There has been a lot of nerd rage and fanboyism on both sides of the “is the iPad actually interesting” debate.  Of course, that means I’m going to subject you to my opinions on it. So, without further ado…

I have always had a love-hate relationship with Apple’s products.  They’re generally shiny and easy-ish to use, but they aren’t really meant for half of my computer usage (gaming), and it’s much cheaper to just build my own desktop myself.  Their “PC vs Mac” commercials anger me.  I’m very much against intrusive DRM.  All told, I’m simply not in their target demographic.

… Then I got an iPhone.  It’s a gorgeous little device.  The interface is intuitive and responsive.  The built-in apps are slick.  The App Store, while technically DRM-laden, does not intrude with its DRM (as I only own the one Apple device, and even so, apps are transferable to other Apple devices).  The App Store itself is extremely convenient.  It’s handy having an internet connection available on-the-go.

So what does that all mean with respect to the iPad?  Probably nothing.  I still don’t like Apple any better than I did before I got my iPhone… but they do make sleek products.

A lot of people are saying that the iPad is merely a giant iPod Touch.  Others are outraged at the implication, and go out of their way to point out every single minute difference in an attempt to show that the two devices are completely different.  The intent of this post is to show that I fall somewhere in between those two extremes, and to explain why my opinion falls there.

The first question to get out of the way is, “How is the iPad similar to the iPod Touch?”  Here is a short list of the similarities I see:

• The iPad’s look and feel was deliberately designed to be similar to the iPod Touch and iPhone, both in software and hardware.
• The iPad’s operating system is largely identical to that of the iPod Touch and iPhone; it merely contains some additional functionality suitable for a device its size.
• The iPad is capable of running unmodified iPod Touch and iPhone apps straight from the App Store.

You could, in effect, use the iPad as nothing more than a giant iPod Touch, and you would see virtually no change in usage.

Let’s pretend for a moment that we want to make a device that is, literally, little more than a giant iPod Touch.  We take the existing device, and enlarge it to 10″ diagonal.  We upgrade the internal hardware appropriately for its new size, and we redesign the UI to take advantage of the additional screen space.  (We’ll say that these upgrades merely make it faster, rather than adding new features, so that it really is just a large iPod Touch.  Upgrading from 802.11g to 802.11n would fall within the scope of these changes, since no new functionality is obtained, but adding a built-in SD card slot would not.)  Let’s call this hypothetical device the iGiant.

The question now becomes, how is the iPad different from the iGiant?  (Stating the question in this matter actually addresses the crux of the issue – it lets us see whether the iPad is in fact an innovative device, or whether it is simply a giant iPod Touch with some UI polish.)  I’m going to further narrow down the question by explicitly discussing the wifi-only iPad, since I do not intend to purchase a 3G-enabled iPad.

So let’s see if we can figure out the differences here between the iPad and the iGiant.  UI differences are irrelevant, as the iGiant would, hypothetically, make virtually all the same UI upgrades.  Let’s see if we can list any features of the iPad that wouldn’t be on the iGiant:

• Increased bluetooth capabilities.  The iPhone and iPod Touch are only capable of pairing with headsets or with other iP* devices, whereas the iPad is capable of also pairing with keyboards and, theoretically, other bluetooth devices, though a mouse is not supported.
• Video output capabilities.  The iPad is capable of connecting to an external display.  Natively, the iPad will only mirror its display onto the external one, but the SDK allows for using the external display as a *second* display, which opens interesting possibilities for using the iPad as a control panel for whatever is being displayed on the external monitor.
• Local file storage.  This makes it far easier to use the iPad as a writing tool.  While it would technically be possible to do word processing on the iGiant, its lack of local file storage would make the prospect cumbersome at best.  This can be seen in existing iPhone and iPod Touch apps (mostly for jailbroken phones) which attempt to enable local file storage by using the app’s configuration storage as file storage.
• iBooks.  The iPad will come with an integrated eBook store, which presumably will not be available for iPhones and iPod Touches.  Some people will find the iPad’s screen to be better for reading than (for example) the Kindle, but that’s mostly personal preference, but the iPad will also enable additional content in eBooks like color pictures and video, which could make for some very interesting educational eBooks.
• A few hardware peripherals.  The camera adapter is an interesting addition, allowing you to use your iPad as a photo organizer (the iPod Touch can’t do this without using your computer as an intermediary), and the same goes for the SD card adapter.  The keyboard dock is also interesting.

I can’t think of anything else, really, and Apple’s tech specs on their iPad page don’t give me any other ideas.

So based on this list, I would conclude the iPad is more than just an iGiant, but not by much.  Edit: You might be wondering why I dismiss the features I’ve listed as “not much”.  The reason is that the iPad doesn’t do multitasking, making real desktop-class usage impossible, and that in my opinion disqualifies it from being “completely different” from the iPod Touch.

