So my exams are finally over, (hurrah) but I come back to find Apple introducing a new iPod shuffle.
To me, this is Apple’s stupidest/dumbest/lousiest/crappiest/most idiotic product in its 32 years of existence.
No controls = only Apple’s earbuds
This, to me, is the epitome of stupidity. You don’t allow your consumers to use their own preferred earphones because you decide to take away ALL THE CONTROLS, COMPLETELY.
The very fact that the iPod Shuffle is lacking this “feature” makes it completely inferior to every single other MP3 player on the market, both past and present.
Do they really think customers will be attracted to buying something which has no controls and which you can only use with Apple’s earbuds? For people like me whose ears just won’t earbuds to stick to them without falling out every 5 seconds, it’s impossible for me to use the new iPod shuffle. The fact that they’re probably going to release an adapter that adds a remote doesn’t help things because
- I hate using remotes, they’re just clumsy and gimmicky
- I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT
Think about it, I have to pay to be able to control my MP3 player, and not to mention in a way which I detest.
It’s smaller… WTF?
Seriously, did they think the previous iPod Shuffle was not small enough? To me the previous iPod Shuffle was pretty darn good, it was just the right size, felt solid enough, and had a clip. All you could ask for was more capacity, which Apple could add over time.
But come on, was there really a need to make it smaller? What’s the point, are people really going to get all excited over it because it’s like 1 or 2 cm smaller? I certainly don’t need it.
I don’t want someone talking in my ear
Basically, Apple came up with this “brilliant” idea that a robotic voice would read to you the title of your song. I used to own a shuffle and l-o-v-e-d it, and it never had this feature, because it’s completely unnecessary. The original tagline for the iPod Shuffle was “Life is Random”, which was perfect. The whole point was that you didn’t know/bother about what the title of the song was, you just enjoyed whatever music that started randomly playing.
There was never the thought going through my head that “damn, I wish I knew what this song was”, more often than not I already did because the songs I put in my Shuffle were all my top-rated songs which I listened to constantly.
All in all, I really don’t see the point in this new “VoiceOver” feature.
Imagine this conversation…
Customer: Oh this is interesting, what’s this?
Apple guy: This is our new iPod Shuffle! 
Customer: Oh I see… wait there aren’t any buttons?
Apple guy: Yup, that’s right!
Customer: So it has a touch screen or something?
Apple guy: Nope!
Customer: Then how do you control it?
Apple guy: Using Apple’s earphones!
Customer: Oh, then what if I want to use it with my own headphones? How do I control it then?
Apple guy: You can’t!
Customer: You’re joking right?
Apple guy: No! What’s wrong?! Look! It’s SMALLER!
All in all…
Apple’s going down the drain if they continue to produce products like this. Honestly, when I first saw the story about how the new iPod Shuffle has no buttons, I thought it was an Onion article.
Oh the horror when I found out it wasn’t…
Awhile back, I posted 
For those who don’t know, I got into the Quake Live closed beta just this month after they decided to expand the player base. Unfortunately, there currently aren’t any Asian servers for Quake Live, and while that’s bound to change by the time Quake Live goes live (no pun intended), little ol’ me is stuck with 300ms ping in every single server thus far. It’s a pain I tell you, to have shotgun pellets take like forever to hit the wall and to watch your lightning gun beam bend and turn really slowly as you turn your mouse. It’s practically impossible to kill anyone, save for the random kills I get whilst spamming rockets away. Really, spamming rockets at every single thing you see (including walls and floors even if there’s no one there) is the only way to kill anybody with such great lag.
For some reason, games don’t do this any more, developers seemed to have stop bothering about fast paced FPSes for a looooooooong time. The two greatest FPSes to me? Quake 3, and the original Unreal Tournament, which was also released in 1999. For a decade, not a single other game has come close to offering the same level of excitement and tension these 2 games offered. Quake 4 was a complete failure in my opinion and it lost a lot of what made Quake 3 so much fun. Sure the single player campaign was fun, but the multiplayer aspect was a huge step backward. As for Unreal Tournament? They decided to ditch the fast paced, small scale gameplay and instead opted for a more Battlefield-esque shooter, having large fields of play and vehicles to boot.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t exactly despise reporters for asking pointless questions all the time (after all most of them make a living out of asking pointless questions), but couldn’t they have the courtesy of asking their stupid questions AFTER the survivor has settled down, recovered from the shock, gotten extra layers of clothing on (seeing as how it was freezing cold), etc. Oh and while you’re at it, wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t bombard the single survivor with like 10 questions at a time, let him actually finish his answers and sentences, and possibly not ask stupid questions (like if you got out of the plane through its middle).
