I do Android and iOS programming already and I thought about dipping into Windows Phone just to test the waters. I have done C# WinForm and WPF development in the past so I know my way around Visual Studio and C#.
I did a little research and you must have Windows 8. I just am not in the mood to do that. I support my family and my extended family on all things technical. I use TeamViewer to remotely take over their machines to clean up toolbars - oh man do I hate toolbars - and other issues.
Every machine, as of last Saturday, that I support is runnings Windows 7. Finally they are all in sync. I don't want to move to Windows 8. It seems a big MS mistake attempting to combine touch screen and desktop into one platform. I have buddies who have used it and don't like it. It may be more end user friendly but it is less technical dude friendly.
Stinks, I probably could have had some fun playing around with Windows Phone development. Who knows, I might have converted on my apps to it and put it on the store. At this point I am saying NO to Microsoft. My hardware can easily handle Windows 8. I built the machine myself, which is what I have done for years.
If the upgrade was cheap I might consider running it in a VM. But MS charges quite a bit for an OS thus they are keeping me out of the experimentation phase. Real shame MS, you want more phone developers but things like this keep me away.
Oh, just in case you think "Well you bought a Mac for iOS!" Nope, I only do iOS stuff for work, not for my personal stuff, so I only do it on my work MacBook Pro. Heck I could probably Hackintosh my PC via a VM and get a Mac running cheaper than Windows 8.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Updating my first Android game. Taking on a different perspective
I wrote and published my first Android game in a week between jobs. Always good to take time off between positions so I took a week and learned Android and wrote a game. It made enough off ads to pay for entry fee into the Android market plus I learned the Android SDK and have been working mobile jobs since then.
The game had hard coded images thus it did not scale up on tablets or larger phones. I have been recoding the app over the past several months. First I redid all the graphics using Canvas drawing code. Consider them vector graphics instead of PNG files. I can pass in a size to the drawing routines and it will draw all the games pieces to fit. I have been testing on my Xoom, Nexus 7, Note II, Galaxy S3 and original Galaxy. Right now all the game pieces are drawing properly and the game code is in place. The family is playtesting the game.
I have some issues in the help screens that I need to clean up that I found late last night on the S3. Probably get that up and going this evening.
Next I want to add a multiplayer mode. This will not be playing on different devices and not be playing at same time on one device but one player attempting to solve the puzzle then handing it to the next player and the winner will be the one with the shortest time. I have a lot of ideas around this mode that I will work on once help is running smoothly.
Before I ship I need to integrate an ad network and test on all the devices again.
Great, that is all background but what about the perspective change? The first cut and release was all about speed. Getting the game working and out the door. Android tablets barely existed at the time. I tried to make stuff generic but was learning the SDK at the same time so things were hardcoded. Now I am weeding out all the hardcoding and really using the power of Android such as styles.xml, canvas drawing code, various simulators and more generic programming techniques.
At first it was really cool just to say "I have a game available from the Play Store!"Now I want to say "I have a game and it scales and plays on you device and you can play it with friends!"
The help system was confusing. People could not learn how to play. It is much better now as it uses the full game board to show you how to play instead of screen shots snippets in dialog boxes. Even doing that aided me in fixing other areas of the code.
I am taking my time. No need to rush, get it done correctly and test is out on a lot of devices. The game play is in place and the single player scoring system works. I am pretty happy with the graphics although I have been tweaking them a bit here and there. While the single player aspect is nice I feel the multiple player side of things is going to make a much bigger impact. People like to play together. A friendly competition is always a bit of fun. I hope this area keeps the game installed longer on devices and earning more ad dollars.
The more I play the game the more things I see to tweak. My son was playing last night and found an issue. Soon I hope to be playing against him. The more I play the more ideas I have for the multiplayer mode. My first thoughts are not the direction I am going to take. Some of it I figured out while doing the new help screens. It is amazing what you think up when you are forced to relook at the game.
I plan on splitting some of the code out into some other objects too. The main Activity is getting a bit large for my tastes. Most of the code is drawing things so I will be passing a Canvas into objects so they can do their part of the drawing but that is not a big deal. I won't hold on to it, just pass it in for the drawing to occur and be done.
So what is the game? Not going to say until it is ready for release. The current version in the play store, which is a few years old, does not run on a lot of newer devices.
