Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used Android (I owned, and rooted a Nexus One way back when), but something just turns me off about it. All my friends at work have Android phones (or iPhones), and there isn’t a day where I hear one of them complaining that their phone app on the phone crashed and completely froze it. In the 5 years that I’ve owned an iPhone I can honestly say that I’ve never had this problem, at all. Why do people put up with this? Someone calls you, and the phone app crashes? That’s pretty terrible if you ask me. Say what you will about Apple’s walled garden, but I do know that I don’t have to worry about the phone app crashing while I’m trying to make or receive a call. I haven’t honestly come across an Android phone that just works, at all. I’ve gone into AT&T and Verizon to play with the various phones that are available, and not one of them can hold a candle to the iPhone in terms of complete user experience. If you have read any of my articles before, you can easily tell that I know way around a computer and tech in general; but there’s just something about having a device that just works exactly how it should without having to do anything at all to it. It’s not that I don’t know how, or anything like that, I just don’t want to. I’ve jailbroken my phone and it’s way too much of a hassle than I honestly want to deal with.

Don’t even get me started on fragmentation with Android. Ok, please, get me started on it. This essentially means that not every phone will get the latest version of Android. Essentially, if you bought an HTC Hero awhile back, you’re not going to be getting 2.3 Gingerbread. That is, unless you root your phone and install a custom ROM. That isn’t honestly the half of fragmentation, because even brand new phones don’t come with Gingerbread. Some phones are still stuck on 2.2 Froyo. Now Froyo isn’t that old (2010 I think?), but brand new phones are still coming out with this OS. That’s like Apple including iOS 4 on the 4S…it just wouldn’t happen. So why is Google allowing this? Well, Google doesn’t really have much of a say once it’s open sources it’s OS. Once it does that, manufacturers can honestly do what they want with it. They can release any version of the OS that they want, and they can choose to keep upgrading the OS or they can choose to keep at the same versions. Sure, you have the option to upgrade your phone by rooting it and installing a custom ROM, but should we really have to? Granted, iOS 5 isn’t going to be on the iPhone 3G, but that phone is insanely slow (412Mhz processor and 128MB of RAM…I mean come on), so I don’t honestly expect the latest OS to run on it. Another problem with fragmentation is that developers have to develop for all these hundreds of Android devices on the market. Since each and every Android device has different specs, the dev has to compensate for this and include support for every possible device that’s out there. This can not only take more dev time, but also more money.

I don’t honestly get why manufacturers don’t care more about quality, as they simply care about quantity. One thing that going to Apple has shown me, is that quality matters. Quality should be number one over everything else. Android simply just does not have quality written all over it, and that’s sad. The problem honestly lies with Google and them not taking control of the OS that they developed. I’d love to interview Andy Rubin and pick his brain about what he thinks about the lack of quality with Android. Honestly, being too open causes problems. Yes, I wish that Apple could implement certain features in iOS, but I’ll take ease of use and quality every day of the week, over being able to customize everything about my device, but have a lesser quality product. My wish would be that Android manufacturers take a look at what Apple has accomplished under Steve Jobs, and honestly see that quality does matter, and to put a bit more effort into their phones. There isn’t a day when I see a new post on Engadget about a new Android phone that’s in development. Seriously? Give it a break guys. You buy a new Android phone and two months later, it’s already outdated. Hell, I buy an iPhone and I get to keep that for a year and get a much better model next year, knowing that nothing will come out in between to obsolete this model. But this is what makes Apple Apple, and why I will always choose them over any other product. Quality means something, and it should mean more to everyone.