Does this mean the iPad isn’t an interesting device?  Hardly; the larger touchscreen is by itself significant.  People have innovated quite a bit with the smaller touchscreens on the iP* devices we already have; I imagine we’ll see even more creativity when people get their hands on a larger interactive area.

All in all, I think the iPad is an interesting and tantalizing move by Apple, and it does have a lot of potential as a platform, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the world-shaking innovation some fanboys seem to think it is.

Do I plan to get an iPad?  Probably.  The cheapest one.  It will be fun to play with, and I have some interesting ideas for apps that will be fun to tinker with even if I never sell them.

I just called AT&T about these charges.  He refunded the $10.67 I was charged, and cancelled the subscription.

He told me that the charge was added by Verisign – confirming my googled knowledge that Jamster is at least partially owned by Verisign.  So… yet another reason to dislike Verisign.

He also added a purchase control thingy to AT&T’s MediaNET to prevent anyone from charging my phone line again without my explicit approval.

I asked why that wasn’t the default – they should automatically verify that you want these kinds of things.  His answer?  “By law we have to allow people to buy things on their phone.”

Guess what?  Verification does not in any way negate the ability to buy things on one’s phone. It was an idiotic excuse, but I didn’t want to yell at him.  After all, there wasn’t anything this particular customer service agent could do about it.

Let me be clear, though: enabling verification by default would resolve the most glaring problems with the system, and if they do that I’ll be satisfied.

So anyway I asked who I can talk to about getting AT&T to stop this sort of thing from happening on a scale larger than “we’ll refund things for whoever happens to notice and complain”.  At first he said “we have no department for that”, but after I pressed him on the issue (there must be someone I could talk to) he directed me to the “Contact Us” section of AT&T Wireless’ website.

So off I go:

…

…

… HULK SMASH THINGS.

Looks like my next course of action is to track down some fraud department number on my own, or failing that, find a VP’s (or CEO’s) phone number and leave a message for them.

Gather round, it’s story time!

Back in August 2008 I upgraded my AT&T plan from a single line to a five-line family plan.  On my second bill (dated Oct 5, 2008), one of the lines showed a charge like this:

“Flycell”… Mblox… $10.66

I called up my sister-in-law and asked her whether she had solicited the purchase.  I didn’t care if she did, but if she had I wanted her to pay for it.  Turns out she hadn’t.

So, I called up AT&T and got them to reverse the charge.  They said they would, and that they had unsubscribed the line from that merchant’s service.

Sounds simple, right?  Well, look at the next bill, dated Nov 5, 2008:

“Flycell”… Mblox… -$10.66 (refund)

“Flycell”… Mblox… $10.66

“Thumbplay”… OpenMarket… $10.66

Well, this isn’t looking good.  They obviously didn’t cancel the subscription the first month, because it was charged again, and now there’s a *second* subscription!  What’s worse, the contact phone number for Mblox and OpenMarket are exactly the same, so it’s the same company.

So I called AT&T again, and they told me they’d refund it and it’d all be taken care of.

Here’s the next bill, dated Dec 5, 2008:

“Thumbplay”… OpenMarket… -$10.66 (refund)

“Thumbplay”… OpenMarket… -$10.66 (refund)

“Thumbplay”… OpenMarket… $10.66

Hmm.  Two refunds for Thumbplay and now two charges for Thumbplay.  Unfortunately at the time I didn’t realize that I never got the refund for the second Flycell charge.

Well, it appeared to have sorted itself out, and sure enough the Jan 5, 2009 bill had no charges from either company.

… and now we get to Jan 5, 2010, this time on my line:

“XXL: Mobile content”… Jamster… $10.67

$#@*&$(*@#%$

Note that neither of us ever solicited these subscriptions, neither of us ever gave out our numbers to those “get a free ringtone” websites, and neither of us have any affiliation with any of these companies in any way.

It is, quite simply, blatant theft.  Jamster and friends throw charges at people’s lines (using their established business relationship with various mobile carriers) and just hope they won’t notice.  Some quick googling (”jamster scam” and “mblox scam” both turn up some dirt) shows that this is not uncommon.  Yes, a lot of the people who fall victim to this scam have signed up for Jamster’s “free” ringtones; but a lot of them have not, and that’s where I fall.

The problem here is that AT&T does absolutely no verification to see whether the customer actually did subscribe to these things – for some unfathomable reason, they just trust Jamster.

Well, I’m going to call AT&T tomorrow morning and get them to rectify the situation yet again.  I’m also going to chase this up the org chart as high as I can to get something done about it.

So, have any of you experienced anything similar?

Edit: here’s part two.

I’ve been playing the beta of Star Trek Online over the last two days, and let me tell you – it’s really fun.

When the game was announced, I was worried that Penny Arcade’s comic would reflect the gameplay; that is, I was worried the missions would feel contrived to prevent you from using the types of technology that make Star Trek what it is.

