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Education.com and my bank account #banking #thanksbofa

That feeling when you get your credit/debit card and you finally get your own bank account and can spend your own money on your own things…

…and then you realize you can’t manage your account to save your life and you run out of money before you can say “oops”.

 

That’s me.  And I’m bad at learning, so guess what?  Throughout my having a bank account, I haven’t learned how to keep anything under control.  So I’m having to stare at my $0.30-ish balance almost every week because I can’t Money.

Yay me?…

 

Then there’s education.com.  Oh my FUCKing god, no one over there even has a vision for better education (or so I’m told).  These guys deserve their own post, and if you want me to rat on them please say so.

 

So here’s my experience (and I’m going to end up ratting on them anyway):

 

Someone told me that Education.com is this horrible site that is incredibly lazy and has horrible games.  I was tasked with the task of trying out some of those games.

I found out I need to have a Plan to actually play those games.  So I made a plan, and started a free trial, after which I would need to pay 35 dollars each month to continue using the site.  Remember the 35 dollar part.

 

SO I played a few of their games.  And of course it was Pre-school up through 1st grade, so I played a lot of games with awkward animals and flat graphics.

Then I came across a game called “I Got Your Number”.

It was this game-show type Flash game, where a host (who was a dog), asked you math questions having to do with the hundreds chart (a chart with numbers from one to one hundred, ten numbers per line).  At first I thought the dog had a mustache, but then noticed that it kept flickering out of existence during some frames of the dog’s animations.  Then I realized it actually looked a lot like teeth.  Then I realized it actually was the host’s teeth, and the animators completely screwed up on the layering, and set the teeth to appear outside the dog’s mouth!  It looked awful.

 

So I played a few more games then gave up.  I responded to the challenger saying that it sucked, cancelled the trial and completely forgot about it.

Now pay attention.

 

Fast forward a week or so.  Note that I hadn’t actually heard anything from education.com, except the sad “are you leaving?” email that I got when I told it I was leaving.

 

In fact, here’s part of it:

—

Hello,

Thanks for giving Brainzy [the game] a try. We’re writing to confirm that you’ve successfully canceled your free trial and your credit card will not be charged.

—

Well, they lied, because my bank account got hit by the monthly payment from the Plan that they didn’t actually cancel.  Appearently they didn’t get the memo that when you cancel a plan, you’re not supposed to wait past the first charge to actually get to canceling it!!

 

I had less than a dollar remaining on my bank account.  Brainzy’s plan costs 35 dollars per charge.  Into debt I go!

 

And then even farther into debt I get shoved because the bank has this dumb, dumb, DUMB overdraft fee.

 

An overdraft fee is something banks have because they can’t figure out that keeping money in bank accounts is how professionals survive in the first place.

A week after going into a negative balance, the bank charges you about 20 dollars. To your bank account.  So now it’s even harder to get out of the red, and you’re left screaming at the bank clerk (I didn’t scream at the bank clerk, but I WANTED to).

 

I am lucky, however, as I have BillGuard, and have already started disputing with Education.com over the charge.

I don’t think I explained it very well to them though, as I just said “I forgot to cancel my plan.”, because I hadn’t actually checked because I thought people have decency.

 

Needless to say, I hate everything right now.

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iOS 8 Beta 1 #apple #ios

This might be a thing.  But if Apple comes to me and says “Screw you you can’t talk about this”, then it won’t be a thing.  (And I still have a reason:  No money.  Oh, and Education.com is a dick.)

 

That’s right.  Apple forgot how to Security once again and allowed iOS 8 Beta 1 to be downloaded to literally everyone.

 

I suppose before I get into the real OS I should talk about how these betas are not secured.

 

Every developer beta SHOULD have a UDID check inside the file.  This means when you go to install a beta using iTunes, iTunes verifies with Apple if the device has an approved UDID.  UDID stands for Unique Device IDentifier, and it is used by Apple’s services to find the EXACT device that is using the service.

iOS 7 Beta 1 and iOS 8 Beta 1, for one reason or another, does not have this UDID check.  So when iTunes goes to install the beta, it doesn’t matter what UDID the device has, because the check wasn’t performed.  Now, Apple’s services could have detected that the check wasn’t being done at all, and denied the install, but for some reason it doesn’t.

