This Is Your Solution Apple?

Really apple this is what you came up with when asked to write an app for media streaming from iTunes. i am so irritated by the craptastic state of this app it is hard for me to form sentences.

so i have an iPad and i have a mac with iTunes that has all my media in it. i can not fit all of that media on my iPad so the obvious solution is to stream it from my mac to my iPad so i can view it in comfort at my leisure. i use Airvideo because it is easy and a very well written app. when iOS 4.3 was released i was super excited because they had said there would be iTunes library sharing for all iOS devices. i was hoping it would be a sleeker version of what Airvideo does built into the video app on the iPad. however i have never been more disappointed in an apple written product in my life.

first of all when you open it the library looks like this.

Please explain to me the organizational paradigm where season 3 of Seinfeld goes next to freaks and geeks and also season 5 of scrubs? i have never seen anything like this. it is quite possibly the biggest clusterfuck of nonsense i have ever seen. how does this code exist. this is how i assume the code is written:

<(are you sure, that seems kind of silly)>

i honestly have no idea who wrote this code but they need to get slapped in the face......really hard.

so it gets worse...much much worse. once you finally find the season of the show you want to watch it opens up to let you view the episodes. logical except this is what you get.

I do not know if anyone knows that much about the office, but Branch Wars most certainly does not come before Fun Run. who the fuck is in charge of this seriously. so not only are the seasons and shows out of order but the episodes are a clusterfuck as well. moving on, one would just think they could muster through and just find the episode they want, knowing of course exactly what order the season goes in. but no.......it seriously gets worse. not only are the episodes jumbled but the app does not even load all the episodes you have in your library. from my experience it shows a maximum of 16 episodes from a show. also it does not pick the first 16 episodes, it just picks 16 random episodes and displays them in a random order. 

this is what you get at the bottom.

so given no choice because the episode i want is for some stupid reason not being displayed i touch get more episodes, maybe that will just load the rest of them. maybe it is a cache issue and it only loads a certain amount. so lets touch that and see what happens. you are seriously not going to believe where it takes you.

Yep, thats right, it takes you out of the app and into the iTunes store to view episodes one can buy. this is such a pathetically designed app am having trouble finding adjectives severe enough to accurately portray how i feel about it. honestly it makes me want to find the human who programmed this and shove something pointy into his left eyeball. i do not understand how this can exist. i honestly can not understand how it has not been patched yet. i really do not understand how there is not a larger uproar over this steaming pile of feces that is this application.

in conclusion all i want to say is FUCKING FIX THIS SHIT. i am tired of this existing in the state it is. 

ok i feel moderately better. :D

Onstar?

I recently took a family vacation to Washington DC. The trip was a result of the need to go to the Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity. On the way there I got to thinking about the integrated on star function in most cars nowadays. I soon came to the realization that on star does not actually give a damn about the safety of it's customers and I will explain why.

The service as it is setup currently is that the customer pay a fee every month after they initialized the service. Now this is clearly a type of insurance plan for the passengers and driver of the vehicle of which only works if the fee is paid every month. So if one is not a customer of this service then they will not have immediate emergency response if something were to go wrong.

The way it should be is this. The service is paid for when purchasing the vehicle. The feature should be a premium feature paid in full upon acquiring the vehicle for the first time. Once the car is started for the very first time the on star function should initiate on it's own. So the second the car is driven off the lot by the owner they are "insured" with the functionality of on the spot response to whatever may happen. No monthly payments and no subscription. If that is not entirely viable as a product then the most it should ever be is a pay to use service. Where upon using the service for an emergency response the customer is charged a fee, but that should be a last resort.

The reason I got to thinking about this is if we were to have gotten in an accident on our trip, even though our vehicle was equipped with the hardware required for then onstar service it would have been useless since we do not pay for the service. So my question is, why do they automatically put it in vehicles if it will go unused? And why make a clearly innovative safety feature just another money ploy.

It should be an automatically initiated response service meant to keep people safe. Instead it is just another way in order for GM to make some quick cash. They should Stop making it a product to make money off of and make it a standard safety feature across the board.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Recycling Facilities?

When it comes to recycling I have never understood why it is always put into the hands of the consumer alone. For instance it is up to everybody to have to recycle on their own at their own will. This has not proven to work. The waste management system itself should have some kind of recycling built in.

The way it should work:
the consumer puts their garbage out for the company to pick it up. After it gets picked up by the management company it is taken to the facility where it is sorted preferably by robot controlled systems into the various recyclable materials. Thereby leaving only biodegradable waste behind to rot in the giant compost pile that is the dump. The facility could also turn a profit on this venture simply by selling the recycled material to companies who can use it. Not only does this solve the issue of non-disposable waste being left to decompose at the dump It also makes it so companies in the area are using cheaper recycled materials instead of having to buy newly created or mined materials that only go further in exhausting non-renewable materials.

