Platform Racism in Tech Podcasts (or Why I Stopped Listening To The Drill Down podcast)

I listen to a lot of podcasts, a lot, most of them technology based, Tech News Today is probably the podcast I listen to most hours and the Engadget podcast the most anticipated (tell you why in a minute).

Before anyone starts to think I’m a crazy Google fanboy I just want to say I love my iPad 2 and it is a really great piece of technology, and might be one of the most revolutionizing pieces of products since the iPhone. I owned the first and second generation iPhone before I switched my smartphone to a Nexus One.

The problem facing podcasts and the podcasts hosts today is that they just don’t come of as experienced enough, or objective enough, and it has almost become a sort of platform racism in today’s podcast society. I was listening to The Drill Down podcast (a quite small and cozy tech-news podcast) last week and I felt like it was one of the worst situations like this I’ve ever heard.

As one of the last topic they started the discussion of one of last weeks arguably hottest stories, Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich event, they were disappointed in the event and spoke kind of short how good it was that Matias Duarte was going to find the soul of Android, and spent almost no time talking about features before they launched in to high praise of Siri, without really giving a clear indication they switched switched subject (from android = bad to iPhone = good).

The discussion start at 46:24 and ended at 52:58, and the discussion was only a comparison of iOS and Android, how iOS is fast on switching apps, how great iOS5 is and the biggest news on Ice Cream Sandwich is the font Robotica which is just a rip-off on Helvetica and the segment ends with a small note of Galaxy Nexus:

“even the iPhone 4S with it’s tiny little 3’5 inch screen is still more compelling to me, and I think mainly becuase of Siri”.

I don’t even know if this can count as a Android segment as they mention iOS more than Android (and yes I did a sloppy count).

Another quote from the segment is: “we see people being frustrated by their Android phone, it’s almost like Windows, many things crash a lot, it’s not as polished as iPhone or even Windows Phone, certain things crash a lot, phones starts falling apart, every device is a little diffrent”

As I said earlier I have had a Nexus One two years now and the crashing apps has become a very small problem, and crashing iOS apps has almost become an equal problem (my Safari and the recent iPad Facebook application is among the worst crashing on my iPad 2).

But The Drill Down is not the only podcast out there with this problem, some of the worst podcasts with this problem is Tekzilla, This Week In Tech (depending on the guests), Macbreak Weekly (which might be justified) and in some instances This Is My Next (soon to be The Verge) podcast can be one of the worst.

Tekzilla has a much bigger problem where the enthusiasm is a big problem and it influence their language and actions in a way that makes it a very non-objective view of the platforms. No better way to prove this than the last week when they were going through iPhone 4S and Ice Cream Sandwich, the amount time spend on the iPhone 4S and Ice Cream Sandwich is not even worth counting as the difference is very big, and the small time spent on Android they bring up at least 3 things they think are bad, while none bad things talking about the iPhone 4S.

And the enthusiasm for the iPhone 4S is noticeable bigger than for the Android devices (which might be a un-solvable “problem”). They actually have presented more iPhone 4 cases than Android Phones in the almost one year I’ve watched it.

I also listen to This Week In Google, All About Android and Android Central Podcast and you would think that they would have the exact opposite language than the more general technology podcasts out there, but they don’t. This Week in Google is very aware of the pros- and cons of the both plattforms, something which the other podcasts lack, other podcasts are more aware of the cons of Android and pros of iOS.

Google-centric podcasts talk highly of both platforms, they know them, they have lived with them and have a more objective view, a more correct journalistic view. Just listening to This Week in Google proves my point where they mention iOS in an esteemed manner, but being more favorably, and geeky if you will, towards Android.

Maybe this proves the point that you need to be more of a tech geek to use Android, or it proves that Android users don’t love Android (as Google pointed out in the Ice Cream Sandwich presentation), but I don’t think any of these point are true. I love Android, more than iOS and I’m pretty sure the guys over at All About Android can agree, the thing is that we as Android users are perhaps more open to change and living with something different. Maybe because we made the shift from iPhone to Android (since iPhone came first), or maybe because we are more open-minded as people towards our technology.

I have lived with an iPhone for two years, Android for two years and a Windows Phone 7 for three months, and I can tell you i truly like all the operating systems, but Android has so many more useful developer API:s than any other plattform. The thing I do most with my smartphone is listening to podcasts, and even though wifi-sync is a great addition to getting podcasts on a phone, it does not compare to the feeling when you’re waking up and you know you can start listening to the latest podcast right away, without having to turn on a computer, wait for the podcasts to download and then sync with the device.

