_{Jamie Balfour's}Personal blog

As if Instagram could get any more controversial, the Facebook owned photo sharing service is now deleting any photos that are uploaded by apps on Windows Phone 8 such as Instance.

Instagram is an app that does not feature on Windows Phone and it apparently is now deleting the user's photos uploaded from any Windows Phone device. This is apparently a security issue more than anything. I've never ever used Instagram because I know the ins and outs of photo sharing through these services and realised that it's not a good idea. Instagram at one point could even sell your photos according to this source, although since then have backed down.

Apple is supposedly testing a new size for the iPad - although this time it is said to be larger rather than smaller. The iPhone with a larger screen size is not new information, in fact, I posted about it a month back.

The rumour suggests a 13" iPad, which is the size of the smallest MacBook Pro (the one I use by the way) and slightly larger than my current Windows laptop. To me this seems too big, I prefer small tablets and small laptops. When I come home, I dock my devices to my monitor (23? display) and enjoy the big screen of that.

More at MacRumours

One of the most upsetting things that can happen with any technology is that it starts to die, or die prematurely. This is exactly what has happened with my Nexus 7.

Many others have complained as well. Here is a list of issues:

1. When I rotate it from vertical to horizontal it takes about 7 seconds to flip.
2. Music can't play in the background most of the time because it can't cope. It pauses the music and I have to resume it.
3. Chrome takes about 15 seconds to create a tab, even if there are no other tabs
4. Occasionally, going home makes the system crash and it takes me back to the login screen.
5. Changing users takes about 10-15 seconds to change between two users on the login screen. I even decided to remove every other user on the tablet in the hope that it would make it faster.
6. The battery life is subsequently wasted by all of this, and system restarts are frequently required. It also heats up considerably.
7. Scrolling is never fluid - it just jumps.

This is a Nexus 7 32GB with 15GB of data. By the way, I have an iPad 16GB as well and have it almost full (11GB of data on it) and it still runs fine.

Here's the proof it happens to others.

Just two searches that I decided to do on both Bing and Google and look at the results!

Google users search more for why "the Xbox One is bad" and Bing users search for why "the Xbox One is amazing".

You can share this on Facebook if you like.

It saddens me to know that AltaVista, which Yahoo acquired back in 2003, which was one of the first search engines I used (because yea, I'm that bit old enough to remember the days before Google was even around) is now being shut down. We got our first Internet connection with Freeserve just before Google came out in 1997 and by that time I would have been eight years old so I had owned a computer for one year and of course all of our searches were done with AltaVista or Yahoo. Although I also remember using MSN as well. But anyway, it's very saddening that Yahoo is closing down AltaVista after 18 years running on July 8th.

Here's the source.

http://allthingsd.com/20130628/happy-friday-yahoo-kills-a-dozen-products/

A recent survey of 150,000 PCs shows that Apple computers are the best at running Windows. Not surprisingly I have Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro. Unlike any of my other three current computers which are a custom PC, Fujitsu Lifebook T4410 tablet and an Asus Eee PC 1020, the MacBook Pro has never met any errors - despite the fact that it is used more than the latter two. After one and a half years running smoothly on Windows 7, it still outperforms my desktop getting to the Windows Desktop even after a reformat. My MacBook Pro has an i5 2.3GHz whereas my desktop has an i7 3.4GHz and double the RAM.

Anyway, here is the link for the information:

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/apple-mac-best-windows-114620?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=obclick&obref=obinsource

Simply, I have upgraded my desktop to Windows 8 now. My post back in October 2012 is now absolutely out of date because I now actually want to use Windows 8.

I have been looking for the ideal monitor solution too and came up with the Dell S2340T monitor which I will be getting at the same time as my next PC which probably will come around about November this year (will not be a gaming built machine this time, as I will be keeping The Zebra to serve that purpose). It's funny I had a Dell monitor previously and loved it, traded it for a much better IPS Asus monitor, loved it too and here I am looking at another Dell monitor. That also means that the Asus PA238q will be for sale, so if you are interested in a 23" IPS LED backlit display which has absolutely remarkable picture quality and is only 2 years old, you can email me through my website to show your interest.

