The pride of Chinese Fakes

I want to briefly share an interesting story about a fake iPod I came across earlier in the week. At work, it turns out someone had tried to return a Apple iPod Nano 8Gb they had bought, substituting the Apple iPod for a cheap fake. The circumstances surrounding this are a bit sketchy as I was not there at the time, the first time I came across it was when the fake iPod nano was returned by Apple with a polite and bemused letter to the effect that Apple only services original hardware. Intregued, I took another look at the iPod nano.

As you can see, from the outside it is a very good quality fake - the screen looks a little strange but there are no marks or variations which would immediately suggest this product is a fake. The back plate is engraved correctly with the appropraite logos and serial numbers, although there is a small circular hole on the back plate which should not be there.

On switching on the iPod however, it becomes immediately apparent it is not a geniune article, the unit took a few seconds to boot during which it displayed a strange egg time icon immediately followed by an odd screen with an Apple logo and an animated message saying ‘Loading…”.

The low resolution screen looks awful and the user interface, although trying to copy the iPod interface, clearly fails to impress.

The scroll wheel doesn’t work, nor does the middle button. To move from entry to entry, you have to press the left and right buttons (for up and down respectfully) along with ‘Menu’ to enter into an option.

Entering any of the menu options results in this bland and annoying message for a few seconds.

The Music section looks as though the skin has been copied from WinAMP. Apart from the initial menu, no effort has been made to recreate or emulate the Apple iPod interface in any of the ‘functions’ of this device. Song and albumn navigation is rudimentary and feels more reminiscant of a portable CD player than a modern MP3 player.

The photo / picture option takes you to a very unfriendly file browser with no previews.

I never did get far into the movies function given that the machine appartently was devoid of movie content. Next up is the radio function. I didnt test if this would tune into anything but at least it is a feature not found in original Apple iPods.

Voice recording, another first for the clone! Unfortunately it didn’t seem to want to record anything and I quickly moved on.

The eBook feature simply took me to a screen saying Empty Disk and promptly switched off the machine.

And of course the essential “Good Bye” screen, you will be seeing a lot of it as the battery is terrible, the clone performs poorly and frequently switches off at random. I have no idea what a fake iPod like this would cost, but the only value I can see it having would be in situations like these where people try to con refunds on their original Apple products (or as a film prop), I pity anyone who would consider using this as a functional MP3 player.

Vista Bashing = Cheap Traffic!?

It seems the web (and certainly the blogosphere) is full of posts damning Vista for various reasons and I do not believe all this harsh criticism is justified. It all came to a head when I read a particular blog entry tonight. I started writing a brief reply in order to express my feelings on the matter, but it turned into a semi-lengthy rant which I would like to reproduce in a somewhat tweaked / editing form here.

What worries me is that it is very fashionable to bash Vista. It feels like any self proclaimed Tech expert thinks it is almost their prerogative to write long anti-Vista articles based on and citing other anti-Vista articles - does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?!

For the record I should say I am a huge fan of Linux, I run more Linux boxes than Windows, but of those windows boxes, the majority are XP and only one is Vista. I am very happy with Vista as well as XP but it is about managing your expectations. It is completely unrealistic to assume Vista will run on hardware that is a couple of years old (or even some budget machines.)

Surprise surprise, it won’t, Vista has been plagued by hardware and software incompatibilities - what does this tell us? Simply that Microsoft was not lying when it said Vista is a major update to the Windows platform. Historically all major updates have had driver and software compatibility issues (anyone remember XP 5/6 years ago?!?) Drivers are the responsibility of the manufacturer NOT Microsoft, for years prior to release Microsoft were talking to hardware companies, asking them to update their drivers but most ignored them. Why!?? Very simply because they will sell more hardware if people have to go out and buy Vista certified equipment. It is not in their interest to revisit hardware they released 2 years ago - it does not make them any more money and the consumer be damned.

Saying that, there are a number of platforms / situations when Vista is clearly not suitable and for those I still run XP - it is more responsive on such hardware and has the added bonus of comfort factor (i.e. I have been using it for years and I am very familiar with it,) but lets not forget, this is old technology that has not really been worked on since 2005 (sp2.) SP3 is nothing more than a security roll up with a few extra Vista developed features added. The desktop rendering in XP (called GDI+) is based on a software stack that is several years old and incapable of hardware accelerated desktop compositing - the same thing Mac OSX and Linux have been capable of for years.