The 3GS looked exactly the same, but it offered a much better CPU, double the RAM (256MB), a better GPU, actual GPS, and a 3.2MP camera. With the 4, it offered a new design, a much, much better CPU, 512MB of RAM, a better GPU, 5MP camera, and an antenna that can cause problems if you hold it incorrectly. Given that the iPhone has been released every year since 2007, the time that has passed since the iPhone 4 has been about 16 months now, so people expected a much better phone given the time it’s taken to release it. Since this is the “speed” update, what’s inside? Let’s go over the differences, that we know about: A dual core A5-based CPU (same as the iPad 2), a dual core SGX 543MP2 GPU (again, same as the iPad 2), an 8MP camera with a 2.4/f aperture, 1080P video recording and video stabilization, a little better battery life, a better designed antenna, HPSA+ 14.4Mbps, Bluetooth 4.0, Siri the voice assistant, and it being a world phone (meaning the chipset supports GSM and CDMA together). So as an owner of an iPhone 4, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it? If you’ve used a 3G and upgraded to the 3GS, then yes it is worth it. The amount of upgrades included are pretty significant if you ask me. Being a current owner of the iPad 2, I can attest to the performance of it. Seeing as how the iPad 2 is a 9.7″ 1024×768 screen, both the CPU and GPU will simply scream on this device.

Probably one of the most exciting changes with the 4S is Siri (pronounced Sear-y), the voice assistant. With the 3GS, they introduced “Voice Control”, which allowed you to control certain aspects of the phone by holding the home button for three seconds and speaking a command. I honestly tried it a bit, but honestly never used it completely. Sure it’s good if you want to change a song or make a quick call, but overall it was extremely limited and didn’t really offer much. Well, in comes Siri. Siri is a technology created by Nuance, which Apple bought in 2010. They had an app on the AppStore (but has since been pulled and existing users have until the 13th to keep using it), and now it’s officially part of the 4S. What Siri offers is a vocal, digital assistant for you to use. So you can ask Siri to make an appointment for you, or remind you to buy a gift for someone, or hell, read back your text messages (and even respond to them!). The amount you can do with Siri is simply amazing. If you don’t believe me, watch the video below and see the amazing things you can do with it:

See what I mean? Being able to have an actual conversation with your phone, is pretty incredible. Not to say that this isn’t creepy at all, or that we should have conversations with our phone, but at least you can do way, way more than you could with Voice Control. Since Siri is only available on the 4S, some have said that it requires 1GB of RAM to work correctly. We don’t honestly know the actual speed of the CPU or how much RAM is actually available, but I believe that it’ll have 1GB of RAM, with the CPU clocked at 1Ghz, or 1.2Ghz. We won’t honestly know until iFixit gets ahold of it next Friday. Next Friday is when it’ll be available, with iOS 5 being available on the 13th. Once the 4S is out, I’ll be sure to put out a review and let you know how everything is. Until then, we’ll have to wait to speculate on how good it is! Oh, and pre-orders are available starting tomorrow at 12:01am PDT.

If you’ve never used WebOS before, and you enjoy pretty things, then you’re in for a treat. WebOS just oozes sex appeal. That’s not to say that iOS or Android don’t look good, but WebOS is just sexy plain and simple. Since this is the AT&T model, it comes with the 3G bands that AT&T support (850Mhz and 1900Mhz), and it also supports 14.4Mbps HSPA+. Everything else about the Pre3 is exactly the same. It sports a 1.4Ghz single-core CPU (would have loved a dual-core, but beggars can’t be choosers), 512MB of RAM (wished it would have a GB, but oh well), 3.6″ WVGA (800×400) screen, hardware keyboard which is pretty nice to use and a MicroUSB charger on the side. So the hardware seems to be pretty great, but how does the OS run? If you’ve ever used the Touchpad before, you may be turned off a little bit by the performance of the OS. I am very pleased to say that the performance of the OS is superb. Nothing ever lags, scrolling is perfect, and I can easily zip along between cards.

If I do have anything to complain about with WebOS, is the browser. Having used iOS since 2007, I’m used to the amazing Safari browser. The browser on WebOS just isn’t up to snuff, and that’s fine. It works just fine in pinches, but I honestly wouldn’t use it for extended web browsing. This is why I have a tablet if I want to do some web browsing. Speaking of the web browser, HP thought it was a good idea *not* to include an orientation lock in the OS. Why is this an issue? Well, how often have you been laying in bed, browsing on your phone? On the Pre3, if you do that, it’ll switch to landscape mode. Landscape more on a device with a hardware keyboard is not a good idea. Hopefully HP (or the homebrew developers) fix this in a patch or an update soon, as it’s next to impossible to browse in bed. Aside from that, are there any other things that annoy me? If you’re *really* big on apps, you’re going to be disappointed with the “App Catalog”. It simply just doesn’t have the apps available. Sure there’s Facebook and a few nice Twitter apps, but games or really big name apps just simply aren’t there. So if apps are your thing, and you don’t want to just use the web browser to access the web versions, WebOS simply just isn’t for you. Me? I’m not 100% big on apps, but there are a few that I wish were available, but I know they’ll never hit. Again, this is also why I have a tablet (iPad 2), so I’m not completely missing out. Are there any apps that I *must* use all the time? No. And during the time I’ve used the phone, I haven’t found myself missing very much.

