Twenty-Six. Early Thoughts

Just picked up the Motorola Xoom today, I’ll be frank and say that this is quite the let down.

I’ll start with one of the biggest gripes I have with the product: the sleep/wake button. Seriously, WHO on the products hardware design team thought that this would be a bright idea?

“Hey guys! let’s put the sleep/wake button BEHIND the device!” So now every time I set the device down on the table, after 30 seconds (or however long you choose) you have to pick up the device and fiddle around the back to find the button to turn it back on. This gets annoying real quick. If I have the device down on the table and I want to quickly check an email, look at my to-do list or anything really, there’s just no hardware button anywhere on the device to wake it up from sleep. I have to pick it up from the table and wake it up.

Above: Neither Form NOR Function.

Next biggest concern, seriously, the boys at Google need to do something  about Android’s UI. I love the widget system, certainly beats Apple’s aging grid+icon home screen design. The practicality of widgets are wonderful, I don’t have to swipe everywhere finding my Weather app to see the temperature, it’s just there. Also, the notification system is excellent. BUT, for the love of God why on earth is this device so laggy? The frame rate when scrolling between home screens is wonderful, nice and smooth. Perfect. But the second I click the App tray button, it lags. Horribly. Honestly, the device is running a 1Ghz dual core Tegra 2 chipset, how the hell does it struggle to open a list of 20 apps? This was apparent the moment I turned on the device, I didn’t have anything past the stock selection of Apps and the device struggled to open the tray. Scrolling was terrible as well, just go to any media heavy website (such as Engadget) and try flicking the screen, the scrolling is extremely choppy. Now, this could be one of two things, 1. The device can’t handle the UI, it’s just too slow (but that’s ridiculous because it’s a 1 Ghz dual core processor!) or 2. Honeycomb just isn’t optimized for the Xoom (but wait! it was developed for tablets such as the xoom. In fact the xoom is the FIRST android honeycomb product on the market, how the hell is it not optimized!?).

These are my two biggest gripes with the product, it’s thicker than the iPad 2 (that’s fine, no big deal) and it’s rather comfortable to hold. I really wanted this product to have a competitive edge on the iPad, but from the looks of it, it’s just a giant let down.

7 April Permalink

Twenty-Four.

I’m a sucker for awesome product photos. Sites like shop.hardgraft.com and Gearpatrol give me a feast of awesome product displays. 

Here’s one of my favs from Hard-Graft. 

11 January Permalink

Twenty-Three. Happy New Years

Dang it! Tumblr keeps crashing on me.

Anyhow, Happy New Years everybody! I’ll write a proper post when Tumblr decides to stop crashing. Or I’ll just switch to Blogspot. 

3 January Permalink

Twenty-Two. Harry Potter is a Wuss.

Ruh oh, been a while since I updated the blog. Currently listening to Extraordinary Girl by Green Day. I must say, the first time I heard this song I didn’t quite like it, there was just something about it. Guess I never found it that special of a song, but having reheard it again all these years later, I really like it. Dammit past Don! Deleting this off your iTunes library was a bad idea! 

Anyhow, I recently watched HP7 (Finally!) and to make up for being a bad Harry Potter Fanboy and not watching it on the day of release, I watched it twice. In theatres. Overall, I liked the movie, it was an entertaining movie and I really like some of the cinematography. Although, Dobby’s death at the end of the movie seemed really badly done…just the whole Harry holding Dobby bit felt like they didn’t spend enough money on the special effects there…because Dobby looked like a broken animatronic (which is what I’m pretty sure what it was). Reminded me of Yoda in the original Star Wars series. Other than that though, I really enjoyed the movie (even the second time round). I can’t wait for part 2, actually I can’t wait to see when they do that “Snape’s last memory” chapter! In all honesty, throughout the whole series I felt the most interesting character was probably Snape. There’s just so much mystery surrounding his current position in the Order of the Phoenix and that of the Dark Order. What a badass Snape was. 

Having grown up with the series you realize that as a kid you don’t really notice some of the flaws in the books/films until after you’ve grown up a lot more and looked back at things and realized “wait…why didn’t they just do this?”. Take for instance this Apparation thing, if everyone can apparate why didn’t they just apparate in and out of trouble? Yes I get it you can’t apparate into and out of Hogwarts, and the Ministry (unless you go from their main offices) but when they are in the fields (like in the movie, when the trio are running from the Snatchers) why didn’t they just grab hold of each other and apparate out of there? Would’ve made things a lot easier, especially since they couldn’t follow them unless they had grabbed some part of them. Another gripe about the whole series was the whole killing curse thing. Seriously, the killing curse is Avada Kedavra? That’s just a slight modification of Abra Kedabra…I swear J.K. Rowling just missed the B keys and hit V and ended up with Avada Kedavra. I mean you got Crucio for extreme pain and Imperio. Those at least sound kind of awesome and have some kind of reference to real words (I’ll assume Crucio refers to cruelty and imperio with Imperil) but seriously, Abra Kedabra is the “spell” ever magician says when they are performing their tricks for kids….and you made that the killing curse? Dang it J.K. Rowling! Way to slack on the deadliest curse of them all. 

Also, does anyone else find that the whole de-illuminator thing kind of lame? I felt that Rowling wrote herself in a corner after Ron and Harry had their argument and Ron left the camp. She probably thought it’d be awesome to have some drama between Ron and Harry, to show how everything has taken a toll on their friendship, but then she realized she wrote a bunch of crap about Hermione’s protective charms all around their camp areas. Anyhow, I felt like she took a look at her bank account, saw all the extra 0’s realized it was the last book and said SCREW IT! and wrote that garbage about the whole de-illuminator and Ron’s heart. Bah! Rage every time I read that passage. 

Despite my small gripes with the series, it’s still awesome and I still grew up reading this stuff. I think I’ll go and re-read Snape’s Last Memory now. Happy Holidays!

27 December Permalink

Twenty-One. Stuck in my head.

Oh Let’s get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France, 

Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance

Let’s get rich and build a house on the mountain making everyone look like ants, 

From way up there, You and I, You and I. 

14 December Permalink