Wednesday 11 April 2012

Reorganisation & Phone Wars

As you may have noticed, I have finally caved and given in to the evils of using a premade theme, because sadly the internet has evolved to the point where design and content production are two different specialisations. I will admit, I do miss being able to tweak every last aspect of the layout, margins and colours. When I first got Quake II all those many moons ago it took me a month of playing every evening to get past the second level, because I spent all my time fiddling with the 3D settings. Mostly because it coincided with us getting our first 3D card, but I digress. The point is, I find myself fannying about less and less these days. It's not my focus any more. If I want this to be a site that people actually read, I have to concentrate on the content, not the looks. Not to say I won't be heavily editing the theme mind you - I will, as it currently looks lazy as hell, and the list of categories beneath the header has gone missing for reasons I have yet to adequately explain. Wait, no, it's just white against a white background. Ass. But this always happens to me when editing by hand. For years I've been banging on to people about the benefits of clean code, and why programs like Dreamweaver overburden your site with a mound of shite, and why Blogger was so overautomated it was nearly impossible to use. Premade never caters to your precise needs, and it's always ever so slightly wrong in a way that sits there nagging at you, like a child actor in a Steven Sommers film. Which brings up a worrying post I read yesterday, and more worryingly agreed with. An error with my phone led me to a blog post by Joel McLauglin, who has made me realise there may be something in the armies of people who get iPhones because they 'just work.' And I realised how much I do forgive my little droid. I forgive it the fact that it takes twice as long for the Facebook app to load my feed as the mobile feed takes. I forgive it the fact that it is hopeless at white balancing photos and everything ends up magenta tinted (yes it's an HTC). I even forgive using a bizarre hybrid of Android 2.1 and 2.2, which I only discovered the other day when I had to do a factory reset. The phone crashed halfway through downloading 2.2 and some of the features didn't update. But I forgive all this because it's the first touchscreen I ever had. And looking at the things that matter - battery life, paying less and freedom of usage - the Legend still outshines the more modern iterations of the iPhone. To me, anyway. I don't care if the phone talks to you now, I've always said: with the iPhone, you pay extra for fewer features. And yet... the user experience on Android is getting really shabby. Google effectively don't even bother patching a lot of Android issues - they'll work correctly in the next release, but if your phone won't support that release, you're stuck. And with UK users forced into 24 month contracts, you can guarantee by the end of the first year Google will have written your handset out of the list of droids compatible with their newest version, so you never get the promised bug fix. There are too many different phones with too many different hardware and software versions, and apps simply can't remain compatible with all of them. Apps drop out or freeze up all the time. All of your friends will be using an app your phone doesn't support. The battery life is only better if you turn everything off, and then you're not getting the extra features you're boasting about over the iPhone. So it occurs to me that sometimes you get what you pay for. And if you're willing to accept all these glitches, then that's the tradeoff. I used to be able to, but I'll admit it is starting to grate on my nerves. But some people aren't willing - they'd rather pay to have someone professional sort things out, i.e. someone they can sue or shout at if it goes wrong. So yeah. I finally understand why people buy iPhones. I'm not sure if I'm happy about that or not.

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