Ranting Kenya

CBC has a feature section this week about the Canadian wireless industry. Basically it has got my blood flowing again.

I have some thoughts that I would like to add.

In my own experience, even though data plans and mobile plans are getting cheaper, they aren’t getting cheaper for me. They never have. If I have a plan that “seems” to work for me for the last two years, that plan isn’t offered to new clients anymore. Also, there is no plan available that is similar that I could use for cheaper.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that price is what keeps Canadian cell phone subscribers relatively low. It’s really simple economics. Price goes down, demand/adoption goes up. Even Sony’s Playstation division seems to be learning this finally. Bell, Telus, and Rogers have divided up the customers, and there happy the way it is.

Bell and Telus now offer the Blackberry Pearl, the 8130 to be specific. Now the 8130 is the version that has the GPS. RIM also has another Pearl, the 8120. Now the 8120 and the 8130 are identical in every way except the 8120 has WiFi instead of GPS. Now why wouldn’t those cell carriers want the phone with WiFi built-in? Oh yeah, to sell their insanely expensive data plans. Why should the carriers choose which phone I can get when the carry an identical phone with only one feature that’s different?

 In my previous posts regarding Safari on Windows, I was a little underwhelmed. There was no real super feature that made me want to switch. To be honest, I’m too connected to Firefox and all my extensions to leave it on a regular basis anyway. However, I fired up the new update to Safari today. Version 3.0.4. I just wanted to see a couple pages without any cached version available. And I wanted to check my yahoo mail, which for some reason the new version crashes Firefox at my work when you exit it. Anyway, to my amazement, Safari 3 is fast. WAY fast. I was loading fresh pages faster than Firefox was from the cache. I tried different types of pages too. This blog, my portfolio site, digg, Bioware‘s website. All loaded so much faster. Not even comparable. It even seems to load pictures faster once they start downloading. On a side note, I had another look at the MacBook Pros the other day. These ones were running Leopard and were brand new. The public hadn’t spoiled them yet. There wasn’t even fingerprints on the screens. Anyway, man, those machines are nice.

Let me begin by stating that I have an HD-DVD player (the Xbox 360 attachment). I believe it’s a better format than Blu-Ray, however I also believe a lot of the differences don’t matter that much. You still get great HD and great sound.

However, now I’m really in the middle. I’m starting to feel the effects of some movies on one format and not on the other. It hurt me way back when after I realized that the Bond movies are Sony properties. Now I’m realizing that Superbad is also Blu-Ray only.

This war really feels like Playstation/Playstation 2 versus Xbox/N64/Gamecube/Dreamcast. There is really little difference in the capability of the competitors, it’s the games that made playstation. Blu-Ray feels the same. There’s just more movies on Blu-Ray. Most of them I have no interest in (Stealth, Hitch come to mind due to their big Blu-Ray campaigns), but there are some good ones.

So what’s my solution? Buy a Blu-Ray player too. Ok. Those Toshiba players are going for 100 bucks in the States, how bad could it be?

Well, the cheapest Blu-Ray player is still the PS3 at $400. The standalone players start at $500. Add the cost of 30-40 dollar movies (there’s lots of Bond movies). So factor in a modest 4 movies and your price tag basically starts at $550 (Blu-Ray has a promotion where you get a number of movies, 5 I think, that come with the player, restricted selection however). That’s kind of expensive.

I finally got my hands on the iPod Touch at Best Buy the other day. It was a rather impressive device. I didn’t have any headphones, so I didn’t check out sound quality or anything like that.

My first impressions were that the screen was impressive. I have seen posts showing the superior screen of the iPhone, and I could see the iPod Touch’s screen limitation, but it was nevertheless a good looking screen.

The text entry was difficult for me on the narrow screen. The first time I tried to enter a url, everything that was typed from my left thumb was one letter off. I continued typing trying to “trust it” but it was way wrong. The wide keyboard was way easier. I did get better however in a few minutes. Not good, but better.

Scrolling through lists and using coverflow was surprisingly awesome. I was skeptical before, but it’s quite efficient.

But seriously, how awesome is the web browsing on that device. I personally have a Motorola Q. I’ve used Microsoft Deepfish, and the regular IE. Safari on the iPod Touch blows it out of the water so completely, I can’t even compare them. Some of the sites I visited loaded very quickly, others less so. I think the WiFi was a little sketchy in the Best Buy so I’m not convinced that the slowness was necessarily the iPod.

If I had any gripes about it, it would be that moving from some of the applications back to the home screen was sluggish at times, also switching from landscape to portrait or vice versa wasn’t as snappy as I would’ve liked.

All in all, when the iPhone comes to a carrier in Canada that is good (i.e. NOT Rogers), I will seriously consider it based on the iPod Touch. The web browsing alone is enough to sell me. The integration that I’ll be missing (potentially) with my computer and Windows Mobile 5/6 is the lesser evil when compared with the impressive web browsing.