Call quality on AT&T’s network has been outstanding (surprisingly enough). With the iPhone 4 that I have, it’s pretty good, but not great. With the Pre3, it’s actually really damn good. I had a few hour long conversations and never seemed to have any issues with the audio quality. Speaking of the network, since this phones supports 14.4Mbps HSPA+ (the iPhone 4 only supports 7.2Mbps), I was extremely excited to finally test this out. AT&T likes to call HSPA+ “4G”, even though we know it’s nowhere close to LTE 4G, so we’ll just call it “fauxG” instead. Using the iPhone 4, I can get an average of around 3.2Mbps, with a maximum of around 5.45Mbps. Using the Pre3 (and speedtest.net, since they don’t have a dedicated app), I got an average of 6.7Mbps, with a maximum of around 8.75Mbps. Far, far from LTE speeds, but a nice bump from the regular iPhone speeds. In real world, I’ll never honestly use these speeds (since downloading apps isn’t going to take that much time), and with a 2GB maximum for the month, who really needs these speeds. Ironically enough, since I was using my iPhone SIM in the phone, AT&T caught wind of me using a 3G SIM in a “fauxG” phone, and sent me a text saying I needed a “4G plan”. Because of this, I contacted them about it, and they said they weren’t going to change my plan, and it was simply a warning. They said I needed a 4G plan because I’d get faster speeds and “more coverage”. I don’t see how a 4G plan would give me better coverage, but oh well. Being on an unlimited plan, I wasn’t about to give that up, and just said I was using the phone to write up a review of the phone. Luckily, they let me keep the same plan and said I was fine.

For someone who hasn’t used iOS, or Android before, WebOS would be a fantastic OS to use. But if you’re someone who has used them, there’s a lot to be desired in it’s current state. Hopefully HP either sells WebOS to Amazon, or they actually decide to pick it up again, but as it is, I can’t justify using it over iOS or even Android. If you’ve read my posts before, you know how much I hate Windows Phone, so I can easily, easily recommend WebOS over Windows Phone every day of the week. Don’t get me wrong, WebOS is sexy and hell, the hardware is there, but with the lack of development happening on the main OS, there really isn’t much left life in these devices. Given that the Galaxy S II and the iPhone 5 (4S???) is just around the corner, it’s honestly too little too late for a phone that could have been amazing. Overall, I love it, but I just can’t recommend it to someone who’s never used WebOS before and want to use it as a main phone. Second phone? Sure.

Score:

8.2/10

Let’s say that you just bought an iOS device, like the iPhone and you wanted to sync everything that you previously bought but didn’t have access to your computer to sync. iCloud lets you redownload any and all of your purchased music or applications right to the device. So that means, you can instantly download that favorite song, or download that app you need to have while you’re out on the go. The idea here, is that you can access all of your previously purchased media, straight from the phone, you no longer need a computer. Another great feature of iCloud is that you can now wirelessly backup your phone directly to iCloud over WiFi. While this may not sound like the greatest feature around, it’s great if either you lose your phone or you swap it at the Apple store constantly (or you just buy a new device). You can restore from the iCloud backup, straight from the phone and get it to exactly the state you had it at when you lost it or swapped it out. Personally, I find this feature amazing, because I’ve swapped my phone out at the Apple store at least 4 times with the iPhone 4, and each time, I’ve had to wait until I got home to sync it and get it how I wanted. That’s no longer an issue.

