1155: The Tablet Revolution

I've come to the conclusion that I'm a dusty old bastard who is set in his ways like an old man. That or everyone else is just plain wrong. Or perhaps a combination of the two.

I'm specifically referring to the "tablet revolution" — that futuristic gubbins that supposes everyone is going to replace their computer/console/handheld/everything with a tablet such as an iPad or whateverthefuck the bajillion Android tablets are called these days. I even read an article earlier where someone from Zynga said that tablets are "becoming the ultimate game platform".

I must respectfully disagree — at least for my needs and wants, anyway.

Our house has three tablets — an iPad 2, a Motorola Xoom and a Nexus 7. The Nexus 7 is currently in for repair, but got a fair amount of use by Andie, largely for free-to-play mobile games and Kairosoft titles. The iPad 2 also gets a fair amount of use by Andie for the same reasons. My Xoom gets barely any use, though the fact I have SNES, Mega Drive and various other emulators on there ready to go at a moment's notice is pretty cool.

But yeah. The fact stands: I hardly use these devices at all. Why? Because for my purposes, they don't offer a superior experience to other bits of kit. For gaming, I have consoles, dedicated handhelds, a laptop PC and a desktop PC. For work, I have my Mac, the aforementioned laptop PC and the desktop PC at a pinch. For browsing the Internet, I have… you know how this goes by now. For me, all of these devices offer a considerably superior experience to all of the tablets we have in this house.

Oh, sure, tablets can ably perform several of these functions, but they don't do any of them as well as the pre-existing devices. About all they do offer, really, is the fact that they're incredibly quick to turn on (assuming they have some charge left in them, which my Xoom in particular rarely does) and are a lot more portable and lightweight than many other devices.

But personally speaking, the fact that, say, the iPad is thin and lightweight isn't enough to make up for the fact that it's a lot more difficult to type on than an actual physical keyboard. And yes, I know, you can pay through the nose and get an iPad-compatible wireless keyboard (or a generic one for Android) but not only does that remove one of the main benefits of a tablet — its all-in-one portability — there's other issues too: the pain in the arse it is to access the file system (on iOS, anyway; this is one area where Android is marginally better), the fact that proprietary iOS and Android apps rarely play nicely with established formats (just try getting a Microsoft Word file with any formatting or layout whatsoever to look even a little bit right in Pages for iOS), the fact that some of the work I do requires the precision of a mouse rather than the cack-handedness of a touchscreen, the fact that some websites I want to use are designed for use on a computer with a keyboard and mouse rather than a touchscreen and a virtual keyboard.

And don't get me started on the games. "The ultimate gaming platform"? Don't make me laugh, Zynga. While mobile and tablet games have been enormously successful in getting more and more new people into video games, and that's a good thing for the industry as a whole, there is no way you can say with any good conscience that tablets are an adequate replacement for more established systems — and better-designed control schemes in particular. Have you ever tried to play a first-person shooter on a touchscreen tablet with no buttons? It is one of the most bewildering experiences you'll ever encounter: why would anyone want to put themselves through that? There are certain genres that work well, of course: strategy games, board game adaptations, word games and adventure games are all good uses of a touchscreen interface… as are the never-ending throng of isometric-perspective building/farming/dragon-raising games that are little more than vehicles for monetisation. There are very few tablet-based games that hold my attention for more than a couple of minutes, in short — the last was Ghost Trick, which doesn't really count as it was a conversion of a Nintendo DS game.

I guess that's sort of the point, though. The main benefit of tablet devices (and smartphones, for that matter) is their immediacy — you turn them on, you tap a button and you're (almost) straight into a game, and you can be out of it again within a matter of minutes if you just needed to fill an awkward silence or wait for someone to come back from the toilet. And that's good, in a way; it just doesn't really fit with how I play games. As I noted in a reply to Anne on yesterday's post, I play games as my main form of entertainment. I don't watch much TV, I don't watch movies, listening to music is something I tend to do while engaged in some other activity, and so games are my main "relaxing time" activity. I want to sit and play something for an hour or two (or more) at a time, and between freemium energy please-insert-credit-card-to-continue bullshit and the "bite-size", disposable, forgettable nature of most mobile/tablet games, I just don't get a satisfying experience from them.

Meanwhile, the laptop I bought a short while back is easily my favourite piece of kit in this house. It's powerful enough to play pretty-looking games like TrackMania, yet portable enough to carry around in a bag. Its battery life is decent (though not a patch on a tablet) and it has a nice screen. It's a good means of playing visual novels without having to tie up the TV, and it copes well with anything I might want to throw at it while working on the go. In short, it's an all-in-one device that does absolutely everything I want it to without making any compromises or dumbing the experience down at all. Sure, it takes a bit longer to turn on than the iPad, but it's also infinitely more useful and fun to me.

Fuck the tablet revolution, basically. Long live the laptop. And the games console. And the desktop PC. And the dedicated handheld. And, you know, sometimes, just a piece of paper.

1089: Ding, Dong, Ding, Dong

(Buffy's Swearing Keyboard. You're welcome. NSFW, obviously.)

