I have little doubt that I’m going to be just as horrible at this game as I have been at most of the new Angry Birds levels, but the physics look awesome and I’m sure that Rovio will still get my $2.99 just the same…
Love the NASA promotional tie-in, too!
You know, it’s bad enough to regularly get my ass handed to me sometimes at triple my own score by my sister in Scramble, but it certainly doesn’t help my ego afterwards because with using a picture of Madelyn as her Facebook profile picture, it totally looks like I’m getting beaten by a baby…
Good god, I never imagined that getting this fixed would end up being so difficult… 
Tonight I had a really bad experience getting my iPhone replaced. It wasn’t one person that did something really poorly, but instead several entities who all made tiny mistakes individually that compounded into a giant ball of frustration that for a brief moment left me wondering if I really did need this beloved iPhone of mine after all!
Let’s start at the beginning…
The Appointment, Part 1 (Apple’s fault)
I actually had originally scheduled my appointment for 7:20pm Saturday night, but rescheduled to 7:20pm on Monday so that we could go to Disney. Or at least I thought I had rescheduled, but come Monday morning, I double-checked and apparently it didn’t take, so I ended up with a slot 30 minutes earlier because my preferred spot was now mysteriously gone…The Appointment, Part 2 (Apple’s fault)
Though I’m honestly not even sure why I had an appointment because I literally sat there for 40 minutes before somebody was actually able to help me. It kind of reminded me of that old Curb Your Enthusiasm episode – what’s the point of having appointments if you’re still taking walk-ups ahead of me?!The Replacement (nobody’s fault?)
Ok, so this part actually went fine – they gave me a new iPhone with almost no questions asked, and after nearly an hour, it looked like I was finally on my way!The Activation (Verizon’s fault)
…except that I couldn’t actually activate the thing in the store because Verizon wanted some stupid “Billing Password” that I had no idea what it was. When I got home, neither did Sara, so she ended up having to call and have them activate it over the phone.The Restore Process (iTunes != iCloud, Apple’s fault)
But we weren’t done yet! After all of that, I couldn’t help but notice that a good number of my apps, along with all of my music, were just plain missing. It took more digging, but I finally figured out that I had backed my phone up to iCloud instead of iTunes, and so I had inadvertently restored from the wrong backup. Worse yet, the only place you can choose between the two is when you’re setting up the device for the first time, meaning the guy at the store had just buzzed right past the option that I needed and I had to wipe the whole thing and start all over again to choose the option correctly that time…
Thankfully, when I got to the activation process again, I just guessed at Verizon’s mystery password by using the last 4 of my wife’s social and it miraculously worked, so at that point I just had to give it time to re-download all of my apps from iTunes again, this time based on the list that iCloud had, not iTunes.
A couple of hours later, and one incredibly long walk afterwards to calm my nerves, it looks like everything has been restored and I’m back to business as usual again. Just goes to show you not to let yourself get too excited about a company’s “amazing customer service” because it really can change just that quickly.
In retrospect, it’s also interesting to note all of the precautions they took in the store to emphasize that they had no responsibility for my actual data – I had to sign something stating that I was authorizing them to wipe my old phone, and the guy even had me push the confirm button! So it’s a little discomforting to find, even only temporarily, that my backup didn’t actually contain what I thought that it did – I certainly don’t have lists of my apps or contacts anywhere, so if those actually had been lost, it would’ve been a major inconvenience to say the least.
If anything, it seems like a fairly quick fix would be a setting on your Apple ID to indicate whether your backups were local or in their cloud, just so there’s no confusion. I actually thought that when I migrated to iCloud, I wasn’t allowed to do local backups anymore, so if during the restore it had just asked me to sign in and then explained whether it could get my data from the cloud or if I needed to connect to iTunes to continue, that would’ve made a lot more sense.
Apple’s usually pretty good about the overall user experience, but they really dropped the ball on this one, especially considering that I’m a geek and I still got confused. Most probably would’ve went back to the store the next day and yelled for them to “fix it,” whereas I pretty much just yelled at the dog and was a grump the rest of the night while I tried to work through it myself… 
Just glad that it’s over now, and I’ve got a working home button on my phone to show for it.