What other amazing things does iCloud offer? Since iCloud is currently in beta (the first beta was released Monday), there’s still a lot that can be added before it’s fall release. However, it’s the potential of what could be that has me the most excited. Imagine that you’re listening to a podcast or a song on your computer and you have to leave. You want to take this podcast/song with you, but you want to pick up exactly where you left off. Right now, you can’t do that at all, without having to seek/scrub through the song or podcast. This detaches you from the experience you were having with the song or podcast, especially for podcasts since you can never scrub to the exact second you left off. What would be amazing is if iTunes can sync your location (either automatically or at request) when you pause the song or podcast, and you can instantly pick right up where you left off on your iPhone or WiFi enabled iPod Touch. This way you don’t have to find your location in a podcast, or start the 13 minute long Tool song you were listening to, all over again. One way that this sort of works, is when you purchase a song (doesn’t seem to be podcasts yet honestly) on your Mac or iPhone (I don’t own a PC so I haven’t tried), it instantly shows up on your other devices. I just bought the song from the Assassin’s Creed: Revelations E3 trailer on my Mac, and seconds later it was already on my iPhone. This I absolutely love, because that means I never have to sync with my computer just to get that song/app I downloaded.

As we mover further into the cloud (which I’m honestly loving if it continues like this) what other forms of syncing would be really great? How about syncing the current open tabs of your browser? Or syncing the exact location on the web page (instead of just starting at the top)? Or your saved games across all devices (Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies for example)? Granted, Mozilla already did syncing of tabs with Firefox for Android, but that doesn’t mean that Apple can’t. I actually quite like the idea of syncing the location you are in a page, instead of always loading just the top. I say this, because there are certain sites I like to visit that are quite long to read, it’d be nice if I could sync where I am on the page with my iPhone or iPad and pick up exactly where I left off. I really like the idea of starting on your computer, and finishing what you’re doing while mobile, because let’s face it everyone has to go outside sometimes right? I hope one day that I can write some notes down in TextEdit on the Mac, and look at my phone or iPad and find the exact notes there waiting for me, where I can add more content, or edit what’s already there and find the changes at my Mac when I get back. How would you like your IM application to sync your conversation across all your devices? Say you’re talking to a friend on your computer and you have to go out, but you’re still talking to them via IM on your phone. Wouldn’t it be great to sync that conversation, so you can look back at it and not feel like you’ve missed anything? You’re not going to remember what you talked about 10 minutes ago, but if you synced the conversation you would be able to! The possibilities are endless.

There may be some concerns about privacy, but honestly if I post my credit card online (making purchases I mean), I’m comfortable enough to have my data synced with the cloud. Apple has said that iCloud will launch in the fall with iOS 5, meaning they have a good three months or so until it’s released to either add new features or perfect the current ones. I certainly hope they implement at least some of the features I’ve discussed here, because the more data I can sync across all devices automatically, the better. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Apple who accomplishes this, but it certainly will be the most elegant that’s for sure. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next, and I’m a proud supporter of iCloud.

That brings me to my next point, yearly games. Yearly games give you one good thing, the game you love, with less waiting time. But honestly, is a year a good enough time to make a game? The answer is no, or in very rare cases. More and more games are making the yearly cycle, but it’s getting too much now. Let’s take a look at Call of Duty for example. Initially brought out on PC, it’s spawned 7 additional games since. 7. The first two games were amazing, but with CoD2, it brought things that would stay with the franchise through all the 6 additional games. First being infinite respawns. Having played CoD, you may know what I mean. You enter an area with quite a few guys, so your first instinct is to take them out one by one. Well, in this game, as you take them out, a few seconds later, they get replaced, over and over again. The only way to fight this, is to stupidly run past the invisible line and BAM they’re all dead. You don’t have to kill a single person, just run past the line and they’re all dead. This has been like this for each additional CoD game. The second thing is the game engine. CoD used the old Quake 3 engine for it’s base, and each subsequent game has used a “modified” version of the Quake 3 engine called simply “IW Engine”. I’ll admit that Modern Warfare 2 and the original CoD look nothing a like, but at the heart, it’s the same engine. I understand engine development takes time and resources, but when you’re owned by Activision, you have the time and resources. There’s no excuse for your 2011 game, still using code from Quake 3. You can’t quite build a new engine if your game is going to come out within a year, can you? At the heart of it, CoD is the exact same game you’ve been playing since 2005, just different locations, but the gameplay is exactly the same. However, with money grubbing publishers like Activision, innovation will never happen.

