Transmorphers DVD Review (Kind of...)

Often blockbusting films still have the movie theatre advertisements plastered throughout every town and city during the eventual DVD launch. Transmorphers on the other hand has intelligently skipped the previous and potentially confusing step by going straight to the most profitable market; deep within 170,000+ poorly listed Amazon.co.uk DVD entries that have neglected the need for a marketing budget at all. Probably a case of "If you film it, they will come" said by their brave, recently graduated PR assistant, and well... I did buy it, so fair enough.

Note: Since I wrote the above paragraph 'pre-Transmorphers' then actually watched the film, I honestly can't bring myself to look at a page, let alone write a review about that bloody film - much like the reason why I learnt to touch type; so I didn't have to look at how disgusting my keyboard is. Rather not peer down at the abundance of swamp life amongst the keys and just know I need to wash my hands at every available opportunity than look at that putrid mess of 3 years lunch fodder.

Avoid.

Surfing like it's 1998

One of the main reasons for Google becoming literally the internet's start page is it's simplicity and ease of use. Page after page of clinical, white search results clear for the eye to see. But, unfortunately this once uncluttered design has begun to bulge at the seams as Google sticks it's fingers into more and more pies, adding advertisements for revenue and functionality which resides in the obsolete to many users (read: iGoogle). With this in mind I've flicked my browser homepage, not away from Google, but towards a refined, cut down, iPhone optimised Google; dropping the Adsense and clutter while retaining 90% of the functionality.

Try it here: iPhone Google

Thinking out loud: iPod Touch

Here goes my first attempt at being involved in popular culture: Comparing the Touch to the old hard drive iPods is like comparing (*insert popular fat celebrity*) with (*insert popular thin celebrity*) it's Thinner, lighter, prettier and has a bigger screen. Wait, that hasn't worked.

To be perfectly honest, not only is it a bad attempt at a comparison but I really shouldn't compare the old iPod with the touch because there is in fact a better comparison with the new 'iPod Classic' but I don't own one of those so we're stuck with this. Read on to judge whether or not the new Touch is worth the heavy price.

PROS

Better audio - Noticeably better sound quality. I went back two steps with the 80GB iPod when I had been using the Archos AV400 line of players which had (have) remarkably superior sound over the iPods. The Touch is marginally better and I noticed better low and high tones in music. What ever that means.

No more bloody click wheel - I swear I was the only person who thought the click wheel was an appalling way to navigate your music, now Apple seem to have read my previous blog post and created the iPod Touch. On the Touch all the menus are in list form and a simple flick of your finger scrolls through them. There's also the option of Cover Flow which allows you to browse your music by album artwork, filling the gap of people who still feel the need to have a visual aid like the CD covers of yester-year. It's a very pretty and well implemented way to browse but to be totally honest, it's a much slower way to get to the track you want and i do tend to just forget it's available. Basically, the list view is so well done that it makes the cover flow option obsolete. God I’m glad it doesn't have an on screen touch version of the click wheel like some of their early patents for this device had.

Instant connect to your trusted wifi networks - Ok, maybe not instant but it's very fast, you'd be hard pressed to open safari quick enough to see that it wasn't connected. This is similar to the Macbooks etc, very useful.

Wifi for web browsing is incredibly good. I've used several touch screen devices to browse the web in the past and the Touch is by far the most impressive, easy to use, stab at mobile web browsing out there. Sadly I tend to get very spoilt when a suitable Wifi connection is about and very much miss it when it's gone. It just becomes a video iPod without the added dynamic of the web. It's impressive to think that the Apple web browser, safari, only has one real difference between the full Mac OSX application and the Touch's version and that is that the Touch's version is actually really good.

No more hold switch - That's right, there's no hold switch, it's now a firm button which I'm finding is much better to use than having to flick the thing back and forth. This does sound rather lazy on my part but when you've been using it for a prolonged period of time, going from sleep to awake a lot it does make sense and IS useful.

Enough of the praise, we all know it's a good looking wee bastard, it's the things it does wrong or doesn't do that irritate me and may interest you. Welcome to the cons.

CONS

I've always thought that the curvature to the corners are there not just there for the aesthetics; they also trick the mind into thinking this is an object that's been used, worn down like a pebble in a river over hundreds of years. This creates an immediate love for the device and is the reason you see every woman, man and child shining their finger print ridden iPod on the train. So they make you love the thing, but how do they ensure that this product still has a limited lifespan? A piss poor shiny back, that's how! When are they going to drop this idea or start using a metal that isn't made of 90% butter so it picks up every conceivable scratch possible? When the cable of your headphones leaves an impression in the metal casing, you know there's a problem. I mean, for christ's sake, un-boxing it left a hairline scratch before the end of our first few minutes together. So this cynical view of the shiny back is that Apple is perfectly happy for you to gradually scratch the hell out of the device to add the visual ware and tear which will eventually implement a new iPod purchase.

