Thursday, July 22, 2010

iPhone 4 : My take on it

I am not going to give an in depth analysis of the apple product but a different perspective on the 4th generation of iPhone . My reference for the points to elaborate is the Apple iPhone website itself . SO HERE GOES ...

FaceTime
A iPhone specific feature and moreover only over WiFi . So if you want to video chat with a person that person has to be an iPhone owner and connected to a WiFi network which is highly unlikely . With respect to the concept of video chatting how many of us have turned away from calling up to texting and Twitter . Is video calling an actually needed function ? Can one have an actual conversation looking at someones face on a small display ? It doesn't matter how impressive it may seem , I really doubt its viability. Apparently Apple is willing to open up its standards for FaceTime which means the developers on other platforms can also connect provided they meet the "necessary requirements"

Retina Display
One word that explains what I have to say : AWESOME .
I am blown away by all the videos and images I have seen of the iPhone 4's display . Truly brilliant . There have been a few complaints about yellowness creeping in but nevertheless the Retina Display sets a higher standard for the phones to come .

Multitasking Done the Right Way
Hardly the right way . Apple has made a mockery out of the whole concept of true Multitasking . After denying the support for it Apple succumbs to the users needs but still manages to fail drastically . Here they freeze the application whenever there is a switch with the exception of Music , VoIP services and GPS applications . So there is no task completion in the background rather just a saved state . If one has to achieve this the developer has to use a special task completion API . So iPhone users have to stare at a YouTube video as it buffers (Now fixed with an update ).
Wait there is LESS !!!
Steve Jobs said ,"When it comes to multitasking if a user has to use a task manager they blew it" clearly pointing out Windows task manager . Even the iPhone only switches between tasks and moreover its poor implementation . An app initialised adds it to the tray and the only way to close it is to press and holding the icon , and then clicking the top left corner of the app one needs to close . So if one opens up a lot of apps the tray becomes a clutter .

HD video Recording and Editing
The recording part well every other vendor is upto it . Everybody is on the same level when it comes to quality recording . Editing : Quote from the Website , "Then edit and create your own mini-masterpiece right on iPhone 4 using the new iMovie app — with Apple-designed themes, titles, and transitions. It’s available on the App Store for $4.99." YOU HAVE TO PAY !!!
How many of us would end up editing videos on the phone ?

5 Megapixel Camera with LED flash
WHAT how is this a feature ? Camera is equally important as the Phone Radio chip on the PHONE isn't it ?

Gyro+accelerometer
Another benchmark for the newer phones to come . Introducing the gyro MEMS is a great step in handling the phone and enabling the 6 degrees of freedom for applications to use .


Now the Design ... Apple has one of the the Best Design Team on the Pale Blue Dot .
It is one heck of a sexy looking device undoubtedly . The stainless steel body and the chemically strengthened glass are sight for sore eyes .

The antenna issues are all over the Internet and Apple has reacted to it in a very unethical manner by pointing out fallacies that may or may not exist in their competitors . The HowTo hold the iPhone articles are hilarious .

The no support for Flash decision just shows how Apple wants its complete dominance over the market . Flash is a huge part of the Web today and thus the iPhone users will fall short in experiencing the flash content so widely available .
The true motive behind this not that flash burns up battery life or its unstable rather developers can market media or applications just by embedding it on the website thus skipping the App Store completely . Simple concept : Apple is not in favor of compensating control .

That winds up my take on it .
NJOY !!!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

mountRB : Disk mounter for Rhythmbox

A very much needed feature that is missing in Rhythmbox the default music player in Ubuntu , mounting the drives that are part of the music library in Rhythmbox.

Having a huge music library and spread out in multiple drives it was quite irritating to mount the drives again and again at every startup whenever rhythms had to be outboxed :) . So I wrote a python script to parse through the rhythmbox library and mount the drives mapping the labels to the respective drives and a bash script to call this python script and also startup rhythmbox. A shortcut to launch the bash script added to the gnome panel made music a one click stop .



MAKE SURE TO HAVE LABELS ON EVERY DRIVE !!!

njoy !!!

PS: my first attempt