Dayton Lowell's Once a year blog

iPhone Review

2009-07-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

Note: I have a 32GB iPhone 3GS, but this short review is general to the iPhone and its software and not specific to the 3GS in most cases.

I'll just get to the point, here are the pros and the cons:

Good:

Over 50,000 3rd party applications. Probably 10,000 of which are farts apps, and another 10,000 are probably Twitter apps.
Lots of quality games, enough that I can safely rule out the need for a PSP or DS portable gaming system
32Gb of storage eliminates the need for a separate Music/Video playing device
Built-In GPS and compass, could potentially eliminate the need for a separate GPS device
3.0 megapixel camera that also does 30fps video, eliminating my need for a camera/flip video camera in most cases. Also, the ability to edit the video on the phone and upload directly to YouTube
Ability for apps to push notifications to the phone is great for IM and GTD apps
A mobile web browser that doesn't suck

Bad:

No Background App support. A must have for apps that play music, like Last.Fm, Pandora & Slacker Radio. Apple lets their own music playing application run in the background, why no one elses?
No Flash support. Not a flash fan by any means, but pretty much all video websites use Flash. At least they gave us the YouTube app
No camera flash or digital zoom. Although there are apps to help/do these tasks

I don't consider the "lack" of a physical keyboard to be a con. In fact I prefer a software based keyboard due to its ability to change based on the current field I'm typing in.

I may decide to do a full blown review of the iPhone 3GS sometime, but not right now.

Here some reviews of the iPhone 3GS. Make your own decisions:

Guitar Hero IV

2008-05-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

I recently found an article which discuses in small detail what Activision is planning to do with Guitar Hero IV. In case you are to lazy to read the article, it pretty much says they plan to implement some of the same things already available in Rock Band.

History Update:
Back in 2007 Harmonix, the developer for Rock Band, sold the rights for Guitar Hero to Activision. Since then they have released one successor, as you may know, Guitar Hero III. They also have two games in development, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (due to be released on June 29, 2008) and Guitar Hero IV. Guitar Hero IV has been speculated to include drums and confirmed to include Vocals, both of which Rock Band already has.

The biggest problem I see with this, is that the devices most likely will NOT be compatible between the two games. Activision has already shown their fans and customers that they don't want there guitars working with PS3. They refused a patch (developed by Harmoix!!), from being released. Thats pretty low if you ask me. That patch was created back in December right after the release of Rock Band and is sitting on a hard drive somewhere not being used, even though millions of users need that patch. Compition is something I usally like to see in a marketplace, but I personally see this as a blatent attempt to rip off Rock Band. But the way things are now, I see them as being too little, too late. For one, Rock Band currently has 155 possible songs (as of 5-2-08) available for it (if you include all Downloadable Songs). This will make for a crazy lead for Harmonix as far as Content is concered, making it hard for Activision to have the same number of songs available for Guitar Hero IV. Even if they release the game tomorrow (won't happen) with 155 playable songs on the disc (never happen), they would still have to continue to release as much downloadable songs as Harmonix (ATLEAST 3 songs a week with an ocasional 6 pack and oscasional full album pack). I don't see that many downloadable songs coming from Activision, but I may be wrong. After all, they do own the Guitar Hero name and Band Hero names. Thats my mad rant.

My first post....and the subject is....Rock Band!!

2008-04-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Hey all, this is my first post so it might be kinda sloppy.

I recently made a post over on the Rock Band forums concerning how I would tweak the way that songs can be chosen in Rock band. Basically, The "song chooser" screen in the game worked just great when I got the game but over time I get more downloadable content (DLC), and the list slowly gets longer and longer. At this point in time with the amount of DLC which I have, it makes for a very long trip to the bottom of the song selection screen. You can read my post from the RB forums to see the full details on my suggested fix but pretty much I just suggest adding a modifier button to allow for "category" scrolling rather then on a song by song basis. I suggest uses the blue button since (I believe) its the only button that each instrument has and is not used for another function in the "song selection" screen (yellow is already used to change the sorting).

I failed to say in my original post on the RB forums that I find it interesting that you can't go up to the bottom...if you know what i mean. A lot of games will take back to the bottom if you hit up when your at the top. If I remember right, that's not the case in Rock Band :(