16GB - Too few gigabytes? This really is a double edged sword and is only held back by the technological advances in flash memory being slower that we'd all ideally like. I frankly loathed the sluggish hard disk based menu on the older iPods browsing and flash memory being noticeably faster in all instances, with better battery life kind of makes me not care about the space limitation. It feels like there was going to be a time when Apple jumped to flash based memory for their flagship line and I'm happy it's sooner rather than later. Maybe this should be in the Pros section?

No email app/no 'add calendar entry'
This is infuriating and frankly is the biggest reason to shelve the idea of buying an iPod touch all together. If not for the fact that you can't live without a fully functioning calendar, then for the fact that Apple has deliberately disabled a productivity feature to extend the narrow divide between the Touch and the iPhone. To cannibalize the iPhone's market is something they are desperate not to do; they've just gone about it in such a ridiculous way. GSM and EDGE capabilities alone are by far the biggest and most obvious separation between the two different products, so why they feel the need to take the 'Add Calendar entry' button is beyond me. Moving away from the admittedly small calendar issue, there's other more glaring things that are missing such as Google Maps and remarkably there is NO Email application. Roll on the hackers who unlock the device and allow iPhone applications to be run on the more than capable hardware of the Touch.

No casual games - That screen is really quite clever, being multi touch and all. To have an addictive little touch screen game on it would be great but they seem to have over looked it. Well at least, they've not started charging for them (yet).

No way to view 'Track information' - Being able to view the ID3 tag info is really useful at times, especially for Podcasts when there's text about the episode. Not having an option, or at least one I can find is really annoying. I can't imagine there's a good reason to exclude it.

No hardware volume buttons - Granted, the double click of the home key to bring up your current music feature is good and works well but it'd be much more convenient to alter the sound in your pocket using a button with tactical feedback, say on the side of the device. It would kill the lines somewhat but frankly it's best to opt for functionality over sex appeal sometimes.

No free content on wireless iTunes store - Though very slick and incredibly fast to download from, the iTunes store is missing quite a useful section. Podcasts and Video Podcasts have been left out entirely. I was actually looking forward to being able to get hold of podcasts on the go, more so than the expensive DRM infested music they sell. Just for pure interest alone from people exploring their new device I would have though a podcast section would be perfect. My guess is that a lot of people, myself included actually bought music to see how it works where as if free items were available I would have used them. At least I was supporting a friend’s band but incredibly I can't now share their own music with them because of Digital Rights Management.

Proprietary cable - WHY can't apple start using mini/micro USB like the rest of the world's consumer electronic manufacturers?!

No wifi sync/music transfer - Such a shame that a device with wifi can't get one of the most useful things right in being able to transfer your music to it without using the supplied cable. To be able to access and update your library while the iPod Touch is in your bag, in another room would be beyond useful. Even the ability to use that wifi for streaming to a wifi media center or your Mac plugged into speakers would be great. And, hey; it would mean I wouldn't have to find that bloody proprietary cable every time.

Conclusion - The iPod Touch is a funny creature. On one hand it's a fantastic iPod, with good video functionality, music and photos but on the other, it's a poor PDA with a pretty screen and clever picture scaling. I knew when I was buying the device that the excluded apps and functionality (comparative to the iPhone) would bug me - but they honestly haven't. I've found that every missing app is easily replaced with a 'made for iPod Touch/iPhone' web app (read: Gmail, Digg and the dreaded Facebook). So if it's not the functionality then what is it?

I think what really pisses me off the most is the fact that this device is more than capable of running every non GSM/EDGE reliant application that the iPhone does and the simple reason for them not including it is the cannibalization of an entirely different product. There's two many iPod Touch reviews focusing on the similarities and comparisons between this and the iPhone which frankly miss the point entirely. Even the Engadget review seemed like they were struggling to justify their $599 iPhone purchases when real the point in hand is that this IS the new iPod, it's the way they're going in future and so far, that future is looking very sunny indeed.

(Additional note, if the future is sunny indeed, screen may not perform as expected in bright light.)

A multitude of buttons, switches and twisty things

Now that the fancy new DSLR camera is here, it's ok for me to take pictures of fruit on my office desk and not be considered remotely strange. It's perfectly acceptable to view everything around me as art - looking at every shaft of light, that broken branch, that crumbling wall. All as long as you can figure out how on earth your own bloody camera works.