Andie and I bought a doorbell the other day. This is not something I have ever had to purchase before, but it was something of a necessity — we live on the second floor (third if you're American) and there were doorbells for flat 1 and 2 in our block, but not ours. This meant a distinct chance of missing out on deliveries of orders from Amazon and Chinese takeaway due to a lack of any means for someone at the block's front door of letting us know we were there. And that will never do. A man needs his Chinese takeaway and AMAZOO.nep deliveries.

Actually, the statement that said I've never had to purchase a doorbell before isn't quite accurate — in my second year at university, I lived in a first (second) floor flat which didn't have a doorbell. The front door was at ground level and opened straight on to some stairs up into the main part of our flat, so if my housemate and I were in our rooms or the living room, chances are we wouldn't hear anyone knocking. (We sure as hell heard the fight outside our door one night, though, and got a bit scared when we heard shattering glass. Luckily the aggressor in the incident had punched through our neighbours' door, not ours. I say "luckily" — obviously not for our neighbours, who then had to spend the next few months with their front door boarded up because the landlord of the building was too lazy to do anything, ever. But these brackets have gone on for too long so I'd better close them before I lose the point of what I was saying.)

Anyway, yes. I popped down to our local massive hardware store, which was but a short walk from our flat, and investigated doorbells. At the time, wireless doorbells, which would have been the ideal solution, were rather expensive. As a student, spending forty quid on a doorbell was out of the question, and I didn't really feel like drilling holes in the doorframe and poking wires through, largely because I didn't have a drill. So on that occasion we survived without a doorbell.

Not so this time, though. Both Andie and I are in gainful employment, and as such we were more than able to afford a doorbell for our new place, particularly as wireless doorbells appear to have come down in price considerably over the course of the last ten years. Wired ones didn't appear to be an option, even. I am fine with this.

The doorbell we chose was a bog-standard model with a single sound that thankfully isn't too horrendous — it just makes a nice, normal (if obviously electronic) doorbell sound. It doesn't play a horrible monophonic ringtone-type tune and it doesn't go on for longer than it needs to, which were the things I was worried about. There's nothing more embarrassing than a doorbell that outstays its welcome. (Well, there is. Lots of things are. But you know what I mean.)

What I was particularly surprised about as we were browsing the fine selection in B&Q (which I maintain is one of the most tedious stores in the world despite the presence of chainsaws) is the ridiculous features the more expensive doorbells offered. The most expensive one they had there — which was about the same price as the basic wireless ones from ten years ago, as I recall — not only had a wide selection of built-in chimes for you to pick from at your leisure, it also had the ability to play MP3s.

Think about that for a moment. A doorbell. That plays MP3s. Truly we are living in the future. An incredibly pointless future where instead of flying cars and cures for cancer we have doorbells that play fucking MP3s.

I express mock outrage at this but I guess it's sort of amusing. You could, with that doorbell, essentially have anything as your chime. If you wanted Brian Blessed shouting "GIMME THAT FUCKING BADGE BACK!" (possibly the best video on all of YouTube, that) every time someone was at the door, you could. Or perhaps the chiptune ALF theme from the dancing chicken man video I used to love so much. (Used to? I just put it on and fell in love all over again. CAN'T STOP WATCHING) Or, if you really wanted to drive yourself absolutely insane, this. Or this. Or perhaps the song that gave us Epic Sax Man. Or… well, yeah. You get the idea.

Damn. Now I sort of wish I'd splurged on the stupid MP3-playing doorbell. Much better for trolling Andie with than getting Siri to call her "Bumface".

#oneaday Day 932: Take Control

I'm generally a pretty disciplined sort of person. I'm good at prioritising, and if I have something that I have to do I'll make sure that I complete it before I do things that I want to do.

It's when it comes to prioritising the things that I want to do that things go a bit pear-shaped.

It's easy to stumble through your days as normal and just let things happen. But if you do that it's easy to fall into routines and patterns and then wonder where the minutes, hours, days go. Those things that you want to do sometimes get forgotten amid your default activities, your comfort zone, the things that you do without thinking.

In order to fit in all the things that you want to do, sometimes you have to take drastic steps. Steps like scheduling your time.

This approach doesn't work for everyone. Some people are terrible at sticking to schedules, others simply don't like the lack of flexibility. But I've discovered (and rediscovered) several times over the years that I actually seem to work better and be rather more efficient if I plan out my time carefully rather than simply taking things as they come. It's a hangover from quite enjoying the sense of "structure" from school and university (even if — ssshhhh… I didn't always show up to my university lectures and seminars) and it's something that I should really start doing more of in my daily life if I want to fit everything in. Because even with scheduling, it's sometimes tricky to squeeze all your desired activities in, and that's when you have to decide how to make compromises and sacrifices. Thankfully, with the things that I want to do at the moment, I haven't had to make too many of the latter.