 

So yes.  I have Beta 1 in my possession.  On my iPad, but not my iPhone.  Even though the 5S would be way better suited for iOS 8 than the iPad 2…betas are almost always terribly unstable, and I need my phone to be working.  I don’t use my iPad very much anyway.

On to the OS itself!

—

 

One of the first things I tried out was the new photo editing features.  And while laggy, they were awesome.  One thing though…for extremely dark photos, both the Light and Color sliders wouldn’t work at all.  I could slide them up and down, but the picture wouldn’t change, and the previews didn’t have any difference between them.  Whether this was due to the iPad 2 camera or the software I don’t know.

 

The photo search function worked well too.  I have no idea why it wasn’t in iOS 7…or 6.  Or 5.  Or any of them.

 

There is still no Weather app on the iPad.  I know it’s only Beta 1…but it really should’ve been in iOS 7.  Just my preference.

 

I’m not quite sure if Spotlight Search should use the internet or not.  If you forget to turn off Airplane mode, then you’ll have a hell of a time trying to figure out why Spotlight isn’t giving you Wikipedia entries (although I did find that it retains previous Wikipedia searches and info, so that’s good).

 

Handoff and Continuity obviously didn’t work because I had only one device running the beta.

 

No Siri though.  Sad Siri is sad for not catering to 1% more of the Apple fanbase.

 

Overall, the experience was incredibly laggy good.  The one thing the iPad was really bad at was splitting the keyboard in two.  For some reason it lagged MASSIVELY when trying to do that.

 

But my reaction to all these lags, omissions and general stupidness is a wholehearted MEH.  It’s the first beta.  It will be broken in some ways.  I don’t care.  Apple is just getting their feet under them with all these new things.  The problems will be fixed.

 

I’m not even supposed to have this anyway. (Unless Apple is cleverly actually opening the betas to everyone!  You must remember, Apple has already opened up the OS X Yosemite betas to the first one million people (I apparently didn’t make the cut)!)

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What are you doing #apple

Bear with me for a moment.

 

System-wide third-party keyboards.

 

Buttons that can launch custom actions from within the sharing section.

 

System-wide third-party keyboards.

 

Beats Music acquisition just for another Steve Jobs.

 

SYSTEM-WIDE THIRD PARTY KEYBOARDS.

 

Are you getting it?  These are not just android features anymore.  Now they will be available for all iOS users.

 

*cue Steve Jobs’s ghost dying and a very loud playback of “Don’t Stop Believing”

When Steve Jobs told Tim Cook not to emulate him, Tim listened.  And instead of stalling and exploding into a pit of slag like the WHOLE WORLD was expecting, Apple continued to innovate and push the envelope.

 

Ever had a problem where you left off on a project on your Mac and had to search for the program, open it, and open your document on your iPhone/iPad?  No more.  Now, the Mac realizes you left off somewhere, and will tell your phone/tablet/phablet, and your phablet tablet phone will prompt you on the lockscreen to open the document that you last had open on the Mac.  It’s called Handoff.  It makes sense.  I want it.

 

I can definitively say that Apple still has that magic touch.

 

—

 

Now for the awkward moves that Apple has pulled.  Namely, the 5C (which I haven’t heard a lick of since that weird dots ad campaign), and the Beats acquisition.

 

The 5C…hmm.  It had color.  It fit in with iOS 7.  It felt fun…but…it just wasn’t right.  People reacted the same way that they did with iOS 7, except this time it wasn’t the colors, it was the plastic.  It might have been called poly-something-or-other, Apple may have said “we had no interest in imitating the typical, fragile plastic phone“, but dude…it’s plastic.  A material usually associated with cheap phones and/or baby’s toys.  Even if God built it…it’s plastic.  People will assume it will break if you so much as drop it on carpet.  It’s PLASTIC.

