I recently bought an iPad Pro. I’m not new to iOS since I’ve used an iPhone and owned an iPod touch at one point, but it’s been a really long time since I’ve used this ecosystem after being a long-time Android/MacOS/Linux user.
I just wanted a place to rant about the various annoyances I’ve experienced since buying the device.
The annoyances
(Spotlight Search) I use this the same way I use Alfred on the Mac – Cmd+Space –> then launch whatever icon pops up. The annoying bit? It takes a second for autocomplete suggestions to show up, and when it does it shifts down the app icons and it makes me misclick the icons to a search instead.
(YouTube) I have Premium, and it annoys me that I can’t use PiP on it, even though it works perfectly fine on Android. I used to joke around how Netflix refused to do that on older versions on Android when YouTube can, but now Netflix works and YouTube doesn’t.
(Split-screen) Hey, Google. Why can’t I use split-screen view on this app? Multitasking with email is a no-brainer. Completely forbidding its use on an iPad is unacceptable!
(Split-screen, 2) Same goes to Facebook. Messenger can do it, I think Facebook should too.
I love your service. It does everything I need for a minimal blog, except for one thing:
Let me use links.
Using a single link doesn’t mean I’m automagically a spambot. Links are necessary if I want to refer to an article or a page that I want to comment on or for further reading.
But nope, I’m a spambot apparently for doing that.
Microsoft Teams overtakes Slack with 13 million daily users
Goddamn. My thoughts kinda exploded on this.
Is Microsoft counting O365 users in general? It's an easy way to spike usage. It's like saying Hangouts has more users than Slack and Teams because every phone starts with a Google account and pretty much has Hangouts preinstalled.
Not gonna lie, Microsoft is doing a killing on productivity tools. GitHub acquisition aside, they have VSCode's rapid development, Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS), their usual Office stuff and the obscure but unique stuff, like OneNote (not-obscure, lol), Planner, Bookings, Flow (IFTTT but more!), PowerApp (Google App Maker counterpart, a-la low-code platform like Outsystems) and of course, Teams (Slack counterpart).
I wish Google took GSuite more seriously; expand beyond the usual suite and pursue product development that can actually compete against Apple or MSFT's level of support and reliability. Stuff like Hangouts Chat is difficult to recommend because they keep axing their products.
Yeah, I see Microsoft Azure as a bigger competitor to Amazon Web Services to be honest. Funny how Google Cloud Platform is there, but somewhat “less” threatening. Microsoft's game is in its network of businesses and their ability to sell their stuff.
If I owned a company and wanted to push a productivity suite, I would say Notion > O365 > GSuite. For a cloud platform, it's AWS > GCP = Azure.
Nintendo (in particular, Banjo-Kazooie, BOTW Sequel)
FF7 (Tifa's reveal, obviously)
The Worst
Bethesda (literally everyone but Bethesda Game Studios has something worthwhile to say on their own conference)
The Crowd (basically Bethesda again)
E3 itself? Not gonna lie, the event has gone mostly stale and nothing's really worth watching live because of how the conferences are presented and how the crowd is so fake and the games lacking in actual gameplay and isn't plastered with filters and lies.
After all,
No gameplay, no hype.
No gameplay, no game.
(On the other side of things, Nintendo Direct is the right way of doing these things nowadays. Nearly every Direct I've watched has always been exciting and it's actually respecting enough of my time to watch it)
It should be obvious at this point — this post spoils the entire movie and expects you to at least watch most of the movies before it.
That said, I wrote this while I also forgot to watch certain movies; particularly the Ant-Man and Captain Marvel ones. Keep that disclaimer in mind, I guess?
Avengers Endgame Complaints
This is actually a list of complaints, not a proper review or anything of the sort.
Personally, I think Infinity War is significantly better compared to Endgame, and most of the reasons are listed below.
Captain Marvel
Why is she so underutilized in this movie? Her absence in many pivotal parts in this story are so bad, it's like she's a DLC character in a game that's already done.
They effing managed to travel back through time and they couldn't get her to help on this one? Because she has other priorities on other worlds? Really? And why wasn't that brought up again?
They were about to wield the Infinity Gauntlet and its stones they've gotten from the time heist, so uh… why didn't anyone bother informing her about things…?
