SOMM Soapbox

I have read and heard stories of peril that stem from the dark underbelly of tech manufacturing across the global and like most Americans, have turned a blind eye to it all. That is until the name of one Chinese company kept popping up in the headlines, Foxconn. On January 25, 2012, The New York Times posted a lengthy article with insider looks into the supply channel of Apple, Inc. After reading the article, I was shocked and angry. Shortly afterwards, I read a CNET piece that tried to rationalize the entire matter in Apple’s favor and I then completely lost it. Are we really in the age when a product requires human costs?

Research in Motion (RIM) just cannot seem to get a break nowadays. Its Playbook tablet has sold poorly and their smartphone market share continues to decline under powerhouses, Google's Android and Apple's iOS phones. Now a judge in New Mexico has ordered RIM to change the name of its OS that is still in development.

We may not get flying cars in the future but if a promotional video by Microsoft is any indication, our future is going to be sleek and dominated by holograms and touch-based appliances. The video paints a vivid future where productivity and ease-of-use go hand and hand. The question I pose, is it possible?

Imagine opening your monthly mobile bill and seeing six digits in the Amount Due box. How would you react? Celina Aarons told WSVN-TV that she was “freaking out” when she opened her bill and saw that she owed T-Mobile $201,005.44. Those six digits were no error, the mobile bill and charges are legit.

Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder and master of all things Apple, has passed at the age of 56 yesterday. We at Sliceofmymind.com, want to extend our condolences to his family and friends. This is an extremely sad day for the entire tech sphere, regardless of your tech preferences or alliances.

In December of 2011, Google chairman Eric Schmidt let out a big announcement in an interview, “In the next six months we [Google] plan to market a tablet of the highest quality”. I had a long discussion awhile ago with good friend and fellow blogger (Lasha of Onefusedlife.com) during the release of the first wave of Android powered tablets that Google, itself would have to enter. Google would have to do for Android tablets, as they had with Android smartphones with their Nexus line. Do them justice.

Samsung, with its bestsellers thus far in the Galaxy S II smartphone series, is now openly mocking Apple and its sub-culture through a funny new commercial.

I am a strong advocate of Google’s Android mobile operating system, but I assure you I’m not a totally blind zealot. Android has matured but still features its fair share of problems. Some of these problems are nerve wracking and could have caused me to leave the Android ecosystem if there were any viable alternatives (in my eyes).  From bugs to security, Google has a lot of issues to solve and here’s hoping that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) does that. Until I get ICS in hand, here are five things I hate about Android.

Apple, Inc has more ammo to use against Android in the mobile war and it’s a feature almost all smartphone users are familiar with, ‘Slide-to-Unlock”.

The Apple iPhone 4S has been released to much fanfare and 4 million units sold, not bad. One has to think, without the virtuoso Steve Jobs, will future iDevices still retain their top spots? According to a report from CNET, the Apple iPhone 4S was not the last iDevice Mr. Jobs worked on. Steve’s last hand’s on project is the iPhone 5. What comes after that is just “another” iPhone and without Steve’s genius at the helm, I sense trouble for Apple.

Since writing Ban Used Games Sales in September of last year, it seems the game industry has grouped piracy and used games sales together. How does illegal copying of Intellectual Property (I.P.) equal the resale of a previously purchased video game is beyond me. According to Jameson Durall, Design Director at Volition, Inc, they are one and the same.

With the Nintendo 3DS pose to sell as many units as its predecessor, the Nintendo DS, in its first year Nintendo is fueling the fledging handheld with the release of Super Mario 3D Land. The title along with Mario Kart 7 is likely help sell the 3DS system, but not everyone will be happy with the game.

Amongst the news of Nintendo losing $926 million for the first half of its financial years is an underlying tone that Nintendo could perish. The sales of the Nintendo Wii, DS have slowed dramatically, compounded by the fact that the Nintendo 3DS, even after a price cut, is not doing as expected. This is leading critics and fanboys alike to claim that the demise of Nintendo is near. What if Nintendo ceases to be?