I've deliberately implemented a steep learning curve by taking a plunge into the deep end of photography. Hopefully now my constant theft of other people's DSLR cameras will subside and in no time at all through the power of Wikipedia and Google, I'll start seeing some results other than still fruit in a suburban office complex.

Totally new look, *totally* new approach

With a new look and a new outlook, I've decided to go out of my way and announce that there's a very good chance of me updating this blog more than once a year. So, 2007's out the way...

Yes.

Someone's playing a dangerous game

"This photo shows our old office building at 122 Leadenhall Street which is currently being demolished from the ground upwards (really!). The seven upper floors are supported entirely by the central core containing the lifts and staircase. I've never seen it done like that before - weird!"

And then our road turned into a film set...

It hasn't happened often (read: once in the 1970s) but it seems we've become Hollywood again. Supposed to be a BBC show set in Clapham. West London's never been so South. It'd be worth clicking the images to zoom if my nervous little hands would keep still with all the excitement.

iHarbour and the spiralling sense of defeat

Sitting on public transport you can look left to right and wouldn't have enough fingers to count the white headphones pointing towards their shiny DAP, ripe for the picking of any iMugger who fancies an upgrade. It's this enormous user base that has always deterred me from buying into what Apple describes as 'Wearing an iPod' and the stigma that goes with it.

In the last 6 years the players that have graced my ears have varied in quality and in some cases lacked the astatically pleasing lines and curves of an iPod but they all had one thing in common; they all pushed the market forward with a new, groundbreaking feature. I started my jaunt into portable digital audio players with the Archos 6000. Only one word can truly sum up this device up, it was a bloody brick. I remember if I put it in my pocket it would pull down my trousers so I always had to have it in my coat pocket; a real disability in the blazing heat of an August day I can tell you. The great thing about this player was it had a whopping 6GB hard drive 6 years ago. I then moved on to some very poor flash based drives then onto the Archos AV420 (20GB) which could record from any source, including the television which could then be played back just like a small DVR. Clever stuff. From here I moved onto a smaller, flash based player, the Sansa E20 (6GB/2GB Micro SD). This was a great player but I very quickly got fed up with not having my entire music collection with me on the move so this only lasted about 4 months. From here I was at a loss, there was no player on the market that was small in size, large in capacity and worked nicely with my Mac and pc. That's when I had the opportunity to pick up an 80GB 5th generation iPod for a fraction of the cost in USD. When your defence is down, anything can get in.

It's worth mentioning here that I was fully aware of the majority of an iPod's restrictions and quirks so the rest of this could just sound like bad research or stupidity on my part. I'm happy for you to pick one of the two but do maintain the thought that some of these annoyances are pure fantasy as to the MP3 player I really want, but does not yet exist.

