Piracy has been around forever and it’s not going anywhere…unfortunately. However, piracy is becoming more and more popular among “kids”. You can unfortunately blame the huge decline of PC gaming, on piracy. I’m going to talk a little bit about the type of piracy and how it’s really hurting everyone.  So you’re a kid about 18-22, and you don’t have too much money. But you hear about this amazing game/application/movie, etc…and you just *have* to have it. But being poor and living off of top ramen, and of course can afford an internet connection, computer, and a cell phone, you can’t afford to buy this item. So what do you do? You download it off the internet for free. Now why would someone do this? Mainly because they’re cheap. I’ve heard every excuse in the book as to why people “pirate”. Everything from “There’s no demo of the game” to “I’m trying before I buy, then I’ll buy after”. The worst I’ve heard is “I’m a poor college student and I can’t afford to buy this”. Come on now, you can afford a computer, your cell phone bill, and obviously food, and “entertainment”; yet you can’t afford to buy that item. It’s just pathetic if you ask me. Granted, I’ll admit that I used to download anything and everything I could, but I was young and stupid back then. Now I make enough money to buy the things I want and in all honesty, if you can’t afford it, you don’t need it.

I was talking to my friend about this topic (and he still downloads anything and everything he can, yet he’s almost 10 years older than I am), and his response was a little shocking. He’s doing it to hurt the “Big Guy”, ie the big corporations. What kind of logic is that? Do you truly understand who you’re actually hurting when you’re pirating? You aren’t hurting the big, rich CEOs; you’re hurting the developers that actually develop these titles. Think about a car company. Now if 90% of their cars were stolen off the lots (from every dealership), you aren’t hurting GM, you’re hurting their workers. As GM already has the money from the dealership. So you\’re hurting the dealership, and the workers. So what does the dealership do? No longer ask for that car, which in turn causes GM to stop production of that car, which hurts the GM employees putting the cars together. Same thing applies to software piracy. You’re only hurting the developers that develop these titles.

I’ll give you another example, Crytek (the developers of Far Cry and Crysis) recently said that Crysis has been pirated at a rate of 20:1. Taking into account that Crysis sold over a million (or was that shipped over a million), 20 million people are stealing your game. So what does Crytek do about this? No more patches for Crysis, and they are no longer developing for the PC exclusively. This is just one company, think about the countless others that are losing tons of money due to this. This is the exact reason why PC gaming is dead right now. Developers have no incentive to keep creating games for the PC, especially if it’s just going to get pirated. What makes me sad, is the fact that people don’t even bat an eye when they’re stealing. It’s just become second nature to them; they just don’t care. All they care about, is the fact that they’re getting this for free.

One very recent form of piracy really ticks me off. Last week, people figured out how to crack every single application on the iTunes App Store. While DRM cracking isn’t new, it’s sad when people are stealing from tiny developers trying to get a name for themselves. On average, the price of an app is about $7. Some are $10, some are $5. A good number are $1, and there are plenty of free applications. I myself have bought 3 different apps. Bejeweled 2 for $10, Trism for $5, and DizzyBee for $3. For a total of $18 I have 3 very good apps. Yet, people still think it’s ok to steal $10 from developers. In actuality, Apple gets 30%, and the dev obviously gets 70%. So, you want to steal 70% of $3? How cheap can you be? My same friend said “Well that adds up”. Well no kidding, but guess what? If you don’t want to pay the $3, you shouldn’t be using the app! If everyone just pirates these apps, what incentive do these developers have to create bigger and better apps?None.  Most of these developers are 1-4 people creating these small apps for you. Stealing that money away from them, is just pathetic. My friend also tells me he does it because he hates Apple. But he owns an iPhone…how does that make any sense?!?! Pathetic and childish. Just grow up people. This mentality came from the Jailbroken apps. All of the apps were free, but people believe that all the apps should be free, so they’re just going to pirate them…on principle! That was the single worst part of the jailbreak community. I remember when a couple pay apps came on Installer, people whined and cried because they had to pay. Sigh.

