That’s becoming the popular phrase around Hollywood since everyone on the inside knows people are willing to flock in droves right now to anything that’s 3-D. A 2-hour documentary about the invention of the paper clip could probably gross as much as your typical run of the mill romantic comedy if it was released in 3-D.
While casual moviegoers may not be wise to the driving force of 3-D: profit, the talented folks on the inside that make up the creative force behind the movies we love, are. Folks like Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams have gone on the record with statements like, “When you put the glasses on, everything gets dim”, and “3-D technology does little to enhance a cinematic story”.
I wholeheartedly agree. I think 3-D in movies, at least as implemented today, is nothing more than a parlor trick that hinders and in many cases blocks the creative shooting and production techniques used to convey the spirit of the feature to moviegoers. Maybe that sounds old-fashioned, but in my opinion, movies have been 3-D since the beginning. It’s called depth of field, and it’s controlled by what aperture the director chooses in a given shot, and what point within that plane is focused on.
Just say no to nerd glasses, higher ticket prices, and parlor tricks that are as old as the 3-D photograph. . cuz hey, we all now how well stereoscopes for 3-D photos caught on right?
Sometime in the last week I starting getting 3G on my iPhone at home. Has anyone else noticed this? I’m not exactly sure when it arrived, but I sure hope it’s here to stay
A quick speed test shows about 1.5mbps down and 768k up. Not bad, not bad at all.
100 million facebook users have had their info compiled into a single dataset which has been published online.
Sure, the info was freely available as of when it was compiled, but this means people don’t get the option to adjust their facebook privacy controls to prevent access to this info today, tomorrow, or anytime, since your info is now available in a torrent that’s hit all the popular torrenting sites.
Bottom line: if you don’t want information to be public now or EVER. . don’t put it online.
Steve, it’s time to concede the iPhone 4 isn’t quite a flawless home run. It’s like cutting the video to black just short of seeing the hitter round 3rd and trip, heading face first into the sand. Stop calling it a “stumble”. It doesn’t matter if the ball is already outta the park. Take the fall, get up, brush off and talk about how Apple is going to resolve this issue, and then make it happen.
The longer you wait, the bigger the roar of unhappy customers that are figuring out their recent increase in signal issues isn’t just a coincidence.
I’d love to see some charts from AT&T that show trending for signal degradation across handsets, specifically the iPhone line. I bet the iPhone 4 leads the pack in sudden degradation. Who knows if they trend any of this already, but I can guarantee you’ll never see any of it made public.
Personally speaking, I’ve noticed the issue somewhat intermittently, and believe that, like so many other variables that affect wireless performance, it’s not an issue that by itself can bring the signal to an unusable level, but drastically exacerbates the other pre-existing variables.
What do I mean? Well, think about it. . .with any phone, your signal often seems to rise and fall for no apparent reason at all. Maybe the tower is a bit overloaded, maybe the weather is changing, maybe your “dome” is blocking some of the signal as you move around. There’s literally thousands of reasons wireless signal may degrade. If none of these are impacting you, and you degrade your signal by shorting that gap on the iPhone 4, all is well, even if it cuts your signal by up to 50%. However, if you were in a low coverage area to begin with, or any of the aforementioned issues are affecting you, goodbye call. This makes it really hard for the end user to identify what’s really causing the issue.
Consumer Reports did their test in an enclosed area with special equipment to virtually eliminate other variables, and determine the real impact of signal attenuation alone. Guess what? They’re suggested fix is a piece of tape over the joint to stop attenuation.
but the short of it is that this guy apparently sprinted onto the field pre-game and tried to put a hat on the World Cup trophy. A security official “restrained” him. . and by restrained I mean pwned his face with their fist
By the way, just in case you were in closet all day, Spain won the world cup.
“The chemical xenon difluoride is normally a mild-mannered white powder, but when you crush it with the pressure of 1 million times our atmosphere, it turns into a super substance. Due to some weird science, all the energy used to crush that stuff is stored inside its chemical bonds, making it a terrific energy storage device. In layman’s terms, that would be a battery.”
As exciting as this sounds, lithium-ion and lithium polymer batteries already pack a tremendous amount of energy in a very dense space. I’m all for improving on this, but technology like this one sounds exceptionally scary-dangerous when you figure the force it takes to form the bonds in these materials. Imagine what would happen if you dropped the thing?
In fact, forget about that, imagine what happens when the decepticons find out you have one
Back from Boston! Ok, well, I got back late last Friday night, and I’m just posting now, but I’ve been B-U-S-Y.