Funny running it on my original Android phone, the first Samsung Galaxy that is now my son's primary device, and how small everything looks. It plays fine on that but once you play on the stunning display of the Nexus 7 everything else looks kind of crappy. Cool how everything scales up and looks fully detailed as I am not blowing up pixels but I am drawing to scale with all the pixels available.
A game makes you use parts of the SDK you never touch while doing business apps. I have not used sound or off screen images in a business apps. Most of those have multiple activities and fragments using standard Android view based controls. I have written custom Android controls that needed to scale but nothing with a ton of graphics. I have not need to access data from styles.xml programmatically in the past. The Android SDK has a lot of power and is very flexible when it comes to running on devices of various sizes.
If the app does well enough on the Android store maybe I will pick up a used Mac Mini and convert it to iOS. I think it would look nice on an iPad and I should be able to port over the drawing code pretty easily. I have done a lot of iOS business development so I already know my way around Xcode and Objective C.
The game had hard coded images thus it did not scale up on tablets or larger phones. I have been recoding the app over the past several months. First I redid all the graphics using Canvas drawing code. Consider them vector graphics instead of PNG files. I can pass in a size to the drawing routines and it will draw all the games pieces to fit. I have been testing on my Xoom, Nexus 7, Note II, Galaxy S3 and original Galaxy. Right now all the game pieces are drawing properly and the game code is in place. The family is playtesting the game.
I have some issues in the help screens that I need to clean up that I found late last night on the S3. Probably get that up and going this evening.
Next I want to add a multiplayer mode. This will not be playing on different devices and not be playing at same time on one device but one player attempting to solve the puzzle then handing it to the next player and the winner will be the one with the shortest time. I have a lot of ideas around this mode that I will work on once help is running smoothly.
Before I ship I need to integrate an ad network and test on all the devices again.
Great, that is all background but what about the perspective change? The first cut and release was all about speed. Getting the game working and out the door. Android tablets barely existed at the time. I tried to make stuff generic but was learning the SDK at the same time so things were hardcoded. Now I am weeding out all the hardcoding and really using the power of Android such as styles.xml, canvas drawing code, various simulators and more generic programming techniques.
At first it was really cool just to say "I have a game available from the Play Store!"Now I want to say "I have a game and it scales and plays on you device and you can play it with friends!"
The help system was confusing. People could not learn how to play. It is much better now as it uses the full game board to show you how to play instead of screen shots snippets in dialog boxes. Even doing that aided me in fixing other areas of the code.
I am taking my time. No need to rush, get it done correctly and test is out on a lot of devices. The game play is in place and the single player scoring system works. I am pretty happy with the graphics although I have been tweaking them a bit here and there. While the single player aspect is nice I feel the multiple player side of things is going to make a much bigger impact. People like to play together. A friendly competition is always a bit of fun. I hope this area keeps the game installed longer on devices and earning more ad dollars.
The more I play the game the more things I see to tweak. My son was playing last night and found an issue. Soon I hope to be playing against him. The more I play the more ideas I have for the multiplayer mode. My first thoughts are not the direction I am going to take. Some of it I figured out while doing the new help screens. It is amazing what you think up when you are forced to relook at the game.
I plan on splitting some of the code out into some other objects too. The main Activity is getting a bit large for my tastes. Most of the code is drawing things so I will be passing a Canvas into objects so they can do their part of the drawing but that is not a big deal. I won't hold on to it, just pass it in for the drawing to occur and be done.
So what is the game? Not going to say until it is ready for release. The current version in the play store, which is a few years old, does not run on a lot of newer devices.
Funny running it on my original Android phone, the first Samsung Galaxy that is now my son's primary device, and how small everything looks. It plays fine on that but once you play on the stunning display of the Nexus 7 everything else looks kind of crappy. Cool how everything scales up and looks fully detailed as I am not blowing up pixels but I am drawing to scale with all the pixels available.
A game makes you use parts of the SDK you never touch while doing business apps. I have not used sound or off screen images in a business apps. Most of those have multiple activities and fragments using standard Android view based controls. I have written custom Android controls that needed to scale but nothing with a ton of graphics. I have not need to access data from styles.xml programmatically in the past. The Android SDK has a lot of power and is very flexible when it comes to running on devices of various sizes.