Timetravel and the Quantum Tunnel
Oh nice, Thanos is defeated and now they have to restore the stones to where they were in order to bring continuity to the timeline. So uh, Cap, how exactly are you going to return the Soul Stone? Just getting there is one thing, returning the stone? What.
On that note, if he lived his life normally in the distant past after returning said stones, that's basically saying he's essentially lived through all of that, along with all of the movies that have happened so far. That's impressive, how the heck did he manage to keep such a low profile all the way; especially in a universe with crazy amounts of surveillance and intelligence tech.
To travel across time they needed Pym particles, their suits and at least a quantum tunnel to start the process. Past Nebula impersonated the present one and went back so she could open said tunnel to bring Thano—wait, so uh, how on earth did they manage to bring an ENTIRE ship and Thanos from the past to the present?
Oh and for the above, really? They didn't bother securing the damn tunnel? That's some really shitty operational security.
Powerlevel Mismatch and Thanos
Okay, you're telling me that a battle-hardened Iron Man, Captain America (now with the frigging Mjollnir) and Stormbreaker-wielding Thor are having difficulties against a past Thanos that didn't even have any of the stones. Really? Yes, the intensity of the fight is enough to break parts of the vibranium shield, but surely you can't say the same to past-Thanos.
Okay, we have Captain Marvel now. I haven't watched her movie, but from what I can tell, she's immensely powerful—she could single-handedly bring the stranded ship where Tony was and bring it back to Earth, and she can willy-nilly go into planets and lasers and shit. Really? She still can't beat Thanos?
Hell, add everyone up above, along with the Scarlet Witch and Strange and oh god, why is everyone having a hard time with this? Infinity War did this better since they were kept separate across many locations for good reasons. Now? Aww hell. wtf.
Infinity Gauntlet
The original gauntlet? Yeah, dwarven craftsmanship and magic and godly metal on their forge that can harness the power of a sun. Oh, Stark nanotechnology bullshit can do it anyway, can withstand two snaps and adjusts on the wearer's size? Yeah.
Oh and five years later and people are still playing Fortnite. Yikes.
Ugh, so it turns out that Psyonix has sold itself out to Epic Games. After being in Steam for a really long time with a thriving community, Epic bought them and now they want to cut themselves off from Steam.
I'm really seeing a grim pattern between:
streaming services' struggle with exclusive IPs (Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Amazon, Apple, etc)
Epic's exclusivity bullshit to overcome Steam
Ecosystem lock-ins with Apple, along with their war with Spotify.
The Terrible
The distribution platforms for various media are becoming fragmented, intentionally, now that both the platform and the creators have realized the value of being exclusive hand-in-hand with each other.
The platform can choose to host the content with little regard to service quality because they know the customers will flock towards the content anyway, whereas creators will opt for platform exclusivity if it means a better cut at the share or added monetary benefits earned by the platform holder elsewhere (ehem, Fortnite money).
The unwanted side-effect of all this is making the experience terrible for the consumer — with consumers being forced to subscribe to multiple services simultaneously, or running multiple game clients with varying degrees of quality of service.
Having multiple competing platforms are meant to drive the quality of services that the consumers want, but that's not going to happen if they're making tiny monopolies out of the IPs that they exclusively distribute.
The Future
God forbid if this creeps to the music industry and YouTube.
Imagine your favorite creators being evenly split between YouTube and somewhere else. That would be fine if it's all free, but if it ever evolves to a paid subscription model, we're in for a bad time, just like...
Imagine your music tracks being split between Spotify, Apple, Google and wherever because artists have decided to “exclusively release” their stuff on a different platform. Enjoy your multiple subscriptions and fragmented playlists, because the platform and the creators have decided to make the best for them and not for us.
Only the big companies will win in the end. The best we have for this would be government regulation, but damn, I'm sure they also have that covered with bribes / lobbying too.
In the end, the consumers will lose if this keeps up.
As many others have said, don't spoil fun things for others. Only assholes spoil fun things. Don't be an asshole.
Commenting or reacting on a spoiler post is the same as SHARING the spoiler post.
Faking stories / events that may be interpreted as spoilers count as spoilers to me. Jokes are okay, as long as they're obviously jokes (although it's still risking my next bullet point so I hope you don't do this!)