The ironic thing about people not wanting to organise themselves these days is it's so easy to do so now thanks to technology. You can make your phone remind you to do things, set email-based nags to pop up in your inbox, create task lists that synchronise between devices, take snapshots of things and store them "in the cloud" (urgh) for future reference. You can even get social and be public about the things that you want to do, making use of your friends as a means of browbeating… sorry, "encouraging" you to actually get on and do stuff.

I use a few simple tools to sort myself out. Firstly and most simply is Google Calendar. I use this in favour of iCal on my Mac because it's easier to sync between devices, is stored online rather than tied to a single device and works with iCal and iOS anyway. Google Calendar is a decent tool with enough features for what I need to do — multiple colour-coded calendars, email reminders, the ability to invite people, time zone support — and it proves valuable when I have taken on lots of things and only have a limited time in which to do them. It was especially valuable this time last year when I was going to Gamescom in Germany and every developer and publisher in the world suddenly wanted a bit of my time. (Apart from EA. They ballsed up my appointment — their fault, not mine — and wouldn't let me in to their stupid high-security compound. Fuck them. I went to go and see Larian Studios instead, which was much more fun.)

Alongside Google Calendar, I've tried several other tools over the years. Evernote is pretty neat, for example. Epic Win was a cool idea that gamified your own productivity, but development seemed to stop quite a while back and it's still lacking a few features that many other task manager apps offer. Most recently, I've been playing with Springpad, which I like a lot, despite a few rough edges.

Springpad is quite a bit like Evernote, but with a few interesting twists. It's based around the concept of "notebooks", which are ways of grouping related content together. Within a notebook, you can create a wide variety of different notes, ranging from simple text notes to checklists (mini to-do lists, essentially) via tasks, recipes, books, product information (scannable via the RedLaser barcode-scanning interface on the mobile apps) and all manner of other stuff. A webclipper bookmark allows you to easily clip things into your notebooks, and the interface generally does a pretty good job of figuring out what kind of content you're trying to store — I tried it with a recipe from BBC Good Food earlier and it successfully recognised it as a recipe, though failed to import the ingredients list correctly.

Springpad also features a "social" component which allows its users to make its notebooks public, too. While I'm not entirely sure that this has been particularly well thought out, it does provide an interesting alternative use for the service, effectively turning it into a kind of blogging platform. Notes can be used as entries, the more specific types of notes used to provide specific information, and the site's in-built commenting facility allows users to build up a community. It's a neat idea. I'm not entirely sure how useful it is, of course, but it's a nice idea.

So anyway. Armed with these simple (and free) tools, I'm attempting to organise myself a bit better. After two days, I've already managed to do a bit more than I would have done otherwise, which is pleasing. I shall continue with this system for a little while and see if it's something that I want to make stick. It will be an interesting experiment if nothing else, and it might actually spur me on to get some things done that I've been meaning to get done for a while.

Further updates on exactly what when I have something to share.

#oneaday Day 882: Microsoft Mysteries

As I type this, Microsoft's mysterious event at which something may or may not be revealed is about to start. The usual rumours and speculation have been flying around and are just as infuriating as ever, but there's been something a little different about this event: unlike, say, Apple events, for which we tend to know the vast majority of the content well before it's announced, there's been nary a whiff of what this might be all about.

A lot of people seem convinced that the company are going to launch a tablet device, and that would make a good degree of sense what with the impending launch of Windows 8. But then there's a new Xbox on the cards. And Windows Phone is surely due for a kick up the arse. And then there's things like Surface, and all the things that Microsoft Research are up to — though let's not forget that they unleashed the monstrosity that is Songsmith on the world. (And now it's stuck in my head again. "You sing into a microphone while the drummer plays along…")

But the truth is that no-one knows. At all. No-one has any idea whatsoever what is going on, and this means that the event has the potential to be exciting. (It also has the potential to be a crushing disappointment, but that's part of what makes it exciting.)

This is something that to a large extent we have lost in the modern age of PR, leaks and the reporting of every little rumour that sneaks out. Think about it. If you reveal everything about your product months before it actually comes out, you walk a fine line between building anticipation and pissing people off with oversaturated marketing. I feel it all the time with modern high-profile video games, and I'm pretty certain tech enthusiasts feel the same way about new gadgets. I don't know to what degree it happens in other sectors, but given the way a lot of modern PR seems to work regardless of industry, I can imagine it is the same across a lot of different areas.

I can't be the only one who prefers to be surprised now and again by something. For all the mindless speculation that goes on around Apple product launches, the company itself is pretty good at keeping things under wraps until the last minute (though they let the cat out of the bag with iOS 6 somewhat). Microsoft has gone one better with this one by not letting even the slightest hint out to the press or the public. It's had a far greater effect on the public's anticipation than carefully-orchestrated "leaks" (most of which I doubt are really "leaks" at all) and "official" teasers — and as a result, everyone is on tenterhooks, watching the currently-running announcement (which still hasn't announced anything as I type this paragraph).

Basically, the lesson to be learned here, I think, is that sometimes it's okay to shut up and not tell anyone what you're doing. Because when you tease something and then respond to all questions with "we're not ready to talk about that yet" or "we do not comment on rumours or speculation" you just come across as a bit of an arse, really.