Jack Kapica wrote in the Globe and Mail an article concerning data rates in Canada and the iPhone.

Here’s my comments on the article and the situation.

Rogers, this is directed at you, and I’m not one of your customers. Cut your data rates. Get the iPhone ASAP. Apple is making a 3G iPhone right now, if it’s not done already. They’re not stupid. They won’t let their new baby, their new industry changing device languish on your GSM network. Get it now while you still can. Nobody is going to be interested in a GSM iPhone if another version is available.

Also, consider that this is the first revision of the iPhone. Your customers of your data plans are largely business clients. Do you really think Apple isn’t going to improve the business functionality of this device? It already has Microsoft Exchange Server compatibility, which if you remember, competes with Blackberry’s push email service.

When the 3G iPhone comes, and remember that it will, do you really think that both Bell and Telus are going to pass on this device? They’re going to see your weakness, your high data rates, and they’re going to cut theirs and leave you high and dry. I’m not in marketing, but I can already see the promotion: New iPhone with new low data rate, and a first in Canada. Compare that to your counter-campaign: Same Blackberry, and we’ll lower our rates too because we don’t care about you, but Bell and Telus are forcing our hand. Seriously, your rates are anti-consumer, and because of that Telus and Bell have made a killing too. Up until now, there’s been no real reason to change the rates since you’re all sleeping on hundred dollar bills, but the iPhone is the reason. It is the change that the entire Canadian wireless industry needs, and it will come to pass, with or without you. Most people aren’t willing to unlock and have firmware updates mess things up. They need a real solution, the one only you can give.

Seriously, Apple has given you the greatest gift you could ever ask for. The un-disputed hottest electronic device in years, hotter than the iPod, and you are the only one who can really bring it to Canada (for now).

Only, you’re saying, “No thanks.”

Well, it seems that the iPhone may come to Canada sooner than anyone previously thought, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

A mobile phone unlocking company called PureMobile will be offering the iPhone to Canadians in an unlocked version. They evidently announced a partnership with the 17 year old New Jersey kid who had received a lot of press the last few days for unlocking his iPhone.

Here are a couple screenshots of PureMobile’s website.

Has anybody been following the Google phone at all? Or the Google Linux distro? Well, apparently the Linux distro is dead.

Ok, fine. That’s a little upsetting but they can always change their minds. But maybe that rumour won’t go away because perhaps they’re developing a Linux mobile OS for their phone. Linux as a mobile phone OS gets a lot of attention lately.

Anyway, Gizmodo posted some more info on the Google phone. Seriously, it looks sick. I’ll buy it, that simple. You know it’ll have WiFi, GPS for Google maps, and all sorts of other great features that make the iPhone look like an expensive piece of “aluminum and glass”. Anyway, check out Gizmodo’s post.

I was thinking about the clickwheel on Apple’s iPod and where they got the idea from. I also wondered why this strange circular movement of the thumb is so easy to use.

Well it finally dawned on me. Combination padlocks.

Personally, I don’t use the “pinch and rotate” technique with my fingers to select my combination on my padlocks, I use my thumb over the actual numbered surface. This, I found, was more accurate and quick for me to open up my locker at the gym, in college, high school etc.

Then it dawned on me, virtually everyone has used this type of lock before. It’s a brilliant evolution of an interface everyone has used. Nobody realizes their thumbs have been trained for the iPod for years. Maybe the lock manufacturers should sue Apple. I’d say prior art is definitely established.

Is it just me or is texture streaming an issue with the Xbox 360 or the Unreal Engine, or both? Two of my favorite games, Gears of War and Bioshock, both use the engine (I’m only speaking of the Xbox 360 versions) and both have texture streaming delays at times. At first, I didn’t notice any in Bioshock because I was too freaked out to walk at full speed.

So what’s going on with these streaming delays? We are still in the early stages of this console generation, and I can’t remember seeing these issues on the first Xbox until Halo 2, which basically pushed that system to the absolute limit. I know that some developers are still learning how to program for these systems. However, the Xbox 360 has been released to the public for nearly two years now, and you know the developer boxes have been out even longer. So is it the engine? What’s going on and why is this still happening?

Interesting study considering most of the blu-ray players out there are in PS3s, and most of those people didn’t even realize that it was a blu-ray player. I believe HD-DVD is the superior format, though most people don’t know the facts.

PARAMOUNT AND DREAMWORKS ANIMATION EACH DECLARE EXCLUSIVE SUPPORT FOR HD DVD… The companies each said that the decision to distribute exclusively in the HD DVD format resulted from an extensive evaluation of current market offerings, which confirmed the clear benefits of HD DVD, particularly its market-ready technology and lower manufacturing costs.

Bye Bye Blu-ray: Paramount and DreamWorks Animation Go Exclusively HD DVD – Gizmodo

Tags: HD