Not all yearly games are bad, just look at the Assassin’s Creed series. While it does scare me a bit that AC could turn into CoD, they’ve managed to keep this amazing franchise fun and fresh with each game. With AC: Brotherhood, they brought an amazing story, fantastic gameplay and tweaked the mechanics of what sucked about the previous game. They listened to the complaints about the game, and improved upon them. How many game developers do that? However, AC is coming up on one of the previous things I mentioned, the game engine. The AC series uses the “Anvil” engine for their games, and while they still look nice, it’s been a good 4 years since it was released. If you look at AC: Brotherhood, it’s not the best looking game out there, and textures are the nicest they could be. Granted, I’m nitpicking about this, but as the series progresses, I’d rather them not use the exact same engine from 2007 for each game. I don’t want to see AC 3 using this engine. Unfortunately, some games actually have to come out yearly, like sports games. I understand the need for it, but I don’t like having to pay $60 for Madden each year, while the previous year’s one goes to waste. Do you think a kid is going to pick up Madden NFL 09 from Gamestop, instead of saving to get NFL 12? No. But sports games are also ones that fix the problems (hopefully) of the previous year, and add new features. I can’t 100% fault them for that, but I just don’t like the publisher’s money grubbing ways. There aren’t really any other games that are yearly, but with big titles like Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty being yearly, others may follow suit.

I touched on being innovative previously, but I wanted to go a bit further with it. I recently picked up inFAMOUS 2 for PlayStation 3. While they have added a good amount of new things to the game, I quickly remembered what I absolutely hated about the first game, and why I stopped playing. This is what pisses me off about games, developers playing it safe. inFAMOUS 2 is an open-world game, but unlike other open-world games, they have multiple enemies scattered throughout the world that can quickly kill you before you get to the next mission. While it would be ok if these enemies were either easy to take out, or didn’t cause you to take massive damage, this isn’t the case here. There are usually 4-5 of these enemies at one time, either shooting you with amazing accuracy, tossing grenades at your feet (ala CoD), or firing RPGs directly at your face. Maybe I’m a worse player than I used to be, or something, but on normal difficulty, 3-4 shots of a rifle should not kill you. The only way to regain health is either to wait about 30 seconds (which during a firefight, isn’t something possible), or find something electrical to suck juice from (and again, during a firefight, not always possible). So time and time again, you die. And don’t get me started on some of the missions that put 30-40+ enemies on you at once. This is exactly what frustrated me about the first game, and why I stopped playing it. This would be ok for a first game, but bringing this element back into the second game is just sloppy. A game should be fun to play, not frustrating where I want to stop playing completely. Don’t get me wrong, inFAMOUS 2 is fun to play when they bring the actual storyline into it, but these random encounters, or the side missions, are enough to make me stop playing. Developers can’t play it safe when it comes to their games. Stop taking the exact same game, adding a few new things, and calling it a new game. Fix the core problems with the first game and build an even better game. Hell, just look at Uncharted. The first game was amazing, but had quite a few problems with combat, especially with guys taking 5-6 bullets before they fell. This was fixed in Uncharted 2, and went on to be game of the year. Dead Space 2 as well, they took a fantastic game, fixed the problems with it, and made a really great second game.

Unless developers innovate, and stop playing it safe, the industry will become stale and bland. You’ll be fed the same regurgitated game you played a year ago, and still pay $60 for it. Why can’t more developers be like Naughty Dog or Sony Santa Monica, and take their games to the next level? Why do we have to put up with more of the same? Why can’t there be more games like Children of Eden, or Pikmin, games that truly innovate and pull the player in. Why can’t we have more games that are built on story and gameplay, instead of shooting and rehashed ideas? There’s too much crap in the gaming industry and if we let it continue, it’ll turn into Hollywood, 95% crap, 5% really good.

