IMAX 3D shows on Tuesday evenings do sell out.
If someone is a good director, 10 years away from the mainstream doesn’t have to destroy their ability (which opposes the George Lucas principle, though that gives rise to the question of initial talent, which I will not discuss here).
Making Titanic doesn’t stop someone from loving science fiction.
Gollum really was a massive step in the blending of motion-captured live actors and CG creatures.
Waiting for the technology you need to be developed can work, but building it yourself is almost always the right choice.
If someone who is a good director and loves science fiction spends ten years of their life building the technology they need to make a movie, it is worth $19 to see it in IMAX 3D.
Probably twice.
Unless you have a very small nose, and so can’t comfortably wear the 3D glasses as their correct focal length is farther from your eyes than your nose will allow.
Which is not a problem I have.
However this means the 2nd time I see Avatar will probably be on a normal screen.
Welcoming others
In the fall of two thousand nine we welcome our first guests to San Francisco. We have lived here scant months, but feel ready. In many ways this is the true test of our comfort in a new place, the ability to show to others what we have built and discovered. Our house is not finished, lacking a desk by the window and a mirror on the wall, but it can be cleaned, the detritus of a life with regular jobs and ultimate games put away, and so it is. We have explored enough to have a coffee shop, a noodle joint, a burger place, and even a sushi restaurant for family outings. The tour of our neighborhood is small, but includes a secluded park on a hill tall enough to afford an incredible view, and Golden Gate Park, near enough for jogs as well as bird watching. We do not know everything, or even many things, but are comfortable with busses, paths by the ocean, and cooking dinner. Our house has but three chairs, yet we can manage to house a guest, and have spare keys.
This ability, to those long with it, seems no grand gift, no special acceptance of place and people. Yet to a transient person it is an achievement long sought. Not only are these four walls new, this specific place, but so too is this city, and state. This is the first lease I have signed in America this decade, possibly ever. Changing my bank’s address of record from my parent’s house I feel my life finally shifting west, belatedly acknowledging where it’s center of gravity has been for years. And after a summer of taking recommendations on cities and neighborhoods it is comforting to lead the way to a mid-morning bagel for a friend fresh off the plane from Shanghai via Beijing. We all rotate around, though, and he is familiar with this neighborhood, having lived here in ’01, before heading to Taiwan, and from there to Shanghai, where we met.
In Los Angeles later, for a weekend, in the city that has been the nexus of my travels east and west, we think of all the other places we have seen together. “Have I still been everywhere you have ever lived?” he asks, the two of us standing on the rooftop of his new house, looking out towards the Marina, and Venice, and the Pacific. Jets from LAX pass on the horizon. Yes, I say, save San Francisco. And San Francisco he will, for three months in we have begun to welcome visitors.
The test of a mobile’s keyboard
The test of a mobile’s keyboard is at what length of intended entry one gives up and waits until a laptop is available.
Pause.
For me, with the iPhone, that point arrives sooner than it has in the past.
Regardless of what Gruber says now about it being “good enough” or what he said at it’s introduction, regardless of how biased I may be, and how wonderful the customization of keyboards is, the length I enjoy typing directly onto the screen is lower than it was on other devices. List of devices used prior here.
As a related note: has anyone else gotten worse at typing on an iPhone lately?
List of mobile phones I’ve used
A Japanese Panasonic candybar model with a monochrome screen which, being old and cheap at the time (2001) I can’t find any information about online.
Nokia J-NM02 - A model that’s very hard to find information on, but in 2002 was pretty sweet. Flip, color, camera, web, and that wonderful antenna.
Nokia 2100 - On moving to Shanghai in 2003 I bought the cheapest phone I could.
Siemens M55 - Quite an upgrade after about a year in Shanghai.
Nokia 6681 - An incredible phone. A little slow towards the end, but with Opera Mini and the Gmail app the best phone experience I had ever had, by far. Also synched with my Mac via Bluetooth, which was a huge win.
HTC P4350 - Windows Mobile. Great hardware, worst software ever. Only lasted six months before I got tired of having the messaging app crash while texting. No sync.
BlackBerry Curve 8300 - An incredible phone, but by 1 year the trackball was breaking. Also better with Opera Mini and Gmail app. Qwerty keyboard was great. Used w/ Exchange.
iPhone 3G white 16GB - Fun, versatile, but hands down the worst phone I’ve used since the… ever. Horrible reception, prone to crashes in the phone app, generally slow, and after 1 year the plastic is cracking at the edges. Note that this is my first time on a US post-paid contract, though I did use T-Mobile pre-paid at times on the BB and the 6681.
Observing America part 1, cell phones
In the year 2009 the cell phone is pretty inescapable. Devices have improved, carrier coverage and ability has improved, and the continual investment in manufacturing has reduced the cost of entry. Via pre-paid SIM and shared-device situations even people without a mobile are able to access the networks and services.