Ah, and there we go. The big announcement is the Microsoft Surface, though it's changed a bit since the table-sized device we last saw. The new gizmo is an iPad-like device with an interesting twist: its Smart Cover-like kickstand has a full multitouch keyboard secreted within it. There's also an optional other case with actual proper, tactile keys.

The fact the Surface is running Windows 8 means that it can run things like Office and the like. There'll apparently be a scaled-back version for Windows RT, and one with Intel chips for the full Windows PC experience. The latter will also incorporate stylus and "digital ink" input as well as multitouch, and apparently has the power of a full desktop PC — though whether or not it will run Crysis is yet to be seen as I type this…

#oneaday Day 862: Lion and Logic

I've been meaning to reinstall my copy of Logic Studio for ages now. For the uninitiated, Logic Studio is a suite of music and audio production tools for Mac that has become an essential part of the podcast editing process for me. I have a podcast to be editing right now, in fact, but am unable to do so until I reinstall Logic Studio, which somehow buggered itself up in the transfer process from my old Mac to my new one.

So it was that today I decided to bite the bullet and begin the several hours long process that is reinstalling Logic Studio. (There are lots of DVDs of content.) I popped in the first disc, opened up the Finder window for the disc and double-clicked the installer, only to be confronted by a message that I really wasn't expecting.

"You can't open the application LogicStudio.mpkg because PowerPC applications are no longer supported."

WHAT.

Logic Studio is a Universal app — for non Mac users, this means that both older PowerPC-based Macs and newer Intel-based Macs can run the program. However, for some reason that remains unknown to seemingly everyone on the Internet, Apple decided to make the installer application for Logic Studio a PowerPC-only application.

On past versions of OS X, this wasn't a problem, as a technology called Rosetta was included to allow newer Intel Macs to run PowerPC-only apps. This feature was phased out in the latest version of OS X ("Lion"), however, meaning that you're seemingly fucked if you want to reinstall anything from disc that is more than a year or two old. (This is obviously not an issue for anything you have purchased from the Mac App Store, since when you download from there you always get the most up-to-date version.)

It's pretty clear why this situation is how it is, even if no-one from Apple would like to admit it — the latest verion of Logic Studio is, naturally, available from the Mac App Store, meaning that those who are really serious about their music and audio production needs should just drop £130 and upgrade. Some of us (like me) aren't made of money, however, meaning a frantic scrabble around Google to try and figure out what to do next.

There was plenty of advice on how to get Logic Studio actually running once it's installed (it seems that Apple included some sort of "obsolescence" tech in the app to actually forcibly prevent it from running under Lion — another nudge in the direction of the upgrade, no doubt) but very little on how to install it in the first place. Fortunately, I eventually found the information I needed, and I thought I could serve anyone suffering the same problem well by sharing said solution. So, without further ado, I present:

How to Install Logic Studio 8 Under OS X 10.7 "Lion"

You will need:
1 copy of your original Logic Studio discs.
1 OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" DVD (10.5 "Leopard" may work, too, but I didn't investigate)
Lots of time

1. Insert your Snow Leopard DVD into your Mac and open the disc's Finder window.
2. Double-click on the Optional Installs folder.
3. Double-click on the Optional Installs.mpkg file to run the installer.
4. Agree to all the bumf and choose your OS X install drive.
5. Rummage through the list of optional installs and ensure that the checkbox next to "Rosetta" is ticked.
6. Begin the install process. It should be pretty quick.

You'll probably get a warning message that Rosetta is not supported on Lion, but ignore it and proceed.

7. Remove the Snow Leopard DVD and replace with the Logic Studio Install DVD.
8. Open the disc's Finder window and double click on the Logic Studio.mpkg file.
9. Follow the instructions as normal. The Logic Studio install process takes hours, so go and do something else and check back to swap discs every so often.

Voila! Sorted.

I haven't finished reinstalling Logic Studio as yet so I don't know if any of the poking around to get it actually running is necessary as yet, but the installer certainly seems quite happy. This Rosetta trick also has the happy side-effect of allowing PowerPC-only applications to run under Lion, which was previously impossible — though obviously you do still need a Snow Leopard disc to pull this off. They don't have license keys, though, so if you have a Mac-toting friend with one, just borrow it — or doubtless some enterprising young individual has put it online somewhere, too.

I'm normally pretty patient with Apple's idiosyncratic ways of doing things — I believe things like the App Store, the "walled garden" nature of iOS and numerous other gubbins are all excellent ideas when you consider the demographic that the Apple of 2012 is trying to court — but all this seemed rather heavy-handed and unnecessary. To lock customers out of an application that they had paid several hundred pounds/dollars/whatevers for because of their desire to be up-to-date with their operating system seems ridiculous — particularly as there's no real reason that I can discern that the app itself shouldn't work. I guess we'll see once I actually finish reinstalling and try to get the bloody thing working again.

In other news, expect a new Squadron of Shame SquadCast by the end of the weekend, all being well!

