Things that annoy me about the iPhone, and I don’t even have one yet…

  1. The iPhone now has voice control (or my 3GS will).  Cool.  It doesn’t work with Bluetooth.  Fail.  Every Bluetooth headset (including my sexy Jawbone Prime) I have supports a command that tells the phone “Hey, the guy wearing me wants to voice dial.”  How in the world could Apple have missed that part?
  2. No To Do app/Task List.  This is FRIGGIN INSANE.  Especially since they HAVE A DESKTOP APP THAT DOES THIS (Mail.app).  I can buy “Things”.  It’s a staff favorite on the App Store and supposedly the best task manager out here for the iPhone.  It’s $10.  I just bought a $300 phone and I need to spend another $10 to get it to do something my Centro and Treo 650 both did?  Oh, and if I want the matching Things desktop app it’s like another large chunk of change.  And it won’t push sync with the cloud.  Eat me, bitches.
  3. No IMAP-based push email.  I could  do MobileMe – but MobileMe isn’t smart.  If MobileMe was smart it’d be like Blackberry works (I think) so that it could go out, log in to your mail account, get the emails and then push them to you.  I don’t want to move all my mail to @me.com.  I like hypergeek.net.  And I doubt the email client will be as pure Awesome as Chatter.
  4. I can’t change the sound for my text messages?  I have 6 stock sounds to chose from and that’s it?  Srsly?  Like many folks who work in Operations I use my phone as a pager.  Apple has made the iPhone ill suited for this.
  5. Apple are clearly a bunch of control-freak Nazis that like to shit on their developers.

Items 1-4 are ALL things that I can do on my Centro.  Other things that my Centro can do that the iPhone can’t (yet): Turn by turn directions (Mapopolis still works on my Centro with my bluetooth GPS), Talk to the file system, use flash cards….

Now I suppose you ask: Hey John, if you feel that way why are you getting the iPhone?  It’s sexy – it really is.  The App Store is pure geek porn.  And while I have hope for the Pre it’s just not there yet.  It’s time to upgrade and right now I’m picking the iPhone.

But I’m also waiting for the “Google Ion” to show up on the develop connection – if I can get an unlocked Ion for $400 from Google I will rock that like a hurricane.  

iPhone: Ordered (and still shat upon by AT&T)

I ordered an iPhone 3GS (no space, I keep it old skool) on Monday.  I’m excited – every time I play with one I want one badly.  Real bad.  Scary bad.  So I’m getting one.  Yay me.

However, what pisses me off is that you can’t cancel the order with AT&T. And they’re sold out.  But the frigging Apple Store has them RIGHT NOW.  I could have one already.  If I went and got one then guess what – I’d have to pay a 10% restocking fee. 

Thank you, AT&T.  I don’t even have my iPhone yet and you’re already pissing me off.

Star Wars – it doesn’t have to suck.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

OK, watch this:

Yeah, so it is a game trailer.  A game I have no intention of playing – PC MMORPGs don’t work for me.  And the game will look nothing like that.

But that’s not the point.  The point is – isn’t that AWESOME?  And wouldn’t you LOVE to watch that movie?  George Lucas made a point in stating that the Star Wars universe is VERY old.  The Sith have risen and fallen a few times in it’s history.  And it’s oddly stagnant – in games like Knights of the Old Republic (by the guys who made this trailer) things look pretty similar to the universe we know, just sightly off.

If the success of the latest Trek movie has shown us anything it’s that regardless of how stale and weak a franchise has become as long as you give us a great story and a great movie we’ll welcome it with open arms.  I think that’s even *more* true for Star Wars than for any other SciFi franchise.  I didn’t camp out for Star Trek.  I did camp out for Star Wars.

George Lucas wrote and directed Star Wars.  He tried but really couldn’t repeat that success.  The best movie of all 6 is the one where he just provided the story.  And I know it’s his baby and all, but in the right hands I really think he could give us a Star Wars that’s slight different, but perhaps even more awesome than anything we’ve see yet.  This universe he created has so much awesome in it – if he’d just let it out to play.  

So many games, so little time…

Modern Warfare 2 Logo

So E3 2009 is upon us and I’ve watched the press shows.  It didn’t really change my mind about anything – it just made me more excited.  Here’s my “list” – games that I consider “Must Haves”.  If it’s multiplatform and I haven’t noted a platform it means that I haven’t made up my mind yet.  I was sure, for example, that AC2 would be a 360 title for me but then Sony mixed it all up.  And these are just games coming out in in the near term – there are some 2010 titles, like Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, that I will be getting but are just too far out to list now.

Anyway, here’s the list in the order they will hit my pocketbook and free time:

  • Halo 3: ODST (September 22, 2009)
  • Bioshock 2 (November 3 2009, 360)
  • Assassin’s Creed 2 (November 17, 2009 – PS3, because of what’s next…)
  • Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines (November 2009 – PSP – and it interacts with AC2 on the PS3…)
  • Modern Warfare 2 (November 10, 2009 360)
  • Mass Effect 2 (“Early 2010”)
  • MAG (“Q4, 2009”)
  • God of War III (“March, 2010”)

Nothing here should surprise anyone who knows me.  A lot of shooters in there – I like shooters.  On the other hand there are couple of things on there that I’m surprised about.  I didn’t expect to be as interested in ODST as I am.  It seems pretty cool, though, *and* it comes with Halo 3 Multiplayer with all the Map Packs so far – and I haven’t bought those.  So it makes it a bit of a better deal for me.  (Kinda like the Fallout 3 GOTY pack gives you $110 worth of gaming for $59.  Bastards.)
 
However, that’s a lot of games.  More than $420 worth (insert weed joke here) between now and Q1 2010.  How much will I spend on any other hobby?  No where near as much.  What I’ll probably do is “prioritize”.  Modern Warfare 2 can’t wait, and I need to play the PSP Assassin’s Creed game before I can start in on the PS3 version.  So I’ll put Bioshock 2 and AC 2 on the Christmas List.  It helps out the parents to be able to go to the Gamestop next to the grocery store and get me presents. 🙂 

Oh, and that was just the “must have” list.  Other games I have my eye on:

  • Infamous (already out, I know)
  • Prototype (June 9, 2009 – maybe a birthday gift?)
  • Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack In Time (“Q4 2009”)
  • SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals Fireteam Bravo 3 (“Q4 2009”)

Another thing of note – Sony is making it way too easy to buy stuff for my original old school PSP.  I think that (and I could be totally wrong) one will be able to buy *any* PSP game that comes out new on the Playstation Store and download it.  With an 8GB card in there that could hold 6 games at once.  I need to go buy that 8GB card, though – I bought FF7 tonight and sure enough I didn’t have enough space.  It may also get me to look at a PSP Go.  More evil…