I am probably looking at a low-powered Mini ITX form factor based PC or, to most people who read this blog's shock, a Mac Mini when they get the 2013 model released. Whatever computer I get next as my primary computer, it will be running Windows 8 without a doubt. I am much the fan of the touch technology built into Windows and have been using it for about 4 years now (with my Fujitsu).

What I now love about Redmond's Windows 8 is still unclear to me, but things like the newly designed Windows Explorer, the new touch keyboard (which will work well with the Dell S2340T), the Start screen on touch, support for USB 3.0 and perhaps the fact that there is now an app store (but it probably should not be referred to as the 'app' store considering that is the first three letters of Apple, hence why they called applications 'apps').

Not that I had not mentioned it already, but Apple were supposedly getting ready with the launch of a new product range. It has now come to light that it could in fact be a games console, evidence suggests based on new features brought to iOS 7.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/sorry-consoles-apples-controller-support-spells-trouble-for-you/

Posted from my Wii U.

Whilst it is not like Apple to admit they are wrong, they will have to now. They are now trying to get into the larger and even larger phone market which is already crowded with other large phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S4. Now Apple is looking for a potential 5.7" display for their iPhone line up.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/13/apple-considering-4-7-and-5-7-screens-for-2014-iphone-models/

Uh oh! I cannot believe I am writing another of these "Why I will not be going..." posts on my blog and again this one points at another Microsoft product. This is the third product line that I have now ditched. Back in October 2012, I mentioned my dislike for Windows 8 after running the beta for months and experiencing the release candidate and then I mentioned my hatred for Windows Phone which I had been using for 18 dreadful months too long.

I was a Microsoft fanboy throughout later primary school and all throughout secondary school. Since about 2011, I have started to completely change that, now following companies like Google and Apple a lot more. Today, nothing has changed, well actually, it has. Microsoft has pushed me further away from them.

I am not going to start saying that I was going to purchase myself an Xbox One any time in the near future, but I had been planning on it when it had saturated it a bit. So today, I started to think to myself, is it really that bad? Well, the answer is actually a lovely great big yes. Which now officially confirms that I have ditched Microsoft. Even after family members were Microsoft employed for a while, receiving invitations for events like the Xbox One release (but didn't go, these were mainly whilst I was in the hospital - thanks for that Microsoft, you know when to fire out the events!) and all the rest, I dislike how Microsoft are now. That company has ruined itself.

In my opinion, all of it went downhill when we lost Bill Gates. Nobody can deny that his last release of the operating system, Windows Vista, was a software bloat and in turn a huge mistake, but it cannot be said that it was down to his work that it failed. I'm sure that under Gates' management skills, we could have seen a similar operating system to Windows 7, which remedied all of the problems created by Vista. But Gates also maintained a stronger position for the company as a whole. The Xbox 360 had some real games on it and had a decent user interface (I dislike the constantly new updated dashboards on the Xbox 360 because I feel that they get worse and worse), the PC still ran on a desktop operating system, not one designed for both tablets and sort of on desktops, and they had Windows Mobile, which ran on PDAs and SmartPhones but felt like a basic version of Windows, not Windows Phone.

Looking at Microsoft's current Windows 8 market share of 4.27% as of June 2013 and Windows Phone market share of 2.0% as of May 2013 people clearly do not care for Microsoft products the way they used to. I am within that group now.

The main point of this post was to describe the Xbox One and its pros and cons. Somehow the Xbox One has been another one of these disasters in my view. It seems like Microsoft wants rid of their company in my eyes.