#oneaday Day 834: RUMOUR: Rumours 'Rumoured', Says Rumour-Monger

If you've ever started a conversation with "I heard that…" and then gone on to explain exactly how you heard somewhere/from some guy in the pub/from "The Internet" that something awesome/awful is going to happen, then I urge you to think before you speak in future. Because if you continue with that sentence, you're simply feeding the rumour mill, and the rumour mill doesn't produce good things and help us make the Bread of Truth. It produces garbage and poo, and then squishes it all out into the world's most unpleasant pâté.

Tortured (and gross) metaphors aside, it's a fact that I wish more people — particularly in the press — would cotton on to.

Today, for example, saw news that Liberty X "might be" reforming for a new album and a tour. Firstly, I don't think anyone wants that, and secondly, the only evidence that such a reunion "might be" happening is the fact that they were photographed together outside the ITV studios and — get this — they were smiling. Stop the fucking presses.

There are a ton of journalism sectors that are particularly prone to this. Showbiz columns report who might be sleeping with whom. Sports columns report who might be moving to some other club for a disproportionately enormous amount of money. Music and arts columns report who might be working on what. And then, of course, there are the tech-related industries.

Anything related to Apple is accompanied by an inordinately huge amount of rumourmongering, for example. In the run-up to the company's announcement of the third-generation iPad, all sorts of nonsense was flying around. This ranged from suggestions that it might not have a Home button to the frankly astonishing assertion that the reason iOS apps had started having textures like leather and the like in the background was because the new iPad would have a haptic display — i.e. one where you could feel textures as well as see them.

The video games industry is far from immune, either. Rarely a week goes by without one outlet reporting on some rumour from a mysterious, anonymous source and the "story" then being picked up by every other news site on the Web as if it were fact. This particular rumour mill goes into overdrive as a hardware generation starts to wind down and people start wondering what the next generation of consoles might look like. Inevitably, the vast majority of stories turn out to be absolute bollocks, and on the rare occasions when an outlet or reporter writes something that turns out to be true, there's at least a day's worth of smug, self-satisfied cries of "Called it."

No you didn't. You were throwing darts blindfolded, and you happened to hit a lucky bulls-eye. Your other fifteen darts are embedded in the barman's testicles, the barmaid's left boob, the right ear of that hard-looking dude who drinks absinthe by the pint and the TV that was showing the Bolton v Wigan match. (Everyone is angry. I'd run, if I were you.)

So why do we persist on reporting on these festering sores on the very arse of journalism? Because they attract attention, particularly if they're controversial. If one site prints a story that Liberty X is reforming, or that the next Xbox will feature a system to prevent used games from working on it, or that the iPhone 5 really, totally, absolutely positively is coming out this time, then that will attract commenters like flies around shit. And that means page hits, advertising revenue and the little graphs that make the men in suits happy moving in an upward direction. Who cares if it's absolute nonsense dreamed up by someone who cleans the toilets at Microsoft? Print it!

I make a point of not reading any stories that start with the prefix "RUMOUR:" now. And should I ever find myself back on the news desk for a popular gaming website, I will most certainly do everything in my power to avoid reporting on such nonsense — unless some actual investigation turns up something interesting, of course. But blindly parroting another site's "anonymous source"? No. Just no.

So, then, I reiterate: think before you speak/write/publish. Because rumours are rarely helpful. Remember that time it spread around the whole school year that you'd shat your pants when in fact you'd just sat in some mud?

Yeah. That.

#oneaday Day 822: Xoom, Xoom, Xoom, Xoom, I Want You In My Room

I've been spending quite a lot of time with my shiny (well, rather fingerprinty now) new Motorola Xoom since it arrived the other day, and I have to say I'm a big fan. While Android seems to be a little more clunky than iOS, particularly prone to slowing down for no apparent reason on occasion, I'm appreciating the things it does do. Having a fully-customisable homescreen is very pleasant, certainly, and the cool quasi-3D effect it does with the wallpaper is pretty neat.

What's becoming abundantly clear to me as I continue to use it, however, is that using it simply feels very different to the iPad. It might be the fact it's designed to be used in landscape as opposed to the iPad's default portrait orientation; it might be the unique array of apps on offer on both devices; it might be a combination of interface elements. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I can say that both devices certainly have a place in my life at this moment for different reasons — and also that getting the Xoom has caused my desire for a 3rd-gen iPad to drop to zero.

If anything, the Xoom seems particularly suited for more "serious" tasks (and by "serious" I mean "not games") — I'm particularly fond of using it for Twitter, chat, email and that sort of thing. Google Currents has become my go-to app for reading the daily news. The built-in "share" functionality, which allows you to easily send stuff from one app to another easily, is pretty neat. The keyboard I have installed, which lets you type by drawing wiggly lines rather than tapping keys, makes me feel like a wizard, particularly with the sparkly particle pattern that comes from aforementioned wiggly pattern. And the inclusion of a USB port (albeit a micro-USB one that requires an adapter for pretty much every peripheral ever, making one wonder exactly why they didn't just put a regular USB port on it) means that it's possible to do things like hook up a keyboard and practically use the damn thing as a sort of laptop.