Jumping ship to probably the single most pirated software on the internet: Adobe Photoshop. Why do people pirate this? The price. They don’t really care what it does, only that it costs about $600 It’s incredibly sad when the user that uses this app, won’t even use 1% of these features. People don’t care though, as my friend says “free is free”. People will do anything and everything to get things for free. Because it’s all anonymous. The only time your ISP will come complaining, is if you download too much. But will they come after you for continuously pirating small things? Nope. And that’s sad. ISPs and other companies really need to work together to nip this piracy crap in the bud. There were talks of creating a TPM-like chip for the PC that will make it so that only original code will run. Personally I think this is a great idea, but for the hardcore hackers, they’ll crack it eventually. But it will stop 90% of the dorks on BitTorrent. Or hell, have it at the Operating System level. The OS can determine if the code isn’t the original, and refuse to run it. But it all comes to Microsoft, and we all know that they do not care about the PC anymore (look at it’s efforts with PC gaming, and *cough* Vista). Mac piracy is slim to none, so I doubt Apple is caring right now about it. So far the only console that hasn’t been “hacked” is the PS3. That could be due to the fact that the security is top notch, or the fact that no one really wants to download 50GB games, then burn them to expensive BD-50 discs. I wish Sony would tighten up the PSP like they did the PS3, as piracy is out of control on that thing . But in Japan, it’s selling like hotcakes (hardware and software).

Sigh, all in all, we (as an industry) need to take a long, hard look at what piracy is doing, and we really need to do something about it. Otherwise it’s just going to be messed up, no matter how hard we try. The hard part is convincing people to pay for something they used to get for free. How can you do that? I don’t truly know. Especially since people don’t care about anyone but themselves.

On the morning of April 3rd, I waited in line at the Apple Store, in fact, I was the first in line! While, I truly despised Apple employees clapping and cheering, it was really nice to get the first iPad sold. Given the fact that most of my friends thought I was crazy for getting one, or the fact that it lacked certain features other devices should have had, I still went in with excitement. I was the first one to buy, and I was the first one out. I then drove home with my friend, eager to play with my new toy. I unfortunately didn’t play for too long, as I didn’t have any sleep the previous night, so I was running on fumes. I got home, activated, installed some apps, and fell asleep. During this time, I still had my netbook as my primary computer, which still couldn’t play HD video properly, or without overheating. So I would attempt to encode video to play on the iPad, but it took 9 hours to convert one little HD show. It wasn’t until a little app called AirVideo came out. This app let’s you stream all of your media from your computer, to your iPad. This was great, as I wouldn’t have to do any converting, but the Atom processor was still too slow for this. I then upgraded my system to a quad core i5 processor, and I was in heaven.

Watching videos on this display is amazing. Not only is the screen 9.7″, the resolution is 1024×768, with a 1Ghz processor inside. This baby can play full 720p video without breaking a sweat. I’ve put a full length Blu-ray rip of Minority Report on here, and wow, it plays it flawlessly, with no skipped frames, or any overheating. When people have said this thing is fast, they weren’t kidding. I have yet to have the iPad slow down at all, nor have I had to reboot it yet; it’s going on 28 days of uptime. My iPhone would have to have been rebooted after a week or so. The iPad does not disappoint in any way, despite only having 256MB of RAM (same as the 3GS). I was hoping for at least 512MB of RAM, but I honestly don’t notice the difference at all. Things just fly on the iPad, from web browsing in Safari, to watching videos, to playing games, the iPad is a beast. I’m hoping I can get to at least 6 months before having to reboot (or at least until the next software update). If the iPad performance is indicative of what’s to come for the next iPhone, sign me up!

