Tuyen’s Blog

New Plex iPhone App is amazing

Finally got the port forwarding to work.  Below is a video I shot on my wife's 3GS of the Plex iPhone app running on my iPhone 4.  It's streaming my media library over my local wifi.  Quality is unreal and the 3GS video capture does not do the actual video playback justice.  After a little caching time, it plays back flawlessly with HD clarity.  The next test will be to see how it streams over wifi outside of my home network.

Once I have a little more time, I'll do a new Mac Mini home theater setup with the new Plex 9.

(download)

Why fanboys should not dismiss the latest Android versus iPhone numbers

Wait, So 20 Phones On 4 Carriers Outsold 1 Phone On 1 Carrier? Shocking.
via techcrunch.com

I love MG Siegler's style of writing. A little snippy with a large dose of fanboy mixed in. Don't get me wrong, I like Apple products probably as much as he does. The only difference is that I'm looking at the numbers that were released today regarding smartphone market share not with disdain but with a general sense of dread and optimism mixed in.

Make no mistake, Android is on the rise. Though I think they make an inferior phone, they are successfully encroaching on Apple's market share. Remember what happened when a supposedly inferior product started encroaching on Apple's market share back in the early 90's? Apple can't turn a blind eye to this and I don't think they are (though I think the fanboys are). My hope is that Apple sees this as a huge threat and decides to do something about it - like say release the iPhone on other carriers. That's why I feel some optimism about the news. If it pushes Apple to make a better product or more carrier relationships then it only benefits me, the consumer.

Is a phone really that important?

This is the Top News Stories section from My Yahoo start page. The first 4 stories seem quite appropriate for this section. These are important news stories that have real life altering impact to many people. The 5th story is just absurd. Honestly people, it's just a damn phone. People are dying in the world and the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster zone. Those are important stories. Whether a phone loses cellular signal just doesn't really seem that important in the grand scheme of things. Granted, Apple brings a lot of this upon themselves with the way they handle PR but I would hope that the powers that be that shape and deliver our news would have elected to push a story like this to Page 2. But in the ever growing chase for eyeballs, news outlets want to push what brings in the most readers. Who cares that only 3 million iPhone 4's have been sold versus the hundreds of millions of other phones on the market. There's only one thing that people love more than fawning over winners and that's to watch them fall.

For the record, I own an iPhone 4. Haven't had any issues with it - antenna related or otherwise. The damn thing does slip out of my hand more often than the previous model so I'm happy to cash in on my free case courtesy of Steve Jobs. If the outcome of all the hoopla is that I get free stuff, so be it. I just think we all need to gain a little perspective of what's truly newsworthy.

A tale of two lawsuits

I'm not a fan of frivolous lawsuits (hot coffee in the lap) because they generally take time away from lawsuits with real merit (asbestos, guns, cigarettes, etc). Most recently lawsuits have been lodged against Apple for the iPhone - One for the antenna issue and the other for the AT&T iPhone exclusivity. The first one is clearly an idiotic attempt at a money grab. Sure it's proven that holding the phone a certain way causes you to lose bars (I can't seem to reproduce this issue but others I know have) but so what? If you don't like the way your phone behaves, return the phone for a full refund. You haven't been damaged in any way that would require redress via a lawsuit. That would be like me buying a pepperoni pizza that didn't have enough pepperonis on it. I'd either suck it up or return it for another one that had enough pepperonis. If the pizza place couldn't deliver me a pizza with enough pepperonis on it because of a design flaw in their pizza making process, I'd just go but a pepperoni pizza from another place that could deliver me a pizza with the required number of pepperonis.

The second lawsuit is one that definitely will be beneficial should it prevail. Having the iPhone on multiple carriers will create more competition in the wireless marketplace forcing AT&T (and others) to compete more on price, service, etc. If nothing else, it'll mean that iPhone users will be dispersed across multiple networks so that the strain won't be on one network. To keep with the pizza analogy, this would be like if you could only order a pepperoni pizza from one place. Not to say that the quality of the pizza or the pizza place was bad but it's easy to see that if more places could offer that pepperoni pizza to their customers, this would benefit everyone in terms of more options, faster service, etc.

Dang... I'm hungry now.

iPhone 4 is niiiiiiiiice

Picked up my iPhone 4 today. Have to say, it does live up to the hype. Gorgeous screen and a solid feeling in your hand (that's what she said). I haven't encountered the two major flaws that have been reported - the antenna hand block issue or the yellow spot on the screen. Guess I'm lucky in that respect.

Photos with flash are really nice. Not great but waaaaaaay better than on the 3GS in low light situations. Haven't done HD video yet but will post some examples when I do.

(with flash)

(without flash)

Oh snap! My iPhone 4 arrives tomorrow?

Guess it does...

Level 40 Steve Jobs

via penny-arcade.com

In actuality, he handled the snafus pretty well. Damn that guy can command an audience. I have a hard time thinking Schmidt, Zuckerberg, Bartz or Ballmer doing the same.

Polish versus Raw Power - iPhone and Android

via apple.com

So this was announced today...

Over the weekend, I saw a bunch of ads for the Droid phone from Verizon. It seems their main selling point was how more powerful the phone was and they are correct. It will always be the case that Android phones will always have the latest and greatest hardware, just like with most Windows laptops. Apple will never make devices with the fastest processors, the most RAM, the hardware latest innovations. What Apple has made a very calculated decision on is they would rather have a more polished product than one with the best specs. They weren't the first with a front facing camera but I bet mobile video chat will explode because of their implementation and not any one else's that came first. Same thing with multi-tasking. Not the first, but a more smooth integration.

For a long time there was this pseudo arms race in the tech industry of who could cram the most transistors on a chip or the most pixels on a screen or crank up a few more Mhz from a CPU. I think we've gotten to a point where the vast majority of us have way too much horsepower in our devices. Now the question is who will use that horsepower in a way that appeals to us. Apple seems to be leading in that sense... for the time being.

Great puzzle game

I just finished playing the game Machinarium. One of the most interesting and creative games I've seen in a very long time. It's amazingly drawn and has a sweet and tight plot. It's hard to believe that it is Flash based. If these are the type of games that might be ported to the iPhone if Flash was allowed in the development environment, I would be willing to soften my stance on the Adobe versus Apple debate.