Consumer side of things:
the only thing the consumer would be aware of would be that they put out the trash. Some would say that this would lead to less care on what people throw away. That may be true however that should be the issue anyway. We should be able to throw anything away that we want and have it all sorted out at the facility we pay to manage our waste. Also when it comes to consumers recycling things on their own, their are a lot of financial reasons the consumer would choose to recycle what they can on their own.

Overall I think that if this kind of plan was implemented I would guess that not only would our world start to become a lot cleaner, but companies that should be "managing" our waste would not just be burying it in a hole somewhere but actually doing the management that they currently propose they do.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Modern Warfare 2 is an Epic Failure?

For as long as there have been video games there have been LAN parties. For As long as there have been video games there have been nerds, who even though socially inept, have had there fellow nerds to enjoy the art form that they are. Whether it be in an arcade, a chat room, or even moms basement. Nerds have always gravitated together to be awake into the wee hours enjoying that new interactive masterpiece together.



Infinity Ward has decided however that this is no longer acceptable. They in one fell swoop made all LAN parties impossible with their newest addition to the Call of Duty franchise. Modern warfare 2 with all it's glamor and beauty lacks one of the most important features for any video game.

These are the things that make this game an enormous failure, even if it is the most popular game.

1. No LAN(Local Area Network) support whatsoever.
They decided to tell their customers that either connect to xbox live, play split screen, or you are playing on your own.

2. System connect only allows for 1v1.
If I can play split screen up to 4 players, why not allow me to port that experience to a system connect. There won't be any lag because there is no network to rely on.

3. DLC maps only playable when connected to xbox live.
This is absolute bullshit. I paid money for these maps. They are on my xbox. Why am I forced to be connected to the Internet to access files stored locally on my hard drive. This is a crime against video games.



There seriously should be some list of rules, a video game charter if you will. That has the rules that all games should be developed by. For instance, if I download a DLC, it is now my property. Don't restrict me to having to be connected to the Internet or only certain users allowed to use it. If it is on the hard drive the account is saved to, then I can use that DLC. Halo 3 for all the problems i have with the game has done this part right. Recently my roommate downloaded the new map pack under his gamer tag on my hard drive. On my gamer tag I had not downloaded them. But halo 3 allowed me to play those maps simply because they were on my hard drive. Allow for all possible multiplayer possibilities. System link, LAN, and split screen.

Update:
people have said to me, why do i reserve such hostility to MW2 and not Starcraft 2 a game that should have LAN support but does not. my answer is simple. Blizzard announced a long time before Starcraft 2's release that it was not going to have LAN support. full disclosure. with MW2 however they just failed to put it in the game and never told us about it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

WWDC?

Some words on WWDC 2010. As I sit back and reflect on the keynote this past Monday, I begin to realize just how disappointed I am. Granted the new iPhone 4 looks fantastic, and the technology they added to this new phone is really quite impressive. However there are a few things I have on my mind that I think should have happened but did not.



10.7?
Apples next big cat should have made at least a Preview or a mention. This is the developers conference after all. In the past it has almost always been the event that apple uses to show a sneak peek of the new Mac os. I was a little disappointment their wasn't even a slide hinting at them working on it.

MobileMe?
I have recently posted about my opinions of the current MobileMe set of functions. So really all I have to say is that it is still way over priced for the limited functionality it gives it's prescribers. I really had hoped for any kind of iTunes streaming, cheaper price....really anything would have been nice.



AppleTV?
Apparently it is still a hobby, how unfortunate. Apple concedes victory to google.



Mac Pro?
From what I understand the new i7 chips would seriously upgrade the performance in those machines. I may be wrong, but they have not made a very big deal about their top of the line Mac in a while.


MacBook Air?
Still a joke of a product in my opinion, but it would have been nice to see something about it this year. It was quietly updated earlier this year, but it doesn't seem like that was enough. Even though I have had countless conversations with my cousin about how they should just remove that laptop all together, it is over priced and under powered.

Overall this years WWDC was all about the iOS and the new iPhone. I had just hoped for a lot more. However I always want a 4 hour keynote anyway, and they always keep it under 2. I just hope they quietly release some stuff over the next few months, or even have a special keynote for some of the stuff I mentioned. Either way this years WWDC was just meh. There is always next year.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Large Engineering Project Impossibility?

Nowadays I believe it is impossible to have a large engineering project commissioned. Some would argue that building a stadium, or a skyscraper would be considered a large engineering project, but I am talking more like the Hoover dam, the pyramids of Giza, the highway project in the 1950's and the transcontinental railroad. Those were true engineering projects and in the present I don't think that with all the regulation and union issues about, that it would be possible to start and finish such a large project without immense political whiplash or an incomparable amount of lawsuits.