Also $600 iPhone vs. Free Firmware.  Who wins?  Apple, I’m going to tell you this for your own good: Please Try Again.

 

Steve Jobs would have thought of this…if only Apple had hired another perfectionist who knew what people would want before they did…

 

Oh wait, they have!  Dr. Dre!  Of BEATS.  A MUSIC COMPANY.  NOT RELATED TO ITUNES MUSIC/RADIO.

They also make headphones.  Every single market analyst was stunned.  They hit Ctrl+Alt+Del accidentally on their stock market computers and crashed the stock market (lawl i made a joke).

 

Here’s what I think:  Dr. Dre is a perfectionist, right?  What drives Apple?  Perfectionism.  Awesome build quality, awesome software quality, the Magic Moment, building things people don’t even know they want until they use it!

 

QED.  Apple has just bought a second Steve Jobs.

Apple.  Bought.  Innovation.

Chew on that and tell me how it tastes.  Does it taste like shit?  Does it taste as bad as Apple hiring that iOS jailbreaker a while back?  What?  That tastes like shit too?  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

 

Some people say Apple just wants Jimmy Iovine.  And you know what’s funny?  This post was originally going to ask “Who the fuck is Jimmy Iovine??”  Then I actually checked his Wikipedia article.  You can tell I don’t follow Beats very much.  But the article dosen’t say whether he’s a perfvectionist like Dre.

 

But here’s the thing.  We know that Dre is signing up as an executive.  But we don’t know where Jimmy is going to go.  He was hired, we just don’t know what position he was hired to be in.  Is he going to be CEO, CCO, CBO, design nerd, replace Craig Federigi or Jony (please not Jony)?

 

Time will tell what all this nonsense means.  That or Apple will explode into slag before they finish their new campus.

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Apple’s ACTUAL direction #apple #oops

Apple uploaded a video on YouTube (yes Apple uses Google somehow) that proved that Apple isn’t turning into Toys ‘R Us but instead is turning into Arbor Day Inc.

Which means that it’s trying to make everything better. Not somewhat better, not awesomely better, just better. Seriously, that’s the entire title of the video: “Better”. Look it up (search for Apple as a channel, don’t actually search for the title).

Now I’m not quite sure what iOS 7 was. Was it flat because it wasn’t depicting real materials and thus was “greener”? Was it colorful because…I don’t know?

Whatever. People are calling it modern so fuck it, I’m sure Apple knew why iOS 7 is better.

“‘Better’. It’s a powerful word.” – Better Tim Cook, a Better Apple, “Better”, Better YouTube

…the iPhone 5c wasn’t better…

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My thoughts on Apple’s reportedly different direction #apple #innovation

First I’d like to say everyone think different.

Now I’d like to say everyone follow your competitors and the smell of sexy greenbacks. And I don’t mean women with green backs.

Yeah.

So Apple is making a phone with a larger screen. I don’t know if that rustles any jimmies, but it’ll make things hell for developers. Or it would, if every element wasn’t able to just be substituted for a different size via the magic of templates, and not only that, every single element is basically a wire frame and can thus be vectored very easily.

I can hear you yelling at your screens that I’m defending Apple, and that what I should be doing is talking about the iPhone 5c and the massive miscalculation that both Tim Cook AND Jony Ive made of how well a phone with a colorful plastic backing would sell. After all, this is Apple we’re talking about. Innovative, serious, cool, techy Apple…right?

No. Or at least, not really so much anymore.

Take the iPhone 5c and iOS 7. What was the selling point of both? Color and fun. The 5c was a breath of fresh air from the black and white lineup, and iOS 7 was the same thing. Apple is completely changing. Changing from a company of innovative sleek devices that “just worked” (except when they didn’t), to a more open, happy company.

Do I like the change? Not particularly…but I won’t mind it if they keep the same build quality and software quality that they’re known for.

I did love the feeling I got when I used iOS 7 for the first time. I wish I had gotten a 5c now. But Touch ID is fun too.

I wish I knew what the iWatch looked like. A colorful plastic Nike-like band isn’t what the world is looking for. That I can say with 100% certainty. (laughs)

There have been many concepts, but honestly I can’t tell what it will look like. I can tell you this though: It won’t have a chrome-black color scheme.