If the app does well enough on the Android store maybe I will pick up a used Mac Mini and convert it to iOS. I think it would look nice on an iPad and I should be able to port over the drawing code pretty easily. I have done a lot of iOS business development so I already know my way around Xcode and Objective C.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Bought a Nexus 7 - my thoughts
NewEgg sent a coupon for 10% off tablets. It was time for me get a Nexus 7. I have a 3 year old Xoom that gets a ton of use around the house but I wanted something smaller, faster and with a better screen.
The Xoom was really starting to show its age. It was heavy and slow. Holding it took two hands. Sure, I would balance it with one hand but then a cat rubbing on my elbow or a kid knocking a knee into it and I would get bonked on the head or have it fall in my lap.
I was using the Nexus 7 (old style) my boss loaned me for some code testing at work. From that I knew it was the right size to be held in one hand. I also got to see how the multiple accounts worked. This is something else the Xoom does not have as they are no longer updating Android for it. I could root it and get something on there but I think I will leave it alone for now.
I had a number of goals for the Nexus 7. I want to read more and not just technical books but some biographies, non-fiction and sci-fi. I have read books on my phone and the Xoom. Again the Xoom is a bit big and heavy to hold for long periods of time plus the screen is just not that great. I grabbed some free books from Amazon via the Kindle app. There are a ton more free books than the last time I checked. It used to be the old classics but now they have a decent selection of newer books.
The screen of the Nexus 7 is impressive. I used the default Kindle font and sepia colors. The device holds in one hand as it just a bit bigger than a normal paperback book as far as height / width but obviously no where near as thick. You don't have to worry about losing your place and having the book close if your fingers slip or you drop it. I found reading on this device to be very enjoyable and plan to read a lot more books on it.
For gaming it is a really good size too. My younger son really likes it over the Xoom. Both devices get used nightly for looking up internet items, checking email, weather forecast, reading books and games. Setting them side by side really shows how much nicer the high resolution and brighter colors shine on the Nexus 7.
Being 3 year newer technology it is a lot faster than the Xoom. Bringing up Chrome on the Xoom and waiting before you can type in your search was painful. The internal browser was a bit easier but it did not share my bookmarks. On the Nexus Chrome starts up quickly and lets me get right to business.
Having multiple accounts is a boon and a bane. I like being logged in as me and only seeing my email and having my home screen look the way I want it. When I install an app it installs to my account. We are not sharing a game so my high score is mine. The levels I complete on games are mine. The bane? I have to install the app under each account if each account is admin based. I just want to pick from a list of installed apps and let them appear under certain users. Not a huge deal.
Battery life is good too. It gets used a ton and holds up well. KitKat installed a few days back. I have not noticed anything super spectacular about it. I did like the old color for the battery and time, not a big fan of white, but otherwise it has not caused any issues.
I enabled developer mode of course. Connected right up to my computer and I have been able to install APK files for the code I am developing.
So far I am very happy with the unit. It is the proper size and weight and the screen is really impressive. It is going to work for book reading, gaming and developing. 10% off was the icing on the cake.
The Xoom was really starting to show its age. It was heavy and slow. Holding it took two hands. Sure, I would balance it with one hand but then a cat rubbing on my elbow or a kid knocking a knee into it and I would get bonked on the head or have it fall in my lap.
I was using the Nexus 7 (old style) my boss loaned me for some code testing at work. From that I knew it was the right size to be held in one hand. I also got to see how the multiple accounts worked. This is something else the Xoom does not have as they are no longer updating Android for it. I could root it and get something on there but I think I will leave it alone for now.
I had a number of goals for the Nexus 7. I want to read more and not just technical books but some biographies, non-fiction and sci-fi. I have read books on my phone and the Xoom. Again the Xoom is a bit big and heavy to hold for long periods of time plus the screen is just not that great. I grabbed some free books from Amazon via the Kindle app. There are a ton more free books than the last time I checked. It used to be the old classics but now they have a decent selection of newer books.
The screen of the Nexus 7 is impressive. I used the default Kindle font and sepia colors. The device holds in one hand as it just a bit bigger than a normal paperback book as far as height / width but obviously no where near as thick. You don't have to worry about losing your place and having the book close if your fingers slip or you drop it. I found reading on this device to be very enjoyable and plan to read a lot more books on it.
For gaming it is a really good size too. My younger son really likes it over the Xoom. Both devices get used nightly for looking up internet items, checking email, weather forecast, reading books and games. Setting them side by side really shows how much nicer the high resolution and brighter colors shine on the Nexus 7.