What remains then as the divide is the level of services, devices, and access. While people like Jan Chipchase, FrontlineSMS and others are tracking and planning the phone’s global advancement, others are tracking the push upwards, into the realm of computers, GPS units, music players, and cameras. These two fronts are in some ways the same, that of expanding the ability and availability of a single, always-on device carried with the user. This expansion is truly revolutionary, and understood by both corporations and individuals.
The problem, however, is the gap between desire and implementation, made worse by the almost-identical gap between truth and marketing.
Here in America, for the most part, we are the lucky recipients of an incredible wealth of technological development. Apple is here, Google is here, IBM and Xerox were here, Microsoft and Sun and countless others are here. We are a test-bed for software and expensive systems.
But we are not a leader, in most cases. And the reluctance with which we admit this, or solve it, is startling. I do not mean to say that America as a nation is failing, or unable to address these issues. I am simply stating that the specific technological issues which Americans face on a daily basis in the area of mobile telephony and computing are neither necessary nor shared by the rest of the globe.
Recently I have noted a number of people making a variety of arguments that can be whittled down to one idea:
“[subject] is not really that bad [here].”
The subject varies, more on that in a moment. The here, though, is implied, because most of the writers or commentators have no comparison, or make none. They do not state that “relative to another system” this one is better. There is no comparison of advantages and disadvantages. There is simply the statement that “it’s not that bad.”
What’s not that bad?
- Network coverage.
Marco, who writes very well about many things, makes the claim here:
I frequently travel to the fringes of cellular reception areas, including many areas with zero coverage from any carrier. I’ve found:
AT&T isn’t as bad as many people think.
Verizon isn’t as good as many people think.
This is classic “not so bad” thinking. Why? Because there is no option for good. While Marco’s experiences are completely tied to his location, being a US consumer he has only so many options. However, in San Francisco, AT&T has far, far worse coverage than Verizon. Not just data coverage, or just voice coverage, but coverage of any kind. On Haight and Ashbury, a relatively central, relatively famous San Francisco location, there is a thirty meter wide dead zone where no AT&T tower reaches. Moreover, Marco’s conclusion, while based on extensive personal experience with both networks, comes down to the very unenviable conclusion that:
my phone is a personal computer most of the time, and it’s occasionally used to make or receive phone calls. Most data is downloaded over WiFi, with occasional small transfers over the cellular network. Network flakiness hurts me less than device flakiness. For me, therefore, the device is much more important than the network, because I’m using the device much more than I’m using the network.
Suddenly the inconsistency is clear. Marco is reviewing cell phone coverage on a variety (he also mentions Sprint) of networks, but, for him, networks are not the primary concern.
There are no good networks in America. Sprint’s is fast, but small, and can not handle voice and data simultaneously. It also is based on a non-global standard. Verizon’s is large, but like Sprint’s cannot handle voice and data simultaneously, and is not based on a global standard. AT&T’s network is large, porous, minimally 3G, and often overwhelmed. T-Mobile’s is small and uses a unique band for 3G.
That’s it. There are other carriers, but they are regional. There is no “good” choice. There are no carriers that offer a truly nation-wide network that also interacts with the rest of the world.
- Price
My good friend Charles has been known to state the following, which, I suspect, is a sentiment shared by many, especially those writing online about cell phones:
I don’t mind paying the $90 or $100 a month, that seems fine for unlimited data, texts, whatever, I just want service that works, all the time.
I’m paraphrasing, so should you see him in person, apologize for me. However, the point remains. There is a portion of the US market that does not see price as the barrier. The absolutely mind-blowing aspect of this realization, which many have made before me, and Charles makes often, is that, despite a willingness to pay, this group is still unsatisfied. Why?
Because there is no good US network.
Yet that conclusion leads backwards, to an interesting thought: Why then is cell phone service, in the United States, so expensive? Without comparison, domestically, this question is hard to answer. Most US carriers offer strangely similar prices, often exactly the same. There is very little price competition, and therefore very little in the way of media comparisons. Yet, in most surveys, US cell phone service costs remain highest in the world. This is not often mentioned because there exists no alternative. Yet media pressure is an effective tool, and should be utilized. Paying more for less is not in anyone’s interests.
There are other aspects, like international travel support, carrier locked phones, and early termination fees, that I would like to rail against. Like pricing and network effectiveness, they are issues defended as “not that bad”, and, I think, all too easy to accept without a view of places where they are not the standard.
Here in America we have a great many things, but not all of them are good, or as good as they could be. We also have the ability to compare, the information with which to do so, and the outlets to publish our findings. It is a shame then that so much of the current writing stays within the bounds of what is, here, rather than looking for what is elsewhere and could be, here.