I’ll leave the internet to fret over that.

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iOS 7.0.x is a bastard child #apple #ios7

I went there, and here’s why I did:

Every app, even Apple’s own apps, cannot play nice with this thing. Well they can, but they don’t know how to be a consistent program. Well they can, but…

Well, I have 11 copies of “Apple Keynotes” in my podcasts app right now.

Could be because I spent a long time trying to get my stupid iPad 2 to cooperate with my Photos app.

Or maybe it’s because the Podcasts app sometimes fails to play episodes and says they’re unavailable from the site even though I know iOS 7 is a lying broken mess and…sorry. I’ll never do that again, tell Jony I love him but he really should’ve…huh, what other option was there…

I’ve been asking myself if Jony should’ve stayed in hardware…and I really have no clue as to what the answer would be to that question and I’m so not padding this in case I figure out an answer to the question as I’m writing this thing down.

It wasn’t even his decision…Tim Cook did that. Tim Cook saw that Jony had magic or something so put him in software.

And Jony didn’t do a good job the first time around.

It’s okay, Apple, people fail the first time around…it’s completely okay *checks news sites*…okay maybe not that okay.

*Rechecks news sites*

Maybe Jony should leave.

Nah, I’m kidding. Jony’s fine. The simplicity of the iWatch will prove that flat simplicity is the simplest and best way to simply simplify simplicity’s simple simplicity.

I hope.

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iPad Air – Review #apple

Let me say first — I do not have an iPad Air. I have not held an iPad Air. But there are a few things I can already say about iPad Air.

Some people may say, if you have not held iPad Air, you have not experienced iPad Air. But since most people pay attention to reviews and blogs when deciding whether to buy products, I think I’m obligated to make a review without experiencing iPad Air. iPad Air.

So let’s start with the name. It’s a bit strange, seeing as Apple has already come out with a product using that tag…the MacBook Air. My dad thinks it’s ridiculous.

But what I think is that the name actually fits it to an extent. The iPad now is able to run at desktop speeds, meaning that the iPad can run as fast as a MacBook…or MacBook Air, hence the name iPad Air. The name also implies the flighty feel you get from how fast it runs…everything runs at the highest FPS, the iPad feels like it’s running with the power of air (that is NOT me getting soft, the style of the OS helps with that effect).

But this has a problem…what of the next version of iOS? Apple typically retains devices through 3 iterations of the OS, then they drop support for the device. If iOS 8-10 dosen’t have this glass/plastic/airy feel to it…I don’t think the iPad Air will hold up the name. Especially if there’s a monster update which requires the A9 chip or B7X2000 or whatever awkward name they can think up. The speed issues will really weigh down the Air (SEE WHAT I DID THERE).

Next, the weight. iPad 4 weighed 1.4 pounds, the iPad Air weighs 1 pound. In Apple-land, this means that the iPad Air is TEH BEST. But I’ve read one blog post where the writer is really disappointed with the iPad Air. Its name, its weight, its price, everything. And he already bought the iPad Air. In my mind, if one person is not completely satisfied with an Apple product, then Apple has lost that product battle already without even trying. Apple is supposed to make products sexy, shiny, intuitive, simple, and fun. If one of their customers feels the need to go buy an Apple product, and isn’t satisfied, I don’t care if Apple’s own board of directors puts Apple at 100% customer satisfaction, that product did not fit that one person’s needs, and that can get bad PR REALLY fast if the news spreads in the right direction. And Siri will get very angry about that (you can try telling her that…I don’t think she’ll react to it though…she’ll just look it up and cheerfully go “HERE RESULTS READ THEM”).

Overall…5/10 maybe? Sorry if that’s too low for you, ain’t too low for me. iPad Sulfur Hexaflouride…sorry, I’m just being silly now.

EDIT: I could have made a Pocahontas joke here…but that would’ve been overkill.