Being 3 year newer technology it is a lot faster than the Xoom. Bringing up Chrome on the Xoom and waiting before you can type in your search was painful. The internal browser was a bit easier but it did not share my bookmarks. On the Nexus Chrome starts up quickly and lets me get right to business.
Having multiple accounts is a boon and a bane. I like being logged in as me and only seeing my email and having my home screen look the way I want it. When I install an app it installs to my account. We are not sharing a game so my high score is mine. The levels I complete on games are mine. The bane? I have to install the app under each account if each account is admin based. I just want to pick from a list of installed apps and let them appear under certain users. Not a huge deal.
Battery life is good too. It gets used a ton and holds up well. KitKat installed a few days back. I have not noticed anything super spectacular about it. I did like the old color for the battery and time, not a big fan of white, but otherwise it has not caused any issues.
I enabled developer mode of course. Connected right up to my computer and I have been able to install APK files for the code I am developing.
So far I am very happy with the unit. It is the proper size and weight and the screen is really impressive. It is going to work for book reading, gaming and developing. 10% off was the icing on the cake.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Life with Mavericks - lots of bumps in the road
I installed Mavericks on my MacBook Pro at work. It has been a very bumpy ride. I really wanted multiple monitors to work better, and it does to a point. I have been able to unplug from my second monitor at my desk, move the laptop to a conference room, connect to the TV there and have it mirror the image then reconnect to my monitor when the meeting was over and have it restore the window positions. That is awesome.
The problem? If my machine goes into a deeper sleep, say when I lock and close it for the night, the next morning or maybe even after an hour lunch and an app window will be hosed. Outlook will disappear into the upper corner and you can move it but no resize it. I have to kill the app and start it back up. It has happened to Chrome, Outlook and VMWare fusion so far. Can't find a definite pattern but it sucks when it happens.
I installed Slate which allows me to take a snapshot of my desktop and restore it. I still have to kill Outlook as the restore is not strong enough to put it back where it belongs but after I restart Outlook doing a restore puts it back on my primary monitor sized correctly. I really hope they fix this mess with an update to the OS.
Next up is Apple decides to wipe out or install older versions of tools such as perl, java, etc. The way the base operating system works is you install common libraries and other tools use them. Of course if you have an old library version things go bad. Also if it used to find the library in one place but it moved then things stink too.
I use xml-grep a lot. It was not working post Mavericks. I updated perl and it still did not work. I reinstalled Twig and no go. I looked at where it was attempting to load things and they did not sync up. I ended up doing a copy + paste of the XML/Twig stuff from one perl directory to another. While doing all this fun something dropped a skeleton .bashrc file in the root directory which load before my .profile so iTerm did not have the proper settings.
MacPorts did not work for the first few days after Mavericks came out. They fixed that pretty quickly but it was failing on the SVN 1.8.4 update. I finally just downloaded the tar file and put it where it wanted and was able to move on. Right now MacPorts is updating and installing as expected but I know they got bit by another Apple tool shift.
Look, DLL hell was no fun on Windows. Most ended up including their DLL copy in their own directory. I did not run into issues upgrading Windows like I have on the Mac. Yes, this only applies to developers (probably) as most folks are not dealing with command line tools. Heck the graphic artist I have worked with had never seen this magical terminal window I spoke of. The problem is Apple is just not very developer friendly which makes me mad at them and hard for me to recommend them to family members.
At this point I am back up and running. I have to kill programs at least once a day to get them back visible on the screen and not is some weird docking mode. That has the potential to affect a lot more than just developers. I am sure I will get bit by another command line tool that is not working as expected soon enough. I am trying to get past all the surprises so I can just do my work.
The problem? If my machine goes into a deeper sleep, say when I lock and close it for the night, the next morning or maybe even after an hour lunch and an app window will be hosed. Outlook will disappear into the upper corner and you can move it but no resize it. I have to kill the app and start it back up. It has happened to Chrome, Outlook and VMWare fusion so far. Can't find a definite pattern but it sucks when it happens.
I installed Slate which allows me to take a snapshot of my desktop and restore it. I still have to kill Outlook as the restore is not strong enough to put it back where it belongs but after I restart Outlook doing a restore puts it back on my primary monitor sized correctly. I really hope they fix this mess with an update to the OS.
Next up is Apple decides to wipe out or install older versions of tools such as perl, java, etc. The way the base operating system works is you install common libraries and other tools use them. Of course if you have an old library version things go bad. Also if it used to find the library in one place but it moved then things stink too.