The days of getting the most for your gaming dollars are gone. A trend brought on by the digital age. The digital age was once herald as the end of high costs for many products and their respected industries, especially videogames. I fondly remember reading an article in Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) as a teenager about how digital content would forever change gaming. Buying video games digitally would be much cheaper and would allow developers to release patches, game expansions (remember those?!) and other digital content to you quickly. The article was partly right on the latter part, but as for the cheaper prices, we’re still waiting

One of Call of Duty: Black Ops's many DLC packs.

On paper, Apple with it’s highly successfully line of iDevices (iPod, iPhone, iPad) is a company that arguably has no equal. You can say due to the reemergence of Steve Jobs in 1997, Apple has become the most innovative company in the last ten years. With a library of patents, award winning products and a mastermind at the helm, Apple could likely join any other tech industry and dominate. Lasha Krikheli (of Onefusedlife.com) posted an article that got me thinking, could Apple become a true market rival in the game industry?

Google’s music service joins a new wave of cloud-based offerings that have the ability and leverage to turn the music industry’s business model upside down on its head…again. Not since the dawn of the MP3 and file sharing has the music industry faced such a major threat and this time, it’s legal (for now).

Imagine purchasing an album one time and with a few clicks, have that album be made available to you on any computer and/or device at anytime. This scenario while possible now isn’t quite legal due to the restrictions imposed by modern digital music services like iTunes. Sure, music downloads don’t have the Digital Rights Management (DRM) embedded into their files but the terms and conditions you agree upon when you download still place restrictions on how and where you can use your music. This is set to change with services like Music Beta by Google.

My Apple iPod Touch 64GB (3rd Generation) was suffering from very poor battery life and it is less than 8 months old. At the advice of a good friend of mine, I decided to bring it to an Apple Store. Using the Support section on Apple’s website, I settle on the Apple Store in the Danbury Fair Mall and I made an appointment for 5:00PM. Drawing from past experience with other companies and their poor support structure, I was expecting to have to buy another iPod Touch or at the very least, pay for the repair even though my iPod is within warranty.

It seems I may have angered the Android gods with my last entry, the five things I hate about Android, as my HTC EVO 4G will no longer take a charge. Instead of buying a new EVO or using my upgrade (I’ve been eligible for an upgrade for 5 years now), I went back to my Blackberry Curve 8330. So I thought I would start a short miniseries of blog entries that will document my readjustment to a phone I once loved. Could my misfortune allow RIM to win me back?

Much time has gone by since we parted ways. I won’t lie and say I don’t miss your superior messaging or e-mail experience. Lest not forget your amazing battery life either, others counted in hours, yours in days. The problem was I couldn’t continue to spin those positives into the faces of friends and family when your negatives are so overwhelming.

With Google apparently showing interest in video games and now based off a report by Engadget that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) will support USB gamepads and HDMI, you might be able to turn your future Android phone and tablet into a nifty game console!

In a move that is not unexpected, Sprint (the third largest mobile company in America) has ended the all you can eat buffet of its 4G mobile plans for tablets, netbooks, USB cards, connection cards and its Mobile Hotspot service. Originally, customers had a 3G data cap of 3GB, 5GB, or 10GB respectfully, and if you had Sprint 4G in your area it was unlimited. Sprint has now combined the two technologies under the same restriction, whether it is 4G or 3G, they both count towards your data cap.

Apple is set to reveal the next iPhone today at 10:00AM PST, but rumors and reports persist that the “next” iPhone is nothing more than a minor hardware upgrade from the iPhone 4. The minor upgrade is said to be the Apple A5 processor (same processor in the iPad 2) and more RAM, noting there is nothing about a radical change in neither the phone’s screen size nor its resolution over the iPhone 4. What does this all mean?

I may not use you too often and when I do, it’s brief but I can’t help seeing you following the same path that the once mighty MySpace took to its demise. I know you want to be a permanent fixture in my life; the center of my social universe, with your multiple arms spiraling in everything that I do, but what you want is too much.