• The dreaded Sync - If like me, you've spend many hours getting your MP3 collection just right over the last 8 years then you should approach iTunes very carefully. When you first install, ensure the button is unchecked which offers to automatically organise your music collection or you'll be left with a very different file structure. Syncing your music with iTunes and the iPod brings up some of the least convenient results when you're not really used to a computer making choices for you. I find it hard to pin point exactly what I don't like about the sync feature but I probably have a hard time with it so much because I like to be completely in control of folders on my portable devices and my PC/Mac. For iTunes to be responsible for syncing, especially when it comes to podcasts, I can miss that something has been added or more terrifyingly - removed without my knowledge or consent.
• Clicking Click wheel - For some reason this clicking really rubbed me the wrong way so it was the first alteration to the default settings that I made. It's probably there to mimic the old 1st generation mechanical click wheel that no longer exists. Thinking more about that click wheel as a whole, I think I would prefer one with a mechanical wheel to get a better tactical feedback on it anyway.
• Share and share alike - Often I'll visit a friend's home and rape their recently downloaded music and videos (only the legit, non digitally rights managed, legal stuff, naturally). Put video or music on the iPod and you'll struggle to drag and drop it back off the device and onto another person's PC. Pretty selfish to take and not give so apart from using the storage section of the drive, you need to use a third party application to extract them. Annoying.
• Doesn’t output to HD signal for displaying on a HDTV - Kind of a shame but understandable.
• Wifi is something that's getting much more commonplace in handheld electronic devices, a standard Wifi chip costs about $1/£0.50 to Apple and their iPod is more than powerful enough to utilise one. So why haven't they! My guess is that even if the technology is immediately available to them, it's in their best interest to stagger the leaps in technology to suck dry the financial gain from every generation of iPod. If they put all their cards on the table in one move, they'll have nothing to throw down in 8 months time when the new iPod is unveiled. To be fair, this has to be pretty much standard business practice but that doesn't make it any less frustrating for the consumer.
• Is it just me or is the iPod really below standard on battery life? I get about 5 hours use before my brain gets the "Must find charger" dread of seeing a battery symbol below 50%. With video it's substantially less. My old Sansa spoiled me somewhat, with 20 hours of audio playback and 8 hours of video. My only complaint with that was that if I used it for 20 hours over the space of 2 weeks, I would always loose the charger so at least the iPod one is always to hand. It's a fine balance of battery life and neglect in an MP3 player it seems.
• Doesn't sync through fire wire - Great! Enough said. The more ways of avoiding the sync feature the better.
• Proprietary cable - Mini USB would be incredibly useful. Call me cynical but I'm assuming Apple have done this to assist in 3rd party companies seeking the coveted badge of 'Made for iPod' on their packaging. This is a relatively unknown tax which assures the user to a high quality and the fact that it will work correctly, but also means Apple gets a 10% percentage of the retail price of a product they have not developed themselves. Sneaky.
• I was happy to see there's a software noise restriction lock in the menus. The amount of times I've accidentally blasted my ears with the first five chords of Pantera's classic love song "F***ing Hostile" is beginning to have long term effects on my hearing. This is especially relevant to sound isolating headphones as they need less than 60% of the full volume bar to be more than effective due to the nature of them blocking out background noise. The bottom line is that the thought of owning an iPod AND being deafened by it would be too much to bare.
• Formatted for Mac means you can't use with PC - Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm guessing this is to do with the FAT32 formatting used in Windows and not as on Macs?! Irritating none the less that I have to format it on my PC so that it works on both platforms. Without access to a PC with iTunes it would be even more frustrating.
• Non user replaceable battery - it worries me that one of the hottest topics of discussion in the office is replacing a dead iPod battery that only lasts 30mins after 1 year of use. It's no mistake that the user can't replace the battery, I’m sure of it. Apple have made the assumption that most people will just buy the most up to date iPod as a replacement, if I’m honest, I probably would too if they made it all shiny and whacked Wifi and a touch screen in it, with a 250GB drive and a 1080i projector stuck in the top...

The bottom line is, I own an iPod and am finding it to be a love/hate relationship. It’s not the most stable of operating systems and often freezes up but I am impressed with the intuitive, simple interface design which I’ve used previously in Front Row on the Mac. The iPod for all its annoyances does do one important thing right and that’s the audio quality. Since using various portable music players this one really does come out on top of the pile, especially when used with a decent set of headphones like the Shure E2Cs. I like the form factor and the way I can put 80GB of storage into my pocket and pretty much forget it’s there. There’s also a great advantage to owning a player that 60 million other people own and that’s a constant supply of cables, support and people willing to put time into hacking the device to turn it into something which is more deserving of the title of Market Leader.

Ok Apple, I think this gunfight is over; I'm running low on bullet points anyway.

Excellent Echo

Simple things for simple people. This building has to be made like this on purpose.

A reasonable stab at travel blogging

Syracuse is a town which appears to be cut very definitely into two halves. On one side, which I presume is downtown; the city has been left to fend for itself since it was first created as an industrial area even though the businesses who own the factories have long since left. The buildings that remain would be an estate agent’s wet dream in London as they all are great representations of studio style but here in Syracuse there’s no desire to invest. The surprise stark contrast was when we approached the university campus which seems to me to be the vast majority and focus of the entire city. Here, millions of dollars has, and still is being pumped into a thriving university community.

Dead nice, but a bit showy. I was especially interested to see that they’d adopted a slanty style to their architecture which I feel has been captured perfectly in this photograph.

If I remember correctly, this building was used in Back to the Future, Back to the Future II AND Back to the Future III. But I’ve been wrong before.

Syracuse and the Cellular Car

Dating an American girl, there’s never a day that passes without me learning something about her culture and variation on the English language. More often than not I’ll slip a phrase into conversation that seems completely run of the mill and I’m instantly stopped with the question, ‘Run of the what?’ Today one word that the English rarely use came up and it was only while I was sitting in one that I realized exactly the true meaning of the word.

Here is Kate’s AutoMobile [phone]. I’m making the assumption that she would refer to it as an AutoCell but I feared to ask, and involve her in another conversation while driving at 45mph on a back street covered in snow. When the call ended and another one appeared to begin I put my foot down (left hand drive, me in the front… forget it) and suggested she continued her conversation about a broken wing mirror at home. See picture below, I’m assured it was from falling ice and not a phone related prang.

To be fair, her driving excels way beyond that of an English road user but I guess when you know there’s a good possibility of that 2.5 ton SUV being piloted by a man trying to text message his wife, you’d all drive with a certain due care and attention.