A big draw for me was the thriving emulation scene on Android, however. Within a few short moments of getting the device up and running I had downloaded NES, SNES, Mega Drive and arcade machine emulators and a few minutes later had successfully transferred my collection of ROM files of dubious origin. What I have now is a portable gaming device that plays pretty much any NES, SNES or Mega Drive game, and a whole heap of arcade games.

This… is awesome. I hadn't anticipated quite how awesome this was going to be, but the ability to play Final Fantasy VI while on an exercise bike at the gym, or Elevator Action while on the toilet, or Golden Axe while waiting for the kettle to boil… well… yes. It's awesome. The fact you can hook up a USB controller (or, for that matter, Wii Remote with Classic Controller via Bluetooth) and play these games as they were meant to be played — with actual buttons rather than floaty, crappy touchscreen controls — is a happy bonus. The fact you can use floaty, crappy touchscreen controls at times when having a controller is not convenient or socially acceptable is also most welcome.

I'm certainly not going to become one of those gits who bangs on about how much better Android is than iOS because there are things that both do far, far better than the other. But I've been very pleasantly surprised by my first experience with an Android device, and the fact it's turned out to be a portable retro-gaming powerhouse is just a happy bonus, really. Now I can finally get around to beating all the Final Fantasy games that are still on my "to-do" list. (V and VI, as it happens. Also Chrono Trigger, which may as well be a Final Fantasy game.) And, as previously mentioned, playing Elevator Action on the toilet.

Now, if you'll excuse me…

#oneaday Day 819: I'm a PC, and I'm a Mac...

…and I'm also a PS3, a Wii, a 360, an iOS and an Android. I'm pretty frickin' multicultural when it comes to operating systems and platforms, in short. Always have been.

The whole "platform wars" thing always bothers me. It's usually started by the media and then perpetuated by fanboys who get angrier and angrier and spew more and more meaningless vitriol at one another until everyone leaves feeling rather embarrassed about the whole thing.

This isn't a phenomenon limited to children and teenagers, either. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen grown men and women posting ridiculous comments about how much they "hate" Apple/Microsoft/Google/Sony/Nintendo/that guy Barry from the chip shop (to be fair, he is a bit of a wanker) and getting increasingly riled up when people try to talk sense into them. Or when people deliberately bait them. Or when people take their comments a little too personally and start yelling back. Or… you get the idea.

It's been going on as long as there have been rival, roughly equivalent platforms doing similar things. We see it with every generation of computers, consoles, handhelds, smartphones, tablets, operating systems… it goes on and on. And, as I say, it's usually started by the media, though in most cases it's a bit of a "light the fuse and watch" sort of scenario, whereby they'll sow the seeds of conflict and then just let consumers batter each other into submission with increasingly-dumb arguments.

I've never subscribed to this particular attitude. I don't see the point. Every platform has its pros and cons. Some are likely to be more successful than others. Some will flop, hard. But they all have their place, and if you enjoy using them or find them useful, then that's a win. If you have no use for them or don't find them interesting, cool or exciting, then that's no loss to you. There's certainly no reason to judge people who do like them, though.

Let's take the Android/iOS distinction. These two groups are regularly at each others' throats, with Android users often hijacking iOS app Facebook pages with comments that just say "Android." repeatedly under the mistaken assumption that this will make the developer of said app want to support them, and iOS users honking on about incompatibility, how much better their devices are and how cool they look. The vocal proportion of both groups are insufferable arseholes, and I really wish they would shut up.

I entered the Android brigade today with the arrival of my new Motorola Xoom tablet. I got it for several reasons — work, curiosity and the emulation scene. What I found was that I gained an immediate appreciation of what Android did, but did not suddenly find myself hating iOS, Apple and everything they stood for. Instead, from a rational, relatively neutral (well, I have been exclusively iOS for mobile for a number of years now!) point of view, I could see that both of these operating systems had distinctive purposes, and could appreciate both of them.

iOS is simple, easy, consistent and clear. You know what you're getting with an iOS device. When you run an iOS app (games aside) you generally know what the interface is going to look like, and you can usually figure out how it's going to work. This is true to such a degree that when apps make minor changes to what is seen as the "standard" way that things work, it's very uncomfortable. A good example is the Spotify iPhone app, which has the "go back" and "now playing" buttons the opposite way around to how the iPhone's native music player has — it's a little confusing and irritating. Not enough to warrant INTERNET RAGE, obviously, but it highlights the fact that most iOS apps are a little more consistent with their interface design.

The "walled garden" aspect of iOS has its place, too. For those who are new to smartphones, tablets and technology in general, the fact that everything scary is walled off means that people can experiment and gain confidence with the device without breaking anything. Apple as a company has been increasingly moving towards the more "casual", "consumer" market over the last few years — various changes to OSX indicate this, too — and the easier and more consistent things are for users, the better so far as they're concerned. All this has the side-effect of irritating self-confessed "power users", however.