The problem is, noone seems to have a long enough memory to remember the Windows 2000 / 98 saga, or the Windows XP / 2000 saga that followed that…

There is nothing wrong with Vista*, similarly nothing wrong with XP*, nor is there nothing wrong with Linux*, and even with OSX* - it depends on what hardware you have and what you want to do with it.

* Of course it is not as black and white as this, all platforms have their inherent strengths and weaknesses.

I wish we would move beyond this fanboy like bashing, if there is merit to a discussion I am all for it, but I am getting fed up of reading the same FUD constantly. Most of it is simply fishing for cheap traffic.

/Rant

iPhone SDK!

Well, I didnt think it would happen (or if it did, it would be a closed, crippled version thereof) but Apple have proved me wrong by releasing the iPhone SDK. For those of you who don’t know, an SDK (or Software Development Kit) is a series of tools and documentation that explains and documents the specific works of a piece of hardware. The goal is to allow third part developers (or enthusiasts) to develop almost any free or commercial application they want for the specific platform. Although Apple have in the past been very draconian with their hardware, opting instead to keep a hand on the tiller, the iPhone has really shown the ability of the fanbase to overcome huge obsticles in order to improve on an already great product.

Apple sensibly is legitimising this growing movement but in a way which they can control and support. For example, SIM unlocking programs will not receive the digital certificates required for development, but on the flipside, you can be assured any programs you do download will be malware free. Not only this, but by opening up the playing field to the third party, Apple are also allowing for great feature-adds which they will not have to pay for.

Potentially now, all the gripes and missing features (along with a long list of ‘I wish it did xyz’) can be properly addressed.

Here’s a quick summary:
- iPhone SDK and emulator available now (beta)
- Intel-based Mac required
- Microsoft Exchange/ActiveSync support coming (oh hello there, RIM)
- IM client coming
- Sega games coming (Super Monkey Ball)
- EA games coming (Spore)
- Apps available on iTunes App Store (both on iPhone and Mac/PC)
- Developer fee of $99 to publish in iTunes App Store (includes support)
- Developer sets price (paid or free)
- Developer keeps 70% of profits
- Firmware 2.0 required to use iTune App Store (available in June)
- iFund: $100 Million Dollars VC fund for iPhone software startups

One of the points on the list was that Spore would be officially released on the iPhone in September. When I heard this I assumed it would either be a 2D mobile version or the full game restricted to the amoeba stages. This appears not to be the case, although all the screen shots I could find show a 2D world. Given the game is procedurally generated, the system requirements (for running) the game would not be particularly high, although I am still dubious. If it is released in all it’s glory, I wonder is the MMORPG element would be available via EDGE?

Locational awareness is one of the key elements to the EDGE support in the iPhone, I hope that this means we start seeing games with real world based like the gizmodo originally tried. Apple have also opened up the iPhone in several ways, as mentioned, they now support Exchange servers through the license of Microsoft Activesync.

This is potentially huge because it really opens up a lot of potential for this device in the corporate world. There are many other gems that were disclosed during the conference, take a look at the full illustrated transcript here, courtesy of Engadget.

Microsoft glares at the iPhone

Before the iPhone started gaining traction, Steve Balmer is on record as saying that there was no way for the iPhone to achieve the same market share as Windows CE. A few short months on and it appears Apple’s foray into the portable devices market has led them to a position of dominance in terms of market share over all of Windows CE products.

In response to this, Ars Technica has a great summary of the new version of Windows (CE 6.1) which is Microsoft’s attempt to redesign the interface. Whilst on first glance it is impossible to tell if it removes existing limitations / annoyances that have plagued Windows CE since its inception, what is plain is that the Vista-esque design looks simply awful. It might be due to smart phones becoming more mainstream, but the transition to simpler and less informative window-spaces (despite increasing screen size) is something that annoys me.

That is not to say that there have not been fundamental (and much needed) core level design changes / optimisations, however as the iPhone has proved, people look at the interface first and then get to the annoyances typically once they have bought the product.

Lets hope that Microsoft get their act together for their upcoming Windows CE 7.0.