So despite not having installed Windows 7 beta the day it got leaked onto the Internet (I was too lazy to partition my iMac hard drive), I finally got around to installing it and finally running it, with much difficulty. I’m typing this now in Firefox on Windows 7 beta build 7000, and thus far it’s more or less a love/hate relationship with this OS. I’ve heard so much good stuff about this beta that I expected it to do wonders, unfortunately it seems my expectations might have been a tad bit too high.
First, the way so many other reviewers described the OS it seemed like Windows 7 finally stopped being the naggy OS that Windows Vista was, for example allowing users to toggle how stringent they wanted the naggy UAC to be. That sounds like a brilliant feature obviously, but in reality, the ability to toggle that setting isn’t really that useful at all. There are only 4 different levels available to choose from, and the system defaults to the second highest setting. However, the only difference between the default setting and the third highest setting is that the background applications no longer dim out, allowing you to interact with them. However, the naggy UAC screen still pops up at exactly the same frequency as the default setting, which makes this feature quite useless. The lowest security setting completely disables the naggy screen (which is what I’ve chosen) and I don’t even want to find out how naggy UAC becomes on the highest setting.
If I’m not wrong, Vista did this as well, but I’m not a hundred percent certain seeing as how I’m coming from XP (I never bothered with Vista, and that’s a story for another time). In Windows 7, the traditional menu bar (no idea what it’s “officially” called) isn’t there on most Window applications. I’m referring to the one with the “File”, “Edit”, Tools”, “Help”, etc menu buttons. Windows XP had these permenantly visible no matter what application you’re using, however with Windows 7 it’s only permenantly visible in third party applications like Firefox. Stuff like Windows Live messenger and even Internet Explorer have the menu bar permenantly hidden. The only way to reveal it is to hit the Alt key or F10, which is pretty stupid.
Then there were games like Syphon Filter, Wipeout, Coded Arms, Fifa games, Grand Theft Auto, Star Wars Battlefront, etc. The more “mainstream” games if you could call them that. Games that hardcore gamers would recognise, or would be interested in, those with 3D graphics and the ones that were supposed to deliver “near PS2 quality” graphics. Unfortunately, it was about this time that the flaws in the PSP became more an more apparent. It seemed the PSP simply wasn’t designed to play certain types of games well. For example, first person shooters were out of the question with the PSP’s single analog stick; third person games seemed likely, but the level of detail in the PSP’s graphics simply made them unplayable, especially with the dim screen; sports games were simply just ports of its console brethrens except with worse graphics and lacking features; strategy games were almost non-existant. The only games it seeemd to work well with were racing games (which get boring quickly especially when there are so many different versions of racing games out there), RPGs (of which good ones were far and few in between) and puzzle games (of which good ones are possible to develop for almost any kind of platform).
I’ve stopped bothering about my PSP for a long time now, there simply isn’t much to play anymore. It seems like developers have completely given up on the console, or at least have given up trying to produce quality games for the PSP. That’s probably a wise business decision.
Sony’s answer to this problem? “Since the reason why it’s doing so badly is because of hardware sales, let’s introduce NEW hardware… AGAIN!” Hence, the birth of the PSP-3000, which besides a brighter screen and an in-built microphone, didn’t introduce much significant changes. Note, this is already the third generation PSP in just 3-4 years, in comparison, Nintendo only introduced a single reiteration of its original DS, the DS Lite, in 2006, and it’s still selling like hotcakes up till this day. Along with the new hardware, Sony introduced new features such as the PSN store which allowed users to download games off the internet onto their PSP.
The answer to the PSP’s sorry state is so painfully obvious: Sony needs to attract more quality developers to the platform instead of trying to sell as many units as possible. If they continue trying to chase after the consumer with more hardware and software improvements, the PSP is going to die out faster than you can say “PSP-4000″ or “4th generation PSP”. As long as quality games start arriving for the PSP, consumers will tag along. Maybe, just maybe, Sony can revitalise the PSP.
At roughly 4am or so in the morning (Singapore time of course), Apple held what was going to be its final Macworld keynote. After more than 2 decades of releasing its brand new products at what is arguably the world’s largest Mac convention, it has finally decided that 2009 will be the last time they’ll participate in Macworld.