I use xml-grep a lot. It was not working post Mavericks. I updated perl and it still did not work. I reinstalled Twig and no go. I looked at where it was attempting to load things and they did not sync up. I ended up doing a copy + paste of the XML/Twig stuff from one perl directory to another. While doing all this fun something dropped a skeleton .bashrc file in the root directory which load before my .profile so iTerm did not have the proper settings.
MacPorts did not work for the first few days after Mavericks came out. They fixed that pretty quickly but it was failing on the SVN 1.8.4 update. I finally just downloaded the tar file and put it where it wanted and was able to move on. Right now MacPorts is updating and installing as expected but I know they got bit by another Apple tool shift.
Look, DLL hell was no fun on Windows. Most ended up including their DLL copy in their own directory. I did not run into issues upgrading Windows like I have on the Mac. Yes, this only applies to developers (probably) as most folks are not dealing with command line tools. Heck the graphic artist I have worked with had never seen this magical terminal window I spoke of. The problem is Apple is just not very developer friendly which makes me mad at them and hard for me to recommend them to family members.
At this point I am back up and running. I have to kill programs at least once a day to get them back visible on the screen and not is some weird docking mode. That has the potential to affect a lot more than just developers. I am sure I will get bit by another command line tool that is not working as expected soon enough. I am trying to get past all the surprises so I can just do my work.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Mavericks, Java, Android Studio, GIT
I installed Mavericks today on my MacBook Pro. The install went fine but it stop me cold for developing on my Android project. Sweet Apple revenge? Not really, they just don't install the developer tools you need by default. I wish the update would look at what you had and update to match but it does not. I did an update of the OS, not a clean install.
Some are getting prompted to install the Apple version of Java 6. I did not get prompted to do so the first time I tried to start up Android Studio. It just did nothing, no bouncing icon and no error message. Highly annoying and not user friendly.
Apple link to Java 6 that works on Mavericks http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572
With that installed I was able to fire up Android Studio but it could not find GIT. I shut it down.
I was waiting on the install of Xcode to finish. Once that was done I fired up Xcode and it decided to grab the developer command line tools. Now GIT is installed and ready to go.
I appear to be back up and running as far as my Android and iOS development goes.
Outlook is acting weird. It decided to sort of dock itself and moving it just popped back into place when I tried to move it. I then tried Window -> Minimize and restore but that did not help so I did Window -> Zoom and then Outlook did some odd animation witch under a house shrinking up into the corner. I did command Q to quit and restart. It came up with half an email message scrolled off the screen. Doing View -> Navigation Pane seemed to get it back in order for now. It is painting weird in that you can only see half the "Today"header of the email headers.
Macports is not working. First it could not find GNUTAR so I did the following:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/tar /usr/bin/gnutar
Which let it update and start the update of apps but now it has new issues. They plan and releasing an update soon so I am going to wait on that.
What I really want fixed is the crappy multiple monitor support of Mountain Lion. I really hope Mavericks makes that better. So far it has been a real time killer to get things up and running as a developer though.
I really miss Xtrafinder too. I know Apple added tabs but the other huge feature to me is the ability to sort directories to the top of the listing always. I understand if you don't like that but give us a freaking setting Apple! I don't want to scroll all over to find a stupid directory intermixed with my files. I am sure there are plans to update that too.
Some are getting prompted to install the Apple version of Java 6. I did not get prompted to do so the first time I tried to start up Android Studio. It just did nothing, no bouncing icon and no error message. Highly annoying and not user friendly.
Apple link to Java 6 that works on Mavericks http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572
With that installed I was able to fire up Android Studio but it could not find GIT. I shut it down.
I was waiting on the install of Xcode to finish. Once that was done I fired up Xcode and it decided to grab the developer command line tools. Now GIT is installed and ready to go.
I appear to be back up and running as far as my Android and iOS development goes.
Outlook is acting weird. It decided to sort of dock itself and moving it just popped back into place when I tried to move it. I then tried Window -> Minimize and restore but that did not help so I did Window -> Zoom and then Outlook did some odd animation witch under a house shrinking up into the corner. I did command Q to quit and restart. It came up with half an email message scrolled off the screen. Doing View -> Navigation Pane seemed to get it back in order for now. It is painting weird in that you can only see half the "Today"header of the email headers.