My other revelation that I had at the Apple store earlier this evening is one that even made my wife do a double-take and say, “Wow – now that’s cool!”
Admittedly I can probably count the number of times I’ve been in these stores on one hand, so I’m not super familiar with their layout, but when I finally settled on my iPhone case, I caught myself saying, “Hey, wait a minute – where do I actually check out?!” as I looked around the store and realized that with the Genius Bar in the pack being entirely for tech support, they actually don’t have cash registers on the floor in these stores! Surprisingly, I asked a random employee and he proceeded to check me out right there on his iPhone, which alone was pretty darned neat, but that wasn’t the cool part…
The cool part was that before he ran the transaction, he gave me a quick, little demo of the Apple Store app that’s available as a free download, that not only allows you to schedule tech support appointments and browse Apple’s full product line using the store’s free wi-fi, but also using a new feature called EasyPay gives customers the ability to check themselves out when making simple purchases for accessories and the like, with the balance just charged to your iTunes account after scanning the barcode of each item with your phone’s camera! You obviously can’t use it for big things like computers and phones, and employees have to retrieve those from the back for you anyways, but for anything else, just scan the back of the box, click a couple of buttons, and you’re good to go!
I’m a big fan of self-checkouts at grocery stores because A) I tend to be a bit anti-social when I’m out shopping, and B) most times I feel like I can check myself out more quickly and efficiently than a human cashier who’d rather go on break or flirt with their bag boy than help me anyways, but this is even a step cooler yet! I downloaded the app as soon as I got home, and I’m definitely looking forward to giving it a try when we go back next weekend to pick out a case for Sara’s phone and run some other errands…
This is the future, and it is awesome. 
I’ve never really been one who was caught up in that whole minimalist, I have too many things lifestyle, however my trip to the Apple store this evening has left me pondering something along those lines that I probably wouldn’t have expected.
I was looking at cases for my iPhone because I’ve had the thing almost a year and still haven’t taken the time to better protect it from my reliable clumsiness, and I ended up settling on this one that also has the intriguing feature of two sleeves on the back to hold credit or ID cards in addition to the phone itself. I bought it initially, thinking that if nothing else it would make quick trips out to the store on weekends easier when I’m often times wearing shorts that simply don’t have back pockets to hold my wallet, but the more I’ve thought about it, I’m actually wondering if I might be able to get away from having to carry my wallet altogether after introducing this thing into my life…
I started going through my wallet in my head, and then later actually emptied its contents out onto my desk, and the truth of the matter is, I don’t really need most of the crap that I carry around with me on a daily basis. Membership cards to businesses that I visit maybe once a month, and some that technically don’t even exist anymore, business cards that look so ratty I’m not sure why I would want to hand them out if I did find myself presented with the opportunity, an old phone card from about ten years ago that probably has about a minute and a half left on it at this point! Why do I carry all of this junk around in my back pocket with me every single day?!
Or more importantly, could I do without to the point where I can boil my life down to only needing two of them so that I can just carry them around in the back of my phone???
I think it might be possible – right now those two cards would be my driver’s license and the main credit card that Sara and I use for all of our daily purchases. All of the membership and frequent buyer cards, I would think, could be kept at home or in my car for easy retrieval when I drive to HoneyBaked Ham for lunch or something – no real need to carry that kind of thing around in my back pocket. For insurance cards and whatnot, I think I want to try taking scans of them and keeping those on my phone, and then keep the actual cards in my backup wallet that I’d just leave in the car. Mind you, I wouldn’t leave actual credit or debit cards in there, but really, if somebody breaks into my car, I think I’ll be a little more worried about the car itself than the fact that they also managed to get away with my Subway Rewards Card that almost had enough for a free foot-long on it, too! 
Oh yeah, and as for cash … I rarely ever actually carry it around with me anymore anyways, so on the off-chance that I need it, I’ll have had to plan ahead for it anyways, so I’m not really too concerned about that…
Anyways, it’s an interesting experiment, and I can tell one that might take a little getting used to not only for not carrying around the big, honking wallet that seems to be a rite of passage for most men, but also the idea that my primary ID and credit card will be kinda out in the open to the world as I use my phone on a daily basis … that’s admittedly a little weird, too, but I’m willing to give it a try and see if it’s just a social awkwardness that I’ll get over after a while at this point.