Boston rocked. Complete 180 from other big cities I’ve been to. There’s open space, richer history, and the atmosphere is just calmer and more cohesive. NYC, for example looks recycled, regurgitated, and temporary in comparison.
Boston seamlessly blends “trendy new” with cobble stone, granite, brick and nature. It’s got it’s skeletons and armpits too, but hands down, my favorite urban blend. If I could change one thing it’d be the time chit closes. . . On a FRIDAY night in the SUMMER, half the bloody city shuts down at 6pm, and the rest is closed by 9pm. No, I don’t mean there’s a curfew, but good luck finding anything open. I literally couldn’t find an open Startbucks at 9:45pm. No joke. If you’re a night owl, stick to NYC. In comparison it literally is the city that never sleeps.
Got home late Friday night, and low and behold by iPhone 4 had arrived while I was gone. In fact, it came Wednesday, a full day before the official release. Go AT&T. You mind-fucked me with your nonexistent status and bullshit answers when I ordered, but a full day early . . . rock-on.
Saturday morning: Wake up, activate iPhone, call AT&T to swap #’s around (had to purchase on my wife’s number originally to get the upgrade pricing) and wow, kickass features in order of importance:
1) Amazing screen
2) Kickass screen
3) Jaw-dropping gorgeous screen
4) STFU and look at the screen
5) Everything else
The “retina” display is truly remarkable. It’s mesmerizing to look at stuff on it. It’s “realer” than “real”. In fact, MOVE over real, the new real is whatever I’m looking at on my iPhone 4 screen. Real is yesterday.
Sunday morning: I wake up, grab by phone to catch up on the news until my daughter wakes up, and 10 minutes in, the screen flickers like a campfire in the wind, splits into double vision, fades to white, fades to black, fades to sparkly silver, and finally: fades to black.
Power button = no response.
Home button = no response.
Hard reset = no response.
Hold down home button = voice dial prompt!, but screen still blank, so obviously the screen had gone off the deep end.
I call AT&T, who has me step through the usual hoops and perform the usual steps, and after 45 minutes they pronounced the screen dead.
What now? Well, AT&T offered advanced replacement with a ship date of 5-6 wks. No thanks. Other option was to show up at Apple, and give them the case #. A quick call to Apple yielded a 3:15pm genius bar appt the very same day, and the expectation of a “replacement phone”. Surely this sounded a little nuts since I know damn well they’re sold out, but I figured worst case scenario I could at least get a 3GS loaner until more 4’s are on the shelves.
Arrived at Apple, and lo and behold, they maintain a seperate stock of replacement phones and they had 1 16GB 4 left!!!! YAY, back in business. I’ll spare you the part of the story where I went to 3 different places shopping for a case, but they turned out to be as scarce as the phones themselves.
This video, while bashing the iPhone 4 pretty much sums up why:
. . .and while you’re at it, check this one out too. If you don’t want a pet AT-AT after watching this, you’re broken:
Just checked my status at AT&T again for my iPhone 4, and it shows shipped!. The FedEx tracking # doesn’t work yet, but this really does seem to solidify that at least I’ll be getting a phone sometime this month.
I’m loving iOS4 on my 3Gs so far. It’s a little cumbersome at first to scroll through the running apps after a double click, but feels intuitive. The unified inbox is also nice, but it leaves we wondering: why didn’t they color code the messages based on the account received through, or present an option for this? Maybe it -is- there and I’m missing it. If not, Steve, can you hear me?? Color coding on emails. . kthx
Pandora runs in the background just as expected (continues to play), and didn’t cause any noticeable lag.
Wallpapers on the home screen just feels right. Just like a good case adds a custom look and feel to the iPhone, so does a customizable home screen, and this should have been an option for day 1. Folders is another great feature that works exactly as you’d expect it would, but again, it should have been there since day 1
iOS 4 (previously iPhone OS), has been released and is available for download through iTunes. If you haven’t updated your iTunes recently, you’ll need to update that as well before performing the firmware upgrade on your iPhone. If you’ve got an iPhone 3GS, you can look for the following new key features:
Multitasking, Folders, Unified Inbox, iBooks, 5x Digital Zoom, Tap To Focus Video, Faces and Places in Photos, Home Screen Wallpaper, Gifting Apps, Spell Checking, Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard Support, and much much more!
If you own a 3G, most of these features will be available, save for multitasking. The 3G just simply doesn’t have enough juice (mem/cpu) for multitasking to work well. If you’re still kicking around an “original” iPhone, you’re out of luck, as this update doesn’t support that model at all.
Happy updating!
UPDATE:
Looks to be about 378MB, and is downloading at ~5mbps for me.
If you can’t make it good, make it 3-D”!