Some of you might have heard about the bad things about the iPad, maybe from me, and maybe from other places, so I’ll just break down exactly what the iPad can’t do. As of right now, the iPad can’t do multitasking (until OS 4.0), it won’t play Flash videos (more on that in a minute), you can’t connect a USB hard drive to it for storage. And they’re right about everything, the iPad won’t do multitasking until OS 4.0 comes out, but I haven’t found too many cases where I’d really needed it. But then again, there hasn’t been a good IM client for the iPad yet, so maybe I’d feel it more if there were. Now we’re going to discuss the elephant in the room…Flash. Flash is the “technology” that most online video and most Facebook games use to deliver content. Flash isnt on the iPad, nor will it ever be. And let me be the first one to say “Good riddance”. Flash is a piece of crap that uses far too many resources on a desktop, makes my CPU work overtime, and drains the shit out of battery life, just look at the crappy JooJoo. If Flash on the desktop is crappy, how the hell does Adobe expect to make Flash workable on mobile devices? Yeah I can’t play Farmville on my iPad, or watch Hulu, but I’d rather have performance and battery life, than a few hours of Flash video. Plus HTML5 on the iPad works great, with no plugins, and no shortened battery life. I hate you Flash, and I always will. There’s no reason why I can watch a 1080p video on my computer with only 10% CPU usage, but with Flash, it’s 60-70% for just a 720p video. Pure and utter garbage.

I know the iPad isn’t for everyone, and I’m not expecting it to be, but it does a lot of things really well. You can easily browse the web from the comfort of your couch, without the additional heat from your laptop, you can sit in bed and do whatever you want, the possibilities are endless. While I still have a desktop for things I can’t do on the iPad, I still use the iPad for everything else. I’d just rather sit in bed and watch a TV show, than sit at my computer to do it. Given the fact that AirVideo can stream all my videos, I probably should have gotten the 16GB, but I did want that extra room just in case I go on a trip and need some movies/shows to watch. I’m even thinking about selling this one, to get the new 3G version, in case I want to bring the iPad to somewhere that doesn’t have WiFi, because it’s better to have it than not. If you’re still on the fence about getting one, go to Best Buy and try one out for longer than 5 minutes. You’ll love it just as much as I do. I mean, I have a friend who is very pro-Windows, said he tried it and hated it. What’s to hate about it? Try it out for longer than 5 minutes, seriously, you’ll really enjoy it. I can’t imagine being without it. I take it to work, even if I’m not going to use it, because again, I’d rather have it than not. For a tablet, $499 is a damn bargain! With so many great apps out there, it makes me wonder why more people aren’t getting one! It’s replaced my laptop, or at least my want of one, and will stay in my life for quite a long time. <3

The iPad was unveiled by Apple on January 27th 2010 after years of speculation that Apple would release a tablet.  I waited patently at Engadget as the keynote went on, viewing every update as it came, but I was ultimate disappointed in the device as a whole.  The first thing that upset me, was the bezel was too large, I mean look at all that black there, they could have done a little better on that aspect.  I like to have as much screen as I can.  Next, they decided to use iPhone OS 3.2 instead of skipping to 4.0.  While this is ok in the fact that they used 3.2 instead of 4.0, they however didn’t really do anything to the interface except adding the ability to use your own wallpaper on the homescreen (something jailbreakers have been doing for ages).  They still have the same 4×4 icon set, they still use the same icons, though they did update the dock to look more the Leopard/Snow Leopard.  They didn’t do anything revolutionary to the homescreen.  I guess I just expect more out of a new device, especially when iPhone OS is becoming a little stale in comparison to Android/WebOS.  They did however make some nice changes to the interface of everything else.  Settings has an all new look, as well as Mail, Calendar, YouTube, Photos, etc…  The software aspect is pretty nice (except the lackluster homescreen).  Hardware wise they decided to use a 9.7″ IPS LCD screen, coupled with a 1Ghz “Apple A4 chip”, which is nothing more than an ARM Cortex-A8 chip, no word on actual memory of the device yet, but I’d hoped it’d be at least 512MB since the iPhone 3GS already  has 256.  There is a 3G version of the iPad, but comes at a higher price AND you had to pay an additional $30 for the Unlimited (read: 5GB) data plan.  Since this is still iPhone OS, it still has the same gripes I talked about in my previous post (no Flash, no multitasking, etc…), so I’m not going to get into that at all.  Let’s get into why I’m really excited about it.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have a netbook as my only computer right now, a netbook I use to watch video on, which causes the crappy Atom processor to choke on and heat up.  Since my iPhone screen is way too small to enjoy a TV episode/movie, I can’t wait to watch a show/movie on this screen.  yeah it’s only 1024×768 resolution, but it’s so much better than the iPhone’s 480×320, and definitely better than my netbook’s 1024×600.  This also means that I can watch a movie/show on the iPad and be able to browse the web at the same time.  If I tried to do that on my netbook, I wouldn’t be able to, the movie would freeze and the CPU would jump to 100% (which it seems to do no matter what I do).  That means I can watch my 720p TV shows and movies on a 9.7″ screen and not worry about overheating my notebook.  I’m also incredibly excited about web browsing on this screen; the iPhone’s screen is just too small to be able to do any real web browsing, without scrolling for days.  Since the iPad will run most, if not all of the iPhone’s apps, this means that games will be so much better, it’ll also make SSH applications actually worthwhile, thanks to the bigger screen.  Though it makes me wonder if games designed for the iPad will run worse on the iPad than on the iPhone, since the iPad uses the same graphics processor as the iPhone, or will the extra horsepower from the “A4″ pick up the slack?  One thing that I don’t get is, why would anyone want to put their music on this thing?  Isn’t that what your iPhone/iPod is for?  I’d rather have that space available for apps/movies.  I guess if you’re lazy and don’t want to get your iPhone/iPod out.