The third party apps do this a whole lot better on Android than on iOS or even Windows Phone (and there are so many more examples of this), a lot of small tweaks like that which makes Android a more automated and functional operating system for me. But I still think iOS and Windows Phone is really good and I get why those platforms are better for some people, which many podcast hosts out there do not.

Category: Android, iOS, podcasts by Joakim Engstrom
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Stay Hungry, Stay foolish – The Remarkable Thing about Steve jobs

I actually wrote this post over a year ago, now seemed like a good idea to post it.

The people one admires change how one matures. As I have matured, the people I admire have also become more sophisticated and less mainstream. If you watch many of the videos of Steve Jobs you can’t do anything but admire him.

Not only did he found Apple, he got fired from Apple, co-founded Pixar, founded a computer company called NeXT, which got bought up by Apple in 1997 when Jobs also became the CEO of Apple, and turned an almost bankrupt company to one of the worlds largest tech companies. With many companies behind him and companies that have become big, successful and most of all made some world changing products, you can’t contribute it all to luck. Steve Jobs is destined to be great because he knows quality and great products, whether it’s tech, film, or typography.

I’ve heard that Apple never does surveys, if Apple would have done surveys the MacBook would by now have a multi-touch screen on it, it would be expensive as hell and would not at all be comfortable to use. That’s because people are stupid and don’t always know what they want or what’s best for them. Steve Jobs knows really great products, he has a vision and won’t let people get in his way.

I’ve heard that when Steve enters a room, he always thinks he is the smartest person in the room, which may seem egotistical but more than often is true. Even if it’s said that he changed his attitude after his illness, it’s still there to some extent, which is evident in the phone call talking about iPhone, Android and Apple in general.

There are many videos out there of Steve talking, but one of my favorites is his talk on Stanford Commencement Address in 2005 where he talks about his time on Stanford, how he dropped out and only went to the courses he really wanted to, among them typography. He also slept in his friend’s room and paid for food with bottle deposits. It was in the typography class that he learned the beautiful typography that he later implemented on the first Macintosh computer with the first commercial computer user interface, controllable with a mouse and keyboard. Many of the things that later would show up in Microsoft’s products.

The most interesting thing about the speech is his finale, where he advices people not to fall in to dogma, don’t settle and a quote that says “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”. Some of the best advice a person can get who just finished school and is going out to create a job for himself.

6 october 2011 Steve Jobs died.

Some of the best of Steve jobs on Youtube:

The speech on Stanford in its entirety:

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on All Things Digital in 2007:

Category: iOS, people by Joakim Engstrom
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Matrix Revolutions – Conversation between Oracle and Neo

I recently made a post on facebook, because someone asked me to go into detail about the conversation between the Oracle and Neo in the Matrix Revolutions, and since I can’t be short when it comes to the Matrix, the post became quite large.
I really go into detail and I thought I would post it here since it might be an interesting read.

“Oracle: I told you before. No one can see beyond a choice they don’t understand, and I mean no one.”

In the Matrix everything is deterministic, the coices you make have already been made. But since Neo does not understand his choices, he can’t look into the future. (Kinda like real life, you know you are going to take a shower tomorrow because you understand why, unless this interrupts with someone else’s deterministic pattern).

 

“Oracle: It doesn’t matter. It’s my choice. I have mine to make same as you have yours.”

Here she’s clearly talking about Smith, later on in the movie Smith takes her  over (without struggle), that’s the choice of hers which she doesn’t understand and that’s why she can’t see the future; because she doesn’t understand why she makes the choice of voluntarily letting Smith take her over (she only understands the choice once she’s inside of Smith (and that’s why she can talk to Neo through Smith in the end), everyone Smith has taken over is inside of all of the Smiths).

 

‎”Neo: Then why didn’t you tell me about the Architect? Why didn’t you tell me about Zion, the ones before me? Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

This one is easy because she gives you the answer. Neo was not ready to know about his 5 predecessors (yes, there were five Neos before him) because he would not understand the choice (the coice between the whole human kind and Trinity) until he was with the Architect.

 

 

‎”Neo: Tell me how I separated my mind from my body without jacking in. Tell me how I stopped four sentinels by thinking it. Tell me just what the hell is happening to me.