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iOS 7 – Review #ios7

Despite what I said in my previous posts about it being really REALLY white and how it relied on some sort of psychological ninjutsu that no one understands (I.e. The blur effect)…it feels really good to use this OS.

“After what, Windows?” You ask. No…it just feels..it gives me feels…I have feels for this…not in a sexual way…I just have FEELS…

I think it’s the mental model it uses. A mental model is something that needs to be used more often something that a developer uses to help make the user experience consistent. For instance, the mental model for iOS 7 is (I think) glass panes in a 3D space.

It’s executed really nicely, and while I’m somewhat beauty-deaf (although I have a proficiency for it when I’m designing something and I can appreciate it), it just gets me in the right spot.

My complains still stand however. Just in case you thought I was brainwashed by Apple’s awesome shiny perfect happy…yeah.

[While I was writing this, I realized I was getting a case of burn-in on my iPad screen……weird. And it only happens when the area is covered with a solid-color blur effect? What?]

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iPhone 5S – Review #apple

Touch ID is awesome. No, it’s not just a marketing ploy to describe multi-touch (I am ALMOST sure that Apple would do something like that, as blunt as that sounds). It is a fingerprint sensor. While it is kind of overkill because the average user is not a flipping SPY, it’s just…it recalls those spy films and futuristic films where everyone talks to each other on watches and there’s flying cars and everything. It’s really cool…it just FEELS good to unlock a phone with your fingerprint. *cough*LGismakingaphonewiththesensornearthesimcardslotwhy*cough* You can enroll multiple fingerprints as well, so your friends can unlock it…or you can make the phone learn both your hands, thumbs and all.

THe new chip voodoo it has makes this phone the fastest frickin’ thing I’ve ever seen. You know that GTA Vice CIty app? Remember how it took a really long time to load or maybe it was just me and my iPad 2 but shut up? THe load time is nuts on the 5S…it loads instantly. I am not kidding. Even when you exit a building into the main world, the loading screen dosen’t have time to display itself on the screen, it’s that fast.

—

Now the bad. I’ve gotten this thing to bluescreen. I didn’t say crash, I said BLUE SCREEN. THe Windows BSOD of death (that was redundant but shush). That thing Microsoft did that turned the screen blue and Windows said something about an error that nobody including their mother and their kitchen sink understood.

Now the iPhone dosen’t display any text when it does this…the screen just turns solid blue and then it crashes to the Apple logo. It kinda looks like that screen debugger in the iPod nano when you tell it to display solid blue.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “You got the phone to freak out and now your iCLoud/iTunes syncing will be messed up or something!”

Nope. My phone is fine. ANd it isn’t just the phone freaking out and displaying blue because that color is first in the color hex table or whatever.

It’s an honest-to-god Jony Ive design choice. Why the hell is that so? Because I’ve gotten the blue screen to act like a panel and slide over the rest of the screen.

Little techno-jargon to explain that:

Every 2D container that is not affected by the gyroscope has to be defined as either a bar, which is an unchanging set of elements usually used for menu buttons, or a panel, which is the main content window and can support gestures like scrolling and swiping to the right to go back a page.

Panels can have slightly different behaviors depending on how it’s coded. Panels can slide different directions and support different gestures.

THis “bluescreen” panel slides down from the top of the screen with an underlying shadow. So it has to be defined as a panel in order for it to work like that, so since it’s defined as something the phone can understand, it is not simply random signals as the CPU dies.

I don’t know why Jony Ive decided that a bluescreen would be good…but I guess it’s better than the phone instantly switching to the Apple logo for seemingly no reason.

Although I have gotten it to switch to the Apple logo without even displaying the bluescreen…but then it didn’t even seem to know it had crashed because then it didn’t ask me for my passcode (which it usually requires you to do after a restart). I don’t know how I did that though, so eh.

UPDATE 11/03/2013: I’ve been told that Apple has completely removed the bluescreen from the OS. Good. Now people won’t be shouting about how Apple is turning into Microsoft or something. Or maybe they still will because it was there in the first place. They probably will…oh well. Here’s hoping the iWatch will crush/hide/mute/sort-of-obscure that claim.