Just the idea of challenging or unreasonably defending any of the above offends me. This includes daring people to unfollow or block you, or saying stupid shit like “oh, you should've reserved tickets earlier” or “spoiler lang yan, move on”. Yeah, I'll move on alright, with a banhammer on your name.
If you fall into any of the above items, I won't hesitate to unfollow, ban or block you in one sitting.
You have been warned.
I got spoiled! What do I do?
If you're unfortunate to encounter any spoilers, please DM the person about it, don't comment. Commenting just makes you a hypocrite. (see bullet point #2).
Why this post exists: Ever since the MCU did its Infinity War and Endgame movies, I've always explained to my friends that they should be wary about spreading spoilers. I've reminded them multiple times, so much that I wrote a post about it.
I keep seeing something along these lines in social media lately, and it irks me.
People were able to donate millions of dollars to restore what had burned down in Notre-Dame! Why can't you use THAT to feed the hungry, the sick and solve the world's problems!
As much as how I'd love the idea of that, it's just not going to happen.
Notre-Dame's case is a measurable and actionable effort—you know exactly what to expect (i.e., restore it to its original form), it's all in a single place, and donated money all goes to that particular effort.
Feeding the hungry? Can people even define a plan to solving this? No way we're just feeding people once and that's it. Solving world hunger requires either a constant flow of food to the right places (a recurring cost, and that's just food! How about other necessities?) or building the necessary support structure to feed entire populations across different continents (a massive undertaking, which likely involves bureaucratic difficulties here and there). There isn't even a leadership responsible to solving the task, so you have to deal with logistics and trust too, because there's always a possibility that the funds will be misused when given to the wrong hands.
Funnily enough, what I've described is called a working government if they actually worked wonderfully towards the welfare of their citizens. Alternately, charities and humanitarian organizations exist for this reason—to support people on particular areas or problems that need the most help.
Humanity IS doing something about these problems, but they're not just simply going to disappear with a ton of cash. It takes people and time too! Implying that humanity isn't doing anything just feels disingenuous in my opinion.
I'd definitely give food and money if I ever see a starving child and no one's doing something about it, but I know that's just temporary.
Solving the actual problems is significantly harder.
I'm deeply saddened and shocked to hear that Fr. Joel had passed away.
He's essentially one of the founding fathers of our local community and its church, literally! That wonderful church wouldn't be here today, and its parishioners would've led different lives without his influence.
To me, he's deeply contributed to my own personal growth and faith thanks to countless fond memories and camaraderie with him and the community. If anything, he's one of the strongest role models of faith that I have had. And I'm sure I'm not alone thinking that.
He started off as strict and cold, but as time went on, we learned that deep down he deeply cared for everyone and knew the best for people to be strong in faith and live better lives, and actually following through the virtues that people should practice in life.
I'll miss the fun and good times, sitting down together making all sorts of tarpaulins and listening to his homilies in mass and his plans that have made our church wonderful today; yet at the same time, I'm glad he's done so much to his mission; he's no longer suffering in pain, and he's with our God in heaven.
As for everyone, please keep him close to your hearts, both in memories and what he's taught to all of us. Death is merely physical, but those values and virtues all transcend that.
Every meeting I attend automatically means a session of Agenda, which tracks when the meeting took place, the minutes and it's all categorized ever since.
Every task I plan to do, or have finished for the day is listed in Todoist, and anything I feel like doing in the future is also immediately scheduled in Todoist. Composing a task is as easy as composing a Tweet (ex: typing Consider automating your task workflow **saturday 1pm #Projects** adds that task in the Project category, with a notification scheduled for Saturday 1PM.)
Status updates for a project are all in a single Google Doc, updated weekly based on all the Agendas and Todoists I've received during the week.
Status updates for work are also kept in a git repository, so that I actually know what I've done for every week in a year; for auditing and tracking purposes (and performance evaluations!)
Things to Do
While I appreciate Agenda so much, unfortunately it's stuck on Apple's ecosystem and I'm using an Android phone.
I'm genuinely considering either buying an iPod touch (which might not happen because Lightning ports are shite) or migrating away from the flow entirely and purely using git and a bevy of shell scripts to speed up the workflow.