Oracle: The power of the one extends beyond this world. It reaches from here, all the way back to where you came from.

Neo: Where?

Oracle: The source. That’s what you felt when you touched those sentinels, but you weren’t ready for it. You should be dead, but apparently you weren’t ready for that either.”

This is a bit more confusing. If we accept that Neo is an anomaly (which both the Architect and the Oracle have said) then Neo must, in part, be a program, or have some code in him that holds the key to balance (the key to free will (or free will in a deterministic setting), because free will can’t exist without there being some problems).

So if Neo is in part something from the Machine world, then he could control the machines in some part, since he is part something from the machines, right?

But since the Matrix is also about balance (a system always trying to balance itself out; since paradise (or a paradise where everyone gets what they want) can’t exist with free will, Neo became the balance. The Oracle and the Architect stand for balance (order and chaos)) Neo can’t die, right?, because if Neo died the world would be out of balance and Smith would “win”, but if Smith won, the balance would be broken (from some religious perspectives, that can’t happen).

In conclusion: Neo can’t die (the world can’t be out of balance) and he can control some parts of the machine city (he is part a program).

 

 

If you read the above the rest should make some sense, I think.

 

‎”Oracle: You know where. And if you can’t find the answer, then I’m afraid there may be no tomorrow for any of us.

Neo: What does that mean?

Oracle: Everything that has a beginning, has an end. I see the end coming. I see the darkness spreading. I see death. And you are all that stands in his way.

Neo: Smith.

Oracle: Very soon he’s going to have the power to destroy this world. But I believe he won’t stop there, he can’t. He won’t stop until there’s nothing left at all.

Neo: What is he?

Oracle: He is you, your opposite, your negative, the result of the equation trying to balance itself out.

Neo: And if I can’t stop him.

Oracle: One way or another, Neo, this war is going to end. Tonight, the future of both worlds will be in your hands or in his.

Neo: The Architect told me that if I didn’t return to the source, Zion would be destroyed by midnight tonight.

Oracle: Please. You and I may not be able to see beyond our own choices, but that man can’t see past any choice.

Neo: Why not?

Oracle: He doesn’t understand them, he can’t. To him they are variables and equations. One at a time each must be solved and counted. That’s his purpose: to balance the equation.”

SIDE NOTE: The Oracle is human intuition and feelings while The Architect is logic. Sort of Spock and Kirk :P
“Neo: What’s your purpose?

Oracle: To unbalance it.

Neo: Why? What do you want?

Oracle: I want the same thing you want, Neo, and I’m willing to go as far as you are to get it.”

SIDE NOTE: She wants the war to end.

 

“Neo: The end of the war. Is it going to end?

Oracle: One way or another.

Neo: Can Zion be saved?

Oracle: I’m sorry, I don’t have the answer to that question. But, if there is an answer, there’s only one place you’re going to find it.

Neo: Where?”

SIDE NOTE: The Machine Main frame, when Neo enters Smith in the end of the movie, the machines are the only ones who can destroy him from the inside.

 

This post goes out to Hollywood Saloon, the best podcast out there, period.

Category: Movies by Joakim Engstrom
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What’s up!

I’m busy working so I don’t have time to update the blog as much as I want to. But I’m working on updates on the few games i have out on the internet and hopefully the updates will bring in sone more revenue so I can keep making awesome games and apps and learn even more about coding and the world of mobile applications.

I’ll keep you all updated ;-)

Category: Android by Joakim Engstrom
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Sneak Peek: A Brand New Android Game

Just thought I share some thoughts and screenshots of the big project me and a friend have been working on lately.

This is a brand new Android game which have been programmed from scratch and will involve a lot more animation, moving objects and action than Kill The Droids currently do!

New Android

It’s involving some steering with the accelerometer, and lots of shooting. The plan is to make it a high score game, with maybe some bigger plans down the line.

I can’t say when it will be released exactly but hopefully sooner rather then later.

Right now there is not much more to be said. Just hope you will all download it when it comes out.

Comments are appreciated.

Category: Android by Joakim Engstrom
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Released Kill the Droids 2.0.

I released Kill the Droids 2.0 yesterday which somewhat fixes the speed issue, adds more highscores and makes it a little more fun.

This will be the last update in a while since I’m working on a much bigger project at the moment.

Category: Android, Uncategorized by Joakim Engstrom
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Kill The Droids – Version 1.0.1

I just updated my application Kill The Droids on the Android Market.