When I look at my photos on Flickr, they look nice, even with some HDR added to them. But for whatever reason, I just cannot hold a candle to some of the photos that I see on the Flickr groups out there. So what’s the real difference here? Some Photoshop magic, or are these photographers just really that damned good? Let’s take these two links for example,

My shots:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joertell/

The Sony NEX-5 Flickr group:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1379448@N25/pool/

These just look better than mine, despite the exact same camera. So now the question here is, do I man up and really learn this trade, or try to spend $1400 on a Nikon D7000 and see if my shots get better? Since I’m relatively new at this trade, I think I should honestly learn everything I can first, before “upgrading” to a better camera. Because if I spend $1400 on the D7000, the shots can honestly come out the same, despite being more expensive. What I’d really love to see, is the non-post processed shots, and see if they’re any better. But knowing most people, they aren’t going to post these. Post-processing in Photoshop, Aperture, Lightroom really do make photos look better, but is it taking away from the artistic talent? Are people relying too much on these applications to make their photos pop?

One trend that seems to be mighty popular recently is HDR. HDR, or High Dynamic Range essentially draws more light into the picture, making things glow. Similar to what you saw in Half Life 2 with HDR support. There’s one website that I recently came across that is purely HDR photos: http://stuckincustoms.com. Spend 5 minutes looking at these photos and you’ll see exactly what I mean. This is all post processed using an application called Photomatix and Photoshop/Lightroom/Aperture. Now, these photos can look insanely beautiful (like on his site), or they can just look nice (like some on mine). You really need to know how to fine tune the settings here. Despite his quick free tutorial, I’ve had quite a few really nice looking pictures from Photomatix. Now what I really want to test is, if I should HDR it before, or after I post-process the image. I’ve noticed that shadows can become overly bright using HDR, but I haven’t quite figured out how to emulate the results he’s getting (without paying a good amount of money for his tutorials).

So what does a guy to do? Spend money on a better camera, or spend money learning how to get better? I think I really want to spend money on how to get better. The better camera can always come later. Photography is something that I really want to make a hobby of mine, possibly taking it into a profession one day. How I just need to get better! What are your thoughts? What camera/software are you using?

The movie that started this whole “3D craze” was Avatar. Avatar was actually shot in full 3D, which means James Cameron actually used a real 3D camera to shoot what he needed. And to be honest, the results were very stunning. Having been my first “true” 3D movie, I was blown away. It wasn’t so much “pop out at you”, but more of depth of field. Meaning things truly felt as if they were on a 3D plain, instead of just being static on the screen. I mean, we all remember the 3D Captain Eo at Disneyland as a kid, where it actually popped out at us. But this 3D is far from that, it’s more to show distance in the background, and to show that the actors are actually walking around in a 3D environment. This worked perfect, and watching the 2D Blu-ray of Avatar, paled in comparison. But you may have seen other 3D attached to various movies, like Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter. This 3D is done post production, and is all done with computers. These films were not shot with a real 3D camera, but done by a studio who just does these after-market 3D transformations. These are the films you need to watch out for, because as we know humans make mistakes and it just looks poor. Since 3D cameras are in the rarity now, there aren’t too many films that are actually shot in 3D right now.

3D has really picked up some steam as of late, especially in Hollywood, but why is that? Have you seen the ticket prices for these “3D” movies? Hollywood thinks it’s ok to charge an additional $5-10 just to see the movie. If it’s IMAX *and* 3D, it’s close to a $25 movie, you might as well just wait for the dang Blu-ray to come out. But since people still go to see these movies, Hollywood keeps pushing them out. I mean, do we really need to see Harry Potter or the Smurfs in 3D? No. The movies that actually were filmed with a 3D camera are few and far between, so do your research before you go to see your next 3D movie. It’s a shame that Hollywood marks up the price of these films just because it’s “3D”. Since there are fewer people going to see movies in theaters, Hollywood needed to make it’s money somehow; so they charge more for a “3D” movie. Not very fair if you ask me.