Macports is not working. First it could not find GNUTAR so I did the following:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/tar /usr/bin/gnutar
Which let it update and start the update of apps but now it has new issues. They plan and releasing an update soon so I am going to wait on that.
What I really want fixed is the crappy multiple monitor support of Mountain Lion. I really hope Mavericks makes that better. So far it has been a real time killer to get things up and running as a developer though.
I really miss Xtrafinder too. I know Apple added tabs but the other huge feature to me is the ability to sort directories to the top of the listing always. I understand if you don't like that but give us a freaking setting Apple! I don't want to scroll all over to find a stupid directory intermixed with my files. I am sure there are plans to update that too.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Hey technology stop bothering me!
I love technology, it is how I earn a living but there are times when the magic turns into an annoyance. Let's take Amazon for example. I don't order a lot from them but I do order a couple of times a year and it has kept me out of the mall at christmas. There are times I am just researching something that I buy local, like our new microwave, and there are times I am looking up products for someone else.
To Amazon this means old Kevin is about to buy product X. We need to hound him about it until he buys it from us. To some folks this might look like magic. How did Amazon know I was thinking about getting a new camera? They just sent me a list of sales, that is awesome. Yes, I bought a zoom lens from Amazon for my camera. That is the only camera related thing I wanted to buy but to them I need to be an impulse buyer and get more and more crap. I want a setting to shut that off.
At least camera equipment fits in the all age range. One year my youngest son was into Go Diego Go so I ordered a few items related to that for christmas. I still get emails from Amazon about Go Diego Go. That ship has long sailed for him. No longer age appropriate. Don't know if they have an age out flag or not.
I have also researched things for other people while there were at my house. Things I am not interesting in ordering for myself. This included looking prices up for the Kindle. Yes, I am an Android programmer but I would stick with a stock Android tablet. The Kindle was the right thing for this person though so I was simply helping out. Now I get Kindle based information in my email.
Companies can only guess at what you want. There is no magic here. I have been able to kill some of the email from Amazon. They stopped sending me stuff about shoes because I could disable that category. I am pretty sure this happened from me ordering house slippers one year. The categories they manage are too broad. I don't want to shut off all electronics to stop Kindle emails.
I guess I could stop all the emails. Silly me thinks one day I will get some super sale email that is the deal of the century and who wants to miss that? Right now they go straight to the trash. Well, not straight there, I usually peek at the contents of the email and trace back to what I might have researched for them to bother me this time. Yes, I am analyzing Amazons analysis of me. Let's just file that under vicious circle for now.
To Amazon this means old Kevin is about to buy product X. We need to hound him about it until he buys it from us. To some folks this might look like magic. How did Amazon know I was thinking about getting a new camera? They just sent me a list of sales, that is awesome. Yes, I bought a zoom lens from Amazon for my camera. That is the only camera related thing I wanted to buy but to them I need to be an impulse buyer and get more and more crap. I want a setting to shut that off.
At least camera equipment fits in the all age range. One year my youngest son was into Go Diego Go so I ordered a few items related to that for christmas. I still get emails from Amazon about Go Diego Go. That ship has long sailed for him. No longer age appropriate. Don't know if they have an age out flag or not.
I have also researched things for other people while there were at my house. Things I am not interesting in ordering for myself. This included looking prices up for the Kindle. Yes, I am an Android programmer but I would stick with a stock Android tablet. The Kindle was the right thing for this person though so I was simply helping out. Now I get Kindle based information in my email.
Companies can only guess at what you want. There is no magic here. I have been able to kill some of the email from Amazon. They stopped sending me stuff about shoes because I could disable that category. I am pretty sure this happened from me ordering house slippers one year. The categories they manage are too broad. I don't want to shut off all electronics to stop Kindle emails.
I guess I could stop all the emails. Silly me thinks one day I will get some super sale email that is the deal of the century and who wants to miss that? Right now they go straight to the trash. Well, not straight there, I usually peek at the contents of the email and trace back to what I might have researched for them to bother me this time. Yes, I am analyzing Amazons analysis of me. Let's just file that under vicious circle for now.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Initial thoughts on iRadio - not overly impressed
I have a Mac at work that I use for both iOS and Android development. I installed the latest iTunes to go along with the latest Xcode and it popped up a reminder about iRadio so I figured I would give it a shot. I have used Pandora in the past and have ripped a good number of my personal CD collection to various formats to listen to on my PC / phone / etc.