Some things I have learned by uploading a mobile application are:

  • If it’s free people will download it like crazy as long as it’s visible. Just by showing up on what’s new I got circa 1000 downloads within 2 hours.
  • How many downloads/hour decreases very quickly.
  • You actually have something that people assume you have to support, like upgrading once in a while.
  • People criticize!

Either way, it’s great just to have something to show up and something that actually works, I’ve learned many things during the debug process.

Some comments on the application:

“Good Game!…….. Fast Paced!………. htc incredible……*<};-)….~~~”

-John

“Pretty dumb, really hard to get to even 20 , u can try it out but its realy nor worth it”

-Spencer

The Application have 3 out of 5 stars right now, thought it would be lower, but since many bugs now are fixed I’m guessing it should stay that way from now on.

Next up is better graphics, global high score and some preferences.

Category: Android by Joakim Engstrom
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Kill The Droids – Android App

Hey everybody, just released my first app on the Android Market.

It’s a simple game which is on version 1.0, and updates will hopefully come in the future, but they will probably come slowly.

Either way it’s very playable but with very short game play.

The object of the game is to kill Droids which fly on the screen, you kill it by a touch, but as soon as one is killed another one will show up at a higher speed, and you’re lucky if you kill 20 of the bastards before they reach the other end of the screen.

As I said it’s short gameplay but I will update it in the future to make it easier.

Kill The Droids - Menu

Kill The Droids - Gameplay

The game should be available in the Android Market, or just scan the QR-code, with a Barcode Scanner app.

Qr-code for Kill The Droids

Category: Android by Joakim Engstrom
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Why video games are art!

A gaming boy

A response to Eberts post on video games and art (link can be found here: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html).

“No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”

As I have only read a handful of the nearly 2000 comments on this post I hope I will not be the first one to cite a game that not only should be, but is, art. And I’m going to try to use Eberts analogies of art to make that point.

First a few lines about why I’m doing this and why I and many gamers should care. Frankly, Ebert, you sound like my dad when I was trying to convince him that films are art, I was coming with names like Truffaut, Godard, Kubrick and even Spielberg. Why the haunting images Le Mepris and Sympathy for the Devil was so haunting and said so much about our society and the people in it.

Why the beginning of 2001 was so brilliant, like a great piece like Bach’s Air.

I don’t blame my dad, he has never seen those films and even if he did he would probably find them boring. It’s exactly the same way with you and a video game, even if the game was pure mastery you would probably… be bored.

And this is not because you are old, dumb or anything else. It’s for the simple reason that you have not experienced video games enough.

If my father would see many films and really concentrate on them he would find appreciation over time for a film like 2001.

If you, Ebert, would game your way through Super Mario, Sonic, GTA, you would find appreciation for other games and find what is art and not.

“For example, I tend to think of art as usually the creation of one artist.”

You point out that film is not made by a single person, by many. Herzog did not make Bad Lieutenant by himself, and would Fitzcerraldo be as good as it is without the patient film crew behind and in front of the camera (not at least Kinski)?

But if this is a requirement for great art Hideo Kojima does something extraordinary with The Metal Gear Solid Series, he had such success as a game creator that he has his own company and is said as one of the giants in gaming, and Metal Gear he had completely control over.

Sam Lake wrote the story and screenplay for the hard-boiled games Max Payne 1 & 2, and was one of the creative forces behind those games.

Max Payne 2

I’m merely setting this up for the next point:

“One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersing games without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.”

Here your definition of a game is becoming a little blurry and it seems like you contradict yourself. If a game is chess or Monopoly, then maybe you are right, but VIDEO games are something completely different and it may or may not have an outcome, rules and points. A VIDEO game is most of the time a representation of a story and can only be experienced.

The first Metal Gear Solid is not about winning, getting points, it’s about war, the destructive nature of humans and the beauty we can find in a person no matter how cruel.

In one of the famous “boss fights” we get to feel sorry for someone whom we (or the main character Solid Snake) had to kill, the story tells of great sadness and we get a feeling of doubt and the moral ambiguity of what we are doing, but we have to keep going. For the greater good(or is it?).

Not unlike Captain Benjamin in Apocalypse Now had to believe he was doing right (or had he?) even if he were sent into the unknown.