But then there's Android, which would be ideal for said "power users" if they weren't so stubborn. Annoyed at lack of customisation? You can do that on Android. Wish you could transfer files to the device simply by connecting it to a USB port, not by farting around with app-specific transfer programs? Sure, go ahead. Want to use non Apple-branded accessories, including USB gizmos? Knock yourself out!

The side-effect of all this, of course, is that it provides more things to go wrong. It's still pretty difficult to break an Android device from what I can tell — at least if you haven't "rooted" it, a process which I still don't really understand — but there are more variables in play. You can install apps from places other than one single "official" App Store. There's a greater risk of malware — something which is practically nonexistent for non-jailbroken iOS devices. The interface(s) for Android apps is (are) maddeningly inconsistent at times. And although the iOS App Store carries a lot of absolute garbage, there's even more on Android.

Both have their place, in short, and both have their own flaws — just as Windows and OSX have their place; PS3, 360 and Wii have their place; and if you really want to keep on using that Palm Tungsten you've had kicking around for years now, be my guest.

In short — and I'm aware I've said this before to little effect on the Internet at large, but it's nice to at least try — people should pretty much just shut the fuck up and enjoy what they've got while ignoring what they haven't got. We'd have a much nicer world without all this envy and jealousy floating around — since, after all, that's pretty much what most fanboy arguments tend to boil down to — so why do we still do it?

I guess it's fun to be contrary. Well, you can count me out. So far as tech goes, I'm multicultural and proud.

#oneaday Day 779: Snark Pit

I've kind of had it with snark. The whole "let's piss on everything" parade that shows up any time something vaguely interesting or cool happens is getting really rather tiresome, and over the last few weeks and months I've actually been taking steps to minimise my exposure to it by simply unfollowing people on Twitter who prove to be irritants in this fashion. (British game journos, you don't come off well in this poll, by the way, naming no specific names.)

Unfortunately, on a day like today, which held among other things the promise of a hotly-anticipated iPad-related announcement from Apple (which turned out to be "The New iPad" with its shiny retina display and quad-core processor… yum) it's difficult to avoid said snark. It seems that for a lot of people nowadays that if something isn't to your own personal preference, then no-one should enjoy it.

At this point I'll say that I'm well aware I've been guilty of this in the past, and for that I apologise. (The X-Factor is still unquestionably shit, though. There is no valid argument in favour of a show that gave the world Jedward. I'm just not going to rant at length about the subject any more.) I am trying my best these days to see arguments from both sides, but unless you're some sort of level 99 mediator, you're always going to come down on one side or another. So long as you don't force your views on others and expect everyone to agree with you, everyone should be free to do that. (Unless it's about something dickish. I think we can pretty much universally agree that those who judge people based on skin colour or sexual orientation can all pretty much just bugger off and sit on a spike.)

I digress. I was talking about snark, and specifically relating to today's Apple announcements. The new iPad is, by all accounts, a lovely-looking device, and the Retina display is sure to raise some eyebrows. As per usual for an Apple event, the company came out with its usual stuff about how it believed we were entering a "post-PC" era and about how people supposedly "preferred gaming on their iPad" to consoles and computers.

Contentious comments, for sure, but firstly, they're marketing hyperbole — Apple announcements are press events, after all, and a company as big as Apple is never going to be humble about its achievements or lofty ambitions — and secondly, it might not be quite so unreasonable as you think. Already many households are making use of iPads for simple tasks such as browsing the Web, checking email, watching TV and movies, playing games, keeping themselves organised and all manner of other things. And the sheer number of people who have downloaded Angry Birds, whatever you may think of it (I hate it) should give you pause when considering the gaming-related comments.

But instead of thinking these points through rationally and considering the perspective that Apple might have been coming from, in it was with the snark about how wrong Apple was and how much bullshit they were talking. Up went the defensive walls, and a veritable barrage of snark was fired over the parapets towards anyone who dared to say "hmm, hang on, that's actually quite interesting, and possibly plausible". (I'm not saying their comments were true, rather that they deserved greater consideration than immediate outright dismissal.)

It only continued when, as usually happens in Apple announcement events, software started to be shown. The new versions of iMovie and GarageBand for iOS drew particular ire, with various Twitter users making acidic comments about how awful the music people makes with GarageBand supposedly is, and how terrible the "movie trailers" facility of iMovie is.

Once again, no consideration was given to the audiences that these features might be directed at. As a former employee of the Apple Store, let me assure you there is absolutely no love lost between me and the tech giant of Cupertino, so I have no "need" or contractual obligation to defend them — and also, a company the size of Apple certainly doesn't need my defence either. But as a former employee, I know that Apple customers aren't just high-falutin' creative types, gadget freaks, tech snobs and people with more money than sense. I know that people who walk through the front door of that store range from very young to very old; from experienced computer user to complete beginner. I know that there's a considerable proportion of that audience who came to Apple because of its products' reputation of ease of use. I've even taught plenty of those people how to achieve simple tasks in products such as iMovie and GarageBand, and to see the looks on their faces when they realised that yes, they could be creative with their computers despite their lack of technological knowhow was, to use a word Apple itself is very fond of, magical.