As an old school hair metal band lover, which greatly explains my tin ear, I chose Kiss as a radio station. It played the first song from them then played the exact same song again and tried to play it again. I finally got it to skip forward to a new song. So far this has been a one time glitch.
I have used iTunes to listen to a shuffled version of ripped collection at work. It appears iRadio has the same issue that iTunes does which is terrible shuffle logic. Same song can appear twice in a row or with only a few songs between it. You may hear a couple of songs off the same album in a row. Ugly.
I use MediaMonkey on my PC at home and don't have this issue with shuffling. It appears to remember what it played and what album it came off of giving me what I consider a proper shuffle. Apple just does not appear to care as this has been an issue with them forever. They went random song selection without other context around it.
So far every song but one I have heard I also have in my music collection. Which is good in one way, I like them, but bad in that I am not getting exposed to anything else. When I used Pandora it found bands I was unaware of - Iced Earth being one of them - and I bought CDs from that band. I find Pandora's discovery system to be superior. This may be catalog related, I don't know what Apple has to choose from and I am well aware new hair metal is hard to come by.
I was happy to see you are allowed to pick explicit lyrics. I really want to hear the original version of the song, not a censored version. So far only one song has played with obvious explicit lyrics from the land of Ted Nugent.
Ads are short and don't appear too often but I have only heard 4 different ones. I have been told about Neil Diamond and the Nissan Versa way too many times already.
iRadio played "She's only 17" from Winger and had no clue what it was. No album art, no song title or artist. It just showed "Kiss Radio". Heck of a way to sell songs. It has done it twice with that song, there were only two songs in between the plays, stupid shuffle logic.
It got stuck trying to stream a song. I had to hit next song and it played an ad then the next song. So far most of the time I skip forward it decides it is time to play an ad before giving me a new song selection.
You can't go backwards. If you really liked a song and wanted to hear it again you are screwed. You can pause, play and skip. Can't even rewind the song you are on. This is a not an optimal user experience to me.
Underwhelmed at this point. Sound quality is good. No skips or stutters while the music is playing. The internet connection I am on is speedy so that is to be expected. Some glitches but none of them are total show stoppers, just annoyances. Apple has some work to do here.
As an old school hair metal band lover, which greatly explains my tin ear, I chose Kiss as a radio station. It played the first song from them then played the exact same song again and tried to play it again. I finally got it to skip forward to a new song. So far this has been a one time glitch.
I have used iTunes to listen to a shuffled version of ripped collection at work. It appears iRadio has the same issue that iTunes does which is terrible shuffle logic. Same song can appear twice in a row or with only a few songs between it. You may hear a couple of songs off the same album in a row. Ugly.
I use MediaMonkey on my PC at home and don't have this issue with shuffling. It appears to remember what it played and what album it came off of giving me what I consider a proper shuffle. Apple just does not appear to care as this has been an issue with them forever. They went random song selection without other context around it.
So far every song but one I have heard I also have in my music collection. Which is good in one way, I like them, but bad in that I am not getting exposed to anything else. When I used Pandora it found bands I was unaware of - Iced Earth being one of them - and I bought CDs from that band. I find Pandora's discovery system to be superior. This may be catalog related, I don't know what Apple has to choose from and I am well aware new hair metal is hard to come by.
I was happy to see you are allowed to pick explicit lyrics. I really want to hear the original version of the song, not a censored version. So far only one song has played with obvious explicit lyrics from the land of Ted Nugent.
Ads are short and don't appear too often but I have only heard 4 different ones. I have been told about Neil Diamond and the Nissan Versa way too many times already.
iRadio played "She's only 17" from Winger and had no clue what it was. No album art, no song title or artist. It just showed "Kiss Radio". Heck of a way to sell songs. It has done it twice with that song, there were only two songs in between the plays, stupid shuffle logic.
It got stuck trying to stream a song. I had to hit next song and it played an ad then the next song. So far most of the time I skip forward it decides it is time to play an ad before giving me a new song selection.
You can't go backwards. If you really liked a song and wanted to hear it again you are screwed. You can pause, play and skip. Can't even rewind the song you are on. This is a not an optimal user experience to me.
Underwhelmed at this point. Sound quality is good. No skips or stutters while the music is playing. The internet connection I am on is speedy so that is to be expected. Some glitches but none of them are total show stoppers, just annoyances. Apple has some work to do here.
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