So let’s get back on track to the “TV” aspect of this. Every major manufacturer now makes a 3D TV, even Vizio does. But again, is it really worth getting one? Since the technology is so new, I’m inclined to really say no. Why? For a few reasons honestly. Not only is it so expensive, but it requires a set of glasses per person. Let’s say you like to have a movie night with either your family or some friends; well you’d need to get glasses for each of them if you’re going to watch a 3D movie. These glasses aren’t cheap either, so expect to pay a pretty penny for each. The average 3D TV comes with a “starter” pack of one pair of glasses. Yet the average family consists of 2-3 people. The cheapest pair of glasses I could find on Amazon was $128 for the “stereoscopic” 3D glasses. That’s well over $300 just for one family, even more if you actually have a movie night with friends or the rest of your family. The cheapest LCD 3D TV I could find on Amazon was close to $1,400. That’s not the worst price for a 46″ TV, but I wouldn’t expect stellar picture quality out of it either.  Oh and I forgot to mention, you also need a 3D Blu-ray player too. If you’re using a receiver, you’ll need a receiver that supports HDMI 1.4 for those 3D images. So let’s take a tally here: 3D TV, 3D Blu-ray player, 3D-capable receiver and 3D glasses. All for the low, low price of half a years pay. :\

Now  I know what you’re going to say, new technology is always expensive. Well, given the gigantic push that Hollywood has given 3D, you’re in the minority if you don’t have one. I’d like to call bollocks to that. I’m sorry, but I do not need and/or want a 3D TV right now. There’s nothing to watch, 3D movies are incredibly limited, 3D broadcast TV is so limited it’s not even funny, it’s insanely expensive, and unless your movie is Avatar, you’re not getting the full 3D experience. I hope 3D goes the way of HD-DUD and just dies. It’s consumer unfriendly, and serves no real purpose in the CE (Consumer Electronics) world. If you really know me, you’ll know that I’ll have a 3D TV soon enough, just because. But I digress, this is not something I will buy until there’s an actual use for it. Sure there are some games that have 3D, and some movies, and some broadcast TV, but it’s not mainstream yet. No buy from me. I’ve even convinced a friend of mine not to buy a 3D TV, based on these merits. It’s just not a smart buy right now, unless you’re super rich.

While technically the PS3 has more horsepower under it’s hood on paper, it fails to excel in actuality. There are a number of reasons for this. The major one being, most if not all developers use the 360 as their base code and port down to the PS3. Porting to a system that isn’t 1:1 is going to introduce bugs. These bugs can range from crashes, washed out colors, graphics not looking as good, less detail than the 360 version,  frame rate issues, z-fighting, etc. Now it’s been widely documented that the 360 version of games have always looked and performed better than the PS3 version, but few people rarely admit it, especially Sony. Don’t get me wrong, the PS3 is very, very nice at exclusive games, like God of War 3 or Uncharted 2; but those are few and far between. I’ve had an ongoing argument with a friend of mine about this, and I’ve defended the PS3 into the ground. “This is the real reason why the PS3 versions are worse”, but I’ve realized something, it doesn’t matter what the reason is, it matters in the actual product. The 360 version is just better. Another one of my friends kept telling me to get the 360 version of Fallout: New Vegas, but I was going to get the PS3 version (naturally). I ended up not getting the game, because my roommate got it instead. But this all changed when Call of Duty: Black Cops (sic) came out. He suggested (again) that I get the 360 version. Ok, fine, I bought it. From the very first scene, it was clear that the 360 version was the best one. My point was even proven after a Kotaku article showed both side by side. The 360 had all the detail, but the PS3 version was washed out and was missing detail all around. Shame.

Since the 360 Slim (360 S to be exact) came out, I’ve wanted it due to the smaller size and less power being used, but I’ve had a hard time justifying getting it. Well, given my new revelation, I decided that I should just plop down the $300 (+tax!) and get the new one. What was I going to do with the old 360? A friend of mine’s 360 was having a hard time reading discs, so I decided to give him mine. Since there were a few new games that I really wanted to play, I saw I had quite a few games that I was no longer playing. While I hate dealing with them, Gamestop was going to give me way more money than if I were to trade back to Amazon or Best Buy. So I traded in 21 games and got $275 for em. For which I bought Halo: Reach, Fallout: New Vegas and Fable 3; along with the new Silver controller. As one of my friends says, when I go one side, I go for broke. That’s not to say that I’ll stop using the PS3, but I won’t be using it for multi-platform games anymore. I’ll still use it for Blu-ray and exclusive games.

