulted in typical disappointment.

Firstly, we'll start off with the iPhone. Before the antennagate discussion, let's dig down into some of the other issues.

Apple starts off by lobotomizing multitasking into a bastard child where you can access a few functions (unless you're Apple, in which case you can do whatever you want). This pokes a huge hole in the "charging $99 and screening apps prevents crap" argument. Even burying it in a submenu for power users to use with a hug bold disclaimer isn't good; if Apple thinks you're too dumb to use a feature right, you can't have it. Then iOS 4 is a power hungry update that bricks many 3Gs and greatly reduces battery life. Gorilla glass turns out to be easily breakable and scratchable. The retina display ships with many units having yellow spots, pointing to a sever lack of quality control.

Finally, we get to antennagate, a very serious issue which Steve Jobs downplays. Apple denies the problem for a long time before holding a press conference.

So Apple invites the media to a press conference that's allegedly to address the issues, and it starts off with a cheeky Youtube video telling the press that they're full of shit and making a mountain out of a non-existent molehill. At this point I knew that Steve wasn't going to recall the phone, although I had strongly suspected he would have avoided it anyways to try to p reserve the illusion that Apple can do no wrong (it just works, not to mention the bottom line).

So the press conference goes on and Apple goes on about how much they love and love their users, and how "smartphones have issues". This is when my bullshit meter hit full throttle. Then the trolling started with the "death grip" being shown on different phones.

Sure enough, Apple hires someone with gigantic hands to hold the phones in unintuitive fashions and show a signal reduction. In doing so Apple tried to make it out to be a minor problem that you can avoid if you don't hold the phone in a way that affects the antenna. In doing so, they tried to distract from a major point: Other phones are designed so that you don't block the antenna when you hold the phone in a fashion that can be remotely described as comfortable or natural.

Then Jobs continued to get more arrogant as the conference goes on. If Jobs thought he could avoid lawsuits no cases would have been given out, and he continued to be hostile and evasive throughout the rest of his conference. His comment about the Eminem band aid may have been the single dumbest thing I've ever heard. Of course, by saying how they'll reassess the issue in September and making snide remarks, Jobs distracted people from the real point that they're going to fix it in future productions of the current phone, which all of their factories will undoubtedly be doing by September (via nonconductive coating). By quietly rolling out the fix, Apple can avoid giving out cases on the new phones and dismiss the antenna problems as a nonissue (the coating prevents the attenuation), and they don't get crap from all the people who already bought iPhones.

Surprisingly, some of the media didn't fall for the RDF and called out Jobs for his arrogance. That made me happy. Then I saw Apple's quarterly profits and that they made record amounts of money. I can only hope that Apple's show of arrogance and lack of care for their users reflects in the next quarter (because the previous quarter was done before the press conference, when everyone thought Apple would actually fix the problem.

Now, onto the iPad.

iSuppli thinks Apple will ship about 13M iPads by years end. It's been called the "Tickle me Elmo of 2010". It's essentially printing money for Apple. Tech blogs and magazines can't stop raving about it.

Firstly, I'd like to state that Apple is in a great situation. The things are flying off of shelves. They get a cut of monthly data subscriptions. They've locked everyone into the App Store. They have a serious first movers advantage in the eyes of many, even though the tablet market is nothing new.

And denying that there is a market for internet appliances like the iPad is stupid. The market clearly exists. However, I wholeheartedly agree that, compared to a real computer, the iPad is a toy. And for $500, it's simply too much for me right now.

Yes, we all get envy of the iPad, watching this fly by and that app. I know a professional photographer who uses one to show photos to his clients and actually do some lightweight manipulation. I saw him take a normal photo of a city street under a train overpass and apply all sorts of effects via multitouch: blurring the background, dimming it and reducing the contrast to bring the only the road in focus. Such work would have taken quite a bit of time in Photoshop, and it was done in under a minute on the iPad.

And for all the wonderful things we can say about the iPad, there are many things that are alarming.

Apple is building up their rules regarding application coding and what tools you can use. They're trying to make smaller developers code for the iPhone platform only. iAds wastes bandwidth and time, and ultimately I anticipate Apple will choke out third party advertisers altogether, forcing them to work with Steve. By creating a platform investment for the dev, Apple is trying to get you to say "iOS has apps X, Y, and Z, I'll get that". Then you spend a ton of money on apps, books, and magazines, and you can't take them out of the walled garden. Better buy an iPad or the hundreds of dollars you spent might as well have been burned!

The device itself is prone to a variety of issues. As a magazine reader, it's probably best-in-class, but for regular reading, it's poor. I laughed yesterday as I read my nook on the beach and, after struggling with glare for ten minutes, the iPad owner found the lovely error message telling him he couldn't use the device until it cooled down. Not to mention how much easier e-ink is on the eyes.

It's not expandable. It has planned obsolescence (no removable battery). It has Wi-Fi issues. AT&T has now capped the data plans. It's fairly heavy. It's very fragile (the glass is thicker than the iPhone, but not enough relative to the increased size of the screen, so it is weaker).

Meanwhile, Conde Nast and others are looking to take content that is free for browsers and monetize it by charging iOS users for it (since you can't change the user agent or install external apps without jailbreaking, it is easily enforced).

The fact that jailbreaking is possible doesn't address the fundamental problem that the company who sells you the device is actively trying to prevent you from using it how you want. Many users are afraid to and Apple could take a more active stance against jailbreaking (suspending the iTunes accounts of jailbroken phones, denying warranty support after running checks in the background on a time delay like VAC so it's hard for hackers to determine if a jailbreak is complete and the process is either slowed or users get bitten, etc.)

No device is perfect, let's not deny that. However, the iPad is a feature limited device with a crippled OS. Let's wait for the devices to be more feature filled and affordable for their limited functionality (since trading off bells and whistles for ease of use becomes acceptable once it's priced like an appliance and not a much higher specced notebook), and let's pick an open OS where developers are not limited by the whims of Apple. In doing so, we won't shackle ourselves to Apple.

If you want an example of people doing so, look no further than the companies that coded apps for IE6 & ActiveX. Do you have any idea of the number of companies that mandate that IE6 is the only installed browser? Even Fortune 500 (and 100) companies? Many still use it on new images today. They can't move on because the pain of moving is so great. They pay every day because they locked themselves down onto a limited incompatible system.

At least the iPad does most of its functionality well, barring some serious Wi-Fi issues. The iPhone 4 is a sad, sad joke, and an example of Apple prioritizing aesthetics over functionality and reliability once again. Although nothing matches the level of sin that the hockey puck mouse was.

YFSGT accepts well-written on-topic editorials for publication via our feedback link.

Tip by Anonymous | Added 2010-07-19, 03:18 AM | 22 Replies

If you haven't watched this, it's probably worth your time.

In other news, there's also this one.