Frankly, as much as I thought the idea of being able to pay for things via our phones was a stupid one years ago, now that I’ve got a much cooler phone that I don’t want to spend five minutes without, the thought of even leaving my credit card behind is a bit tantalizing in a world where all I need is this miniature computer in my pocket wherever I go! I believe that Starbucks and some other retailers are already offering apps that tie your rewards card into your phone, so once credit cards are on board, all we need then are electronic state IDs and I’d be all set to walk around completely clutter free … save the phone itself, that is!
In the meantime, though, I think I’m going to try a few weeks surviving on just the two cards and see how that goes – I’ll post a follow-up later to see if I end up going back to carrying a wallet or if my life then feels sufficiently liberated by no longer being bound to this small stack of trivial plastic and paper cards that I’ve seen fit to carry at my side without question for so long! 
As much as I love technology and new gadgets, it might come as a bit of a surprise that I’m not normally what you might call an early adopter for the latest and coolest toys. In fact, if anything I’m typically more of a wait a year or two until half the people have moved on and then give it a try-kind of adopter, if anything!
My most recent case in point for this scenario is with Pandora, the streaming radio service that allows you to customize a playlist by specifying types of artists and even specific songs that you like. Up until two days ago, I’d never actually used it myself … I’d referred my wife to it when she was looking for something to workout with because I’d always heard great things about it from fellow technology geeks, however I’d never gone so far as to actually signup for the app or install it on my iPhone until we were driving back from our Christmas in Michigan and I found myself growing increasingly tired of having to constantly scan for new radio stations as the few worthwhile ones in each region would slowly fade out of range…
A couple of things impressed me with Pandora – first, that it didn’t drop a signal once while we were on the road, even when driving through the mountains of Tennessee. It technically had a couple of hiccups, but I honestly think that those were more my wife’s car getting finicky with the iPod USB connection than Pandora’s fault. Anyways, I don’t know if it actually pushes the entire song at once to avoid problems or maybe just does some serious caching, but knowing how much my 3G speeds on my phone can be when we’re moving at 70 mph, I was impressed!
The other thing was simply that with one click, Pandora managed to single-handedly replace my beloved local ’80s radio station that abruptly changed format into a dance station last summer, and frankly that’s why once we got home I was quick to install it on my own iPhone as well. I mean, I’ve been saying that I’m going to sit down and make a playlist of all my favorite ’80s songs for years … even back when 101.5 The Point still existed … so to finally have a reliable, easy to use way to rock out to my Duran Duran and Survivor in my car again is a godsend in and of itself!
Eventually I want to play around with it some more and maybe locate stations for some of my other musical tastes like modern rock and island tunes. Before I took over driving and requested the sounds of the ’80s, my wife was actually enjoying a similar blast from the past listening to the old ’90s favorites that we both remembered from high school. It’s actually a pretty cool, little app, so I’m glad that I finally got around to getting on board with this one…
It never ceases to amaze me how much content I’ve gotten out of this $2.99 app purchase! Whereas they could easily charge separately for each add-on pack, instead three bucks gets new levels updated for all of the major holidays throughout the year – right now I’ve got an entire year’s worth of seasonal fun from 2011, and now they just released a new holiday edition for 2012. There’s a reason that folks are going gaga over these birds!
My one and only complaint is that the newer levels always seem to be too hard for me! I’ll play the same level for 10 minutes before I finally get frustrated and give up, whereas I played the original levels literally for hours on end. Still, I suppose you can only build so many easy levels before you need to ramp it up a bit, anyways, and again, the updates are free, aren’t they?!
TL;DR – If anyone can tell me how to get past the first level in Wreck the Halls, please have a heart and help a brother out…
I couldn’t help but ponder while I was upgrading my iPhone to iOS5 this afternoon the differences between an Apple and a Windows OS upgrade.