Price

Xbox One: £429

Wii U: £299 - £349

PS4: £349

Winner: Wii U, lowest price

Disc format

Xbox One: Blu-Ray disc

Wii U: Proprietary Wii U Optical Disc (based on Blu-Ray), Wii Optical Disc

PS4: Blu-Ray disc

Winner: Xbox One and PS4 as they can also play Blu-Ray and DVD films

CPU

Xbox One: Octa-core (8 cores) AMD

Wii U: Tri-core PowerPC

PS4: Octa-core AMD with two quad-core dies

Winner: Xbox One, a single octa-core almost always performs better than a dual-die system

GPU

Xbox One: AMD 768 shader modules at 800MHz

Wii U: AMD 320 shader modules at 550MHz

PS4: AMD 1152 shader modules at 800MHz

Winner: PS4, most shaders at the same clock frequency

RAM

Xbox One: 8GB DDR3 2133MHz RAM (5GB for games) giving a system bandwidth of (8 x 2.133) x 2 lines per clock x 2 modules = 68.256GB/s

Wii U: 2GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM (1GB for games) giving a system bandwidth of (2 x 1.6) x 2 lines per clock x 2 modules = 12.8GB/s

PS4: 8GB GDDR5 5500MHz RAM (7GB for games) giving a system bandwidth of (8 x 5.5) x 2 lines per clock x 2 modules = 176GB/s

Winner: PS4, the highest RAM frequency due to GDDR5's higher bandwidth (GDDR5 also is better at dealing with larger requests than DDR3 which copes better with small requests) and also has the most free memory for games and the highest memory bandwidth.

Storage

Xbox One: 500GB hard drive which is non-replaceable

Wii U: up to 32GB of non-replaceable flash storage

PS4: 500GB hard drive which is upgradeable

Winner: PS4, 500GB hard disk which can be upgraded against the Xbox

Output resolution

Xbox One: 4K

Wii U: 1080p or 2K

PS4: 4K

Winner: Xbox One and PS4, they both support 4K resolution (3840 x 2160 or 2160p) whereas the Wii U supports just 1080p

Input methods

Xbox One: Xbox One Wireless Controller, motion controls with Kinect, voice commands with Kinect, SmartGlass app for iOS and Android

Wii U: Wii U GamePad, Wii Remotes, Wii U Pro Controller, Wii Classic Controller, Wii Nunchuk, Wii Balance Board

PS4: DualShock 4, motion controls with PlayStation Move, PlayStation Vita and the PlayStation app for iOS and Android

Winner: Wii U, there is no app for tablets, but it makes up for it by supporting 5 players on one console with a variety of different inputs that mostly come from existing Wii hardware.

Constant online connection required

Xbox One: required to be connected to the internet every 24 hours on the primary console and every hour on a secondary console

Wii U: none

PS4: none

Winner: Wii U and PS4, you do not need a constant internet connection

Region locks

Xbox One: region locked

Wii U: region locked

PS4: no region lock

Winner: PS4, there is no region lock

Backward compatibility

Xbox One: none

Wii U: NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Commodore 64, MegaDrive, TurboGrafx, NeoGeo, Master System through Virtual Console and Wii Optical Disc support

PS4: an online service that will permit the streaming of previous-generation games

Winner: Wii U, the most varieties of games

Connectivity

Xbox One:

• 2x HDMI (one in and one out)
• 3x USB 3.0 ports
• Wi-Fi
• Kinect port
• b/g/n wireless

Wii U:

• HDMI port
• 4x USB 2.0 ports
• SD memory card
• Bluetooth
• Near Field Communication (NFC)
• AV Multi Out (composite, VGA, component, SCART support)
• Sensor bar port
• a/b/g/n wireless

PS4:

• HDMI port
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
• Bluetooth
• PS4 Camera port
• b/g/n wireless

Winner: Xbox One or Wii U, the Wii U features an extra USB 2.0 port which means you can plug in more devices but at the cost of speed (480Mbps vs 5Gbps). No matter what, the PS4 is the loser here.

 

One more thing...

I have actually begun to get even more annoyed because I read that at E3 Microsoft did not even demonstrate the games they were showing on an Xbox One. In fact, they were shown on a PC. Read this.