Jwill's Log

Lately, I’ve been playing a game on my iPhone called Home Run Battle 3D, a home run derby game with an arcade and classic mode. The classic mode is the standard derby: anything that’s not a home run is an out and you have 10 outs to hit as many home runs as possible. Unlike the arcade mode, the pitcher only throws fastballs. In arcade mode, you can also get points for hits that don’t make it out of the field of play. Items such as score doublers come up during the game which adds some variety. Also, the pitcher throws a variety of pitches in this mode which can become challenging. There is an online mode as well where you can play against other sluggers across the country. You can customize your slugger with a variety of uniforms, bats, gloves, etc. (the spiked bat in the picture is an example of the offerings). Smashing home runs out of the park is a rewarding experience and the game is really addicting.

I do have a few qualms about the experience, though. You can customize your slugger by using “gold balls” – you get them by hitting them out the park in either the classic or arcade modes, by playing online, or by completing a number of achievements. The issue I have with these gold balls is that you don’t get them very quickly and things in the game cost a lot. When you’re only getting 3-5 gold balls a game and things cost 500+ gold balls, you’ll be playing for a while before you get anything unless you complete an achievement. Also, I find it deplorable that it costs gold balls to change your slugger’s skin color or hair style. What if I want to make my slugger in his own likeness and not as a white guy with black hair? What kind of message is the game (probably unintentionally) trying to send? Also, the game’s graphics can be a little glitchy – when you hit poles, it makes the sound before it hits and the ball’s flight doesn’t change. Also, the slugger walks awkwardly when walking to the plate, and he and the pitcher stop dead when the ball is in flight, their sprites not moving at all.

Despite the game’s flaws, though, I enjoy playing it overall but I think I prefer the offline over the online play. You can check it out on the App Store; there’s a lite version, as well.

The iPhone’s mail program is solid for quick reading and replying or deleting of messages. It also does a very good job of reading a variety of attachments. However, it is a bit simplistic in some of its features. The one missing feature that bothers me the most is the ability to flag messages. Mail programs mark messages as read as soon as you open then; “read” messages can just as easily be “skimmed”. I like to be able to flag messages that I find important that I want to get back to later. That I can’t flag messages requires me to leave messages read or mark them unread again, neither of which are optimal solutions.

Another thing that bothers me about the iPhone’s mail program is its search. I’m glad Apple added a search feature so that we can find what we’re looking for; however, the search is limited to finding and reading messages. What if I am searching for messages to bulk move them? What if I am searching for messages so I can delete them? The iPhone mail program doesn’t let me do these things, requiring me to wait until I get back to my computer unless I want to manually search for each message.

The iPhone’s mail program is adequate for retrieving and quickly replying to messages. However, when something comes that you want to save for later, you have to work around its limitations of not being able to flag messages. There are also other limitations such as not being able to move messages between accounts. It’s a decent app and I’m not going to stop using it (I don’t think I have much of a choice), but it could be improved.

Source: New York Times
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Note: after writing this, Nuance put out an update that allows you to remove your contact listings from their servers and also not put them on in the first place. Problem is, whenever I download this update, it downloads 1.0.1 again and tells me I still haven’t updated the app (see my “App Store Woes” post).

From David Pogue, the author:

I tried out Dragon Dictation, a new, free…app for the iPhone from Nuance. You tap a big central Record button–and you talk. (You still have to speak the punctuation and say “new paragraph” when you want a line break.) When you tap Done, the typed transcription of what you said appears on the screen.

My brother emailed me a week or so ago and informed me of this application. I myself tried it out. It’s surprisingly accurate; I mean, it does mess up sometimes, but it’ll even give you other suggestions that, at the very worst, come quite close to what you said. It’s also (at least for now) still a free download on the App Store, so it’s a must grab. This article is actually about the privacy concerns of the application. Some users have been bothered by the fact that the application sends your audio to Nuance’s servers to transcribe it, and that the program takes the first and last names of your contacts for the purpose of recognizing these names when they are said. Pogue states that despite the power of this application, there are 1000+ one-star reviews of it. For one, reviewers on the App Store are pretty poor reviewers; they see one bad thing and think the whole application’s useless (and feel like it’s a justified way to review something) or will fill up their review with Emoji that serve no purpose but to make the review colorful. Regarding privacy concerns, Pogue says:

What I don’t understand is: Why don’t these same people worry that Verizon or AT&T is listening in to their cellphone calls every single day? Why don’t they worry that MasterCard is peeking into their buying habits? How do they know Microsoft and Apple aren’t slurping down private documents off the hard drive and laughing their heads off?

I mean, if you’re gonna be paranoid, at least be rational about it.

I find this to be a great point and one that would hopefully quell some concerns about Nuance’s practices.

Am I the only person who’s had a problem with the iTunes App Store’s handling of updates at times? Sometimes it will tell me it has an update, I’ll install it, then it’ll tell me an update is available for the same version of the same app. It’s frustrating and makes me wonder if I’m downloading anything at all, or if the old version’s still the one being downloaded from Apple and the version data changed, causing iTunes to get confused. Another issue I have with the App Store is that updates shoud be skippable. Sometimes, updates to applications bring more problems than they do solutions and you want to downgrade. Yes, this can be done using Time Machine to recover the backup, but I’m still going to be told I have an update and I just hate seeing that badge and not being able to dismiss it.

Source: Appleinsider.com
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“Apple has generated major revenue and margin growth based on its iPhone business — while AT&T largely has been unable to cash in on the growth in data services beyond monthly access fees,” said Jagdish Rebello, PhD, senior director and principal analyst for iSuppli. “This is making it difficult for AT&T to make the required investments to upgrade its network to support greater bandwidth. The net result is a deterioration in the mobile broadband user experience.”

This is a very interesting post regarding AT&T’s issue with high bandwidth users. I recommend giving it a read. I do agree that AT&T gets the shorter stick out of such a deal. Unfortunately, it’s tough to charge more for your service unless you charge more for everyone. “Unlimited” should be just that.