And mind you, I understand that right off the bat I’m not entirely comparing apples to apples here (pun acknowledged, but not intended!) because iOS is a mobile operating system whereas Windows is on a desktop. Plus of course, the mobile versions tend to always be free because I’ve already paid for the hardware itself, whereas for traditional Windows, the software is really all that they’ve got to charge me for…
But nonetheless, as I flipped through the list of all of the cool, new features that were being added to my already beloved iPhone (notification center, enhanced camera features, automated cloud backup features – the list goes on…), my first thought as I was reading through the list was … where are all of the security updates???
Primarily being a Windows user on the PC, I’m used to OS updates being security patches – in fact, almost exclusively security patches. Really, when was the last time you applied a patch to Windows that wasn’t either a security patch or an update to the Spyware Removal Tool?
(I’m still on XP, by the way)
I honestly can’t think of a single one, which leads me to wonder if maybe that’s why people are always have such a lackluster enthusiasm towards Windows these days … it’s boring! Whereas when Apple updates iOS, yeah, I’m sure there are a bunch of new security enhancements that they bundle in there as well – I mean, the download was 768 MB – but that’s not what Apple chooses to focus on, now is it? Instead, they do all of the obvious stuff (security) in the background and alternatively direct us to the cool, new stuff that we’re going to be able to do once we’ve upgraded!
Again, maybe it’s not a direct comparison, but I think Microsoft could take a cue from Apple here if they would stop focusing on the nitty, gritty, ugly insides that most users don’t even want to hear about (i.e. “What do you mean I’m not secure?!“) and instead made those updates actually do something to improve the Windows experience that I already paid big bucks for a couple of years ago!
…
OR you can bundle it into a new version, stick another $149 price tag on it, and don’t be surprised when my next computer is a Mac. I may be nearly a decade late to make the switch, but hey, better late than never…
“Surprised, but nonetheless excited” is probably the best way to describe my reaction the other day when I got a random email from Cinemaware stating that “they were back!” and also that they were released a new port of my old Amiga favorite, Defender of the Crown for the iPhone. Having really been getting into playing the classic version of Final Fantasy on my iPhone lately, I’m always up for another dose of nostalgia!
That said, after actually playing the ported game, I guess I’m somewhat less excited.
The problem is basically that this is a very lazy port – they literally didn’t change any of the controls, despite moving from a 14″ screen with a mouse and keyboard to a 3″ screen with neither. The worst is the cursor control itself – as opposed to being able to touch and select menu items, your finger just moves the mouse cursor just like it did on the Amiga version back in 1986. I mean, this is very literally an exact port from the Amiga version, whereas a couple of minor modernization tweaks would’ve done wonders for the gameplay.
The other thing that stuck me as odd was the sizable Amiga emulator banner along the bottom of the screen – you can unfortunately see it quite prominently in each and every one of the screen grabs below, and frankly, there’s just too little screen space to begin with on a mobile device to be giving anything up to advertisements or whatever. It’s the same reason that I paid the couple of bucks for Words with Friends – I just don’t want to trip over that kind of stuff when I’m gaming on a mobile phone.
Oh yeah, and also unlike how Final Fantasy made a major change to their save system to allow the ability to basically pause anywhere, not so much with Defender of the Crown – exiting the game at any point means you’re starting over from the beginning, introductory text that you’re unable to speed through and all…
It’s too bad, really – I used to love this game and it could’ve been a neat, nostalgic little port from 25 years ago, but instead its painfully obvious that this was a bare-bones, shortest route to the iTunes store project that’ll be happy with the $2.99 from anyone who they’re able to trick into downloading this based on great memories. The game still looks great for its age, but it’s just not really playable in its new format, which is an absolute shame because they could’ve done something really special with this timeless classic instead of just taking the easy way to a few quick bucks.
I always loved this part in particular – the class change always felt like such a big accomplishment, like becoming a man … at least in Final Fantasy terms. I kind of like the updated graphics that they did for this scene, too – feels straight out of Final Fantasy 2 (IV), with the exception that you don’t actually have to fight Bahamut this time to prove your valor…
That’ll be Sir Gobo from now on!