As such, I feel it's grossly unfair and downright blinkered for people (including professional commentators in some situations) to completely dismiss a considerable proportion of Apple's audience and declare a feature to be "awful" or "crap" simply on the grounds that they don't see the appeal, or think that its results are cheesy. (They are, but imagine if you had no idea how to edit a video and suddenly discovered you could put together a slick-looking movie trailer from your holiday footage and upload it to the Internet. You'd be pretty stoked, and you wouldn't care that it was a bit cheesy. If you were inspired by this ease of use, you might even look into the subject further to find out how to take more control over the stuff you were creating.)

I'm using Apple as an example today since the announcement is still pretty fresh in everyone's mind. But the presence of snark can be found pretty much any time something interesting is announced or discussed, especially in the tech or gaming industries. You can count on there being an unfunny hashtag pun game mocking the story within a matter of minutes; endlessly-retweeted "jokes" trying to look clever; and, of course, protracted slanging matches any time someone calls these people out on it.

And, you know, I've had enough. If you have a valid criticism of something, by all means share it and back up your point. But if you have nothing to say other than "I think this is crap, therefore everyone else should too" then kindly keep it to yourself. Because, frankly, your opinion isn't anywhere near as important as you think it is.

#oneaday Day 759: I Said Byte, Byte, Mrs Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is here!

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the official website.

Still no clue? It's a little computer (and I mean little — it's about the size of a credit card) that costs approximately £16 and is capable of outputting 1080p video via HDMI. David "I Made Elite, No Not the Call of Duty thing" Braben was involved in its development and has been a vocal spokesperson in the run-up to its release, but the device itself is the brainchild of one Eben Upton, a former lecturer at Cambridge University.

You're probably thinking that £16 is pretty cheap for a fully-functional computer, and that there must be some sort of catch. Well, it's not a "catch" as such, but don't expect to be playing The Old Republic on this little beast. Boasting 128MB or 256MB of RAM and a 700MHz ARM processor similar to that found in a low-end smartphone, it's not going to set the world alight with its performance, but that really isn't the point of it.

Instead, Upton, Braben and the other industry luminaries who have worked on the project are hoping that the device will inspire a quiet revolution in computer science teaching. Due to the system's low cost, it will be a simple matter for schools to outfit themselves with a veritable arsenal of Raspberry Pis, allowing large numbers of kids the opportunity to get hands-on time with a real computer and learn some useful skills.

This is a hot-button issue in the UK at the moment, as the Livingstone-Hope Next Gen Skills report published last year found that computer science teaching in the UK was, to put it politely, somewhat lacking. The National Curriculum prescribes that children should be equipped with certain information and communication technology skills by the end of their school career, but the goals are distinctly unambitious and, more to the point, have not exactly moved with the times. There's a strong focus on Microsoft Office and little else — no exploration of web design, website administration, database management, programming, and certainly very little in the way of creative design work such as Photoshop.

Part of this is a cost issue, of course — even at educational pricing, Photoshop is still pretty frickin' expensive — but that doesn't diminish the fact that kids aren't leaving school with the computer skills that they'd need to find jobs in the tech industries. They're maybe leaving with enough knowledge to allow them to fulfil a secretarial role, but that's about it. They certainly wouldn't be building a website, looking after a CRM or even inputting data into a CMS. Any knowledge of social networking and blogging is done on their own time — and all credit to the kids of today, they take to it like a duck to water.

What the Raspberry Pi team hopes to achieve with the little computer that could is to provide kids with a piece of kit that is built for tinkering with. Many pieces of consumer electronics in the home these days are locked down tightly to prevent modification and experimentation — in the case of games consoles, users are even punished for unauthorised system modifications in many cases. There's also a high barrier for entry to development in many cases — expensive software packages, development kits, membership in "developer programmes" all build up costs to a level unfeasible for the hobbyist to contemplate, especially if they're not sure whether or not they'll be able to develop the skills necessary to enjoy success.

The Raspberry Pi, running on Fedora Linux and designed to be expandable with all manner of external hardware, is a low-cost step that will allow a much greater number of people access to some truly open hardware with which they can experiment, tinker and learn all manner of exciting things. And even if they find that their brain is completely incapable of wrapping itself around complex computer-related concepts, they're only out of pocket by £16 when all's said and done. (Plus the cost of monitor, keyboard and other bits and bobs, but that's beside the point.)

Hopefully the Raspberry Pi will convince schools to throw out the abject tedium of the National Curriculum's ICT programme and start exploring more relevant, exciting topics surrounding computing. It might also convince schools to hire ICT teachers who actually know something about computers, rather than treating it as a second-class subject to be handled by teachers of completely unrelated disciplines as a means of filling up some of their free periods. What a brave new world that would be.

Will it be a success? Impossible to say at this juncture, as the simple existence of the product doesn't necessarily mean that there will be buy-in from the people who it is aimed at. But we'll see.

To find out more, check out the official site. You'll be able to order one for yourself at the end of this month, and educational packages including additional equipment, documentation and all manner of other goodies are on track for a September-ish release from the sounds of things.