A vote for me is a vote for me not asking you to vote for me anymore
Hey guys. Thanks to you, I am now in FIRST PLACE in the iPhone contest, so thanks a lot! You guys rock!
Click above to vote for me.
However, as seemingly insurmountable as my lead looks, it is by NO MEANS a lock, so let’s not get lazy. My primary competition seems to be mounting a last-minute effort with 5 hours left to go, so I need your help. Please let everyone on the planet you have ever met know that the fate of the free world depends on me winning that iPhone. At this point, it is really almost as much about me avoiding the embarrassment of losing than actually winning. I really didn’t expect to be able to catch up so quickly in such a short time, but now that I have, it would really be kind of embarrassing to lose such a lead.
So please, tell your super popular friends, brothers and sisters to take 5 seconds out of their busy day and vote for my video. It will save me from entering a downward depression spiral which might cause me to forget where I placed all those Mac Chick of the Month entries…
When you get so good at a game you love… that you hate it
As anyone who’s ever spent an extended period of time with me will attest, “familiarity breeds contempt”. And while I am used to this saying applying to human interactions, I never thought it would sum up my relationship with some of my favorite iPhone apps. Yet here I am with a score of 528 in Flight Control, and I practical dread playing it now.
So, what’s turned me sour on what was at one point my favorite game? Well, quite frankly I’m just too good.
Yes, I know I am not even close to being the top Flight Control player (I have seen scores of 20,000-plus) but a 528 score is apparently still good enough for me to be placed in the top 4% of Flight Control players worldwide. And while Flight Control still holds a coveted spot on my first page of iPhone apps, my finger rarely seeks its soothing, blue embrace. Why? Well, what started as a wonderful casual game has now turned into a serious time commitment. I have calculated that it takes me a little over 5 minutes to land 100 planes, meaning that in order to break my record, I’m looking at laying out about 30 minutes or so of my not-so-valuable time. Faced with the near certainty that my attempt will end in frustrating failure in the 400’s, I more often than not will pass on Flight Control for a more casual, compartmentalized game like Peggle or Puzzlings.
I had a similar issue with the pie-wedge-placing game Frenzic, where in order to beat my 2300 score (again, nowhere near the top score) I would have to devote quite a bit of time, and invariably not reach my goal. Frenzic is similar to Flight Control in that both are fast-finger games, and although both have pause buttons, resuming a game a day later usually ends in disaster as you invariably forget your place.
Addicting, but not fun
To me, Flight Control and Frenzic both suffer from the same underlying problem Read more
Help Build the Ultimate iPhone Feature Request List - Part Deux
Filed under: Photos, Slow News Day, design, iPhone, whining
It was about 2 years ago that Apple first released the iPhone - widley heralded as the most technologically advanced phone anyone had ever seen, save for the fact that it was missing almost every “must have” feature that phones 5 years older had had forever. At the time we decided to create a wish list of things we all wanted our iPhones to be able to do, and over the years Apple has filled in most of the more glaring holes, like a better camera, MMS (sort of), Exchange support, Push notifications (OK, that wasn’t the goal but we got it), an app store, and so much more. Still, there is ALWAYS room to complain. So, with that in mind, we are starting round TWO of our iPhone feature request list.
We invite you to add your ideas in the comments below, and we’ll add the ones we think are the best to the master list. We’re not really looking for things like “add more storage” or “add a faster network”. We’re more looking for things that can be added via software/hardware to improve the way the current iPhone functions.
I will start the list with two things I miss from my jailbroken iPhone days:
SBSettings: Apple needs to rip off SBSettings in some form.
image via TheAppleBlog
If you are unfamiliar, SBSettings allowed you to swipe your finger across the iPhone’s status bar (where the time and battery life are) and a drop down would slide into place which allowed you quick access to a bunch of features such as adjusting the iPhone’s brightness, turning on and off WiFi/3G/EDGE/Bluetooth, enabling SSH, etc. It was customizable, and while we realize Apple wouldn’t allow some of those features in a similar version (SSH, most notably) it was way more convenient to adjust my iPhone’s brightness at night that to go into settings.
Let us add 5 icons to the dock
Yes, I know it throws off the beauty of the 4 icons you have going now, yet there are at least 6 icnos I would like to have in my dock at all times, and while 6 is pushing it, 5 icons actually fit nicely.
Enable Disk Mode as with a regular iPod (Dillon Brown)
This one has baffled me as well, as Apple apparently has no problem with 3rd party apps transferring files to and from the iPhone, yet for some reason we cannot use the iPhone as a makeshift USB Thumb drive out of the box. Apple should add the “enable disk mode” check box to the iPhone in iTunes, and let a connected iPhone appear on the desktop.
Share directions in Maps (Kelly Croy)
While Maps is technically a Google app, we have no say as to whether or not it appears on our iPhones, so Apple should take heed of it’s failings. We would like to be able to e-mail directions to people. Currently copy and paste does not work in Maps, so we can’t even do that.
Holy appendix, Batman!
Faithful Macenstein reader Batman writes:
“Hey! It is now June 18 and you still have stuff at the top of your site from the 14. WTF? Are you dead or what? Do something!!!!!”
Yes, as many of you who follow my Twitter feed know, I had to have my appendix taken out, so it was NOT, I repeat, NOT the 2 three scoop sundaes I got at Friendly’s that were ripping my stomach apart earlier this week, and no, I did not get a virus (we all know people who use Macs do not get viruses).
Looking back I realize that over the past 3 or 4 years or so I have posted something almost every day, which is really quite amazing, as well as quite sad. Anyway, I hope to be posting in a day or so, but it’s certainly nice to see that even a busy crimefighter such as the legendary Batman finds time to read Macenstein, although being a REAL man, (well, an imaginary REAL man…) I am sure he laughs at an appendix stopping anyone from doing their job.
Media Temple sucks, Part 2
Filed under: Not Cool, Opinion, You Bet I'm Pissed, whining
Well, THAT sucked…. Our outage today was (for once) not directly related to Media Temple, other than we finally got so fed up with them that we moved the site to a new host. Unfortunately, things did not go all that smoothly (for some reason the database was merged with that of another site we have on Media Temple). We’re not sure why that happened, but in the end we are now about 50% sure we are now up and running. So let us know if you notice anything weirder than usual.
And death to Media Temple (well, at least until we find out our new host is just as bad and go crawling back to them).
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