It does make me wonder though, with all the press out there that the PS3 versions are inferior, why doesn’t Sony do something about this? With all the money Microsoft throws around to make the 360 so great, why isn’t Sony doing it? What about their QA process? Are they just ok with an inferior product? Or do they not have as strict of an approval process? Whatever it is, it’s just sad. If Sony hopes to win this console race (and let’s face it, the Wii doesn’t count because no one plays theirs), they’re going to have to do a much better job with their games and throw down some of their bazillions of dollars and do something about it.

I’m not about to go over every little detail of the story, so I’m just going to talk about the gameplay.  While I was quite excited about the game initially, I quickly changed my mind after seeing the GameTrailers review on it.  They loved the game, but I just couldn’t get past the gameplay.  I know that this game is survival horror-type, but I didn’t realize this would be so limiting.  As with all survival horror games, you’re not given rocket launchers or machine guns; but based on the GameTrailers review, all you’re given is a flashlight, and a revolver.  Didn’t look too appealing if you ask me.  My friend bought the game and told me to come over and see it, as it was insanely beautiful.  Still skeptical, I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of it.  Would it be better than I saw on GameTrailers?  Or would it be the same or possibly worse?  After watching it for a few minutes, I was hooked.  Since my friend isn’t too keen on scary things, he gave me the game to play.  Seeing as how I’m a huge fan of story-driven games, this was right up my alley.  From the opening of the game, I was hooked.  The game is 6 “episodes” long, with each being around 2-3 hours each, depending on difficulty and how much exploring you do.  Speaking of exploring, most games nowadays now have collectibles/treasures that you need to find, and this game does too.  While I’m not exactly sure the reasoning behind it, Remedy decided to use coffee Thermoses as their collectible.  There are 100 in the entire game, with some possibly being only in higher difficulties.  They also have “manuscript pages”, which explain parts of the story that you may have missed, and even alluding to things that will happen in the future.  For example, a good 30 minutes before you experience it, you find a page that says “And the bulldozer raced toward him, with every intention of killing him”.  Sure enough, you’ll find that same bulldozer a little later in the game.  There are 106 total manuscript pages, with certain pages only available on higher difficulties.  I’ve already beaten the game and now on my second playthrough and I’m actually taking the time to explore and find things I missed before.  But do yourself a favor, don’t go exploring too much; Remedy made the woods quite large, so searching over the entire woods, is going to end in a lot of wasted time.  They didn’t exactly hide these collectibles, so don’t look too hard.

About a week or so ago, the first DLC (downloadable content) for the game came out.  Simply called “The Signal”, this DLC involves Alan following his GPS signal so he can find his way out.  I’m not going to explain the story on this one, as it does contain spoilers.  This DLC is only about 3 hours long and costs a cool $7; however, if you bought the game, you received a code in the game to download the first DLC for free.  The gameplay of The Signal is very similar to the first game, but the difficulty has been taking up a notch or two.  I found myself dying far more than I did in the first game.  While that’s not a bad thing per se, they don’t give you an option to set difficulty, it’s simply at “Hard” or “Nightmare”.  A bit distracting if you ask me, but I was still able to beat it, as well as find this funny bug near the end of the DLC.

Alan Wake is a game unlike any other, sure it borrows from survival horror and the lip syncing is actually quite funny at times, but the story is simply amazing.  My first playthrough, I kind of blew right past the game, didn’t really listen to the story and mostly forgot about everything.  Now with my second playthrough, I’m paying a lot more attention to everything.  Is there anything I don’t like about the game?  Well, I honestly would have liked it to be on PS3 as well, but since I have a 360, I can’t quite complain.  The lip syncing is hilariously bad at times, but that’s truly it.  This game is by far the best game I’ve played in a long time and now that I’m on my second playthrough, I’m loving every minute of it.  There’s so much to do in this game, from listening to all the radio programs, to the TV programs and listening to all the manuscript pages; this game just envelopes you into it’s world and you don’t want to leave.  They even made a 6-part live-action “prequel”, where each episode is only 5-6 minutes long.  I have mixed feelings about this prequel, which the production values are great, it’s a bit short on story.  Though I can’t really blame that on the “show”, as how much can you really do with 5-6 minutes?  All-in-all, you should play this game.  It’s way better than Red Dead, way better than Starcraft 2 and better than God of War 3 (my second favorite game this year).  Buy this game so we can have a second and third game!

5 emphatic stars out of 5

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.