More recently, I’ve been worried that the writing would be terrible; the reason for this worry was that the developers, Cryptic Studios, did an absolutely atrocious job of writing in Champions Online.  (The fact that I still liked it despite the writing and terrible balance speaks volumes about how entertaining the gameplay can be.)

Instead, what I find is a surprisingly well-written, non-contrived set of missions.  Indeed the game refers to them as “episodes”, and that’s kind of how they feel.

Space battles are quite entertaining, especially when they get large – two dozen player ships fighting a bunch of NPC battlecruisers makes for an epic battle scene – and the little touches make the battles that much more interesting.  When an enemy ship explodes, you need to get out of the way; I’ve been destroyed more than once when my shields were low and I was too close to a defeated enemy when his warp core exploded.

Ground battles are, similarly, well done.  I had been worried because in a lot of MMOs you just stand there trading blows with the enemy; that’s not how Star Trek portrays ground combat.   Instead, you get a personal shield, and you can dive and roll out of the way of incoming shots, and you have an away team to help you.

I also like that group missions are automatically grouped for you.  Say you’re patrolling the Risa sector; the game automatically matches you with other people also patrolling the sector so you don’t have to sit there waiting for people in chat to say they need to do it too.  It makes perfect sense, and it’s so convenient.

The beta has some bugs; sometimes missions won’t complete, or the graphics glitch and you spawn in ground areas with the ship model instead of the player model (or vice versa, in space).  But these things should be expected during a beta.  In fact the most annoying aspect of the beta so far has been players complaining about bugs.  Guess what?  If you want a bug-free game, the beta is not something you should be playing.  There is a price for early access.  (The other annoying thing has been players not reading mission text, or not looking around.  The answer to “where is the Admiral’s office” is “right where you beamed onto the station, under the big sign that says Admiral’s Office“.)

As a result of the entertaining time I’ve had playing the beta, I pre-ordered the Star Trek Online Collector’s Edition from Amazon.  Now I just have until the game launch to decide whether I want a lifetime subscription; I’m leaning toward “yes”.  I’m having far more fun playing this than I had playing Champions or Lord of the Rings or any other MMO I’ve tried.

At any rate, once the game is officially released and (hopefully) the beta’s kinks are worked out, I’m planning to do a Let’s Play series with Star Trek Online in the spirit of Shamus Young’s Let’s Play Champions Online series (which itself was in the spirit of Rutskarn’s Let’s Play Morrowind series).  I’m hoping it will be an epic story of a young Starfleet officer’s efforts to defend the Federation, rather than a story about how a young Starfleet officer retired at age 30 due to nonsensical plots (as Shamus’ series ends).  This will be an experiment which may fail completely, but nonetheless I’ll try.

Dear AT&T,

I am writing to let you know that your marketing department needs to be kicked in the head.   You see, I just got this letter in the mail from you:

Dear Preferred Customer,

Because we value you as a customer, I have a great deal for you.  It starts with the opportunity to get a FREE 3G phone when you activate an additional line of service!

That’s right, you’re Pre-Approved to receive a FREE phone when you activate an additional line of service with a new two-year agreement.

[...]

What’s more, you’ll continue to receive special equipment offers, plus a monthly corporate service discount of up to 8% on qualified monthly charges.

There are a few problems with this “offer”, all of which prove that you do not in fact value me as a customer.

First: This was printed with a computer.  Would it really have been too difficult to put my name instead of “Preferred Customer”?  It’s printed one inch higher, where the address goes, so clearly you know who this particular piece of paper would get sent to.

Second: I could not add a sixth line to my account even if I wanted to, because five lines is the maximum.

Third: My account currently has a 12% monthly discount through my employer.  Am I supposed to feel good that you’re offering me a smaller discount?

Fourth: As a result of the second and third points, I must conclude that “Pre-Approved” is a complete fabrication.  If there is a pre-approval process, it’s being run by a small group of blind monkeys.

So AT&T, you know that database query that extracts a list of customers for the mailing?  Yeah, pull that out.  I’m going to tell you how to fix your problems right now.

See how it starts with SELECT, then lists a bunch of fields, then it says FROM and a table name, and then there’s a WHERE clause?

Add two more things to that WHERE clause:

WHERE [...] AND discount < 0.08 AND num_lines < 5

You see, this way, you’ll filter out the people who couldn’t use your offer even if they wanted to (and you won’t insult them by offering them a discount lower than their current discount).

It’s a five second modification.  Please do it.  You’ll save trees not printing so many offers, and you’ll save money on paper and ink and postage.

Which brings up one last problem with this letter:

Fifth: You’re mailing me a paper letter.  I had thought I asked for everything electronically; it turns out that paper mailings are specifically opt-out.  Well, now I’ve opted out.

I probably would not have done that if you had bothered filtering your mailings so you would actually be sending them to people who might care.

Thanks for your attention.