Why it worked in the past...


Well frankly most of the worlds greatest projects were created using slave labor, or something very close to it. The pyramids were built by slaves who had no rights and did not see any kind of payment for building them. The amount that must have died during the long proccess of building all 138 pyramids must have been staggering.

The transcontinental railroad was built mostly by Irish and Asian immigrants. Whose working conditions would never pass in today's world. The rate at which they completed the project clearly means they worked well beyond the work day limit in today's world.


The Hoover dam was built as an economic boost for the depression, so men were eager to go to work on the project, 112 people died while building it. Something that would never be allowed to happen in the modern age. Even 1 death is a travesty nowadays, and would spread across news outlets like wildfire emphasizing how the project is doomed and how it was a terrible idea to begin with.


The 1950's interstate project is the most recent. Suggested by president Eisenhower It was immense, the goal was to connect the country in a way that was never before seen. much like the railroads in the 1800's the interstate was meant to enable travel to more places even easier. A trip that would take 30 days prior to the interstate now took two. Since it took place in modern times the conditions were quite good when compared to prior projects. However the price tag was a staggering 128 billion dollars. The pubs would have a cow if Obama wanted to spend that much money on a single engineering project.

That's not to mention union issues, where to manufacture goods, housing transfer, and so on. The cost for something that big is too high in today's world. The regulation would restrict it so the length would be ridiculous and it would be political suicide if the project went awry in any way.

I think the closest thing to these examples would have to be the Burj Dubai tower. However even that was built using sub par working conditions.

Why we need one right now...
The reason I bring this up is because take the Hoover dam for instance. When it was commissioned in the 30's it was designed to create jobs and boost the economy. It worked, and it also created the largest hydroelectric facility on the planet powering most of nevada and southern california. The country could use the boost in it's economy with a project of that size. Unfortunately it will probably never happen.


Obama has said multiple times that he plans to redesign and re construct our crumbling infrastructure. This means redoing roads, electrical distribution, water, and much more. I have not seen any progress in my home town just yet, but he may have this on the back burner since now he has to deal with finishing healthcare, the oil spill, 2-3 wars, terrorist issues, and so on. Hopefully he gets to it because we need the jobs and we need the economic boost that would surely follow.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Magazine Prices?

So reading on this ipad is amazing. However the price I have to pay is not. I really want to get popular science and time. But both cost $4.99 an issue. AN ISSUE. I mean come on. Give me a years subscription for 30 or something. $4.99 is way to expensive for a magazine issue in my opinion. I was really hoping to be able to read magazines and comics on this device, but now I find myself realizing just how poor I am, lol. Even comics are around 5 dollars. I guess this is how much these things would cost in the real world so it makes sense. However most magazines like popsci have a yearly subscription service for a drastically lower price then it would cost to purchase each in the store. I really hope they bring that kind of service to the app store, because then I will actualy start buying magazines. As for comics, I really want marvel to bring their online service price of $59.99 yearly price to view thousands of comics online. Why don't they bring that to the iPad? Clearly it is because people will buy the comics regardless. Overall the whole comic and magazine trend on the iPad is disappointing to me. Hopefully things change in the future.

Update: wired came out and said today that they would be releasing a subscription service in the fall. Let's hope the rest of the magazine companies follow their example.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Windows Terminal?

i am using a public terminal to type this with.

the entire purpose for getting on this windows machine at work is so that i could print off my pay stub. but they have it locked down so i cannot even save a document to the desktop to allow me to email it myself. i would try my flash drive but it is in my locker downstairs and i don't feel like walking all the way down there just so when i try it i am not able to access it. the reason i would need to email it to myself is because there is not a printer connected to either of these terminals because of the simple fact that people would destroy their ink reserves here at the hospital.

there used to be the library here that had printers, that associates could enter using their ID badges. since they renovated it, they have blocked out anyone who is not a Doctor from using the library. apparently the doc's were getting pissed they had to share their library with the other staff from the hospital. i would try and get my pay stubs at home but their website only works in IE, which is beyond stupid. i have a mac and there is not an IE for Macintosh. so i am restricted to a windows machine to check my pay stubs. they don't even allow for FireFox to access their website. what a brilliant idea Promedica web programmer.

so now i have to attempt to connect a printer to my windows partition on my mac just so i can print out a pay stub. kind of lame that the security on these terminals is so extreme. why not just allow for desktop saving of documents, but when the machine logs off it restores to the default empty desktop. this way i at least could email myself the saved HTML of the websites that contain my pay stubs.

i went to put a picture on this post and apparently i am not even allowed to open a new window. how lame is that. also i just found out i cannot create a document in google documents either. i fail to see the reason for those two things to be disallowed.

also, this keyboard fucking blows.