The ending for Metal Gear 1 is a sad one and there is no victory in losing the love of ones life, and not completely destroying the bad guy, but not unlike An Inconvenient Truth the future for Solid Snake seems bright. An experience not unlike Apocalypse Now (even though Metal Gear Solid 3 does this even more so), the underlying themes of Metal Gear Solid does just as Apocalypse Now, hiding it’s true meaning under a gritty war theme. And all under Kojima’s careful and overwhelming hands.

As for Max Payne it plays out as an action-packed film-noir story as you play a modern Humphrey Bogart who gets entangled in a more personal journey than first intended (the crappy movie makes the video game no justice). Here is a video game that can only be experienced, you go on a trail for justice with just leaving dead bodies behind you, but you do it because you have to (to avenge your loved ones and setting the bad guy to justice), and this game works so good that you even compare to noir classics as John Huston’s Maltese Falcon or Wilder’s Double Indemnity, as it works just as good and tells the story so effectively that you believe this to be true. And even if some say that the game has been dated it’s the same persons that say The Maltese Falcon has been dated (the graphics are bad vs. it’s in black and white).

Video games will always be restrained by technology, but so will film (the reason one chooses to make a black and white film today is the same reason someone chooses to make a side scrolling game today, because it serves the story and characters better).

If you are talking rules as: you can’t get past that wall because someone programmed that wall to be indestructible, it’s the same for movies, you won’t see past that wall because it’s not important to the story and characters we want to tell.

I can quote more games that have moral themes and so deep moral choices that is shakes the core of ones being (a certain baby-kidnapping in Fallout 3 comes to mind).

“Plato, via Aristotle, believed art should be defined as the imitation of nature.”

Santiago brings forward an interesting game, Flower. Flower is at its essence an imitation of nature, so much so as it tries to portrait nature literally. But what Santiago points out is that it’s about something else, balance in nature.

Ehh, what?

Sure one could say that, and it’s true. But one could also say that 2001 one is about evolution, and it’s true. 2001, Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi and Flower use the same engine in the human gene which is to find an explanation, the same way we try to find an explanation behind Mona Lisa’s smile.

Can’t it just be? Can Mona Lisa just be smiling? Can Koyaanisqatsi just be beautiful? Can not Flower just be beautiful too?

Flower is a haunting piece of art. The first time I started the video game I was in tears, it was the most beautiful video game I had ever seen, and like 2001 I just stared at the first spectacle of Flower and marveled by its beauty, after 10 minutes of just staring I grabbed the controller and thought this must be the way people felt when they first saw a painting by Monet for the first time in the beginning of 1900.

Flower is not about anything, you are the wind who try to capture flower leafs and as you capture more and more the environment changes. It’s the most hunting game I’ve ever played just because it’s pure mastery at mixing sound (more like music) and the picture in front of you. It’s as hauntingly beautiful as a Monet painting, Bach’s Air, or Herzog’s Encounters At The End Of The World.

You can even play it with just one button, which makes the experience more seamless and immersing.

Flower is not for winning, not for points, it’s for an experience, and an experience that not only brings me goosebumps but actually makes me fall a few tears by the sheer thought of it.

“Toward the end of her presentation, she shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of video games as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management”

And this point is the worst yet, which only proves you are wrong. Go in to Warner Brothers, Fox, Universal at any point in time and see the exact same points on their wall, is it viable to finance Herzogs (put in any name you want) latest film, or even distribute it?

Film is a really expensive art (can be relatively cheap as once again proven by Herzog), but ever since the beginning of film it has been expensive, as you actually has to have a video camera (even though they are becoming cheaper). D. W. Griffith would not have made Intolerance if he had not had such success with Birth Of A Nation (and so on and so on).

A game company or person has to have a viable business method to survive and make the games that they want to make (exactly as Griffith), even if they don’t find a viable solution you would still find a person or group who makes great games with very little, but the time and money it takes does make it hard to make the next game, and if you are having short on cash it’s cheaper to make a short art film than a short art video game, in a pure money perspective (a cheap camera costs less than a good computer to render graphics).

I’m not a hardcore video gamer, I’m more of a film buff and do enjoy watching Truffaut more than playing virtual golf. But I truly believe that this is because of my upbringing and that I know how to appreciate Zombieland more than Left For Dead 2.

If Ebert learned to appreciate Super Mario, maybe he would learn to love Flower, and not only see it as a video game, but a truly wonderful work of art.

”Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.”

As I have illustrated, I have already experienced video games as an art form. I rest my case.

Category: Movies by Joakim Engstrom
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