I’ve already pre-ordered the WiFi version as a birthday present to myself, as I did not want to wait for the 3G version, nor did I want to pay an additional $30 to AT&T when I already do that for my iPhone.  Another reason for not getting the 3G version is that where am I going to take the iPad?  I have WiFi at home, and I’m sure as hell not going to take this device anywhere only to have it stolen, so I’m going to keep this baby at home thank you!  Since the iPad runs on iPhone OS, it’ll only be a matter of time until it’s jailbroken.  I really can’t wait until this thing is jailbroken as that will truly open up everything, themes, additional programs.  As excited as I am for the iPad, being a hardware enthusiast, I want more.  I want a 10″ HD screen, 1.5Ghz processor, 512MB/1GB of RAM, front facing camera for Skype, and a dedicated GPS for the WiFi version.  Hey, a guy can dream can’t he? .  All I know is that I’m going to be extremely happy with the device, but I will certainly write up a review after I get it in less than 3 weeks.

Let’s give you some examples as to how the Atom processor simply fails (and netbooks in general).  As I mentioned earlier, people love watching YouTube/Hulu/Vimeo/etc…which uses Flash.  As most of you know, Flash is an incredible resource hog and since it’s a bloated piece of software, it runs everything in software mode (read: uses CPU).  Just running a basic 360p video from YouTube causes the CPU to jump to 50-60% if not more.  Why?  Why should I have such a high CPU usage just for watching a simple 360p video?  That’s not even counting the CPU usage from the OS itself, any programs you have open, etc…So just watching that video, could tax your CPU to 100%.  Great, stuttery video.  Don’t even think about watching a 720p video on YouTube, it just won’t play properly.  This is just video alone!  Imagine trying to play Farmville, or CafeWorld on Facebook, you’re going to get 100% CPU no doubt.  So while you were able to play these games on your desktop or even your latop, you’re shit out of luck on a netbook, mostly because of the shit CPU inside.  There are HD accelerators available for netbooks, one being the Broadcom Crystal HD miniPCI-e card.  However, inside the Mini9, there’s only one miniPCI-e slot, so you have to lose WiFi (ugh…).  This card only allows acceleration of Flash for video (not the card’s fault, pure on Adobe), so if you wanted to play those Flash games, good luck, this card won’t help.  This card WILL help if you wanted to watch 720p HD mkv videos, but beware of Windows sucking up CPU usage randomly, causing your HD video to stutter like crazy.  So there’s another thing that your netbook can’t do.

So is there really anything a netbook is good for?  Not really.  Unless you only view google.com or sites that aren’t graphically intensive, or doesn’t use any Flash, you’re going to have a horrible experience.  I love how small the netbook is, I love how convenient it is, but each time I use it, it makes me cry as to how lacking it is.  Why do I have a netbook instead of a desktop/laptop?  I had to consolidate (read: needed money) things and sold my laptop, so I’m stuck with the netbook for now.  I need power, and this thing just doesn’t cut it at all.